commit e67cb128e033ef765ea5255c741f33e7a1b06f97 · bmann.ca/bmannconsulting.com

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_notes/Accounting Software in Canada.md

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       Quickbooks is widely adopted and recommended by small business accountants. But, I find it extremely frustrating to use. Multi-currency support is in the [$65CAD/month tier](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/ca/pricing/).

     

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       Note: Quickbooks doesn't support a direct connection to Stripe

     

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       ## Wave

     

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       Wave is inexpensive -- free if you manually import bank statements. The paid tier is [$220CAD/year](https://www.waveapps.com/pricing) for automatic account imports and the ability to accept credit cards. It doesn't support multi-currency and it doesn't have supports for the accounts I need (Wise).

     

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       Wave is inexpensive -- free if you manually import bank statements. The paid tier is [$220CAD/year](https://www.waveapps.com/pricing) for automatic account imports and the ability to accept credit cards. It has very basic multi-currency support and it doesn't have supports for automatically pulling info from the accounts I need (Wise).

     

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       [Wave Payroll](https://www.waveapps.com/payroll) is still my recommendation for easy to use payroll in Canada.

     

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_notes/DNS 323.md

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       ---

     

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       link: https://www.dlink.com/uk/en/products/dns-323-sharecenter-2-bay-network-storage-enclosure

     

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       tags:

     

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         - homelab

     

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         - hardware

     

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         - product

     

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         - NAS

     

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         - D-Link

     

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       ---

     

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       An old D-Link product that I used to run a lot of things on my [[Home Lab]].

     

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       I dragged it out for the [[Z-Space Electronics Bazaar]]

     

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       [Datasheet PDF](https://www.dlink.com/uk/en/-/media/consumer_products/dns/dns-323/datasheet/dns_323_datasheet_en_uk.pdf)

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_notes/Dietrich Ayala.md

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       ATProtocol: https://bsky.app/profile/burrito.space

     

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       ActivityPub: https://mastodon.social/@dietrich

     

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       twitter: https://twitter.com/dietrich

     

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       github: https://github.com/autonome

     

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       ---

     

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       <script type="module" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bsky-embed/dist/bsky-embed.es.js" async></script>

     

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       <bsky-embed

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_notes/Forward Email.md

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       April 11th, 2025 - Technical Whitepaper [PDF](https://forwardemail.net/technical-whitepaper.pdf)

     

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       > In an era where digital privacy is increasingly compromised, Forward Email stands as a beacon of transparency and security in email infrastructure. As the only 100% opensource, encrypted, privacy-focused, transparent, and quantum-resistant email service, we have fundamentally reimagined what users should expect from their email provider. Since our founding in 2017, Forward Email has grown to power email for over 500,000 domains – including industry leaders such as Canonical, Netflix, The Linux Foundation, The PHP Foundation, Fox News Radio, Disney Ad Sales, jQuery, LineageOS, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, The University of Cambridge, The University of Maryland, The University of Washington, Tufts University, Swarthmore College, Government of South Australia, Government of Dominican Republic, Fly.io, RCD Hotels, International Correspondence Chess Federation, and notable developers like Isaac Z. Schlueter (npm creator) and David Heinemeier Hansson (Ruby on Rails creator). This remarkable adoption stems from our steadfast commitment to privacy-by-design principles and complete technical transparency. This whitepaper provides extensive detail and technical insight into our history, threat modeling, systems and security architecture, and future roadmap. Through comprehensive analysis of our implementation choices, cryptographic approaches, and security protocols, we demonstrate how Forward Email achieves unparalleled privacy protection while maintaining full auditability through open-source development. By combining quantum-resistant encryption, zero-knowledge operations, and a distributed architecture with our steadfast refusal to collect user metadata, Forward Email represents not just an email service, but a fundamental shift in how privacy-critical infrastructure can and should be built in the digital age.
     

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       > In an era where digital privacy is increasingly compromised, Forward Email stands as a beacon of transparency and security in email infrastructure. As the only 100% opensource, encrypted, privacy-focused, transparent, and quantum-resistant email service, we have fundamentally reimagined what users should expect from their email provider. Since our founding in 2017, Forward Email has grown to power email for over 500,000 domains – including industry leaders such as Canonical, Netflix, The Linux Foundation, The PHP Foundation, Fox News Radio, Disney Ad Sales, jQuery, LineageOS, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, The University of Cambridge, The University of Maryland, The University of Washington, Tufts University, Swarthmore College, Government of South Australia, Government of Dominican Republic, Fly.io, RCD Hotels, International Correspondence Chess Federation, and notable developers like Isaac Z. Schlueter (npm creator) and David Heinemeier Hansson (Ruby on Rails creator). This remarkable adoption stems from our steadfast commitment to privacy-by-design principles and complete technical transparency. This whitepaper provides extensive detail and technical insight into our history, threat modeling, systems and security architecture, and future roadmap. Through comprehensive analysis of our implementation choices, cryptographic approaches, and security protocols, we demonstrate how Forward Email achieves unparalleled privacy protection while maintaining full auditability through open-source development. By combining quantum-resistant encryption, zero-knowledge operations, and a distributed architecture with our steadfast refusal to collect user metadata, Forward Email represents not just an email service, but a fundamental shift in how privacy-critical infrastructure can and should be built in the digital age.

     

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       Of interest:

     

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       * quantum-resistant encryption through the use of ChaCha20-Poly1305 cipher

     

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       * unique approach to email storage using individually encrypted SQLite mailboxes with optimized PRAGMA settings

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_notes/Home Lab.md

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       An overview of what I have running at home.

     

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       ## Desktop

     

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       * USB-C KVM Switch [[VisionTek VT2900]]: nothing permanently plugged in, I connect my [[Steam Deck]] or my laptop as needed

     

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       * Hyper X Keyboard, mouse?

     

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       * Yeti Microphone

     

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       * Opal Camera

     

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       * [Focal Celestee Wired Headphones](https://www.focal.com/products/celestee), a thank you gift from <https://headphones.com>

     

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       ## Network and Servers

     

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       * [[Lenovo M900 Tiny]] running [[Cloudron]]: not a paid instance, so it just runs [[Ampache]] for music and a static webserver <https://home.bmann.ca>

     

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       * High speed fiber over cable via [Oxio](https://oxio.ca)

     

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       * [Unifi Ubiquiti Dream Machine](https://ca.store.ui.com/ca/en/products/udm)

     

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       ## Cloud Things

     

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       I run [[Commons Computer]] and a [[Bluesky PDS]] instance at [[BringYourOwn.Computer]].

     

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       ---

     

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       Related notes tagged with homelab (not necessarily MY home lab):

     

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       <!-- tagged with homelab -->

     

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       <ul>

     

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       {% for post in site.notes %}

     

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       {% if post.tags contains "homelab" %}

     

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       <li><a href="{{ post.url }}" class="internal-link">{{ post.title }}</a></li>

     

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       {% endif %}

     

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       {% endfor %}

     

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       </ul>

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_notes/PDS on Fly.md

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       ---

     

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       tags:

     

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         - pds

     

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         - ATProtocol

     

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         - selfhosting

     

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         - FlyIO

     

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         - opensource

     

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       link: https://github.com/likeandscribe/pds-fly/

     

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       ---

     

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       [[Bluesky PDS]] running on [[Fly.io]] by [[Tom Sherman]]

     

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_notes/Railway.md

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       Free-to-start hobby tier. You get a $5 credit every month, but must have a credit card attached. You can manually add people to projects. 8 GB RAM / 8 vCPU per Service max. PR deploys and Monorepo support.

     

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       Pro tier which supports teams is $20 / month / person, plus resource usage. 32 GB RAM / 32 vCPU per Service.
     

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       Pro tier which supports teams is $20 / month / person, plus resource usage. 32 GB RAM / 32 vCPU per Service.

     

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       ## Railway Metal

     

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       Railway had terrible issues with Google Cloud, and have migrated a bulk of systems to [Railway Metal](https://docs.railway.com/railway-metal), their own managed hardware.

     

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       As part of Railway Metal, the $20 / month minimum spend means there are no team fees.

     

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       You can also [buy Railway on AWS Marketplace](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-cnib4vbrfgs5a) -- which looks like $10KUSD / year -- where you can use it to run / deploy to public clouds.

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_notes/Tom Sherman.md

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       ---

     

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       link: https://tom-sherman.com/

     

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       tags:

     

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         - person

     

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         - developer

     

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         - ATProtocol

     

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         - Bluesky

     

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       ATProtocol: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2xau7wbgdq4phuou2ypwuen7

     

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       ---

     

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       Creator of [[Frontpage]]

     

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       Runs a lot of things on [[Fly.io]], like [[PDS on Fly]]

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_notes/Vaden Masrani.md

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       ---

     

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       link: https://vmasrani.github.io/

     

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       tags:

     

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         - person

     

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         - Vancouver

     

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         - zspace

     

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         - llm

     

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       ---

     

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       > I am the CEO of [Sophia Consulting](https://www.sophiaconsulting.ai/). Previously I was a Senior Research Scientist at Huawei Technologies Canada, working in the area of machine learning and artificial intelligence. I completed my Ph.D ([evidence](https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0430543)) at the University of British Columbia as a member of the [PLAI lab](https://plai.cs.ubc.ca/) under the supervision of [Frank Wood](https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~fwood/index.html). My CV is [here](https://vmasrani.github.io/assets/pdf/vmasrani_resume_2025.pdf).

     

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       > 

     

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       > Before this, I was supervised by [Giuseppe Carenini](http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~carenini/) in the [Laboratory for Computational Intelligence](https://www.cs.ubc.ca/cs-research/lci) where I completed my M.Sc. in artificial intelligence. I have also had the good fortune of working with [Siamak Ravanbakhsh](http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~siamakx/), [Emtiyaz Khan](https://emtiyaz.github.io/), and [Colin Gay](https://www.phas.ubc.ca/users/colin-gay) in deep learning, approximate bayesian inference, and particle physics, respectively.

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_notes/VisionTek VT2900.md

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         - product

     

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       link: https://visiontek.com/products/vt2900-usb-c-kvm-docking-station-multi-display-mst-dock-100w-power-delivery

     

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       description: This is a KVM Switch that sits on my [[Home Lab]] desktop.

     

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       USB-C Dual System KVM Docking Station with 100W Power Delivery

     

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_notes/Z-Space Electronics Bazaar.md

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       ---

     

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       tags:

     

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         - event

     

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         - Vancouver

     

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         - zspace

     

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       ---

     

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       A buy / sell / trade of computer hardware, electronics, and devices of all kind, hosted at [[Z-Space]].

     

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       ## May 2025

     

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       May 16th, 2025 <https://news.z-space.ca/z-space-electronics-bazaar-may-16th-2025/>

     

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