Let's Encrypt SSL Certificate for Dynamic DNS Host

As I was tired of having to add an exception when wanting to visit my personal website, I decided it was time to use Let's Encrypt to get a signed SSL certificate. Luckily it was easier than I thought. Here are the simple steps that I followed.

1. Add the ppa repository
• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
2. Install the cli tool
• sudo apt install python-certbot-apache
3. Run the cli tool
• sudo certbot --apache -d <dynamic dns host name>
4. Answer the questions that included:
• Email Address
• Select which conf file to add to (For me it was /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl.conf)
5. Check that my SSL certificate was now signed

TODO: Automate the renewal

Removing phantom tuner in MythTV

I had a tuner that did not appear on the tuner screen in setup, but would always throw an error about the default channel for it not being available when saving and exiting.

In order to resolve this, I followed the suggestion here: http://lists.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/2010-March/284826.html

1. manually login to the database
1. mysql --user mythtv --password mythconverg
2. find the phantom cards id
1. select * from capturecard ; 
3. delete it from the 'capturecard' table
1. delete from capturecard where cardid = ;

Refurbished Fossil Sport Review

As my Pebble Steel was beginning to annoy me with its inaccurate battery life and bad mms support, I recently purchased a refurbished Fossil Sport 43mm for $50 plus tax to replace it.

Hardware

The included magnetic charger makes it easy to ensure proper alignment for charging. However, the puck itself is very light and prone to being pulled off the table by the weight of the cord. It would have been nice for it to have some sort of non-slip rubber bottom.

The silicone strap is extremely soft and very comfortable. There are 10 different holes for size adjustment and 2 loops to hold down the extra strap. On the downside, it is quite small. My wrists are not very big, and yet I have to use the 4th to last hole.

The watch case is the crown jewel. It is well constructed. The two tone design makes it look smaller than it actually is. The buttons have a satisfying feel to them. The rotating crown has a smooth rotation with no click.

The GPS works well and is pretty accurate on a Google Fit workout.

There is no speaker for interacting with the Google Assistant or taking calls on.

Initial Experience

The first two days the battery life was awful as it was seemingly constantly downloading updates (and of course I was messing with it more trying out different watch faces). The updates would pause when the battery dropped below 30%, so the watch was on the charger ... a lot.

Watchfaces

I am disappointed by the seemingly lack of watchfaces on the Play Store. For any kind of variety, I had to install Facer. Facer has lots of options, but none of them were exactly what I wanted. Luckily, I was able to use their editor to create my own. However, Facer does have seemingly daily notification spam.

Software

The watch does seem to lag when interacting with apps specifically. Interacting with notifications is generally good, but does occasionally lag. This would probably be fixed by moving to 1GB of RAM in the Gen 5.

Battery Life

I charge my watch while in the shower every morning and typically have 30-50% left when I take it off overnight. It will then lose another 7 or so percent overnight. The settings that I use are: always-on time, tilt to wake, tap to wake, background heart rate, "ok google" detection off, and Wi-Fi off.