Dan Q

James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes

On the flight over to Trinidad I finished reading James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes by James Acaster, which I received as part of our family’s traditional Christmas Eve book exchange. I’m a big fan of his stand-up work (and I maintain that his 2018 serialised show Repertoire is among of the most artfully-crafted pieces of live comedy ever written) and clearly JTA recalled this fact when giving me this book.

Many of the stories in Classic Scrapes have featured in his work before, in various forms, and I found myself occasionally recognising one and wondering if I’d accidentally skipped back a chapter. It helps a lot to read them in Acaster’s “voice” – imagining his delivery – because they’re clearly written to be enjoyed in that way. In the first few chapters the book struggled to “grab” me, and it wasn’t until I started hearing it as if I were listening in to James’s internal monologue that it gave me my first laugh-out-loud moment.

After that, though, it got easier to enjoy each and every tall tale told. Acaster’s masterful callback humour ties together anecdotes about giant letter Ws, repeated car crashes, and the failures of his band (and, I suppose, almost everything else in his life, at some point or another), across different chapters, which is fun and refreshing and adds a new dimension to each that wouldn’t be experienced in isolation.

A further ongoing concept seems to be a certain idolisation of Dave Gorman, whose Are You Dave Gorman? and Googlewhack storytelling style was clearly an inspiration. In these, of course, a series of (mis)adventures with a common theme or mission becomes a vehicle for a personal arc within which the absurdity of the situations described is made accessible and believable. But with James Acaster’s self-deprecating style, this is delivered as a negative self-portrayal: somebody who doesn’t live up to their idea of their own hero, and becomes a parody of themselves for trying. It’s fun, but perhaps not for everybody (I tried to explain to Ruth why I’d laughed out loud at something but then needed to explain to her who Dave Gorman is and why that matters.)

A fun read if you enjoy Acaster’s comedic style.

Note #25480

A couple of hours into our ferry journey, we just got our first glimpse of the island of Tobago, where we’ll be staying for the next few days.

Note #25478

Just visited the Logos Hope, an ocean-going, volunteer-staffed floating book fair (run by a Christian charity, but it’s not-TOO-religiousy inside, if that’s not your jam) that’s coincidentally docked for a fortnight right next door to my hotel on Trinidad!

What a strange concept. Fun diversion though.

Note #25476

My 12:55 flight is, according to this departure board, delayed to… 12:55!?

Either it’s running a full 24 hours late, or this board is untrustworthy.

Lego: Zero Dawn

Except to children, I don’t really give Christmas presents to (or expect to receive them from) others any more.

But that didn’t stop my buying myself a gift of a particularly fun Lego set to build over the festive period (with a little help from the eldest child!).

Caddy

I’m pretty impressed with running WordPress on Caddy so far.

It took a little jiggerypokery to configure it with an equivalent of the Nginx configuration I use for DanQ.me. But off the back of it I get the capability for HTTP/3, 103 Early Hints, and built-in “batteries included” infrastructure for things like certificate renewal and log rotation.

(why yes, I am celebrating my birthday by doing selfhosting server configuration, why do you ask? 😅)

Entitled by Kate Manne

I just finished reading Kate Manne‘s Entitled. I can’t remember where I first heard about it or why I opted to buy a copy, but it had been sitting in my to-read pile for a while and so I picked it up last month to read over the festive period.

The book takes a pop-sci dive into research around male entitlement and the near-universal influence of patriarchal ideology. It’s an often bleak and sometimes uncomfortable read: Kate Manne draws a line connecting the most egregious and widely-reported abuses of power by men to much-more-commonplace “everyday” offences, many of which are routinely overlooked or dismissed. The examples she provides are a sad reminder of quite how deeply-embedded into our collective subconscious (regardless of our genders) are our ideas of gender roles and expectations.

It’s feels somewhat chastening to see oneself in some of those examples, whether by my own assumed entitlement or merely by complicity with problematic social norms. We’ve doubtless all done it, at some point or another, though, and we don’t make progress towards a better world by feeling sorry for ourselves. By half way through the book I was looking for action points that never came; instead, the author (eventually) lays out what she’s doing and leaves the reader to make their own decisions.

The vast majority of the book is pretty bleak, and it takes until the final chapter before it reaches anything approximating hope (although the author refrains from classifying it as such), using Manne’s then-imminent parenthood as a vehicle. She finishes by talking about the lessons she hopes to impart to her daughter about how to thrive in this world, which seems less-optimistic than discussing, perhaps, how to improve the world for everybody, but is still the closest thing it delivers to answering “what can we do about this?”.

But I suppose that’s the message in this book: male entitlement is a product of our endemic patriarchy and, try as we might, it’s not going away any time soon. Instead, we should be picking our battles: producing a generation of women and girls who are better-equipped to understand and demand their moral rights and of men and boys who try to work against, rather than exploit, the unfair advantages they’re afforded at the expense of other genders.

That I’d hoped to come to the end of the book with a more feel-good outlook betrays the fact that I’d like there to be some kind of magical quick fix to a problem that I’ve certainly helped perpetuate. There isn’t, and that’s a let down after the book’s uncomfortable ride (not a let down on the part of the book, of course: a let down on the part of the world). The sadness that comes from reading it is magnified by the fact that since its publication in 2020, many parts of the Western world and especially Manne’s own USA have gotten worse, not better, at tackling the issue of male entitlement.

But wishful thinking doesn’t dismantle the patriarchy, and I was pleased to get to the back cover with a slightly sharper focus on the small areas in which I might be able to help fight for a better future. A good read, so long as you can tolerate the discomfort that may come from casting a critical lens over a society that you’ve been part of (arguably it could be even-more-important if you can’t tolerate such a discomfort, but that’s another story).

(In 2025 I’m going to try blogging about the books I read, in addition to whatever else I write about. Expect an eclectic mix of fiction and non-fiction, probably with a few lapses where I forget to write about something until well after I’m deep into what follows it and then forget to say anything about it ever.)

Dan Q did not find GC8KR7D Motorway Mayhem (another one)

This checkin to GC8KR7D Motorway Mayhem (another one) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

The geohound and I braved an explore of this litter-filled GZ but couldn’t spot a cache among the copious detritus before the whiny little thing started fighting to get back to the warm of the car and to the rest of her “pack”. Maybe next time we pass by this way.

Endless SSH Tarpit on Debian

Tarpitting SSH with Endlessh

I had a smug moment when I saw security researcher Rob Ricci and friends’ paper empirically analysing brute-force attacks against SSH “in the wild”.¹ It turns out that putting all your SSH servers on “weird” port numbers – which I’ve routinely done for over a decade – remains a pretty-effective way to stop all that unwanted traffic², whether or not you decide to enhance that with some fail2ban magic.

But then I saw a comment about Endlessh. Endlessh³ acts like an SSH server but then basically reverse-Slow-Loris’s the connecting client, very gradually feeding it an infinitely-long SSH banner and hanging it for… well, maybe 15 seconds or so but possibly up to a week.

Installing an Endlessh tarpit on Debian 12

I was just setting up a new Debian 12 server when I learned about this. I’d already moved the SSH server port away from the default 22⁴, so I figured I’d launch Endlessh on port 22 to slow down and annoy scanners.

Installation wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped considering there’s a package. Here’s what I needed to do:

Move any existing SSH server to a different port, if you haven’t already, e.g. as shown in the footnotes.
Install the package, e.g.: sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y endlessh
Permit Endlessh to run on port 22: sudo setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' /usr/bin/endlessh
Modify /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/endlessh.service in the following ways:
1. uncomment AmbientCapabilities=CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE
2. comment PrivateUsers=true
3. change InaccessiblePaths=/run /var into InaccessiblePaths=/var
Reload the modified service: sudo systemctl daemon-reload
Configure Endlessh to run on port 22 rather than its default of 2222: echo "Port 22" | sudo tee /etc/endlessh/config
Start Endlessh: sudo service endlessh start

To test if it’s working, connect to your SSH server on port 22 with your client in verbose mode, e.g. ssh -vp22 example.com and look for banner lines full of random garbage appearing at 10 second intervals.

It doesn’t provide a significant security, but you get to enjoy the self-satisfied feeling that you’re trolling dozens of opportunistic script kiddies a day.

Footnotes

¹ It’s a good paper in general, if that’s your jam.

² Obviously you gain very little security by moving to an unusual port number, given that you’re already running your servers in “keys-only” (PasswordAuthentication no) configuration mode already, right? Right!? But it’s nice to avoid all the unnecessary logging that wave after wave of brute-force attempts produce.

³ Which I can only assume is pronounced endle-S-S-H, but regardless of how it’s said out loud I appreciate the wordplay of its name.

⁴ To move your SSH port, you might run something like echo "Port 12345" | sudo tee /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/unusual-port.conf and restart the service, of course.

Note #25448

Compared to the children, the dog is Not So Impressed by the deep snowfall we’ve just received. To be fair, it’s basically up to get armpits!

(leg-pits? I don’t know what the right word is for a canine!)

Note #25446

I’m staying in a lodge in the Yorkshire Dales National Park to celebrate the eldest kid’s birthday and we’ve just received a huge dump of snow, overnight. What was grass is now a thick white carpet of fresh powder. Sounds like a great birthday present for an excited kid I can just hear beginning to wake up…

Dan Q did not find GC8TK41 05 – Willow’s Wanders – Eshington Bridge

This checkin to GC8TK41 05 - Willow's Wanders - Eshington Bridge reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

An extended search over two visits today by the eldest child and I couldn’t reveal this one. Very frustrating, given that it’s clearly there somewhere (CO performed maintenance just yesterday!). We’re staying in a cabin a little way downstream, so we might find another opportunity to search again tomorrow, weather-permitting. 🤞

Dan Q found GC80592 Coffee, Cache and Dash

This checkin to GC80592 Coffee, Cache and Dash reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

QEF while stopped for a confort break on a long journey North from Oxford. The dog wanted to go with the others into the services, but had to stay outdoors with me and hunt for the cache. Solid hint!

My Ball

Our beloved-but-slightly-thick dog will sometimes consent to playing fetch, but one of her favourite games to play is My Ball. Which is a bit like fetch, except that she won’t let go of the ball.

It’s not quite the same as tug-of-war, though. She doesn’t want you to pull the toy in a back-and-forth before, most-likely, giving up and letting her win¹. Nor is My Ball a solo game: she’s not interested in sitting and simply chewing the ball, like some dogs do.

A champagne-coloured French Bulldog on a black-and-white rug, indoors, stands while chewing a lime green tennis ball. — I’d like to imagine the grunts and snorts she makes at about this moment actually translate to “My ball. Myyyy… ballll. Myyyyy ball! MY BALL! My… BALL!”

No, this is absolutely a participatory game. She’ll sit and whine for your attention to get you to come to another room. Or she’ll bring the toy in question (it doesn’t have to be a ball) and place it gently on your foot to get your attention.

Your role in this game is to want the ball. So long as you’re showing that you want the ball – occasionally reaching down to take it only for her to snatch it away at the last second, verbally asking if you can have it, or just looking enviously in its general direction – you’re playing your part in the game. Your presence and participation is essential, even as your role is entirely ceremonial.

A champagne-coloured French Bulldog in a doorway, on a tiled floor, holds a braided rope; a human hand barely holds the other end. — This might look like a game of tug-of-war, but you’ll note that my grip is just barely two-fingered. She’s not pulling, because she doesn’t need to unless I try to take the toy. This is *My Rope*, she knows.

Playing it, I find myself reminded of playing with the kids when they were toddlers. The eldest in particular enjoyed spending countless hours playing make-believe games in which the roles were tightly-scripted². She’d tell me that, say, I was a talking badger or a grumpy dragon or an injured patient but immediately shoot down any effort to role-play my assigned character, telling me that I was “doing it wrong” if I didn’t act in exactly the unspoken way that she imagined my character ought to behave.

But the important thing to her was that I embodied the motivation that she assigned me. That I wanted the rabbits to stop digging too near to my burrow³ or the princess to stay in her cage⁴ or to lie down in my hospital bed and await the doctor’s eventual arrival⁵. Sometimes I didn’t need to do much, so long as I showed how I felt in the role I’d been assigned.

A toddler with long blonde hair, wearing a pink cardigan, sits on a tall stool in front of a kitchen sink, holding a long-handled scrubbing brush. — In this game, the chef was “making soup” (in the sink, apparently) and my job was to “want the soup”.

Somebody with much more acting experience and/or a deeper academic comprehension of the performing arts is going to appear in the comments and tell me why this is, probably.

But I guess what I mean to say is that playing with my dog sometimes reminds me of playing with a toddler. Which, just sometimes, I miss.

Footnotes

¹ Alternatively, tug-of-war can see the human “win” and then throw the toy, leading to a game of fetch after all.

² These games were, admittedly, much more-fun than the time she had me re-enact my father’s death with her.

³ “Grr, those pesky rabbits are stopping me sleeping.”

⁴ “I’ll just contentedly sit on my pile of treasure, I guess?”

⁵ Playing at being an injured patient was perhaps one of my favourite roles, especially after a night in which the little tyke had woken me a dozen times and yet still had some kind of tiny-human morning-zoomies. On at least one such occasion I’m pretty sure I actually fell asleep while the “doctor” finished her rounds of all the soft toys whose triage apparently put them ahead of me in the pecking order. Similarly, I always loved it when the kids’ games included a “naptime” component.

Note #25428

Our family tradition on New Year’s Day is to go to the Rollright Stones. Legend has it that you can’t count the standing stones and get the same answer twice.

This year the younger child counted 37, the elder 67… so wide a difference that you can see how one might ascribe a mystical reason!