Tickets My tickets were about $125 each. Parking $45. This makes my 10th Dream Theater show since 2005 and my first time at the YouTube Theater. Nice venue. Dreamsonic This was promoted as a “festival” but didn’t really feel like one. It also felt like they were trying to recreate the Progressive Nation concept from ‘08/‘09, which I think was better. The lineup was ok. Animals as Leaders is cool, but Devin Townsend has never done anything for me.

Tickets I last saw Depeche Mode on August 17, 2009 at the Hollywood Bowl. The cost was about $70 in Section S. This time it was almost $400. 😲 I wouldn’t do it if they weren’t one of my favorite bands. With Fletch recently passing, I felt I ought to try and see them again. Once again, tickets were mobile only. In case you’re wondering, the “Add to Google Wallet” doesn’t do anything on GrapheneOS with Sandboxed Google Play services.

Tickets When the event went on sale back in November, I wasn’t able to get tickets. Demand was crazy and so were the prices. A day prior to the show date, they announced that some additional tickets were released so I decided to give it another look. They appeared to be on the side, almost behind the stage so I was going to pass again. However, the resale options caught my attention and the price was more reasonable compared to when they first went on sale, so I decided to go for it.

Originally, I was looking for a RSS reader and considered things like Tiny Tiny RSS, FreshRSS, Miniflux, etc. Then I came across maubot and its RSS bot. I figured I’ll give that a shot since I already run a Matrix homeserver. This isn’t a general how-to. I’m just documenting my experience and issues I ran into. Please refer to the actual docs. Installing maubot I used the Docker install. I use the Docker Compose plugin so after the initial docker run as per the docs and editing the config file, I added a service in my docker-compose.

I’ve been using GrapheneOS since 2019 with a Pixel 3a. Support ended May 2022 so it’s on to the next phone. The Pixel 6a will be supported for 5 years (up from 3 years). This is a big plus. More on the 3a vs 6a comparison later. Installing Normally, OEM unlocking would be available when first receiving the phone, but in this case the 6a needed an OTA update and then a factory reset in order for OEM unlocking to work.

This is not a proper book review. Just some thoughts and notes on topics in the book that I found interesting. Given that I’m somewhat of a privacy enthusiast, I’m not sure why I didn’t read this sooner. It was published on September 17 (Constitution Day), 2019 and I read it this year. Some might say skip the first half of the book or so to get to the whistleblowing, but I enjoyed the whole thing.