iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 02/07/2026

So far so good. I am spoiled with Go having this stuff out of the box, but requiring `hyper` feels ok I suppose. #RustLang #HTTP #Telemetry #Latency

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 02/07/2026

Got a working version of httptrace-rs as a stand-alone client. I do, however, want to support hyper directly and offer a Connector so that's gotta be next. #RustLang #HTTP #Telemetry

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 13/06/2026

Some early feedback about probes.dev was folks wanted to also see a traditional timeseries of latency over time, so here we go... #GoLang #HTTP #Monitoring #BuildInPublic

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 11/06/2026

Just looks so good and its quite informative! probes.dev coming soon! #DNS #TCP #HTTP #GoLang

Screenshot of https://probes.dev Timing view of request life-cycles and distributions.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 10/06/2026

This first version was nice, but it really didn't convey what I wanted so I redesigned it to show relative average time spent in each part of the request lifecycle. #GoLang #HTTP #Monitoring #BuildInPublic

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 09/06/2026

Sneak preview of a Timings Breakdown in probes.dev to see where the average time is spent during a request. #GoLang #HTTP #Monitoring

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 09/06/2026

Speed of packets' differences in one graph. Yellow: NYC probe talking to app also in NYC Blue/Green: SFO and AMS probes talking to app in NYC #Latency #Geography #Networking

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 07/06/2026

Changed up SQLite from `PRAGMA syncronization = FULL` to `PRAGMA syncronization = NORMAL` and got an immediate result. Litestream is still doing its thing in the background as well to ensure changes are synced elsewhere. #SQLite #GoLang #Litestream

DB write latency graph showing p50, p95, and p99 dropping to the floor.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 07/06/2026

It has been about 24 hours since probes.dev went into private beta and the metrics have shown nothing exciting. It is just humming along. #GoLang #HTTP #Monitoring #BuildInPublic

Screenshot of Graphana dashboard showing the app and 3 regions showing nothing exciting as far as incidents are concerned.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 06/06/2026

And probes.dev is in private beta with everything working. Public beta coming soon! #GoLang #HTTP #Monitoring

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 03/06/2026

Ceramic coated, PPF installed, and all windows tinted. All set for Summer! #Lexus #IS500 #FSport #FlareYellow

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 02/06/2026

Public status page progress for probes.dev is looking good. Although, I might try to use the green, blue, purple shades to see how that looks instead of the standard green, yellow, red. :shrug: #HTTP #GoLang #Monitoring

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 01/06/2026

Made it to #3 on the orange site... blainsmith.com/articles/htt... #HTTP #GoLang

Screenshot of Hacker News show the blog post at #3

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 30/05/2026

Now we have some Prometheus metrics being exported so we can keep an eye on the health of probes.dev #GoLang #SQLite #Prometheus #Observability

Prometheus UI showing a p95 database write latency over a 5-minute window.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 30/05/2026

Early morning work before everyone gets up. I got the deployment files and scripts all set for probes.dev #HTTP #Monitoring #Telemetry #GoLang #SQLite

Directory listing of deployment scripts and systemd folder of unit files and a Litestream config file.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 28/05/2026

I got billing set up and working for probes.dev so we're getting close to public release! #HTTP #BuildInPublic

Screenshot of simple Billing page for https://probes.dev showing a "PAID" subscription.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 28/05/2026

Hahaha what?! Moderation? Adult Content? I thought with all this awesome "AI" stuff like this was a solved problem. 🙄

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 26/05/2026

The gradient colors are much nicer and tighter now with the X-axis having cleaner segments. #HTTP #GoLang

HTTP probe timings screenshot with gradient bar charts shifting from green, blue, purple, and pink for fast to slow respectively. Top stats bar shows uptime/downtime percentage, Apdex score, mean response time, and errors.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 24/05/2026

Got D3 rendering the charts. The design isn't set in stone, but I like it so far. #GoLang #D3 #htmx #templ #HTTP

Screenshot of heatmap of latency of a single probe.

Screenshot of Probes listing showing summary of uptime, latency, and Apdex score with sparkline charts.

Screenshot of timings charts for a single probe for DNS lookup, connection, TLS handshake, TTFB, response, and total roundtrip.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 23/05/2026

Working as intended so far. Main app and N probes start up and the app sends out info to each probe so it can go probe the endpoint, collect results, and report it back to the main app. #GoLang #Docker #BuildInPublic

Screenshot of tmux with two panes. Top pane shows SQLite data of HTTP probe results from different regions. Bottom pane shows docker compose logs showing 3 probes running and being signaled by a main app when and what to probe.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 17/05/2026

ffmpeg is really making the i9 do work. #ffmpeg #Transcoding

Screenshot of btop showing 20 cores of a 12th Gen i9-12900H Intel CPU utilizing about 20-35% during an ffmpeg transcoding session.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 17/05/2026

My mostly specific Markdown to Gemtext converting to copy my Zola site into a decent Gemini capsule is coming along. Once I do get most of it converted I won't have to keep doing this since writing Gemtext by hand is as easy as Markdown. #GeminiProtocol #Gemtext #Zola #Markdown

Screenshot of Lagrange Gemini browser showing an article with code blocks and normal headings and text converted from Markdown of my existing blog.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 13/05/2026

Working on a tool to convert my #Zola site content to #Gemini since I can push my capsule of .gmi files to #Sourcehut and it will serve it for me. gemini://srht.site/quickstart.gmi #GeminiProtocol #GemText #SmolWeb

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 28/04/2026

Very cool design. Just FYI that the left margin is cut off on Vivaldi on Android.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 07/04/2026

This is what we call "Fake Spring" in NY.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 05/04/2026

"This comment sums up why I’m so tired of programming in 2026 pretty well" Source: fursuits.online/@tilton/1163...

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 05/04/2026

Finished home dashboard. All self hosted and doesn't rely on creepy, exploitative, spying big tech. RPi Monitor with a VESA mounted RPi 5 running magicmirror.builders with FOSS modules and a custom module I made so my wife and I can manage tasks from a little Go app. #RaspberryPi #MagicMirror

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 12/03/2026

PASS PASS PASS PASS... Original Blake2b passes, new Blake2s passes, Argon2 using original Blake2b passes, and entire stdlib passes. #HareLang #Blake2

Terminal view of Blake2, Argon2, and entire Hare standard library modules' tests passing after adding Blake2s support to existing Blake2b implementation.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 07/02/2026

Using the Popover API to avoid any JavaScript is pretty neat. #Henhouse #NoJS #NoJavaScript #StaticHosting #SelfHost

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 24/01/2026

"Not enough attention is paid to the fact that part of #Ubuntu's monetization strategy is to withhold security updates to non-paying users" #canonical #linux #ubuntuserver #ubuntults #ubuntu #sysadmin Source: floss.social/@mort/115950...

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 13/01/2026

My parents are awesome. 5un5h1n3 got a new car cover for my birthday for those winter months it doesn't leave the garage. ♥️ #Lexus #IS500 #5un5h1n3

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 04/01/2026

My 2005 Jeep Wrangler TJ with the original 4.0 litre engine and 6-speed transmission just hit 155,555 miles 250,341.5 km. In a world full of enshittified unreliable garbage this is one of the few material things that bring a smile to my face. #Jeep #Wrangler #Reliability #Enshittification

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 02/01/2026

Temporary home for the weekend while my wife paints my office for my holiday present.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 30/12/2025

I don't have a large collection, but it is timeless. #Books

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 27/12/2025

Sketching out some UI for the project I've been working on. This should help me start to put things together for a working version by the end of next week. #BuildInPublic #StaticHosting #SimpleCSS

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 13/12/2025

I started messing with @charm.land some more and decided to make a browsable list of all code comment prefixes. I might even integrate it with the $EDITOR and $VISUAL vars to allow you to quickly open the select file and that line number and/or a preview popup of the surrounding text. #TUI #GoLang

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 25/11/2025

I've been blocking permutations of this account at least once a week.

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 27/09/2025

Nice morning at Thistle Day Highland Games heavyathlete.com/game/5748/

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 25/09/2025

www.barbellmedicine.com/the-bridge-2/

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 16/07/2025

hare-binstream for reading and writing binary data a bit more conveniently. git.sr.ht/~blainsmith/... #HareLang #Programming

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Blain Smith @blainsmith.com · 12/06/2025

Extended lunch to wash the car is yet another reason I enjoy my own co-op. Zero pressure to be glued to my computer on a gorgeous day. ☀️ #Lexus #IS500

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