Simon MottAll about me
Simon Mott - All about me
Simon Mott

Category Archives

8 Articles

OwnTracks and my Google Timeline

by Simon

A while back, a friend showed me an application they had started using called OwnTracks, which periodically sends location updates from your phone to your own server. I used to collect similar location data back in the day via Google Latitude, so the idea of self-hosting my own tracking history intrigued me. Fast forward a few months, and I finally got around to setting it up.

Shortly after, another friend decided to set it up as well and mentioned wanting to import their historical Google Timeline exports into it. I hadn’t even considered that, but I loved the idea of giving it a shot since I had years of location data sitting around. A day or two later, I had my data fully ingested and viewable in OwnTracks, dating all the way back to mid-2010.

The first hurdle I ran into was that iOS Google Maps exports use a different format than the Android versions, requiring me to patch the import script to handle the iOS payload. Using an LLM coding assistant, I threw some sample data at it, and it quickly generated everything OwnTracks needed to ingest the files.

However, I quickly discovered that Google Maps on iOS logs far less granular data than it does on Android. Thankfully, I still had my old Android phone from when Google originally moved Timeline data on-device. That phone contained my complete, detailed history from my Android years up until my switch to iPhone, so I dutifully ingested that data too.

Using ffmpeg’s vpp_qsv detail enhancement filter

by Simon

As part of my last post, I was exploring video transcoding with an Intel Arc GPU and how different levels of ICQ affect video size and quality. During which, I noticed there’s a QSV compatible filter in ffmpeg called vpp_qsv which has a detail parameter. VPP stands for Video Post Processing and the filter help text simply says “enhancement level” for detail. The potential to do some automatic picture enhancements directly on the GPU piqued my interest so I decided to have a play with it.

Transcoding with an Intel Arc GPU

by Simon

I am a bit of an NVIDIA fanboy when it comes to GPUs. This is partly down to being a long time Linux Desktop user (until recently) and them having excellent drivers allowing me to pretty effortlessly get proper hardware acceleration working.

In my lab environment I have an old Nvidia Quadro P400 that’s set up for various transcoding workloads and its been working absolutely great for me despite being an older card. I have been primarily using the h264 codec but I recently moved over to h265 (hevc) mostly out of curiosity, and to see if I could get quality on-par with h264, whilst getting similar file sizes.

Me, myself and I

by Simon

As you have have discovered, I’m not especially big on blogging. I lead quite a mundane (or at least I think so) life compared to some other people I know. That said I feel I should share at least something new!

I had some advise from a few of my closest peers to which the “jist” was the need to not sit on my arse and at least try to better myself. As of a few days ago I made the decision to look into the possibility of gaining some professional certifications. I am looking to start a career in the IT industry and, partly because of where I live (and my unwillingness to just get up and move) and my lack of industrial experience … its not going very well.

I feel pursuing these certifications will not only aid me in the career department (eventually) but the knowledge and mindset of “I did that” would boost my view of my own self worth and improve me as a person.

Admittedly this is all talk currently. As some of you know, most of the time my “bark” has no “bite” to put it bluntly.

I am hoping to achieve the following certifications:

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS)
Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure Configuration (70-642)
Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Configuration (70-640)

CompTIA Linux+ (Exams LX0-101 and LX0-102) – with the aim of furthering this to LPIC-1

Happy New Year

by Simon

Happy new year.

This year has been full of interesting things for all of us and today is the start of yet another. I hope you’re all not too stuffed on turkey as it all goes back to normal Monday, wouldn’t want you falling down the stairs as you cant support yourself! There is lots to be done this year.

OpenSSH

by Simon

Here you will find some tips and tricks for OpenSSH that I found useful. Note that the instructions on this page do not cover all the capabilities of OpenSSH and I advise you to use these commands at your own risk.

SSH Aliases

If, like me, you have lots of servers and find it quite tedious to continually type “ssh admin@server1.co.uk” for all your servers, Aliases might be a god send!

To add an alias is really simple. Below is an example of an alias that shortens “ssh admin@server1.co.uk” to “ssh s1” (This can be further shortened with bash aliases which, at present, are not covered here).

Iggy Woes

by Simon

iggy_broken_leg-02.09.09I have a pet Iguana called Iggy. Its a female Green Iguana and over the weekend she broke her leg, badly. (See image to the right)

I was in Milton Keynes over the bank holiday weekend with the #MDBot Group (Quakenet). We arrived on Saturday at about midday and we left the next day in the afternoon. Milton Keynes is, on average about 2.5 to 3 hours away from me so leaving at 15:15 meant I wouldn’t get home till early evening.

When I eventually arrived home after having a relaxing 1.5 hour bus journey from Milton Keynes Central to Birmingham International, my pet Iguana did her usual routine of coming over to me to say hello which, in her world means she wants me to make a fuss of her and usually give her some food. After I had spent 5 or so minutes rubbing some dead skin off her back and prepairing some cress for her to munch on, I sat at my computer and proceeded to catch up on some of the TV shows I had missed over the weekend. After a short while I noticed Iggy was climbing down onto the floor (Which isnt unusual, she likes a good wander), as she walked around the side of the desk I saw her leg was the size of a rugby ball…

My Website

by Simon

Well, just in case you didn’t realize, this is my website. For the most part it is about myself or things I enjoy. I will use this site to host facts/statistics about me and also things that will, in the future, help me with things I may have forgotten (for example, config files, command arguments for things like iptables etc).

If you find any of these pages useful please feel free to link to them. If you are sad and have no life like me feel free to subscribe to my RSS Feed.

If you have any suggestions please feel free to pop them over to me via the contact form (when it works) or alternately via IRC in #agari on Quakenet.

Thats about it for introductions, more to come (soon I hope!)