Extra Virgin Olive oil - Azeite - Good enough to eat on it's own
Itâs been all change with the olives. I didnât attempt to combine with anyone this time round.
Azeitonas verde - green olives
So the only olives I harvested were my own. I picked these mid October.
The four main olive trees that I have, produced a very good bi-annual harvest as expected. They were the main contributors to the 157 kg that I collected to have pressed for olive oil. These produce green olives. I still have no idea as to their variety. I have young olive trees and a few not pruned large olive trees. These contributed about 15 kgs to this total. The 15kgs were a mixture of black and green olives. One of the varieties is the âcornicabraâ.
Oliveira grande - one of the big olive trees
I picked my olives mid October and essentially picked them by hand. I found this works better for me and is more conducive to a state of zen. When I got tired of the silence I tuned in on the portable radio đ I had to bash the olives which were higher up with a long cane. It went well. Because of limited time I have ended up leaving about 25% in the field. This is fine. I am happy my work efficiency and finished in a week. For my efforts I got 17 litres of olive oil. This will keep me in oil for a year, so I am pleased. I was reluctant to collect more this year due to difficulties in arranging transportation.
I got my olives pressed at Lagar Santa Catarina, Afra & Rocha Limitada. My olives got thrown into the mix with other mainly small holdings growers. The Lagar gives you your olive afterwards. I am not sure how much of the oil the Lagar retain for their work input. I didnât ask this time round. I think it is 25%. The oil produced by the lagar is of Extra Virgin quality and is, as always, very good.
O Pepe com as azeitonas - O Pepe being used as a work horse.
Pickled olives are nice to eat. Which you are waiting for your other dishes to cook. So about 3 weeks before the main harvest I picked some for pickling.
Pickled olives - azeitonas conservada.
That about wraps up my olive productivity for the year. I will for the rest of the year carry on with pruning and transplanting what the olive trees I have. I do have 100-150 young olive trees for sale if anyone wants some. Of the mainly Cobrançosa variety. A bargain at three euros a tree. Strictly by appointment đ Thank you.
eCryptfs is a POSIX-compliant enterprise
cryptographic "stacked" filesystem for
Linux. Please note that eCryptfs is not a partition/ disk encryption
subsystem like "Veracrypt".
eCryptfs is a stacked filesystem that can be mounted on any
directory and on top of the main file system.
Using eCryptfs, we can easily create an encrypted directory to store confidential data and mount it on any directory. Although it is good practice for the mount path to match the path of the underlying file system.
No separate partition or pre-allocated space is actually required. eCryptfs should work well on local filesystems such as EXT3, EXT4, XFS, JFS and ReiserFS etc.
eCryptfs also supports networked filesystems such as NFS, CIFS, Samba and WebDAV, but not does not have full functionality as it was designed to work with local filesystems.
It stores the cryptographic metadata in the headers of files, so the encrypted data can be easily moved between different users and even systems. eCryptfs has been included in Linux Kernel since version 2.6.19.
Installation
I have only tested it on Ubuntu 18.04 which runs on the
5.4.0-87-generic kernel obtained by running
$ uname -r
5.4.0-87-generic
To enable an utilize Ecryptfs install ecryptfs-utils
$ sudo apt install
ecryptfs-utils
How to use Ecryptfs
The method below explains how to encrypt a folder called temp2
located at /home/zephyr/temp2
Open terminal and run the following:
$ sudo mount -t ecryptfs
/home/zephyr/temp2 /home/zephyr/temp2
Passphrase: â enter your passphrase
Select cipher:
1) aes: blocksize = 16; min keysize = 16; max keysize = 32
2) blowfish: blocksize = 8; min keysize = 16; max keysize = 56
3) des3_ede: blocksize = 8; min keysize = 24; max keysize = 24
4) twofish: blocksize = 16; min keysize = 16; max keysize = 32
5) cast6: blocksize = 16; min keysize = 16; max keysize = 32
6) cast5: blocksize = 8; min keysize = 5; max keysize = 16
Selection [aes]: 1 â selected
Select key bytes:
1) 16
2) 32
3) 24
Selection [16]: 1 â selected
Enable plaintext passthrough (y/n) [n]: n â
selected
Enable filename encryption (y/n) [n]: n â
selected
Attempting to mount with the following options:
ecryptfs_unlink_sigs
ecryptfs_key_bytes=16
ecryptfs_cipher=aes
ecryptfs_sig=015fa84ce5a1043d
Mounted eCryptfs
temp2 is now and encrypted folder. Any files and folders moved
into it or created in it, will be automatically encrypted.
It is very important to remember your passphrase to be able to access your eCryptfs encrypted files and folders. It is also advisable to make note of your encryption settings for future mounting/access of your encrypted file/directory. Choose a password of 14 characters long made up of 3 random words. This is easier to remember and still secure. You can add symbols and numbers to it increase the strength of the passphrase.
A signature file named "sig-cache.txt" will be created under "/root/.ecryptfs/" directory. This file is used to identify the mount passphrase in the kernel keyring. It is a read only file except for the root user. I suggest saving a copy with a .bak extension as the signature number for each encrypted and mounted folder. It is a good reference to have.
Accessing your encrypted data.
Each time you reboot
your system the encrypted volume will be dismounted and you will not
be able to access your encrypted data.
To access your data you have to
remount the encrypted volume with:
$
sudo mount -t ecryptfs /home/zephyr/temp2 /home/zephyr/temp2
After which Terminal pops up prompting you for your passphrase
type in your passphrase
The problem with this is that you have to enter all the encryption options each time.
Automating the mount process
My solution to this is make an executable .sh file with a text editor. I use the default, gnome, gedit text editor
In this example, I have called it mount_temp2.sh
Paste the following code into it. Use whatever options you chose when you encrypted the file/folder.
#!/bin/bash $ sudo mount -t ecryptfs -o ecryptfs_cipher=aes,ecryptfs_key_bytes=16,ecryptfs_passthrough=no,ecryptfs_enable_filename_crypto=no /home/zephyr/temp2 /home/zephyr/temp2
Save mount_temp2.sh
Right click, on the file in File Manager, go to the Permissions tab and tick the box âAllow executing file as a programâ
Next with your Text Editor, create a new executable file. Call it run_mount_temp2.sh for example. Paste the following code into it.
#!/bin/bash #start terminal and mount encrypted temp2 folder gnome- terminal -- sh -c './mount_temp2.sh'
Make
it executable as described
previously. Now when you
start your system, simply double click on
run_mount_temp2.sh
this it will call Terminal and prompt you to enter your passphrase. After entering the correct passphrase you will be granted full access to your encrypted folder and files within.
Automating the dismount process
You
can dismount (unmount) your encrypted folder at any time to make it
inaccessible. By default
to
unmount an encrypted drive manually,
open Terminal
an run
sudo umount /path/to encrypted/folder
so, in my test case it is
sudo umount /home/zephyr/temp2
To
Automate unmount/dismount:
Create
an executable file (refer to âAutomating the mount processâ for
the steps) called
unmount_temp2.sh and in it enter the following code. Paths and folders should match your own.
Next
create the run file that will open Terminal and run the previous
created executable.
Create an executable file called run_unmount_temp2.sh
Enter the following code into it:
#!/bin/bash #start terminal and unmount encrypted temp2 folder gnome-terminal -- sh -c './unmount_temp2.sh'
Double clicking on run_unmount_temp2.sh will run Terminal and execute the command to unmount the encrypted folder
Notes on Automation
All the automation files should be in
the same folder/directory
The folder/directory containing the automation files should not be encrypted.
Creating an encrypted folder on a USB drive
On your Linux machine format a USB stick with ext4 file system. The USB stick will only be accessible to machines with Linux operating systems.
In this example I have given the USB
stick a Volume Label called âSECRETâ.
Whenever you plug in this USB stick it
will be mounted as âSECRETâ by the operating system.
Next create a folder on âSECRETâ.
I called mine temp3.
Next mount and encrypt the temp3 folder by running the following command in Terminal. The path name should start with media/home directory name/usb volume name on a standard Ubuntu 18.04 install.
$ sudo mount -t ecryptfs /media/zephyr/SECRET/temp3 /media/zephyr/SECRET/temp3
The steps to automate are the same as described earlier on.
Note: Verify the volume name for the usb that you use in your scripts is correct and matches the one shown in Terminal when you type df .
In Conclusion
To further automate the mount process you could utilize the Startup Applications Preferences app
Start Program App
which comes pre-installed on Ubuntu 18.04 . This allows configuring applications to run automatically when logging in to your desktop. So just add the run_mount_temp2.sh example to the list of startup apps.
In the Command: field you need to enter bash U% followed by the path to your .sh executable.
bash %U /path/to/file/run_mount_temp2.sh
Alternatively you can create a .desktop file in /home/your home directory/.config/autostart . So for example mount_documents.desktop with the following code in it.
One quirk I noticed is that ecryptfs will allow you to carry on mounting your encrypted volume with an incorrect passphrase and proceed to create a new signature for it but you wonât be able to access your encrypted files and folders. Ecryptfs does warn you first that the passphrase you have entered maybe be incorrect and do you want to proceed with the mount. Best to abort if you are unsure about the passphrase you entered.
All in all , I think ecryptfs is a robust , fast and very flexible file encryption system.
Bougainvillea and Wind Power -my renewable energy dreams are still very valid .
Night time temperatures
have begun to fall, definitely a sign of the onset of autumn.
Still havenât fired up
the stove as itâs still above eighteen indoors during the night.
I havenât been doing much outside the past month and a half. Been busy doing a PHP certification course as well as learning javascript and such. Needs must etc.
Gathered and sold my own carobs and those of a friend. I donât mind picking carobs, itâs easy enough to do. Almonds are another matter. A mixed blessing as this yearâs almond harvest is looking to be poor. Almonds are great chopped up and added to your oatmeal porridge. I also throw in some chopped or grated seasonal fruit I have to hand. Like apples, plums, peaches, pears etc. The dogs love this too.
Picking almonds
My own carob harvest was poor this year. About half but what I had last year but I really didnât mind. Transportation for me is a still an issue. Something I haven't managed to resolve.
Lampa Preta variety of figs
I have had a decent amount of fruit this season. The plums were very good. Early June right upto mid September. I think I picked the last of the Santa Rosa variety today. I have had some decent peaches , a good number of nashi pears and a few melons.
At the moment I got some Persimmon (kaki) trickling through. They are delicious when properly ripe. I also had my first figs. Lampa preta (black lantern) . I had planted this way back in 2016. It finally managed to grow and is a properly established tree now.
Melons
I have snd have had , a fair amount of grapes for the table. I have 4 fruits vines at the moment. 1 red (Italia) and three white (Dona Maria Branca).
My first grow bed is working very well.I have lettuce, beetroot and sweet potato growing in it. As well as the edible weed purslane.
Grapes, Dona Maria Branca
I have not been cockling much. The new inflatable was cleverly punctured. There are some very dodgy foreigners about. It was busy where I had to make land and they were waiting for me to come in. They came with their dogs too. Poor Bonji was kept occupied. I left craft and Bonji unattended for less than a 5 minutes. I will be more careful next time.
Well thatâs all for now!
It pruning and the olive harvest next.
Has been rather busy. I have been kept occupied with land management, prep-ping for a programming certification and the three dogs.
Land management is mainly irrigation now. Everything is turning dry. I am doing a bit of pruning here and there as well as cutting the grass as it pops up. Itâs mainly clear so I donât have to bust a gut. My motorised scythe has broken down again. The Bosch electric strimmer on the other hand works fantastic. The handle parted at the weld joint. I donât know any welder here so I think I will have to try some nuts and bolts.
Been trying to grow a few vegetables. Bought a dozen salad tomato seedlings â 9 have survived the attention of the dogs and snails. I have this year a few melon plants grown from seed. They are of the tennis ball size variety.
The two new canine additions, Chubbs and Conan are a handful but adorable. They are water dogs and love splashing about in the Ria Formosa. Itâs a bit more difficult to take them to a nice beachy area as my kayak was stolen. Some people here obviously didnât want me having fun on the sandbar catching cockles. I got an inflatable kayak to serve in itâs stead. Itâs a cheap and cheerful Intex Explorer K2.
It is however very difficult to row. And unsuitable for boisterous young dogs with sharp claws. Their mother,Bonji on the other hand is fine in it. I am working on a plan to fit an electric trawling motor. Another option I am toying with is poling along the shallows. But it hasnât got a solid floor that would support one standing. I have wrapped a tarpaulin around it so that I can drag it over ground - for just a little way đ
I had a good amount of apricots but lost about 70% of them to worms. I currently have a decent about of plums. I have â by luck - varieties that ripen at different times. So itâs been plum juice, plum cake and plum compote. The trees were ,and still are ,infected by a tiny white fly whose larvae eat up the leaves. and I think, the fly damages the fruit. I sprayed them thrice this year with some pesticide which saved the leaves and ensured a decent crop of plums. No ideal but necessary. Speaking of cakes,if you are in the supermarkets around here you must try the cake Folar de Erva Doce. It's not much to look at but melts in your mouth. It's sort of a sponge cake. 400g at under âŹ3, It's goes down very well with the afternoon cup of tea.
.
My Almond toffee. Made this afternoon 30/06/2021. And very good it is too đ
I have built my first grow bed. đ I have just sown spinach and put in some sweet potato cuttings.
My solar power dreams are still alive and well. Besides running the 1000W Bosch strimmer I can also boil hot water in a 800W 0.5 litre electric kettle â during the day. Not at night as it would quickly run down my small battery bank. My solar array is quite small 720W at 24V. It is adequate for my current needs and works well. I am not sure if the law has changed. Back in 2014 you were permitted a solar array of a maximum of 1500W output for self consumption.
This is a critical security issue allows a malicious entity to silently log onto your phone via bluetooth . âThis vulnerability can lead to theft of personal data and could potentially be used to spread malware â (TechSecurity, 2020). This vulnerability affects Android versions 4.2, 6.0.1, 7.0 and 8.0. If you are on a version that is older than 3 years you will not receive any security patches from Google.
How to reduce the risk of a BlueFrag vulnerability on older versions .
Since there arenât any software patches what you can do is to keep your bluetooth connection turned off when not in use and not to make your phone is not discoverable via bluetooth.
The danger of running unsupported Android OS versions is high.
The current Android version is 10 but there are a lot of phones (millions!) running older versions which are no longer supported by Android and hence not patched for vulnerabilities. I have a phone with such an older android operating system v4.2 KitKat) and I am sure it has been hacked and the apps infected by malware. It has come to my attention many apps on it have every permission under the sun and even if you force stop them, they restart on reboot. BlueFrag is just one vulnerability. There are a host of malware apps that can be downloaded from the Googleâs PlayStore including ones that can steal payments information and other personal information. To my mind Google takes a flexible view on security policy when it comes to safeguarding usersâ personal data. Google have only committed to 3 year support plan for each version release. So you should consider this if you are in the market for a second hand phone.
Whatâs to be done if you are on a older OS?
Ditch phones with older versions. Personally I wouldnât run anything older that v6.0 (Marshmellow) which has more strict settings to what permissions an app is granted. On v6.0 apps have to be granted permissions explicitly by the user to access sub systems on your phone. Ofâcourse this requires knowledge by the user to know which permissions to allow or deny an app when prompted.
If you have the ability you can use ADB (Android Debug Bridge ) utility to remove bloatware apps from your phone and generally manage what is on your phone, in a better way.
More is less.
Be very careful with which apps you install. Just because an app (application) is available from Google Play for download does not mean that it is secure or that it will be secure in the future. Carefully check which permissions an app is requesting and has been granted. See this in your Settings -â Apps.
Good luck everyone â remember to think twice đ
I was looking for linux Web Analysis tools and came across GoAccess. I found itâs recommended on a cybercitibiz site (Gite,2021).
On Linux Ubuntu 18.04 you can install it from the debian
repository. Open Terminal and type
sudo install goaccess
This will run the install script and install goaccess on your system. To get help type
goaccess âhelp
To do something useful you need to point it at a web server log file. I am using a LAMP configuration for my test web server (Linux Apache MySql and PHP) . The log files here are located at /var/log/apache2/access.log where access.log is the name of the log file. If you have virtual hosts running you may have setup separate log files for each virtual host which is a good idea.
You can download remote web server log files to your local linux
and view them in the goacess application.
To view the log file in goaccess run
goaccess -f/path/to/logfile/access.log
example: goaccess -f/var/log/apache2/access.log
Note: If any of your directory names contains a space or spaces enclose it in quotes or goaccess will encounter a parsing error.
The following screen should come up.
GoAccess initial selection screen- GoAccess is a light weight web traffic analysis Terminal tool for Linux
Pressing enter gives you the Analysis view shown below.
GoAccess Analysis of log file from a web server
I think it is an excellent tool for giving you some idea quickly, on whatâs happening on your web site.
In my February log file snapshot, you can see that I had 3748 unique visitors and unfortunately no referrals (referrers). Referrals are when visitors come to your site through a link of your website on another site.
I think it is an really excellent tool! Itâs small in size, just over 2Mb and easy on processor resources. And you donât have to pass your or your clientâs data to a third party like Google. Having mentioned Google , there is Google Analytics which is a full blown web analytics application. It is free. The down side is google have access all your web server traffic and activity.
There are Open Source Web Analytics alternatives which I am going to look into but for the moment I am happy with just GoAccess.
Is all but over. Weatherwise we have had a couple of cold weeks where you had frost and frozen pipes. But is has warmed up this week and some of the almonds have bloomed. It been a mixture of sunshine together with cloud cover and light rain.
The little LE300 wind turbine has been helping keep the lights on during periods of poor insolation. I have been pruning my own trees around the property. I have been taking my time with this. Itâs going well and I am not going anywhere. I had my first avocado thus year. Of the Hass' variety.
.
I have been experimenting with making cookies. The almond and lemon ones turned out decent. There werenât many olives to be had last year but I managed to pick a few for pickling from the Belgian neighboursâ trees.
I currently have 5 dogs in the house. True four are still only puppies but they are driving me insane. đ I really hope I can find good owners for them and soon.
Another first for me. 1 kg of sweet potato. Grown in a large pot. The ones in the ground didn't do well in the heavy clay soil.
Text to Speech
Cold January days so more time for reading, Due to my particular situation I canât read books. As you can see I can read and write quite well well on the computer using standard âAccessibilityâ tools and by improvising using different font/illumination settings.
I recently discovered Google Play books on my Android smartphone. It can use the Google text to speech engine which surprising works offline and works rather well. I âreadâ âThe War on Horrorâ which I found to be quite a good read. This is a free ebook. Brits would feel equally at home with the various themes explicitly presented or alluded to in this book. It brought back to the fore of my mind how we usually manage to achieve just mediocrity when aiming for excellence. If we started out aiming for just mediocrity the results are guaranteed to be dire.
Evie ebook Reader and Google Play Books on Android smartphones
I discovered an excellent ebook reader on the Android Download store, Google Play. The name of the application is Evie. It is a really good ebook reader! It has style and elegance and superb functionality. I am not sure who the creators/developers are but well done to them!
Screenshot of Evie on my smartphone
Evie can use various text-to-speech engines including Googleâs text-to-speech engine which surprisingly works offline. The voice of Brian (British english) is rather good. I use it to read .pdf books from my former degree courses, and technical manuals amongst other ebooks. You can change the engine. Amazon has gone the 100% cloud way. Their text-to-speech engine, Amazon Poly works only when you are connected to the internet. There are other text-to-speech engines that work offline. You can download and use these with Evie. Most of these require to be purchased but many offer a try-before-you-buy option.
This was covered by myself in this previous article when I first ventured into the world of Linux and Ubuntu.
I have learned some new things now and this is a follow up to correct some inaccuracies. Firstly, you should not install Linux on any FAT file system including FAT32 as these file systems don't work correctly with linux file permissions.
Choose a partition size greater than 6GB preferably 10GB minimum for the primary partition which will contain the linux OS files and boot loader. Create a 4GB linux-swap partition as previously. Choose the ext4 journaling file system for the primary partition.
During installation I made a mistake and installed the ext2 file system which is a legacy linux file system and does not support journaling. A Journaling file system verifies the state of a file during the copy/move process by keeping logs. If a power outage occurred during the file copy process the system would know about it and inform the user that the file was not transferred/saved successfully. There is no such tracking with a non journaling file system and the corrupted file would be saved as a valid entry. I will have to see if I can convert from ext2 to ext4 without having to re-install.
The rest of the installation procedure for a portable Ubuntu linux 18.04 is still valid.
I decided to invest in a Bluetooth dongle to help me access the internet on my desktop etc via my smartphone. Why, I think is more secure in being less visible than a Wifi connection.
After having a look around I decided to go for the Plugable USB-bt4le from amazon. This is because it claimed be run on Linux. You can read the review here
And it did! However I had an issue when connecting on an unlocked smartphone that was on the Orange network. This forced me to dig into the world of Android development . It was a baptism of fire. đ I spent and entire day and most of the night learning about Androidâs adb (android debug bridge) and the android development environment.
Thanks to Canonical who maintain the software packages for Ubuntu, it is easy to install adb using the apt install adb command in Terminal.
After digging around
on the internet I found that tethering was set to use DUN and to
disable this you had to run
sudoadb shell in Terminal
followed by the statement below after you enter shell in
shell@E####:/ $ settings put global tether_dun_required 0
I think removing the APN for the DUN setting from the mobile phone carrier (on the Orange network in my case) also helped as it seemed to re-enable DUN on reboot.
shell@E####:/ $ settings delete global tether_dun_apn=[ApnSettingV3]Orange Internet,orange.fr,,,orange,orange,,,,,208,01,0,DUN,,,true,0,,,,,,,spn,Orange F
Then reboot.
This did not solve the tethering problem entirely although it prevented the DUN (Dail-up Network)lookup on trying to connect.
What really got it working - Solution to Bluetooth tethering the Smartphone running Android 6.0.1
On your Android Smartphone Go to Settings
Turn on Bluetooth first (ensure you also have an internet connection although this can be done later ). Then
Settings â More â Tethering and Portable Hotspot
then Enable
Bluetooth tethering.
And this should
work! Unfortunately it seems you have to do this each time you turn
Bluetooth on.
I uninstalled the older version of phpMyAdmin via Terminal and running :
sudo apt remove phpmyadmin
These were originally
installed from the Debian repository using Terminal and command line
when I setup LAMP .
Do not use the autoremove command if you want the current version of php left in place. I also left the old phpMyAdmin database in place. Because I was not sure if it was needed by the new version.
My current php and phpMYAdmin versions are as shown in the image below
You can refer to this article here. phpMyAdmin never worked properly. When accessing tables in databases I got the following type error.
Warning in ./libraries/sql.lib.php#613
count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable etcâŠ.
After looking at various articles the best solution I think is the one I found at AskUbuntu.com . See the image below.
It is simple and very effective. And exemplifies the portability of phpMyAdmin. The other methods of removing the installed version of phpMyAdmin and installing a newer version look painful and are not guaranteed as the Debian repository may not have the latest version or version compatible with your current Php version.
Method:
Go to the phpMyAdmin website. Download the latest version in zip format (5.0.4 at the time of writing). Copy the hash number as well. This will enable you to verify the integrity of the downloaded file.
Verify the hash number. To do this, open Terminal, supply the path where the zip file has been downloaded and type sha256sumfilename.zip . Verify the hash number is the same as that supplied by the phpMyAdmin download site. See image below.
Unzip the file.
Copy the unzipped folder and all itâs contents to your public folder. On Ubuntu 18.04 running Apache 2.4.29 this is in â/var/htmlâ . You can renamed to folder to something shorter if you like.
Make a copy of config.sample.inc.php and rename it to config.inc.php.
Edit config.inc.php
Make sure you have the authentication part setup correctly as follows to use a cookie and your web server is correctly specified in host.
/*
Authentication type */
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type']
= 'cookie';
/*
Server parameters */
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host']
= 'localhost';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['compress']
= false;
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowNoPassword']
= false;
Save config.inc.php
Launch phpMyAdmin by accessing the phpMyAdmin hosted folder.
English 
Portuguese 
This will keep me in oil for a year, so I am pleased. I was reluctant to collect more this year due to difficulties in arranging transportation.
itâs easy enough to do. Almonds are another matter. A mixed blessing as this yearâs almond harvest is looking to be poor. Almonds are great chopped up and added to your oatmeal porridge. I also throw in some chopped or grated seasonal fruit I have to hand. Like apples, plums, peaches, pears etc. The dogs love this too.
The little 
