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kan.bn Kanban Board

Back in May 2025 I posted about Focalboard which is a task management system you can run on your own as a container application. I also added a note in September about how it lost all my data.

While losing the data is completely terrible, I could have tried to recovered it, but I really didn’t like using Focalboard enough to be bothered. So I went looking for something else, and found kan.bn

kan.bn is a Kanban board, similar to Trello if you’ve ever used it. In fact, I tried Trello a few weeks ago as I used it for work about a decade ago. I guess Atlassian acquired Trello and it seemed pretty enshittified when I tried it. I mentioned in my Focalboard post how Asana, Monday, and Notion have all turned into goddamn AI platforms now so I want none of that.

Anyway, kan.bn is simple. Almost too simple. I’d like to see a few more features, but if a simple web-based Kanban board is all you need, it may work fine for you. I should also note that I’m just one person, and I don’t have a team or anyone else using this. Just like Trello it supports multiple users, teams, etc. but I don’t really need those features.

What I need is a self-hosted web application that I can use to track my projects, assign deadlines, and it would be great to be able to get notifications (email or Pushover, etc.) for tasks I need to do. Some of those requirements are why Anytype didn’t really work for my needs either.

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10K Miles: 10K Trees – REACH GREEN Virtual Challenge

In October 2025 I took part in the 10K Miles: 10K Trees Virtual Challenge which was organized by Reach Green.

Here’s an excerpt from a post on October 16th, 2025:

Every mile logged in the 10K Miles: 10K Trees Challenge plants a tree and builds community. The early success of the 10K Miles: 10K Trees Virtual Challenge has done more than exceed expectations, it has validated REACH GREEN’s mission. We set out to prove that when people are given a way to take meaningful environmental action that feels relevant, accessible, and achievable within their everyday lives, they respond.

This month-long challenge invites the REACH GREEN community to collectively log 10,000 miles by October 31. If we reach that goal, we’ll fund the planting of 10,000 trees through our partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation, REACH GREEN’s first beneficiary. Each mile logged represents a tangible step toward a healthier, more resilient planet, and the restoration of North Carolina’s endangered longleaf pine forests through our first collaborative project.

I was a little skeptical but I figured I was going to ride my bike anyway so why not join in and contribute. I love trees!

I’m not really a competitive person. I mean, I occasionally set goals for myself, but I’m not out to beat anyone. It was fun to watch the stats though, and I was usually between 9th and 12th place in the standings. October was amazing for bike riding. Not too hot, but still warm outside. I rode to work 15 days in October (often talking a longer route home) and was doing longer rides on the weekends.

In the end I came in 9th place (out of 226) with 26 hours of riding and 306.536 miles. Not too shabby! Since I was riding to work that also means it was just over 200 miles where I did not drive a car to and from work, so there’s a double-win there since I burned less gasoline and created less carbon emission from the car.

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Your RasterWeb! Wrapped!

This year you’ve visited RasterWeb! at least once… right now!

We don’t know if you’ve visited before, read any posts, subscribed via RSS, or bookmarked or shared anything.

Because we don’t track that shit.

We disabled analytics years ago, because we don’t need Google tracking you or running their trackers on this site.

It just doesn’t matter.

Sure, numbers and stats are fun to look at, but we don’t care that much. (We can always look at the server log files with Analog but honestly we’ve been too lazy to set it up again.)

We don’t rely on advertisements to run this site. Besides a normal day job we’ve got a side business that usually makes enough to cover the server costs. (Need a controller?)

You can learn more about the data we collect from you on the Privacy Policy page. It’s not much.

Well, thanks for stopping by to check out your “wrapped” for RasterWeb! We’ll leave you with a fun quote from The Prisoner:

“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”

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The Book of Pete

There’s a very good chance I’m going to die. Hopefully not soon, but you never know. At the end of every calendar year my body breaks down, it gives up. Usually I end up doing physical therapy, some doctor visits, and either end up in the emergency room or urgent care, and each time I learn about a new way my body is failing me.

The recent death of Rob Reiner is just another reminder that when you die, people look to your work and the kind of person you were, and hopefully they think fondly of you and what you brought into the world. So many have spoken so kindly about Reiner. My introduction to his work was Spinal Tap. I’m pretty sure it was my friend Milt who showed up with a VHS copy of it and said “Dude, we gotta watch this!” and it was glorious. We even went to see Spinal Tap when they came to play in Milwaukee.

But, back to me and my failing body… When my cat Tink passed away in 2021, it hit me hard. She played a huge role in getting me through 2020 when I faced a pandemic, job loss, job change, another job change, and going through therapy. That cat remained a constant loving companion to me, and writing and reading about her comforted me greatly. You can see what I wrote in The Tinkerbell Pamphlet. I’ve advised others to write about their pets after they’ve passed away, and I hope it helped.

Besides the cats, I have a loving partner, and other family members I will leave behind. There’s a chance some of them do not know me as much as they would like to (or have liked to) because in many ways I am a closed person. Sure, I’ve been publishing since the 1980s but like any good publisher I don’t share everything. I also do a lot of weird things my family and (many) friends don’t really understand. (And that’s okay!)

While “blogging” at it’s start was very much about sharing your opinion about things on the (new) World Wide Web, I have an archive that starts in 1997 and goes on to today. It’s not the greatest writing, it’s not groundbreaking, but it is mine. And my hope after I’m gone is that the site gets hosted long enough for the people who knew me and cared about me get a chance to explore it. To see what I thought, what I did, what I made, the images I created, the weird music and videos I shared with the world. This web site is, for lack of a better term, “The Book of Pete”.

I don’t want this to be dark, because I want to keep living for a few more decades, but I also want to encourage others to view blogging as a legacy they can leave behind. You’ll make mistakes, you’ll get things wrong, but if you use those failings as opportunities to learn and grow, then I think that’s pretty cool.

There are people having the conversation about what happens to your digital footprint once you are gone, and how it can/should be maintained or preserved or archived, and it’s not something I’ve dug into yet, but in the grand scheme everything is ephemeral. We as people, our work, our digital output… it all fades away in time.

And I guess I’m looking for a way to make it last a little bit longer.

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NeoPixel Bike Light V2

About a month ago I posted about my first NeoPixel Bike Light but I’ve also been working on a newer version, and also got distracted along the way, but came up with a compact version, well, two versions. Here’s the first one.

I designed five parts that were then 3D printed, and added in a thin sheet of 0.04″ thick PET plastic.

It’s all held together with four button head screws in the corners. This back cover is plain (and white!) but I have something else in store for an upgrade coming soon.

There are two Micro USB ports on the side, one for charging and one for programming. I don’t love that they are exposed so that’s something I’ll work on in a future version.

Let’s look inside! There’s a 8×8 NeoPixel panel, a microcontroller, a charge controller, and a lithium battery. Here are the parts:

Let’s talk about the parts!

I never really build electronic things that use LiPo batteries and chargers, so this is somewhat new to me. For this project the LED panel sort of sets the X and Y dimensions, so I chose a battery that would be smaller than the panel. The batteries were a 4-pack but ended up being less than $5 USD each. The TP4056 Charging Modules come out to less than $0.75 USD each. They may not be the best, but they work. (Don’t forget to add a diode, though!) The ones I got were Micro USB but there are also USB-C versions. That’s our power sorted… oh, add a switch to make it a real project!

The LED Matrix comes in a two-pack for $11 so it’s about $5.50 for one. It’s a nice panel, seems to work well, and you only need to solder three wires to it. The mounting holes are in the middle of the PCB, not on the corners, which is fine. I just made pegs in my 3D printed part that it can snap onto.

Now, that Pi Pico. There are obviously smaller boards. I do prefer an RP2040 board nowadays if I can use one, and I usually have a few dozen Pi Pico boards in the shop. Alternately if you did want really small and maybe USB-C the Seeeduino XIAO 2040 would work great, though they often cost a lot more than a $4 USD Pi Pico. (Depending on where and how you get them.)

The The Waveshare RP2040-Zero is another small and cheap option. There are a ton of knock-off clones of that board under $4 USD each, but Waveshare is a good company worth supporting.

Hey, it lights up! You can program patterns or whatever. This one just does a “lime” color for reasons.

It’s fairly compact. I could make it slightly smaller (in fact, that’s in progress right now!)

So this is what I call “Pocket Light 1.0” which is an old Adafruit Circuit Playground. I got two of the “Classic” or “Developer Edition” board a long time ago, I think for super cheap. Anyway, they have built-in NeoPixels, can be programmed, and run with an attached LiPo battery. I was dropping this into the pocket of my hi-vis vest for a little extra light when riding my bike in the dark of winter.

So here’s the light! In my pocket, shining bright. I’m mostly pleased with how it turned out, but also know there are improvements to make, and I can do better, so I will.

This post was too long, but I have more so I’ll expand on things in another post.

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