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Watch for changed files in SyncThing

For syncing files between my devices I’m using SyncThing. This tool is reliable, available on Linux, Android, Mac and iOS. And it encrypts the communication.

But sometimes I want to know when files in certain directories have changed - as example in my Obsidian vault. This allows me to post-process the files.


Read a JSON text into a variable in Ansible without parsing it

For one project I need to insert the content of a local file into another file on the remote system, and the first file happens to be JSON. The JSON file is in compact format (jq --compact-output) and is supposed to stay this way. When Ansible reads the content of the file, it determines that the content is JSON, and parses the content into the variable - and along the way is uncompressing the format. Not what I want.

To keep the file content as string, it is necessary to tell Ansible to handle this as string.


Public previews in Hugo

Hugo is a static templating system. It is (mainly) used to deploy websites/blogs which don’t have and need dynamic content. The content of all pages is pre-generated, and the webserver delivers files from disk (or rather from cache, once files are loaded into memory). This approach allows for extremely fast websites, as no dynamic content is generated on every request.

While I know Hugo from work, I haven’t really used it for private projects - until recently. I have started a new project where I present interviews with people behind the PostgreSQL Project - and this is perfect for a static website. Interviews don’t change, once published.