Currently reading: Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman πŸ“š

Continuing the series. Been a good way to spend my $.99 audible credits.

I really enjoyed this video. The cinematography and music are just so good.

kottke.org/25/04/004…

Finished reading: Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman πŸ“š

Enjoyed this more as the book went on. It balances the terribleness of the whole situation with the right amount of humor. Looking forward to continuing the series!

Questioning why I ever came home from vacation as it’s now snowing here in Michigan…

We have a bird, deer, and raccoon feeder (not necessarily in that order)

a white tail deer eating out of a bird feeder

Michigan Theater. πŸ“

Enjoyed seeing Explosions in the Sky last night in Ann Arbor!

Concert with fog and red lights

Concert with fog and  lights piercing the fog

Concert with purple lights and fog

Brown Pelican looking for some food

How I Use Tailscale

What is it?

Tailscale is a VPN service that makes the devices and applications you own accessible anywhere in the world, securely and effortlessly. It enables encrypted point-to-point connections using the open source WireGuard protocol, which means only devices on your private network can communicate with each other.

It has a very generous free tier that includes most of the features included in the higher paid tiers while limiting you to 100 devices–more than enough for my use cases.

Where does it work?

Tailscale also has apps and integrations with all the operating systems and devices that I require. I have it installed on my pi-hole and home assistant Raspberry Pi’s as well as my iPhone, Mac, and Synology NAS.

Ad blocking

I have been casually using Tailscale, but I recently read this post that explained how to use Tailscale in coordination with your Pi-Hole to get ad-blocking even when I’m not at home.

One issue I ran into was covered by the troubleshooting section of the previously mentioned article, but the UI of my Pi-Hole running versions Pi-hole v5.17.1 FTL v5.23 Web Interface v5.20.1 did look a little different.

Using Tailscale while traveling

Another aspect of Tailscale I recently learned is the concept of exit nodes.

The exit node feature lets you route all non-Tailscale internet traffic through a specific device on your network.

This means that I can use Tailscale in place of other VPN options to secure my internet traffic when I’m traveling and using public wifi.

Conclusion

I’m very happy with how powerful Tailscale is as well as how great the documentation is. The free tier is extremely useful and I’m surprised that they offer all they do in the tier.