So you want to run your own mail server… redux

I was reading this blog article today, and it reminded me that I hadn’t implemented MTA-STS in that mail server setup script I put together the other month.

MTA-STS isn’t really… vital… for running a mail server, but I guess it’s nice to have, and it’s easy enough to add. It does mean that the script makes your MTA run a web server, too, which may or may not be something you want to see happen.

As mail-tester.com says:

While adding this, I thought as well that I could try the script on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (it was originally written for the previous LTS version), and I’ve tweaked it so it works on both.

I’ve also made the script output all the DNS stuff you have to twiddle into a DNS BIND file suitable for usage directly (if you’re using BIND), or for importing into the Cloudflare DNS console (if you’re using that):

Uhm… I think that’s it.

As usual, the code can be found on Microsoft Github, and comments/fixes are welcome.

Go forth and throw off the Gmail shackles!

TSP2019: Uncut Gems

Uncut Gems. Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie. 2019.

[twenty minutes pass]

Oh deer.

This is the Adam Sandler Oscar bait movie? To ensure getting nominated, you have to have some sort of health angle, so it starts with a colonoscopy (it is Sandler, after all) and some possible cancer, before we go into full-bore New Era of Quality TV doing Death of a Salesman (which means that everybody is from New Jersey and that all these morons are shouting at each other ALL THE TIME).

If you were to design a movie to annoy me, this would be that movie.

I don’t recalling it actually winning any Oscars, though…

But it did win a bunch of other awards — perhaps the Independent Spirit Awards are the most significant…

Well, perhaps it gets less annoying…

GAH! IT GOES ON FOREVER!

Well, re-roll the movie…

[ten minutes pass]

I wondered when they were going to introduce the bitchy wife. I should have made a bet.

[twenty minutes pass]

I can’t take any more of this. One hour of watching uninteresting morons shout at each other is all I can take. I’d rather get my teeth cleaned.

Is this the only movie in this blog series that has broken me? I think it may be. And apparently I’m not missing much of a performance:

This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.

TSP2019: The Dead Don’t Die

The Dead Don’t Die. Jim Jarmusch. 2019.

[five minutes pass; i.e., I watched the titles]

Wow; this movie basically has everybody that’s famous. It’s not just Jarmusch’s normal troupe (although many of them are here), but a bunch of random famous people. I’m assuming they called his agent or his agent called them and they said “sure!”

Appearing here for free, I’m assuming.

[wtf; forty minutes pass?!?!]

I thought that was like ten minutes.

I’m so totes engrossed in this movie… I’ve been a Jarmusch fan since forever (I saw him once on the streets of New York! squee!), and this is just such a Jarmusch movie. It’s basically a goof on Night of the Living Dead: Nothing’s very serious; it’s all just done in fun, even the really grisly bits (and the political bits).

It’s like… if you designed a movie to appeal specifically to me (and you weren’t French), this would definitely be the movie to make.

The “name” actors are definitely having fun here (although Chloë Sevigny seems to be participating in a totally different movie than everybody else), and the newcomers are delivering, too. I love the two threesomes — the hipsters, and the peeps in juvie. Just amazeballs.

(I’m typing this because I had to take a pee ‘n cocktail break.)

[the end]

The pacing, the way the actors deliver their lines… It’s just like er Down By Law or any of the early Jarmusch movies. Adam Driver in particular — I’m wondering if he studied those movies like hard and is just going “how would John Lurie do this scene” and then doing that.

But it’s not just a goof, of course. Just like Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was a movie about racism, this is a movie about Trump, and just as despairing.

It’s a really well-made, funny, knowing movie, so I was expecting everybody to hate it.

And I was right!

*phew*

This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.

TSP2017: War Machine

War Machine. David Michôd. 2017.

Oops. This is a Netflix movie from 2017? Starring Brad Pitt? I’ve never heard of it, but apparently Tilda Swinton has a tiny role in this, so I’ve gotta see it for this blog series.

[ten minutes pass]

Oh deer. This is my least favourite movie genre ever? The satirical-military-movie-with-an-omniscient-voice-over film? I hate these movies so much.

And the director has told Brad Pitt to be a gruff general, so he tries to speak like Christian Bale as Batman, but he comes off as just being constipated.

[forty minutes pass]

IT”S JUST BEEN FIFTY MINUTES?!?!

I’m so bored I could plotz.

There’s nothing… nothing here. The cinematography is tedious; the acting is bad (Pitt is hamming it up to the max and the rest of the actors are playing it straight); the plot is without interest…

This is a typical Netflix Made for TV movie: It can be fun to watch cheaply made indie movies, but cheap Made for TV movies remove all the quirky stuff that cheap indie movies may occasionally have. It’s the worst of all worlds: None of the freedom of indie filmmaking, and none of the budget of studio movies.

[the end]

The last bit is… vaguely more interesting?

The paying-off-the-Afghan-guy thing reads more like “well, not all Americans are bad, right” than anything else, though. So the father’s suffering is more of an opportunity to show that most of them care.

Which is eye roll inducing.

It’s such a confused movie. You can almost see how this could be a good movie, if only not for… every single artistic choice by the director while making it? I mean, I can see how the pitch sounded like it was going to be good?

But it’s not.

Also: I hate the colour grading.

This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.

TSP2019: The Souvenir

The Souvenir. Joanna Hogg. 2019.

Hey! We’re back with our sorta-yearly “what has that Swinton woman been up to since last we checked?” This year, we have … about half a dozen movies? So she’s been busy.

First off a movie by Joanna Hogg? That name seems so familiar to me that I assumed that I had seen a bunch of her movies, but apparently not…

[an hour passes]

It’s very Rohmer in the way that it’s not clear what it’s going to be about… It’s not very Rohmer in the way that it’s all meta: It’s about a woman in film school, so we get to hear some bits from the teachers that also seem to apply to the movie I’m watching.

I love movies about making movies, but it’s not a genre that endears itself to a whole lot of people, so I’m not surprised at this tomatometer:

[the end]

Very meta. I just googled, and apparently Tilda Swinton performed in Joanna Hogg’s graduation movie in film school? And the woman playing the central character name is Honor Swinton Byrne, so I’m guessing that’s her daughter? And the in one of the scenes, the professor reiterates that she should make a movie about what she knows? So is this an autobiographical movie by Hogg?

SO META.

Oh… There’s going to be another part? Well, I’m there.

This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.