Wednesday, 15th May, 2024

Went to the local hackspace last night, what an amazing place full of good tools, materials, bits and pieces and vintage hardware and general stuff! Also has a nice work area, social area, drinks/snacks, local servers, music all sorts that makes it just a great space to hang out. There were about 10 people there, maybe half uni students and half older, probably about my age, folks. Mostly guys but a couple of women too. Everyone was very friendly and so diverse. Most folks were doing programming projects but one guy was doing some wood work. I’d taken my lego pieces to build the unikitty tram, and that attracted a lot of attention and had a good chat with folks about lego and Studio software.

There was an older guy who I talked to a lot about all sorts of things, well mostly I listened, but he was interesting. Does a lot of social work and interfaces with different groups and has interesting stories.

They do weekly meets but if you’re a member then you can use it at any time. Probably going to join, although I wouldn’t surprise myself if I never build anything there but just hang out and chat!

Planning what mountain to climb this Friday…

Going to the hackspace, where most people are running linux on their laptop has obviously got me thinking about running linux again… One guy was running i3 and whilst it’s been years and years since I’ve used i3 window manager, I really want to use it again. It’s so clean and straightforward. One of my laptops was dedicated to running linux on it, I just haven’t got round to doing anything. One guy had a really nice Lenovo laptop, it looked like a surface but better. I’ll add it to my list of todos. The list is quite big and I’m debating if I do my list on Friday, when I’m off work, or if I go up the mountain and play radio. Play radio is my first thought, as the weather is supposed to be lovely. I was eyeing the 10 pointer, circa 1100m, summit that’s about an hour away. That would probably take the whole time I have. Alternatively I go find something closer and lower and do that, then come home and do some jobs.

I also stayed out very late and didn’t get home until 11:30pm, then I was all excited about the place and had to have a cup of tea and some computer time to calm down, but that meant it was post midnight when I went to bed. So now I’m tired and whilst it’s still light outside, and inside, and I could do some jobs, I just can’t be bothered.

My daugther has been using my ipad a lot and the Smart Keyboard cover is showing heavy signs of stress. I think I need to remove it as it’ll get wrecked. She doesn’t use the keyboard, it’s just that it’s attached the whole time and gets handled a lot. It also means it’s on 2% battery right now…

I sort of need to do some work tonight but I’m also feeling too tired for that. Maybe if I park myself in front of the computer I’ll spring into life. Which also reminds me that the office really needs a good clean and sort out. It just accumulates all sorts with everyone using that room, and it’s never clear enough for the cleaner to clean so it’s also dirty.

Archive box, that I host, stopped working the other day. In fact I don’t know when it stopped working as I was hardly using it. It just annoys me that it stopped working for some reason. Nginx also was throwing some weird error about not being able to write to a folder. So I made the folder /tmp/nginx/client-tools or something like that and it ran fine. I don’t understand where that came from… Makes me think about redoing everything. The hackspace runs all it’s websites on a little HP Microserver in the rack there. Maybe I need all my stuff at home on my server. I get why people just pay to have services. I like self hosting but it’s just another thing to look after.

You might see a theme…I also liked the hackspace as everything was done through necessity and with what they have. My problem is that, for the most part, I can pretty much just buy whatever. I feel like this leads to excess of stuff, over engineered solutions, and malaise of tech. On the other hand, using some old thing for something can be annoying. I don’t know what the solution is, but I’m going to try and find stuff to sell in this weekend’s ebay sellers fees promo. I think the Mac mini G4 should go, and the Xbox one, and whatever else I can find.

A while ago I ordered this kit from the US which lets me build a standalone digital radio (ham) where I can connect to all of the digital radio networks and then use a mic and speaker together with a mini PC to chat to people without having to get a real radio out. I always found the digital hotspots a bit weird, where you’d transmit into your hotspot and then it routes over the internet to the network. Why bother with the handheld part? I suppose people already have them. Anyway, I bought all the stuff but have never used it. I’m not sure I really will. I think there’s software I can run on the computer to connect and I never do that either. I just don’t know if anyone would buy it/even be looking for it. I suppose I can list it and see what happens. I’ve also got the Dell Wyse with it, but that was only £20 and I could use that mini PC someplace else. I should just wipe it and reinstall linux on it so it’s more general purpose. Maybe for packet radio that I said I’d do but have never done so either….also including a kit to build the node thing.

Feeling in a purge mood, but also want to buy that small e-ink reader - boox palmer. Perhaps selling the Mac mini G4 and xbox will cover most of the cost of one? At least it’s fewer things and I’d definitely use the palmer.