toroidalcore

So I got done doing some cleaning, and am just waiting on some water to boil. I'm going to try pouring it down a slow drain to hopefully clear up some grime. George, my cat, is getting into pre-bedtime spazz mode, and should probably be run around a little. I should also make my lunch for tomorrow.

All is well, got some useful things done for a weekday evening. Still put off other things I'd like to do, but I'll have time later I suppose.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

I am posting this tethered to my phone right now, to test 4G internet in my area. It's relatively fast, but I'm trying to use it a little more to get a feel for normal every-day browsing.

I do self-host on hardware I own, but I have relocated my server for this to a friend's house. So that isn't a concern. 4G for me is behind CGNAT, so hosting could be tough, but there are workarounds.

5G would be another option, but apparently that hasn't been rolled out in my area yet.

Mostly, I'm tired of paying for cable. I need a break from that. Despite being a computer nerd, I actually think I can get by without a wired cable for a while. We shall see.

Normally I'm a proponent of using a wire if available. But they jack up the price, and I'm just not sure of the value. Hey, maybe someday I'll be able to get fiber around here.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

Why self-host? I just like the control. I like the idea that I can have control over the software and the hardware, as long as the hardware is sitting on a shelf in my basement. It doesn't have to be, you could just have a general purpose VM. Being able to put your own spin on it is nice, too. Maybe you want to do email or photo hosting a certain way.

I also just find it kind of enjoyable. I don't mind messing around with the technical aspects. This may not be true for everyone. There is definitely more work.

The important thing is that people do self-host. Not necessarily that everyone does. But it should be possible.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

Most of the #lights I put up for the holidays, or that I leave up all year round, are #LEDs. At one point I had more incandescent lights. Both types had problems with moisture. The first LED ones were built like the normal incandescent lights, as in you could remove the bulbs. The newer ones are sealed, and you can't replace an LED if it goes out. These seem to hold up a little better – with the non -sealed ones, the bulb leads could corrode away. The sealed ones, however, still had issues with moisture, even if they were more resilient.

I generally prefer the newer LED lights, but I still use incandescent here and there. If I'm not going to have them on a lot, the energy savings isn't an issue. And while modern LED lights look pretty nice, the incandescents have a different look. However, while corrosion afflicts both types, the incandescents, at least the ones I've been using, seem to have a lot of issues with bulbs going out.

The incandescent lights, the miniature ones that are run in series, have a small shunt filament that shorts them out if the bulb goes out so the whole string goes out. Sometimes, this fails, and all go out anyway, requiring more troubleshooting. I have a string of green lights I was going to put up for St. Patrick's Day, but found at least six or seven bulbs out – luckily they didn't take the whole string out. I usually handle this by cannibalizing an old string, basically taking one which is older and did go dead, and using it for replacement bulbs rather than trying to fix it. I did, and now it's up on my mantle and looks nice.

I've wondered what actually causes these bulbs to go out. Previously, this string had been up outside for one season. Really, just the month of March 2021. They're just inside now. I suspect it has something to do with a surge when they're turned on, but I'm not sure. This is a minor thing, but I'm curious about it nonetheless.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

I have a few multicolor Christmas light strings up in my front yard. These were leftover from the holidays. Other strings have been switched to clear lights. Since it's warm out, I'm going to go switch these remaining ones to clear.

I live at a corner, and it's pretty dark there at night. I usually leave some lights up all year round, if only to make my house visible to drivers. I think it looks nicer than just leaving the doorway light on too.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

Several components of my home network run off of low voltage DC, 12 or 24 volts. The computer I'm using as my router is one example – it's a fanless industrial PC that actually takes I think 10-32 VDC. I have it running from a 24 VDC power supply.

My small off-grid #solar power system gets used for things like charging batteries and occasionally running my laptop. I make an effort to use it, and not just let the battery float, but I've been thinking about how to divert some of the excess power.

One idea I had was to use a small DC-DC converter, going from 12 VDC (from the battery) up to 24 VDC, diode OR'd with the power supply running my router. It would basically look at the input voltage, and push current up to the 24 VDC side such that the battery didn't sink below 14 VDC (or some other setpoint). The idea being that when the battery is in absorb, you can skim excess power off the top.

This is interesting because another option would be a grid-tie inverter. In my case, I'd need to find a small one that could officially work off of a battery. There are plenty of cheap ones available, but I'm not sure they're approved for this application, and I'm not sure how much I trust them in general.

The converter should be relatively safe if done right, and doesn't interface directly with the grid. The computer I'm thinking of draws 20-30 watts continuous, and while it won't consume all my excess power it can take some and do something somewhat useful – I will admit that a lot of the time it just idles.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

I just spent some time trying to troubleshoot a wireguard link I have between two sites. One side is running OpenBSD, and I found that all of a sudden I couldn't ping the networks at the remote site, which I could previously get to through the wireguard tunnel. However, if I disabled PF on the OpenBSD machine, I could.

The other side was configured to see the OpenBSD machine as a wireguard endpoint, and so had the DNS address of this machine in its wg0.conf file. I didn't have this set up on the OpenBSD side. When I configured the OpenBSD machine to have the other side as a wgendpoint, things worked.

I'm happy it's working, but this is something I'll have to look into more.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

Today I was driving around in the country. It was warm, and the snow that has been building up was melting. One one hill, a dirt road, water was gushing down like a stream. This will drain off soon as we get closer to spring.

My own house is on a hill. I got water in my basement, but not too much, since it tends to drain off. My area is also prone to flooding, which is another nice thing about a higher elevation.

I'm just happy that most of my ice is gone, and hopefully the water should have drained off before it gets a chance to freeze over again.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

I'm just realizing that I need to vacuum the kitchen, and most of the downstairs of my house. Maybe wash the floor too. It's not too bad, but it's getting to that point.

There's a little snow left. We got more last night, and it's been cold, so it's sticking around. It is very sunny though.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

It's sunny out. I am running my laptop. If you have a #solar electric system, the only real way to waste solar power is not to use it.

When it gets sunnier I have quite a bit of power available through this. I'm on grid, and this is kind of a hobby/backup source, but I try to skim excess off the top when I can.

But I also try to keep my battery charged most of the time, especially if it's close t inclement weather (which it isn't right now). I haven't made the jump to lithium iron phosphate for this system yet, so keeping it charged is beneficial since it's lead acid.

A future project will provide an easier way to top it off from the grid, as well as making transitioning between grid and solar AC power easier. But that's for future posting.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town