toroidalcore

It's the night before travel. Maybe, I hope, I can get an early start. I hope to have a pleasant drive. I'm mostly packed, just need to eat breakfast, get my coffee, corral George, and load the car.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

I've been thinking I need a change at work. I might get the chance to soon. Not to get ahead of myself, but we shall see.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

I built a fire last night, and another one this evening. I have a lot of twigs and branches that have accumulated. It's nice to build a fire, but it's also nice to get rid of this sort of yard debris. Just putting it at the curb seems like a waste.

I'm trying to head towards getting rid of my pile of wood, since I'm looking to have a fence put up eventually, and could use the room. So I've been making it a point to have a fire a little more often. Luckily, it's been damp out lately, so that hasn't been a huge issue.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

Thinking of interesting projects is easy. I've got a selection of things in my mental queue, power electronics projects, software projects, and some home-related things. And then of course there's whatever I have going on at work, although that of course is a separate queue.

Part of it is the end goal, the thing you end up with when the project is done: the box, the configuration, whatever. But part of it is the journey, the meditative process of chilling out with a cup of coffee on a rainy day and working on something.

Both require a start, getting nudged onto the track of progress. Sometimes it's easier to do this than at other times. Sometimes inspiration strikes randomly, other times it's a schedule, a ritual you stick to. Sometimes with others, sometimes solo.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

My pool is open. The screw I mentioned in a previous post has not turned up, although everything seems to be working right. This was after trying to vacuum it out of the lines with another pump. So right now I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that everything will work right.

I shocked it a bunch of times, and now the water is clear. The greenish cloudiness turned to dead algae in the form of little sand-like piles on the bottom. My procedure is usually to take my spare pump and just vacuum this to waste, once the water level gets higher. I have a diatomaceous earth filter, which is great for clearing the water, but in my experience will get plugged quickly when vacuuming sediment, so I just go to waste. I mean, the worst thing that would happen is I would have to regen and put new earth in, but that's kind of a pain.

The pools is about 61 degrees F right now, so not to attractive for swimming. But eventually we'll get a heat wave, and not only will the temperature go up but the cold water will feel good. I've thought about getting a pool heater, or even trying to work out some kind of solar heater, but I'm not sure if it's worth it. Not just for me.

The pool is an excess, and kind of a money sink. I do admit, that if my house hadn't come with it I wouldn't have had it put in. Not this time around, at least. I grew up with a very nice above-ground pool, and if I had a family I would probably get one (or maybe an in-ground). But for now I could probably survive with out it if I had to. Or, at the very least, on one of those temporary pools with the inflatable ring. But since I have my pool, I enjoy it.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

It was raining today. Hard. And haling. It started when I was in the office, and there was some nice pounding on the roof. It let up a little, and picked up again after I got home.

So now I got some extra water in the pool, and an excuse to put off mowing for another day or so. It's also cooler out. I think I can get by without running the air conditioning tonight, unless it's too muggy.

The air conditioner I have in my bedroom is nice, but I kind of like not running it if I can. If it's cool enough I can open the windows for some air when I sleep, without the noise.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

My pool is green. But, it's clearer after I shocked it. I opened it a few days ago, and it's getting there, but it's got a ways to go before I can really swim in it. It's not hot enough yet outside.

One issue – the skimmer and main drain are connected to each other. There's a little fitting that goes over two openings, one leading to the drain, one to the pump. So you can control the flow of water from the drain, and the skimmer at the intake to the filter. Before installing this, I dropped a screw down one of the openings.

I have a second pump I typically use for vacuuming. My plan is to use this to vacuum the screw out, just by holding the intake hose to each of the two openings. I'd rather try this than have it get stuck somewhere in the piping.

After this, I should be able to get the filter going.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

I just dumped a bunch of shock in the pool. The water is too low for the filter, but I've got a spare pump that I'm now using with a couple hoses to just pump water in a circle, to stir. Eventually I'll add more, and will be able to run the skimmer. I could probably cut the skimmer off and run the drain, but I'll just stick with this for now.

The pool stays pretty cold, but it gets up when we have our summer heat wave. I only have air conditioning in my bedroom, so it's a key part of my strategy to remain somewhat comfortable when we get our heat wave. We usually get two or three big ones a summer up here.

It's extra work, particularly with chemicals costing more these days, but I think it's worth it considering I have it. It was a nice perk that came with the house, although I'm not sure I would have had it put in had it not been there.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

Today it's reaching the 90s (f), in what might be the first real heat wave of the season. I'm going to go and take the pool cover off, and maybe do some other yard work. Or stay inside and do some cleaning or whatnot.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town

I use my laptops to browse the web and do other things that tend to be graphical in nature. I also use them for the terminal, sometimes to SSH into another system, sometimes just to edit something using emacs or whatever. Laptops are generally nice, so long as I can fit my hands on the keyboard and have enough screen real estate to do whatever I need. They also tend to use more power than I think necessary for the simpler terminal-based tasks.

The one I'm using now, a Lenovo x131e, uses about 8 watts or so with TLP installed, running from battery. My Dell XPS 15” uses about 6 watts idling on battery, without TLP installed. It only seems to go up a little while browsing the web or working on a document. (Obviously something like Youtube, or a heavier app will use more.)

On the other hand, a Raspberry Pi uses maybe a couple watts. A Pi Zero W I have uses about 1 watt. A display is going to bump this up, as will a USB accessory (the Pi Zero W in this case just has a USB to Serial adapter connected, and is connected to Wifi). But, for typing a text document, or using SSH, I'd like to think a small, basic display wouldn't add too much more. Something like a text-only smart phone.

There are various projects for cyberdeck type things popping up, which I guess are close to this. It doesn't have to fit in my pocket, but being straightforward to use and low-power would be key.

Find me at @toroidalcore@hackers.town