I honestly would prefer library silence or less. Earplugs cause other issues for me so they are not an option, I have tried. I also prefer almost complete darkness.
I'm honestly looking to build a float tank to use for times when I am really struggling to sleep. When I scuba dive the only reason why I don't try to take a nap is the risk of losing my regulator or running out of air.
My garden is about 10ft by 12ft. I grow two varieties of tomatoes on a total of four plants, two varieties of cucumber on a total of fourteen vines, two varieties of zucchini on a total of four plants, two varieties of winter squash on a total of fourteen plants, and I have seven small watermelon vines plus seven cantaloupe vines.
Attention and work to make it happen can depend on a lot of things. I am able to grow so much because I am using as much vertical space as possible. I have six large fence posts supporting two five foot by eight foot heavy wire panels that support my tomatoes and watermelon plus cantaloupe. I have two lighter gauge panels that are four foot by eight foot bent into an "A" shape to support my cucumbers and winter squash. I have some cheap tomato cages to support my zucchini. The ground has been covered with cardboard where all plastic tape and labels have been removed and it's just the cheap brown stuff without printing. It was a full day worth of work to put everything in but the end result is relatively cheap fresh food and if you continue using the materials and replant seeds you save the cost goes down every year.
For watering I'm using a misting system that sprays water directly onto the planting areas that is controlled with a zigbee hose valve which is controlled by HomeAssistant. I had a couple soil moisture sensors but even though they said they were outdoor rated they all died... so for now I have to manually chose when to turn it on or off.
You will still have to worry about pests but diatomaceous earth (the super fine stuff) helps keep a lot of them at bay along with neem oil plus some dish soap in a sprayer. But you have to reapply after a storm and look for them every couple days.
Remember that your garden will be dependant on your local conditions. And you need to get started ASAP to maximize your growing season, a seed packet will show the minimum days to harvest but you will get food to grow on many plants for a few months. If you buy plants that are already started your time to harvest will be shorter than from seed unless you are able to eat the sprouts but you are not going to get food next week. The caveat is that plants cost more and will often be root bound so you need to get the roots freed up so they can grow.
It's also worth getting a soil test done because some things need more potassium and phosphorus to produce food. And you may want to add a little fertilizer part way through the season.
Well. Let's see....
My local community is dealing with a 150MW BESS facility that is scheduled to be built over the next 18 months so I'm trying to educate my other half on that so she can inject a little stability into the current group of doom and gloom. We have a ton of windpower nearby and a data center being built about 20 miles away with a few other BESS' being built within about 40 miles.
I'm in the process of prepping the install of a new meter base, Enphase System Controller 3, Enphase IQ5 Combiner, and all the wiring for the system to function properly. I did some initial work last week to rebuild and insulate the exterior wall which has gained about 6 inches of thickness and is now insulated to R29. Hopefully on the 20th I can get the next portion done and everything finished for solar panel and battery installation.
I'm also working on a little project that will kind of recreate and reimagine one of the little slow MMO browser games. There was one I used to play called Aargh that was basically a big square map you could move around on and do little things or send messages to people. My version will have visuals for people using IPFS and more plain for regular users, and run almost completely using free Cloudflare services outside of IPFS assets. They are called slow MMO's because you have a limited number of movement actions per day and you can not bank actions for later use. I'm still in the preliminary planning stage but I'm looking at two environments, one with actions that can move large distances around the map and another environment that is more limited and has a debuff which will prevent more actions if you do something wrong. It may never work and I doubt it will be popular but I think it will be interesting to try and build.
It makes it much easier to use and if you only use a little bit at a time it keeps you from tossing out pieces that have spoiled. If you use a micro plane just gently work the ginger back and forth, don't press hard and you can get as much or as little as you like.
Find an Asian market. Go to their international isle. Look for grace brand or wildwood brand.
The issue is that it's nearly impossible to get scotch bonnet peppers and habanero are not the same.
Also authentic jerk is smoked over pimento wood (pimento is what they call the allspice berries) so even having everything else authentic doesn't guarantee it's going to taste the same.
If you insist on doing your own https://jamaicacafe.org/jerk-chicken/ is pretty much it. And use real fresh ginger, not the pre mushed paste in a tube (if you get a micro plane and freeze the ginger you can quickly grate what you need) and it must be scotch bonnet peppers.
My late wife was from Jamaica.
Also try the Saturday chicken soup https://originalflava.com/soups-and-stews/chicken-saturday-soup/ get some packets of pumpkin soup and use that powder instead of the chicken soup they suggest and use knorr bullion powder for the broth.
I have one question. Are you using an of the shelf router or something like OpnSense?
If the answer is no then you have found a good place to get started. As you begin to self host you will need to look at securing your new toys.
You will gain a ton over a consumer router. They are often just powerful enough to get the job done today. They rarely get updated and if the product is end of life you can only hope a project has picked it up or replace it with similar risks. Building your own you can shoot the specs to a point where you have room to run other features and last a long time. You can run something like CrowdSec, multiple vLan's, time server, DNS servers with multiple upstream servers and ad blocking similar to piHole, Caddy, ACME client, captive portal for guest networks, Intrusion Detection, and a lot more.
Then you will not only have some understanding of the function and use while you expand your self hosting journey to all those fun services you will also have the flexibility to secure your network when you begin to integrate those things into your home and life.
I'm running my own router using OpnSense, server running TrueNAS, smart home with HomeAssistant and fairly complex network of devices. I have a 10Gbps fiber backbone and a 48 port switch for my 1Gbps ethernet. It can be addictive especially when you are rebuilding a house.
After that figure out what you need, want, and desire. But keep your router as a separate device from everything else. And remember that what you think you need will only work for today, software is only going to get more complex and need more horsepower to keep it going.
For hardware there are two schools of thought, newer lower power devices and older stuff. The choice is spend now or over time. My used X10SLL-F with a xeon E3-1226 v3 router, my X10DRH-C with a pair of E5-2683 v3's and my desktop Ryzen 5800X which is currently also my Frigate NVR host along with other miscellaneous hardware draws along with the other devices in the house (fridge, deep freezer, smarthome stuff, and the like) draw about 1100 watts. So my baseload is about the same as any other us household.
I worked in a casino in the late 90's. I dealt with supplying the coins and payouts for all the slot machines. When a machine would have a jackpot I could have the payout and paperwork printed and waiting before the techs could get to the machine. Everything would show up on my computer screen, including when there was a machine fill done.
Now ask yourself what prevents the machines from being "tighter" or "looser" at the push of a button or click of a mouse.
Every single game is designed to make the house a profit. The only way to truly win at gambling is to own the casino or not play.
I'm waiting for Tau day. Better to wait and have twice as much pi.
If it's a 1U they can sound like a jet engine. The Noctua 40MM fans can be swapped in and cut the noise a good bit.
You can also build a shroud to place over the case, the idea is to allow the air to flow but use something like deep pile carpet to line the inside and absorb the sound created.
It will never be silent but you can get the sound to the point where it won't rot your brain.
And I am now an Enphase Certified Installer. The area where I need to work is mostly prepped and the last bit of prep work will be done tomorrow.
Permanently Deleted
Get them to say it on video. It won't take long before they are no longer around.
Enphase University is something I'm in the middle of (60% done). On Monday I'm replacing the meter base and mast and installing an Enphase System Controller 3 along with an IQ Combiner 5 and getting everything wired up so I can keep moving on my solar panels.
Finished putting in my garden yesterday. Two types of winter squash, two types of summer squash, two types of cucumbers, two types of tomatoes, some watermelons and some cantaloupe. All in an area about 12 ft X 12 ft. Have a couple zigbee soil moisture sensors and a zigbee hose valve so when the soil moisture gets low HomeAssistant can water things when needed.
Had 25 hours under water to capture footage last month. Now I have to spend the rest of the year editing video. Still trying to get over whatever I caught from the college kid on the flight home as well. He wore a mask in the terminal and took it off on the plane...
Brown
Edit: Boy I guess nobody likes Brown E's....
Ringconn Gen2 smart ring. Battery issues. Eventually wouldn't hold a charge for an entire day. This is after being sure to charge it from no lower than 40% and generally no higher than 90% Completely unusable after a year.
I've bought some different smart switches and bulbs that changed hardware but not model number thinking I could flash them to ESPHome.
Nope. I could have graduated as a junior had they let me take a single class that was "Only available to seniors."
The class was 1 semester and dealt with reading a copy of Newsweek. It was junk. I made them pay for it. Because I had already maxed out their computer program the school district sent me to the local community college for free.
Yes, I've been tinkering for a while. The network piece I have had the longest is actually my 10G switch. Previously I had a couple 8 port switches but when I started wiring the house up I didn't want to be playing any games.
I buy a lot of used enterprise equipment. If you are planning to have multiple access points that can use POE (power over ethernet) you can buy a new 5 port switch and be ok but if you are thinking about cameras a used 24 or 48 port POE switch from ebay well save you a ton in the long run. The Dell PowerConnect 5548 (48 port 1Gbps switch) I am using provides two 10G connections so that I can use a pair of DAC (Direct Attached Copper) Cables for a total of 20Gbps from my 10Gbps backbone. It's overkill but it means even with multiple cameras, ap's and wired clients I don't have to worry about oversaturating the connection. My camera server also connects via fiber as does my NAS/media server.
Mini pc's are great right up to the point where you want to expand beyond what they are capable of. Without a PCI Express slot upgrading the network will require the use of a USB adapter but they can be more of a pain than it's worth. You can find stuff with more ports but there is a point where it will probably be cheaper to just get something you can expand with.
For failover to 4G the Netgear LM1200 has the option to go between your current internet connection and your router and negotiate the connection and automatically switch. I just use it like an ONT (Optical Network Transceiver) or Cable Modem and let OpnSense control the switch over because then I get accurate measurement of the data used and length of downtime. But that also means I need a minimum of three ethernet connections two for WAN and one for LAN.
I purchased my router parts used on Ebay. A similar setup in a 1U format (which I wouldn't recommend unless you have a place where you can keep it and not hear it in your day to day life, are deaf, or are wrong to swap it into a new case with a different cooler) can be picked up as of right now for 185.00 plus tax and about 35 shipping.
If you have questions though please feel free to ask.
OpnSense is amazing.
I've used it for over 10 years after using a ton of other stuff. I run a 10G fiber connection from my router to my 10G network backbone with multiple vLan's. My ISP provides me a 1Gbps fiber connection to an ONT. I also use a Netgear LM1200 as a wired Cellular backup which OpnSense selects automatically when the fiber loses connectivity.
I am running mine using a Xeon E3-1226 v3 in a Supermicro X10SLL-F with 16GB of RAM and a 128GB Sata SSD. 10G is provided using a Mellanox ConnectX3 and an SFP+ module with OM3 Fiber.
I'm running a Quanta LB6M for my fiber backbone and a Dell PowerConnect 5548 for 1Gbps ethernet connections.
For WiFi I use a pair of TP-Link Omada EAP-650's with the OC200 controller using POE. It hands over seamlessly as clients move around the house and I'm planning to add a 3rd AP upstairs when I have finished my solar install and competed the building of the master suite.
I haven't seen that specific thread, but while Google making the driver open source is a noble gesture compared to the 'black box' approach of companies like Nvidia, open source isn't a magic fix. We’ve seen countless projects die simply because no one has the time or the specialized knowledge to maintain them.
Right now, the community is handling minor patches, but we are one major Linux kernel architectural change away from needing a ground-up rewrite of the Gasket driver. If/or when that happens, and no one steps up to do the heavy lifting, thousands of these devices will become security risks or paperweights. It’s particularly frustrating because they are still being sold brand new to unsuspecting users who assume they’re buying a supported, plug-and-play product.
Not that I know of.
Tried Jellyfin. It puked when it saw my library.
I bought plex lifetime years ago when it was like 125.
I still hate the new plex app ui on roku. It's clunky and sucks. The alternative is to break my library in sections and hope something else will maybe work.