rho @rho@fosstodon.org

After putting this off for over a year I finally wrapped up a post on my little Odroid XU4 CloudShell2 NAS. This may have worked out for the best, as I now have a full year of use to reflect on.
#libreops

https://electro.pizza/2020/05/selfhosting-cloudshell2/

Week 2 of electric mower use:

I made it through the entire yard both mowing and edging with about half the battery remaining!

The first week was a trial by fire as the grass had not been cut for 3+ weeks due to rain. Took 1 swap of the batteries to do it all.

Overall, I'm very impressed. Already loving not having to futz with gas/oil/carburetors/air filters/etc etc

In this year's installment of 'Crazy Vine We Let Take Over a Fence', Bird House Gourds!

#gardening

The ground cherries are really going off this year! Love these little things. Super productive and a sweet almost tropical strawberry kinda flavor.

#gardening

I was excited when my SO asked if I could setup a NFS for her to archive a lot of her older video and design work. However, it dawned on me soon afterword that my little hobby NAS was no longer so 'hobby'. So finally setup some automatic offsite backups.

I decided on restic going to a b2 bucket, triggered with a systemd timer. Seems to be working great so far.

#libreops

Potatoes in bags, first harvest.

A couple of our plants saw a lot of insect pressure and started dying back a little early. So we decided to harvest them and see what was going on in there. We got potatoes!

I'm very excited to see the harvest from the plants that fared better with the insects.

#gardening

I've been thinking of diving into Neovim lately. It seems like it's come a long way and now has a fairly large adoption.

Anyone use Neovim? Love it, hate it? Worth the switch for a long time Vim user?

Update on the growing potatoes in bags experiment.

As the potato plants grew I would mound up around them by adding more soil and unrolling the bag. Eventually the bags were completely filled up. Now it's just a waiting game while they do their thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUsDk8wjRPs

Picked up a Kensington Orbit Trackball to change up my mouse situation. Loving it so far!

Picked up some Womack blackberry canes this morning. A redditor in my area was clearing some out, and was offering them to any takers on the city's gardening sub rather than tossing them.

Thank you random internet person!

Trialing an analog tech upgrade to the coldframe. This spring loaded arm has a hydraulic piston that expands and contracts with temperature, opening the cold frame lid when things get too hot. A common bit of kit in greenhouses, but looks like it may work out here.

#gardening

I'm thinking about standing up a Gemini server. I'm leaning toward using Aerozine, but I thought I'd throw it out here before I settle on something.

If you''re running a Gemini server, what are you using? Do you have a favorite, or a recommendation?

#AskFediverse

One of this year's garden experiments will be trying potatoes in bags. I'm using some insulated reflective bags (and one dog food bag) saved from imperfect produce deliveries earlier in the year. I don't expect they'll hold up too well out in the sun, but figured it was worth a shot just to test the method.

#gardening

Wound up standing up a simple Caddy webserver, and using rsync to deploy. Simple enough.

Thanks @YellowGrue and @hopeless for talking sense. Already feeling better about it.

The time has finally come to rethink how I deploy my personal website. For the last 3 years I've been using homebase and pushing changes to it via dat protocol. It worked great, but things at the dat project have moved on, and deploys are no longer reliable.

Do I try to upgrade to hyper protocol, or ipfs? Maybe something more traditional like a git based deploy? Or just go for dead simple like rsync?

Decisions, decisions...

Trying Yaupon tea this evening. Its a native around here (along with most of the Southern US), and is apparently the only native plant in North America that has caffeine.

I was expecting something harsh and bitter, but I'm pleasantly surprised. Its earthy, smooth, and pleasant.

This evening I stood up Jellyfin on my little Odroid NAS, and sorted through all my random albums using beets. I don't imagine it could handle transcoding very well, but as a little music server its performing very well.

You know, I've really grown to love the music of Jethro Tull.

With the week were having in Central Texas, I think a solar installation and some large battery backups may have moved up the project list.