rho @rho@fosstodon.org

A few personal 2020 goals:

- Find a new job
- Learn to weld
- Continue Spanish studies to the point I can participate in a conversational Spanish practice group
- Upgrade my Ham License to General (US)
- Be more social IRL and work to be a better husband, son, brother, and friend.

One more today just because I'm very pleased with the result. SO suggested we make a sandwich loaf while I had the baking stuff out.
I promise this isn't just a food and garden account. 😅

We ran out of tortillas for the daily taco rations. Dug up an old recipe and fixed that in a hurry.
#bread

Today is the day the pepper, tomato, and cucumber starts go in the ground. It also looks like the fig tree we planted earlier in the Winter made it through!
#gardening

Cast iron cinnamon rolls this morning!

There is a backlog of half written blog posts sitting in my site's repo, and I think I'm experiencing a writing paralysis because of it. Part of me wants to just scrap them all and start with what I'm working on now, but I think I need to just pick one, focus only on that, and try to push something out. Maybe that will be enough to gain some momentum again.

Interesting Computerphile interview with Masayuki Uemura about his experience developing FamiCom at Nintendo.
#nesdev
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbL9OFlxwV8

TIL about file attributes in Linux.
lsattr and chattr
Reading through the man docs is kinda blowing my mind. I had no idea this even existed.

Looks like I'm going to be disassembling and cleaning the lawnmower's carburetor today. I've been checking out the electric Stihl mowers the last couple years. Really wishing I had one now.

Spending all day in Jira and Confluence trying to lay out a backlog for myself has left me pretty frustrated and spent. Chilly and rainy out. I think I may bake some bread.

Listening to Ardour by Teebs is making for some cozy project documentation. 🎵

With the last of the radishes coming out of the garden I thought I'd give pickling them a try, and while the vinegar was out may as well pickle some onions too!

Setting up for a long smoke in the Webber Kettle today. I use a little 433mhz temp sensor for both the cooker and the food. I got curious if my rtl-433 to MQTT setup would pick it up, and sure enough!

It's funny to think of Texas as a large renewable energy provider. The installed wind capacity ranks 5th in the world, exceeding all but China, the US, Germany, and India.

I was thinking about this as I just finished a drive back from Lubbock to Austin. The drive takes you through one of the largest onshore wind farms in the world, and it's quite a sight. I think the next time I head up there I'll try and get my dash cam to take a time-lapse to maybe capture the scale of things.

It's a happy feeling to get a harvest this time of year, even if it's tiny. Definitely a crop I'll be growing in future Winters. The cool weather keeps them very mild.
#gardening

Experimenting with automating a small oil heater in the cold frame to take the edge off some of these cold February mornings. Wired up a GFCI outlet with a Zigbee controller that I have talking with my Home Assistant installation.

Using this as practice for a thermostat project I've been thinking about for the house.

Fantastic interview with @neauoire on Future of Coding!

I especially love the discussion about workflow mentality. Taking tasks that you have endless motivation to do and directing them to things that you may not be as motivated/inspired to accomplish.

Anyway, its absolutely worth a listen:
https://omny.fm/shows/future-of-coding/44-making-your-own-tools-devine-lu-linvega

Spent last night getting rtl_433 dockerized (https://github.com/rh0/rtl433_to_mqtt) and running more permanently on a little Odroid that sits on the network.

Now I can't stop watching the graph of the garden temps. Every 5 minutes, pull up grafana, "yep still cold."

Fully Charged was a lot of fun today! Got to see the Rivian truck, and talk with one of the battery engineers. It was very impressive. However, I found myself drawn to the e-bikes and classic cars that had been given an EV retrofit. I left feeling like we're really on the cusp of EVs being ubiquitous.