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.

Picked up a small contract job last week to move a site off WordPress to a simple Jekyll build on GH Pages. Been a while since I've messed with Jekyll. It's been a nice change of pace.

Reworked my network board last night. Swapped to a larger switch, and added some of the always-on SBC's.

I should probably just get a small rack, but sometimes it's fun to sit down, listen to some music, and craft something.

Cut out from work a bit early today to begin the cleanup efforts on my disaster of an office. It's starting to dawn on me just what I've got myself into. 😓

While planning on reorganizing my local network I'm once again wondering how difficult it would be to power all these devices directly with DC. Falling down the rabbit hole of nano sized DC grids and plants.

As I take everything down I think I will inventory the energy usage of each device, and maybe setup some power monitoring when I stand it all back up. That'll give me some numbers to chew on as I think about what a DC system may look like.
#libreops

Ran down to Schertz, TX today for the San Antonio Radio Fiesta. Passed the test to upgrad my license to the General class!

While I was there I picked up a couple items at the swap. A couple Kenwood radios for VHF/UHF (2m/70cm) from the 80's to use at my bench, and a TEN-TEC 252 power supply to match my old TEN-TEC Argosy.

#hamradio

Obsessing over tonight's weather at a very messy desk.

All truth is one.
In this light, may science and religion endeavor together for the steady evolution of Mankind;
from darkness to light,
from narrowness to broadmindedness,
from prejudice to tolerance.

It is the voice of life that calls us to come and learn.

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

Finally got around to removing pacaur in favor of yay, and wow it's a lot more friendly!

(edit: typo, I removed pacaur not pacman, the muscle memory is strong with the word pacman)

Finally narrowed down the Solanaceae varieties (peppers and tomatoes) I want to try in the garden this year. The diversity in that family is dauntingly huge, but it's so much fun combing through seed catalogues and researching subspecies and their habits.

A single black walnut tree in a kind lady's yard in Smithville, TX will be the sole mother to all black walnut trees reintroduced to Austin's blackland prairie. There are still good folks out there.

(PDF warning)
https://www.treefolks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/hmw.pdf

I received a hot air rework station as a gift this year. I'm intending to use it for very small SMD soldering. But first, as a test and practice, I decided to harvest some components off a crusty board from an old boom box.

Just had a "Wait what year is it?!" moment after this toot.

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.

NOAA posted a cool animation for Winter Solstice today. One full disk image from GOES16 per day for the last year.

Happy Solstice, the light is returning!

Doing a bit of research on a backup solution for the NAS and finding myself in naming hell:

Duplicity, Duplicati, Duplicacy...

yeesh

I'm starting to realize some of the freedom zigbee2mqtt with the CC2531 (usb dongle in the vid) are giving me in the IoT space.

It's something I've always avoided because I didn't want to have to buy into some ecosystem with a hub that's constantly calling home to the corporate overlords. For testing I picked up a couple zigbee enabled
Phillips Hue bulbs from a big box store, and was able to control them from a home assistant install on my NAS via an MQTT broker. That makes me the overlord!

Successfully flashed firmware to a CC2531 using an Arduino Leonardo!

This makes the USB stick a Zigbee coordinator for use with zigbee2mqtt, and saves the expense and waste of purchasing a CC debugger/programmer.

Just wrapped up a clean install on an old Odroid XU3 in preparation to throw an MQTT broker on there and experiment with piping various bits radio data to it.

Thinking Zigbee, 433Mhz OOK, APRS, and ADS-B.