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.

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.

After more sleep and less beer I came to my senses. I do want MQTT here, and I simply needed to use something like telegraf to get the data over to influx. Starting to come together now!

Success getting temp and humidity data from two off the shelf 433mhz sensors (one in the garden, and one in the cold frame). Then piping that to MQTT. Using an RTL-SDR dongle, a small dipole, and rtl_433.

It was only after this initial excitement that I realized it probably makes more sense to send this directly to influx db. 🤦‍♂️

Fully Charged Live North America is this weekend! Excited to see a Rivian up close, and hoping to test drive/ride a few EV's and electric bikes.

As I'm wrapping up some lingering reads from 2019 I think I've settled on "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" as my first book of 2020. Somehow I haven't read it yet, but as this year's madness continues to ramp up in the US, it seems like the time is right.

If you happen to be curious what I've been reading lately I keep a book log at https://electro.pizza/bookshelf/

This is just mind-boggling.

"The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope has produced the highest resolution observations of the Sun’s surface ever taken. ... The cell-like structures – each about the size of Texas – are the signature of violent motions that transport heat from the inside of the sun to its surface."

https://www.nso.edu/telescopes/dkist/first-light-cropped-field-movie/

Small weekend garden project; building a cold frame! Typically I get seeds started indoors under a grow light, but as the garden has grown in size I've run out of room for starts. This should free up a lot of space (or give me an excuse to expand the garden further).

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.