rho @rho@fosstodon.org

A very rare sight on the sunrise loop from GOES-16 this morning. ❄️

Having a Zigbee hub that I control has me much more inclined to have 'smart' things around the house. Local only, running FOSS, no required mobile app, no cloud service, no vendor lock, yet still using off the shelf consumer devices.

Sending out a few gifts from the garden this year. The pain powder power pack.

Pulled the final Orange Thai pepper harvest this weekend. Decided to experiment with smoking a drying for powder. A few hours on Mesquite then finishing them off in a dehydrator. They turned out great! Nice smokey flavor, but still has some punchy heat.
#gardening

Processed some loofa today! This is about half of what's left on the vine.
#gardening

On a related note, this live oak tree is nearly 2000 years old. The last time I saw it I was a young man. It gave me great solace to see it again and spend a short time among it and its daughters.

Ran down to a very empty gulf coast over the weekend; looking to de-stress and tune out for a bit. The weather was perfect and I've never seen the water so clear. It did help to recharge a bit, though I could use a week (or a month).

It was nice to step away from the glowing rectangles and do some light mechanic work today. Swapped out spark plugs and cables, and got the work truck back in service.

Picked up Superflux's "Instant Archetypes" cards somewhat on a whim. I was curious about their choices for mapping on these concepts. They are beautifully done, but I'm disappointed and somewhat surprised with how narrow the context is. May as well be "Archetypes of Big Tech Capitalism."

An XBee Zigbee module arrived today. Hopefully I can get this little thing talking with my local Zigbee mesh. Ultimately I'm aiming to control some low power devices, which seem to be oddly missing in the consumer Zigbee stuff.

Spent some time getting more familiar with Grafana configurations. Finally cleaning up the garden data display.

August is brutal here, but I'd like to be able to get fall garden starts going outside without cooking the seedlings. So I'm experimenting with a new lid and shade cloth on the cold frame. Initial tests are looking promising.
#gardening

Wiring up this little magnetic switching circuit breaker for an old radio, and I cant stop fidgeting with it. Something about the sound and the action, so nice.

Looks like this old Ten-Tec power supply still works! Testing out the endpoints to try and make up a cable to power my Ten-Tec Argosy HF radio.

Having to scale things up with the cucumbers! Fermenting this time; +3% brine, shooting for half sours.

#gardening #fermentation

Consistent harvests of Summer vegetables coming out of the garden now. A whole mess of hot peppers are not too far behind.

#gardening

Spent some time today messing around with a simple pure CSS illustration, then way too much time with CSS animations.

I have a new appreciation for the work involved in some of incredible CSS art I've seen floating around. It's not easy.

So far pickle consumption has kept pace with cucumber production. Looks like that will soon change, hope the neighbors like cucumbers.

#gardening

First cucumbers of the year coming off the vine today!

#gardening

It took two weekends, but got it together!