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author: danrl
wondering if there are simple and good record players out there. have obtained a vinyl but donât own a device to play it. want to experience the full sound and depth, so likely need solid set of speakers, too. any into this stuff and has recommendations?
woke up at 5:30am and figured i use the time to blog again. last blog was over a year agoâŠ
topic: patience and the wonderful effects of being kind to oneself.
https://danrl.com/breakfast/
til: they are selling dos 6.2 and windows 3.0 compatible x86 computers at aliexpress for 200 usd. thereâs also windows 95 machines. newly built but with old architecture and bus systems.
i am intrigued to get into non-old retro computing. i really just need a low energy consumption device that can run gemini and irc.
anyone have seen similar devices?
spend a night in nature. a bit scary at times but also unbelievably relaxing and satisfying. nothing better than being woken up by the sun in the morning.
have a new video out. it shows me building a work bench in the storage container. yolo style. no plans. just tools and wood.
this is meant to be the first base for the future off grid house building adventure.
enjoy!
https://youtu.be/KOT6-dYKBYI
felt so braindead after work yesterday. went to the maker space and practiced welding and plasma cutting for an upcoming project. that immediately re-energized me. canât imagine what a lack of physical work would do to me. how do people live on-screen and on-line all the time? is that a special ability i donât have, maybe?
had the chance to once again see how incentives drive behavior. not in a good way. some cities are so run down and somehow everyone seems to be ok with it. back to the mountain paradise for me.
i have a few thousand dollars remaining principal on my car loan which i got at a 1.5% rate back in the days of quantitive easing. i have saved up the amount and it is earning me 4% on my savings account. i know i should stick with the loan and pay it off as slowly as the schedule allows thanks to the hilariously low rate. but there is something in me that wants to be free of this debt and pay it off right now. why is patience so hard?
a extremely busy friend is no longer responding despite there being quite active chatter until about 20 days ago. last known appearance was her going on an aircraft a week ago after getting her flying license. should one be concerned? many reasonable explanations but our brains are wired to imagine negative outcomes to protect us. not helpful today.
last day of controlled burns to get rid of wildfire fuel for the summer. we burned three dead trees and we have more left. the remaining wood has to wait until rain seasons begins in late autumn.
new lagrange on iphone is sick. amazing job, @skyjake. love the scroll bounce refresh!
til: powder nails. itâs basically shooting hardened steel into concrete with a charge, like a gun.
also: 2d, 12d and 16d common nails and how there is no real system behind them but a lot of interesting history.
had another great day at our land. decided the storage container needs a window. next up: get my welding skills back up to snuff. been a while. also, any off-grid welding recommendations? shall i try generator-based stick welding? donât wanna bring protective welding gases for mig or tig. keep it simple. hillbilly style :)
in the last weeks i was building a shelf in my 20ft shipping container whenever i had some spare time. time lapse video here:
https://youtu.be/DQabNbFqopc
paper bags keep failing me more often than not. hate them for most applications. good fuel for campfire starting, though.
keep the rubber side down and the thing between the lines
tina couldnât sleep. she talked nonstop starting at 5:30 while i was half asleep still. usually i do that to her. sucks to be at the receiving end of oneâs own bad habits. til.
we built an anti deer fence from scrap materials we found on our property. fun exercise in resourcefulness initially born out of the idea that it will be a temporary fix. we all know how long temporary fixes will remain in production đ€Ș
https://youtu.be/IrQbklcYPm0
sitting at a lake near our rented cabin, reading through the sunrise. vacation!
visiting phoenix, az. love the desert. saw so much life hidden between the bushes, cactuses, and wondrous trees. next up: an old mine and lakes.
surprise find during unwrapping a difficult tax issue; apparently the uk gov (hmrc) had sent me a payable order a year ago which i never got. now trying to recover that. not much money, but also not nothing. also, til: payable orders đ€·
def need to chill more
this might be the first ai generated log:
alien came to earth.
he said, "i'm looking for a friend."
a dog barked.
alien said, "that's close enough."
(generated using googleâs bard llm)
this work week was mixed. at least i got some technical debt cleanup moving forward. what a drag!
heading back into nature tomorrow. on that note, hereâs my latest video in which i learn basic plumbing skills and make extra trips to the hardware store for measuring wrong:
https://youtu.be/z60LK2nbVrc
current book: âthe revenge of analogâ by david sax. can recommend. i love my tech job and i love technology, but for sure it can only be a stepping stone to happiness, not the only source of it. nature and tangible things and haptic creativity are similarly important to the true human experience.
no finish line in the rat race
this weekendâs local mood: bank run.
our friend kordian visited and helped us clear the road from fallen trees (storm damage). got some nice cam shots out of that day. but also totaled an entire chain saw chain and had to accept that not everyone likes to wear as much ppe as i do. enjoy!
https://youtu.be/koqBVnwog10
the universe is testing me again and again this week. so many fuckups, i hardly can repair them in time for the next one to appear. i underestimated how tough it is to survive an economic downturn. on the plus side, started strength training again to mitigate the stress. it works wonders! love it!
you know that the attention machine is going full circle when someone uses a random generative ai extension for excel sheets, admits knowing nothing about the topic at hand and not being able to verify the results, then posts a catching video full of generated, unverified bs on tiktok where a (lemme check) self-proclaimed founder and vc and what not finds it, steals it, and uploads the content to linked in of all places for click farming. how is this not a hype cycle?
took my solar panel, battery, and a coffee machine up to the mountains for a coffee break during storm damage cleanup work. to my surprise, the 120w rated panel delivered 114w peak. that is close to spec. expected much less.
enjoy the video and the beautiful view (of nature, not me, lol):
https://youtu.be/r_zeQVXpJVc
my new project at work includes wading through tons of legacy config and code and clean it up. i actually like it. itâs a challenge and a mess, but super critical for our products.
my wife and me moved to a new apartment which is smaller but quieter and sleep quality improved.
still a lot of stress in our life but at least we are making progress.
nothing has been going to plan lately and it stresses me out. so much on the line. stupid past me, so bad at predicting the future. meh.
saw a fighter jet take off up close. impressive.
my morning commute often has me biking through a small forest-like stretch of trees where i regularly pass a woman greeting me with a wholehearted âgood morning!â while she does her daily run. a mile or so further down, i pass by next to an airfield where the silicon valley billionaires commute in on monday mornings and out thursday afternoons via private jets passing right over my helmet. within that short distance my experience goes from down to earth regular folks to the most lavish lifestyle present on this amazing peninsula. love the spectrum! what a life!
bought a second phone and removed all my work apps from my first phone. now it should be easier to âswitch offâ on the weekends. letâs see.
recently i got some unexpected insights into a large corporationâs digital strategy and the execution thereof. it was a highly complex system of legacy and new services from a multitude of vendors. almost impossible to securely orchestrate let alone run to high reliability standards. some business are facing tough times modernizing their business and spending in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars on service evolution is totally normal for them. it was a different world for me to see.
i saw air force one and the u.s. president shortly before he assessed the santa cruz storm damage and flooding. and then tina and i assessed our own storm damage on our property and started with the cleanup work. 15 minutes of video at
https://youtu.be/fkIAMQKfuSA
times are tough right now. a friend asked chatgpt to generate stoicism wisdom and shared it with me. lol. that made me laugh a little. counting the days to saturday when i will spend time in nature again. for recovery from stress.
tough week.
despite all the rain we recently got, or maybe because of it, we leveled our shipping container by placing it on used railroad ties. now the water can flow freely around it, less rust should build up, and it doesnât feel like the sinking titanic when inside (it was that off!). my friend dima helped me pull this all off. heâs an example in strength and endurance. worked all day while soaking wet.
https://youtu.be/IOkT0naqakw
iâm part of the âsunset teamâ that is shutting down my employerâs cloud gaming product which my site reliability engineering team(s) supported. today we released an easter egg before we shut down for good next week. the community has been very supportive and i could not have wished for better users. a chapter ends and it hurts a little. products can be technically great and still fail in the market. an exercise in acceptance for me personally. gg.
an app disappeared from my phoneâs home screen. i noticed b/c the layout changed. for two days i have been wondering which app it could have been that vanished. i still donât know. i guess i (a) have to many apps installed in the first place and (b) that app was not really important enough to be on the prime real estate that the home screen is.
a old and very good friend from school reached out after many years of mutual radio silence. it was good to reconnect. we quickly figured out that we have walked different paths yet arrived at similar places, just a ocean and a continent apart. some connections are so deep they can be revived within minutes despite spanning decades and vast distance. who would you like to see again that you havenât in a while?
we have acquired a used shipping container to store our gardening tools on our property. it is in surprisingly good shape. allegedly, it made just a single trip before it had to make room for even more containers arriving at port. global trade is wild.
https://youtu.be/9vw6P2JzN20
smth went wrong with the reporting of taxes withheld back when i lived in the uk. now hmrs (uk tax collector) wants a ridiculously large amount of money from me within a couple of days. very stressful. hopefully i can get the proofs i need to avoid that. b/c i paid my taxes and then some. time waste. but a good opportunity to test my zen.
can highly recommend avatar 2 in 3d. great cgi, astounding shots, interesting sky people (future humans) tech like a maglev and a giant sea animal hunting boat. james cameron really did make great use of the new sony detachable sensors and incorporating his years long camera research. 3d is not dead. and i love it. story also pretty good albeit a bit hollowoody, naturally.
winter time at stardust lane: a tree fell down and we had to clear the road (once again) https://youtu.be/uMJogV6jyLs (please like and subscribe, haha, thx)
i need to transport some building material but my car is too small. this annoys me. i might need to make invest in a trailer which i try to avoid. renting is prohibitively expensive given how often i will need to haul lumber and other stuff. some days i feel very resource constrained and that holds me back with big ideas.
we now have a storage container. still ten years away from a house but this feels like progress. and my biggest xmas gift box ever. đ đ«
doing controlled burns on our property. it is fun. roasted potatoes and veggies for lunch. sunshine. silence. recharge time.
todayâs mood: full on christmas đ€¶ đ best time of the year
the year is approaching its quieter time. i have a important milestone at work coming up, much like an exam, and i need to ramp up my prep if i wanna make it through.
on my mountain property i will receive a shipping container next week to serve a storage. exciting, given the road conditions at this time of the year.
one more week to go and then it all slows down. đ
i ran out of disk space. the action cameras produce so much data even though i am only using 1080p instead of 4k. so i bought an external hard drive to cope with the influx of footage every week.
in other news: my new video has received over 200 views. iâm surprised so many people are interested in our journey towards a off grid home in nature.
https://youtu.be/LySaNbzFOKY
(wood splitting in the rain)
it all started with me sharing my nature weekends and property cleanup videos with family and friends. now it is my new hobby: taping and scrappy video cutting. no aspiration to be perfect, just for fun.
don't have a fancy battery to store excess solar power but i have dead trees and scrap lumber. so i built myself an eco friendly solar heat energy storage solution. in less fancy terms: another day on our property. i built a firewood rack :)
https://youtu.be/Qo9kzAlLmJA
on the weekend i build a sawhorse (aka sawbuck) so we can cut firewood. so many dead trees on our property, turning them into firewood for cozy evenings down the road.
https://youtu.be/xaWsbzmvEkY
turns out, the wife is a great tree cutter. she roamed our property and identified dead trees, cut them into smaller pieces, hauled them to our sawhorse, and made firewood. i was busy building a large wood rack to stack the influx of material. now she is tired :)
once i helped installing a metal fence around a large meadow for an outdoor hacker camp (emf camp) ânearâ london. they provided me with a brand impact driver to do the job. the tool was extremely reliable and when i had to buy my first power tool years later i chose the same brand. and this is how i bought into the ecosystem. a trap! now all my tools and batteries are from the same vendor, no way out. itâs like the ios/android ecosystem but in real life.
anyhow, i got myself a miter saw stand and did an unboxing video. the vendor should sponsor me, lol.
https://youtu.be/LjtBPXD5oVg
i contributed to a book called "lan party" which is about the 90s/2000 era lan parties, before gaming went onto the internet forever. it looks like my contribution was chosen to be included in the final print, even a photo of mine might end up in the book. i might be in a history book! am i old now? how should i feel?
the web is utterly broken. we can build a better one. one that provides value to people's life. one that connects people in a meaningful way. one that is quirky in nature, clunky to use, a place that delivers only what it needs to and then disappears into the background of our lifes. a people first information highway. not a brain-hacking, money-optimized, ad-ladden place to waste precious life hours.
iâm considering converting my blog to a gemlog first. with the option to render html, but maybe i wonât serve the web anymore. sounds like a big step. unsure what is best. certainly donât look forward to running servers again⊠cloudflare pages (like netlify just different provider) is a great place to host static content. but donât think they serve gemini.
i want to avoid being single homed. that doesnât sound right to the site reliability engineer that i am.
ideas?
every time i watch the latest serenity os update video on youtube i want to download, compile, and run the os immediately. it is so impressive what can be done by a small group of people who don't take "no" or "impossible" for an answer. we have to add gemini support to the browser, though, it would just be perfect! anyone else into serenity os?
friday evenings are my new productivity spot. the unexpected power of being alone in the office and having no one ping me or send me emails. unfortunately, also no one there to review code changes.
the big web is broken. wanted to read an article on my phone and all i got was this: http://bayimg.com/iabedaAbH
good lord, what would we do without the small web.
yesterday i was reminded that planning is good, but plans go puff quickly. arriving at our piece of land i was equipped to clear some branches that started growing into the road overhang. what i actually found was a dead tree that fell onto a different part of the road. so i spent most of the day turning the tree info handy pieces of firewood and stacked it up nearby. time flies and eventually my chainsaw ran thru all the batteries i had. it was such a please to deal with the curveball nature threw at me and be successful in that. buying this place creates challenges and satisfaction each weekend. big difference from the moving of bits and bytes during the week.
another saturday in the mountains. we got the old tracked loader running. it made a nailing noise. i guess the injection needs to be looked after. it is scheduled to be sold off.
the wife got herself a pro level weed eater and starting whacking the stuff out of existence. next week we are looking at creating burn piles.
we also played powerball hoping to boost our construction budget up from 0. that, of course, didnât work. as engineers we know that the odds are not in our favor but 10 bucks for hope seemed like a good deal.
there is this interesting space between prefab homes and on-site construction that is prefab walls and roofs to be assembled at the construction site that are customizable to great extend. electric, plumbing, shape of house, precision cuts, solar, even air tightness is an option. this space seem worth exploring. i want to do most construction work myself, otoh, iâd take a cnc routed and nailed wall any day over slowly building out in the open over weeks and months. tradeoffs and decisions!
i brought my idea to charge a 4x4 electric vehicle via solar to my friend who is smarter than me. he did some quick math and it turns out what i was planning is quite a stretch. i would need a lot of buffer batteries in my (to be built) house to store a full car charge during the day (solar) and then transfer it overnight to the car (to be bought one day)
good thing i donât have money to do anything right now and start again from scratch. the solar only car charging idea gets too expensive given current prices and battery technologies.
we spent the day at the property we just bought. 12ac of vacant mountain forest. huge redwoods. i put up a mailbox and build a bench and a table out of old wood i found. the water pipe has a leak. well, leak is an understatement. it is basically broken. so we gotta run a new pipe. nothing went as planned and still it was a great day and i feel accomplished. back to nature!
i need to tow a trailer with our car soon to get some building materials onto our nature mountain property. i installed a tow hitch receiver which was my first modification of a car ever. then time ran out and it got dark. i reassembled the car. next i have to disassemble the whole back of the car again to connect the wire harness. unfortunately i broke some decorative parts that are impossible to find in stock somewhere. so soon i can tow a trailer but the car looks broken from the outside. tradeoffs!
in other news: the wife got poison oak while hanging out in our forest and the rashes are spreading. sorry to see her suffer.
my wife spent a day in our little redwood grove in a hammock. she had a stressful week, too. welcome relaxation. at the end of the day she didnât want to leave. nature is surprisingly powerful in calming is down. now we need to build a small shed or cabin in the clearing to be able to stay late some days. keeping mountain lions and other nocturnal wildlife apart from us. i am a bit scared of those. the country i grew up in wasnât home to dangerous animals.
omg it happened. my wife and i bought 10+ acres of beautiful redwood forest and some clearings. our own piece of nature. so much work now! and it seems to be buildable as well. so much to do! couldnât be happier.
company shut down my business unit. job and visa in limbo for a brief period. finalized land purchase. the past week was a rollercoaster ride par excellence. need a break. have a great weekend everyone!
it is happening. we will get our very own piece of nature. i made the initial deposit yesterday. first wire transfer in my life. i now know why ach (automated clearing house) exists. what middle ages process is wire transfer? this country continues to surprise me!
i know some of you are following my journey back to nature. i have exciting news to share. my wife and i spent all day at the lot of land we like to buy in the mountains. together with the sellers we walked he property lines (the ones we were able to find, lol) und i cut some bush and dead trees to get to most corners of the lot. discovered a small redwood grove on the edge of the lot. it is so peaceful and beautiful. lots of small flat spots and little hideouts all over there. we agreed on a price. now preparing the paperwork.
the big web get less usable by the day. just now i came across an article that had ads between paragraphs (so far so bad) but also overlayed over the images. at first i thought the author had forgot to add the images they were referring to in the text. then i discovered them beneath ads that i uad to remove by clicking on a tiny x in the corner. ads aside content were annoying, ads within content made me explore alternatives like gemini, ads on top of content will make me leave forever.
i wanted to buy a plot of land in midst nature. trees, some open space for a cabin, a good view and the sound of the forest. well, the sellers moved a little. and i moved a little. and maybe this time we can make it happen! i should start a gemlog if it works out and share my journey. wdyt?
we have some coffee making equipment at work that is not provides by our employer. hence it doesnât fall under the regular cleaning regiment that keeps everything tidy in the office. a colleague cleaned our custom equipment because it was damn necessary. now the coffee tastes different. i liked the previous taste. should i worry?
met with the owner of the property i fancy so much. met on the property for negotiations and that went into the night. weâre closer to a deal now, but i had to stretch to go there. it is too early to be excited, but i feel like we are close to finding common ground. the sunset was unreal. so beautiful. and it is only one and a half hours away from where i live. maybe i do get my nature getaway after all? so exciting. there is wildlife though and i guess i should learn how to build a cabin.
i have been trying to buy a small piece of land in midst nature for recreational use and relaxing. unfortunately, sellerâs and buyerâs opinions about the actual value differ a bit. despite all goodwill and moving closer to their price, they wonât move. it was a really nice plot of forest with some open space intermixed. perfect to place a tent or even a small cabin one day. letting go is hard. the journey towards more nature time in my technology-focused life continues.
sending warm greetings from a mountain cabin to the great station community. spent all day hiking with my wife in yosemite national park. saw chipmunks, interacted with squirrels, spotted a coyote and several birds i hadnât seen before. we jumped into rivers and enjoyed the views from below and above mountains. spending time in nature is such a recharging experience. wishing everyone a great weekend and the opportunity to experience nature and peace as needed. đż đł âïž
i ditched paypal. too many years of too many frustrations and always knowing when push comes to shove, they or their algorithms will screw me over without hesitation. deleting that felt good. delete from your life what you unhappy. can recommend.
learned about the backrooms today. scary. afraid of noclipping now. i like this part of reality and donât need to see the backrooms ever.
out of curiosity started wearing a continuous glucose monitor (cgm). it can last up to two weeks before it has to be removed. I am three days in. so far, the readings were less exciting and volatile than i expected. i am basically at or around 100mg/dl all day, slightly below at night, with soft spikes to 130/140 after a meal but back to 100 within two hours of that. yesterday i ate a ton of chocolate and ice cream for science. still the spikes never left the green zone. amazing how well out body can regulate. insulin truly is a magic substance!
anyone at defcon 30 this weekend? should we have a gemini meetup?
stayed at several friendâs places this week. all nerds in one way or another. all their places are special somehow. thereâs the nature-loving friend with a mountain view, the architect friend who designed the most connected home i ever saw full of iot devices, and the upcoming phd friend who stores space and robotics artifacts on surprising places. everyone was warm and welcoming, and in every place i tool note for my own future home i want to self-built eventually with my wife
currently staying with friends in the bavarian alps. not the biggest fan of my origin country, but have missed the quiet and remote peace of a mountain home. slept with open window and had the best sleep. today it is sunny again and the gras is green, the forest growing, the goats opinionated (as usual). i feel a morning hike coming upâŠ
this station message posted via starlink. letâs push some byte through time and space!
gemini works pretty well from an airplane. definitely love the one request per page load principle here. the roundtrips for tls negotiation non withstanding. and i canât even see the moon, where we all know, capsules are hosted.
the amount of free stuff that i have to say no to is staggering. t-shirts, water bottles, candy. all things i may want, especially because they are free, but donât need. there is a part of my brain that is a gatherer :) however, all the stuff doesnât make the gatherer in me any happier beyond the moment. why is saying no so hard?
my better half and me are looking for ways to reconnect with nature and spent more time outdoors. one idea we had was to move to the woods and out of suburbia. to see what is possible we spontaneously looked at two undeveloped properties in the nearby mountains and let our imagination loose on how we would develop it to cater our needs. we quickly had more ideas than would fit on 5 acres without cutting down too many trees. that was an interesting exercise. we can neither afford that much land at this time, nor do we think we should need a lot that big. wanting less is a never ending journey. a simple, fulfilling life the constant reward. once again i learned: life is simple, not necessarily easy
my wife and i looked at properties online. we canât afford a nice plot of land with a small house in it. so we started thinking anti-mimetically about it. not that we want to buy something anytime soon. but what if? what do we really need? from first principles? â- so much of peopleâs behavior is mimetic, following others or rooted in a desire to impress or gain social status (like a fancy home). behaving anti-mimetic while being true to oneâs own desires one can open new paths and unlock new options. it is simple, but boy can i tell you, it is not easy.
a colleague brought me my favorite nut-based cheese that is only sold in the u.k. all the way to the u.s. what a nice gesture. i enjoyed the first bites yesterday together with my wife. we were reminded of our time living in london. a small, carefully selected gift can invoke big, happy feelings in the receiving party. thinking of paying it forward. is there someone in your life who deserves a small gift? maybe a nice text, a call, or their favorite sweet treat?
living with less is simple, but not easy. take minimalism as an example. there is a form of minimalism in which people own few, but expensive things. their homes look aesthetically empty, almost sterile, but the things that are there scream âi have moneyâ. to me, this isnât minimalism. just a different form of consumerism. may they be happy.
deleted twitter in favor of station now that i can use it from my phone
Like this place (station) and the crowd. Now I am afraid I might loose my client cert. Is there a way to register a backup cert to the same username?
You can not find peace by avoiding life. But you can live a more peaceful life by avoiding certain things in life. For me, one of those things I needed less of was caffeine. I was addicted to it, drank enourmous amounts of coffee each day. Then I stopped, and my life became more peaceful. Better sleep, fewer highs and fewer lows, less scouting for the next shot and more relaxation in my breaks. Nowadays I drink coffee on rare occasions, e.g. when I unexpectedly have to drive at night. I needed less caffeine. What do you need less of? How could less enrich your life and peace?
Another experiment in living with less: I have not worn my smart watch for almost a week now. It felt uncomfortable to not track my activites. Tracked or didn't happen! After a few days uncomfort turned into liberation. I don't need a tracker (anymore) to regularly be active. Freedom? Freedom! #allyouneedisless
A friend inquired about my exercise routine and willpower. I replied:
Every evening I put my gym clothes on my dresser, including a bottle of water and headphones and the apartment key. Everything that I need to leave immediately after getting up is there.
I make it easy to do the right thing and to save my willpower. I donât overload my future self but try to help him out. We tend to ask little of our present selfs and burden our future self.
all you need is less