đŸ Archived View for station.martinrue.com âș danrl âș tinylog captured on 2024-08-25 at 02:54:06. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
âŹ ïž Previous capture (2024-08-18)
âĄïž Next capture (2024-08-31)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
author: danrl
find me at 2&h in camp deoxidized, if any of you is at burning man. see ya in the dustâŠ
a lucky coincidence plus an incredible generous friend and suddenly i find myself going to burning man for the first time. always likes the idea but never thought i would have a chance to actually go. excited!
i am in the âi gotta run my own 2g networkâ stage of onboarding the dumb phone. i will have to stop myself right there and reconsider life choices. do i really want to maintain basically a mobile network just to operate a 12 year old phone on my premises? notwithstanding the license issues of spectrum useâŠ
snatched up an old dumb phone (sony ericsson w350i) from 2008 only to realize that there is no 2g network anymore. so small, so perfect. wish there was something like a 5g dumb phone that actually works and has open source firmware (not android).
back to the stripped down iphone mini in the meantime.
ah, the absence of drama. everything is boring. the government being slow like a snail in approving my paperwork, work project slowly coming to an end, the next one lined up, investments slowly grow despite recent market turmoil, reforestation is slowly moving along.
how long will it last? will trouble find me again? better enjoy the break while i can.
have a good day everyone!
i need to learn about forests and planting trees. 2/3 of the coastal redwoods i planted survived the summer (with plenty of watering) but it becomes too expensive. how do i reforest my land without spending hundreds of dollars each month on water?
we have rain season coming up in november. enough time to learn about forests? which books to read? anyone has an idea?
i accidentally started a record collection. donât even have a turntable, but the idea of having vinyl records somehow got me. now saving up for a decent turntable and amplifier. still not sure how this all happened.
oh no, starlink is running fine but my openwrt router just died. now i have fast internet but canât use it because my main router, which i trust more than the starlink router, is dead in the water. sad day.
this string of characters has been posted via space and satellites, thanks to my just set up starlink dish and router. i am very excited, my fellow geminauts!
was bored and started reading mark twainâs âlife on the mississippiâ. got so hooked that i canât stop it and put all other evenings activities aside yesterday. books are the best thing since sliced bread and wild honey!
i ordered a starlink kit to see how that works at my location. it is expensive but there isnât really any alternative. so my gemini will actually go through space, technically speaking?!
managed to get a lot of trash removed today as part of my continous mountain nature cleanup. so. much. trash. humans suck at properly disposing of trash.
did a ham radio fox hunt at the nasa research center for field day today. that was fun!
saw a c40-a (âclipperâ) aircraft taking off from the local airfield. we have a lot of interesting aircraft showing up here every now and then, air force one is a regular guest for example, c17, marine one, bunch of netjets, and of course a zeppelin and the other billionaires toys.
the country i live in doesnât let me vote (yet) and i could not be happier. they have the choice between a clinically dead candidate, a convicted criminal and an alleged nutjob. tough one!
i wonder what the winning move here is for the ordinary citizen? pick a side and get all worked up? disengage entirely for a life in peace?
trees smell awesome. better than cities.
i am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer. (walden, economy)
of all the things challenging my sanity, the u.s. legal immigration system has to be the end boss of all times. why again am i going through this again?
i put up an antenna or two and connected them to a software defined radio receiver. had them laying around and i really wanna get started in ham radio somehow. but to be honest, i also needed an excuse to do some welding. i enjoy welding a lot, and i am not even good at it. not at all. but who cares? itâs a hobby!
https://youtu.be/NRMJGSRC_1M
i just love the smell of welding gas. thatâs the best part of welding stuff in the shop using mig welders. in the field i do flux core welding, and that is just dirty no matter how you look at it.
started watching three body problem. i know the show differs a bit from the books, which i have yet to read. i'm two episodes in. and there are so many wtf moments. that is a masterpiece of science fiction but i am not sure i like where everything is going. wow!
for giggles, i tried to convince my wife that the government is hiding aliens from us. went on for a while and she got really annoyed. i claimed that the intransparent handling of the alien issue by the government poses a problem. she told me that the only problem there is might be a husband who went insane.
it was fun, but clearly she was annoyed af.
i can get carried away with things and ignore everything around me when digging in. including basic needs like, drinking water. recently i added a reminder on my phone to take a quick 10 minute walk every afternoon. that has been a game changer. i loose some time, but get mental energy in return. why did it take me so long to take a break? (context: my work happens on a screen all day)
i tried to catch my drone out of the air. one of its legs was not properly fixed, so it glitched out of my hands and the propeller blades slit my finger joint three times. canât type on a computer, but thumbs only typing on the phone works. đ thatâs a first for meâŠ
just wanted to let you know that i appreciate you all and the geminispace in general. a friendly, diverse yet accepting crowd with a tendency for peaceful coexistence. that isnât a given in many places, and some big communities can only get there with a lot of policing. we can be very proud of what we built here! thank yâall for being excellent!
let this be a appreciation thread for that reason. post your own capsules, your favorite capsules, nice words about your fellow geminauts!
going to houston, texas for a week. never been to texas. what to expect? must see things? food?
(no politics, donât care about that one)
thinking about joining the volunteer fire brigade in two years or three (after house built). visited them today and liked the trucks and camaraderie and helping others. anyone a firefighter here and has opinions?
the fcc assigned me a new four letter call sign for my ham radio license: kilo-six-romeo-xray
given how hard it is to get a four letter call sign these days, i am very happy. it all luck of course.
my awesome wife has been doing our u.s. federal and cali state taxes. including foreign tax credits from two other countries with unaligned fiscal years, because why not. i just look in amazement how she navigates about 100 pages of forms and attachments in two languages.
also: moving internationally is tax hell. beware!
someone i worked with more closely than before over the past few months (due to a shared project at work) has decided to end his life recently. it is very hard to understand their decision.
recap: year one of building a debt-free, off-grid, zero energy home. if you are blessed with long enough attention span you can watch us struggle for two hours. did we bite of a project too big to chew?
https://youtu.be/ZUllUyql0-I
the three most important life improvements i made in the past year:
(1) eat much healthier (2) kill all social media except station (3) disable youtube watch history and the awful shorts âfeatureâ
my focus went into the relationships and projects i deeply care about. best trade ever.
work was weird yesterday. and it is weird today. somehow a lot of politics is happening around my project. not sure if that is good or not.
performed my first maintenance on a piece of heavy equipment: my excavator. iâm not saying itâs easy peasy, but i will also say that i have seen software that was orders of magnitude more complex than such a machine.
enjoy the struggle at https://youtu.be/bU2RnwAF1u4
every time i see young couples with a stroller passing by i peek into the stroller. just to see if they are trying to squeeze in one last purely biological incarnation of intelligent life or if this is just one more overfed, dressed up silicon valley pet that canât be bothered to walk on its own. from dogs and cats to bunnies and birds, i have seen it all. for a welcome change, today i saw not one but two strollers occupied by human offspring. not all is lostâŠ
what a eventful week. got frustrated at work. also slightly underpaid. found a new way to build my house. changed all the plans. excited to learn more there. listening to someone who i thought was mostly stupid and learned that they are not that stupid (but still disagree with them on many topics). ate a lot of fast food for some reason. very unusual for me. wild days. but coming home and being greeted by my wife made my day, every day. life is wild right now.
healing the forest: we've been planting three kinds of redwood trees, including the rare dawn red wood which changes color to red.
https://youtu.be/9YS9_WcE6Ls
major breakthrough in house design yesterday evening. after over a year of moving walls and roof rafters on paper i found a combination that looks affordable, requires materials i can actually source and transport to the building site, and can still carry all the solar panels i need to get through the darkest winter days without ever needing a generator. the all electric, full solar, off grid home is getting closer. i will have to ask my structural engineer about my new plans. a bit worried about one of the load bearing walls and the high seismic counterweight of the excessive amount of panels i will have to install.
cleaned up a trashy section of my land (so much junk from the previous owners) and then planted six redwood trees in the place instead.
i need vacation đ€Ș
a drug addict intruded our property while we were away. scouting for things to steal. luckily my cameras caught it and pinged me when they detected a person. I quickly called my neighbor who stopped by with his truck and caught the guy. since the suspect tried to start a fight, even the sheriff came, which is a bit of a hit and miss out here. that scared the tweaker and hopefully he will never return. the âno trespassingâ signs are huge and i put them up every 50 feet or so. the lack of respect for other peopleâs property pisses me off. he was lucky i wasnât there myselfâŠ
in my latest video i integrate a wind sensor into prometheus/grafana via a raspberry pi pico w microcontroller. nothing beats open source software!
https://youtu.be/oT1HWP1ZnYU
bright light city is setting my soul on fire! greetings from las vegas from someone who doesnât drink, smoke nor gambles. still, forever in love with this place. if we ever have a gemini conference or a station user meeting, it should take place in las vegas i think. it has something for everyone!
i have seven forms pending with the government in an immigration matter. the forms together make up a single case. they approved one today, which is great news. at the same time i am wondering why not approve them all. they will have their reasons i suppose. they also have not necessarily had a stellar track record on in terms of being organized or consistent or, dare i say, fast. stay classy!
unpopular opinion: @martin should build a battery rc car, launch a toy rocket from the backyard, have in that same backyard a small tunnel dug, and then claim publicly: in terms of achievements i am kinda like that other guy who runs a unprofitable social media site for fun, but i did it before it was cool and my users actually like me.
someone translated - ignorama - one of my favorite german punk rock songs. here's a snippet for your entertainment:
youâre dancing with me, the world is beautiful //
when you dance with me //
i couldnât feel any better //
youâre dancing with me, the end is near //
when you dance with me //
iâm spared this whole misery
ladies and gentlemen, fellow geminauts, we got ourselves an excavator. i can not overstate how much fun it is to operate heavy equipment and shape your future home, extract trash and restore nature.
a game changer! https://youtu.be/xwqyvc4tww0
i figured out the matcha dosage issue. it is palatable now. progress!
had my first matcha ever. not sure i like it. looks like i overdosed, apparently one has to use less than a spoonful per cup. friend brought the stuff from japan and i didnât understand the instructions since i canât read japanese. anyway, feel pretty awake now. maybe i should try regular green tea first and slowly work my way up?
a manager at work opened an important career door for me today. it wonât be the most exciting project, but it is something special and new and thus worth pursuing. will have to learn a few new skills to get it done. excited and grateful. i have been asking for such an opportunity for a while.
the storm tipped over one of the neighborâs huge redwood trees and we got the biggest chainsaw available to cut it into 10ft lengths (~3 meter). it was fun to cut a coastal redwood on the u.s. west coast using a stihl chainsaw made in my origin country germany.
https://youtu.be/YtXuYN63uUU
january 1st. the gym is full of new people which are not necessarily following established etiquette. luckily, this usually only lasts two weeks and a lot of the new guests will have disappeared. itâs a new yearâs thing. every year đ
happy new year, fellow geminimauts!
i discovered ham radio a few days ago. used citizen band as a youngster and loved it. damn, ham radio is soooo cool. have my technician exam tomorrow, got a handheld receiver as a last minute gift for christmas, and i got sucked into reading ham radio books. now looking for printed(!) magazines for beginners, e.g. a years worth of âover the airâ would be awesome to find somewhere. very excited for my first exam and studying like crazy under the christmas tree.
after three days of cloud and rain my shedâs battery died and the solar panels are now clean but they havenât been generating any power. so all sensors and monitoring is offline until the sun returns. living with the seasonsâŠ
got a fcc license to operate in the gsmr spectrum. nothing special, $35 for a ten year license and no test required. even got a call sign assigned. naturally, the rule loving german in me is excited to receive an official government document stating my permission to transmit on a regulated frequency. i am horribly easy to excite!
fixed my photovoltaic inverter. now letâs hook it up to modbus and see what we gotâŠ
took my video clips from one year of owning a bare piece of land and edited it into a 2 minute trailer for youtube. but since i have a hard time with the narrator track and as a late in life immigrant my english pronunciation is sh*t, i tried an ai voice thingy. very very useful and unlocks my creativity. hope people are ok with that. noticed that some really hate when human creativity is amended with technology but prefer a âpureâ form of expression, whatever that means.
trailer to be released around xmas on my channel (@danrl)
did my first maintenance on a diesel engine. thank you, youtube! next up: hydraulic system maintenance. i didnât know owning heavy equipment is so much fun. i enjoy this!
i bought an excavator. pretty beaten up, used machine close to 2000 hours. will now show it some love, replace all the filters and fluids and give it a good greasing. welcome to the team, bobcat!
considering buying a mini excavator. but how to make sure i donât get scammed? there is âironcheckâ which sounds very promising. i never bought machinery of that size. not sure how to approach this.
after years of preparation i was finally allowed to file my immigration paperwork. so many obstacles on the way. and now it is unclear if the paperwork has been received or if they were lost by the courier. to the very last step, this process filters for the mentally strong and those willing to with uncertainty and knowing how to take action at every step. i wonder if that is by design? it is a great filtering function, after all. wish me luck!
few things bother me more than unreliable people making promises and then not following through. specially the attorney i work with that on a really important matter is jeopardizing timelines big time. weeks and weeks of not doing a single thing but always promising. and when finally i got something to review it was cluttered with the most basic mistakes. unbelievable!
road tripping with my parents showing them my new âheimatâ (home). they are impressed by the size of things but also wonder why some parts look so âthird-worldlyâ. fair assessment :)
someone took millions of years old dinosaurs or other organic matter of that time out of the earth in the form of oil. it was refined to kerosine and pumped into sk935 yesterday. then i boarded the aircraft and spent hours of emulating an x86 on my apple m2 drawing electricity from the jetâs engines, just so that i can run a x86-only cross compiling build tool to build an mediathek/filogic arm binary.
how did we get so far (up) and yet are clearly throning over a giant pile of legacy s*#t?!
just landed in munich for a short trip to attend a wedding and meet some people in person. i forgot how densely populated my origin country was! not that i live in a sparsely populated area during the week in the silicon valley, but the weekends in the mountains are a change for sure. next mission: get some sleep and then find decent döner! đ„ servus!
got solar power on my off-grid piece of land. with a battery and an inverter. now we have 24/7 electricity. âĄïž and 4g internet. put up a cam and birds started inspecting it on day 1 and then attacking it on day 2. day 3 was âshit on this thingâ-day. since then a new peace has been established and i can enjoy the view undisturbed.
got some old solar panels that was thrown out at a commercial solar farm. put them up on my storage container and now i have about 2.5kwh nominal (2kwh effective) to power my handful of raspberry pis and sensors. i might have over-engineered the whole thing :)
have a raspberry pico w connected to a monk makes plant monitor using the uart/serial port of the pico. monitoring soil moisture of my balcony garden all worked while connected to the usb-c of my macbook air for firmware development. then switched to a power adapter and now it canât read stable data anymore. tried all kinds of cable, power adapter and what not. but as soon as i connect the pico to the macbook it all works. wtf. spent half a day debugging and then gave up. donât get itâŠ
celebrated my birthday recently by inviting my friends to an outdoor camping-style party. a lot of them came to my surprise and we had a large group hanging out in the sun, camping chairs, sandwiches, music, great conversations and story time. might have been my best birthday party so far! friends ftw!
the wife cut onions on the cutting board. i was too lazy to clean it up between uses and prepared my muslis for the week on it. since sunday i have had a pineapple musli with strong onion taste each morning.canât wait for this week to be over, lol.
gemini works great on my off-grid property with limited cell service. my favorite protocol in the place i like the most!
german word of the week: hawazuzi :)
https://youtu.be/DpelUteS50A
the long wait is over! or is it? got a raspberry pi 4 and a fancy aluminum case. assembled it yesterday. this could be my future capsule. ideally hosted at home, but that requires a different router. the isp equipment is dns hijacking garbage that doesnât let me administer it probably without them overwriting my config remotely. new router is stuck in the mailâŠ
the wait continuesâŠ
yesterday the wifeâs choir people came up to our mountain property and helped us dig a trench and lay some water pipe for the future house. they are exceptionally helpful people and we made good progress.
a while ago i did my first off-grid welding:
https://youtu.be/Kd34i0bhYfs
and this weekâs video is about assembling a cargo carrier for the car. we need to get fuel for the generator and i refuse to transport these gasoline bombs inside the car. the cargo carrier solves that issue.
https://youtu.be/YSLDTfFKcJA
there are more videos on the channel. one new every friday. didnât had the time to post them here as usual.
so little sleep. so much soldering and hacking. #defcon
defcon is coming up. i am excited! also i enjoy las vegas, despite not drinking or gambling. itâs my personal study ground for what happens when you overload people with opportunities to get their next dopamine hit. anyone else there from the gemini space?
hack the planet!
also, released a new video. short clip of me servicing my hydraulic bottle jack which had a rough time lifting a shipping container.
https://youtu.be/a-jx0IDnjek
another round of poison oak â ïž clearing. this time i got myself a hazmat suit. it was very hot in the sun. something has to giveâŠ
now back down in the valley and enjoying a sandwich đ„Ș
really enjoy working in nature!
disappointed by the low quality of work that i got from one of those âhiring things outâ platforms. i ordered a couple of video editing jobs on fiverr just to see what the market is. the first revisions are usually the absolute bare minimum and i donât know what the cultural background is of the creators but delivering such a low level of quality would make me ashamed. overall, the time is not worth it. i could have done it myself in half the comms and review time.
am i holding it wrong?
i walked into a bunch if poison oak (again) to scout the path for my new water supply line. now the itching keeps me awake at night and i look funny all over my face and arms and legs.
i was promised immunity would build up over time. not seeing it!
tried to pull a utility trailer uphill on the questionable dirt road. spent the rest of the day recovering the trailer and secure my jeep. we definitely need a new road. if only the fire code wouldnât be so damn strict. canât see yet where we could cut a compliant road. this is going to cost me a fortuneâŠ
also have a new video out (like every friday). this time the wild turkeys đŠ came by with their last remaining chick inspected my work.
https://youtu.be/nW7VZKpfcNs
another night in nature, joined by my wife. she found a genius solution to the strange noises: earplugs :) i myself get used to the noises and can better distinguish the animals making it now. also, the nights are beautiful.
spending another night aline in nature. some noises still scare me a little. there is much that i canât attribute correctly yet. let me tell you one thing: nature nights arenât quiet at all! (that isnât news to me, but having camped for decades on a different continent this one has its own set screeches, chirps, crackling noises and what not)
a major bureaucratic step in turning my united states visa into a permanent thingy has been approved today. long way to go, but after two years of waiting, this is significant news. party time! made my day and week!
life has been busy lately. learning a ton about welding and laying pipes. and about immigration law. what a weird mix of topics.
i am still unsure about what domain to use for my capsule. also, i have not enough time to work on my capsule so it only exists as a draft on my computer. priorities!
like every friday, i released a new video. this time we spent a day on hard labor: fixing our access road. now we can use our road safely again and wonât slowly erode it. also we wonât fall off the mountain, or at least it is less likely now.
https://youtu.be/1MNmCYPfV8s
my welding skills are a bit⊠rusty. definitely need more practice sessions.
https://youtu.be/VsFOf73nXM0
spent two full days in nature, working hard on our mountain land from sunrise to sunset with just a lunch break. months of strength, endurance and especially core training in the gym paid off. i have become more resilient and more physically productive. finally. the rewards for daily gym visits are not very immediate but this now motivates me to continue going. i should have lived that way 20 years ago. i was young and recklessâŠ
havenât heard from @bavarianbarbarian in a while. u ok, friend? hope all is well with the garden and your parents.
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