Beardedleftist

Quick update! I've been pretty busy with life and some new and unforeseen struggles lol but so far this has happened:

I've done nothing with the Arduino. Likewise, I started looking at some of the books, but I did not have the brain power at the moment to keep on learning/retaining the info. I'm coming back this summer, though, because I did some automations at home and I want to see how much I can accomplish while being offline (not saying I'm walking around with a tinfoil hat, but I want to try to enjoy tech without being constantly being tracked).

I definitely entered a rabbit hole that sent me straight to linux (I was just using Ubuntu once in a while and now even my wife's laptop runs on linux!) and now I repurposed and old laptop that runs NixOS and is our home server and hosts Home Assistant with some useful and some silly automations, Grocy, Immich, Music Assistant, Jellyfin, shares media and folders through samba and WebDAV and let us connect when we're not home through Tailscale. It's been pretty empowering for a noob to be able to do all this, although it might not sound as much for literate people like you guys, lol

My next stop is some cheap solar panels that let me run Home Assistant OS on a PI5 (?) and now that I know better how NixOS works, probably re-do our home server on a new machine that's also cheap but does not eat as much energy as an old T530.

I wanted to write back since it's been a year, I wanted to let you guys know how it's been so far. Any questions and recommendations are welcome, and it might not look like it from this message, but all your replies were super helpful (still are, I just snatched a website and another book from the just now!).

Take care!

shocked Pikachu face

Sorry man. Feels like 2024, no more no less. Friendship and willingness to be around people (in person) is an old fart thing. Nowadays I only invite or make plans with my really close friends. Friends that are more family than friends.

Those casual friends we used to have are gone for good between laziness and socializing on-line, whatever that is.

If you were my neighbor and invited me I would've totally attended and decimated those delicious quesitos!

It is incredibly expensive. I only buy the ones I need for academic reasons... And you can imagine the artwork on those 😂

There's plenty of second hand libraries here that make deals like buy 3 for 5€. That plus public libraries is what keeps me reading to be honest!

Ping just to see if you found something relevant/interesting! :)

Wow! That's one thing I miss when reading on e-books. It's extremely convenient, but I miss those treats and the whole experience of holding a beautiful volume!

You're welcome! I hope you find something you like :)

Fair point lol I don't find the "discover" feature attractive, so I've been using the Openreads app just to keep track of what I've read year to year (a great app, by the way!)

Edited to add that maybe different instances of bookwyrm have different ways to review your books? I may be wrong about this, but I think it is worth checking if you really want to try an open alternative.

https://bookwyrm.social/ is what I've been using. I'm not an avid tracker though.

I tried thestorygraph, liked the idea but I don't like my readings to be guided by an algorithm and also I don't feel like paying for a platform, especially if I'm not using the main feature (the recommendations)

You could read Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson. It's an essay(ish) book about taste in music, funny to read and not too long (~200pg I'd say).

About the comfort zone, you could try and read something about contemporary problems and predicaments. A poison like no other talks about plastics in our everyday life (not fun), or something really old like Seneca's On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It (~100pg)

We're suffering a serious drought here though, even Barcelona's tap water might be not available this summer! We should split our sunny and rainy days! We visited Frankfurt and Heidelberg and loved the cold and rainy days… which makes sense: we barely had any winter this year 😅

You make some good points, and being overwhelmed after trying to bite too much at once is something I'm used to, sadly, so I'll try to think about how to approach all this. Probably pre-configured hosting as you said, so I can see the website running sooner, and we'll then see how it goes or what calls my attention!

So, happy tinkering… Keep us posted in case you start another low-tech blog coming from Spain to us. And don’t let any complexity stop you 😊

That would be so cool! I don't know much about practical stuff, but I plan on putting my reflections about morals and society online. It would be nice to have some kind of low-tech website like that and inspire some conversation on the topics. I'll keep you guys posted for sure!

PS: I'm pretty sure I had a coffee with Kris, but I didn't know about the website back then. I thought it was a cool guy, we had a good time (well me at least lol).

Probably, because only two of them decimated a whole plant here. They're hungry little buddies, so much so that I actually captured them and keep feeding them with veggies leftovers lol