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'/seasonal.php'); ?> + </head> + <body> + <?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/nav.php'); bg(true); ?> + <h1>the comp<em title="Is that a Homestar Runner reference?">ier</em></h1> + <h2 id="caption">my main computer</h2> + <p>My main PC is an ever-shifting, questionably arranged agglomeration of components selected as if at random, initially designed and assembled by yours truly circa March of '22. Apparently, I have a lot to say about it.</p> + <div class="gallery"> + <figure class="media"> + <div> + <picture> + <source srcset="images/pc1.jxl" type="image/jxl"> + <img src="images/pc1.jpg" alt="Front view of my computer tower. It's black, with solid metal side panels and a mostly grey front panel. It has four 5.25" expansion bays and two 3.25" external expansion bays. The top 5.25" bay contains an optical drive and the rest are filled with a 3D-printed vent for an extra fan. One of the 3.25" bays is occupied by an aftermarket front I/O panel with two USB 3 ports and headphone and mic jacks. Below that is the power and reset buttons and power and hard drive LEDs, and then the stock intake vent. The very bottom piece of said vent has a USB logo printed on it. There's also a Pentium 4 sticker."> + </picture> + <figcaption style="margin-top: 0;">"Intel Inside" technically isn't a lie — the motherboard has an Intel wi-fi controller.</figcaption> + </div> + </figure> + <figure class="media"> + <div> + <picture> + <source srcset="images/pc2.jxl" type="image/jxl"> + <img src="images/pc2.jpg" alt="The inside of my computer. All of the components are promintently visible. Two intake fans are mounted on the bottom, directly below the GPU. My cable management is serviceable, with a lot of extra length crammed in the dead space between the top-mounted PSU and the optical drive. Also visible from this angle are the abnormally large feet."> + </picture> + <figcaption style="margin-top: 0;">Yes, I had to cut holes in the bottom for those fans. I also had to get a right angle adapter for the USB 3.0 header since these fans actually block the big dumb cable that hooks up there. Totally worth it — this is actually a <em>better</em> airflow situation for the GPU than the old case.</figcaption> + </div> + </figure> + </div> + <h2>Internals</h2> + <h3>CPU — AMD Ryzen 7 5700G</h3> + <p>The Ryzen 7 5700G is basically the 5800 except cheaper and you trade PCIe gen 4 support for an integrated GPU. This was important to me in case my dedicated GPU died or otherwise became unavailable. This has come in useful occasionally.</p> + <h3>CPU Cooler — Noctua NH-U12A</h3> + <p>Admittedly, a bit overkill for the 65-watt chip it's attached to. I bought it because I was getting thermal throttling with the stock cooler, but when I took it off to put the new cooler on I discovered I hadn't mounted the stock cooler properly to begin with. The stock cooler, mounted correctly, would probably have sufficed, but frankly that mounting system was dogshit anyway. SecuFirm™ gang 4 lyfe.</p> + <p>Now that I have it, this cooler is great. Nothing specific to say, it just works and works <em>very</em> well. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the first and last CPU cooler I ever buy. My one complaint is that the fan clips are kind of annoying to deal with.</p> + <h3>Motherboard — Gigabyte B550 AORUS PRO AC</h3> + <p>Nothing much to say here that you couldn't get from the product page on Newegg. Plenty of external I/O, though internal I/O has proven limited, and has yet to cause any problems with operation. I chose it partly for the included wireless functionality, which now mostly gets used for my bluetooth Xbox controller ever since I upgraded to a wired connection.</p> + <p>I recommend this motherboard if for some reason you're building an AM4 gaming system in $CURRENT_YEAR, but be warned that the screws holding the M.2 heatsinks down are made of cheese and <em>will</em> snap off if over-torqued. Don't ask me how I know. Also, the included Wi-Fi antenna is fugly and has an absolutely pathetic mounting magnet.</p> + <h3>RAM — G.Skill Ripjaws V 2x16GB DDR4-3600 CL18</h3> + <p>Good RAM. No complaints. I thought for a while that the XMP profiles weren't compatible with my CPU or something, but an update to my motherboard's BIOS solved that.</p> + <h3>Boot SSD — Samsung 980 500GB (NVMe)</h3> + <p>Used solely to store my OS and programs. Far bigger than necessary for that purpose, but no issues so far. Plenty fast and all that. I initially assumed it had DRAM, then I learned it didn't, <em>then</em> I learned that it's one of those drives that leeches off of your system memory instead of having an onboard cache, so make of that what you will.</p> + <h3>Secondary SSD — WD Blue 2TB (NVMe)</h3> + <p>This drive is mounted as /home, for convenient OS reinstalls and such-like. Also nice and zippy, but I suspect I'm not actually doing anything that would hit this thing hard enough to noticeably differentiate its performance from that of any other NVMe SSD. This one also uses your system memory as a cache, but that's fine. I've got plenty to go around.</p> + <p>The drive that used to fill this role was a WD Blue 1TB SATA SSD that started off serving the same purpose as an aftermarket upgrade to my old laptop, but got transplanted wholesale when I upgraded to the new system. That drive still functions, but since it holds all my most sensitive and irreplacable files, I elected to replace it for Peace Of Mind™ after my PSU exploded, and opted for a cheeky capacity upgrade while I was at it. Plus, this one was on sale for like, $90 off!</p> + <h3>HDD — WD Black 4TB (7200RPM)</h3> + <p>This drive is here as an overcorrection following years of gaming on laptops with tiny little SSDs in them. I mostly fill it with Legally Obtained Content™ and the dregs of my Steam library that I don't play very often. Absolutely no complaints thus far.</p> + <h3>Case — Dynex DX-350CC</h3> + <p>I seem to have accidentally gotten into building sleeper PCs. I promise I didn't mean to — I was drawn to this case for its superior expandability, greater ease of working-on, and massively increased piezo-buzzer-havingitude compared to the Corsair 110R this machine used to reside in. It just so happens to also be from 2004, back when "Pentium" was the name for Intel's flagship line of CPUs instead of their worst ones and I was learning to walk.</p> + <p>For all those reasons plus its absolutely charming aesthetic character, I really like this case. Unlike the last guy, I can actually get at the modular PSU without yanking it out and scratching all the paint off. It even constitutes an upgrade in terms of front I/O and airflow, after some aftermarket mods.</p> + <p>See, this case came with mounts for two 92mm fans, which is better than some of its contemporaries, but not nearly enough for several hundred watts of glistening, sinewy computing muscle. In order to bring it up to modern snuff, I cut a couple slightly sketchy speed holes in the bottom and 3D-printed a bracket and vent for the front drive bays, and mounted the 120mm fans out of my old case in those places. I also fitted some slightly goofy-looking aftermarket rubber feet to give the case more ground clearance to get better airflow from the bottom. Since I now have two entire fans blowing directly onto the GPU, I'd guess that it's actually getting <em>better</em> airflow than in the old case.</p> + <h3>Power Supply — EVGA SuperNOVA G6 1000W</h3> + <p>This power supply is a tad bit overkill for the system it's in — in spite of my new video card, I'm still running a 65-watt CPU. I've got so much headroom I could probably fit a second of the same GPU in here. I could probably get away with a 750-watt unit, but I've got good — or at least understandable — reasons for going this crazy.</p> + <p>I originally specced out this system with a much more sensible Seasonic Focus GX-650 rated for 650 watts, but despite being, by all accounts, the correct power supply for my use case at the time, it still died suddenly with a loud POP two and a half years into Seasonic's 10-year Worry-Free Warranty™. The RMA process was good, at least.</p> + <p>I wanted to get something less likely to suffer the same fate this time around, but having just lost a well-reviewed unit from a reputable brand with a good efficiency rating and a generous yet sensible rated wattage to nothing but bad luck, the only thing I could really do to maybe accomplish this other than just getting luckier was to buy something so overbuilt that it no longer regards my machine running at full bore as a significant load, hence this absolute goliath of a PSU. The original plan was to get a slightly more reasonable 850 watt unit instead, but this one was on a really good sale. I basically paid 850-watt money for it.</p> + <p>As of writing a few months after installing it in my system, my plan has yet to backfire. Time will tell if I made the right call.</p> + <h3>Optical Drive — LG WH16NS40 Blu-Ray Burner</h3> + <p>It's really important to me that my computer have a disc drive, and this was the cheapest unit available that supported all the major formats. Like most of the parts in my computer, it functions reliably as advertised without significant issue and I don't have much to say on the matter. This thing isn't just for the Aesthetic™ — I have a decently large collection of CDs that I've ripped using my computer.</p> + <p>I used to have a WH<em>14</em>NS40, which is basically the same save for slightly worse performance in certain specific contexts and a weird firmware issue to do with ripping 4K blu-rays. I had no problems with it, but I had to cannibalize it from my main rig for a different build and ended up replacing it with this, the closest thing available to the exact same unit.</p> + <h3>Case Fans — Arctic P12 (x3) + Noctua NF-A9 (x2)</h3> + <p>All perfectly fine fans. The 120mm Arctic P12s are good value at a good noise level, but in my experience the same cannot be said for their smaller fans, hence the premium Noctuas for the 92mm fan mounts.</p> + <p>I've also got random generic dust filters on all the intakes in a desperate attempt to sort of control the dust buildup inside my machine. It kind of works.</p> + <h3>GPU — AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT</h3> + <p>Fine, enough edging. Here's the part you're probably actually interested in, you filthy gamer.</p> + <p>I got this card used in late 2024 for circa half of its launch MSRP — I would not have been able to justify something this high-end brand new, especially at scalper prices when I was initially building this machine. I used to run an RX 6600 XT, but I had a project going which urgently required a quality video card and I'd been looking for an excuse to upgrade the one in my machine for a while, so out it came and a-scouring the eBay listings I went.</p> + <p>Gaming wise, the 6600 XT was about all I really needed. Frankly, I could probably get by on the integrated graphics in my CPU, but I quite like having two display outputs to complement my second monitor. This new GPU is ludicrous overkill for me in this department; it's marketed towards playing the latest triple-A titles at maxed-out settings in 4K, which means it completely pulverizes every PSX-graphics indie title I can throw at it with the overwhelming force and ruthless efficiency of the Chicxulub impactor.</p> + <p>The real reason I wanted this orbital nuke of a graphics processor was for Blender. If Blender Open Data is to be believed, this thing represents a more than doubling of the performance available to me in the Cycles rendering engine, which translates to a substantial improvement in render times. Of course, a mid-range Nvidia product would be better here than anything AMD is capable of, but as a known Linux user that was a no-go for me; I've heard nothing but horror stories about Nvidia GPUs and desktop Linux, and my personal experience frankly corroborates them. The venerable Mr. Torvalds said it best: <a href="https://youtu.be/iYWzMvlj2RQ">fuck 'em</a>.</p> + <p>There were a handful of GPUs in this performance class and approximate price bracket that I was considering — in fact, my original upgrade plan was a 7700 XT. I went with the 6800 XT because I deduced through the awesome power of spreadsheets that, with the current state of the used market, it had all the others beat in price-to-performance ratio, and it wasn't even close. I specifically went for the AMD reference model, since it was the only version with a short enough heatsink that I was confident it would fit in my case without any modifications.</p> + <p>I want it on record here that if I ever drop north of a grand on a 4090 or whatever the biggest baddest new this-or-a-used-car AAA-cruncher is and I haven't won the lottery, I am to be taken out back and shot like a lame horse. Frankly, I probably need some sense beaten into me if I'm buying lottery tickets to begin with.</p> + <h2>Peripherals</h2> + <h3>Mouse — Logitech G602</h3> + <p>This is my forever mouse. Excellent build quality, more than good enough performance for my casual gamer ass, and it takes AAs. I recently took it apart to replace the first component to start failing, the switch for the left mouse button. I intend to keep using this mouse until I can't get replacement parts for it, or I get carpal tunnel and have to upgrade to something with better ergonomics.</p> + <p>I generally prefer wired peripherals where possible, but the RF dongle this mouse uses has been rock-solid for me, as long as I don't keep it behind a bunch of EMI-blocking metal panels. My only real issue with this mouse is that the software for it doesn't work on Linux, but I only need that to configure the side buttons.</p> + <h3>Keyboard — Keychron V3 and Q0</h3> + <p>I would have just gotten a 100% keyboard, but they didn't have it in the chassis colour I wanted so I ended up with a TKL and separate numpad instead. I'm a huge fan of both, what with the open-source firmware and hot-swappable switches and all. I especially like the extra included keycaps for use with a Mac, not because I intend to use it with a mac, but because it lets me finally get rid of the fucking Windows logo on my keyboard.</p> + <p>Unless I lose them in a house fire or something, I think these units probably constitute my "endgame", as keyboard enthusiasts say. They have every feature I care about and every upgrade or change I can see myself caring to make is maximally easy. This is one of those things that I shelled out for with the intent of never, ever replacing it.</p> + <h3>Gamepad — Xbox One wireless controller</h3> + <p>I bought this several years ago when I was still running Windows because I wanted maximum compatibility for minimum effort. It still works now that I'm on Linux, using bluetooth and with xpadneo installed. It's decent, no complaints, I'm sure it could be better but I don't use it enough to justify caring.</p> + <h3>Monitors — MSI MAG274QRFW 27" 1440p 180Hz (2x)</h3> + <p>Another "endgame" purchase. Very good monitors, if I replace them it'll be because they broke. (Speak of the devil, one of them has been replaced under warranty since I originally wrote this section.) I truly don't care for OLEDs — they get burn-in, for god's sake, I thought we moved on from that in the early 2000's when LCDs became commonplace.</p> + <p>These are mounted on a cheap, AmazonBasics-tier VESA monitor stand that came with a huge metal foot that kind of defeated the purpose, but that I have since replaced with a much more compact combination of 3D-printed brackets and wood screws.</p> + <h3>Headphones — Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro (Modified)</h3> + <p>After a lifetime of losing headphones to frayed cables and the inevitable failure of poor quality materials, my top priority when getting my next nice pair of cans was durability, and Beyerdynamic's products fit the bill nicely. As a bonus, they also have excellent sound quality and are supremely comfortable.</p> + <p>The only issue with these headphones is the non-removable cable, which is an automatic deal-breaker for me. I purchased mine through a modding company that replaced that cable with a 4-pin mini XLR jack, which has proven to be a bit of a double-edged sword as finding sanely priced replacement cables for it is nigh impossible.</p> + <p>I'm also rocking aftermarket cat ears. I just don't trust the quality on the cheap novelty headphones that come with them built in.</p> + <picture> + <source srcset="images/cans.jxl" type="image/jxl"> + <img src="images/cans.jpg" alt="A pair of Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro headphones with a removable mini XLR cable plugged in, a custom green headband wire, and aftermarket cat ears."> + </picture> + <h3>Drawing Tablet — HUION Kamvas Pro 12</h3> + <p>Perfectly cromulent 12-inch display tablet. It doesn't completely work out of the box, but the proprietary driver program is at least available for Linux. I like that the stylus is completely passive and doesn't need to be charged, which is frankly an absurd thing for a stylus to require.</p> + <h3>Webcam — Logitech C925e</h3> + <p>It's a USB webcam. The picture is good enough — better than most laptops — but it does some annoying auto-adjustment stuff that makes chroma-key shenanigans difficult at times. Standout features are the privacy shutter, indicator light when the camera is in use, and screw mount. I'm sure the microphone is adequate in a pinch, but I have no reason to use it.</p> + <h3>Microphone — Audio-Technica AT2020 USB+</h3> + <p>Very good microphone. Probably as good as I'll ever need. Superb sound quality; my friends in voice chat complain whenever they hear me on anything else. I'd have gotten the XLR version but I did not yet own an audio interface and didn't want to shell out for one just for this.</p> + <p>In what is becoming a running theme, it sits on a perhaps unbefitting $20 no-name mic arm from Amazon, with matching cheap shock mount and pop filter. They work, though. The springs on the arm are loud and, as my friends are keen to point out every time, quite audible through the mic.</p> + <h3>Audio Interface — Arturia Minifuse 2</h3> + <p>Nothing to write home about for the most part. It's a good quality audio interface with the amount of I/O I presently need, which is to say two mono inputs, and it mostly works fine on Linux. Bizarrely, though, between this and my Benhringer Model D, the only device with a MIDI interface that's recognized by my computer is the analog synthesizer.</p> + </body> +</html> diff --git a/uses/cumulonimbus/bg.jpg b/uses/cumulonimbus/bg.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..27a1ed4 --- /dev/null +++ b/uses/cumulonimbus/bg.jpg diff --git a/uses/cumulonimbus/bg.jxl b/uses/cumulonimbus/bg.jxl Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1882e7d --- /dev/null +++ b/uses/cumulonimbus/bg.jxl diff --git a/uses/cumulonimbus/index.php b/uses/cumulonimbus/index.php new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b0d8b5a --- /dev/null +++ b/uses/cumulonimbus/index.php @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> + <head> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <title>cumulonimbus</title> + <link href="/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all"> + <?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/seasonal.php'); ?> + </head> + <body> + <?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/nav.php'); bg(true); ?> + + <h1>cumulonimbus</h1> + <h2 id="caption">get it? 'cause it's in da cloud</h2> + <p><code>cumulonimbus</code> is an OVH KS-1 dedicated server and the larger, more intimidating successor to <code>cumulus</code>, the DigitalOcean VPS that I used to use. Its specs are as follows:</p> + <ul> + <li>CPU: 4c/8t Intel Xeon-D 1520</li> + <li>RAM: 32GB DDR4-2133 ECC</li> + <li>SSD: 480GB Mirrored RAID</li> + <li>OS: Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS</li> + <li>Bandwidth: 300Mbps symmetrical</li> + </ul> + <p>As appears to be a pattern for me, it's massive overkill for what I need it for, but as I expand on <a href="/blog/posts/renting_an_unremarkable_server/">here</a>, it's actually close to half the price of the much wimpier old VPS. Pretty crazy.</p> + <h2>Software</h2> + <h3>OS - <a href="https://ubuntu.com/server">Ubuntu Server 24.04</a></h3> + <p>Canonical isn't my favourite company, but Ubuntu server is fine enough and it's what I'm used to for servers. I have never once had any major problems with this.</p> + <h3>Web Server/Reverse Proxy - <a href="https://caddyserver.com/">Caddy</a></h3> + <p>This is the software that makes all my websites (of which there are now several) and other services available to the internet. I used to use Nginx for this, and both programs do this job quite well, but I like Caddy because it's much simpler to configure and handles HTTPS automatically for you.</p> + <h3><a href="https://radicale.org/v3.html">Radicale</a></h3> + <p>A fairly basic and extremely reliable solution for hosting synced calendars and contacts lists. It even tolerates my abuse of symlinks to create a shared calendar for my family, a feature it does not support by default.</p> + <p>This isn't really a reflection on Radicale, but I really appreciate that somehow, Apple has decided to build CalDAV support directly into iOS. Even Android needs a third-party app for that.</p> + <h3><a href="https://activitypub.software/TransFem-org/Sharkey">Sharkey</a></h3> + <p>When it became clear that Firefish was a dead project, my choices for migrating my fedi instance were a burgeoning hate-fork of Firefish and a fork of upstream Misskey that required directly tinkering with the instance database in order to migrate. Apparently I preferred the latter.</p> + <p>It's a pretty damn good user experience by my estimation, and it has a lot of nice features I use and a hell of a lot of nice features that I don't. It's kind of a miracle it works as well as it does with all this stuff in it. The frontend is pretty heavy, but that's obviously not an issue for me.</p> + <p>If you're going to install any Misskey derivative, I'd strongly recommend just using the Docker image. Installing it natively requires you to essentially download the source code and compile it yourself, and if you're not used to the Node.js ecosystem it's really more trouble than it's worth.</p> + <h3><a href="https://forgejo.org/">Forgejo</a></h3> + <p>My needs aren't really comprehensive enough to speak on the quality of Forgejo as a git forge beyond that it seems pretty good and does everything I need. I do like how easy it is to update.</p> + <h3><a href="https://freshrss.org/">FreshRSS</a></h3> + <p>I ended up with this because I elected to ditch Nextcloud in the process of migrating hosting providers, and this was the first RSS reader that I managed to get working on the new server. I swear, it's like the RSS 2.0 spec states that your self-hosted RSS reader has to have installation instructions that don't work.</p> + <p>I've yet to find an RSS reader with a user experience I like, but this one is tolerable enough that I don't think "I should really find a replacement for this" every time I use it like I did when I was using Whatever Nextcloud Has™, plus it supports a couple common APIs so I can replace the frontend if I decide I hate it.</p> + <p>Speaking of which, I'm currently using a mobile app called Capy Reader to access this on my phone since the mobile web UI kind of sucks.</p> + <h3><a href="https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge">rss-bridge</a></h3> + <p>Extracts RSS feeds from a genuinely kind of shocking number of websites that don't otherwise have them. I make generous use of this. Feel free to use <a href="https://rss-bridge.bathynomus.xyz/">my instance</a> if you want.</p> + <h3><a href="https://docs.searxng.org/">SearXNG</a></h3> + <p>Aggregates search results from various other search engines. Does that job well and has like, a lot of options to customize where it pulls results from. I wish it had more powerful image result filtering tools, though.</p> + <h3><a href="https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden">VaultWarden</a></h3> + <p>My password manager. Before this I used KeepassXC in conjunction with Syncthing to get it onto my phone, which was a pretty good solution, with the one downside that I could only add passwords from my PC because I didn't completely trust Syncthing not to disappear one of my passwords in a syncing conflict. My primary motivation for switching to this was that it eliminates that concern. It's also just good in general.</p> + <p>This makes two services I'm self-hosting even though my paid Protonmail account also has them.</p> + <h3><a href="https://zadzmo.org/code/nepenthes/">Nepenthes</a></h3> + <p>A tarpit for AI scrapers. Self-explanatory at this point.</p> + </body> +</html> diff --git a/uses/images/switchback.jpg b/uses/images/switchback.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ad388d8 --- /dev/null +++ b/uses/images/switchback.jpg diff --git a/uses/images/switchfront.jpg b/uses/images/switchfront.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..29cd7c4 --- /dev/null +++ b/uses/images/switchfront.jpg diff --git a/uses/index.php b/uses/index.php new file mode 100644 index 0000000..72423a3 --- /dev/null +++ b/uses/index.php @@ -0,0 +1,94 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> + +<head> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <title>My setup</title> + <link href="/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all"> + <?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/seasonal.php'); ?> +</head> + +<body> + <?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/nav.php'); bg(); ?> + <h1>my setup</h1> + <h2 id="caption">If yours is different you're objectively stupid</h2> + <h2>Computers</h2> + <a href="compier/" id="compier">comp<em title="Is that a Homestar Runner reference?">ier</em></a> + <p>My main PC, a mid-tower desktop "designed" and built by me, boasting a Ryzen 5700G, 32 gigs of DDR4, something like 6 terabytes of storage, a comically overbuilt PSU, and a graphics card. It runs <a href="#eos">arch, btw</a>.</p> + <a href="servy586/" id="servy586">Servy 586</a> + <p>A home-built TrueNAS box assembled from used gaming parts that could pass for a high-end, if a little dated, gaming rig if not for the preponderance of hard drives I put in it in place of a competent GPU. Much more stable than the <a href="/blog/posts/building_a_normal_server/">old one</a>.</p> + <p>Read about its conception and construction <a href="/blog/posts/building_a_sensible_server">here</a>.</p> + <h3>Libre Computing Le Potato</h3> + <p>A Raspberry Pi clone that I use to run Pi-hole, and that's it. I wanted a machine that was isolated from my incessant tinkering with the big boy server.</p> + <a href="cumulonimbus" id="cumulonimbus">cumulonimbus</a> + <p>The cloud server that runs this website and almost everything else I self-host that's accessible from the public internet, because paying two <span title="An Imperial Netflix Subscription, sometimes abbreviated to INS, is an approximate unit of cashflow based on the price of a Standard tier Netflix subscription in the mid-2010s. It generally refers to a window of anywhere from $10 to $14 per month depending on context. One Metric Netflix Subscriptionne, or MNS, is equal to exactly €10 per month.">Imperial Netflix Subscriptions</span> is better than dealing with the endless maze of headaches that is pointing your DNS records to a machine on a residential connection at a shared dwelling.</p> + <p><a href="/blog/posts/renting_an_unremarkable_server">I wrote a blog post about it!</a></p> + <h3 id="phone">Google Pixel 8a</h3> + <p>This counts as a personal computer.</p> + <p>Chosen solely because it was the most recent Pixel at a sane price, I was pushed to upgrade to this from my old 4a by the impending end of software support for 5th generation and older Pixels. Turns out, buying a used Android is a good way to not get security updates for most of the device's useful life, and if I'm gonna bother with <a href="#graphene">GrapheneOS</a> it would behoove me to make sure I'm up to date on those.</p> + <p>Seeing for myself the difference that four years of iteration has made to the a-series Pixels has only solidified my perception that smartphones are as good as they'll ever need to be and have been for quite some time. The faster processor, nicer screen, and better camera in this year's model don't make a difference for the things I do with my phone, and the lack of a headphone jack has already proven inconvenient.</p> + <p>That said, the loss of the headphone jack did not come without its benefits in exchange. The 8a is broadly a nicer and more premium-feeling device than the 4a, and I specifically appreciate the wireless charging and faster cellular data connection more than I was expecting to. Bizarrely, even my 4G LTE speeds in areas without 5G service seem to be drastically improved.</p> + <p>I also like some of the new features in newer versions of Android that never released for the 4a, chief among them the "Charging Optimization" switch that limits the battery to 80% charge to preserve its health long-term, which I'll be needing since I plan to keep this sucker for the entire <em>seven years</em> that it's slated to keep getting security updates. Extraordinarily rare Google W.</p> + <h2>Consoles</h2> + <h3>New 2DS XL (Hacked)</h3> + <p>Did you know it's surprisingly easy to hack your 3DS? <a href="https://3ds.hacks.guide/">Do it now!</a></p> + <p>I also used to have a Switch, but I've sold it on account of I never really use the thing anyway. I still wanna show off the dope clear shell mod I did to it though, so here's that:</p> + <details> + <summary>dope awesome nintendo pictures</summary> + <img src="images/switchfront.jpg" alt="Front view of a Nintendo Switch with clear plastic shells on the joycons" /> + <img src="images/switchback.jpg" alt="Back view of a Nintendo Switch with clear plastic shells on the joycons and console" /> + </details> + <h2>Other Hardware</h2> + <h3>Prusa MINI+</h3> + <p>I bought a Prusa because their printers have a reputation for quality, which this unit has certainly lived up to. It's been quite reliable, and when it fails, it's usually my fault in a really obvious way. It automates a lot of features that I suspect would have been pain points on a cheaper printer, up to and including uploading gcode to it directly over the network. This thing's easier to use than a regular 2D printer!</p> + <p>My one major issue is that the cantilevered gantry results in a slight inaccuracy in the Z axis, meaning the first layer is too high on one side of the bed and too low on the other. I suspect that this is why they didn't make it bigger, although it could also just be my fault for going and ordering the un-assembled kit version to save money on assembly.</p> + <p>I run mine with Prusa's satin textured bed plate for easier removal of PETG parts (I managed to damage the included smooth plate printing big stuff in PETG) and a 0.6mm Diamondback nozzle for printing with filaments with abrasive additives. It's expensive for a nozzle, but I think for the last nozzle I'll ever need to buy on an already 700 Canadian Victory Point printer it makes sense. I used to run an E3D Nozzle X, but I think I wrecked the coating trying to clean it with a brass wire brush.</p> + <h3>CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD</h3> + <p>A UPS that powers my computer, server, and related paraphernalia. I got it for all the normal reasons you get a UPS (power outage protection and such-like) and it has thus far performed as advertised. I wouldn't try to game off of the thing, but it's proven more than sufficient to keep my machines on long enough for a graceful shutdown in the event of a power outage. Highly recommend getting one.</p> + <h3>Netgear GS308</h3> + <p>It's a gigabit network switch. It has 8 ports. It performs as advertised. What else is there to say?</p> + <h3>CMF Watch Pro 2</h3> + <p>I used to be the kind of unconditional tech enthusiast who thought smartwatches as a premise were really cool, but that was when I was like 13, and the novelty of my Moto 360 and its adorable little WearOS videogames honestly wore off pretty quick. I'm not so Tiktok-brained that grabbing my phone out of my pocket to check the time or my notifications or whatever registers as an inconvenience, let alone to the extent that I would want to buy a smartwatch about it.</p> + <p>So why'd I buy this then? For me, it's about the biometric sensors. Primarily I just wanted some hard data to assuage some anxiety I was having about the state of my heart, and a device that costs as much as a dedicated heart monitor while doing all the other smartwatch stuff <em>and</em> not making me feel like a paranoid weirdo for owning it seemed like a pretty damn good deal to me.</p> + <p>The smartwatch itself is fine. The custom OS it runs is a little more basic than even circa-2016 WearOS in terms of software features, but I honestly don't care about any of that stuff anyway, and it's actually really nice for the hundred Canadian Zero-Calorie Sugar-Free Diet Dollars and free shipping that they're charging, although I wish the app reported more detailed biometric data, said the undisputed queen of run-on sentences.</p> + <p>The one problem I'm having so far is that after like a month the included pleather wristband is starting to discolor and flake off and generally do Pleather Things™, but frankly this is a very cheap smartwatch and I'd rather them cut costs on the one part I can easily replace than on, like, the battery or the CPU or some shit. Hopefully this isn't indicative of the long-term endurance of the actual device.</p> + <h2>Software</h2> + <h3 id="eos"><a href="compier">Desktop</a> Operating System - <a href="https://endeavouros.com/" target="_blank">EndeavourOS</a> (Linux)</h3> + <p>My <a href="#compier">main computer</a> runs EndeavourOS with the GNOME desktop environment. I chose it mostly to get the AUR, which has occasionally proved useful, but at this point I'm kind of stuck here because all the config files for my programs are in standard locations, god forbid, and everyone else is on flatpaks now, which fuck that all up for no good reason. I once <a href="https://isopod.cool/blog/posts/my_terrible_distro_hop/">failed to switch to Fedora</a> because of this.</p> + <p>I have a long history with Linux, dating back to 2015 with the first computer I ever owned: a <a href="../blog/posts/toshiba_chromebook/">Chromebook</a> that I put Linux on to play Minecraft, which ChromeOS couldn't do in any meaningful capacity at the time. It took me all of nine months to blow it up doing that because it was passively cooled with a plastic shell and not designed to ever go above ~30% usage on the dinky little Celeron that was its excuse for a CPU. After that I got a real PC running Windows, which solved the Minecraft problem so I mostly stuck to that for the next six years, although I did make intermittent attempts to switch to Linux again.</p> + <p>I pulled it off for real in 2021, when I took a combination of upsetting news about the upcoming Windows 11 and an SSD upgrade to my laptop as an opportunity to swap out my operating system as well. It went pretty well, all told; I wasn't using much Windows-exclusive software other than Paint.NET and some games, the latter of which now run great on Linux anyway thanks to Valve's efforts with Proton. Shame I can't play all my Epic Games Store freebies anymore, though.</p> + <p>My current desktop environment of choice, as previously mentioned, is GNOME. I used to run XFCE, and KDE before that, but I got sick of all my stuff occasionally breaking on me and wanted to see if GNOME would be sufficiently UX-designed that it would Just Work™ and Not Get In My Way™ and all that. So far so mostly good. I was worried about how well Wayland would work, but it's basically fine, with the exception of Discord not playing nice with regards to screensharing.</p> + <h3 id="graphene">Mobile Operating System - <a href="https://grapheneos.org/">Graphene OS</a> (Android)</h3> + <p>On top of the bordering on iPhone-grade support lifetime, this here is the other reason I'm so brand-loyal to Google's first-party <a href="#phone">hardware</a>.</p> + <p>GrapheneOS is a fork of Android that's been security-hardened and de-googled, two of my favourite things for an operating system to be. It's dedicated to privacy and security above all else, almost to a fault. I'm told it's only available on the Pixel line because those phones have security hardware in them no other OEM on the planet can be bothered with.</p> + <p>GrapheneOS provides a few user-facing privacy features that I quite like, such as the ability to deny network and sensor access to apps in the permission settings, and a bunch of under-the-hood security improvements I'm woefully underqualified to explain short of just pasting stuff wholesale from their website.</p> + <p>Do I need this level of security? Probably not. Would I enjoy some of the features GrapheneOS strips out in the name of security? Possibly. But I like the peace of mind knowing that if cops ever get a hold of my phone they'll at least be kind of frustrated trying to access it.</p> + <h3>Web Browser - <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/" target="_blank">Firefox</a></h3> + <p>I quite like Firefox. It's extremely customizable (especially if you know where to look), the devtools are better, and there's a wealth of privacy tools available that just kind of don't exist in Chrome (including <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-starts-deprecating-older-more-capable-chrome-extensions-next-week/">adblockers</a> as of late). It can also edit PDFs now!</p> + <p>On top of being generally superior, I also use Firefox on principle. It's currently the only major browser outside of the Apple-exclusive Safari that isn't built atop Google's <a href="https://chrome.bathynomus.xyz">Chromium</a>, and I don't like the idea of Google having total monopolistic control over all web browsers.</p> + <p>Firefox is one of the only pieces of software I'll actively advocate switching to, so go do it. Do it now. It, like essentially all other browsers, can <a href="https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/import-bookmarks-google-chrome">import your data</a> from its competition, and I'd also recommend using this <a href="https://ffprofile.com/">profile generator</a> to fortify it for maximum privacy while you're at it.</p> + <p>All that said, Mozilla is under questionable management at the moment and kind of in Google's pocket anyway, so maybe we shouldn't be relying completely on them to champion the free web. Maybe throw some money in the general direction of the <a href="https://servo.org/">Servo</a> project.</p> + <p>I use the <a href="https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/">Fennec</a> fork of Firefox on mobile, and <a href="https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium">Ungoogled Chromium</a> for the occasional poorly-built website (usually streaming services, work stuff, or banks) that doesn't want to run in my weird paranoid Firefox config.</p> + <h3>IDE - <a href="https://vscodium.com/">VSCodium</a></h3> + <p>Microsoft's Visual Studio Code is, loathe though I may be to admit it, my favourite IDE I've ever used, which is why I use VSCodium, an open-source build of VSCode with all the telemetry and shit stripped out.</p> + <h3>3D Graphics - <a href="https://www.blender.org/">Blender</a></h3> + <p>Lucky that the only 3D graphics program available on Linux just so happens to also be the best one. I use this sucker for just about everything it can theoretically do, from CAD to video editing, and even some things that it's actually good at!</p> + <h3>Photo Editor - <a href="https://www.gimp.org/">GIMP</a></h3> + <p>Honestly, what were you expecting? If you want to edit raster graphics on Linux, GIMP is more or less the be-all-end-all, unless you want to do everything in the terminal with ImageMagick. I'd prefer to use Paint.NET or even my Legally Obtained DRM-free copy of Photoshop CS6, but somehow photo editors are one of the only things that are consistently incompatible with WINE. I've been meaning to give <a href="https://www.photopea.com/">Photopea</a> a shot.</p> + <h3>DAW - <a href="https://www.reaper.fm/">REAPER</a></h3> + <p>My primary motivation for choosing REAPER is that it's available for Linux. My secondary motivation is that it has a lot less of the bizarre idiosyncracies and feature omissions that I found limiting when I was using LMMS. It's also cheaper for a perpetual license than even the shittiest most artificially-limited versions of most of the other major DAWs, although it's not like I can run any of them anyway.</p> + <h3>Media Players - <a href="https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Rhythmbox">Rhythmbox</a>, <a href="https://mpv.io/">MPV</a>, <a href="https://www.videolan.org/vlc/">VLC</a></h3> + <p>I use Rhythmbox for music, MPV for video, and VLC for anything that doesn't open one of the other two when I click on it. All three are very boringly good at what they do, and all three are varying levels of fugly.</p> + <h3>Torrent Client - <a href="https://www.qbittorrent.org/">qBittorrent</a></h3> + <p>This is the program I use to download my, uh, Linux ISOs. And local copies of Wikipedia. At least one of those is actually true. I've got it configured to only work through my VPN. I don't know if my ISP would actually get on my case if I torrented anything... unscrupulous without it, but I'd rather not risk it.</p> + <h3><a href="https://syncthing.net/">Syncthing</a></h3> + <p>Syncthing is a peer-to-peer automatic file syncing program that I use to automatically sync files between my various devices, peer-to-peer style. It works really well and I really like it. Among other things, I use it to get photos from my phone onto my PC, my music library from my PC onto my phone, and for automatic backups of both to my server.</p> + <h3>Notes - <a href="https://obsidian.md/">Obsidian</a></h3> + <p>The best user experience I've seen in a notes program since the Notes app on my iPhone 4S. The thing that sold me on it is that it saves your notes as markdown files in a user-defined folder, so I can point Syncthing to it. This beats out my previous solution of Whatever Nextcloud Has™ by a country mile. Let me know if you know of an RSS reader that works like this.</p> + <h3>Shell - <a href="https://www.zsh.org/">zsh</a></h3> + <p>I switched to zsh largely due to ambient peer pressure from the wider Linux community, and I doubt I'm taking full advantage of its many advanced features, whatever those are, but I do quite like how conducive it is to customization with such programs as <a href="https://ohmyz.sh/">Oh My Zsh</a> and <a href="https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k">Powerlevel10k</a>, and I miss its improved tab completion and command history functionality whenever I'm ssh'd into one of my servers.</p> + +</body> + +</html>
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'/nav.php'); bg(true); ?> + <h1>servy <span title="Are you perhaps detecting a pattern with how I name these?">586</span></h1> + <h2 id="caption">my home server</h2> + <p>Assembled from mostly used parts that range from vaguely sensible to <em>wildly</em> overspecced for my use case, my home server seems to have ended up as my personal exercise in gratuitous computing overkill, for the sort of peasant that can't afford <a href="4k_in_more_ways_than_one.png">4 grand for an RTX 4090</a>.</p> + <p>It got that way because I was trying to build a machine of a similar level of performance to the old gaming laptop that used to be my home server, before I <a href="/blog/posts/building_a_normal_server/">vivisected it and grafted on a NAS</a>, only to find that it didn't seem to like my doing that very much. Believe it or not, the point of this monster was to get away from the unusably bad stability issues the old server was having, and it seems to have worked. You can read more about how I justified it all to myself <a href="https://isopod.cool/blog/posts/building_a_sensible_server/">here</a>.</p> + <h2>Hardware</h2> + <h3>CPU - AMD Ryzen 7 3700X</h3> + <p>When I said "gratuitous computing overkill", this is primarily what I meant. For a home server, this high-end, albiet 5-year-old, gaming CPU is admittedly a little bit ridiculous. An Intel N100 Chromebook chip would be more than capable of most of the things this server is doing, but I had a good reason to go for something this fast: I knew I wanted to run Minecraft servers on this machine, possibly more than one, and with Minecraft, single-core performance is king. Even professional Minecraft hosting providers use chips like this, because enterprise-grade server hardware is worse than the consumer stuff for this task.</p> + <p>My line of reasoning for choosing this CPU was as follows: my currect machine has an i7-9750H in it, so I'll get the desktop version of that, the i7-9700K, for similar performance, except wait, the corresponding Ryzen chip from the same generation is a <em>way</em> better value on the used market, let's get that. And that's how I ended up <a href="https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/3425vs3485/Intel-i7-9750H-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-3700X">accidentally doubling my multi-threaded performance</a> despite specifically setting out <em>not</em> to get a major upgrade. Realistically, though, I wouldn't have saved a ton of money going for something more in line with my stated goal anyway.</p> + <h3>CPU Cooler - Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120</h3> + <p>In what is becoming something of a theme here, I'm well aware that this cooler is ludicrously overbuilt for the chip I'm asking it to cool, but that's the point. This thing provides more than ample headroom for me to set a nice, relaxed, quiet curve on the machine's case fans, which is important since it's currently sitting right next to my desk.</p> + <h3>Motherboard - ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR VI HERO X370</h3> + <p>Also a bit of a silly motherboard for a home server, what with all the built-in Gaming Lights™ and fancy overclocking features. I need it though, because this is the only thing with all the expandability I need. It has eight whole SATA ports, exactly enough for all my drives, which saves me having to burn a PCIe slot on a SATA controller. This particular board also has another helpful feature: if add-in cards are installed in both the first and second PCIe x16 slots, it shares the bandwidth evenly between them for two x8 connections instead of having one x16 and one x4. This gives me enough lanes for the specific 10 gig network card I'm using.</p> + <p>Buying used components is always a bit of a risky play, and I initially thought this board, or the CPU, was dead on arrival when it failed to POST with a cryptic CPU error. Fortunately, I was able to fix it with the BIOS flashback feature. I may or may not have updated the BIOS, but it gives you so little feedback I don't know. I just inserted the USB drive, hit the flashback button and waited until it stopped blinking. Either way, it works now.</p> + <h3>RAM - Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x16GB DDR4-3200 CL16</h3> + <p>It's RAM. What can I say? I picked this particular kit because it was the cheapest one available from a brand I actually trusted. I bought this stuff new, since used DDR4 prices at the time were exactly the same anyway.</p> + <h3>GPU - Nvidia Quadro P400</h3> + <p>A bit of an anemic video card for gaming, but I'm not gaming on this machine, at least not like that. This card was both dirt cheap used and has the two features I was actually looking for and nothing more: literally any video output at all for first-time setup, and good transcoding performance for Jellyfin.</p> + <h3>Network Card - Dell Intel X540-T2 10GbE</h3> + <p>These old server NICs allow for 10 gigabit ethernet connectivity at rock-bottom prices. I originally bought two so I could put one each in the server and my main PC and direct-attach them, but limitations of my B550 motherboard killed that plan. This one still went in the server so it will be ready when I eventually upgrade to something that can accept the other card.</p> + <p>The one downside of these cheap old network cards is that the fans on them are pretty much always dying and tend to be very loud. I solved this problem by splicing a replacement fan onto the connector from the original, and mounting it to the card's heatsink with a zip-tie that's screwed into one of the original fan mounting holes.</p> + <div style="display: flex;"> + <img style="width: 50%;" src="nictua.jpg" alt="A 40mm wide, 10mm thick Noctua fan zip-tied to the heatsink on a PCIe Ethernet card."> + <img style="width: 50%;"src="ziptiemount.jpg" alt="The zip-tie is screwed into one of the original fan mounting holes on the heatsink. As in, the screw is going through the zip-tie."> + </div> + <p>Lucky me the original fan is a standard 12 volt one and doesn't take, like, 19 volts or something stupid like that. I wouldn't put it past Dell.</p> + <h3>Power Supply - Seasonic GX-650 650W</h3> + <p>I originally bought a GX-650 for my main PC, then it blew up out of nowhere and I RMA'd it, but still bought a beefier replacement anyway out of both an abundance of caution and a desire for more GPU upgrade headroom. When this unit arrived, it ended up in my server. Again, it's overkill for what I need, but that's now my official strategy for PSUs.</p> + <h3>Case - Enlight 7237 (?)</h3> + <p>This Pentium 3-era case was among the first I found that could accommodate my needs for this machine, although I admit my search strategy was flawed. Still, I was enamoured with this case and, frankly, building in it was a pleasure compared to my experiences with modern cases. I can actually get to the modular PSU cables without removing anything! Imagine that! And in a case that <em>predates the concept of modular power supplies by fully half a decade</em>. In spite of its objectively dogshit airflow, this case makes me resent the modern Corsair box I originally built my main rig in.</p> + <p>Since this case appears to have been whitelabeled by a system integrator called Touch Computer before being emptied out and sold to me, there's no indication of what model it is, but it closely resembles the Enlight 7237, so I suspect it's either that or something closely related. Apparently these were very common back in the day, and I can see why.</p> + <figure class="media"> + <div> + <div style="display: flex;"> + <img style="width: 50%;" src="servercase.jpg" alt="A beige PC tower with four 5.25" bays and two external 3.5" bays, populated with an optical drive and a floppy drive respectively. The only visible branding is a Pentium III sticker and a badge that reads "TOUCH"."> + <img style="width: 50%;"src="servercaseinside.jpg" alt="The inside of the same old PC case. Its layout is extremely pragmatic: motherboard in the very bottom corner, PSU in the top corner above it, and all the drive bay mounts are in a cage lining the front side. In other words, it looks like an old PC case."> + </div> + <figcaption style="margin-top: 0;">These photos are from the case's Ebay listing. It did, in fact, ship with all that stuff, including the IDE cable.</figcaption> + </div> + </figure> + <p>The "586" in this machine's name is derived from the Pentium sticker on the front of the case.</p> + <h2>Drives</h2> + <h3>Boot Drive - Samsung 870 EVO 250GB (2x) (Mirrored)</h3> + <p>I run two boot disks in a mirrored array for increased reliability. It's not strictly necessary, but it's one more thing I can rule out if the thing ever fails to boot.</p> + <p>I bought these drives for the original laptop server build, but they didn't make the cut after I hit some weird laptop-BIOS-ass limitations on my SATA connectivity.</p> + <h3>Apps Storage - Crucial BX500 1TB + WD Blue 1TB (Mirrored)</h3> + <p>I like my redundancy, especially since both of these drives are technically used. The BX500 was used for the same purpose in the old server, and the WD Blue was originally a storage upgrade for that laptop when it was still my daily driver, before being transplanted into my shiny new desktop rig, before then being replaced for peace of mind when my PSU a-sploded.</p> + <p>These are the drives I install programs to and such-like. There's no reason I couldn't use the giant HDD pool for this, but the performance hit just wouldn't be worth the savings, especially since I only had to buy one of these drives for home-server purposes anyway.</p> + <h3>Game Server Storage - Samsung OEM 256GB NVMe</h3> + <p>Not redundant, unfortunately, since I only had one of these laying around and there was only one remaining drive slot in the system when I decided to add it. This is the original boot drive from the old laptop, meaning it's over four years old, so it arguably needs redundancy the most, but frequent automated backups should mitigate that issue.</p> + <p>I install my game server(s) to this drive for maximum performance. By now the pattern must have emerged that I'm going all out on speed for anything that's going to affect that in particular. Only the best for the half a dozen or so friends who are gonna ever actually play on this thing. I think we've all dealt with enough poorly-performing shit-tier Minecraft servers in our time.</p> + <h3>Bulk Storage - Seagate Exos 16TB 7200RPM (x4) (RAIDZ1)</h3> + <p>A patently insane amount of storage. Even configured such that one of them is used up entirely on redundancy, that's still well north of 40TB of usable space. It's enough for my entire life, and that's the idea. These drives hold automated backups of all my other devices, my entire library of Legally Obtained media, and a good amount of other stuff, too. The NAS is to minimize the chances I ever lose any of it, and the massive HDD array is to minimize the chances I have to delete any myself.</p> + <p>I absolutely could not afford drives like this new — I got these drives Manufacturer Recertified™ from <a href="https://serverpartdeals.com/">serverpartdeals.com</a>. This makes them ever-so-slightly less trustworthy than new drives, but that's what the RAID is for, and the recertified ones are <em>half</em> the price of brand new. I chose the specific drives I did because they were the best available in terms of cost-per-terabyte at the time I bought them.</p> + <h2>Software</h2> + <h3>OS - <a href="https://www.truenas.com/">TrueNAS Scale</a></h3> + <p>I could probably recreate my elaborate configuration on like, baseline debian or something, but I don't want to. Between four ZFS pools, virtual machines, a slightly convoluted system of SMB shares, and various other services, the slick web GUI TrueNAS provides makes everything far more convenient. Its configuration export feature was also very handy when migrating to the new machine.</p> + <p>It's got some idiosyncracies to it, but in general TrueNAS smooths out the experience of running this server enough that I'm doing a lot of things I probably couldn't be bothered to otherwise.</p> + <h3><a href="https://jellyfin.org/">Jellyfin</a></h3> + <p>Let's be real, this is what home servers are for. This is why you get one, to make watching your, uh, totally legally obtained movies on your phone more convenient. Jellyfin does a great job of this. It fetches metadata reliably and plays nice with my GPU for transcoding. I also use it to host my music library, now that the Finamp beta lets you transcode your downloads to OPUS.</p> + <h3><a href="https://gethomepage.dev/">Homepage</a></h3> + <p>I mostly keep this around because there's no way to point your Firefox new tab page to a local file on your computer, but it's got some nice features. Namely, it can display stats from your various services.</p> + <h3><a href="https://syncthing.net/">Syncthing</a></h3> + <p>I fucking love Syncthing. I've got all my favourite files from my PC and my phone backing up to my server, automatically and with zero effort. If I could only run one thing on my server, it'd be this.</p> + <h3><a href="https://filebrowser.org/">Filebrowser</a></h3> + <p>A Google Drive-style web file browser for my network shares. I can access them over SMB, of course, but this provides the same functionality with a lot less friction for devices and people that aren't super compatible with that level of nerd shit.</p> + <h3>OS - <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian Linux</a></h3> + <p>Wait, what? Didn't I just say I was running TrueNAS? I am, but I also have a virtual machine under TrueNAS for my game servers, and this is the OS I use for that. There's a learning curve here compared to Ubuntu Server, which I'm more used to, but at the end of the day Linux is Linux.</p> + <h3><a href="https://craftycontrol.com/">Crafty Controller</a></h3> + <p>A convenient admin panel for my Minecraft servers. Getting my old server imported was an Experience, but after that it's been smooth. Highly recommend. I especially like the automated backup system.</p> + <h3><a href="https://www.wireguard.com/">WireGuard</a></h3> + <p>I run a WireGuard client in the VM with a server on my VPS to make my game servers accessible from outside the <span class="house">house</span> without giving out my IP address, worrying about dynamic DNS, or trying to port forward on the solid lump of concentrated ISP malice that passes for my router. I had to write a couple configuration files by hand, god forbid, but otherwise this was much easier.</p> + </body> +</html> diff --git a/uses/servy586/nictua.jpg b/uses/servy586/nictua.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c692bf8 --- /dev/null +++ b/uses/servy586/nictua.jpg diff --git a/uses/servy586/servercase.jpg b/uses/servy586/servercase.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..bbd1006 --- /dev/null +++ b/uses/servy586/servercase.jpg diff --git a/uses/servy586/servercaseinside.jpg b/uses/servy586/servercaseinside.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..038f65d --- /dev/null +++ b/uses/servy586/servercaseinside.jpg diff --git a/uses/servy586/ziptiemount.jpg b/uses/servy586/ziptiemount.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea00cb1 --- /dev/null +++ b/uses/servy586/ziptiemount.jpg |
