post-1709664779
Podcast recommendation: Darknet Diaries. Amazing story telling about tech scams and hacks you should know about. #podcast
Darknet Diaries https://darknetdiaries.com/
post-1704807583
How to Build a Small Solar Power System: an in-depth article that goes into all the details and nuances of running devices and small appliances off solar panels. Well worth the read if you want to DIY your own solar solutions. #solar #maker #diy
LOW←TECH MAGAZINE
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/12/how-to-build-a-small-solar-power-system/
post-1704725337
New birds spotted around my house: two Spotted thick-knee that laid eggs, and a Greater striped swallow. #birding #photo
post-1704560582
I enjoyed reading this, a lot! Actually the whole issue is an awesome read, check it out! #ai #chatbot #humour #future #dating
Emotional Intelligence Amplification https://asteriskmag.com/issues/03/emotional-intelligence-amplification
post-1703242140
Podcast recommendation: Late Night Linux. If you are into Linux and open source, this family of podcast shows has awesome content, humour, and hosts. #podcast #recommendation
Late Night Linux https://latenightlinux.com/about/
Nextcloud Hosting
Today I'm launching my new business called Nextcloud Hosting, providing a private cloud server for your data hosted in South Africa.
post-1699772999
This is not a photo of an old CRT screen, it's cool-retro-term! It's such a convincing emulation of a CRT display, after a few days of using it, I'm amazed at how good modern LCDs are! I also enjoy how the retro look takes me back to the 90s and makes me enjoy text-based programs a whole lot more. #nostalgia #retro #terminal
post-1697782290
Mechanical Watch - an incredible interactive blog post detailing the mechanisms and workings of a mechanical pocket watch. Simply mind-blowing.
Bartosz Ciechanowski https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
post-1697783337
Neal.fun - a bunch of absolutely delightful interactive apps. Be sure to check out Space Elevator!
Neal.fun https://neal.fun/
post-1697372646
Podcast recommendation: The Art of Manliness. Interesting topics, awesome guests, and great production. #podcast #recommendation
AoM Podcast https://www.artofmanliness.com/podcast/
post-1694024847
Here is something I am working on: a solar powered UPS for routers (for my friends). Uses original router power adapter as 'pass-thru' while falling back to LiFePO4 battery during loadshedding. #solar #diy #ups
post-1692109827
I wanted to find out what the minimum hardware for running a reasonably good Large Language Model at home would be, so I bought a refurbished ThinkCentre M715q with AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 2400GE CPU. It's a 2018-era machine costing only around $200. With no upgrades, I was able to run llama.cpp in CPU-only mode on the smallest Llama 2 7b model (q2_K) generating 5.2 tokens/sec! Very impressive! I can also run Vicuna 13b (q4_1) at over 2 tokens/sec after upgrading the RAM to 16Gb. All this while consuming around 40W of power. One trick I had to employ is to use "LLAMA_AVX2=1 make" to compile, as it doesn't detect AVX2 by default. Anwyay, I love this ThinkCentre machine, it is amazing bang-for-buck and will be my main dev machine for the forseeable future. #llm #thinkcenter #llamacpp
post-1684828798
An inspiring talk by Kartik, like a TED talk for programmers.
Using computers more freely and safely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6fjjaq8JCI
post-1683695093
This DIY handheld computer build blows me away with how well it's done. I think this is my dream portable computer. Pity they don't sell anything like this, so I'm gonna try DIY'ing my own. #handheld #portable #computer
post-1683695664
I hacked together a prototype of the previously-mentioned handheld portable computer, using a Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 inch LCD touchscreen. So far it is really nice to use! I like how I can use a full desktop OS while walking around. The keyboard and trackpad allow me to use a regular OS without having to worry about touch affordances, mouse-overs, and right-clicking. There is scope to make this much more compact if using a 3d-printed enclosure. #diy #raspberrypi #handheld #portable #computer
post-1682870784
My DIY battery-powered wireless driveway visitor detector, take 3! A much harder problem than I anticipated. Attempt 1 was using a cheap and low power PIR sensor. Too many false alerts. Attempt 2 was a radar presence detector. Doesn't work outdoors, way too many false alerts. This one uses a commercial outdoor PIR sensor, which seems to work quite well so far. On the down side, it uses quite a bit of power (20mA continuous), so I've had to add a lithium battery with solar charger. Nice thing about a LiFePO4 battery is that I don't need a fancy solar charge controller, I just use a buck converter set to about 14V. The grey box houses a microcontroller with a LoRa transmitter, mounted on an aluminium bracket that I can hang on my driveway pre-cast wall, so that the PIR sensor looks across the driveway. I put the battery and charger into an ice cream container and placed a roof tile over it to protect against rain and sun. The receiver side is an ESP32 connected to a LoRa receiver and buzzer that plays a ding-dong chime and also sends an MQTT message for futher automation. #diy #lora #pir #motion #sensor
post-1681625924
Some photos from a recent camping trip to the bushveld. #photo #camping
post-1680965298
The hill in the background is shaped just like an Elephant's silhouette, hence the name Olifantsnek. #photo
Olifantsnek https://www.sa-venues.com/attractionsnwp/olifantsnek.php