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/

Today I'm launching my new business called Nextcloud Hosting, providing a private cloud server for your data hosted in South Africa.

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

https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term

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/

Neal.fun - a bunch of absolutely delightful interactive apps. Be sure to check out Space Elevator!

Neal.fun https://neal.fun/

Podcast recommendation: The Art of Manliness. Interesting topics, awesome guests, and great production. #podcast #recommendation

AoM Podcast https://www.artofmanliness.com/podcast/

Photos from a recent trip to Kerala, India. #photo

More photos from a recent trip to Kerala, India. #photo

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

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

An inspiring talk by Kartik, like a TED talk for programmers.

Using computers more freely and safely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6fjjaq8JCI

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cdsdrqA-50

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

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

Some photos from a recent camping trip to the bushveld. #photo #camping

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

Recently spotted: Meerkat, Cape Glossy Starling sunbathing, African Hoopoe #birding #photo

Book recommendation: The power of fun by Catherine Price. A serious and well-researched look at having True Fun (a state when playfulness, connection and flow happen). #book #recommendation

Catherine Price http://catherineprice.com/books

Since about 2015, smartphones have been getting increasingly user-hostile and locked down. It started with Google Play Services, a permanently running auto-installed, auto-updated service that has full access and control of your device. One a new Samsung Galaxy phone, I found 262 packages pre-installed, which were mainly from Google, Samsung, Facebook, Microsoft, and the cell provider. I tried disabling some of them, and at some point the phone locked with the message: "Your phone is locked because the Device Service was uninstalled without authorisation". Ok, so I enabled all the apps again, but that didn't unlock it. Tried a full factory reset and reboot, and now the phone says: "Phone Locked. This phone can't be used without authorisation." Just, wow! We are no longer allowed to uninstall the surveillance and bloatware on our phones. #smartphones #bloatware #surveillance

My house got struck by lightning again, taking out the alarm system again. This time I decided to #diy my own alarm system with an #arduino. It's a bit of a rat's nest right now (prototype), but it works! Controllable via Telegram and standard remote. Gotta solder it up on a board next and add some lightning isolation/protection. There's surprisingly little info on the internet about replacing a commercial home alarm system with custom Arduino one. The biggest challenge is that the long wires to sensors can pick up noise/EMF so I had to do some filtering in software to avoid false triggers.