I’m beautiful and tough like a diamond…or beef jerky in a ball gown.

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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2025

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  • The only reason I gave up on Docker Swarm was that it seemed pretty dead-end as far as being useful outside the homelab. At the time, it was still competing with Kubernetes, but Kube seems to have won out. I’m not even sure Docker CE even still has Swarm. It’s been a good while since I messed with it. It might be a “pro” feature nowadays.

    Edit: Docker 28.5.2 still has Swarm.

    Still, it was nice and a lot easier to use than Kubernetes once you wrapped your head around swarm networking.


  • I had 15 of the 2013-era 5010 thin clients. Most of them have had their SSDs and RAM upgraded.

    They’ve worn many hats since I’ve had them, but some of their uses and proposed uses were:

    1. I did a 15 node Docker Swarm setup and used that to both run some of my applications as well as learn how to do horizontal scaling.
    2. After I tore down the Docker Swarm cluster, I set them up as diskless workstations to both learn how to do that and used them at a local event as web kiosks (basically just to have a bunch of stations people could use to fill out web based forms).
    3. One of them was my router for a good while. Only replaced it in that role when I got symmetric gigabit fiber. Before that, I used VLANs to to run LAN and WAN over its single ethernet port since I had asymmetric 500 Mbps and never saturated the port.
    4. Run small/lightweight applications in highly-available pairs/clusters
    5. Use them to practice clustered services (Multi-master Galera/MariaDB, multi-master LDAP, CouchDB, etc)
    6. Use them as Snapcast clients in each room
    7. Add wireless cards, install OpenWRT, and make powerful access points for each room (can combine with the above and also be a Snapcast client)
    8. Set them up as VPN tunnel endpoints, give them out to friends, and have a private network

    Of the 15, I think I’m only actively using 4 nowadays. One is my MPD+Snapcast server, one is running HomeAssistant, ,the third is my backup LDAP server, and one runs my email server (really). The rest I just spin up as needed for various projects; I downsized my homelab and don’t have a lot of spare capacity for dev/test VMs these days, so these work great in place of that.



  • My X1 Carbon does now. But it used to drain to empty after a day or two even if it was turned all the way off. Drove me crazy.

    The problem ended up being the always-on USB setting in the BIOS. For some reason, even with nothing connected, that would drain the battery until it was completely flat. Once I turned that off, it’ll sleep for weeks like you said.

    OP, maybe check the BIOS settings for “Always on USB” or similar and disable that?




  • Ooh, I haven’t tried RTL-SDR on it yet, but I think I’m nearing capacity on what it can do at once lol.

    Here’s the block diagram for it (in spoiler below). Everything’s up and running except the Bluetooth Receiver -> Snapcast (it works on the bench but I don’t have the scripting/automation done yet). I’m also adding an SMA connector for an external antenna, but the new base part is still printing. Photo shows it “as is” of this writing.

    SSL for the web apps was a PITA since I wanted real certs. Had to make a wildcard domain under my main hobby domain, so all my apps are like “https://{APP_NAME}.mobile.mydomain.xyz/”

    As soon as I can get the Bluetooth + Pulseaudio scripting done, I’m gonna try to do a write up and maybe a show/tell post.

    Block Diagram

    Current Case


  • I would love to have a small Wikipedia browser that can survive the apocalypse.

    I’ve got the full 120 GB Wikipedia dump running in Kiwix on a Raspberry Pi Zero. Works great (surprisingly)

    E-ink display, mini keyboard

    Have been using a Minimal Phone for a few months now which has both of those. Can connect to the Pi easily.

    multiple ways/ports to transfer info,

    Add a USB-C hub (or add a hub to the Pi) and you’re set

    All wrapped up in a heavy duty equipment case that’s able to survive a building collapses and burns in an earthquake, that’s shielded from EMP.

    And that’s where I’m limited - My 3D printer can only do so much lol. 😆

    I’ve been working on a side project this week with a Orange Pi Zero 2W (Pi Zero “clone” but with better specs). It’s got the Kiwix+Wikipedia like my older Pi (described above) plus a bunch of other neat stuff. It’s kind of a combination travel router, portable web app server, party box, and extremely over-engineered bluetooth speaker all-in-one. Hoping to put together a show-and-tell post about it when I get the last of it squared away.












  • Pretty much, yeah.

    Rather than jot down in a text file the various ffmpeg commands I use frequently…

    Raktajino@laptop:~/Downloads$ history | grep ffmpeg
       12  sudo apt install audacity gimp ffmpeg mplayer
      184  history | grep ffmpeg
      215  ffmpeg -i source.mkv -ss 629 -t 7 out.mkv
      217  ffmpeg -i out.mkv -s 0.5 -vf scale=1280:720 out.mp4
      218  ffmpeg -i out.mkv -ss 0.5 -vf scale=1280:720 out.mp4
      231  ffmpeg -i out.mp4 -vf "subtitles=out.srt" final.mp4
      503  ffmpeg -i toofat.wav toofat.mp3
      ...
      682  history | grep ffmpeg
      684  ffmpeg -i 1.gif -i 2.gif -filter_complex "[1:0] [2:0] concat=n=2" out.gif
      685  ffmpeg -i 1.gif -i 2.gif -filter_complex "[1:0] [2:0] concat=n=2:v=1" out.gif
      686  ffmpeg -i 1.gif -i 2.gif -filter_complex "[1:0] [2:0] concat=n=2:v=1" -map '[v]' out.gif
      687  history | grep ffmpeg
      688  ffmpeg -i 1.gif -i 2.gif -filter_complex "[0:0] 12:0] concat=n=2:v=1" -map '[v]' out.gif
      689  ffmpeg -i 1.gif -i 2.gif -filter_complex "[0:0] 1:0] concat=n=2:v=1" -map '[v]' out.gif
      690  ffmpeg -i 1.gif -i 2.gif -filter_complex "[0:0] [1:0] concat=n=2:v=1" -map '[v]' out.gif
      691  ffmpeg -i 1.gif -i 2.gif -filter_complex "[0:0] [1:0] concat=n=2"  out.gif
      694  history | grep ffmpeg