Yep. Glad he’s got a system that works for him, but as a solo dev I love my Forgejo. I self host it, (so no Trust issues) and if you’ve hosted any other services before, the setup is a simple Docker compose - so I’m not sure I accept the Heavyweight argument either.

Great comprehensive answer. The only thing I might have added (at the risk of confusing things) is that Codeberg is a non-profit, community-led effort that provides Git hosting (with Forgejo), so a sort of open source GitHub

I started doing this, maybe 15 years ago, but if I look through my spam folder now, most of it is to the email address I used before I began using unique addresses (the rest is to random addresses in my domains that I’ve never used).

My hypotheses from that are that

• there is probably less ‘selling of email lists’ going on than we think
• I’m less interested in dubious internet sites than I used to be
• or (most likely) these days, your internet thing has to be offering me some real value if I’m going to consciously give you any of my data.

It got enshittified. I went to use it one day and it wouldn’t work without creating an account.

Same - As an Insomnia refugee, I thought “Oh no, not this again” and felt foolish for evangelising it.

+1 for the Seiko 5s. Love me a SNZG07J1

+1 for Forgejo. I started on Gogs, then gathered that there had been some drama with that and Gitea. Forgejo is FOSS, simple to get going, and comfortable to use if you’re coming from GitHub. It’s actively maintained, and communication with the project is great.

"Convert this text to make it sound like from a random person: "

Shoutout to Magic Earth, the (weirdly named) iOS app that uses OpenStreeMap data. Works on CarPlay, has reliable routing, and I get a buzz out of updating a changed a speed limit or something on OSM and then seeing the change implemented a few weeks later when I’m driving through there again.

My step-up from Pi was to ebay HP 800 G1 minis then G2’s. They are really well made, there’s full repair manuals available, and they are just a pleasure to swap bits in and out. I’ve heard good things about, and expect similar build quality from the 1 liter Lenovos.

I agree that RAM is a likely constraint rather than processor for self-hosting workloads. Particularly in my case as I’m on Proxmox and run all my docker containers in separate LXCs. I run 32GB in the G2’s which was a straightforward upgrade (they take laptop like memory). One some of them I’ve upgraded the SSDs, or if not, I’ve added M.2 NVME drives (that the G2’s have a slot for).

• Climate change contributing to
• Climate refugees contributing to
• Breakdown in social cohesion contributing to
• Populism, oligarchs, and authoritarianism contributing to
• Breakdown of international cooperation contributing to
• Inter-nation conflict contributing to
• GOTO 10

I love this idea (of just picking something I’m loving each month), it would help me overcome my decision paralysis about who to support.

Yes, a few. Signal (daily use), LetsEncrypt & Certbot (EFF). It’s not enough.

One day I decided I’d spend $x every January (when I do all my other donations) on open source stuff I depend on, and roughly in the proportions I depend on them. It quickly became impossible - I can’t just fund Debian (which I use a lot of in VMs), I’d need to think of all their dependencies, same with NGINX, Node etc etc. The mind boggles.

I need something like a Spotify subscription for open source to assuage my guilt of the great value I extract for my personal use of open source.

Or start scratching the shit out of your hand half way through a tummy rub.

I switched from Copilot to Codeium after only a couple of months of Copilot use - just based on the cost since currently I’m just a hobby coder.

The main difference I’ve noticed is that Codeium doesn’t seem as smart about the local context as Copilot. Copilot would look at how I’m handling promises in a project, and stick to that, whereas Codeium would choose a strategy seemingly at random.

A second, and maybe more telling example, is that I do my accounts using ‘plain text accounting’ in VS Code. This is a very niche approach to accounting software and I imagine is hardly in the training sets at all - there certainly would not be a lot of public domain text accounts in the particular format (BeanCount) I use in public code repositories. Codeium doesn’t make any suggestions for entries as I’m entering transactions, whereas Copilot would see that the account names I’m using are present in another file in the project and suggest them, and very quickly figure out the formatting of transactions and suggest them correctly.

#2 back and sides, finger length on top

I’m on iOS. I’ve been testing a beta of Jello that looks really promising, but as a beta has a bit of distance to go. I’ll check out Feishin though - thanks for the recommendation.

I’d love Jellyfin to turn out to be the solution, but I suspect it’s not, at least yet.

I’ve got three of these little 1L HP’s, one for production, a spare, and one for development. But really, it’s a small load - that list would happily run on an old nuc. The constraint is really memory which I’ve mostly addressed by moving from VMs to LXCs. And I could be even more efficient by just running all the docker containers on one host if I had to.

Storage for media and backups is a Synology NAS.

Infrastructure:

• Proxmox VE - everything’s virtualised on Debian, mostly in docker inside LXC’s for neat backup/restore and moving between nodes
• NGINX Proxy Manager - in front of most of my homelab services so they have https certificates
• Tailscale - access everything, everywhere, including on phone, securely
• Uptime Kuma - monitoring, with ntfy notifications
• apt cacher NG - unnecessary caching of apt updates

Apps:

• AudioBookShelf - Audio books (download them from here into BookPlayer (iOS) to listen in the car)
• Kavita - eBooks.
• BOINC - curing childhood cancer
• Forgejo - git repository. I do a bit of dev, but everyday self-hosters should probably still learn git to manage their configs
• Jellyfin - TV/Movies
• Syncthing - I replaced dropbox with Syncthing and FileBrowser, and Evernote with Syncthing and SilverBullet

Currently in testing on the dev server:

• neko - virtualised browser. Been experimenting with this in a container with a VPN for really simple secure browsing - ie launch it, do your online banking and then destroy the container.
• Dashy - I go through periods of wanting a pretty home page with all my services, set it all up, then fail to actually use it and eventually delete it, then hear about another cool one…
• Sharry - securish file sharing. I don’t love just emailing my accounts off to the accountant.
• LimeSurvey - survey software (like Survey Monkey) - just something I’m testing for work
• Omada controller - I’ve got a TP-Link switch and WAP that don’t really need centrally controlled, but you know, can be.
• A couple of development environment LXCs I use VS Code in

I still have not landed on a music system. I’ve put some of my library on Jellyfin, and tried a couple of apps with, but haven’t hit on a good combination yet. [edit:formatting}

Yes, in a shallow tourist mine in Australia. Apparently coal starts to flake easily once it’s been exposed to air for a bit, so they kept a big chunk in a large jar of water that you could take out and handle. It felt like a light wet rock.

The sample, and the coal at the workface of the mine was stereotypicaly black. We wore hats with lights on, and when we emerged back out to the daylight I had an overwhelming urge to speak in a Monty Python type Yorkshire accent and go home and have my back scrubbed clean of the coal dust by my swarthy tired looking wife while I sat in a tub in front of the fire in the kitchen and our urchins played in the street.

I don’t want to give the impression I’m a big fossil fuel tourist, but I’ve also seen blobs of crude oil on beaches near Mediterranean sea oil terminals.

Sadly, I didn’t try to set fire to them on either of these occasions, which I now regret.