Every once in a while, there's a little project that pops up in my feed that is just so neat, it's hard to resist buying it.
I have a couple boxes full of these things.
Meet the Beepberry:
This thing is the brainchild of SQFMI, a group who seems to know exactly how to tickle the interest of a tech enthusiast who loves little gadgets.
This blog post is one of the few instances where, no matter how much you prefer reading to watching a video... you're going to want to watch the video.
The day after I interviewed Eben Upton, co-founder of Raspberry Pi, I went to the Sony UK Technology Centre in Pencoed, Wales to tour the factory where almost every Raspberry Pi has been made—50,000,000 of them (as of this month!).
I got to snap a picture with the milestone Pis:
I've been involved in open source communities for over a decade. I helped organize events and initiatives, I've donated photography services, and in general I like to give back. For me, a lot of this stems from my faith background—the motto of my Jesuit high school was 'Men for Others'.
But I would consider myself a 'moderately active' volunteer, compared to some. I might give a few hours here and there, or help at a major event for part of the time, but there are people who have a drive and passion for helping others that's far beyond my capacity.
A few years ago, I had a major, life-changing surgery. In researching the surgery and it's life-long impact, I discovered a local support group affiliated with the UOAA organization. I attended a local meetup before the surgery, and met vibrant, healthy people who had gone through the trauma I was about to experience. I kept attending, and now try to ease their anxiety of people who come after.
Earlier this month, I was able to discuss with Eben Upton (co-founder of Raspberry Pi) the role RISC-V could play in Raspberry Pi's future (among other things—watch the full interview here).
Today I got AT&T Fiber Internet installed at my house, and I thought I'd document a few things I observed during and after the install.
They trenched fiber boxes between pairs of houses in my neighborhood. It seems like they have little fiber hubs for 8 houses in a set, and those little hubs connect back to the main neighborhood box with an 8 or 10-strand cable, directly buried in the ground.
Apparently my street's main run was kinked somewhere, and only one of the strands had full signal, so I'm the lucky winner who signed up first, and I get that fiber until they run a new cable underground :)
I am frequently away from home (whether on family vacation, a business trip, or out around town), but I have a number of important resources on my home network—as any homelabber does.
There are services I like to access remotely like my NAS with my giant media library, my edit server with all my active projects, and especially Home Assistant, which lets me monitor all aspects of my home.
Some people rely on individual cloud services from IoT vendors and have a bunch of apps to connect to each type of device independently. As someone who has dealt with numerous security breaches for numerous services, I know not to trust 50 different cloud-connected devices in my home.
That's why I'm a 'self-hosted' homelabber, and why I try to find devices that don't leave my local network.