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Set a static IP address with nmtui on Raspberry Pi OS 12 'Bookworm'


Old advice for setting a Raspberry Pi IP address to a static IP on the Pi itself said to edit the /etc/dhcpcd.conf file, and add it there.

But on Raspberry Pi OS 12 and later, dhcpcd is no longer used, everything goes through Network Manager, which is configured via nmcli or nmtui. If you're booting into the Pi OS desktop environment, editing the IP settings there is pretty easy.

But setting a static IP via the command line is a little different.

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Getting files to and from a PowerBook 3400c with hfsutils


PowerBook 3400c booting Mac OS 8.6

There are about a dozen ways to get files to and from an older Mac like my PowerBook 3400c, but right now (at least until I figure out a good way to get my NAS -> an AppleTalk server -> 3400c working), my preferred method is via a CF card—I pop the CF card into a CF-to-PCMCIA adapter, then insert that into one of my PowerBook 3400's PC card slots, and bingo: removable flash storage on a 1990s laptop!

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Learning about ZFS and efficiency on my new Arm64 NAS


HL15 with Ampere Altra and ASRock Rack motherboard - NAS fully built

I've been building out a new Arm-based NAS using ASRock Rack's new 'Deep Micro ATX' motherboard for Ampere Altra and Altra Max CPUs.

I posted about the hardware earlier, in Building an efficient server-grade Arm NAS. Go check that out if you want details on the specific hardware in this setup.

But at the end of the build, I installed Rocky Linux, and found the power consumption to be a bit higher than expected—over 150W at idle!

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Water cooling is overkill for Pi 5


tl;dr: 52Pi and Seeed Studio's water cooling solution for the Raspberry Pi 5 can be fun, and works better than any other solution—but at a steep price, and with a number of annoying quirks.

Ice Pump water cooling block installed on Raspberry Pi 5

A few months ago, 52Pi reached out and asked if they could send a new water cooling kit they were working on for the Raspberry Pi 5. At the time, the hope was we could figure out a way to get very high overclock with adequate cooling.

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My TODO list is a .txt file on the desktop


About six months ago, I finally reached a breaking point: my email-based TODO system stopped working.

It was beyond its breaking point for a few years, actually... ever since I my average daily email volume increase from maybe 5-10 'important' emails to deal with to 50+.

My email-based TODO system used to go like this:

  1. Email myself things I deemed important enough to do the next day
  2. Next morning, when I checked my email, knock off the top item in that list, and try to work down the list a bit
  3. Anything else, forward that email again for the next day

Once an item got maybe 5-10 Fwd:s in the Subject line, I would decide whether to nix the TODO item entirely, or move it off into a Trello board—in either case, likely to be forgotten forever.

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Photographing the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse


On April 8, there will be a Total Solar Eclipse covering an large swath of the US, offering hundreds of millions of people the opportunity to witness one of the most spectacular displays of our sun.

Jeff Geerling Photographing the Total Solar Eclipse

I wrote two blog posts about the recent 2017 eclipse, as well—check those out:

For this year, I was considering going all-in on a custom Raspberry-Pi-based solar tracking system, recording video and images... but Will Whang already built a custom solar imaging setup that would put anything I build to shame.

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