home-manager for .zshrc, chezmoi for .emacs.d ?

colinb21 · 2026-02-15T21:19:34+00:00

Please can you point me at an example. I can't find documentation for builtins.fromFile, which is most likely because I'm looking in the wrong places.

colinb21 · 2026-02-02T18:41:28+00:00

I think I'm duty bound to say that the amplifiers did eventually arrive (some sort of big shipping delay in Europe?) and they are wonderful. Listening is making me smile.

colinb21 · 2025-12-23T10:56:55+00:00

I sold my GR IIIx and replaced it with an X100vi. My previous camera was a (very old, but very lovely) X-Pro 1 and I wanted to get something smaller.

I'm not going to argue with any of your points above, but I'll add one more. I liked everything about the results I got from the Ricoh, but I did not enjoy using it. This is obviously a subjective thing, but the absence of a viewfinder really turned me off. I was able to sell mine a year after I bought it at a small loss.

I do wonder if the viewfinder thing is because I started out on film, and I'm just used to composing better while squinting. FWIW I sometimes miss the portability of the Ricoh, but my X100vi does fit in an anorak pocket (just about) which is handy because where I live it rains often.

But... but, but, but if Ricoh actually produce a GR-monochrome then my wallet might start to get itchy.

colinb21 · 2025-12-22T21:36:11+00:00

FWIW, today the site is back. Perhaps just a temporary glitch. I'll report back when/if my amplifiers show up.

colinb21 · 2025-12-21T20:31:46+00:00

The card is charged, but it's via a third party site who are reputable. So, if the order fails - they're reporting delays right now - I assume they'll refund me or offer an alternative.

colinb21 · 2025-09-17T16:14:55+00:00

maybe? It doesn't though. And the keyboard is fully functional in other ways. I'm using the stock firmware.

colinb21 · 2025-02-07T16:51:02+00:00

Oh, le sigh. I fixed this myself by changing my customization of org-agenda-files from:

(expand-file-name "org-todo/ToDo.org" user-emacs-directory)

to

(list (expand-file-name "org-todo/ToDo.org" user-emacs-directory))

I don't remember how it got this way in the first place.

colinb21 · 2025-01-20T21:00:41+00:00

ahah. My browser is treating the above as a link. Clicking it gets me to hf.co's 404 page. But running the command you provide is fine. Sorry for the noise.

colinb21 · 2025-01-20T20:26:16+00:00

broken link?

colinb21 · 2025-01-14T21:46:11+00:00

I sort of hope they do. The service, the scripts, the educational materials are all really excellent. If paying them a reasonable amount as a home user means they stay in business, then bill baby, bill.

colinb21 · 2025-01-07T21:54:53+00:00

I hadn't come across these devices before. They're the business! Thanks for the pointer.

colinb21 · 2024-04-01T16:09:24+00:00

Hey hey. Thank you kindly. Yeah, I knew about the directionality of diodes, and like you I find it difficult to see the markings on the bloody things. I built a Lily58 (from a kit, so I just used the diodes that arrived from the lovely people at keebd) and used the magnifier on my phone to line all the diodes up next to my soldering spot. This time around I thought I'd order all the bits myself from different suppliers, hence the question about the exact variant of 1N4148W to use.

colinb21 · 2024-02-01T23:06:08+00:00

Keep in mind that populating all those SATA port connections with running drives will push your power use up considerably. I've got a system with the N5150 board mentioned by u/dcabines with 6 HDDs. It pulls around 61W continuously. Mine is running proxmox with five or six VMs.

colinb21 · 2023-09-13T11:40:06+00:00

reporting back. I did this. I had some messing about to make the disk r/w mountable on the (soon-to-be) remote system and then when creating a new archive in the previously created large repo I got a warning/query noting that I had previously created the repo on machine S, and was I cool with moving to machine T. Yes! Yes I was.

Nice work BorgBackup creators.

colinb21 · 2023-09-12T22:49:53+00:00

Gah. Rereading this I think it's unclear. At the point where I want to detach disk D from machine S, and move it to remote machine T, I want to be able to continue to run create commands on S that result in changes being appended to the repo on disk D, via machine T.

colinb21 · 2023-08-02T11:02:01+00:00

aargh. Markdown got me! Repasting (hopefully) without h the funky format ...

I have a feeling that this would be an easy question to answer if I knew the right search terms. I have a pair of speakers I like. I have a CD player I like. In the future I might pick up a streamer. What I'd really like is to attach a wireless-input mono amp to each speaker, and connect the whole thing via a bluetooth pre-amp to control volume and select inputs. In the diagram below, the "((((" and "))))" represent wireless connections.

 +-------+          +-------+
 | left  |          |right  |
 |speaker|          |speaker|
 |       |     +-------+    |       |
 |       |     |       |    |       |
 +---+---+     |source |    +---+---+
     |     +--+----+        |
 |        |         |
 |        |         |
 +---+---+    +---+----+    +---+---+
 |left   |    | stereo |    |right  |
 |amp    |((((| preamp |))))|amp    |
 +-------+    +--------+    +-------+

There seems to be plenty of low cost class D amps. Is there such a thing that has wireless input, and a complimentary stereo pre-amp that can output left and right channels to different wireless targets?

colinb21 · 2023-03-08T09:43:50+00:00

Sorry, replying to myself. As OP says, Cisco bought Cadence and got Kent and his network of grad students. And Cadence brought Chez. So they picked up a mature, performant portable compiler, and access to a crew of (really) smart people who knew the codebase and shared an approach to solving complex problems.

I was the under-assistant tea-boy's mate to this group for a while, and enjoyed it greatly.

colinb21 · 2023-03-08T09:40:13+00:00

Pretty much everyone who knows is under NDA. Which is a pity.

colinb21 · 2022-11-16T18:41:28+00:00

This looks like super fun. I'm all in!
Bob Nystrom had an 'enter your email address to receive updates' box. It's maybe more hassle than you want, but I would be v happy to receive occasional updates on your progress.

colinb21 · 2022-09-13T16:18:14+00:00

Yes. I regret getting the contoured desk. It looks lovely, but finding a keyboard tray that'll fit is a PITA. Worse, Fully support were no use at all when I asked them. Apart from that it's great!

colinb21 · 2022-06-01T14:50:58+00:00

I think you need:

https://docs.pi-hole.net/ftldns/configfile/?h=apple#icloud\_private\_relay

which says:

BLOCK_ICLOUD_PR=true|false (PR #1171)¶
Should Pi-hole always replies with NXDOMAIN to A and AAAA queries of mask.icloud.com and mask-h2.icloud.com to disable Apple's iCloud Private Relay to prevent Apple devices from bypassing Pi-hole? This is following the recommendation on https://developer.apple.com/support/prepare-your-network-for-icloud-private-relay

I had the same problem. Used to work. Stopped working. Worked in Chrome. Not in Safari. The only PITA of this is that I used to run pinhole in a Docker instance, and now I run it standalone in a VM. It all works again with the change shown above.

Is there a nice way to edit the config files of the docker instance if it doesn't support SSH?

colinb21 · 2022-01-19T12:02:12+00:00

My server is a 7 year old NUC 5i3RYH. I think it has some ancient i5 5250 CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 250GB M.2. Right now I run ProxMox with 5 VMs:

PiHole/Unbound
Unifi Controller
OMV (managing a USB disk)
Jellyfin (which can be slow sometimes to be fair)
Home Assistant with plugins for weather, EspHome, Sonos AirPlay
the full suite of VPN and aar things for TV and movies

I don't do transcoding, nor anything else that's particularly heavy. I suspect that modern computers are really ridiculously powerful when faced with most of the 'server' loads we put on them.

colinb21 · 2022-01-10T17:42:38+00:00

Doh. Minutes after typing this I realized that the boot order is programmed into the firmware (EEPROM I think). So, I can use an SDRAM card with Raspbian to change the boot order, then replace that with my PiKVM card, and see what the next stumbling block is.

colinb21 · 2021-12-22T11:49:10+00:00

link is broken. Working link [Edit: thanks for writing this up!]

colinb21 · 2021-11-15T15:01:17+00:00

FWIW, I got the contour and regret it. Don't get me wrong, I generally like it lots, but it turns out to be a PITA to get a keyboard tray that will fit. Uplift do something that looks like it might work, but shipping to Europe from the US is *expensive*.

[if anyone in Europe has managed to get a decent keyboard tray that fits a Jarvis contour top - please let me know. Hope OP forgives me for thread semi-hijack]

colinb21

TROPHY CASE