s0: @s0@cathode.church

My first day of riding my TiltWheel was super successful I think ​ Here's a video for you. I promise I can go faster on a straight run! More practice to do yet though. Maybe tomorrow I'll take it outside. #tinkering

I think the most important thing I can say is:
If there are kids/teens close in your life that might be Having Gender Feelings, or have expressed that they're trans -- acceptance is good but not remotely enough. Don't just be 'cool' about it. You need to be actively loving and supportive. Because they are trying so so hard, and being met with casual acceptance may be less than they need even if they don't know it. They are dealing with grief, and fear, and confusion, and new joy, and so, so vulnerable. Talk about that with them.

Workbench status: Sick af

Cryptocurrency dipshits don't bother follow requesting me btw ​

so I took one down and opened it up and. What. Whoever made this was on crack. It’s all hand soldered and they’ve populated the MAX232 serial chip. But left off the resistors that actually connect it to the serial port. They’re completely unconnected. Then I bridged them to test it and got nothing, so they seem to use a different unknown protocol (or just aren’t programmed to support serial). Incomprehensible.

Well, the good news is now we can push to replace them with pretty, legible, large-format E-paper displays

Let’s do a jitsi hangout while I replace the CPU that sounds fun

And the most important function of cathode church is of course me tooting about whatever I’ve done to my server lol

I will not be migrating cathode church to my home server despite the money it could save because I would absolutely take it offline semi-regularly by accident while fucking around

Oh and I got caddies for the extra 2 6TB drives, so I can expand my ZFS pool up to 30TiB
Time to run offsite backups for friends

I don’t have the second heat sink yet so I can only put one in yet anyway. So after work today that’s the plan. That and fixing the damn virtual servers on it

They’re the same TDP, so I’m hoping what this actually achieves is lower power usage & even slower fan speeds for similar workload.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Xeon-E5-2609-vs-Intel-Xeon-E5-2630-v2/1429vs2052
50% better single-thread perf, nearly triple the total performance with one of them. A little more powerful than my current desktop. If I add the second, double that.

New server brains arrived. Two second-hand Xeon E5-2630V2, for $15. The performance should be a real jump from the E5-2609V1 in the server now.
I probably don’t need the second one at all but I have the option at least.

Get you a wife who can be cheered up from feeling bad for nearly any reason with a slice of sourdough with butter on it

First test today was a bust. Either the cable pinout is wrong, I’m not opening the right serial device, or the python script isn’t working correctly.
Tomorrow I think I’ll try to find a USB serial adapter and take one of the signs down to the workbench and see if I can make it work with the official software. Definitely annoying that the original adapters have disappeared.

It’s for some LED matrix scrolling sign boxes. Until now they’ve been using IR remotes to program them but the remotes are nearly all dead and irreplaceable. So I’m going to set up a spare mini PC and rig up a little script to set the text on them with a python library that someone has helpfully written from reverse-engineering before.

Tomorrow I get to make an RS-232 cable from one DB9 to four (or more) parallel RJ11s in bus topology and I already feel dirty

So far I’ve purchased:
- Adversary by @bluedelliquanti
- After Hours by Bowen McCurdy
- Faster than Light: the Nagarjuna by Sloane Hong
- I am of Two Hearts by Val Wise
- Run Wolf Run by Jona Li
- Still Here by Elise Schuenke
- The God of Arepo adapted by Reimena Yee

I working through them and enjoying them all very much.

Anyone who enjoyed the beautiful short story “The God of Arepo” by four strangers collaborating on tumblr, I have good news.

Reimena Yee has made a beautiful illustrated version you can buy in this year’s Shortbox Comics Fair. Proceeds go to two charities fostering literacy for marginalised kids.

You can find it here, and get your eyes leaking again. https://www.shortboxcomicsfair.com/shop/p/the-god-of-arepo-adapted-by-reimena-yee

There are also lots of other short and medium-length comics in the fair by dozens of great queer and non-white artists, across genres.