Fedegenerate

Murderbot is very good. The TV show does a good job of capturing the tone of the books imo.

Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge - Harry Harrison (book 2 of the SSR series). Other than the typical hangups of sci-fi from the era, not a particularly aggregous example though, it's been an ok 'brain-off' read. I enjoyed the series going through it my first couple times as a teen, less so now. Mostly recommend as a nostalgia trip, or a study of sci-fi as a whole. Otherwise, go read hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy or something.

Honestly, the most interesting thing has been the tech predictions, poor Harrison didn't stand a chance. Mass surveillance would be too labour intensive to be feasible?!

Vikunja feature request: once a day export "due today" tasks to printer, mark as done when printed. One day I'll learn python and could script this myself... One day.

Vikunja is how my fiancée and I keep track of housework, we're both neurospicy. But, like the author if I forget one day, the system completely breaks until I make a conscious effort to start again. By then the list is over run with "overdue"s it's a little disheartening.

I don't think Greens will get much sway until they start scapegoating disadvantaged groups.

Blaming society's ills on the rich and powerful won't work while they are, well, powerful no matter how true it is. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer, until majour outlets start discussing that we'll continue to blame single mums, trans people, disabled people, immigrants, gingers, anything but the actual problem.

Until then I don't think we as a country will ever stop supporting Conservative, Labour, Libdems, and now Reform over Greens.

Faithbreaker - Hannah Kaner. The third of the Fallen Gods trilogy. 1st is a great read. 2nd doesn't have the family of the first, the stakes of the third, and develops the characters/world not enough for the break imo. 3rd doesn't recapture the magic of the first, I'm 70% through it. I think the author could have written a tighter pair and added the exposition through novellas for those that want it. I've heard that audiences are great at picking out problems but terrible at suggesting solutions though, so what do I know?

Shallowly the world building is pretty good, I like the universe. Being disabled myself, I kinda want to live there, the acceptance and accomodations are great. The social aspect of the world is bold, works well, and is something I'd like to see more of.

The "gods among us" (I don't know the term for 'gods and people from a symbiosis each empowering the other') this has been done better in American Gods or Poppy War etc imo. That's not to say it's bad here, just a theme that's been done well elsewhere, but it's a shallow observation of the series.

My real joy of the first is the found family. Everyone is damaged in their own way and the characters, crunch and support each other quite well. But, they're separated in the second entirely and not particularly together for the third. I knew this going in from reviews which is fine. Even the side characters gave me a sense of 'trauma response to something' vibes leading to interesting behaviours and conflicts for our protagonists to navigate. Everyone has been hurt, by events immediately before the books and we get to piece it all together as we go.

I think I plunged back in because the LGBT+ and disability acceptance, even celebration, is a welcome escape from today's world. Faint praise I know, but praise none-the-less.

Book 1>3>2 I think. Book 1 I'd recommend if you're socially progressive and like found families, or like gods among us stories. 2&3 make your own decision based on your feelings for book 1. Promising author, I look forward to their next book.

I'm just lazy. All my nonsense is virtual now. I found a DOSbox docker image last updated 4 years ago. Also all my dos games are .7z currently. Setting it up is as simple as a docker compose and extracting the games I wanna play, but I have to fire up my virtual laptop and... I'm just lazy

To anyone and no-one:

“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize,” Kevin Alfred Storm, noted Neo-Nazi caught with a non zero amount of child porn, talking about Jews. Also, paraphrased by William H, talking about Muslims.

Wacky Wheels! Thank you, I had long since forgotten the name, but not the game.

I just checked, I have a copy of it!!!! One day I'll set up a DOSbox. I thought Star Control 2 might be the game that persuaded me, but it might be this garbage kart racer.

I fought against getting a contactless debit card for so long. I used to call my bank a month or so before my card expired demanding a non-contactless card. "But sir, you could just not activate the contact..." I don't want any of it. I'd say "when I forget my pin it's time to go home" paying chip and PIN like a peasant. I probably said "PIN Number" for how stupid I was being.

Anyway, contactless payment is awesome.

My fears are still grounded. Originally it was because, near weekly, I saw someone paying with a card they just picked off the floor. I hated the limit being so high long before they raised it, let alon after they raised it again. Also a skill check before ordering another beer has some merit.

"Cults do like to cut off and distance their members from outsiders and their families" In the same email that he was threating to block me for suggesting his quoting of a Nazi might be a bad thing.

Close second: "Trump (married to a woman) is misogynist" but also "I (British), married to a Malay, can't be racist because I'm married to a Malay".

Honourable mention: "I don't like the word 'Islamophobia' or your Newspeak". My guy, Newspeak was famous for doing something to the dictionary, and it wasn't adding words to describe more concepts.

Anyway, he blocked me... Like cultists do. All quotes are paraphrased, I CBA digging through the emails.

Hardware wise I'd go AIO. A mini and a pair of mirrored USB drives is my setup. I have an off-site backup running: another mini + USB. Finally, I have an inherited laptop as a redundant network box/local backup/immich compute. I have 5 households on my network, and aside from immich spiking in resources (hence the laptop), I have overhead to spare.

An n100 mini (or n150, n200, whatever) is cheap enough and powerful enough for you to jump in, decide if you want to spend more later. They're small, quiet, reasonable Value for Money, easy Wife Acceptance Factor, and can age into a bunch of devices if you decided self hosting isn't for you. I'd make a retro console out of any spare mini.

This way, when spending £x00s on a server, you'll have some idea on what you actually need/want. The n100 can the age into a firewall/network box/local back up/etc if/when you upgrade.

All that said. An AIO storage-compute box is where I'm headed. I now know I need a dedicated graphics card for the immich demand. I now know I want a graphics card for generative AI hobby stuff. I know how much storage I need for everyone's photos, and favorite entertainment, permanent stuff. I know how much storage I need for stuff being churned, temporary stuff. I now know I don't care about high availability/clusters. I now know... Finally, the 'Wife' has grown used to having a server in the house: it's a thing I have, and do, which she benefits from. So, a bigger, more expensive, and probably louder box, is an easier sell.

"TRaSH-guides" into your favourite search engine. Even if you don't want to set up a *arr, the pros and cons of file format are discussed there.

Prowlarr suggests Knaben, then TheRARBG are my most successful sources of Linux ISOs.