Mine is Becky Chambers. I've just finished rereading all of her work, and it gave me the exact same feeling of hope I had the first time. Not groundbreaking, but soul-feeding.
Man, that's a really tough question if I'm only allowed to pick one.
I've enjoyed some Becky Chambers books as well, though the Monk & Robot series weren't quite my cup of tea. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is one of my favourite books.
If I could wish for one new book from any author, it'd have to be Robert Brockway. His Vicious Circuit trilogy is a masterpiece in so many aspects, I've immensely enjoyed Carrier Wave and am currently following his rewrite of Rx and Fuck You In Particular, Nashville, Tennessee on Patreon.
Decided to build something rather complex as a first project and it's proving challenging at ever step of the way, but I'm really proud of how it's turning out....
Hmm, Lemmy or Jerboa appears to have eaten my lengthy reply, so here we go again:
My aim is to have my router/firewall, mail server and VM host in the shelter, as it’s the most protected room in the house. That means I need at least two lines - one from the modem to the router/firewall, and one connecting everything to the internal LAN.
The internet connection is rated 400Mbit synchronous with the option of upgrading to up to 25Gbit, though at present I can’t imagine us ever needing that much and it’s probably more of a marketing gimmick anyway, so that line isn’t as critical, throughput-wise.
The rest of the house is currently a copper Gigabit affair, though the cabling is Cat7 and capable of more, so I wouldn’t want the fiber to be the bottleneck when we upgrade to 10Gbit a few years down the road. Hence multimode looks like a good idea. The question is whether (and how) there’s a way to cut, install and connect it myself. POF would be easier but comes with a number of question marks concerning 10GbE.
Little space + no copper data connections next to power cables leave little choice but fibre.
That’s the thing. If I add anything else the house won’t pass the periodic electrical inspections.
For an EV we’re probably talking 11 or 22kW, so a rather thick cable. But you’re probably going to have it installed by a certified electrician anyway, or can you do that yourself in Germany?
In case anybody stumbles across this thread and has a similar problem: I’ve successfully installed two fiber connections this week and they’re working very well so far. I’m very happy!
My hardware shopping list:
Lightwin single-mode (OS2) simplex fiber with preattached LC plugs (link)
Lightwin LC/APC female/female adapter
Ubiquiti 10Gbit SFP+ modules (sold as a pair, product code UACC-OM-SM-10G-S-2)
Two Zyxel XMG-105HP switches with five 2.5Gbit, PoE++ RJ45 ports and one 10Gbit SFP+ port
The Lightwin cables have relatively short plugs with small and narrow protector caps, which is very important in my case.
The 2.5Gbit switch is fine for me because everything else in the house is 1Gbit and I didn’t want to spend three times the amount for two 10Gbit switches just yet. Though the OS2 fiber should be able to handle anything we might throw at it in the foreseeable future.
Pulling the cables with the attached connectors through the narrow pipe was a bit tricky. I used a standard pull-in string and strong, inflexible adhesive tape to attach the fiber cables to it so that there would be a distance of 2-3cm between the string and the first plug, with a thick wad of tape inbetween, and the second plug following at a similar distance. Then I applied a generous amount of lube to the pipe and slowly pulled the cables through. They just so went around the corners, but once the plugs came out at the other end it was smooth sailing.
The internet fiber plugs directly into the OTO socket on one side, and connects to the modem via an LC f/f adapter on the other side. The LAN fiber has a switch at each end.
I’m sorry for the kids that are punished for having stupid parents, but maybe a few public incidents of children dying from entirely preventable diseases is what it takes for other parents to finally stop mindlessly parroting every piece of anti-vax BS they read on Telegram and vaccinate their kids after all.
Though at this point it’s evident that we as a species have well and truly failed either way.
It depends on the hardware you have, as the charger and inverter can interfere with each other in a number of ways.
For an RV with a couple lead-acid batteries, separate devices all connected to the battery usually work fine.
For more sophisticated set-ups (at least around here) all-in-one devices incorporating both charger and inverter are preferred. You also get load managenent this way.
If you have a separate inverter and charger that are designed to talk to each other and have good MPPT, you connect them both to the PV panels so the inverter doesn’t sabotage the charger’s ability to measure the battery’s state of charge or charge it optimally. This is ‘preferable’ for lead batteries and critical for lithium batteries.
As I said, it depends. There are inverters made specifically to be connected to PV panels, and there are inverters made for a fixed input voltage that you connect to a battery (the DIY store kind are usually the latter).
Though if you want to build a self-contained PV system without having to think about it too much, you’re probably best off with an all-in-one device where you can just plug in your panels, your battery and your devices and let it worry about the rest.
There’s another aspect, and I sadly lack the technical vocabulary here, but basically what you want to do for optimum efficiency is to convert the voltage as few times as possible. So: panels–>inverter–>load resp. panels–>charger–>battery, but not panels–>charger–>inverter–>load. The latter decreases your general efficiency and introduces roughly twice the losses.
The charger may also reduce its power output to much less than what the panels could deliver once it thinks the battery is full.
But then again, it all depends on your use case: where you use the system, what the environmental conditions are, and of course what your budget is. There simply is no one-size-fits-all PV system. You may not even need an inverter if all you want to do is charge your phone and laptop.
I haven’t had any luck in finding sci-fi books recently. I’m looking for a longer story that takes its time to establish the world/universe and the characters living in it. I like the idea of exploring space or futuristic cities/landscapes and being on a journey together with the protagonist. The story doesn’t have to have...
Not sure if it tickles your fancy, but if you’re in the mood for a humorous space adventure with an elaborate story and serious undertones, give Ben Yahtzee Croshaw’s Will Save The Galaxy For Food a try.
Also, I haven’t seen Adrift and the Outer Earth Trilogy by Rob Boffard being mentioned here. Especially the former managed to instill a sense of dread in me while the story unfolded. The latter is a rather long read, though the first book (Tracer) is self-contained.
ETA: a somewhat different style, but if you like futuristic worlds / galaxies with tons of intricate details, try The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. Her world (universe, in fact) is incredibly rich in detail and diversity. Each alien race she introduces has its own complex backstory, values, language and culture.
The other books in the series didn’t grip me like this one - they add a lot of background, and in that she’s a genius, but for my taste the story was somewhat lacking.
So my roommate is a habitual cigarette smoker. He doesn’t smoke indoors (thankfully) but he does smoke about every other night outdoors. I don’t think he realizes that when he’s done smoking the smell sort of… lingers on him and his clothes. Last night after he was done he was in the kitchen for a bit cooking. I came in...
The only really effective thing is ozone, as has already been posted, though an ozone generator in the living quarters comes with its own gotchas such as ozone being corrosive and harmful to your respiratory system.
Apart from that, we used to get the smell out of hair and clothes with a hairdryer set to hot. I’m not sure how you could apply that knowledge to an entire room, but there’s probably no harm in trying.
Having said that, if your roommate carries such a strong smell, does he really smoke outside, or does he just sorta-kinda stand in the half-open doorway and call this outside?
Planning to replace the old TV coax cable with Ethernet cable so everybody in the house gets their own low-latency connection for gaming. The problem is that TV cable is installed in a daisy chain while Ethernet has a star topology, and there’s only room for one cable from the basement to upstairs. So at the moment I’m pondering whether to keep the daisy chain and place a switch in every room, use some sort of MoCA (Ethernet over coax) adapter or go all the way and install fiber.
Also, we should really replace the carpet in the master bedroom with hardwood soon.
Who is your favourite author?
Mine is Becky Chambers. I've just finished rereading all of her work, and it gave me the exact same feeling of hope I had the first time. Not groundbreaking, but soul-feeding.
Doing masonry for a root cellar vaulted ceiling ( discuss.tchncs.de )
Decided to build something rather complex as a first project and it's proving challenging at ever step of the way, but I'm really proud of how it's turning out....
In-house fiber network
Not sure if I should post this here or over in Technology, but here goes....
Unvaccinated Florida kids exposed to measles can skip quarantine, officials say ( arstechnica.com )
How to Build a Small Solar Power System ( solar.lowtechmagazine.com )
Your Sci-Fi suggestions
I haven’t had any luck in finding sci-fi books recently. I’m looking for a longer story that takes its time to establish the world/universe and the characters living in it. I like the idea of exploring space or futuristic cities/landscapes and being on a journey together with the protagonist. The story doesn’t have to have...
How to get cigarette smell out of my apartment?
So my roommate is a habitual cigarette smoker. He doesn’t smoke indoors (thankfully) but he does smoke about every other night outdoors. I don’t think he realizes that when he’s done smoking the smell sort of… lingers on him and his clothes. Last night after he was done he was in the kitchen for a bit cooking. I came in...
Companies That Union-Bust Must Now Automatically Recognize Union, NLRB Rules ( www.vice.com )
(August) What are you working on now, DIY? ( beehaw.org )
Making any progress, you slackers? Tell us about it!