alifeee's weeknotes

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Weeknotes 08

This is quite a nice excuse to find a place to exist for a while, and weeknote. Today I am in a cafe.

I was going to order the headings, but there are too many, and after all, it's "only my weeknotes". Thus, they will be in a very arbitrary order.

I made some extra shelves

I found a shelving unit in a skip this week. It looks like this.

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The shelves are loose, resting on little nubbins that are pushed into pre-drilled holes in the side, so you can move them around. Think "classic Ikea shelving unit".

Since there were a lot of holes for the shelves, I figured I could make some more. So, with the help of a 3D printing expert, I 3D printed some more shelf holders at my local hackspace. I also found a long piece of wood in another skip, which I took to the hackspace and cut into two shelf-sized squares with a table saw. Table saws are scary.

Now my shelves look like this

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Storage!

I added another bench to OpenBenches

I find OpenBenches a very endearing website. I love their mission.

This week, I added a bench to it.

I booted a laptop I found in a skip

With a brief benchy interlude, here comes the second half of skip-adventures.

I found an old laptop in a skip. It had the battery removed, and was a little wet. I found a power cable at the hackspace, let it dry, and tried to boot it.

It was from 2005, and did not have HDMI. It had a modem and a phone cable hole. The installed OS was Windows XP. It was certainly memory-inducing to see the Windows XP boot sequence.

The laptop is "ancient", as far as technology goes, and as far as the amount of e-waste would have you convinced. It has a 40GB HDD, a 1.7GHz processor, and 900MB of DDR2 RAM. While this is not enough for what I normally do with a computer, it's fine for playing around.

A few weeks ago I came across Damn Small Linux (DSL), which is a Linux distribution smaller than 700MB in size (so it fits on a cd!) I'd never booted a laptop with Linux before, but the process was very easy. I used a USB boot maker, and added the DSL boot files. Then I plugged it in to the "skipbook", and booted it. It was an old enough computer that spends ages on the BIOS load screen where you have plenty of time to press F2 or F12 for BIOS settings, so I pressed F12 and selected "boot from USB".

After a couple of errors (fixed by using different safe modes), I booted DSL, and installed it onto the HDD, formatting it in the process.

Now I have what could be considered an underpowered, inefficient, laptop-shaped server! I'm not sure what to do with it, but I did manage to ssh to it from my laptop, which is a good start.

I watched some of Dabang Delhi Kabaddi Club's games

I like Kabaddi a lot. It's a sport. In the Pro Kabaddi League in India (the largest Kabaddi league in the world), I suppport Dabang Delhi Kabaddi Club (DDKC). I haven't been watching many games this season, but this week I watched a couple.

Next week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, it's the eliminators, semi-finals, and final, respectively. I'm planning to watch all of these. You should too.

I played Factorio again

It wouldn't be a weeknotes if I didn't mention Factorio. It was... fun again this week!

I found an old typewriter

I found a curious case at BHF. Opening it, it was a typewriter! I had a go on it, and put it back in the box, labelling it with "typewriter". It will probably be sold on BHF's Ebay.

Some planes flew over Sheffield

Some planes flew over Sheffield. More people knew about it and talked about it than I've ever experienced people know about or talk about planes before.

I'm practising handstands

I've been going to the park and doing handstands. I think if I keep doing it I'll get better at it.

Today I was able to stay in a handstand for several seconds. I think my brain is forming memory to do with it. Muscle memory if you will. It reminds me of when I learnt to skate on freeskates, when we would try for a while on a particular day, and the next morning something would've clicked in our sleep and we could suddenly do what we were practising. This is a good reminder that sleep seems to be a great place to process the days happenings.

Next week I might be able to do handstands for even longer.

I talked to my sister about freelancing

She is a freelance copywriter. We talked about how she finds people to pay her.

I think it was good motivation for me to find people to pay me.

I set up a test Patreon

I do lots of stuff for lipu tenpo. One thing I'm trying to set rolling is printing & posting of new magazines. We've decided the easiest way to do this is via our Patreon, so I am setting up a tier that collects people's addresses so we can have easy subscription management.

I don't have access to the lipu tenpo Patreon so I set up a testing one. To test the subscription, I am paying myself. Since I am the first patron, I have to wait 5 days to withdraw the money that Patreon takes 8% of. There's also VAT.

I got a laminator

There was a second-hand laminator in the electrical testing area of BHF. I picked it up a few days ago, and yesterday I picked up some plastic laminating pouches.

A few days ago I drew some posters. Now I can laminate them. I haven't tested it out yet.

I went to the board game cafe

I went to the board game cafe. We didn't book ahead, so there was only space for us for 45 minutes. It wasn't a lot of time for board games. I thought this might happen, so I brought some smaller games in my bag, and we went to a cafe afterwards to play some games without the time-stress.

I wrote my longest weeknotes

Is that true? I'm not sure.

I'm not sure how long I want these to be.

I guess they are this long.

Enjoy your time.

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