I’m beautiful and tough like a diamond…or beef jerky in a ball gown.

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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2025

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  • The only reason I gave up on Docker Swarm was that it seemed pretty dead-end as far as being useful outside the homelab. At the time, it was still competing with Kubernetes, but Kube seems to have won out. I’m not even sure Docker CE even still has Swarm. It’s been a good while since I messed with it. It might be a “pro” feature nowadays.

    Edit: Docker 28.5.2 still has Swarm.

    Still, it was nice and a lot easier to use than Kubernetes once you wrapped your head around swarm networking.


  • I had 15 of the 2013-era 5010 thin clients. Most of them have had their SSDs and RAM upgraded.

    They’ve worn many hats since I’ve had them, but some of their uses and proposed uses were:

    1. I did a 15 node Docker Swarm setup and used that to both run some of my applications as well as learn how to do horizontal scaling.
    2. After I tore down the Docker Swarm cluster, I set them up as diskless workstations to both learn how to do that and used them at a local event as web kiosks (basically just to have a bunch of stations people could use to fill out web based forms).
    3. One of them was my router for a good while. Only replaced it in that role when I got symmetric gigabit fiber. Before that, I used VLANs to to run LAN and WAN over its single ethernet port since I had asymmetric 500 Mbps and never saturated the port.
    4. Run small/lightweight applications in highly-available pairs/clusters
    5. Use them to practice clustered services (Multi-master Galera/MariaDB, multi-master LDAP, CouchDB, etc)
    6. Use them as Snapcast clients in each room
    7. Add wireless cards, install OpenWRT, and make powerful access points for each room (can combine with the above and also be a Snapcast client)
    8. Set them up as VPN tunnel endpoints, give them out to friends, and have a private network

    Of the 15, I think I’m only actively using 4 nowadays. One is my MPD+Snapcast server, one is running HomeAssistant, ,the third is my backup LDAP server, and one runs my email server (really). The rest I just spin up as needed for various projects; I downsized my homelab and don’t have a lot of spare capacity for dev/test VMs these days, so these work great in place of that.















  • A database can be used to plug into any number of applications that run on top of it as well as be easily shared by multiple people and centrally backed up. Auditing, logging, and row and table level access controls, and other measures can be easily added.

    Excel files (or even MS Access files) as “databases” are often just people emailing around a file or accessing it from a shared drive. You end up with a split-brain situation at best and at worst you’re dealing with constant file corruption from multiple people thinking they can access it from a shared drive at the same time.

    Then you get vendor lock in and are forced to keep MS Office professional licenses because Shawn created some stupid Access “app” 10 years ago which is “THE DATABASE” and no one understands how it works.


  • Yeah, I didn’t watch this video b/c I’m at work, but I have seen his ebike video so I’m assuming the construction is similarly well thought out.

    It’s just that all the fuses and BMSs can’t protect against a dodgy cell that decides to self-immolate. For cheap, disposable devices that are only meant to be charged 5-10 times or less and then thrown away, I’m super wary of the batteries that are chosen for those. Have seen too many things burst into flames and even expensive well cared-for devices turn into spicy pillows.




  • That guy’s got some brass ones, lol.

    I’ve upcycled disposable vape batteries for lots of projects, but never anything that draws significant amounts of current. Usually powering ESP8266/ESP32 projects that draw a couple hundred mAh at most.

    While I’m all for keeping thing out of the landfill, I would be absolutely terrified to put that many questionable quality lithium batteries into an array let alone try to draw any substantial amperage from them.