Nerdy Awesome shit you bought!

[Deebs]

Right, two of the PIs are now running Pi-Hole (have 2 VMs currently doing that but I want physical for my DNS due to me fucking stuff up whilst ill).

Currently blocking:

 

[Bodhi]

Ordered Pixel 8 Pro, should last me for a while as it'll come with 7 years of updates.

Ah another beta tester for us other Android folk

 

[Bodhi]

Will admit I'm more interested in the Pixel Watch 2 - currently got a Fitbit Sense which - apart from the odd software glitch - has been a fantastic bit of kit. Loads of health info, all the notifications etc I need and the battery lasted about 6 days when it was new. However now it's getting on a bit that's down to 4 days and the charger is being a PITA.

Is the Pixel Watch any good?

 

[Tay]

Got most of my crap running on a low power unRaid server, Pi-hole and PI-Alert running plus a whole host of prowlerrr, radarr type stuff running. Have a low power HP thin client running my firewall as I cant bring myself to stick that in a virtual environment.

Just getting into the PI's myself and have a EmonTX3+EmonCMS with multiple CT's monitoring my imported power (And soon to be exported power) cuz British Gas suck donkey balls and could fall into a bag of tits and come out sucking their thumbs.


Love my PI-Hole although had to drop the filtering a bit myself, some of the stock lists are very agressive.

 

[Deebs]

Got most of my crap running on a low power unRaid server, Pi-hole and PI-Alert running plus a whole host of prowlerrr, radarr type stuff running. Have a low power HP thin client running my firewall as I cant bring myself to stick that in a virtual environment.

Just getting into the PI's myself and have a EmonTX3+EmonCMS with multiple CT's monitoring my imported power (And soon to be exported power) cuz British Gas suck donkey balls and could fall into a bag of tits and come out sucking their thumbs.


Love my PI-Hole although had to drop the filtering a bit myself, some of the stock lists are very agressive.

View attachment 48346

Same, my firewall is physical but I have a VM of it for testing upgrades being a professional an all

 

[Tay]

Next you'll be saying you do backups and everything ^^

 

[Embattle]

Will admit I'm more interested in the Pixel Watch 2 - currently got a Fitbit Sense which - apart from the odd software glitch - has been a fantastic bit of kit. Loads of health info, all the notifications etc I need and the battery lasted about 6 days when it was new. However now it's getting on a bit that's down to 4 days and the charger is being a PITA.

Is the Pixel Watch any good?

I think the Pixel 2 is good, certainly works for me.

 

[Embattle]

Got a new headset coming:

Haptic PC Gaming Headset - Razer Kraken V3 HyperSense | Razer United Kingdom

A cutting-edge gaming headset powered by haptic technology that provides realistic vibration experience for in-game sounds.

www.razer.com

I'm replacing a Corsair Void RGB headset due to the fact the cable seems to of degraded, that issue along with the fact the Corsair mechanical keyboard I purchased a few years ago took less than 6 months for WASD and the shift key to wear off means I'm avoiding any Corsair stuff now.

 

[Embattle]

Semi nerdy but it seems more essential than ever for motorcycles:

HELITE E-TURTLE 2 AIR VEST - MOTORCYCLE SAFETY VEST - HELITE

The world’s fastest selling inflatable safety vest – the Helite Turtle 2 has now gone wireless!! Increasing safety whilst on your motorcycle.

heliteuk.co.uk

 

[Bodhi]

Anyone else buy power tools then figure out what to do with them afterwards?

Yeah just done that.

Bosch Advanced 18V Li-ion Brushed Cordless Multi tool

This versatile, oscillating, 18V multifunction tool is the perfect choice to tackle a wide range of DIY projects. With a powerful motor and electronic speed preselection, the AdvancedMulti 18 enables speeds to be matched to the needs of each job and material. For optimal visibility, a 180° light...

www.diy.com

Already planning to use it to sand some walls and cut up old furniture so I can take it to the tip - if anyone knows of an attachment that can be used to strip wallpaper I'm all ears.

 

[smurkin]

Anyone else buy power tools then figure out what to do with them afterwards?

Yeah just done that.

Bosch Advanced 18V Li-ion Brushed Cordless Multi tool

This versatile, oscillating, 18V multifunction tool is the perfect choice to tackle a wide range of DIY projects. With a powerful motor and electronic speed preselection, the AdvancedMulti 18 enables speeds to be matched to the needs of each job and material. For optimal visibility, a 180° light...

www.diy.com

Already planning to use it to sand some walls and cut up old furniture so I can take it to the tip - if anyone knows of an attachment that can be used to strip wallpaper I'm all ears.

They do a wallpaper attachment, but its just a curved smooth blade. I found it just dug into the plaster. I've had a corded one for about 10 years. Its ok. doesn't get used very often. Good for sanding into corners.

 

[Bodhi]

They do a wallpaper attachment, but its just a curved smooth blade. I found it just dug into the plaster. I've had a corded one for about 10 years. Its ok. doesn't get used very often. Good for sanding into corners.

I did wonder if it would dig into the plaster/smoothing paste/all the other stuff we're finding under the wallpaper.

Managed to get it all off now using an old fashioned wallpaper scraper and some elbow grease, now for sanding where my new toy comes in

Have had a quick go to try and get rid of some old paint - gets more off than our proper sander and is so much easier to use - seems to produce less dust as well, so far anyway.

 

[smurkin]

I did wonder if it would dig into the plaster/smoothing paste/all the other stuff we're finding under the wallpaper.

Managed to get it all off now using an old fashioned wallpaper scraper and some elbow grease, now for sanding where my new toy comes in

Have had a quick go to try and get rid of some old paint - gets more off than our proper sander and is so much easier to use - seems to produce less dust as well, so far anyway.

Do you have a vacuum attachment - well worth exploring as it really saves on cleaning up.

I have a Mirka Deros - it doesn't really make any dust. It was pricey but it is my favourite bit of kit.

 

[Deebs]

Do you have a vacuum attachment - well worth exploring as it really saves on cleaning up.

I have a Mirka Deros - it doesn't really make any dust. It was pricey but it is my favourite bit of kit.

Sorry but are my reading glasses playing up?

Did you say that a hoover is your favourite bit of kit? Not a 10,000 watt drill, chainsaw, kango, massive 2 handed axe, angle grinder that can cut anything known to man?

Ah I get it, you must be like me when I used to have an office in a loft with a resident bee's nest, spent most of the day chasing the fuckers around with my dyson on full power laughing when I caught the buggers and then watching them spin at the speed of sound in the dust bowl. They must have been dizzy as fuck

Tell me it is so and that you do not let the missus use that to clean the house?

 

[smurkin]

Sorry but are my reading glasses playing up?

Did you say that a hoover is your favourite bit of kit? Not a 10,000 watt drill, chainsaw, kango, massive 2 handed axe, angle grinder that can cut anything known to man?

Ah I get it, you must be like me when I used to have an office in a loft with a resident bee's nest, spent most of the day chasing the fuckers around with my dyson on full power laughing when I caught the buggers and then watching them spin at the speed of sound in the dust bowl. They must have been dizzy as fuck

Tell me it is so and that you do not let the missus use that to clean the house?

Yes, I do use it as a hoover from time to time its bloody powerful. It will also suck up water if I take the dust bag out.

Mostly though I use it to sand things. The sander attachment power cable plugs into the hoover so that the hoover only powers on when the sander button is pressed. It also has an app. It is both cool and nerdy

I have all those other tools but this is the best one. Not sure what a Kango is.

The wife never does the hoovering .

 

[smurkin]

ps, I also do the Dyson thing with wasps

 

[Deebs]

Kango is the tool workmen use to smash concrete/roads etc. A women's fantasy being able to sit on one of them whilst they jackhammer away for hours.

I probably should get one of those robot hoovers but the fuckers are lazy and won't do stairs.

We should start a team, The Dyson Wasps.

 

[smurkin]

I probably should get one of those robot hoovers but the fuckers are lazy and won't do stairs.

Nice birthday present for the wife. Last birthday I bought her a meater bluetooth food thermometer for doing barbecue cooks

 

[Deebs]

Nice birthday present for the wife. Last birthday I bought her a meater bluetooth food thermometer for doing barbecue cooks

Are they actually any good now and not a fad when they first came out? ie has their suction power improved so that they actually pick dust particles up?

 

[Embattle]

Ours is always full of hair, etc. and I run it mid week of full vacuum and at the weekend of vacuum and mop but our Dyson stick can still out power it if a more series clean is needed.

 

[Bodhi]

Do you have a vacuum attachment - well worth exploring as it really saves on cleaning up.

I have a Mirka Deros - it doesn't really make any dust. It was pricey but it is my favourite bit of kit.

Apologies chap missed this - but yes we have the vacuum attachment for our mutil sander and it's great when doing woodwork - but more challenging to use when sanding walls for painting.

We've got the Bosch equivalent to that vacuum (Bosch are my Sony for cosplay tradesman activities in case you hasn't guessed) and it's a stonking bit of kit. Does wet and dry and if you're not careful it will pull the carpet up.

Had loads of use out of the multi tool already - loads of sanding and it made short work of a Billy bookcase that needed to go to the tip.

Most useful bit of kit we've bought though has been one of these:

Yeti Folding work platform (L)600mm

This work platform from Yeti has a 395mm by 600mm platform, and a height of 0.5m. This platform can be used for many things like decorating, washing cars and for just out of reach areas. The maximum load capacity for this platform is 150kg.

www.diy.com

Having high ceilings means a lot of height work, and I hate stepladders - this has changed the game completely.

 

[smurkin]

Most useful bit of kit we've bought though has been one of these:

Yeti Folding work platform (L)600mm

This work platform from Yeti has a 395mm by 600mm platform, and a height of 0.5m. This platform can be used for many things like decorating, washing cars and for just out of reach areas. The maximum load capacity for this platform is 150kg.

www.diy.com

Having high ceilings means a lot of height work, and I hate stepladders - this has changed the game completely.

Those little work platforms are great - cheaper at argos

 

[caLLous]

I've finally freed myself from the shackles of consumer ISP modems and their half-arsed routing capabilities.





Orange don't allow their modems to be put into bridge mode so I've had to put the OPNsense box in the DMZ. 2.5G from the modem to OPNsense which then goes to the 2.5G managed switch underneath and then out to all the sockets in the house (or all the ones with something on the other end of them, anyway), either direct to machines or to the other managed switches in the first pic.

I'm a bit annoyed that I didn't do more research about the firewall appliance beforehand because I went for one with 6 2.5G ports, thinking I'd go direct from it to the sockets but apparently doing the routing via OPNsense and bridged ports is a real killer for performance so I'm only using (and will probably only ever use) 2 of the 6 ports on it. I could just as easily have gone for one with fewer ports and the N100 CPU instead of the N305 but you live and learn.

Anyway, one local subnet with everything stuffed on it is out, VLANs are in (including one that gets piped through a Wireguard VPN to make anything connected to it - primarily the Fire Stick - think it's in England), my own Wireguard server so I can securely connect in remotely, network-wide adblocking via AdGuard Home, DNS caching (and other good stuff) via Unbound DNS and a host of other features I haven't even begun to look into yet...

 

[Wij]

Nice. I wish I had your commitment but I just can’t be arsed. My Asus router is dropping the wifi networks for about a minute, once an hour, and I can’t summon up the arsedness to try to fix it.

 

[caLLous]

Nice. I wish I had your commitment but I just can’t be arsed. My Asus router is dropping the wifi networks for about a minute, once an hour, and I can’t summon up the arsedness to try to fix it.

I regularly had this problem, once or twice a month, where internet traffic would just stop getting through for a couple of hours at a time. Stuff that was going through a VPN or an SSH tunnel was fine, but everything else just went dead. It's happened since I put this new system in and I was able to pinpoint that it was a DNS server issue within minutes and (touch wood) fix it. I should probably have realised it was a DNS problem before but I didn't, so there.

One thing that wound me up about the ISP-enforced modem and pushed me into doing all this was that you have to use their DNS servers and fuck you if you want to do anything else. That meant that stuff like Pi-hole and AdGuard Home couldn't be set up network-wide because you need to set them up as the DNS server that whatever you want to block ads on points to. So I would've had to manually configure every device on the network to use them. Now, though, OPNsense points everything that's heading out to the internet at AdGuard Home so the DNS requests from any device that connects to the network go through AGH to block ads, and then through Unbound to check if there's already a cached response and then, if there isn't, it gets encrypted by DNS over TLS before going out to DNS servers of my choice (Cloudflare at 1.1.1.1, Google at 8.8.8.8, Quad9 at 9.9.9.9 etc). Even a phone that's fleetingly connected to the wifi gets the same treatment.

 

[Jupitus]

<SNIP> and (touch wood) fix it </SNIP>

You sure you wanna say that to @Wij ??????

 

[MYstIC G]

I regularly had this problem, once or twice a month, where internet traffic would just stop getting through for a couple of hours at a time. Stuff that was going through a VPN or an SSH tunnel was fine, but everything else just went dead. It's happened since I put this new system in and I was able to pinpoint that it was a DNS server issue within minutes and (touch wood) fix it. I should probably have realised it was a DNS problem before but I didn't, so there.

One thing that wound me up about the ISP-enforced modem and pushed me into doing all this was that you have to use their DNS servers and fuck you if you want to do anything else. That meant that stuff like Pi-hole and AdGuard Home couldn't be set up network-wide because you need to set them up as the DNS server that whatever you want to block ads on points to. So I would've had to manually configure every device on the network to use them. Now, though, OPNsense points everything that's heading out to the internet at AdGuard Home so the DNS requests from any device that connects to the network go through AGH to block ads, and then through Unbound to check if there's already a cached response and then, if there isn't, it gets encrypted by DNS over TLS before going out to DNS servers of my choice (Cloudflare at 1.1.1.1, Google at 8.8.8.8, Quad9 at 9.9.9.9 etc). Even a phone that's fleetingly connected to the wifi gets the same treatment.

I did something similar (but far smaller scale) a while back. I got fed up of every time you have to jump ISP in the UK (because none of the fuckers will just let you keep paying what you were paying at the end of an initial term) having to redo the entire network plus whenever the shit ISP router played up, all the local lan services died as well (who'd want to open a file from their NAS when the whole internet is missing ).

I have one of these: NanoPi R2S running OpenWRT handling the DHCP with the main DNS for the lan on a different port and the normal DNS on the standard port running AdGuard Home with a lookup to the non-standard DNS internally then encrypted DNS externally. When I bought them it was like 2 for £40 so I've basically got my router and an entire spare for less than the cost of your average AAA title these days.

 

[Overdriven]

Upgraded the wife from a OP8T to a OP12R and the migration process was seamless. Phone is hella fast too.

Didn't go for the 12 as the price difference for what she'd use it for was overkill.

Huge performance difference between the two and even my Pixel 7 Pro.

Not jealous at all.

 

[TdC]

I'm still on an old 7T privately. Good to hear they still got it.

 

[Bodhi]

Decided it was time for a music system for our second living room (not a flex we live near Stoke, all old houses have two living rooms).

Anyway decided the core of the system would be one of these:

Marantz Melody X M-CR612 (Black)

Shop for Marantz Melody X MCR612 Black | Streaming Mini System EXC Speakers with Richer Sounds for expert advice and lowest prices guaranteed

www.richersounds.com

Does CD/DAB/FM/Spotify and lots of other stuff.

Then got one of these to play the 2 records we own:

Denon DP300F (Black)

Shop for Denon DP300 Black Turntable with Richer Sounds for expert advice and lowest prices guaranteed

www.richersounds.com

Speakers will be a set of these I've kept since the 90s:

Rogers db101 Speakers Reviewed - HomeTheaterReview

The Rogers db101 is designed to be "headbanging equipment wreckers" and to play loudly. As our reviewer said, "keep this in mind if you're an apartment dweller. The db101s do not assume the proximity of complaisant neighbors." Performance wise, the speaker has "suck finesse in midband, such...

hometheaterreview.com