Good evening gopherinos | |
Once again it's time for the Old Computer Challenge [1]. This | |
year, we're back on slow hardware, to the best of our abilities. | |
The aim is to use one core at the lowest possible frequency and | |
512MB RAM. | |
For this year, the trusty iBook G4 returns, partially out of | |
laziness, but also because I ended up shaking things up anyways so | |
it's like starting anew anyways. First off, setup of the machine: | |
using apm -L it's now running at 599MHz and unfortunately, the | |
suggestion to set machine mem=512M isn't an argument for the | |
macppc kernel. Instead, I limited the datasize-max to 512M and did | |
a quick yank of the 1GB stick for the factory 512MB for a new | |
total of 768MB. A quick peek at top shows I'm only using 114MB so | |
I should be good anyways. | |
I'm in the process of transitioning to a new mail system so right | |
now everything is in disarray. Eventually it will be better but | |
it's a bit of a mess. mutt is my friend here, and with some | |
fetchmail it should be fine for the next week. snownews makes its | |
return as my feed reader, and this year I'm playing with | |
newsgroups / usenet via slrn and slrnpull thanks to the helpful | |
entry from f6k [2]. | |
Of course, since I can't leave well enough alone, I decided to | |
take on the additional challenge of running network through a | |
38400 bps null modem connection. This basically means I'm text | |
only, unless I'm willing to batch or wait. | |
This is no big deal for the most part. mutt is happily text, | |
although the rest of the world insists on gigantic messages. news | |
fits in with text primarily as does irc. There are a few | |
things graphical that I'd like to still check out, and they | |
work but maybe not optimally. First off, watching ADS-B is a | |
fun distraction using my local tar1090 offering. My text only | |
alternative is readsb --interactive. Not nearly as nice as the | |
map, but I can figure distance with RSSI and lat/lon, and | |
direction with heading. The other thing I'd like to see is get a | |
quick read on the local temperature and humidity monitors. | |
Originally I was hoping on setting up something like grafterm, but | |
I ran out of time to figure it out. So running rtl_433 will give | |
me realtime environment data pretty quick and will work for now. | |
Anyways it's getting late and I'm hoping additional entries are | |
less about the tech and more about workflow solutions. Also, I've | |
somewhat kept up on reading from last year so reading is a great | |
way to spend the evening. The computers are usually off during | |
peak energy usage hours due to electricity cost and heat, so | |
curling up with a book or portable is already part of the routine. | |
Sadly, my e-ink device is very much not OCC with it's multi-GB | |
memory and 8 processor cores, but since I'm just using it as an | |
e-reader or sometimes a notepad or sketchpad, I'll give it a pass. | |
Anyways, it's late. Goodnight. | |
Tags: #oldcomputerchallenge #limitedinternet #batch #rss #sdr #adsb | |
[0] Text-only version | |
[1] gopher://occ.deadnet.se/1/users | |
[2] gopher://sdf.org/0/users/f6k/2022/0812.txt |