I’m going to my first #repaircafe today, it’s in a nearby village and I emailed to ask if I could visit and they said yes! I’d like to do something similar in our village as there seems to be the need and the resource just needs the organisation…
Just as an update, had a lovely visit to a nearby village, their #RepairCafe is part of a Good Neighbours scheme (they organise a bus to a local town, help clear gardens, provide a befriending service - they have invited me to their AGM to learn more).
The session had clothes repairs, small wood work repairs, bike repairs, an IT helper and knife sharpener, it’s their 4th session and sounds like advertising was key. There was a little bustle and a queue for the wood repairs person but then /1
My husband has always been scared of spiders. If a spider needed removed I would be the one to deal with it, as I've always admired their work. For whatever reason, spiders love our Bathroom, and there always seems to be one or two in there no matter what hubs has tried to keep them out. So, I started naming them, I called one Henry, and I told hubs that he was really social, because every time you'd sit down on the toliet, he would pop out of his hole and just sit by your feet until you were done, then he'd crawl back. Another one would crawl out by the wall when you'd shower, and I told him that was Henry's wife Helena, and she was kind of a pervert, because she liked seeing people naked, but Henry didn't mind, because he liked them freaky. Whenever we would come out of the bathroom, we started giving updates about what Henry and Helena were up to. One day they disappeared, and we were both kind of sad, but last night hubs comes out of the bathroom, and says, Come look! He points to the wall by the toliet, and there is a little spider, and he says, Henry, he had a son! We are very excited about this development!
@RickiTarr the spider that lives in our upstairs bathroom is called Snowball while in our living room it’s his cousin Doughball. They are definitely our friends. Doughball often comes and watches tv with us.
I’m upgrading my garage ethernet network so maybe some down time on the solarcene.community #solarinstance. Pleased with myself as instead of jumping to am&zon I went on #eBay and got a 8 port network switch #secondhand . It was missing the power adapter which is fine as I’ll be rigging it anyway to run off 5V (it’s a TP SG108 and I’ve already got the 5 port version which works fine off 5V with a little modification).
Means I can finally put in place my plans to automate the #mastodon instance
Eek, plan is not going as well as I hoped, turns out it’s an older version of the SG108 so it doesn’t run off 5V, it seems to half boot but isn’t enough. Looks like the modern versions of the device have some low power elements.
It’s not all bad, it’s meant to run off 9V and my solar system is 12V so I can step it down. The question is how efficient is it?
Progress! (Apologies for solarcene popping offline a few times)
I found a step down power supply which I’m now using to power the 8 port switch, it’s mounted to a frame of hexagons. The #orangepi on the right runs solarcene.community. The laptop isn’t on #solar right now and does other projects
I have an SD card belonging to a friend, with the last photos she has of her late husband. Unfortunately it seems to have a hairline fracture. Very occasionally I can get as USB reader to recognise the card and the first 4K block, but it's usually dead as a door nail. I'm sure an expensive lab could recover it, but that's well out of reach. Any sane ideas welcome.
I have some books that I don't want, but I'm not sure how to dispose of them properly.
Let's start with the worst case:
poorly-written book
expressing potentially harmful ideas
by an objectionable author
One example might be Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. I think I have to hold on to it because even though I hate it now, it was important to my political evolution. But let's say I decide I need the shelf space, and it's time to say goodbye.
@solarpunkpresents really enjoyed season 3 episode 1. I think it’s key that #solarpunks debate and discuss everything and it’s good to hear alternative opinions. I was particularly interested about the concept of mineral footprint, where are we going to source the nails and screws of the future? #solarpunk
@solarpunkpresents thanks Ariel for the reply! Perhaps I should setup a village nail/screw repository a bit like community tool kits. (Actually isn’t a terrible idea!)
@solarpunkpresents@RavynWitch reflecting on my own maker/diy approach I have often been forced to order multiples of a washer or screw, I recently took down some plasterboard/drywall and managed to recover the screws from there.
I could see the ‘Little Parts Library’ being mounted on a wall, lots of coded little draws and a larger deposit slot for new donations. It would need a solar panel roof and would host its own web server which tracked usage and meant 1/2
@solarpunkpresents@RavynWitch you could look up if there was available parts before you turned up. Volunteers would pop in a few times a week to tidy up and sort the new donations.
I’m inspired! Though I bet it turns out this is a real movement and I’m late to the party!