Joe's computing experience

my computing experience

These are the things I use in my day-to-day computing experience at home. As I enjoy working from my computers and tweaking them, I recommend them all.

My configuration files for some of these softwares can be found on my dotfiles repo on GitJoe. My wallapers can be found on this page.

mother

mother is my main computer. It's a desktop I bought a long time ago and that I have improved over time. To the day of writing, only the motherboard, CPU, and I guess the box are original from the day of the purchase. Nearly everthing else has been replaced/added over time. I like this box, but even the motherboard and CPU are expected to be changed at some point because it is ancient, if not antique.

Its name, mother, is a reference to the on-board computer in the first Alien movie. It's a great film, go take a look.

hardware

Here is the hardware specs:

software

mars

mars, formerly fbsd-tp, has now become my fallback/just-in-case machine. It used to be my main computer over mother, my more beefier machine. As I found myself making music and playing games more frequently, I ditched this low-spec BSD machine over a more high-spec Linux machine.

hardware

This computer is a ThinkPad T530 and I love it. Unfortunately I bought it used and the previous owner forgot to tell me there was an ugly turtle tattooed on the rear side. This is my only complain. It's not too visible but it's there. The deal was quick, there was not much lighting and the seller opened the screen right away, so I didn't see that ugly turtle until I was home with my new computer.

tp_turtle.jpg

The ugly turtle

Here is the hardware specs:

I know it's not crazy good but I can do all my work and my media consumption with it so I consider myself a tech-happy guy.

software

Software on this computer is all about minimalism. Well, except for GNU Emacs.

neofetch.jpg

My neofetch

helios

helios is the nervous system and the central point of my home network. It's a very modest Ubiquity Networks EdgeRouter-X and boy does that thing delivers. Btw maybe I'm retarded but I can't find it anymore on their website, shit.

This is essentially a simple router/firewall/NAT. It's clearly not a FortiGate or an OPNsense-loaded appliance but it's fairly capable for the price, while consuming less electric power. With hardware offloading, I'm able to reach Gigabit Ethernet no problem. Also, this is powered by a MIPS processor, which is cool.

The plan was originally to get this temporarily, because it's cheap, and then when I'm richer getting myself a larger, more capable, 2.5GbE OPNsense-type firewall to fit with my 2.5GbE fiber installation, and to communicate with a future NAS equiped in 2.5GbE as well, also considering changing all my switches to 2.5GbE ones (much pricier). But in reality, I don't need such a deluxe setup, and I'll probably never get a NAS, cold storing things in extrnal HDDs is fine for my use cases.

I use this to separate my devices into subnets and route some of my traffic through WireGuard when I need peace of mind. This thing is great, get yourself one.

Bellow you can find a map of my home network.

net_small.png

My network

The bbox, my ISP box, is essentially a bridge to the internet at this point. I'll get a generic ONT and try to replace it. This fucker keeps pinging all of the devices it can find and sending data home. At least my subnet devices are safe now because its now blocked by helios. But removing bbox entirely would be great.

athena

alcatraz

other notable hardware

I have a RaspberryPi 4 I received from a friend as a christmas gift. It runs FreeBSD of course. I use it to learn I2C/GPIO programming with a bit of electronics. I am looking for some projects for it.

I later got into microcontrollers. I own a development Arduino Uno and an ESP32, which is a very interesting chip. I will share projects I have with these things in the future if I find myself finishing a project.

I have a Casio F-91W watch gifted by a friend too so I never loose time. Adult people tend to show more respect towards people wearing watches too, just like they do with people with wives or kids, so there's that. I later bought a Casio A100WEGG-1AVT and a A100WE-1AVT because they're super cool-looking.

Last piece of hardware worth noting is my keyboard: a Leopold FC900R PD with Cherry MX Brown switches. It is so good I plan on buying maybe 5 of them in the future so I don't need to worry and I can just use it the same model for all my life. I might check some of the Unicomp Model M remakes when they are available again.

But what a fool I was. This is what I thought some time ago. Then I dived into the much larger world of high-end mechanical keyboards. I setteled with the following build.
Keydous NJ80-AP white (I wasn't able to find it non-transparent black) with brass plate as my board, which comes with pre-lubded stabs. Kailh Polia tactile switches, not yet lubed. Super good switches for the tactile enjoyer. Drop + MiTo MT3 Godspeed Ares keycaps. Love those MT3 keycaps.
This is a great build to me, might get a second one, Apollo variant, just for work. I actually ended up selling my two Leopolds after completing this build so yeah. Still wanna try these Unicomps eventually.