busybee fluffy rambles

Office

• sparkle (macOS)
  • M1 Mac studio (32GB RAM, 24 cores)
  • 6TB total SSD
  • Used for all my art and 3D modeling, most of my video editing, and some of my music production
  • The second-most-expensive computer I’ve owned (the first-most being a G5 PowerMac, which was also named sparkle)
• nodule (Linux)
  • an Intel NUC with way more storage than it needs
  • Runs my Plex frontend (with the content stored on attache) which probably isn’t terribly efficient considering that means my TV talks to nodule which then talks to attache but whatever, I have gigabit ethernet, It’s Fine™
  • Also runs my owncast instance
  • I also have a homebridge instance on it for my security cameras
  • This machine was originally my work machine when I worked at the shitty web publishing company back in 2020¹, bought during the “two weeks” when we were working from home during the pandemic and I needed better partitioning from my personal computer since my in-office work machine was an iMac because I really wanted there to be a separation between Work and Home so I opted not to get a laptop like everyone else did, and honestly I still think I made the better choice for a bunch of reasons
  • For a while it was my 3D print server, a task for which it was extreme overkill
  • I also use it for doing non-macOS builds of bandcrash, natively for Linux and the Windows one via virtualbox.
• feldspar (Windows, decommissioned)
  • 8th-gen Lenovo X1C (core i9, 32GB RAM)
  • 1TB of SSD
  • Originally was my work computer when I worked at Moz², but they let me buy it at a decent discount when I left
  • For a while this is what I used to do Windows and Linux builds of Bandcrash and also some shader setup for my VRChat avatar because one of the shaders doesn’t run on Metal; I also used it to bootstrap VCC on my VRChat projects before I switched to ALCOM
  • Currently decommissioned, as the battery turned into a spicy pillow and the fan started to scream loudly, and the fan is an expensive proprietary part that nobody stocks
• eve (Windows, essentially unused)
  • An Eve V Windows tablet, somewhat notorious for being from a company that was trying to do some interesting stuff but they turned out to be really bad at the business part of business³
  • I bought it as a portable art-making device because I thought it’d be better than my iPad for running real drawing software; it wasn’t
  • Also it never really worked right and has some long-term reliability issues
  • I’ll probably use this to replace feldspar at some point but also its battery no longer maintains a charge either Update: Ended up using nodule for this, so much better
• piney (Linux, essentially unused)
  • a PineBook pro
  • it fucking sucks and I never use it
• cadet (macOS, decommissioned)
  • a 2017 15" MacBook pro with a cracked screen making it basically useless
  • but it used to be my main computer that I used for basically everything
  • I miss being able to have just one computer to do basically everything
  • someday I’ll remove the display panel and turn this into a slimline Windows dev machine or something because it’d probably be better at it than eve
  • but for now it sits in the corner next to my yoga mat and DDR pads and a bunch of other exercise equipment that I really should remember to use more often
• SteamDeck (Linux/SteamOS)
  • … a SteamDeck
  • I want to love it but it hurts my hands to use

Bedroom

• champ (iPadOS)
  • an iPad Pro (third? gen? the one right before they switched from A-series to M-series processors)
  • mostly I use it for doodling song ideas that pop into my head as I’m waking up
  • sometimes I also draw on it or use it to write down my intrusive thoughts or the random TODO list items that occur while I’m falling asleep which then leads me to ruminate on those things until I pass out from exhaustion
  • don’t keep computers in your bedrooms, kids

living room

• glados (formerly lunchbox) (Windows 11)
  • gaming PC with a Ryzen somethingorother and like… it has storage in it I guess? and an RTX 2080Ti
  • mostly used for VRChat and for joining Zoom calls
  • also temporarily what I’m using for the things feldspar did, maybe it’ll be permanent if it turns out to not be too awkward update it was too awkward
  • it’s so named because it is in a svelte white case and it used to have a laser turret on top (previously it was in a more compact but much more difficult to maintain and cool cube case, thus the old name)
• grace (macOS)
  • M1 MacBook Pro, 13" (16GB RAM, 1TB storage)
  • bought on clearance from Apple so it wasn’t too expensive
  • used to be my recording studio machine but now it’s just the “random computing from the couch” machine that every nerd has
  • fun fact, it is the computer I am typing this very blog post on right at this moment
  • also fuck butterfly keyboards and also the touchbar, ughhhhh I’m glad Apple dropped those, not so glad that I’d have to pay another $1200 or whatever to get a better computer than this, why doesn’t anyone make good laptops which prioritize the typing experience without also being top-tier Computing Mastery Machines
  • maybe I should replace it with an old iBook or something
• hyphy (Linux)
  • a craptacular HP netbook I bought at Wal-Mart and mostly use for just like, random Linux bullshit I guess
  • it sucks and its keyboard is awful
  • but it has an optical DVD-RW drive, a rarity in my house
• pi (Linux, rarely used)
  • a Raspberry Pi 400
  • mostly bought it to see if it’d be a suitable computing device for my nieces to wean them off of their Chromebooks but my sister said if I gave them one I’d have to be the tech support and knowing my sister I realized this was a threat, not a promise
  • at one point I thought I’d use it as a vintage computing emulator thingamajig since it has a nostalgic form factor reminiscent of the C128 (which I once had) and Amiga 500/600/1200 (which I didn’t but always wanted) but god damn is it uncomfortable to actually use in that way
  • mostly I just use this to run my Halloween projector loop once a year and that’s about it and I kind of forgot I even had it until I was about to publish this entry

basement/studio

• attache (Linux/Synlogy DSM)
  • my NAS
  • it’s a Synology DS920, with 9 bays total (4 internal, 5 external) and a ridiculous amount of storage (like 40TB or something? enough that I don’t feel like I need to upgrade it any time soon)
  • I have a lot of legitimate stuff to store on it, including:
    • my private git repos
    • the archive of the startup I was cofounder/CTO of a few years ago
    • my video projects
    • my music production
    • backups of all my other computers
  • I also have a lot of less-legitimate stuff on it
  • also I run a Homebridge instance on it although it doesn’t do much these days (mostly it proxies wake-on-LAN for glados from HomeKit so I can say “hey siri, game time” and then everything in my living room comes to life configured for PC gaming)
• inkling (Linux/Windows 10 dual boot)
  • Lenovo ThinkPad X220T
  • Bought it as an art-making laptop
  • it fucking sucks for that because it is super heavy and the screen is only 1024x768 and the stylus has precision issues near the edge of the screen
  • these days I mostly use it as a serial terminal for accessing my router which only has a serial port
  • it also has an optical drive
  • its internal battery is long-dead
  • it also came with an external wedge battery which doubled the already-heavy weight and is also probably dead by now
• bucket (macOS)
  • M1 Mac mini (2020)
  • 4.5TB of SSD total
  • This is central to my recording studio and it’s pretty good at it although it’s starting to get a bit long in the tooth and I hope the M4 mini rumors are true
  • I mostly just wish it had more Thunderbolt ports (guess which part of the M4 mini rumors is most compelling to me)
• dingus
  • Bambu Labs X1C
  • this isn’t a computer it’s a 3D printer
  • I only list it because this is why nodule stoped being a 3D print server, because it has its own built-in
  • great at extruding plastic, not so great at running Excel
• router (Linux/OpenWRT)
  • a router
  • it’s a PC Engines apu4 running OpenWRT Linux
  • it routes traffic
  • simultaneously the most important and least interesting computer on my network

There’s probably others I’m forgetting, but jeeze, I have too many computers.

Of all the machines on this list I mostly use sparkle, bucket, grace, slate, and glados, in no particular order. Well, and router.