It's been a minute since I've written an update for the blog, so I thought I would take a minute and see if I could get any words to flow. The last few months have been a blur. I've been re-structuring how I work, since we are beginning to build up some more on the homestead, and are currently preparing to build our chicken coop. Between these preparations and thinking work on some of my projects, I have been doing some of the following:
These are some of the main things I have been working on lately, and will continue working on as priorities into the immediate future. Of course, I also have to eat, so I'm doing some contract programming and writing for clients on the side, about 20 hours a week. When I'm not doing all of these things, I'm usually hanging around outside getting some work done before the cold really sets in, or sitting inside playing video games with my cats hanging around me.
The last month or so, I have been at home more than anything else again as we continue to build some of the homesteading ideas out, and it continually reminds me that I am happiest when I can just be at home. I tend to only leave my property once a week in order to get groceries, tobacco, drinks, and the like. If I don't need to go get things for the house, the house is where I'd rather be!
Of course, I'm not entirely a hermit. I still hang out with a few friends, and I am looking forward to the prospect of hitting the city to go bowling again sometime soon. It has been far too long since my wife, my best friend, and I went bowling - always a good time.
Anyone that knows me knows I also play too many games - and of course, in true rav3ndust fashion, I am looking forward to several games that I want to pick up and play over the next few months, and most of them are for the Nintendo Switch. I want to pick up the Switch version of Minecraft as there are a few friends I could do cross-play with. I also want to play Nier:Automata for Switch, along with the Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity in preparation for Tears of the Kingdom coming out next year. I'm still a big fan of Nintendo (and yes, I know they have their faults, like every other games company).
If I'm really excited for something on the video gaming front, however, it is picking up my own Steam Deck. Of course, this is also because it will afford me the ability to use a full-blown GNU/Linux machine in a Switch-like format, sporting that new Arch-based SteamOS 3. I'm also, however, looking forward to playing my Steam library from anywhere, like a next step up from being able to play my favorite Switch games from wherever I might be.
I have been thinking more seriously about my plans for a sort of "FOSS service", where I run all kinds of services and allow people to use them. Something like a git forge (probably Gitea or GitLab), a Nextcloud, a Fediverse server, an email box, and other such things. I'm still mulling over which services we will offer and how I'd like to plan to do it.
Finally, I've been working on nightshade, my "system in a script" that sets up my preferred environment on a fresh Arch Linux installation. This includes ashWM, and a bunch of custom scripts, wallpapers, and more. Getting it running on a fresh Arch install is this easy (assuming you have Git installed):
git clone https://github.com/rav3ndust/nightshade
cd nightshade/installer
chmod +x nsInstaller.sh
./nsInstaller.sh
Give it a try if you'd like! You get my window manager setup and a host of custom software, some of my custom scripts, and a minimal environment with my own elegant customizations and patches on top of dwm.
This week I am reading The Regulators by Richard Bachman, a Stephen King pen-name.