Tag: Home Assistant

Paramount Sucks

By

On 17th November 2021

In Blog

So today we got the news that Paramount has decided to pull Star Trek Discovery from Netflix and force the UK to wait until early 2022 to get season 4.

Well that just sucks balls and I am gonna be clear, I am not gonna wait, I will pirate it, why, because USians can’t help but spoil stuff.

Was the same with series 1 of The Mandalorian, so yeah, so will pirate it, and I will make it clear that this policy makes me extremely unlikely to subscribe to Paramount+ at all and I will pirate subsequent shows.

The golden era of streaming has ended as the market fragments as every company wants a piece of the pie.

But well, I need to dust off my pirate hat once again.

Home Assistant

Today I took the old Core 2 Duo that was originally going to be used as a NAS until we discovered that the PC can’t run FreeNAS and I installed Home Assistant on it, running on a virtual machine in Debian.

It’s gonna be a lot of work to configure, but I look forward to the challenge.

Windows Reinstall

I have had to reinstall Windows 11 on my main PC, I wanted to move away from the Dev Channel as I now need stability, but that necessitated a full reinstall, not a huge deal but it’s done now.

Got the PC more or less back to what I want it to be.

What Am I Modelling

I started the week off by painting a Shokkjump Dragsta for my Orks.

I had found my Macrotek Enginseer amongst a load of 40K Adeptus Mechanicus stuff, so I got them built and painted next.

After which I turned my attention to Sigmar finest, Yndrasta, the Celestial Spear & the Celestant Prime.

I got them more or less finished at the same time, but they are such important models I felt they deserved their own posts on Instagram.

I ended up painting them in the traditional Hammers of Sigmar colours, because I really want them to stand out on the tabletop and also stand apart from my Celestial Vindicators, because that’s how important their roles in the army is.

I then started work on Obi-Wan Kenobi for my Grand Army of the Republic force for Star Wars Legions.

So what’s in my painting queue for next week?

  1. Obi-Wan Kenobi
  2. Necron Skorpekh Destroyers x 6, Warriors x 3 and Canoptek Plasmacyte x 2
  3. Blackstone Fortress The Archivist
  4. Adeptus Custodes Wardens x 5
  5. Death Korps of Krieg Heavy Bolter Team x 3
  6. Blackstone Fortress Ambull & Borewyrm Infestations x 2
  7. Ork Flash Gitz x 5
  8. Grand Army of the Republic BARC Speeder
  9. Necron Warriors x 10 & Lord Hasmoteph the Resplendent
  10. Imperial Knight Warden

What Am I Reading

Not a thing, but I did listen to the audiobook of Dominion which was quite good, really good plot and lots of cool action.

What Video Games Am I Playing

But of a mix, mostly Forza Horizon 4 and Forza Horizon 5.

I did finish Halo 4 and have now started on Halo 5 Guardians.

Also Halo Infinite launched so I have a bit of a play in that.

What Tabletop Games Am I Playing

Not a thing 🙁

What Am I Creating

I put up the latest battle report for Imperium and that’s about it.

What Am I Backing

Not a sausage, but I have now confirmed the pledge manager for Avatar: Legends and the shipping and add on costs for Orlog were taken.

For Orlog I ended up adding on the glow in the dark dice, the Valhalla dice set and the linen mat.

What Am I Cooking

Sadly not a thing, I need to change that.

What Am I Spending

Not a lot as very much broke.

I did purchase the Festival DLC for Tropico 6 from the Humble Store, and Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force on GOG

Next Projects

By

On 10th August 2021

In Blog

Now that both mine and Megan’s PCs are complete, it’s time to turn my attention to my next projects.

Setting up a Home Assistant server, and adding Network Attached Storage.

For the Home Assistant server, I am going with the Raspberry Pi 4 solution, but just to ensure it’s going to be as future proof as possible, I am going to build it around the 8GB version.

That’s probably gonna get out together in the next six weeks or so, and I will hopefully be able to join up a lot of the house smart systems together properly.

That said, I am actively looking to see if IFTTT can do many of those functions and if it’s possible we could put off the Home Assistant server by using that. Then again, I do like to tinker and Home Assistant would be a challenge and something to occupy me.

The Network Attached Storage is already in progress. When I built Megan’s PC I also built a PC for her dad, he had an old Dell Optiplex eBay special which managed to screw itself up all the bloody time.

Anyway I got sick of fixing it, so I built him a new PC that should last him a fair few years as his biggest usage is amateur photo editing.

Anyway this Optiolex has a couple of hardware issues, the motherboard has a couple of dead SATA ports and is very much at the end of its usable life as a general PC.

So I intend to use it to fiction as a the houses NAS for the short term, I have grabbed a SATA SSD to serve as it’s system drive and I am gonna pick up a couple of Ironwolf Drives next payday to run in RAID.

The idea being that all of our files can be stored centrally and backed up at the same time.

Next year I plan to transfer the NAS to dedicated hardware, potentially by pinching Megan’s motherboard after replacing hers for something a bit more high end. Plus either grabbing a new GPU for Megan so the 1660 Ti in her system can go into the NAS or getting something like a 1650 Super for the NAS.

The GPU would be needed because by the time I get ti the situation where I can put the NAS into dedicated hardware, I want it to be running a PLEX server too, so we can have our own home Netflix with all of the DVDs and Blu-Rays we have ripped onto the server.

I have a rough plan in my head now, and think that it’s possible in a couple of months I will have the basics of both of these systems up and running.

They are going to be housed in the cat cave (spare/junk room) and we have a monitor already set up in there for them, we will need a network switch still as both devices will need to be plugged in via Ethernet.

What I Am Modelling

I started the week by painting the Judicators with Boltstorm Crossbows for my Stormcast Eternals, two squads of five.

Then I painted the Night Scythe for my Necrons, a model I have wanted to paint for absolutely forever!

And then I painted the Beastmen for Blackstone Fortress. I have tried to give them a load of variety, with at least one dedicated to each of the four Chaos Gods and one that’s Chaos undivided.

I just wanted to see some variety on the table.

I am also working on printing a fleet for Battlefleet Heresy, so far I have gotten printed out a Battlebarge, with some damage from a print failure and four Strike Cruisers.

Tomorrow I intend to try another Battlebarge and a couple more Strike Cruisers, the plan is to get a fleet ready for Company of Legends.

Right now on my painting table are Sylas Beastbane, Leena Stormspire, Astriea Solbright & Berek the Indomitable, who are about 50% done.

So what’s coming up next week?

  1. Zone Mortalis Terrain
  2. Sylas Beastbane, Leena Stormspire, Astriea Solbright & Berek the Indomitable
  3. Death Korps of Krieg Infantry Squad x 10
  4. Stormcast Eternals Vindictors x 11
  5. Blood Ravens Primaris Chaplain on a Bike
  6. Kurdoss Valentian
  7. Custodes Pallas Grav-Attack x 2
  8. House Taranis Knight Castilian
  9. Blackstone Fortress Traitor Guardsmen x 21, Commissar & Ogryn
  10. Stormcast Eternals Praetors x 3

What I Am Reading

My review of Target Keee by Stuart Moore was published and you can read it here.

And I started on Pandemic: Patient Zero by Amanda Bridgeman and I got it finished, it made for uncomfortable reading if I am honest.

You can read my review for that here.

I am now reading The Serpent and the Dead by Anna Stephens

What Video Games I Am Playing

Played a variety this week, there was a session of Bioshock Infinite, a bit of Clustertruck, Halo 2 Anniversary, Star Wars: Battlefront 2.

You can see my Bioshock Infinite play videos here.

I also got my Saturn emulator up and running and can now play some games I always wanted to play as a kid, but couldn’t because my parents couldn’t afford a Saturn.

My current queue of games to stream is right here below

  1. Bioshock Infinite (Nintendo Switch) – In Progress
  2. Assassins Creed (Xbox Series S)
  3. Borderlands(Nintendo Switch)
  4. Assassins Creed The Ezio Collection (Xbox Series S)
  5. Horizon Zero Dawn (PC)

What Tabletop Games I Am Playing

We played Carcassonne as a family on Thurday night, albeit on the Switch, quite predictably I came last!

What Am I Creating

I got the unboxing video for Carnivale done!

What Am I Backing

Still backing AB Con, it’s only for a small amount, but I think it’s good to encourage events like this.

I am also backing Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game at the Otter-Penguin level right now, but might up it to the Polar Bear Dog.

What I Am Cooking

All I cooked this week was a mad concoction of chips, beans and cheese for lunch on Sunday for me and Lindsay.

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