With all of these 4-H activities that I've been helping with, I've been in my car. A lot. That means that I don't always have access to great internet, great resources, and I can't always connect home to my servers, there. I've decided to combat that by building a single, portable network. A network in a box, if you will. Here's how I did it.

Computers are so intricate, complex, and finely tuned that it can be scary for young folks to spend any significant time getting their hands on the hardware, and really exploring. What's more, it's not common for people to really understand what parts make up a computer, and how they can be used.

I'm ready to manage my audio "wiring" a bit more virtually, these days, and I'm ready to do that with some of the cool new tools available in Linux. Luckily for me, Pipewire has some command-line applications that make doing that an absolute cinch! And what's better, I can do it from Python, and make it a little more automagic. Now THAT's what I'm talking about!

So, I've got an old (1992) Ford pickup, and it's got a newer-ish stereo. I love keeping my favorite tunes on a USB stick that I can play everything from, but I HATE it when the volume changes from one song to the next. I go from barely being able to hear the music to having my eardrums blown out in 0.5 seconds. So, I've come to the conclusion that I need to fix that. With PYTHON!

I'm so fed up with low-level audio in Linux. It's a constant struggle, and I'm throwing in the towel. I'm done.

I recently decided to drop Windows (finally), and move to Linux, full-time. But that means moving to Pipewire; which is both exciting and slightly daugnting. You see, to make the move, I need to get VBAN working on Linux, and talking to Pipewire. Hmm. Time to do some digging...

Seems that, these days, there's an endless number of things that need to be automated for an "all-out" home-automation system. But how should we bring all of that stuff together? Well, I think I've got an idea...

I spend enough time in my arm-chair with my laptop that I thought it about time to power all my digital toys in the same spot!

When things get sticky, leave it to Python to keep the wheels greased!