We use a Synology NAS for backups and media sharing. But it's a bit heavy when we have to travel and take it with us ...

So looked into a Beelink miniPC running Linux as a NAS. The idea worked, but ran into some issues with heat because the Beelink has no fans for cooling.

The SSD drive I added to the Beelink would heat up way too much when there was any sort of extended activity. So looking into other solutions now ...

I originally wanted to use a specific NAS solution like OpenMediaVault or TrueNAS but they were a bit too restrictive in terms of getting things to work exactly the way I wanted.

So I finally settled on running Debian and simply installing whatever I needed to handle the rest and that actually works so much better for my own purposes …

#NAS #Storage #Linux #Debian

Lokesh Kangaraj and Rathna Kumar are listed as writers for both "Vikram" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9179430) and "Leo" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15654328) ...

Yet, there's a huge difference between the two — the former plot worked, the characters were consistent. The latter not so much, the characters do things which make no sense, or take actions which are not consistent with who the character is supposed to be.

Is this due to the actors involved and how they thought their “image” should be projected?

It appears that “image” is very important to Indian actors, but if this was about image (and I’m not saying it was), is sacrificing the plot for the sake of an actor’s image the way to go?

#Movies #Tamil #Plot #Image #Writing

"Leo" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15654328) is just pointless violence and stupidity ...

What kind of court tests a person's shooting ability when they killed somebody in self-defence? Does India not have self-defence laws?

Half an hour in and it's already very stupid with the promise of the cycle of violence continuing ...

Apparently the wife of a murdering thug does not accept that her husband will die by the gun and so wants revenge and so on ...

Movies, especially Tamil ones, have continued to get violent for some time. It’s almost as if each new movie wants to push the boundary as to how violent they can be.

Leaving aside “Leo”, I find this troubling. I hope this is cyclical and it goes away soon, but if not, where are we headed?

#Movie #Tamil #Leo #Vijay #CycleOfViolence

"Kaala Paani" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19072562) seems pretty interesting — at least based on the first episode ...

First, the setting is different from most Indian shows — Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Second, there are all these tiny touches which, if you pay attention, pay off for a viewer. I liked these little details a lot and am hoping that it continues on beyond the first episode ...

#TV #Hindi #KaalaPaani #Netflix

Watched two different Tamil movies today where they mention that China (and other countries) are plotting to stop India's progress by sending drugs and poisoned products to India ...

Seems like classic human behaviour — "others" are jealous of us. They want to drag us down.

We'll never change — we always blame others and want "our" people to be cautious/wary of strangers.

And then we pass on this behaviour to our children ...

#NationalismOrParanoia #PoliticalRhetoric #Politics #Humanity #TheHumanDisease

Sun Tzu said: “If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.”

With cockroaches, it's: "If you kill one and leave the body out and wait long enough, others will come to take the body away and you can kill them too." 😛

#TheArtOfWar #Cockroaches #AncientWisdomModernTwist

I like Santosh Shoban (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9922589) — each of his movies that I've seen so far has had something different/unique about them.

It looks as if "Prem Kumar" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15340716/?ref_=nm_knf_t_3) is in the same mold in that it doesn't follow the typical Telugu movie storyline.

So far, I’m hooked and I’m curious to see where it goes ...

#Movies #Telugu #PremKumar #SantoshShoban #SomethingDifferent

After looking at AnyType and several other solutions, I decided that none of them have the flexibility that I want for adding data from various sources and being able to define any type of data storage.

So, working on my own solution …

Decided to use the latest in Swift and SwiftUI, and also throw SwiftData in to the mix since this’ll probably be a personal app and not for public release — there are many such solutions out there, but they just don’t have what I want 🙂

Some interesting things to solve to accomplish this — How do you define a data structure which is not predefined in a way that can be used via code? How do you generate a SwiftUI interface dynamically to represent these data structures?

I believe I’ve solved them but the app is very rudimentary at the moment. I’m curious as to things hold when I add in more complexity …

#Swift #SwiftUI #SwiftData #Apple #macOS #iOS #PersonalDataManager

Being multi-lingual sometimes leads to weird situations 😛

In Tamil movies they sometimes pronounce "graphics" in a way that sounds like "gira-piss" and in Sinhalese, "gira" is "parrot" (or rather, parrot-related) and "piss" would of course be English — so parrot pee?

Do parrots even pee? 😀

#Tamil #Sinhalese #Language #Funny #MultiLingualWeirdness

"Billiions" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4270492) has always been a favourite of mine, but this season has felt very weak.

The dialog is overly talky without getting to the point, and hasn't had as much punch.

Now that the final setup, which I assume was what they were aiming for but were getting lost in the weeds getting to, maybe it'll get better?

#TV #English #Billions

While it is a battle between two behemoths, I can't help but feel like supporting Quest 3 just because of the language used by a lot of reviewers.

Like saying, "there’s almost nothing compelling to do in mixed reality on the Quest 3". And you know that Apple Vision Pro does have compelling experiences? How do you know this?

It's not as if any of these people have used the AVP for longer than half an hour .... So how do you know that AVP will have compelling experiences whenever it launches? Faith in Apple?

Also, will these reviewers actually buy an AVP at 7x times the price of a Quest 3 for themselves? Or is this just hatchet jobs for a paycheck?

I don’t know … but excessive praise for an as yet unreleased product, or damning something that exists for pie in the sky, always makes me uneasy …

#Quest3 #AppleVisionPro #Meta #Apple

It almost feels as if every episode of "Gen V" has a theme and you have to discover it 😛

For episode 3 it's — parents (or better yet, family). How parents affect you as a child and the sometimes love-hate relationship you have with them. It's also a tiny bit about trust maybe?

Alliances are made, people begin to trust each other and I'm kind of curious as to how the show will evolve and if the writers will stick to this level of writing …

#TV #English #GenV #Writing

"Gen V" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13159924) episode 2 is a lesson on trust that really drives home the point in multiple ways.

You know the characters shouldn't trust certain people, but they themselves don't know due to how their character works.

It's interesting in how people work and yet, has me screaming at the TV for them to not fall for it 😛

I’m still enjoying the core story and I do like these little touches of psychology and the inner workings of people ...

#TV #English #GenV #Writing

From AnyType (https://anytype.io/) and it's inability to import data in a way that is easy, I went on a whirlwind tour of similar applications — some open source, and some only freemium.

I tried NoCoDB (https://nocodb.com/) to BaseRow to SmartSuite to Fibery to Mathesar to Budibase — there are a lot of interesting solutions.

Way too many to list in about 500 characters for sure 😛

Sometimes I wish I still blogged so that I could do detailed write ups about all these but that’d probably be too arduous a task given how many of these solutions are out there!

#DataManagement #PersonalDatabase #KnowledgeManagement #Tools

Just when I think people can't get any sillier, they do 😛

From, "you believe in what I don't believe in" to "you use a different phone" to, it's now "you don't use an OSF/FSF (or whatever TLA you prefer) license for your open source project" 😀

Live and let live people! Don't get so dogmatic!

As long as they aren't hurting themselves or others, why does it matter to you how somebody else chooses to live their life or what they believe in?

Why must everybody conform to your worldview?

#Questions #Beliefs #Dogma #Reflections

"The Boys" is violent, rapey, murdery etc. But I think it's closer to how humans would behave if they had super-powers than what Marvel or DC thinks ...

So, I was ambivalent about "Gen V" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13159924) since "The Boys" is a bit over the top for me. But the first episode of "Gen V" was interesting and has enough in it to keep me hooked. Will watch more to see if the potential pans out or if this is going to just go with over-the-top violence …

#TV #English #TheBoys #GenV #Comics

AnyType allows me to keep a list of movies I want to watch and create various views based on different criteria such as movie language ... but it's hard to automate adding data to AnyType. Easiest way is to type it all in manually.

My own app lets me do things as I wish and I can automate movie information retrieval easily from say IMDB, but it is task-specific and I can't easily store (or rather, store in an organised fashion) movie information side-by-side with say, book info, or a comic book collection.

Can I find a middle ground?

#PersonalDataManager #AnyType #Swift #SwiftUI #Automation

I started using AnyType (https://anytype.io/) to maintain my movie/TV watchlist, tasks, notes and a few other things ...

So of course, I start working on a #Swift app which will allow me to add movies to AnyType easily by doing a simple IMDB search 😛

Only about a day of work so far, but the search works. The transferring data easily to AnyType part is a bit more involved but there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.

#Swift #SwiftUI #macOS #AnyType #DataManagement

The second episode of "The Continental" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6486762) is much better.

It gives you a hook, a slightly bigger world, and a wider cast of characters (and backstories for existing characters) that makes things interesting.

Much better than the first episode, IMO. I think I'll watch for a little longer to see how things develop …

#TV #English #TheContinental

Got my old iPhone X out to do some testing ...

The case was falling apart and I took it off. That was the first time I'd ever bought a case (back then) for a phone ...

I had forgotten how slippery the iPhone X was without a case. Just leave it even on a (mostly) flat surface and it starts sliding …

Was that a deliberate design decision on Apple's part to drive case sales? I have to wonder (in hindsight) given that I've bought a case for every new iPhone since then 😛

#Apple #iPhoneX #iPhone #Cases #SlipperySlope