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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2024

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  • Yes, I’ve done almost exactly this while traveling. You can even carry around a couple variously configured sd cards for different use cases. I had one with jellyfin for sharing locally and also Kodi for direct HDMI connection to TVs. There is a in app on Android for jellyfin called findroid that allows offline copies from the media server, which allowed me to not need the thing powered the entire time I wanted to watch something on my phone, just long enough to download it. Adding samba shares adds a other layer of accessibility. I had another SD Card with video game ROMs for retro gaming, but this one got left at home because it requires controllers and I didn’t think I’d use it that much. I had another with “little backup box” installed for automatically backing up my photos and videos after a day out exploring with my camera.

    I used a Raspberry pi 5 for all of this, running from a battery backup, because I didn’t really need a keyboard once I had remote connections to my phone sorted out. Pick a rugged case and you case just toss it in your bag of chargers. It took up about as much space as a pack of cigarettes. Another option would be the Raspberry Pi 400, built into a keyboard. A little bulkier, but maybe more resilient in the face of technical difficulties.


  • It’s not all that bad. Ever done body work on a car with bondo fill, grinding, drilling, and sanding? It smells, sounds, and vibrates just like that, but in your mouth. The drugs will work, unless you take drugs like weed recreationally. Go ahead and tell the dentist this because you will need more than normal. Follow all the dentist instructions, especially about icing afterwards and taking ibuprofen (not for the pain, but to reduce inflammation), even if you feel okay. The worst part for me was always how sore my jaw was just from holding it open so long. Don’t try to go to work afterwards, it’ll just interfere with your aftercare of ice to the jaw. Besides, you’ll just end up drooling on yourself. It’s not so bad really. You’ll be fine.









  • “People” is a generic term for more than one person.

    “Persons” denotes a singular distinct grouping of people. Ie, Native American persons.

    Are you sure about that? Cause it sounds like you’ve never spoken to a native English speaker about the terms here.

    A group of persons with a commonality are a people. The individuals are persons within a group. You can say “a group of people”, but that’s different (like a sheep vs. a flock of sheep and also a distraction here). The group is a people. People is not a generic term for multiple persons, it’s implicitly a group with some commonality. Nobody says “the American persons”, it’s “the American people”. The “various peoples of North America” would refer to a plurality of various and distinct groups of persons.


  • It sounds really counter intuitive, but wake up slower. It’s really easy for me to startle awake just enough completely turn off my alarm, not just snooze, and fall back asleep hard. If I wake up to an alarm that slowly increases in volume from barely audible, then I tend to wake up much more gently and slower. That little bit of extra time means makes it much harder to fall back asleep and by the time I reach for my alarm to silence or even snooze it. I’m clear headed enough to not either actually snooze the alarm instead of turning it off or be awake enough to not fall back asleep at all. Going from awake straight to sitting up or standing is super stressful and just makes everything awful. Being mostly awake before my head even leaves the pillow is much less stressful.



  • I have setup and run what are basically HTPC’s for decades now. Kodi running on a Debian based Linux distribution or just Debian is a solid recommendation and has lots of support for infrared remotes, but kodi can be very fiddly to setup properly. It will work, but don’t expect it to work “out of the box”. You’ll probably still need a mouse and keyboard for anything outside Kodi. You’ll have to read a bunch of documentation and do some customizing to get the most out of Kodi. It’s still easier than most other setups, but it will feel very frustrating if it’s your introduction to Linux too.

    I’ve moved to using my HTPC primarily as a server. Once you get comfortable with linux and docker, setting up new server services like Jellyfish, Plex, and and *ARR stack is relatively trivial. The advantage here being that you can serve your media to any device that can connect to your server. For me that means one library of media to share with any TV in my house, any mobile device I own, and any friends and family computer savvy enough to download the right apps and setup an account. If your network (and your Internet connection) isn’t reliable this kind of setup may not work very well for you at all. For example, Plex account authentication will fail is you don’t have Internet. Jellyfin and Kodi fair better when Internet is only available occasionally or is unreliable.

    My least favorite part of using Kodi was setting up the remote. Even worse was trying to configure controllers for retro gaming. The situation is MUCH better than it was, but is still far from easy. I was kind of able to side step the remote problem because now I can just use the remote for the TV (if it supports the Plex or Jellyfin apps) or another streaming stick like fire stick, Nvidia shield, or Roku. My Nvidia shield can pair with any Bluetooth controller and runs RetroArch so that problem was side stepped too. ROMs can be copied via samba shares or loaded directly by a USB drive.

    TLDR: Kodi has built-in support for IR, but streaming sticks are cheap, and in the long run I found setting up a server was more versatile, more reliable, and less stressful. I know, I also hate it when people ask for a specific solution and others recommend asking a different question. But in this case, my experience is that IR remotes suck, are flaky, and not worth it if there is any other option.