I recently set up two Raspberry Pi 4s to run services on my home network. They’re managed using Ansible but use Docker and docker-compose for server software that prefers to be installed using containers. One runs a Samba share and the other monitors things like electricity with VictoriaMetrics and hosts Grafana dashboards.

I found an in-depth site called Bicycle Rolling Resistance that reviews tires for their rolling and puncture resistance, so I added it to Web bicycle resources. It seems like the only Rene Herse tires that have been reviewed are the 700C × 44mm Rene Herse Snoqualmie Pass range so I’ll have to extrapolate to the 650B × 48mm version I’m running. It’s impressive how many Watts a high-pressure road tire can shave off, but the testing conditions don’t seem realistic.

I’ve compiled a couple dozen books on woodworking I want to read. Overall, my reading list just keeps getting longer and I don’t have any habits for winnowing it down or working through it. But I’m excited by the content of these books, despite them focusing mostly on tools and specific joinery techniques, instead of specific plans or general project design.

I’m about halfway through with a pair of Low Japanese sawhorses, so I spent some time drafting more precise plans. I can’t figure out how to make SolveSpace export the models at the correct scale, though. And there were some manual steps in preparing its SVG output to something that works with the site layout.

I was working on a pair of low Japanese saw horses today and had my first real woodworking injury: I sliced my the right side of my left index finger with a chisel. Never hold a piece of wood in one hand and use a chisel with the other – a chisel is not like a knife. I’ll probably write up a note on woodworking safety, along with the projects I’m building.

I’m writing a few notes about the basics of woodworking with hand tools. I have most of the tools and a few pieces of lumber, but I’m waiting to set up a more permanent work area and the tools I do have will take some effort to break in. It’s also been tricky finding tools that don’t contain Materials I will never work with.

I’ve been biking more for fitness and I’m looking to take a multi-day trip this year. While looking at route options, I found a well-researched site called Bay Area Bikepacking with ride reports and photos from routes I could reach without driving a car. To keep track of these, I added the site to San Francisco Bay Area bicycle routes, along with some more ambitious ones from Bikepacking.com.

I stumbled across a great gearing calculator on Observable by Tyson Anderson called the Bicycle Drivetrain Analyzer and added it to Web bicycle resources. It leans heavily on visualization to show any number of drivetrain gear combinations, overlap, and spacing, primed for comparison. Only Shimano groupsets are built-in options, but it also supports manually specifying any kind of cassette or chainring combination.

I’m adding a stream of entries to the site so it can hold ephemeral thoughts and for others to follow changes. These entries show up for RSS users when significant changes are made or I have something to share. I’ll try to keep them short and leave the long-winded content for notes.