Getting the mutant home server gaming in a VM

This post is the second part in a series I am working on. See the first part here: Home Lab Upgrades: Why This Mutant Motherboard/CPU Combo Could Be the Perfect Solution) The biggest most exciting use case for me with my new home server was a virtualised gaming environment. I’ve always wanted a living room gaming PC, but didn’t want to have a PC just for that purpose. I’ve had a home server of some sort for the last couple years, usually running some Docker containers, and I always wondered if one day, I could run Windows in a VM, with a graphics card. Read More…

Home Lab Upgrades: Why This Mutant Motherboard/CPU Combo Could Be the Perfect Solution

I’ve always liked strange hardware. Odd prototype mobile phones, weirdo computer parts that only exist because of Bitcoin mining etc. You name it, I enjoy looking at it and imagining the possibilities. Recently, thanks to CraftComputing on Youtube, I became aware of a strange sort of motherboard/CPU combo that features an Engineering Sample CPU that purports to be an Intel 11800h. The retail version of this chip would have originally been destined to go into a laptop. Read More…

How the Pixel 6 Pro charges - In Graphs

I was bored, and was curious to know what the charging behaviour of my Pixel 6 Pro looked like. I decided to use a Ugreen Nexode 100w USB-C charging brick with a Macbook charging cable as the power supply, and left my phone in its case. I note this because I will in the future perform this same test with the phone artificially cooled to see how much of a difference temperature makes to charging rate. Read More…

Surviving Hotel Hell and Visa Chaos: A Cautionary Tale

As a 16-year-old, I made the decision to leave the UK due to my dislike of the politics and direction of Great Britain under the Conservative party, particularly under the leadership of Theresa May as Home Secretary. This decision was further solidified by the Brexit referendum and the actions of subsequent leaders such as Boris Johnson and Priti Patel. Over the past decade, my views have only been reinforced by the events and developments in British politics. Read More…

Convincing a Scammer That They’re Going Crazy

According to 419eater.com, scambaiting is “enter[ing] into a dialogue with scammers, simply to waste their time and resources. Whilst you are doing this, you will be helping to keep the scammers away from real potential victims and screwing around with the minds of deserving thieves”. These scammers aim to take advantage of the elderly, people with disabilities, and others. I occasionally engage in scambaiting, but particularly enjoyed the encounter I document here. Read More…

The Perils of RSS

RSS, or RDF Site Summary, Rich Site Summary and most recently Really Simple Syndication, is a standard that allows readers to aggregate multiple blogs into one ‘reader’ interface, which displays these blogs posts in a standardised way. It’s an old standard, developed in 1999 at Netscape for use on their my.netscape.com portal. It allowed users to import RSS feeds from other websites and have their content appear on Netscapes feed syndicator. Read More…

kn100.me has been rebuilt!

Just a quick note to say kn100.me was fully rebuilt. I’ve done my best to keep all links the same, but it’s possible I’ve missed something. If you notice something broken or missing, let me know. Thanks!

Dealing with a Cybiko Classic in 2022

The battery problem Unfortunately old, long term unused Cybiko Classics suffer from exploded batteries. Worse, the residue will eat away at the original battery contacts, and will even begin to damage the motherboard if left in for long enough. Get the batteries that are in there out as soon as possible, and clean the battery contacts as well as the Cybikos own contacts as best you can. You may also consider disassembling the Cybiko to clean any residue that may have gotten to the motherboard. Read More…

Putting a high end DAC inside your ITX desktop computer

Tl;Dr: In this blog post, I discuss the problem I have with having an external DAC (cable clutter), and the hacky solution I came up with (putting a USB DAC inside the chassis of my computer and hijacking the HD-Audio solution built into most PC cases). The problem I recently became dissatisfied with my motherboard audio solution, so I investigated DACs and found the Fiio K3. The difference compared to the onboard motherboard audio was that the headphones could be driven louder (unsurprising) but the bass specifically seemed ’tighter' and more defined. Read More…

Taking my data back from Eufy

Firstly, you might want to check out the dashboard. I recently started a diet. One thing I decided this time around was to be heavily data driven in my weight loss, and therefore I decided to get some ‘smart’ weighing scales. I got the Eufy P1 scales which seemed to be reasonably well reviewed, and it turns out that Eufy is another name for Anker, another Chinese brand I’ve had success with in the past. Read More…