 Welcome to the homelab show. I actually believe this is episode 123, but I put 122 in the title Someone can correct me on that one, but we are live with techno Tim J and Tim We'll start him. How you doing man? Hey, I'm great. I'm great. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks so much for for having me on This is a second time I've been here. So I feel like I'm I don't know Two-time club so but it's been a while Yeah, for sure I want to say right the beginning here that at some point during this because we had to choose some time arrangement problems Because getting getting three people's time schedule. Perfect is not easy. So when I disappear from this podcast partway I will just say goodbye. I don't want to interrupt anyone. I have to pick my friend up from the airport So but we will we will get this kicked off We don't have a sponsor read that is a Something we're working on thank you. We mentioned this before that we didn't have a sponsor and sponsors have reached out We are just working out the details and the deals, but they're not worked out yet So if you are a sponsor and listening to this You're still fine Yeah, there's still time to contact us that we're not good at the whole business side of this But we are definitely here to have fun here to talk about homelab I Wish I would have had the foresight to order one of techno Tim's cool new shirts That has been a discussion amongst us as he's got these cool dark mode shirts I know if you're listening to the podcast just go check out the links in the description You'll find techno Tim's site. You can find his swag store and I I just really like that shirt Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it Yeah, I was surprised to see a few people pick it up and wear it on YouTube videos. It's been awesome Wow, that's incredible So that is that a meme from one of your videos where you kind of like just talked about dark mode Or is it appreciation of dark mode in general or both both? I mean usually in all my tutorials the first step in and in all my tutorials is enable dark mode if it has dark mode So any anything we're doing is like, you know, you got to turn on dark mode. So Yeah, so that was naturally when I when I was thinking about things to put on a shirt I thought well, what are the things I like and dark mode was definitely top of the list So my my wife and I put this together and then got it some shirts made. So yeah, it's I mean who uses light mode anyway I hope no one Yeah, it just reminds me of the windows XP days everything would have this white color around the blue and the green and We've come a long way. Yeah, it says retina saving mode in the comments. We'll go with that. I I Get it though like for me It's like I if I look at white screens like all day my eyes get so tired And I know some people are the opposite though I don't mean to poke fun at light mode, but some people are the opposite when they see dark mode They just don't get it and they're like my eyes are so tired. I'm like imagine that but the opposite for me So I totally get it every everyone's different, but I when I turn on dark mode I just feel like ah sigh of relief, you know You know, I want to bring up right away in your recent studio tour So I really like the aesthetic that you have because I think everyone goes with Either we all have a mess or we you know cobbled it together or we you know go all dark and That's probably the more common, but you've actually gone a little bit different I think you you have this really cool aesthetic with all the light for people watching this live There is a white toolbox. I love the fact that you're using a toolbox as well. Yeah, those are actually so good to store things in Yeah, yeah, that's that's a husky toolbox from From from Home Depot It's it's actually really awesome So I was looking for like a steel cart or something like that like I wanted something where I could work on stuff and put stuff on there I have three servers on there now and The the more I looked at things I was like thinking like these are all super expensive like why don't I just look at a tool cart and I found that one at Home Depot and I loved white. I love the whole like natural wood and white look So I got that and it has drawers and everything like I love it. I couldn't have asked for a better cart And it has a built-in Search protector on the side too so you can just plug stuff right in like I got three servers and a switch plugged in back there It's pretty awesome, but you know, I think that's one of the things that should be brought up more often maybe honest it's a topic we haven't covered a lot is You can build a home lab and we all talk about different racks and things like that Those are those are important aspects we jump into the software. That's an important aspect But you do a lot of some of that board tinkering stuff and you need a place to do that You're like if I want to build up my little raspberry pies and things like that. I need a place I need the tools to be handy or you want to take something apart That's it is much an important aspect to the home lab is making sure that you have a Lab by which to build things on you know That's what I gave my tour and I used a bunch of Ikea the butcher block style countertops and things like that I like the wood look as well and it's uh, it's you know, it's important. What are the tools you use? What are the little things on the desk and stuff like that? Those are always Let's try a whole topic. We could we could cover it over some point in time What's on your desk How many people probably love that yeah, yeah, it's it's been amazing though having all those chores because Because when I when I'd work on stuff like if I if I didn't have it like somewhere else in a different drawer I'd have to run to the basement go into storage go grab it and bring it back up And so I had to do that so many times it I got my steps in for the day But at the same time it was like it was so distracting to have to stop everything I'm doing go get a screwdriver or go get you know some part or some piece Just to come back up and start all over again. So yeah that that thing's been awesome. It's yeah Couldn't have asked for a better thing it it is heavy though. And my neighbor and I moved it. I'm upstairs This is an upstairs room. We moved it upstairs Almost didn't make it that that also makes you an outlier me and Jay are in the basement of our We built our studios in our basement. You like I'm going up. I wish I wish I could be in the basement But I really can't but but yeah, and we didn't take the drawers out either a thing weighs a good 350 pounds Next time I'll take the drawers out. Maybe you should do that next time Hopefully you won't be seeing if you're not looking forward to moving it again. That's right. I onto some homelab topics new covered one of the things I thought was really good as you've covered some of the Automation and integration with the camera stuff. This kid this comes up a lot some of the object recognition. I'm What are your what are some good tips on that if you kind of reference some of the videos you've done on it? The I've terminated that it's on the tip of my tongue I forgot to write it down the one that does the object recognition of figuring out what's in the camera that you feed to your cameras that oh Yeah, just just yeah just object detection. I don't know. There's a couple of libraries for a might I told I'm totally slipping my mind when you did the video on it. I'm just like The tip of my tongue it is for me too because it's been so long. I know what the thumbnail looks like. Does that count? That's how we remember things I know exactly what the thumbnail is and there was two thumbnails what the one is yeah, yeah, yeah yellow and green with me in a 3090 but no, it's so there's a couple of libraries you could use dark I forget what it is dark something. I can't remember frigate someone has it in the also frigate frigate too. Yeah Yeah, thank you. So frigate. Yeah, if we're talking about like objects. I thought you were talking about ML and stuff I did It that was a good video you did on that. Oh, I didn't do one up for it. No, no No, no, no, I not yet. No, no, I haven't done one up for it You did one where you were showing how you could do the object and it was switch your TV to tell you what was in there What was the tool you used for that? I'm trying to oh, so that was a deep dark This is what we're talking about. So this was the ML stuff the machine learning. Okay, but anyways It was a library that that is I don't know in Python it runs in CUDA runs on NVIDIA and can do object detection live in and you know real time and It was pretty cool. It was like, you know, I was picking up things. It was recognized, you know pencil and and and cell phone and It thought that this was a cell phone my my little Fair enough, I mean Remotes do look like cell phones. That's right And it was like detecting plants in the background. It was saying potted plants. So it's really cool. I've a deep stack Yeah, I think it is deep stack. Yeah deep stack. Yeah, but it's uh, yeah pretty pretty cool stuff I'm it's funny. You mentioned this because I've been I've been wanting to get into some more like AI Stuff self-hosted AI stuff at home and I think pretty soon I'm gonna build a box dedicated to AI and ML basically beef it up To do only that because I want to do I want to run some of my my video that I have here through more object detection too It I'm not saying just, you know, turn on frigate, but I want to do some custom stuff with some custom models. So Yeah, there's a There's there's so much to do when it comes to AI at home Just it's kind of overwhelming Like, you know, I was I was looking at some videos last night and some channels and I was like It's just so overwhelming to get started. It is there's so many other things to play with on that But I'm gonna leave you here to Jay because I just my friend just landed and it takes me 15 to 20 minutes Get to the airport. So that should be both the time me on parts. So I will leave it to you guys I have a great night everyone and take care Oh Right, so where were we we were talking about AI? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's it's yeah It's kind of it's kind of overwhelming like thinking about all just getting into it self-hosted stuff like like olama And then getting from there going into different models and stuff like that It's like man, it's it's a deep dark rabbit hole But I think it might start going down it. We'll see we'll see but I need to build a box dedicated to it Because like everything all my machines like have responsibilities. So I need yet another machine And I want to dedicate it to I don't I don't want to like, you know tack on like this very, you know super intensive workload onto something that's that's running other things. So So if that's something we might see on your channel, then what's your current rabbit hole as of today? What's the most recent rabbit hole you've gone down and Well, well, it's Well, it's not really it's kind of a topic, but this whole so I have three servers back here I'm actually going down this kind of rabbit hole of Co-locating my servers in a data center here in Minneapolis. And That is a deep dark hole too Because you know, you think yeah, yeah, and yeah, just get some servers plug them in. No, it's it's get some servers You know figure out what you're gonna do a first switch for power Network and then it's label everything and then it's document everything like I have every serial number for every hard drive And I know exactly which bay it's in like in a spreadsheet. I'm like, oh man I didn't know I signed up for all this but but you know, that's that's kind of what I have to do if I want to You know make servicing this thing a long term pretty easy. So But yeah, it's a lot. Yeah, so coming up soon. Yeah, I think I might be racking this Well, you guys will see the video soon for me It'll be most likely Friday morning It's going to a data center and reckon this and then this is gonna be another, you know Rabbit hole of just basically building a private cloud, you know You know a cloud that's available to me somewhere else I would know I have one at home already, but I Would love to see some stats around Enterprise networks, you know, how organized they are how, you know, clean everything is Home labbers network how organized it is how clean it is Because I'm going to make a statement that I have no idea is true and maybe you could tell me if you think it's true I have no idea if it's true the average home labbers network is 10 times more Documented and you know even and consolidated and consistent than the average business network I have no idea if that's true. I just made that up But you know, you have to think about it because everyone I talked to Including you it's like you take pride in setting up everything labeling and documenting just like you were saying So it's interesting to me how you start a job and you're lucky to have that kind of a data center at your new gig You know, yeah, yeah, it's it's tough though You know once once, you know I don't scale beyond one and I know how I work and you know when you start working with larger teams You know and everyone's contributing to stuff it gets tough to kind of keep that, you know All together, but I don't know. I don't know what it's like I remember I remember what it's like in my tech support days to you know Configure network switches and stuff like that and have the network closets being a mess switch it switches ports on the wrong vlan Crossover cables plugged in that shouldn't be plugged in cat 3 that was still there when Who knows what that even does? I remember that stuff and that was a long time ago. I'm sure that stuff still goes on now But I think old habits die hard and yeah, it's interesting how you know, you're always gonna have these stories like I Walk into one data center when I'm you know working for a company and I've never been there before and I go in there And there's wires everywhere. There's a networking for dummy's book on the floor where I first walk in and then there's a UPS on a Table chair that somebody put behind the server because the power cord wasn't long enough for them to get it down to the floors That put a chair underneath it so it doesn't you know And then you go into a home lab and then you have cable management You have you know, everyone knows where everything is what everything's plugged into. It's just it's just incredible the difference Yeah, yeah, usually yeah, I don't know enterprises like usually you walk into someone else's mess and you know It's tough. It's tough But my home lab has been crazy at times too. I think as I've as I've scaled it You know, I've tried to organize it and I put a ton of time into it Like I put way too much time into mine, you know, or is it work? It's you know, it's kind of your job and not saying you don't want to you know Put an extra hours, but at the same time, you know, you got a life to live Like building your own home lab home. So yeah, it's it's tough Like I put I put a ton of time and I learned the hard way so many times, you know, I I didn't label stuff I didn't I didn't manage cables, you know, I didn't do anything. I thought yeah, I'll plug this into here I'll remember what it's for two weeks later. What the heck who did this, you know, and it was me So, you know, I've learned a lot of hard lessons to where now. Yeah, I absolutely do label switch ports I do label everything with painter's tape. I don't use a label maker for everything and You know, I try to keep my cables tidy now That's that's one thing that now from now on my cables are always tidy. I Try to do the same but with the it's always tough when you have a home lab in a studio for recording at the same time Because it's like a double whammy. Yeah, because you could have your your cabling for your networking You don't want the you know, have too many cables around your audio cables for, you know Fear of interference and yeah, all these different things, but it's just It's just incredible the amount of detail but sometimes I wonder if anyone else is like this like earlier in my career I felt like my home lab was kind of my Revenge network. So what I mean is I'm at work It may be I say, hey, we should go this direction and I pitch it This is what we should do This is the design and then they don't want to go that direction that go a different direction Maybe I don't agree with that direction But that you know, maybe at the time I didn't have the seniority so at home I'm like I'm gonna do it my way and I'm gonna do it the way that it should have been done there And I have all the control here. It's my house I can just set up whatever network I want to and you know, this is gonna be amazing sucks They didn't go my direction, but my network is amazing Yeah, yeah, no. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, I think that's you know That's a nice thing about having home arms You can you know kind of kind of do what you want and you know I there are things that you know I borrow from work like ideas or practices or patterns that I borrow from work and apply at home And then vice versa, there are things, you know that I learned at home that I then play at work So it it's it's pretty awesome goes, you know goes both ways So what's in your stack nowadays? What's what's behind the scenes you anything from your container? Solution to whatever you have going on. I think it might be if you don't mind cool to talk about what you're running I think that'd be fun. Man. How much time you got? Or maybe even Videos that you've done I'm sure no, I'm teasing so So yeah, so from a high level. I have this, you know a server rack in my my basement I have an hl-15 and some other servers in there. I've now Downscaled to some Intel Nux so some many, you know small form factory devices that replace those three servers back there Those are running Proxmox, so I have a Proxmox cluster across all three and then within that Proxmox cluster I'm running three Kubernetes clusters and those Two one Kubernetes cluster is public one Kubernetes cluster is for internal for home And another one's a management one actually running Rancher. Oh, and then Yeah, I mean and then on top of that then I have I don't know 50 60 probably workloads running inside of there everything from I don't know everything from Monitoring to custom code that I wrote that runs my own website techno Tim dot live is is actually Running it on an Intel NUC cluster and Kubernetes Here in my home so and that's part of why I'm I'm you know I'm doing this Colo thing is because one because I like I'm not I'm not using the servers now home And I kind of feel bad But two is to just kind of move move my my public things my public workloads, you know two two You know somewhere else I guess and if this falls through I'll just buy another I'll just get another ISP and then do it here at home again So I just I just kind of you know, I I do so much in my website gets a lot of traffic and you know, I kind of I Get worried sometimes, you know that like hey, did I you know did I did I do all the right things? Did I am I firewalling everything? I should be you know It gets complicated really quick when you have you know 5e lands public workloads Kubernetes, you know it So yeah, absolutely like like when you think you've set your firewall rules, right? But you're not sure so you wipe the Wi-Fi settings from your phone and then connect to the SSID that's on that VLAN and then you try to go to the thing that you don't think you should be able to go to and then You are able to go to that like how did I and then it's always fun Navigating that and it's the VLAN separation being would you say that's one of the bigger hurdles that People run into when it comes to go getting from like a more beginner level to more of an advanced level as they learn homelab Yeah, I think so. I think I think it's it's definitely an advanced concept is You know just V landing in general Chris from crosstalk solutions has a great videos on intro to VLAN I even watched I watched I don't know 15 minutes of it last night where he was explaining tagged untagged and trunk ports I Happened to be skipping through it and I Listened to that whole thing because sometimes they get confused on tagged and untagged and your default network on untagged ones But anyways, yeah, so so VLANs are hard to kind of wrap your head around They were hard for me for a long time. I always kind of knew what they were. I always kind of understood What they did but really, you know, it's just segmenting your network virtually, you know on each port or within a network and So so yeah, it is You know, I have a lot of people who I've talked to who who just have a flat network for home You know their their first step is always like well, I want to separate all my IOT devices and I think that's a great idea I think that's a great idea to do. Yeah, I think that's the first VLAN You should create outside of your you're the one that you're on is the TV land Throw everything over there, you know, and then once you do that I mean you're better than 99% of the people at home right now. So Yeah, I would yeah, absolutely and nobody VLANs unless they know what that means. Yeah, it's true I mean pretty much there if they know what it means and they're not doing it at home They're doing it at work. Otherwise, how would they even bother to learn it in the first place? but that that is that subnetting and I Think containerization seem to be some of the bigger hurdles I see people run into but I feel like it's Sometimes the instruction some people, you know, learn my video they learn my reading and different Materials out there but I know those kinds of things seem to come up a lot and the in the space is problem topics because it's hard to navigate like This connects to that except if his tag is this and if it's going through this route Then it skips this it's low local traffic if it's here It's not local traffic if it's there and then you start to really get an idea of how this stuff connects together When you do it at home versus, you know reading the theory behind it, I would say too Yeah, it's it's it's tough like I have I have lots of respect for you know network administrators network engineers cuz you know my my I'm only like level 1.1 Network person, you know, I You know everything I learned I taught my myself, you know and mostly YouTube I did some networking way back in the day some Cisco stuff But but nothing nothing like I didn't even create VLAN. So all I did was change switch ports to existing VLAN So doing it all at home and kind of learning myself is was was was a big hurdle to take on but but I think it's worth it I think I I think I kind of went overboard to create 5e lands and I got way too specific Well, hopefully after I you know, I moved some of that to a Colo then I can kind of get rid of two or three of the VLANs that I Have that are really it's hard to distinguish between the two But but it's funny when I hear someone say, you know, I'm just level one networking and I'm thinking yeah And about ten years when you know ten times as much and I ask you the same question the answer is gonna be well I'm a level one Nobody ever that I've known ever feels like they you know, they might be really amazing But there's always something you don't know So it just kind of feels like this monumental thing to learn which can keep it interesting But it's funny when someone says well, I'm just starting out. Yeah, you'll feel that way when everyone else feels like you're advanced It's just kind of a weird internal measurement kind of thing. I've noticed it's yeah Sometimes but when you when you when you get it when you make that thing work, man, that feeling is just amazing Yeah, for sure. I remember the first time I ever networked devices It was my brother in his room with his windows 98 PC and me in my room with windows 98 PC And I I got a hub and we had no idea what we were doing, but we wanted to play NBA live I think 98 or something like that the PC game Basically sitting in our own rooms, but playing, you know, basically a land game. No idea what it's doing Following, you know, these printed instructions on how to assign a static IP because you know, once I started messing with networking I didn't have internet anymore. I had no idea what it's doing and I remember well finally when when I saw the network Working and I saw it was a hub back then to not even a switch when I saw the lights flashing and like we could join The land game together. I I almost cried because I was like so happy that like I figured this thing out It is an amazing feeling too in gaming I feel like is a big driver for a lot of people I mean for some people it's plaques could be gaming could be learning for certification But you know, I think when I first started on real tournament was a big driver and this kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, I was running that a lot of people are running that Had my I think that was my first land was to play that if I'm not mistaken is either that or to try to Share an application over the network because what else was I doing at 19? Yeah, it's yeah, there's there's always there's always something that that that that takes you down that path But yeah, and it's it's different for everyone. I remember even like like I When I went to college The first year They Well, I went to college my the the PC that I had I got a PC in it didn't have 100 100 meg Nick in it and I had no idea what it is doing like I was like I'm never gonna figure this out like I have to put this network card in I'm not gonna get on the school's network like what the heck do I do and so my RA At the time came in Rodney He opened it up and he just popped this card in and screwed it in and I saw that he was done I was like that was like the most easiest thing ever like That I didn't even want to open up a PC at the time because I had no idea what it looked like inside I thought it was gonna be so complicated Well, I saw him do that. It was all over. It was all over. I you know I was buying voodoo graphics cards and you know and going all crazy upgrading You know putting in four hard drives in CD burners DVD ROMs. Yeah, it was it was great But it took me at one point. You probably put the paging file on another hard drive. Oh, yeah Frames in your game. Oh, yeah. I had Raptor 10k drives. I had Raptor drives. Yeah, you do you remember the Raptor 10k drives? Yeah, I do I I um, yeah, that that was an incredible time. I think around that time See back then I thought 80 gigabytes was massive Like whoever who even needs 80 gigabytes, that's that's incredible. I never feel that. Yeah Yeah, that's just wild. So I think for me I remember wizardry 8 being one of my games I was trying to get as much performance out of not almost nobody's heard of that game because it was You know, there's the company went out of business right after they made it, but you know What other things drive your interest in homelab? What are the other what are some other things that just really gets you like fired up and ready to go? Oh, that's a that's a that's okay. Yeah good question. Um, or you could even answer. What is it today? That's yeah, it could be different from one day to the next. Yeah I mean today. It's uh, you know, it's a lot of networking I feel like my homelab is matured, you know And so I'm kind of like looking for the next thing now It's it's so mature like, you know, I'm running three three Kubernetes clusters. They're all get ops all automated Like I have CI and CD deployments running and deploying everything automatically You know, I get pull pull requests from a bot that I approve and then that kicks off a whole entire You know automation to update my server. So it's like Mine's pretty mature. So I am kind of looking for that next thing but it but in general like I like I like anything that like is is is It's hard to describe but for me like I get a lot of joy when people use the thing that I built Yeah, I've been this way forever. And so like like I I Love that people use my documentation side to get thousands and thousands of people using it I love it. I love it. And that's half the reason why I create more documentation is so more people can use it Like I I love when people use the stuff that I build, you know I've built, you know an ansible K3 has playbook lots of people use it thousands of people use it and it's awesome Like I love it when people use my stuff that ever stops. I'll be pretty bored But yeah, but like even like I want to host Game servers like I would host like 10 game servers and not even play the game but host them for other people You know, and I would love that but you know, I haven't found the I haven't found enough people to play those games yet So your YouTube audience would probably want to play some games. If you got them on there, I would imagine, right Yeah, yeah for sure. And I just love I love hosting things and then on top of that I love it when people use it. And so those two things together for me You know, it kind of like sparks something in my brain that says, oh, this is this is awesome. And so Yeah, I just want to keep building more public stuff that people use But but here in my home lab like I like I talked about a little bit earlier I'm gonna be building, you know an AI box a dedicated AI box, you know That's all it's gonna do on, you know, GPU the whole nine. So And see where that takes me because I take you to another rabbit hole And then more hardware Probably bigger power bill. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this isn't I mean, who knows but not something I'll probably have running all the time. I just you know, I want to tinker with the stuff I want to you know become more familiar with it, you know, there's some cool things I want to do too like I you know, I Want to run, you know text and stuff through, you know through through through like a GPT or something like a olama or text And you know and ask it questions like a self-hosted chat GPT type thing But then other simple things like I you know, I use whisper to generate a lot of my my YouTube Subtitles and it's an easy way for me to just like generate them real quick and it's all local So I do it local on my machine. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah And it's way more accurate than than YouTube's Transcription and so I use whisper on my Mac. It's all local and it transcribes it for me And then I get me you then I get good subtitles with timings But what if I just want to like what if I want to match in code and like do my whole entire back catalog and Generate subtitles for all that like really good subtitles like Accurate ones and then what if I you know and then and then feed those all to Google And then what if I want to translate all of those so those are some some of the things that you know Where where I could do it on this machine or I could do it, you know one off I want to do it like at scale. And so yeah, I kind of want to have a dedicated box So sounds uh, yeah, it sounds fun. I'm I'm already seeing the rabbit hole Yeah, but I mean and all this stuff might seem difficult as some of the people starting out But everything always does and until you get to a point where you're like, well, that's all it was Yeah, yeah, it's it looks like voodoo, but it's this you know, it's it's actually simpler than people Make it out to be so AI just sounds like this Incredible calculus type level of difficulty which I'm not saying it's easy the people that program this stuff I mean they have the lion's share of the work here, but you install it and to set it up I mean that's it's just something somebody could do in their house when you know I was young you were lucky to see a computer in someone's house Difference. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah. I I agree. I agree and that's kind of what I you know I mean, I I want to make some content around it too. I want to make it approachable I want to make it, you know, my goal always want to create tutorial based content is repeatable and approachable and so hopefully I can do that with some AI stuff too because Because uh, it'll be interesting for me to learn and then teach that stuff And then try to you know, try to make it a little more approachable right now. It's kind of You know, we're what I use this. How would I use this? What do I even need? And not really being able to like see, you know, personal use cases for it Um, but hopefully, you know after I take this journey, hopefully I'll see some of those and teach those too. So Well, I mean you're providing a service. I think you you probably know this but many content creators don't We have this You know said like not everyone learns the same way some people just can't learn from a video no matter how hard they try I even Heard someone say something like I I don't want to pause a video and go back or they might read something But someone has you know, who doesn't retain by reading Loves a video, but then when you have the two together you have documentation So the whole amp community were increasing documentation when you create a youtube video you're creating documentation You have a blog article a video. So you have written visual and Meanwhile, we have all these companies that are using ai to make these Barely passable how-to articles When you look into how to install a package via apt and then the article is like What is the apt package manager the history of the apt package manager who invented it? Who's using it how many people are using it you go through like five to ten different pages on the very bottom? It's just as apt install package Yeah Talking about right and oh, yeah, yeah, and humans even do that too because the seo, you know It's like people trying to game seo. I mean it's it's all google's fault for that is because like, you know Because that gets indexed and then people read it and then yeah, and you know If the content's too short google basically tosses it out So if you published, you know, hey to install this is apt act get blah, blah, blah And your your blog article is you know five lines long. It'll it'll never never get recommended Yeah, google google. Yeah google. Yeah, it's all google's fault I blame them too, but then with content like yours. It's like we can we can avoid all that We can go right to someone who's you know Here's what it looks like and and they're going to get right down to what what's going on with that And you know have you could just cut straight to someone who you know, it's not a AI written article and sure it's fine if they're accurate But I think there's something to be said about having a person that represents the integrity of the content and then Does the work to learn how to do it with probably no documentation Create the documentation that then other people will use and then to level up even more I almost feel like we become the alpha testers for enterprise software Yeah, for sure for sure. Yeah, I I I know what you mean. Yeah uh, you know Yeah, I feel that no, I was gonna say I know what you mean because like, you know, uh, you know In general enterprises, you know our hesitant to try new things or I that maybe that's a bad approach they're they're just uh They're more cautious, you know when it comes to like open source or to trying new things or they have architecture in place that like You know trying something like proxmox just doesn't fit in Uh, but I I love doing that kind of stuff at home And I think that's why a lot of people have a homelab too, right? You know, hey, we have VMware at work, but uh, you know what at home I don't want to run vmware. I want to run something else. I'm going to run proxmox or You know xcp and g or something else. Uh, it's it's pretty it's pretty awesome. It's pretty awesome Sometimes like, you know, some companies just they really don't want you touching their servers Even if that's your job, right? They're hesitant and I'm not saying that's a bad thing You should be, you know protective over who uses your servers But I've had people that I've known that really want to just learn something and they're just denied because They don't have approval to work on the project So they can just come home and install it at their whim and then do it do it anyway Whereas before it's like we were beholden to what the company would allow us to learn and and now You know, we're using your website on an intel nuke Yeah I mean, that's a that's a big difference there, too So, um, do you think think we'll ever get to a point where It's like, yeah, let's see what the homelab community thinks of it like an enterprise says this Let's see think of the so let's see what the homelab community thinks of this product before we use it for enterprise because Any little tiny detail that is off or a cpu. That's just one generation too old they're gonna, you know, totally go on there and Be labor the point and I think it's just incredible that the detail that, you know, obviously you go to in These videos when you review something like your hl 15 for example, that that that was incredible detail in the video Yeah, thanks. I yeah, it was uh That was you know, kind of big Taking that on and I never really did a hardware review Uh before like before that like I I I didn't know You know, I still question like how do I go on some of this stuff, you know Oh, yeah But I went pretty deep on the hl 15 one because I think it's you know, I think it's a it's a it's a great system and two because like You know, I I felt like I felt like There was a lot of things to uncover in that thing and so It spans the gamut when when when you have a whole entire system like that, you know, how do you how do you even review it? It's like there's so many pieces, you know from compute to the storage to the networking to everything um, even you know, the the the design of the case. It's just like Kind of overwhelming. So I I just took my time with that one. But but yeah, I mean, I'm hearing all the The same things I go through. It's just um a lot of people don't realize how much work it is I mean, I think they kind of do because and I'm not just talking about the research work that goes into it But after you learn it and you do a video review, it's like You have all these different phases you go through like I'll literally have a b-roll day where I just like the entirety of the day I'm just lining up everything. I'm going to be Covering just filming it and then I go into the review, but It's just massive. Is it the same for you? It is it is. Yeah, I I mean I I mean no one taught me how to do like my youtube process Even for my tutorials or anything. I just like kind of made it up myself It's probably not efficient. Uh, but I've I've gotten I've gotten pretty efficient at my inefficient process. I feel like to where I I can I can edit videos really fast But for me, it's it's it's the recording piece And sometimes even just turning the camera on and starting the recording. Uh, that's hard for me sometimes because because I mean you have to be in the right mood like, you know, I mean You know if I if if I'm not feeling my best like I'm just like Should I record a video today? You know, I I did record one today though But but yesterday I was gonna do it last night and I thought all day. Yeah, I'm gonna do it. Yep. Yep seven o'clock I'm gonna start no problem Got around seven o'clock and it wasn't like I was procrastinating It wasn't like oh I can do it tomorrow, but it was just like You know, I'm I'm not bringing my best self like I I I don't want to like, you know I don't know bring anything less than my best self. So anyways for for me. It's really hard sometimes To even hit record. Yeah, I could have my script. I could have everything lined up I could have everything tested like like I have, you know for this last video But sometimes it's it's so hard for me to hit record because I I I overanalyze stuff and yeah, and I just think like Am I in a good mood right now? Like a like a good mood enough to record, you know what I mean because people see it if you're not if you're not, you know Having a good day so but yeah And there's some and I'm sure it's already the case but you learn these weird tricks that just some kind Sometimes work like like I could have a like a headache or something. I'm not feeling well You could probably see it on my face. So I really don't want to be in front of the camera I really don't want people to see me like this but maybe I have a Opinion like well my voice is fine. I might not look okay No, I might have just got over a cold and I'm still pale or something. So I'm I'll just Decide to record all the on camera moments Later and then all the parts where I'm off camera. I'll just bang those out. Nobody has to look at me because And then oh, I got a salon appointment or haircut, right? So I just do all the on camera ones I just got my haircut. So I have like two weeks of on camera moments and then Meanwhile, everyone's like, why don't you ever change your shirt? They don't realize they see me like, you know after I go to the You know salon or something and then I come back and then I'm off camera and they think it's the same session I'm just in my pajamas Chocolate or something just talking into a microphone like I had A tote like in front like here in front of the camera with like all kinds of like pads and things because I didn't have what I needed So I'm going to do all the off camera moments. You couldn't see me anyway Then take all that stuff off my desk Then I addressed the camera. It just it's just it unbelievable I should do like a video just about all the stuff that nobody sees Yeah, it's it's incredible And like the smaller your space is the harder it is because like you keep having to shuffle stuff around I mean, I mean your office looks like about the same size as mine and and like I I I can't do two projects at once because I don't have enough place, you know stuff for it Uh, and then on top of that like hey, I like to tinker outside of the videos I make too. So yeah And like, you know, I the things on my on my, you know Desk need to stay there until I'm done with the project or I got to tear it all down and put something else up there So oh, I wish I I wish I had space like Jeff Geerling. He you know, he got a new office space and has a you know He's he's got a lot of space now Yeah, you know, you'll get there like this is the first time I've ever had that because you're only seeing like a part of it Like my office was about the size before about just a little bit bigger than the desk But I haven't set up anything else yet. Just this little area like you go this way There's just a bunch of junk and a bunch of crap Eventually, I'll have the table set up. But this is like four times the size The weird thing is I'm making so much content I don't even have time to set up the other part of the studio to actually use it And it's just a it's just you know, the content creation could take a lot of time as you know But then having a space is important because just like you Well, actually still the case because I don't have any other surfaces like clear the desk and then But film the video and like everything's all over the floor literally. Oh, no Like uh, most of the time I have the biggest mess ever just out outside of camera outside of camera angle You know, usually that couch is just full of junk full full of junk And I mean you can't even see the couch that's there, but there is one it's just full of junk because like How do you manage noise in there though with with with your home lab equipment and recording? I mean, that's always like the kind of thing that's that's a big challenge Do you have any you just have quiet equipment or do you just put it off about a range of the microphone? Well, my my server racks in the basement. So that's that's nice like server racks not in here super nice Uh, I don't I don't really have like any equipment like I you know, I have a couple of switches Actually, I have about four switches in here mainly because I'm testing some stuff Um, but nothing that really makes any noise like my windows pc and mac are down in this rack They don't make much noise And everything else those servers aren't on right now if they if they were you'd hear them So it it stays pretty quiet. I mean, but then you know, they you know, I have wood floors. I have stucco walls. I have you know Are not stucco plaster walls like this is an echo chamber and I've had to like put tons of sound treatment and rugs and Even curtains up to to help it. Uh get rid of the echoes. But yeah, it's uh Yeah, it's a never-ending It's a never-ending. What's that that the struggle is real. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's never-ending once once you get into Consecration, it just it just never ends like you your sound's always not good enough or something's not good enough And you gotta you gotta tweak it and just go as you go but I think the most incredible thing that surprised me This isn't a good thing by the way, but it's just a funny thing that happened It's like I managed to fill an eight terabyte nvme with just three video projects You know, but that was what when I was experimenting with raw footage. Yeah, we'll never do that again Without a codec or anything just the raw footage is just you know filled an eight terabyte drive Like three 15 minute videos Yeah, the scale can that can go up monumentally when you go 4k. It's it's just crazy. Yeah, it's wild it's wild and uh, you know, so I have a true nas server that um, you know I I think even like two months ago. I I had Oh, I can't even remember. Anyways, my my pool was 50% full now. I mean two months later It's it's 62% full Like I I use so much storage. I need to figure something out. Um, like, uh, the last video I shot, uh 78 gigs was today 78 gigs. That's how much video I use Ha ha Yeah, so uh, but uh, fortunately like in in my hl 15 and that's running true nas You know, I I could put about two more pair two more two more pair mirrored Uh v devs in there and uh expand a little bit more But but then it's going to be crunch time. So so I I've really been, you know debating Um, uh, I I've been looking for, you know, a long long term like kind of a cold storage type codec to like store You know videos for long term like archival purposes And I think av1 might be that one. So anyways, I might uh, I might do a batch in code with, you know, ffm peg For about, you know, three weeks straight And convert some of my old footage to av1, uh, just uh, just to get some more space back, but but yeah, it's uh Man, I I I my my true nas server is just like It just keeps filling up It's just I was 95 full And then I Figured out what was wrong and then a long story made short It was backing up something that I I didn't care to have backed up because it's not important But just, you know temporary temporary stacking on top of itself I'm like what is going on with this darn thing and is nearly gonna fall over because Zfs and 95 full is not Yeah Yeah, I think anywhere above like adish is kind of like it gets it gets it starts, you know chugging along Um, but that's tough because then because then like even if you deleted that stuff in the snapshots then like Your stuff's all fragmented then still right like it like I filled up and then like, you know, it's I feel like at that level I probably would defer to tom I feel like he knows more about And I do but I know that it's definitely not a not a good thing, but um, basically Like you I have all this archive footage by have like the entire like tar balls for the project files Here locally and it was taking snapshots of those but I have them backed up off-site and my Policy is that if I don't go back to archival footage within a couple of years I'm never going to so I just whatever I'll just keep the original upload forever But it was backing up these files. I didn't care about I didn't even have time to look at Like don't let your hard drives get full I say as mine is just getting full in the background and I become a hypocrite But yeah, I need to put on some alerts on chunas to to to warn me ahead of time Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, but then when I you turn off your phone and do not disturb mode because you're editing Well, it's always a fun time too. Yeah All right, so where can people find you? Where do you want to send people to to check your content out if they haven't already done so? Oh, yeah, just I mean if you just google techno tim, it's it's pretty easy to find me Or techno tim dot live that's that's where I send everyone That's where my documentation is my my website is my documentation And you can find all the content that I that I create both video and and text content So but yeah, just just google techno tim and it'll usually take you to the right place I remember there was a time when it wouldn't and it would take you to someone who's name was tim and made techno music So that was my that was my goal For the first year of youtube was to beat the old techno tim in seo, then I think I got it now I mean, you know a friendly competition, you know of seo not like, you know Oh, yeah, I mean for us seo is just we don't want to make content in the neco chamber Yeah people that we don't want to just do it for one people one person although that person really loved it I mean that feels good, but we want yeah, we got to do seo so people couldn't like see what we're doing And before I let you go I'll just as an aside, you know Like us youtubers would talk offline like we hate some of the stuff we do like that dumb face on this thumbnail works But oh my god, I hate this thumbnail of me. It's so ridiculous But I have to do it because you know, that's how the content is or the platform That's what it expects. So it's always interesting. Yeah, I call it dumb face That's what I call it And like I when I do it I'm you know, I tell my wife like I have to do a dumb face thumbnail for this one, you know Uh, and so many people say they hate it. So many people say they hate it Why do it? Why do people do this? But then they click on it? So it's like, okay, like Like, you know, um, that's that's the first That's the first signal to youtube For the algorithm is clicking on a thumbnail. And so like, okay, you need people to click on a thumbnail That's how you get them to watch. Do they watch longer in 30 seconds? Yes How much do they want, you know, and it keeps going on from there and there and there And the first signal for the algorithm is did you click on it and uh, and people do click on the Faces, you know Just like I got it down now. But even though I've only done it once or twice Uh, I I reserve that for for for special occasions, but I decided to lean into humor going forward I think people will see that if I have to make a thumbnail with with that kind of a face I'm just gonna make it completely hilarious like the arch Linux thumbnail where I just have the I run arch cert. I'm just having opening my best to show. Hey, I got an arch shirt I'm running arch because it's a meme But um, I feel like that's the only way I could think of but then that doesn't always work and people still might hate it And then you're like, well, uh, again, it's the best I could come up with Yeah, it's it's it's tough youtube game is tough. It's a tough game But you know, I think the I think would have put it all counts It's it's still as long as you deliver and I know you do It doesn't really matter if it's it looks like clickbait But if you give everyone what you said you're going to give them, that's that's fine You're not lying. You gave them what they came there for and you're entertaining them. So Think in the long run. It's probably all for the better. So All right, I think we're about at time Anything else you want to mention or any other things you want to shine some light on? No, I I think that's it. Like I appreciate you letting me stop by. Um, if there's um, yeah, if if you I mean, I I see some comments of people asking stuff. I didn't really Sorry, I don't know if I should answer some of them But some people are asking about, you know proxmox and stuff like that I do a ton of proxmox. So you like that you want to learn more about it. I got tons of tutorials on that I think you do 2j But watch them all. Yeah, watch everyone's tutorials. Yeah You learn one person will mention something the other person didn't so if you watch everyone's Tutorials watch both of them. That's right You'll learn all all the better for that too because you know, like I said Everyone thinks it's something that someone else didn't think of and I think it gives you a better Impression overall the technology and different vantage points of how it works. So Love the the learning and the content. So awesome. So yeah techno tim dot live and We appreciate you being on And I know tom feels the same way although he's he had to you know pick somebody up But it's been fun all the same. So thanks for joining. Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Take care everybody