weekly - er, monthly? - What's Up?

I'm a terrible DIYer but I have to say: I put up two Ikea bookshelves by myself, which is progress. Baby steps.

I'm working on free software to do real-time translation of speeches at conferences and such, from Norwegian to English or {insert language}.

Using Whisper and TTS on a server, and a web interface accessed on the participants' smartphone/device.

Currently building an indirect backlight for my bathroom mirror. The outer ring is going to hold a piece of warm-white LED strip.

We built pig shelters from pallets, and I'm almost finished knitting a plant-dyed pullover from local wool, just in time for winter. Other than that the rain has been putting me off doing much. I wanted to mount the ram pump back in the stream to try out a new approach for feeding it but there's water everywhere 😅 Maybe I should buy proper waders if I want to play in the stream in winter.

I finished the sound recorder build for now, might return to it in another week. Got a midcentury desk, a park bench, and two old bar stools I'm restoring to give away. I need to fabricate replacement curved boards for the back of the bench, and I don't have any oak in the right dimensions, so this week's project will probably be the desk. I just need to get the top on it, predrill all the holes, and get in touch with the people who'll be taking it. For the bench, I need to get in touch with some relatives, pick through their wood piles. For the barstools, I need to sand the rest of the finish off and figure out what I'm going to replace the seats (currently torn orange vinyl and the cheapest plywood I've ever seen) with. Maybe big slices of tree, or just some carved seats.

Organizing all my networking and homelab gear onto plywood for a "router wall".

I 3D printed a short cable management system for the copious amount of cables flowing out of my PC.

answering my own question, i'm snagging a couple of old mountain bikes from a coworker and her husband who don't use them. going to fix them up a bit for myself and my wife, maybe make mine into a low-end bikepacking rig. i like that idea; we'll see how much stuff i can use from my own boneyard and what, if anything, i'll have to buy. good times.

Painting window reveals in the basement windows. It'll take about half a day or so, because they're new and need at least two times. It'll probably also mean that I need to paint some of the walls. It'll make a massive difference for the lighting. The old ones were brown. It's been 13 years since I bought the house and this is about the last remains of the previous owners 1970 fashionable choices to make over. I can then start redoing my own mistakes. It never ends does it?

Installing thousands of leds into my fur coat I made. This looks buttery smooth in person, about 1600 leds in the two sleeves.