does anyone here have experience hosting a Signal proxy and/or a Tor relay? there's a blog post on signal.org asking for folks to help, and i can but i don't know enough about network security to feel safe/confident doing some of this stuff. same with Tor - i've always wanted to host an exit relay (and in fact have this whole long theory about how every public library in the US should host an exit relay, but that's for another post someday maybe).

do any of you have experience with doing this? what kind of best practices would you recommend? any good resources on protecting your network that you might point me to? i will be getting my Net+ cert within the next year but for now i am starting from "enthusiastic beginner" and want to be helpful, but careful.

This is a place for you to talk about things you've been working on, projects that you think are cool, things that you're doing and etc. I'm hopeful that seeing people's cool projects and efforts can be inspiring to the rest of us!

hi all. i live in western Colorado, in the desert part rather than the mountain part, and it's HOT. and sunny. my house has a long west-facing wall full of large windows, and we've been keeping the blinds shut all day but it's not helping. i'm thinking of installing awnings.

my questions are, a) have you done this or something similar, and if so what did you do, b) are there awnings available that are NOT just plastic? and c) any other hints, tips, or ideas would be welcome.

(image via daily-dragon-drawing on tumblr, specific post here)

happy spring to many - here in western Colorado we're vacillating between warm and cold in a true, classic Colorado manner.

i do these posts about praxis periodically because i seek inspiration and motivation for concrete actions i can take in my life, and you, the community of people who are into solarpunk, are creative powerhouses. with that in mind, what kind of projects are you all working on, or have you seen going down? any ideas that you're excited about doing as the weather gets warmer?

thanks for being rad, friends.

Imagine I want to create a local internet for my community. Things that will be useful, helpful, and easy to use. Ideally, setup/maintenance would be relatively straightforward too, since I will for the time being at least be running this solo.

So if I'm going to be the community SysAdmin but also have free choice of what to run, what would you think about the following ideas of things to share with people?

-Radarr (movies) -Sonarr (TV shows) -Lidarr (music) -Calbire (or Readarr I guess, for books) -Jellyfin (media streaming) -Nextcloud (file sharing)

And then as for me myself, I'd probably set up a Graylog Open instance to aggregate issues, and have a couple of separate physical servers for these different things.

Do you think that would be helpful/useful/fun for getting community members to think about the potential of hyperlocal internet?

Alternatively, are folks doing this already? If so, how do you have this kind of thing set up?

If I'm dreaming big, I would also love to set up a mesh relay to offer this intranet stuff to the community.

I'm hoping that these ideas are solarpunk enough and selfhosting enough to warrant community feedback.

Basically, I guess, are there any other community SysAdmins out there doing this kind of work?

Thanks for your time.

Hello all, happy early spring to those of you who are experiencing it! Here in western Colorado, we've got our tiny rainy season going on. what are you doing in your communities, in your gardens, in your organizing spaces? what kind of cool praxis have you got going on?

middle-aged IT generalist guy, United States. from left, lens cleaning cloth, REI 1L nalgene, handkerchief, coffee tumbler, ridge wallet, generic grid lined notebook, Leatherman Signal, Pilot G2 .07 pen, keys for work with included tiny flashlight, and phone case (Peak Design Mobile) to represent the phone (Pixel 7 Pro) used to take the photo.

not pictured: car/bike keys, as the wife has the car today and it was snowing so i didn't bike, and wristwatch because i forget, constantly, that i'm wearing it; it's just a part of me. generic Timex Weekender with a nylon strap. does nothing special but tells me the time, accurately, on a face i can read, even in the dark.

https://imgur.com/a/ivFq4VE

Hi all,

A coworker gifted me a free Trek 4500 from the early 2000s, largely unused in the last many years. It sat in my back yard for a few months while I thought about what to do with it; I've finally made the first movement towards having a badass utility bicycle.

Step one involved knowing that I like a more upright riding position and am not the most comfortable or agile person on a bike (that's nice-speak for "I'm a pretty fat guy" and "I never really rode bikes as a kid so I learned how in my mid-20s and am still not 100% comfortable with it"). So I bought a pair of swept-back handlebars which I then kept in a closet for a month, lol.

Finally I decided to just move forward, so I took the bike to the local bike shop and had them do their inspection, basic needed maintenance, and installation of the handlebars. Now I have something fairly comfortable which also looks kind of neat.

Four more things I have planned to do:

• Add a back rack that I have on an old trashed frame also in the backyard.
• Acquire and add fenders. While it rarely rains here, when it does I'd like to be prepared.
• Acquire and add a front rack, since this is going to be largely for groceries and errands.
• Add a bike trailer, again for groceries and errands.

Other possibilities include a different seat, a handlebar bag in lieu of a front rack, essentially anything else to make it cool and functional.

Do y'all have any recommendations for stuff that might be worth adding or doing to this bike to make it comfortable for someone overweight to commute with and do basic errands and groceries with?

Hello, comrades! What kind of stuff are you up to these days? Anything cool, anything you want to share about?

well, my plan was to fix up a free entry-level mountain bike a coworker gave me - and, to be clear, i still intend to do it. however! i ran out of time, money, and know-how, all relatively quickly. and combined with that, i also decided somewhat last minute that i don't really want to drive to work any more in 2024 if i can possibly help it.

so instead i dusted off my electric chariot, my Shadowfax, my E-Motion ebike which i have named "Thora". she's my go-to ride in nice weather, but has been packed up for the winter. last night i got her out of her "garage" and charged her up, and this morning i did my quite short 1.5 mile commute in cold weather for the first time. 21 degrees F, -6 degrees C.

just wanted to say, i super appreciate all the advice shared in my other thread about winter biking. i wore my snowshoeing coat, gloves and glove liners, and a stocking cap. it worked! the only rough part was my face; it got so cold i got a headache. that said, i can just try a scarf tomorrow.

here's to functional transportation, even in the wintertime.

welcome to the first day of the New Year here where i am, in Western Colorado, USA. i am feeling an uncharacteristic sense of optimism today; any day can be full of new beginnings, but how great is 1/1/24 to also be full of opportunities?

speaking of which, what kind of actions have you been taking recently, or do you plan to take in the near future? how are you bringing solarpunk into the world?

may 2024 be a good year for you and yours, and me and mine, and ours, and humanity, and the earth.

hi there, comrades! just curious, what do you all actually host for yourselves?

i currently run a two old PCs refurbished as Ubuntu servers and am looking at adding a Raspberry Pi 400 that i was gifted and don't know what to do with. i have ideas though!

anyway, i'd love to hear what you've found useful, helpful, and/or fun to run. my own answer will be in the comments.

'sup, comrades?

hope you're well. what's going on in your worlds? how have you been spending your time, energy, and interest? any cool praxis in your worlds?

hi all - i am wondering what your daily riders look like - for example above i have my ebike (a secondhand Eco-Evo by Easy Motion), which is my summer daily driver since i can charge it with solar energy and don't get as hot cycling (i'm fat and i live in a desert, which is a miserable combo sometimes).

right now i'm working on putting together a winter "acoustic" bike by putting together a bunch of parts stripped from old bikes i've salvaged or been given, but i'd love to see any ideas for what folks ride.

Hi friends and comrades! What are you working on these days? I'm really interested in praxis and in new ideas of what to do in real life to advance towards a solarpunk future.

Hope you're all well!

'sup, comrades? i meant to do this thread weekly, but oops! forgot for a month. oh well - what do you have going on, what are you working on?

'sup, comrades? i figured we could maybe do with a weekly DIY thread on what we're working on, inspired by the rad "Show & Tell" thread from two weeks ago.

what do you have going on, what are you working on?

crossposted from Reddit:

hi all - my wife and I are doing our best to amend our terrible soil in climate zone 6b/7a (western Colorado, near the Utah border). our logic and philosophy is that at this time we can only do what we can do, so that's making our home as solarpunk and permaculture-centric as possible right now (without losing sight of building collective resilience and empowering the disenfranchised).

to that end, our soil: it's pretty abiotic. to grow food, which is a future goal, we need healthier soil. also we're not flat broke but we're relatively close; being frugal and cheap is a necessity. so we determined that we're going to try to amend our soil using cheap, locally sourced, and recycled things - and maybe more sweat equity than I'd love, ha! we elected to go with the lasagna method.

the lasagna method is to lay down different strata of materials to encourage the breakdown of "brown" and "green" materials, in composting terms. also our yard currently is mostly dirt with a few weeds for good measure, so even if we eff it up, it'll be okay.

I work in IT and my wife's a librarian, so we have access to a LOT of cardboard. I've been collecting it slowly over the summer, and today we decided to lay down our first layer.

here's the plan: lay down a layer of cardboard (brown only, tape and labels as removed as possible) two sheets thick. soak the cardboard so it doesn't blow away in the wind. cover that with a layer of wood chips, which we happen to have from removing a tree along our fence line with our neighbors and chipping it up. the wood chip layer is about two to three inches thick, and then we soak that, too. finally, we cover the wood chips with a layer of greens; for us, this is getting on our local Buy Nothing group and asking for lawn clippings. we are also going to plant fall cover crops and once they have grown in the spring, do a chop-and-drop layer of that.

over time, we will plant a few trees (looking at either a local growers apple variety or a multi-graft we can buy online) and have a rotating group of garden beds.

so that's our plan: a bit of couples labor each weekend over a long period of time, with the hopeful result of improved soil biology and then the growing of native.plants and flowers and food crops.

I hope this is solarpunk enough to warrant this post!

good growing to us all. !

In this thread, post what you're working on! Guerilla gardening? eBiking? planting/pruning? Let us know!