Setting up a new NAS – Synology DS220+

For a while now I’ve wanted to have a dedicated backup device instead of worrying about scripts running on my PC to 2 hard drives and cloud backup. It was a ridiculous setup that wasn’t really easy to keep up to date and I didn’t check on nearly enough. The internal drives of my PC are also pretty slow since they are secondary, and I also want to avoid keeping my PC on all the time. Then came Amazon Prime Day!

I finally took advantage of an Amazon Prime day deal and bought a NAS for home. I decided on the Synology DiskStation DS220+ since it was a great price, compact and can house 2 hard drives with a RAID 1 setup which is perfectly fine for my use case. I seriously doubt that both hard drives would fail on me at the same time – unless of course there was some crazy power outage or short. Also, I do a 3-2-1 backup.

A 3-2-1 strategy means having at least three total copies of your data, two of which are local but on different mediums (read: devices), and at least one copy off-site.

backblaze.com

My plan of attack is to do PC/Mac to NAS backup sync, then once a week sync the NAS to an external USB drive. My most important files and photos are in Google’s cloud. Ideally I’d have my second backup in another off-site location completely – but for now at least I’d have 2 different devices.

I decided to do a short Twitch stream setting the NAS up. You can take a look at the VOD below on my YouTube channel. It was great to see you all in chat!

I’ll write another blog post on what software I decided to use to sync, as well as any other plugins I decided to try for this Synology NAS. Thanks for reading!

You can leave a comment or catch me on Twitter!

Mood of Spring 2021

“The neglected middle child of mental health can dull your motivation and focus — and it may be the dominant emotion of 2021.”

There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing

This article explains exactly how I’ve been feeling the past few months. Not burnout, but aimless. Hope is pushing it’s way through, but it will take more time. I like how the article talks about “flow”. I think I have “flow” when I play a game with friends. The time melts away with laughter and goofiness, yet I can work at a small skill little by little and that me feel better (ok fine, my k/d ratio isn’t quite 1.0 yet, but I’ll get there). 😂

Nothing else gives me “flow” at the moment. I try to go for a walk now and again so that it makes me feel good – I’ll do that more now the weather is nicer. To beat the languishing I plan to see more and more friends IRL when I can. Now that people are getting fully vaccinated the hope is getting stronger. I’ll get energy from people when I’m ready to receive it. And the energy comes in the form of physical distance, not virtual. My brain can only handle so much virtual time.

Instead of hot girl summer, I want a safe girl summer. I’ll wear some favorite items of clothing, carry my safe girls items and breathe outside air again. I’ll keep my mask on when traveling or in crowds, and start taking photos again. I want to discover the city I’ve loved now that I’m living here. I can’t wait to hop on a plane again. I can’t wait to meet new friends that I’ve known virtually for what seems like an eternity. I want to end this languish.

💙

Particles.js and a Coding Stream!

Recently I made a homepage as a birthday gift for a friend, similar to what I’ve done in the past with some of my favorite tools for building websites:

KilobyteKeith.com homepage
A homepage for KilobyteKeith

I used Particles.js, which is a Javascript library that has fun particle effects for the background of any webpage, Bulma.io for the CSS framework, as well as Press Start 2P for fun retro font styling.

I also finally got the nerve to show off how I put together this project and streamed it on my Twitch channel since I’ve been wanted to code on stream for a long time! My goal is to get really comfortable with being uncomfortable about what I know and don’t know, as well as grow and learn with the community I’m trying to build. A lot of my geeky friends are also web developers, and when I talked about doing this I received a bunch of support which was really wonderful! I’m very luck to find good people to push me along with my goals.

Here’s the VOD if you want to see me nerd out:

Thanks to everyone who tuned in and for the support! You make me want to do more and hit my goals. More projects to come!

Rediscovering the Love for Gaming

I’ve been extremely fortunate to find a good crew of people who I love to game with in the last few months or so. I think the mix of having my own time and space along with taking the time to let things happen naturally is the key to finding what I never knew I needed (which is companionship).

I’m really lucky to have found people who are patient with me when I ask questions, don’t make me feel intimidated, and have the same sense of humor that I do (which makes multiple hour long gaming sessions feel like they are 20 minutes!). It’s a major reason why I didn’t really stick to gaming before the last few years – everyone was taking it too seriously, too toxic, or just never stuck around since we didn’t vibe. Just like anything else in life, you’ve got to keep looking around to see who is your crew. In my case I actually stopped looking and let it find me. And somehow it did. You’ve got to love the internet (most of the time).

Thank you to the homies out there who play games with me everyday. It’s made me love live streaming again which helps me find more great people to vibe with. I don’t feel lonely anymore. 💙

Binary’s Bytes: Salmon, Green Beans, Roasted Red Potatoes

I’m doing a cooking stream tonight, and since this is something I’m doing off the cuff, I figure I’d share what my unofficial “recipe” is. I tend to make extra for leftovers and don’t really measure, so I’ll do my best to give you my setup below!

Serves 2 (or in my case, me and myself for leftovers!). I’d recommend you start with the potatoes since they take the longest to cook.

Roasted Red Potatoes

  • 2 medium red potatoes
  • ~4 cloves of garlic
  • pinch of salt and black pepper
  • ~1 tbsp olive oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Cut the potatoes into small pieces about 1 inch big. Put the potatoes onto a sheet pan and spread out in 1 layer. Roast in the oven for about 45 minutes or until browned and crisp. I’d recommend flipping them once or twice to ensure even browning all around.

Pan-Seared Salmon

  • 0.5 lb. fresh salmon
  • ~1 tbsp olive oil
  • pinch of salt and black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp of butter

Warm a non-stick skillet with olive oil over medium-high heat. Place the salmon skin-side up in the pan. Cook until golden brown on 1 side, about 5 minutes (depending on gas or electric stove – keep an eye on it!). I throw on the butter on top to give it extra yumminess 🤤 Then turn the fish over with a spatula and cook until it feels “firm” to the touch and the skin is a little bit crispy.

Sautéed Green Beans

  • ~ about 10-15 green beans
  • ~1 tbsp olive oil
  • ~1/2 tsp garlic powder
  • dash of cracked black pepper

Warm a non-stick skillet with olive oil over medium-high heat. Stir green beans, garlic powder and black pepper until beans are tender but still crunchy (usually 5-10 minutes)

Let me know how it came out for you on Twitter or comment below!

Binary’s Bytes

I’ve decided to make a new category on this blog for food and cooking.🎉 I’m finally settled in my new space, am loving it, and am cooking nearly all the time which is a big change from the past few years of my life.

I now want to concentrate on finding inspiration from others in terms of health and eating better for myself. Food for me is a huge part of my life – when I’m sad I eat, when I’m happy I eat, when I’m with family or friends I eat, when I celebrate I eat. I was always thin and fit growing up, but the last few years of my life were filled with stress, so I stress ate all the time. Now it’s time to undo that damage and reach some personal goals. I’d like to do it very slow and steady without anything other than focusing on eating a bit cleaner and doing it extremely gradually. Everyday won’t be perfect, and I will binge now and again, but I’m not going to make food my weapon any longer.

Join me on finding some new recipes, sharing what I enjoy, and doing more cooking streams and/or YouTube videos!

Have anything you’d love to share with me? Give me a shout on Twitter or Discord!

A Win

With the sadness, heartbreak and struggles of this year came a breakthrough in a personal goal – to live on my own.

I do sometimes feel a sort of “survivor’s guilt”…like, how can I be happy in a year like this? Of course I’ve deal with the struggles as everyone else is emotionally with quarantine. And we’ve had people in my family lose friends to Covid – it’s very real. However, with that came the chance for me to to save money and re-evaluate my spending habits, and since I was in a dry household I didn’t have a vice to put my sorrows into. I mean, I do tend to eat my feelings, but my weight hasn’t gone up a ton, and I could have shopped, but my desires went away.

I faced my fears them head on. It was a rough time with anxiety…but pushing through that made me stronger and be able to rock the demons. From all of that, I decided to take a chance and do what I’ve wanted to further be able to focus on my life and what I wanted to do. So I moved to Brooklyn, NY. A nice neighborhood near the south of the borough where I have a one bedroom apartment, high up, laundry in the building (on my floor!), grocery store a block away, subway a block away, plenty of buses and a beautiful view of a bridge and area to walk around in. It’s perfect for me right now.

The apartment was shown to me by a realtor who doesn’t ever do rentals. She does sales for coops and apartments in the city (New York City). How’s that for chance? When mom and I went to the open house, I got immediate good vibes from the space and from the realtor. I think she also felt it because of the way we were talking – I was asking questions, she was answering them, but it was a lovely banter where we were both comfortable with each other and both silently though “yes, this person is for this place”.

And so, a month later after I thought I didn’t qualify for it (because I didn’t have all that much in savings as the landlord though I should) the realtor convinced me to not give up and I proved that I was an able and responsible tenant. What seemed like a lifetime (about 3 weeks) I then finally got approved. At the end of October, I moved in.

It’s been super chill. I almost feel guilty at how happy I feel at night when I put my colorful LED lights and watch my big TV. Sometimes I game, sometimes I read, sometimes I’ll meet up with a friend or my parents, but overall I’m really happy. I can focus and my head feels so incredibly clear.

Spiritual self – ✔

Financial self – ✔

Time to work on my professional and physical self.

Have anything you want to share with me? I’m on Twitter. Thanks for reading!

PhotoADay Project

On the 31st of August I read the DayOne blog, which is a blog from a journaling app I had purchased on my Mac a few years ago. I started to follow what the blog post recommends, and post a photo a day to my DayOne journal (and Instagram).

It’s the 15th of September and I’m pretty proud of me keeping up with it so far. Instead of posting to the DayOne app directly, I post it to my secondary Instagram account that’s focused on photography. I set up an IFTTT applet to post the photo into my DayOne journal automatically. It works so well!

Here’s to hoping I can finish out the month. I need to think of a theme for October – most definitely Halloween related. Reach out to me on Twitter if you have any ideas!

Connection

I’m always on the lookout for connection. Not sure why this is. Maybe because I’m an extremely affectionate person. I love to interact with people; meeting new people online or in person. I’ve done with whether in a relationship or not.

I’m introverted by nature. I heard the term “ambivert” and I feel that it describes me perfectly. Every now and again I like to go out to the world and see it buzz around me. I’ll need to see friends and catch up with them. It’s why I love photography. I like observing the world around me and capturing the moment. I love videography because you do this same thing but in motion. I love watching vlogs to see a connection between me, the viewer, and the person telling their story. I love seeing the creative process. I love seeing a normal day in someone’s life. It brings connection even if it’s virtual.

Never Forget

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