I'd say today was pretty decent. I finished the last few preps on an event I'm hosting tomorrow. The professional networking org I help run is launching it's database series that will run through Fall. I'm sort of the lead guy for this series and kicking off the first event. Basically the goal of the series is to expose people to obscure databases that are still useful. Basically the goal is to increase the number of people who know how to use at least one thing outside of postgres/sqlite/mysql/mongo.

But the cooler part of what I did today is I finally got an ESP32 to work. If you don't know what an ESP32 is, it's a micro-controller that is known to have super over the top networking capabilities. A micro-controller is like a miniature computer that's so small it usually doesn't run an operating system. It typically just runs one code loop.

I've owned several but for some reason my system for many years hasn't been able to program one in spite fallowing directions. But I was able to use AI to get things sorted out. The nice thing is I completely avoided the IDE that presents sometimes unnecessary options, obfucsates what you are really doing, and potentially hides errors. Using pure cli turned out way better.

But the outcome relates to why I was trying to get an ESP32 working anyway. My jank desktop now has proper cooling. I had fried a while ago the controller for the fan on the motherboard. If you plug a fan into the motherboard the system will claim there is no fan. I discovered that I mostly don't need a fan. But the key word is mostly. I bought a USB to fan adapter that just runs the fan at full power. Not very Zen to be in the same room while that is running, whilst the computer almost never needs a fan even for most heavy work loads.

But there is an issue. There are a small handfull of workloads that can still crit the computer. One of them was the review feature here. It's just an AI that grammar checks your post. But I'm tunneling the workload to my desktop and there was a small risk of it shutting down my computer. So now I can turn that back on.

What the ESP32 does is creates a USB device I can send signals to. It then acts as a fan speed controller sending a PWM signal to the right pin on the fan. I then have a script looping looking at /sys/class/hwmon files to detect if a cpu gets hot. It checks every 5 seconds. If it reaches 80C (20 degrees below crit), it will give at least 20 seconds of full fan speed.

The sick part of this is while doing this I was soley focused on this fan problem which is pretty mundane. Actually getting an ESP32 working opens up a ginormous world of possibilities I haven't even had time to think about. I basically just tripled what's within my obtainable horizons to do technically with one small thing that in the moment was just a means to an end. It's pretty cool when the means to an end end up being a much more useful thing than the end itself.

And the end isn't that bad either. It means I can affordably launch all the AI stuff I want on the internet at small scale. Services like runpod are only useful if you have a minimal scale, otherwise they are economically prohibitive. So I needed something to bridge the gap. And I now have that gap covered for so many ideas.

Also I did a fuck ton of laundry. I own so many clothes I can go a month without doing laundry (or more). So when I do it I do it at an industrial scale. So I also did that.