# Computing in 2024

Last year I made several changes that reduced the energy consumption
of my computing activities at home. This year I plan to provide some
of my energy requirements via solar power. I also want to start
experimenting with ham radio data modes.


## Computer

The Asus B202 eeebox[1] has been serving me well for the past 5
months, though I have had to recently replace the fan and bios
battery. It is sufficient for everything but dealing with a full-fat
web browser. Ungoogled-chromium works for most sites but not all,
with some it really struggles.

I've decided that there is already more than enough used I.T. surplus
in the world and that something already out there can surely fit my
needs. I have recently been thinking of changing the above system for
a HP T620[2] thin client. This should provide a small foot print, low
energy (15w) 64bit system with no moving parts that would offer a
good performance upgrade over the current system.

Other than that I'm quite happy with my current setup:
 * Asus B202 eeebox (1.6Ghz Atom 32bit CPU, 2Gb RAM and 120Gb SSD)
 * 24" Asus pro-art monitor (1920x1200)
 * Lenovo KU-1255 USB Trackpoint keyboard


## Software development

I will continue to use shell and awk for any small programming
projects. Perl is my default language but I've been forcing myself to
learn how to use more primitive tools which are to be found on all
unix and linux systems. You could argue that Perl is found on all
those systems these days, but I think it's bad practice to keep
installing programming languages on systems and to make them
requirements. What was once all shell scripts is now a mishmash of
perl, python, lua and whatever else. I know as well as anyone how
strong the desire is to use what you know, but sometimes, for the
greater good, it is better to force yourself to convention and
broaden your horizons.


## Solar

I need to calculate how much solar power I need to produce and store
in cells to operate without downtime. This means at some point I will
be purchasing solar panels and either an all-in-one solar generator
or building my own from components (battery, charge controller,
inverter, ...).


## Radio

I've been studying for my foundation ham radio license and hope to
soon start mixing computing with radio for communications with data
modes. I'm looking forward to experimentng with JS8Call, ft8, winlink
and RTTY.


[1](gopher://gopher.icu/I/images/asus3.jpg)
[2](https://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c04017240)