Hi, I'm Christian. I'm going to be posting about computer projects, or anything related. That includes anything that isn't strictly the computer but that computer guys are likely to do, such as setting up RGB light strips around their computer rig, which is one project I'm doing right now. Others will be more like solving electronic problems with something like a pair of Bluetooth headphones.
I'm doing this because an IT instructor advised me that a great way to demonstrate IT experience without having had a job would be to keep a blog of everything computer related that I do. A counsellor of mine relayed this to her husband, who owns a business, and he thought that was fantastic advice.
It took me a couple weeks to settle on a name for the blog, and for some reason I kept thinking of the Robert Redford movie, Sneakers, in the beginning when they're breaking into a bank and David Strathairn tells Dan Aykroyd to "check the ones coming off the blue trunk." Trunk. Backplane...Reboot, ESD, Truncated??? That was taken. Truncat3d it is!
I have already kept notes for years now on how to fix uncommon, niche problems I have with my electronics and computers. I have had the occasion to have to solve the same problem more than once, and so enter my note keeping, which I thought I might as well share here for any benefit it might give others. And I do encourage responses, feedback or if you know better than me how to fix something.
I often take a more creative, cost saving approach to my solutions whenever possible. I am a very curious person so I'm always thinking of something cool I could do even if I don't end up doing it.
Some projects I want to take on include building a file server that I can access online just like a cloud service from any of my personal devices, to setting up a pi-hole for my home network. I am already working on the pi-hole, which I will elaborate on in a future post.
Another project I'm currently working on as mentioned above is setting up LED RGB light strips in my room to accent it with more dramatic and appealing lighting. I'm a big fan of indirect lighting. Until now I've used a lot of torchiere's, and to save space I've moved on to simple desk lamps pointed at my walls and ceiling. I've always wanted to play around with the color temperature of my bedroom lighting. But now that Wi-Fi enabled bulbs and light strips have become more and more common, I thought I might as well do those since they are somewhat affordable.
I had an idea a couple weeks ago for lighting my room that included my computer case, but more on that later.
I just bought a white Thermaltake Core P3 computer case, which I've wanted since I saw it mounted on a friends wall back in 2017. I finally had the means to do it and so I did. It's a modular, open-frame, floating glass frame case.
Floating frames are usually used to give pictures a three dimensional look, and like they're floating. And I fell in love with floating glass frames years ago whenever I saw one at the entrance of a restaurant I went to growing up. It looked like this:
Floating Acrylic Picture Frames
A small gripe I have with the Thermaltake Core P3 is that I didn't realize that the case was effectively dated. The cases front I/O only included USB 2.0 and 3.0. And I also didn't know there was an updated Pro version of the case, which is a bit different and a little bigger I think, and it has updated I/O to include USB 3.2 or whatever...well, it's newer and faster than 3.0 whatever it is. But no matter, my current build is budget and my friend, Nate, helped me build a case for about $150 using some parts I already had and used ones he bought off eBay to build computers and sell online pre-built for cheap. And the motherboard he helped me pick had plenty of PCIe slots, two NVME M.2 slots, which I need both of, and one type C port. So if I really can't be bothered to convert to type A for whatever reason, I have a type C on the back of the case, nearest to my chair.
And then it hit me: I've always thought RGB case lighting was cool and would like to do it but have always been turned off by the idea of any eye strain or this case being on display in my room, putting off light that burns into my eyes while I'm trying to see my monitor. But what if I fashioned light strips around my room and also around and within the computer case, which could all be controlled from a remote. If I need darkness to watch a movie or something, I can turn all my lights, including the RGB in my computer off with one remote. I'm not going to do two different things that compliment each other because when I come in my room, I don't want to grab this remote and switch lights on, and then go flick that switch, and then press this button over here. It needs to all be controlled from one spot, with one action. And so the project was born.
I didn't do any research, or know anything I was doing, but I saw a light strip kit from Walmart. Monster's Smart Illuminessence kit costed about $13. It said it had an app and could be controlled by Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant. When I opened it, I downloaded the app and discovered that the only way to turn it on was to pay what I considered to be any on of three exorbitant subscription fees. It was something like $20 or $30 monthly, $50ish yearly, or $70ish for lifetime access.
According to Linus Tech Tips WAN show about a month ago, customer read 'lifetime and think a literal human life or some other large metric, but to companies 'lifetime' really just means: until they stop supporting it. This can be misleading, but ultimately even though I think they should be more clear, if they say 'lifetime' meaning the foreseeable time they'll support that product before they replace it, it makes sense even though I think they know what we'll all think by default. Knowledge is power. I don't like it and I could go on and on about it.
Anyway, I returned the Smart kit with thoughts like that Monster just lost a customer, and then I saw they also had a kit labelled 'Essentials". This time it worked right out of the box with a remote. I like it.
The remote is a little overly sensitive, responding to touches other than my fingers when sitting on my bed. (Don't put anything on top of it. Instead I turn it upside down and under my mattress so I always know where it is and it's never disturbed.
I have plenty of gripes with it. The Essentials kit doesn't have the option to cycle through all the RGB colors automatically, sometimes referred to as Unicorn Vomit. The remotes color wheel allows you to select many colors and you can dim or brighten or have them blink or even do two Christmas colors, orange and purple for Halloween or it can do other occasional color schemes. But I can't control color temperature, and pure white on this LED strip is a very low temperature, might as well be light blue. And I personally thought any color other than white caused me eye strain but this is likely just me.
Man I never thought so much about eye-strain in my life until this project. I swear I don't have a disorder, this project has simply brought this to the forefront.
I decided to put another strip behind my TV which doubles as my computer monitor. And then on the left side of my room (to the left of my TV) is my door but I decided that putting light strips around that frame might burn into my vision while watching TV. My new computer case will go on the opposite side of my bedroom door from my TV. I need to buy an HDMI cord that's stretch from the computer, to go under the rug by my door to the TV.
I don't want to permanently fix light strips to the wall behind the computer, the paint...well the apartment was built at the end of WWI, who knows when it was painted last. And I'll want to reuse the strips when I move. I don't want to attach the strips to the computer case because that'd ruin the aesthetic of the case. I do need to figure out how to attach them to the inside of the case without them calling attention to themselves when turned off, and ruining the aesthetic of the case. First world problems! But for the light behind the computer, I realized last night that I could put four picture frame adhesive mounts in a square and wrap the strip around them very carefully so the paint doesn't chip right off. Yes, it's that old. I'd like to wrap a light strip around the glass pane of my computer case, facing inward to make the glass glow, but these strips aren't exactly pleasing to the eye themselves and the pane is only 5 mm thick, with the light strips being much wider.
I also want to put strips behind some of my furniture and my mini-fridge. And I am also looking into the possibility of getting diffusers for all the strips to even out the lighting between the LEDs.
I wonder if future employers would be turned off by any fonts other than normal ones?
This has been Truncat3d 00000000111100010100110______________end of line
