Clean up git branches by date
One of those tiny conveniences that I’ve meant to discover long ago, but finally got to. My work (and my fun), both code and prose, is almost entirely in the git VCS and most of my WorkWork is in git repositories that are shared with others. Mostly, I tend to use topic branches and push them up to a central repository (gitlab/github/forgejo) and largely when these branches merge to the main branch, they are deleted from the central repository.
May 21, 2025
Self-Hosting in Public Cloud
Sometimes “Self-Hosting” means or implies “on your own hardware, in your own home or a co-location centre”. But sometimes it means “on a Virtual Machine provisioned by a public cloud vendor”. For most of my self-hosted services, I have little need for Serious Uptime, so I can just use whatever old/puny hardware that I have lying around the house and my ISP’s connectivity (now via fibre, not satellite!) is Good Enough. And if the Raspberry Pi (Pi4B with 8G RAM) can cope, the marginal cost is tiny: the datasheet says 15W max.
May 5, 2025
Charging Li-ion powerbanks
Since my region has had problematic power outages recently, I’m thinking about rechargeable batteries and powerbanks; It’s generally accepted that rechargeable batteries for modern consumer electronics1 degrade faster if they’re frequently charged to 100% of nominal capacity. Indeed, so much so that battery manufacturers specify lifespan in terms of the number of cycles to reach 80% of the rated battery capacity. In addition, “Simply storing lithium-ion batteries in the charged state also reduces their capacity”.
May 4, 2025