Petint's blog

Day one

I have a job now. Today started off pretty well. I got up at 6 am, got to the bus and then the train station. This is when things got a little sideways. They announced at the station that the train would be 15 minutes late, which would have been an unacceptable level of delay, because I was supposed to have about 5-7 minutes at the point when I needed to get on the company bus. (Which only comes once a day by the way.) So I got really worried if I make it, so I decided to take a faster route then the one I was planning to use. At the end I made it there in time, not that it mattered, because the company bus ended up being about 30 minutes late due to a really bad traffic accident., so yay for me??
We started our day by picking up our staff ID cards that we're required to wear in the factory at all times, and is often required for opening doors. They also gave us a little pack of goodies, which included: a cup, a pen, a pack of sticky notes and a t-shirt. After this we were shown the place where we should gather in the morning, and the place where most of our activities will take place, the training center.

After a quick briefing in the training center we went on a factory tour. We got to see all the stations where these huge control panels are made. I even got to see some familiar faces on the factory floor, because some of my former classmates ended up getting a job here. After this we went to the testing facility, where the control cabinets undergo a series of electrical tests after a series of visual inspections. Reliability is key in this industry, and unexpected errors aren't allowed. This process is also repeated with the presence of the customer. After this we had lunch at the canteen. The meal wasn't anything special, but at least it was pretty inexpensive. Expect for the soup, because they don't give you decent portions, so I won't be getting soup anymore. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful.

This factory assembles and tests control systems built for various gas turbines. These turbines are equipped with hundreds of various sensors, require dozens of control signals and guarantee a 100% uptime, so critical system design is taken really seriously here. Every component has redundancy in this system. For example, the turbine control system has two control units, both connected to the two Ethernet switches, and all IO modules are connected to both switches. Every signal that enters or leaves the cabinet has to be isolated and conditioned for safety, the cabling which carries signals intended for spark-free areas is all labeled really clearly, and is well separated from the rest of the system. These cabinets are REALLY MASSIVE! They are constructed from a number of sections, each with different duties. These sections make 19" rack mount gear look small and there's like 10 of them in one of these control panels. These panels are probably about 3 meters tall, and weigh several tons! I genuinely can't express how large these are. You need to see these to understand just how large these machines are, and this is just the control panel, so just imagine the rest of the machine. It must be really massive.
Oh, I forgot to mention the packaging. These control panels are packaged really well, as they might end up going to any imaginable place on earth. They are packaged with the presence of the customer, who gathers picture evidence of these events. Then it gets covered in plastic, vacuum sealed, boxed up with various woods, and they even get shock and tilt indicators, and they undergo even more testing in Italy. All in all I had a really interesting day, and I can't wait to find out more.

2025-11-03

I used to speedrun Minecraft

Today is the 11th. anniversary of the day when I first played Minecraft. For this occasion I'd like to reflect on my early experiences with the game. The year is 2014. You're 10 years old, and all of your friends are talking about a video game. This video game was Minecraft.
However, at first I didn't have the full version of Minecraft so I could only play on the demo, which gives the player about 100 minutes (or 5 in-game days) to do as they please. After a couple rounds of starting a new world, making some progress, running out of time and starting all over again I started picking up some knowledge. Knowledge about the basics of the game, but I also got to know the world well, since it was always the same. I've learned that there's a long cavern under the starting area, that there's some iron ore in that sandy hill to the right, where certain biomes and POI's were located. After a while I started having goals, like: make a cake, an anvil, an Iron golem, other various items or just get as many achievements as I can.

After a couple of months I discovered something. I realized that I can open my save to lan, enable commands and change my game mode, and that my abilities wore less restricted in creative mode even after when the time ran out. However, I still couldn't do as I pleased indefinitely, but this would soon change.
I already knew about the modding scene and popular modpacks like Tekkit, but ad the I didn't know how modding the game worked, but soon I found out about Forge.
So I installed forge and a couple of mods, and when I started the game something was different. I was no longer playing the Minecraft demo, but the full version of the game. I started building my own modpacks, because I couldn't log in to the official launcher without having a copy of the game. So I mostly played modded Minecraft from then on, eventually switching to cracked versions of various launchers. But this isn't the only way I got the true Minecraft experience. There was another thing I did to play the game, which was joining a popular minecraft server community. The one that popular youtubers played on and still heavily promote, the server community started getting involved with community events and still is to my knowledge. You probably already know which one I'm talking about and it you don't then too bad, because I've chosen to not name them. I later left this server community behind and I mostly played cracked modded minecraft.

The only thing I didn't have access to was multiplayer, but I didn't mind. By the time I could buy minecraft I felt like there was no point to it, because I've already played the game so much and it wouldn't really give me anything that I didn't already have. But last December someone I used to follow on the internet decided to run a minecraft server. So at last, I decided to bite the bullet and buy minecraft anyways to play on this server and so I could just have minecraft already. I never got access to that minecraft server, so I decided to just run my own from my old ThinkPad running Debian 12, since I already knew how to do so. In the end buying Minecraft had turned out to be a good call.
It's also a friend's birthday today, so happy birthday Forkow!

2025-11-02

Just a quick one today.

Livemarks is a great RSS extension for Mozilla Firefox, it does exactly I want an RSS browser extension to do. It works just like the ones browsers used to have built in.
Download here fi this sounds like somethinh that you would enjoy.
Watch out for tomorrow's post, because it's going to be a special day!
Fun fact: Noctua is an Austrian company, based in Vienna. I literally didn't know this until this Thursday. Also they give you 60 months of warranty! That's like 5 years! I really should update my feed generator to use a UUID instead of the current date, I thought that one post per day would be enough, and it rely has been so far. But I've really upped my output in the last few days. Today is Friday by the way.

2025-11-01

Crank the Heat Up!!

A couple of weeks ago our boiler started leaking, however this isn't our only plumbing problem, So I'd like to start with our oldest one, and progress to the newest. Our house is equipped with a hot water recirculation system, which allows the people to get instant hot water whenever it's needed. This system relies on a pump in the domestic hot water system that takes some of the water from the end of the pipe, and pumps it back to the tank to be reheated. This system never really worked well for us, because our pump was put on a time switch, so it only ever operated during certain parts of the day. Then the valve under the pump started leaking, and it hasn't worked ever since. However, the second problem will make the firs one look like a good thing, because the "long lasting" ceramic valves in the bathroom faucet had worn out, so it leaks and makes a horrible buzzing sound when under pressure. But only the cold side of the faucet does this, so I came up with a simple "solution" i like to call: "Just turn it off lmao". So we only have hot water at the faucet, which gets really hot if you use it for too long. (This is the part that makes the first problem look like an advantage, because if the pump was operating, then I could use the faucet for much less time.) But problem 3 makes all of this irrelevant, because as I've foretold in the beginning of this post, our boiler started leaking water recently. This boiler is responsible both for DHV production, AND keeping the house warm, so I'm stuck without heating, in October, plus I have no access to hot water. At least I can finally use the bathroom faucet as much as I like, right? Also, less then half of our roof has thermal insulation, so all the heat quickly leaves the house at this part of the year, and comes right in in the Summer months, so that's fun. It's currently about 18°C in here, my fingers are freezing off and it's not gonna be much warmer any time soon, and nobody's going to do anything about it. I guess it's time to get a high performance server or something. Why jump to that conclusion? Why not call a plumber? I won't do it, because it's not my responsibility. My dad won't do it, because he's a diy-er, and he wants to fix it himself. Yeah, like that's ever gonna happen. (See previously mentioned problems.) If he keeps this up, I guess I'll have no choice but to ask my brother if I can move into his apartment. Life sucks.

2025-10-31

The zoo

So we visited the Budapest Zoo yesterday. We like saw the animals and stuff. Also there were a bunch of fancy lanterns everywhere as part of some seasonal thing.
Also they have sharks now, so we also checked them out. When I went to check out the tigers one of the them decided to lay down on a raised platform in front of the window and looked right at me. The other large felines weren't as cooperative though, but like what does one expect from a cat? The Madagascar house was also really interesting. We also checked out the snakes. I had a great time at the zoo, hanging out with my brother, however I was really exhausted by the end of the day.
But that's all for now. They don't all have to be very long, right? riiiiiight??

2025-10-30

The Visit

I got visited by my radio club's president today. He's been planning to to so for a couple of months now, but he never came because I never answered the phone or called him back when he called me about it because I don't like talking on the phone.

So today started off just fine. I even got up earlier then usual, because I already knew that today would be a special day. I know I haven't mentioned it here yet, but I need to do a month of my studies at an external firm. It turns out, that I had made a typo when I first applied for the job, so I needed to restart the application process from the beginning. So I spent most of my day with filling out electronic forms, reading and writing e-mails to various people, then out of the blue someone called me. Someone familiar, a man who I've known for years at this point, and you probably already know who I'm talking about. Yup, it was him. Alex, the club president, the whole reason why I started writing this. He called me on the phone, that he got off work early and that he's able to come to my place, as it wouldn't be a detour for him.

So I said yes. He told me that he would arrive in about an hour. So I started getting ready for the visit, and he came just as promised. I took him out back, showed him around and at the end we've both arrived to the same solution: We need to install a 5-6 meter high pole at the end of the garden to fasten my future HF antenna to. We're also planning to install a VHF/UHF antenna at the other end of the house, where my current VHF antenna is located, so he also inspected that. Then we went inside the house, to find a place and a way to get the cable inside the building. We settled on using RG58 cabling and a pair of holes on the windows frame. After this, we had a brief discussion on our plans, then he left. After this I ""finished"" cleaning the house, and taking steps towards getting that job at The company. So I've had a rather eventful day today.

Wow! three posts in a row. This has literally never happened before.

2025-10-29

Running minecraft servers

I've been trying to run various Minecraft servers since 2015 I think. I might have been able to run Minecraft server software on my PC, but I could never connect to them from outside my local network. It took me until like 2019 to figure out just how port forwarding worked on my home router, and that's also the first time when I was running the server on a dedicated computer 24/7, so that's when my journey really begun. The year is 2019, and... Due to... uh, "Certain world events that would go on until late 2021 and never really stopped happening" I decided to run a Minecraft server that I called "KaranTekkit" to play minecraft with my classmates. I decided to run a Modded minecraft server, because I really love playing modded minecraft. I chose Tekkit server's modpack, because I like tekkit. I told my classmates and a couple of my friends to come join, I posted on Facebook about it, I ran the server 24/7 for months, I even made a Discord server about it, but nobody came to join. Well, that's a bit of an overstatement, because I could get my siblings to join on a couple of occasions, but that doesn't count as a stable player base. After a while I kinda gave up on the project. Also some "things" had changed, and the server wasn't needed anymore. Then +Things+ were !changing! again, so I decided to do it again. But I didn't want to end up like last time, So I made a Facebook post about it. In this post I wrote that I will run a Minecraft server if this post gets 10 likes, but not too surprisingly the post didn't get 10 likes, so just like that, KaranTekkit Season 2 was cancelled. Then a couple of months later I decided to restart the server, but I didn't tell anyone about it. I didn't forward any ports, and I didn't get a domain for it. KT 3S was just for me, so I can play on my old world again. I think I've even deleted the Discord server (that nobody ever joined) by this time. So after this I gave up on the idea of running a Minecraft server for a while. But then last December something happened that I've already written about, but just haven't posted yet, but that server hasn't done well ether. The Discord server I posted it in has like 300+ people, and I could only get 14 people to ever join. The peak stable player base was like 3, and the most players I ever had on was about 6-8. bUt hey, at least it's not running on my hardware, because one of the moderators allowed me to run it on his server. "Well, what sounds like a successful server to me, what are you talking about?" One might ask. Well, there haven't been any activity in the recent months. I haven't been on the server for a while, because nothing ever happens there. I haven't even updated the server, because I just don't care anymore.

2025-10-28

Computering

This August I decided to test my socket 478 processors. My goal was to check if they even work and to upgrade one of my P4 builds with the fastest one.
However, when I put this build together I was just using parts that I had laying around the house so I ended up using a cooler which had it's holder and connector missing. So I ended up mounting the cooler in a very cursed way just with some zip ties and I SOLDERED THE FAN'S WIRES TO THE CONNECTOR ON THE MOTHERBOARD. Yeah, that was really stupid of me, but it's what I decided to do at the time the old motherboard was kinda weird anyways. It had this huge header on the right edge that was used for selecting the memory type and no CPU power connector. (I later found out that people on the internet say that it has power problems.)
So this build was kinda cursed. So while I was testing the CPU's I accidentally broke the fan wires off the motherboard and the project was halted. I tried to clean or replace the connector on the motherboard, so I could use a good CPU cooler, but my efforts had ultimately failed so I decided to replace the motherboard. I decided to go with an ASUS P4PE-X TE, because it's the first socket 478 motherboard that I found. After a couple of weeks of procrastintation and a couple hours of messing about I ended up choosing a netburst celeron 2.60GHz from 2003 that I found on the ground at an abandoned train station in Kőbánya.
This CPU is missing pins and has rust on it and was hard to insert into the socket, but it works... somehow.
I went with this processor, because this was my fastest CPU with 400MHz FSB, because I couldn't get any of my faster processors to work in my setup, not even with my fancy 460MHz Gamer ram, which is quite a shame, because I have some 2.8GHz Penitum 4's. It's written in the motherboard's manual that it supporst 400MHz/533MHz/800MHz FSB speeds, but I could only get it to work with 400MHz chips. I also wanted to have 1536 MiB's of RAM, but it turns out, that I can only use two DDR DIMM's when using DS modules, so I ended up with 1024 MiB's of RAM.
I also changed the video card while I was here. I went from an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (Inno3D FX5200-8X) to a ATI Radeon 9550 (Gigabyte GV-R955128D), because I wanted to use DVI. I also insatlled an Adaptec AIC-7850 SCSI Controller, because I already had it and I wasn't using it. On the software side I ended up going with Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition SP2, because I already had it on there.

2025-10-27

GregTech Parte Deux: The why

So Why did I start playing with GregTech if I hate the mods so much? It's simple really. A friend of mine invited me top play on his Minecraft server, which has GregTech on it alongside many other mods, like AE2 and Create and a bunch of other stuff. I've been playing on this server for just over a month now, and it's been a pleasant experience for the most part. The server is alamfa64, who I've already mentioned on here some time ago. He runs the server from his home from one of those tiny ThinkCertere PC's. (Sine note: They make special monitors for those that you can just slide them into, creating a quasi all-in-one.) The server has a player base of about 10 people. When I first joined the server they were mostly strangers to me, but I was able get to know them pretty quick, since we would also hang out IRL sometimes.

Now to wrap things up with a quick in-game GregTech status update: I'm doing quite well, I already have EV tear tech, I recently expanded my base and opened a shop in the oldest part of my base.

2025-10-19

No opportunities missed

I was recently tasked to go to a place where I've never been before, and things definitely could have gone better.
At first things started out just fine. I got on the right train, made my way across the city all the way to the bus. After this things started getting interesting. You see, I've never been there before, and I forgot to check the place on a map so I didn't know how many stops to take, or which way to go when I did get there.
So at one point I was entirely convinced, that I've already missed my stop so I decided to get off the bus. At first I was confused, but after asking a local man for directions I've realized that I got off early, and that I should have stayed on the bus until the next stop. The bus only comes once an hour, and I've already waited for the previous bus to show up, so I decided that I would walk to my destination. Then I took a wrong turn, and went to the left where I should have gone to the right. I went down a dirt path, fully believing that I was going the right way. At this point I thought that I was almost there, so I started looking for the building among the dessert of identical concrete buildings, however this was in vain so I decided to just wonder around aimlessly before acknowledging that I jots got lost. After this I decided to call for help on the phone, since I didn't have any kind of map on me. At this point I found out that I was going in the wrong way, so I turned back, then crossed the road and I was there. Everything went well at the place, but after that I did have to wait a really, really long time for the bus to show up, and let me tell you that I had everything but a good time.
In conclusion, check out the place where you're going at least on the day before, take notes and if you're in trouble, or not sure of something you can always ask the people around you for help.

2025-10-15

GregTech

I've been cutting my teeth on GregTech for over half a Decade now and I feel like writing about it.
I've been messing about with GregTech for some years now. I think it all started with an InfiTech playtrouhg, that never really finished the modpack.
Later I also watched some InfiTech 2 serieses on the same channel, but they never got past MV. (Or at least I don't recall them going past MV tech)

But why am I writing this now? Well, a couple of weeks ago I found this one Youtube video titled "Beating Minecraft's Hardest Modpack With Nothing" from a channel named Neurotic Goose. At this time I had no intention to play with GregTech. At this time I felt anger and haterd towards the idea of playing with GregTech and I still do to this day. And yet I'm actively playing with the mod, because it feels challenging. Every bit of progress I make with the mod feels rewarding in a very addictive way. At one point I started making Stainless steel just for fun, then I decided to automate HV tear circuits just because I could, and then I realized that I've entered the HV era, and the same also goes for titanium.

The loop: The gameplay loop of GregTech is all about making stuff to make better stuff to make more better stuff, until you reach the best stuff.
As you go along with this insane death spiral of exponentially increasing complexity, your sanity will most likely plummet rapidly. You will find yourself playing long hours, late into the night just to craft a single item.
But it this worth it? What prizes may one receive for the small cost of one's sanity? Well, better tools and armor of course! Neutronium tools are basically unbreakable, and really op if you can actually get to make them before the heat death of the universe or going insane. You kind of have to be insane to even begin playing with GregTech, because the learning curve is really steep, and the difficulty is just as high. But as you unlock more better tech you also gain the ability to make basic technology faster, cheaper and more efficiently.
For example, at the start of the game you can only make plates by using a hammer in a crafting table. This process requires two ingots per plate, but using those early plates you can create a forge hammer, which makes two plates from three ingots and by you can go to a ont-to-one ratio by using a Bender.

In GregTech many crafting recipes require various types of a programmed circuit. This item isn't used up in the recipe, however it determines what items your machine will make from the materials you've provided. Don't get me wrong, I really like this system, because it's simple and intuitive (as long as you pay attention to what kind of circuit you've placed into which machine, or otherwise your crafting will stop for apparently no reason because you've made the wrong item just nothing.)
For example most metals that are made in the Electric Blast Furnace have two versions: One with no Nitrogen, and one that needs Nitrogen. The version with Nitrogen is usually about twice as fast as the Nitrogen free version.
However this feature of the mod makes auto crafting setups more convoluted. You ether build a system that uses the right circuit for the right recipe, but why do that when you can also JUST automate the production of the machines and make one machine for each kind of circuit. This uses more resources, but GregTech is a very resource intensive mod anyhow, so you'll care more about the TROUGHPUT of your machines and you'll need to have to craft many different items in one kind of machine, so you might as well make as many as you want. The only limitation is power generation, but you can also just make MORE power to run the sprawling madness that you call your factory.

Bit I think I've already gone on for long enough about GregTech, so I'll just cut it short here. And still this is my longest post on here yet.

2025-10-13

Stuff and Things

So school is back, which means a couple of things for me, like having a decent meal every weekday and access to tools and resources that I don't have at home. However, there are also backside to this.
For example, I really don't like most of my class. Well, aynwasy I also changed the way I'm managing my projects this year. I've decided to only have one project going at once and to log all of my projects this year.

Usually before the beginning of the year I'll try to give myself unreasonable goals, but This time is different. I have no overly ambitious plans for this year. I just want to continue what I was doing last year.

Also, Sabrina Online just got updated.
Just felt like pointing that out.

2025-09-08

American Power Converters my beloved 💚

My UPS decided ti just die on me in a recent thunderstorm, so I had to move all my computer activities.
I could have just plugged all my stuff in with regular IEC power cables, but for some reason I didn't realize this at the time.

So I'm stuck with a weird computer setup without a single normal 16:9 monitor. Instead I have a 4:3 main and a 9:16 aux monitor, which is actually better then the main 4:3 monitor. (hehe wizard cat :3)

But there's a thing: I didn't move my main computer from it's place, and yet I'm still using it! Well, let me tell you all about RDP. Actually, no never mind. Okay, just one little thing: The audio latency SUUUUCCCKSSS!!! And it doesn't support(?) having multiple displays on the remote machine, so I'm basically using two computers at the same time, and each of them get one screen.

Here's the rest of the problems I've been having: Gaming over RDP is a no-go, the copy/paste macros on my mouse aren't working and I GET DOUBLE DISCORD PINGS EVERY SINGLE TIIIMEEE!!!!

2025-08-01

Blog update: Blog writer and RSS feed

So far I've been using my IDE to write these posts, but I recently had the idea to make a simple... uh.. program? or website? or a web app? to make it much easier. almafa64 also suggested, that I should make an RSS feed for the blog, so I did. I've been wanting to add an RSS feed to my website, I just never had a reason to do so before. I also gave the blog posts IDs, so I can easily reference them. I', planning to add some more features, like rich text support, links and copy buttons for the generated code but I think this is good enough for a first version. This is the first post I made using the new blog writer.
Big shout out to almafa64, who helped me with some of the code.
(I've literally never used JS before this.)

2025-06-20

Sabrina Online *

I recently started reading the Sabrina Online webcomic written by Eric W. Schwartz. Here are my thoughts so far:
The comic strip is about the life of a skunk called Sabrina, and her friends. It also contains a lot of Amiga-related humor, and just tech in general. I've really enjoyed it's meta humor, with it's 4th. wall breaking and comments on real-live events such as the Y2K bug. I also find the passage of time fascinating. Sometimes the strips directly continue the action in a previous one, and other times months go by between two strips. For example, Sabrina just finishes collage off-screen. There's a bunch of adultery in it, but it's an EWS comic, what were you excepting?
In conclusion, It's a great comic and you should go read it.

2025-06-04

New setup

I recently got this HP monitor from a friend of mine. I didn't know what I was going to use it for, I just picked it up because he didn't need it anymore, and it's also way better than most of my monitors. My first plan was to use it in a retro computer workshop setup, but before I got to that I decided to connect it to my laptop with a USB type-c port adaptor. Then I got a new shelf for my main desk from stretched Lidl (aka Ikea), but it turned out that it doesn't fit my main setup, so I moved it to my sib's old desk and I used it to organize their stuff. So now it's Kind of a communal computer area for the entire family, which isn't really what I was going for, but I think it's still a nice setup.

2025-05-31

Graduation

Graduation took place at Pataky. But it wasn't my graduation.

...But it could have been. Today, my old class graduated, including acquaintances, former good friends, and the like.
This graduation was different from the others, because this time it wasn't strangers or relatives I barely knew who were graduating. This time, it was real friends.

I'm afraid I'll never see them again and I hope I'm wrong.

2025-04-30

I'm starting a blog.

Recently I've been thinking of starting a blog on my website.
So I did.
This is my first post.

2025-04-25