My crappy, noobish “Tinylab”

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Here is my recent little project called “Tiny Lab” (apart from my Main Home Lab). An idea born from looking at the empty shelf :). Not so long ago i bought 2 Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q Gen2 Tiny PC’s & had 6 HP ProDesk 600 G2 Micro PC’s laying around for very long time, so I thought why not just put them to some kind of use instead of just sitting & collecting dust.

One of ThinkCentres is being used as my desktop, since I was never a gamer this works for me really well. Overall I love these little PC’s, they also called 1 liter computers. Lenovo, DELL & HP all make them, called Tiny, Micro, Mini. Considering their size some models are real powerhorses. Mine are average. Here are the specs:

ThinkCentre M70q Gen2 Tiny: i5-10400T, 32GB RAM, 500GB nVME + 1TB SSD, both have exact same configuration.

The HP Minis are old & really low spec, I guess that’s why they been laying around for son long without any purpose.

HP ProDesk 600 G2 Minis: i3-6100T, 12GB RAM, 500GB SSD. All have the same configuration.

I actually do have few of these HP’s attached to few TVs around the house, but had 4 left dusting.

I also dig out my old ass Lenovo Twist Touchscreen (Laptop/Tablet) which haven’t been used in years & came up with some ideas how I can make some use out of it. So now it hides the TinyLab when screen is down & running terminals with hardware monitors 24/7 (vtop – I have install instructions posted here) which are connected to my proxmox & VPS’s,this way I can just glance at it real quick & know the current state of servers (CPU, RAM & largest processes). This shelf is located right next to my desk on the left side, so I can see it clearly. Whenever I need to a access the “TinyLab” physically I just move the screen up.

Lenovo Twist: i7-3517U, 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD. (Touch screen)

I know the setup looks a bit “ghetto” . I had few USB fans laying around so I just added 4 for now to make air circulation better. Right now I’m Planning on having 2 ThinkCentres & 3 HP ProDesks.

ProDesks have Proxmox Cluster setup & running few VMs & Containers. One ThinkCentre like I mentioned is my main PC & second one is dedicated to PLEX, Blue Iris & qBittorrent. Yes I know & I was running all of them on proxmox VMs, but I like to tinker too much & brake something very often, so just letting these few apps have their own dedicated hardware. Blue Iris is a very powerful Security Camera Recording Software, It’s currently recording my Home & Office Cameras.

Also attached to “TinyLab” 2 External HDDs: 4TB (My PC Backups) & 10TB (PLEX Data)

New Menu Section – Links.

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I have what I consider a pretty extensive “Bookmarks Toolbar”. The most visited ones I put an Icon only without any text & some folders contains over 50 additional bookmarks. Folder names “N” is for “News”, links to various news in all kinds of fields, so had an idea why not share the ones i visit most here on my blog. Check out Links to see the ones I consider attention worthy ones. I would also appreciate if you send me some of the ones you visit often!

[I used to have two row Bookmarks bar, since even now I can’t fit my main icons, but after Firefox made changes I wasn’t able to bring it back using same way I did before. If you know how to do it I would really appreciate if you can drop a comment with that info!]

IRC – TheLounge (ZNC, IRCcloud)

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TheLounge – IRCloud, ZNC, psyBNC, mIRC, XChat, irssi, weechat, BitchX Killer

[Instructions how to install The Lounge are located here]

– So if you on IRC you probably at least heard about sch things like IRC Bouncer, ZNC, IRCcloud etc. Pretty much the ability for your nick to stay connected even when you turn of your computer, later you just connect back & it’s like you never left, you can see all the conversations that happened, who joined / left & so on, you can come back in few weeks & just continue. But for this to happen you gotta have a separate service that’s always connected to the internet, such as Server, VPS, Shell… After getting that you would install a platform that would work on that server, now a days most popular one is ZNC, which is simple enough for regular IRC users, but then you gotta be an IRC veteran unless you tech savvy. (I included the install instructions for installing ZNC as well). So after you install ZNC on the Server that’s always connected online, then you would use the some IRC client that you correctly use to connect to that ZNC, so it might get complicated.

That’s where service such as IRCcloud comes in. You login to your account & connect from their platform to the same servers / channels you always do. You can access it from any device / computer that has internet connection, they also have a iOS / Android apps. It’s really easy to use, actually easier than IRC client, but it comes with a cost. it’s $6 per user a month, which I find absolutely ridiculous in 2023 considering IRC been declining & barely getting new users, and most who is on IRC been on it for a while. So to charge same price as an actual VPS service (actually great VPS even cheaper) is nuts. Plus they actually increased it by $1 beginning this year.

But luckily there is almost the same platform, but even better, more modern, & more actively developed called “TheLounge”. It’s pretty much the same thing, but you have to install it your self & yes you need that low spec, low budget VPS, something for around $2,50-$5 a month TOPS, and you will have the whole VPS to your self, where you can run TheLounge and many more cool things, host a website / blog, your game server, well why not the whole IRC Server! since you will also have a dedicated IP address as well. I think I will make a section here with a best VPS deals out there on weekly bi-weekly bases, since you can find a lower end one for like $1.50, which would still be able to handle way more than just TheLounge.

If you are ready to install, click here. I would recommend installing it on the latest Linux such as Ubuntu 23.04 or Debian 12… This way you will have no hiccups with “nodejs”. But you can run any Linux version, just google how to update nodejs, since it will require new version.

Installs Page

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If you didn’t notice, there is “Installs Page“, where you can find useful Apps for Windows & Linux. The reason for making it, because Friends & People Online would ask how to Install this or that. so I decided to dedicate a page with most frequently asked Installs. And some are the ones that I consider great & useful. The instruction are simple & nothing I add is complicated, so beginners & noobs like me would easily understand it, since sometimes the instructions on developers pages are kind of complicated. Hope some folks will find it useful! As of this post there is instruction for Installing things such as Kasm Workspaces, ZNC, Linux Terminal Monitoring & some other Linux Simple Tools… I will try to add more once in a while & if you have particular request to simplify install instruction for something let me know by contacting me in “Contact” page!

FIRST Surgery Completed

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First Spine Surgery / Fusion

(overdue post!!!) So I realized I have wrote a draft for the blog after my first surgery was done, but never posted it was just sitting there in the Microsoft Word file. So even know it’s wayyy too late and I’m already scheduled for the second one in few weeks I still decided to post it, here is the original post:

So after many years of waiting, few years of going thru hell it’s done. At last I had the surgery!
I consider this step one of the biggest in my life, because prior to surgery, my back (spine) problems has literally ruined a lot of things in my life, ruined me financially, caused huge issues with my marriage, dragged me thru hell emotionally.
I lost so much to it, that I look at these few years with fear… I’m not going to get into it too deep, but some people knows about pain killers and what they might cause after long term use.
However, now is a time for new chapter, which in no way will be easy, but it’s HAS to be done in order to get back to “normal” again.
Even before the surgery, my surgeon seen many MRI’s, CAT scans, CT scan etc of mine (of course) and new the issue I have is bad. The surgery was estimated to last 3-4 hours, however after I was cut open, they realized it’s worse than they thought, so it took “a little extra”, 8 hours.
But it went all good, the recovery still going (it’s been almost 3 weeks), still using the cane.

Comcast & Verizon Business (Dial-up Speeds)

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So the other day I randomly called Comcast Business to see how much we currently paying for services & thought checking out Verizon & their current offers, maybe I should switch.
Comcast Business Customer Portal doesn’t have an option to see how much you currently paying, they do list the services/packages you have. We have “paperless billing” with auto-pay.
So after calling it took quite some time to figure out how much we paying for each service, since the reps English was so broken, I had ask him to repeat each answer 3-5 times.
Turns out we pay as follows:
Internet: (200Mbps down / 20Mbps up) – $120
Voice (Phone): 2 lines $15 + $5 Voice Mail
TV: $30 + $10 Cable Box
Router/Gateway that serves both Internet & Voice: $19

plus: Fees & Taxes
Total comes to: $236

Even know it’s for a business & not residential I still think it’s a bit much, specially when we don’t use Voice (we have VoIP provider) & we don’t even have a TV. so 2 services completely pointless for us.

After talking to Comcast I went to talk to Verizon & see what they currently offering & that’s the funniest part…
The Agent (chat) informed me they don’t have FioS in my area & was happy to offer different speed package…
a DSL with whopping MAX Speeds of 3Mbps down & 384Kbps up! Yes, in 2021 Verizon offer these speeds to business clients that most of the time have multiple people on computers doing tasks all day.
So if I convert to MB/s the MAX speeds you would get is 0.37 MB/s down & 0.047 MB/s Up.
Annnnd, this supersonic speeds comes at the great price of $52.99+TAX per month / $149.99 for router & $149.99 ACTIVATION LOL, so with fees & taxes first bill would be over $400!

Tails Linux – Tor Speeds & IP Locations

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Tails Linux – Tor Speeds & IP Locations

So if you familiar with Tails Linux, you know that incoming or outgoing connections go thru Tor, since Tails main purpose is anonymity & privacy. We all know going thru Tor is never blazing fast, it’s rather extremely slow at times. This is due to going thru different locations, overload, distance, power of host etc.
For few days just out of curiosity I recorded the speeds and IP locations of the Tor connections. I even learned about the country I have never heard about called Seychelles (East Africa), which is extremely tiny, just 459 km2 (285 miles) which makes it way smaller than New York city & population of just 98,462! (2020 estimate) which is 90 times less than New York city. So it was very surprising that Tor would “pass” me thru such country!

Below you will find the info of random connections:
Time, IP, Country, Host & Speed. Speed is in Mbps & goes as Download / Upload

(I don’t want to post this info in plain text for search bots, google or any other info gathering BS to pick it up, so instead will be as screenshots)

A few MUST steps after installing Windows 10

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I Install / Reinstall Windows very frequently & thought would share the 2 steps I take every time to make fresh copy of Windows work way faster by disabling lots of bloatware that the new installs come with.
First thing is to download & install “OOSU10.exe“, its a Free anti-spy tool for Windows 10. This software is an absolute MUST, it has a huge selection of options to disable Microsoft from tracking you, learning about you and much more. Windows (Microsoft) even tracks your typing pattern (like Google) and sends that info back (Of course). Even if you are across the world on someone else’s computer, not logged in to any account, they can still know it’s you by knowing the way you type, it’s like a finger print, every typing style is unique.


If you too lazy or not sure about which options to disable just go to Actions & choose Apply only recommended settings, however don’t be afraid to choose “Recommended and somewhat recommended settings“. Now apply and choose to save, it will suggest to make a restore point which is always a good idea, do that and reboot the windows to take effect. Don’t forget after anytime you run Windows Update you will have to open OOSU10 again, it will say “Revert to previous settings” since Microsoft doesn’t like not be able to collect as much info as possible about you and will enable tracking when updating again.
-> Download it here: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

This next step is not necessary, but it’s very easy as well.
Click Start, type “PowerShell” left click on it and choose to Run it as Administrator. The command line window will open, now copy the text below, paste and hit enter:
iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString(‘https://git.io/JJ8R4’))
A new panel with options will open. There is many options you can choose, however I always choose at least 2. Uninstalling “Cortana” & “OneDrive” (if you don’t use it). Cortana is a pain to completely disable (uninstall) so this way could not be easier. After pressing any of those options give it time time to complete the task, a little message should pop to let you know it’s done.


Always check for new updated version at the creators website https://christitus.com/debloat-windows-10-2020/ , it was coded by a guy named Chris Titus who also has an amazing YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/ChrisTitusTech which you should subscribe to, it has lots of useful tips & tricks not only for Windows, but also Linux.

And that would be all, just a few little simple steps to make Windows much faster and safer. I will also make a post about what steps to take after installing Mozilla Firefox, which privacy setting to disable & which addons should be a must for any user.

Reason for starting nonsense blog

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[original date of this post was April 15th]

I’m a person who would never start a blog if it wasn’t for the reasons I just did. I’m just terrible at it and see no point of starting something you know you are not good at and don’t have so much passion for it.

However, due to my health I thought this would take my mind of current / past or even future stuff. I’m expecting a spinal surgery soon, which will be “pretty complicated” lightly said. They will have to open my stomach, move organs aside to get to the spine and fix 2-3 of my discs and same from the back with 8 inch incision. Due to my health as is I’m expecting a pretty long recovery / rehab which will be spent mostly in bed. So aside from learning, reading, creating stuff etc. I thought something new such a blog would be a good idea as well. So here we are…

In real life I’m an IT person, who is passionate about most tech things, have few servers at home running Proxmox, VMware, Windows Server etc. UniFi16 PoE serves as my switch and UniFi UDM Pro as my router / firewall / controller. As most UniFi users, once you try them there is no way back. Also have few awesome PTZ PoE Outdoor cameras (which definitely gonna write about) and I have a huge obsession with ThinkPads (IBM / Lenovo). Have a pretty decent collection, around 20 of them, with most in fully working condition. They date all the way back to 1994 release. Currently main one is ThinkPad X390 which I custom ordered from Lenovo and was one of the first people to own one.

Vertiv Liebert PSI5 Lithium-Ion UPS

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When it comes to UPS systems, the latest models using lithium-ion batteries are on fire. Wait. Not literally on fire, I mean they are really hot right now. No. Not hot, hot. Like explosive. Wait. I mean … never mind.

Exploding lithium-ion battery puns aside, UPS makers are releasing new generations of products that use lithium-ion batteries in favor of the stalwart VRLA (valve regulated lead-acid) battery. Without getting into a deep discussion on the pros and cons of battery chemistries, the short of it is that lithium-ion batteries offer some compelling improvements in weight, power, recovery, and service life of a UPS. Cost has been a huge factor in limiting the commercial viability of lithium-ion-based UPS models, but prices have dropped considerably in the last few years. And while these UPSs may still cost more up front, the total cost over time will be the same or less.

So what does one of the newest UPS models running lithium-ion batteries look like, and how does it perform? To answer that question, we turn to Vertiv and its Liebert PSI5 Lithium-Ion UPS.

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