I don’t believe there’s cause for concern. I just assumed based on the prompts while setting up the backups that it would actually restart the VMs. I was wrong.

Just sitting here surprised that my proxmox backups didn’t interrupt my VMs.

More Ace Combat!

I tried to play Shadow of the Tomb Raider but an online account, unskippable cut scenes, and quick time events for the first 10 minutes minimum made me uninstall it. Just not my kinda game.

this is because your own personal library does not make them money.

I believe that was an electron app for the PC. There was a flatpak available as recently as a month ago. I remember seeing it when I was looking for good music players. not sure how well it works.

It’ll take me a bit because I’m swamped with work and want to finish HL+ first but I’ll try to follow up.

HL+ was my only intro to the series. I scooped it up at a used game store when I was digging through some loose carts in a bin. I have really enjoyed it and I considered getting the ps2 version but I read that the controls were a bit more clunky and there were some quality of life improvements in it.

Comparing 7 to HL+, it’s hard for me to pick the better game. HL+ reminds me a ton of the old title Fury3, I think because the ground is mostly just flat bitmaps. That’s a heavy nostalgia factor for me because my dad and I used to play that game quite a bit. I thought the updated graphics in 7 would put me off but they’ve been nice. Plus the thin story is a little enjoyable.

I think it’s harder to stall in HL+ than 7 but that might just be because I have a bigger controller? The plane customization in 7 is overwhelming to me compared to the limited options in HL+ but others might like that. After about 10ish hours in each game, I’d say they are just about equal to one another. I think I’ll try to finish HL+ first and then go back to 7 so I don’t get too confused with the controls switching back and forth.

as I mentioned earlier in the thread, I’m on AC7 as well. love this game. it seems like a nice mix of arcade and sim.

Oddly, I got into EE because I like the fighting games a lot. The Dead Cells collab just put it on my radar. I was kind of bummed that EE seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the titles. I shouldn’t be, however, because there’s BlayzBloo on the NDS and Clone Fantasma on the 3DS. Neither have any real story but feature the characters as well.

Side note: I badly wish that the Legion 1.5 mode in BlazBlue Contiuum Shift II was available on other releases. It’s my favorite mode but the d-pad on the 3DS wears my thumb out. I would love to be able to use my leverless controller. Perhaps emulation is the way to go for that one.

Ace Combat 7 but maybe I’ll go back to Ace Combat Horizon Legacy +… I always seem to find later titles in a series and end up playing them in confusing parallel.

BlazBlue Entropy Effect. This one has been fun and weird. I jumped into it because of the Dead Cells collab and that content feels almost like it could be a Dead Cells 2. This game took a while for me to understand what’s going on. I like the gameplay a lot, not so much the overworld stuff.

Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth. I went back to this game and realized that I gave up on the first boss months ago. Might try to beat that boss or I might just start it over. This game is a lot like Blade Chimera (same engine, I think. definitely the same team) but I have nostalgia for Lodoss stuff so I picked it up last year.

I use both. I have some things I want in VMs and others in containers. I run a VM to run containers in podman alongside my “normal” VMs.

Proxmox has its own ability to run containers but I was more familiar with docker/podman.

Your DNS provider may offer static hosting as a paid service. I’m using porkbun and their static hosting is pretty cheap, plus they handle SSL and whatnot for me.

i have very few services and tend to lean into virtual machines instead of containers out of habit. i have proxmox running on an old mini-pc that needs to be replaced at some point. 16GB of RAM in it, 4 cores on the CPU (it’s an i3 at 2ghz), and a 100GB SSD.

VMs and services are as follows:

• ubuntu vm
  • runs my omada controller in docker
  • used to run all of my containers in docker but i migrated them to podman
• fedora vm
  • runs several containers via podman
    • alexandrite, where i’m composing this now!
    • uptime kuma
    • redlib for browsing reddit
    • kanboard for organizing my contracting work
• dietpi in a vm to run pi-hole (migrated here when my pi zero-w cooked itself)
  • this also handles internal dns for each server so i don’t have to type out IP addresses
• home assistant HAOS vm

home assistant backs itself up to my craptastic nas and the rest of the stuff doesn’t really have any backups. i wouldn’t be upset if they died, except for my kanboard instance. i can rebuild that from scratch if needed.

i’ll be investing in a new mini-pc and some more disks soon, though.

whatever you go with, you might have an issue with it being constantly plugged in if that’s your plan.

I used to run a piratebox off a nexus s years ago and I’d regularly unplug it to let it run off the battery for a while. constant charging can cause excess heat and that’s not good for the battery.

for me it was less about things being a little bit harder and more about being unable to travel from the airport to lodging or work offices without paying out of my own pocket, which I couldn’t afford anyhow.

typically I would just buy a cheap prepaid stock android phone for this and use as much fake info as I could.

that’s the hard part for me. daily life is bearable with a dumb phone but i live in a semi-rural area. when i go to civilization it’s high friction without a smartphone.

i tried to do this recently but it created a lot of friction in daily life. once the masses have moved on, it’s hard to keep the old stuff, sadly. it’s really frustrating.

i, too, was alive at a time when all this convenience didn’t exist but a large part of the world has moved on with forcing privacy nightmares.

some of these “conveniences” are requirements for people. i keep a lot of my personal digital activities isolated (offline gps, minimal invasive app usage on my phone, custom ROM, blah blah) but when i have to travel for work, i am required by the company to use ride sharing (relies on gps), commercial messengers, and other invasive commercial apps (that rely on phone based payment systems). typically i pick up a stock android phone and a pay as you go plan for this to use as a “burner”, using false information where possible.

sure i guess i could quit my job and go hang potatoes in somebody’s garage for $0.13 USD per year but i’ve made my bargain with the devil.

the lines between privacy and convenience are fuzzy and ever moving. it’s best to approach this with a bit of threat modeling first. figure out what you’re actually worried about and what you can tolerate, then decide how much convenience you’re willing to suffer.

guess i’ll have to yoink it out of my phone when i get some motivation. thanks!

while it’s a bit more than a tablet, I scooped up a gen 3 yoga x1 thinkpad off ebay for somewhere around $300 USD. i’m running bluefin on it and it works great for most of my general computing tasks. the screen folds back into a tablet mode and the keys recess when it does. that functionality “just works” on a fresh bluefin install for me.

the stylus that sits inside the body of the laptop doesn’t function and i suspect that it is a (non-replaceable) battery issue. i bought a larger lenovo stylus for the device after some research and it works great (plus i can replace the battery). it’s a CCAI21LP1520T4 model. i think it was about $35 USD.

the only downside is it’s a bit heavier than a tablet and it can get kind of warm over time but i’m doing development on it and have several docker containers running for that purpose. that might be a me problem.

i like that it has a headphone jack and an sd card slot. there’s also a sim card slot but i doubt that’s usable with linux.