xylem

This solar powered electric cooker operates on a kind of similar principle (store up heat to cook food using minimal continuous energy input), and is a good example of one way to construct the insulation - https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2025/10/how-to-build-a-solar-powered-electric-oven/

If you're comfortable on the command line, exiftool is pretty flexible and can likely do what you want

This is great, and it doesn't have to be as complicated to get started. Here's my setup -

• navidrome running in docker on my server (a NUC in the basement, with a copy of the library)
• tailscale to access the server from outside my home network (I run headscale, a self-hosted coordination server on a VPS, but the free company hosted default would be fine)
• Ultrasonic on my phone (I like the ability to "pin" songs or albums to keep offline)
• local copy of the library on my desktop which I listen to with Quod Libet

I cancelled my Spotify membership back in April and have been buying on average an album a month, either Bandcamp or directly from artists if possible. Bandcamp is also decent for discovering new artists, and I've also gone old-school and sought out music critic websites that cover the genres I like.

This is cool, and what great timing - I just spent the last half hour sewing up the seam inside the ear cups of my QC35s. The fake leather is flaking as well so I'll definitely try something like this in the future, probably with fabric (maybe a 4-way stretch cotton knit, athletic fabric probably a good choice)

I was also thinking about crocheting a cover for the top band.

Currently enjoying a salad of overwintered kale and cabbage, beet greens from thinning the sprouts, a couple radishes, and snap peas, with sunflower seeds and fresh dill sprinkled on top. I just added grocery store cucumber and bell pepper, because I was behind on planting those. This is what we do it for!

The indieweb / smallweb community has some tutorials, like this one - https://32bit.cafe/cyowebsite/

I recently visited The Garden In the Woods, near Framingham, MA - it's a combination botanical garden and native plant store. Wonderful place, I highly recommend it to anyone in the area. I came home with a Serviceberry bush that I planted where one of the hedge/tree conifer things on the edge of my yard had died.

In the annual garden my flour corn is coming up - planted it a bit late, so hopefully it'll have enough time. I'm a little behind on everything except the peas this year, tbh, but it's nice to see things finally start to take off.

Sounds like the zipper is too long - a friend was just telling me about this pitfall since I'm planning to make a pair of pants soon.

I don't have any first-hand experience, but this YouTube channel has some great videos about tailoring jeans. Not exactly your problem, but might at least help you understand the construction - https://youtu.be/AiYmCpDKmqk

This may also help - https://youtu.be/RBN10DxjW14

Fruits of my seed starting labors, some farther along than others. The big squash was a volunteer from the compost, not sure yet if it's a butternut or a pumpkin. Also featuring some peas in the background that I really need to trellis

Last year's kale is starting to flower - the seed I saved from the year before is growing well so I'm excited to collect more.

Bonus double rainbow from the storms we had earlier this week. Weather is beautiful now, I like the May-June time of year.

These were relatively cheap, off of Amazon. Probably not spectrally perfect, but they've been good enough for my seed starting.

I have a set of "dumb" grow lights plugged into some smart plugs which connect to Home Assistant. It's simple, it works, and I like getting the power consumption data as well. Having multiple "zones" would just require another smart plug.

The ornamental cherry is in full bloom, which is lovely! Yesterday afternoon we slapped together a trellis for some of the peas with some reclaimed building materials. Last weekend I planted out my two blueberry bushes, which are just starting to break dormancy.

This weekend's task will be to thin the masses of volunteer tomato seedlings that have popped up, and maybe transplant some of the more intentionally grown ones!

I have two yards of topsoil/compost blend arriving this week, at which point I can plant eldest sister corn in the new beds!