I will soon have a home and figured now's the time to do a proper home server, especially since it's going to come with cat 6 run from the main panel to just about every room. I code for a living, but at the same time network is a massive gap in my knowledge, as are servers, and I was hoping to use this as a learning moment as well as just a way to optimize things. I've been doing research for a few weeks now on and off and feel like I've got more questions than I started with, so I'll just vomit them out and if anyone has some guidance I'd really appreciate it.

Some information:

1. I'm willing/able to spend to get quality/simplicity. Time is the much bigger crunch for me right now, and I'd much rather buy something that works even if it costs more than cobbling together some deals.

2. Related to 1, I'd like this to not become my fulltime second job/hobby. I will at some point try to expand to a full home lab, and do want to use this to learn about things I feel I should understand better for general knowledge and my career, but i'd love for core functionality to mostly "just work" after configuring so when I don't have time to do that I'm not stuck telling everyone "oh yeah it'll be broken until I find time to fix it".

Things I know I want-

1. Some sort of NAS. From my research Synology comes up a lot as the "it's expensive but it'll just work" option, and I probably want something like a 4 bay of NAS specific several TB HDD's in something like raid 5/6/10. Pricey as hell but I'm most willing to spend on this as the cost might very well be split by the family members who want me to guinea pig all this.

2. I will have a camera system and would prefer to not have it sending data outside my network. This is the area i've looked at the least, as it's a little farther down the road, but I know others who have things like Arlo and lets just say i'm not super impressed. Obviously this brings up question like remote access to said camera's and where I'm storing the data (nas? Somewhere else?)

3. I'd like to mess with a media server. Plex/Jellyfin constantly come up in my research, so I'll be looking into those, but I've also got a bunch of audiobooks that I'd love to be able to easily share, and I think there's software for that stuff as well.

4. Pihole strikes me as the other "well if you're going to do this, you might as well" option that i'm aware of. Realllly need to better understand networking in general, but I hear these days it can kinda be installed and quickly configured and then left to do its job.

5. Related to all of this, Casa OS keeps coming up as a very good tool for a beginner like me, since it streamlines the handling of docker containers and also file sharing. However it's not really an OS, since it must actually run on Debian (i think?) for now (zima OS still in testing?).

Stuff I'd like to mess with but doesn't have to happen right away.

1. Eventually the aforementioned NAS would be backed up offsite to another NAS at another family members house, once I know what the hell I'm doing.

2. Proxmox constantly comes up as THE tool to use, but it leaves a lot of questions for me. Obviously if I start trying to do lab environments and screw with VM's it's going to be great, but my understanding is that I probably don't, as a beginner, want to say load up a device with proxmox and then have it host debian which installs CasaOS as it'll get a little more tricky to have everything talk right? Unsure on this part.

3. Anything else I'm forgetting. One issue I keep having with this is a LOT of the information out there is either too complex for me to really grok or just says "well yeah you could do ANYTHING with this" and it just sorta assumes I know what the options are. If there's anything else worth checking out I'd love to know.

Hardware I've come across-

1. Synology - Already mentioned but seems like they're a common go to for a "more money than skill/time" situation like mine.

2. Zimaboard - My understanding is it's underpowered for its price, but the main draws are that it's VERY low power, small, and quiet. What it could actually do from my list above is where i'm unsure. I see people are supposedly using it for Plex servers and what not, and I'm pretty sure it's not going to make any kick ass lab environments, but being quiet, small, and maybe a bit closer to plug and play seems tempting (I know they make the blade and a few other products but it all seems greek to me).

3. Various mini computers - I've got a minisforum machine from several years ago that I currently use as a living room computer for light gaming and mostly playing movies and the like. Not sure if i could just wipe it and convert it to be the starting point (more on that later). I know used 1 liter mini pc's from companies like HP are also popular.

4. The MS-01 - Similar pile as the last one but my understanding is this is the kind of thing that's probably really cool if you actually know what the hell you're doing. I'm 99% positive it is vast overkill for my purposes, but I'd like to eventually get to the point where I could understand why I might want something like this. My understanding is if I knew what I was doing I could probably drop proxmox on this and do everything I could ever want and more, but I feel quite far from that.

Some general questions I have -

1. The thing that kicked this all off is my new place likely having fiber, and cat 6 drops throughout the building. Architecture is something I'm still a little shaky on. I assume i'm going to need my own modem/router (just because the cox routers are meh and not really configurable from last I checked), and then that routes to the server first???...or something(seems like a must if you want the pihole to do anything)? I've seen lots of niffty network diagrams at this point but they're all from people WAAAAAAAAY beyond my skill level doing much more ambitious stuff, so it gets hard to understand. If anyone has a simple home network diagram/guide to look at I'd really appreciate it.

2. I'm just in general going to need to learn more about networking, especially in a home environment. Should I eventually get those camera's set up, I want to understand how to let them talk to internal storage and what not ,but not get out to the web...or..something (again remote access seems nice, but also like a massive security concern). I know speed is also a big factor i'm going to need to better understand. Having a fiber connection in only to be bottle necked by a crappy router or a 1gigabit port is just a waste of money, so that's something else I'd like to better understand.

3. I'm a little unclear on how to deliver the media in a media server to the various screens throughout the building. I've got cat 6 to all of them, but I suspect i'm still going to need, at the very least, a cheap computer to hook up to it and then display the image to the monitor/TV? This is why I assume I can't just wipe my current mini PC and reuse it as a server, because I still need it to receive the data from the home server (or at least a web browser?). A part of me feels like if I got a powerful enough server it should be able to server the media direction to the screen, but then you'd need some sort of HDMI/DP drops as well from the server to all your screens?...or something?

Sorry for all the rambling but I've got an odd mix of knowledge and ignorance so it's been a little difficult to research when half the video is stuff I already get, and the other half blows past me or just assumes I know about the parts i'm trying desperately to learn about.

-----UNDERMOUNTAIN SPOILERS-----

-----HALASTER BLACKCLOAK SPOILERS-----

I've been playing and DMing D&D since the late 70s. Most of my campaigns have been homebrew worlds with my own rulesets. But as with many of us, the pandemic became a personal golden era of online gaming with friends around the world, especially with the old classic modules and Roll20.

This campaign began simply enough. It was called Thug & Thugger, and it only had two players. I told them they were thieves who stole from other thieves, interrupting the thefts and taking what they wanted for themselves. And it worked fine for the first 7-8 levels. But then we got ambitious and I sent them on a Spelljammer ship into the Phlogiston. There, they found the protection of an elder goddess who had been imprisoned and needed them to rescue her. But in the course of their rescue, things went sideways and instead of being murdered by Nalfeshnee and Hezrou demons, the elder goddess in a last gasp to save her heroes sent them "somewhere random."

Where they landed was the seventh level of The Dungeon of the Mad Mage in Undermountain. Not only that, but the demons had been compelled to be their familiars and... once they figured out their scale issues... all of them were no more than nine inches tall. The characters discovered that they couldn't go up any floors, only down. If they were going to survive this, they would have to conquer all 23 levels of the dungeon. Now, I'm well aware that this plot sounds like it came out of the diary of a 12 year old, but ultimately what we wanted was a campaign that finally took players all the way to the end and allowed them godhood after level 20.

With all our play these last few years, the schedules of daily life had defeated nearly every campaign. That was why we only had two players. And that was why we shoe-horned our narrative arc into the only module we could find that would get the players to 20.

The first five floors or so were an absolute bloody blast. They were immensely overpowered, despite being only nine inches tall, and they went through entire hordes like a buzzsaw. After the near-death challenges of the Phlogiston it felt like a victory lap. And as the DM I was fine with it, knowing their bully ways wouldn't last. At a certain point, one of their foes banished the Nalfeshnee (which was a massive loss--those things are stupidly powerful) and they regained their former physical height.

Then it was a fight. The two characters were a warlock/bard and a ranger/monk. Both fought well in the magical dark without disadvantage. That was their main strategy: cast darkness and then wade in. It worked for most of the levels and against a wide variety of enemies, especially since the vast majority of spells require you to "see" your target. But then the monk started spamming stunning strike and they got back to running the table on me. Dungeon of the Mad Mage was written before stunning was a thing, so not a single foe had resistance or immunity to it. He would burn through the legendary saves of nearly any bad guy and still have extra ki points left over.

They leveled and leveled again. They also became clerics to appropriately worship the elder goddess. Their bag of holding filled with gear and each action or attack became as convoluted as a Disney contract. The number of saves, reactions, buffs, etc. that needed to be accounted for on every move was something I won't attempt again without an AI assistant. As they approached the final battle, I realized that I needed help.

One player had told me that another friend group of ours had tried the year before to take on Undermountain but that campaign had fallen apart. So I secretly texted the DM of that group with a proposal: Since you know this campaign so well, I need some assistance for the end. He happily agreed.

On the day of the final battle, the players were locked in combat with Halaster's most senior minions. Suddenly, the Mad Mage himself arrived. That's right. On the Zoom channel, someone new joined. Someone named Halaster. He appeared in a wizard robe and fake white beard, wielding a scepter he'd bought on Amazon, with a screen behind him generated by AI to look like Halaster's lair.

My players lost their minds. They thought I was just going to put on a corny voice and be Halaster myself. No no no. But this wasn't to be just a cameo. I told the new player to legitimately have Halaster kill them. I wasn't looking for a happy ending. And as the DM I wasn't going to be anything but the referee, adjudicating what had now become a PvP situation. Two players against the Mage. My two players finally realized what I had in store for them. This was a serious no-holds-barred fight to the death.

The Halaster player is also a legendary game designer in his own right, a video game designer turned executive who has worked on many games we all know. He called in several other legends of the industry to help him figure out his moves. I even handed him the gift of cursed gloves I'd tricked the monk into putting on several levels before, which made his stunning strikes against Halaster something he needed to roll on the wild sorcery magic table.

And they still beat him and won their freedom and the freedom of their elder goddess. But man was it a battle. They withstood his meteor storm and made saves against his most potent spells. At the end, the bard only had 3hp and nearly everyone else was dead.

But we did it! We finally finished a level 20 campaign. And now we know we never need to do that again, lol. It became so unwieldy and slow after about level 15 that it felt more like work than play.

We look forward to starting over with simple characters who do simple things. The monk will be the DM this time, leading me and the other player in the Lost Mines of Phandelver. And each of us will try playing two simultaneous classic characters this time: me a dwarven cleric and elven illusionist, he a half-orc fighter and wood elf rogue. At least we know our schedules work.

My son recently made a pen in his high school shop class and absolutely loved the process. With summer approaching, I've been toying with the idea of setting him up with his own pen-turning station rather than the typical summer job route.
Here’s where I could use your expertise:

Lathe Choices: I'm looking at a couple of options from Harbor Freight—there’s a $300 model and a $550 variable speed one. How crucial is variable speed for a beginner? Would the basic model suffice for starting out, or is the upgrade worth it in the long run?

Chisels: I don’t want to cut corners on quality, especially for cutting tools. Any recommendations for brands or specific tools that are good for beginners but can also handle more advanced projects as he improves?

Essentials List: Besides the lathe, what are some must-have tools for pen turning? I already have the basics covered with a table saw, miter saw, dust collection system, and drill press.

Learning Resources: Any favorite videos, books, or other resources that could help both of us learn more about pen turning would be greatly appreciated.

I want to encourage him to sell them, but I'm also completely fine if they end up as Christmas gifts for the family. I’m excited to encourage my son’s new interest and would really appreciate your input on how to create a great setup for him. Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions!

So, over the pandemic, I decided to follow a dream and write a novel. I followed all of the best practices I could find, had it beta read by folks so that the finished product would be as polished as possible, posted it on Amazon's kdp site in ebook and paperback/hardcover, and then set out to get the word out, but nothing seems to be attracting any attention to it.

To be fair, I know I'm not going to be the next Stephen king, but at the same time I feel like I should be able to find an audience somewhere. I've tried Facebook ads, i run a blog I post to semi regularly, as well as mirror posts on FB and insta, I've tried a couple of short videos on tiktok, but since its launch a couple years back, I've managed to amass just under 20 bucks Canadian in royalties.

Now, money wasn't a motivator when I began this new trek, but it would be nice to feel like the world I created has reached a few people and given them at least a small amount of entertainment.

If you're an author that's had success with some form of marketing, please share, and if you're someone who reads new stuff on the regular, where do you go to find new stories?

Find yourself watching tons of great videos on [insert chosen video sharing platform], but also find yourself reluctant to flood the Tildes front page with them? Then this thread is for you.

It could be one quirky video that you feel deserves some eyeballs on it, or perhaps you've got a curated list of videos that you'd love to talk us through...

Share some of the best video content you've watched this past week/fortnight with us!

Ever since the Hamas attack, I think I have understood the position of the Palestinians, that they were there first and then Britain unfairly divided up the landed and gave some of it to Jews so they could have a homeland where they wouldn't have to deal with Anti-semitism after what they went through during WWII.

But Jews/Zionists claim that they have some ancestral right to that land and I have not found it easy to come across anything from a reputable source that explains what backs up their claim (wikipedia and random YouTube videos don't count).