On this show, I play a song from The Arts and Sciences; I spent one of my best nights out seeing The Arts and Sciences open for the Indigo Girls; I am currently taking a beekeeping certification course; I will be buying two nucs of bees plus lots of gear; I believe your garb should be politically neutral in unrelated public outreach; I made a Mastodon post that got an atypically large response and yet did not enjoy it; the anti-trans talking points of today were popularized by Jeffrey Epstein 15 years ago; I got Github Actions working to build and publish this here Eleventy site; I added search to this here Eleventy site; I enjoy the Vito X Dino podcast but had to protect myself from large episode dumps; is milk violence and is that a serious position? I was and am a fan of Harvey Pekar but my one chance to meet him I chickened out; I used to work rotating shifts in a chemical factory; XMas week was the best work week of the year; I read the Harvey Pekar story "Snow Day" at work in almost the identical situation Harvey was in for the story.

Here is the direct MP3 download for the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, February 13 2026.

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On this show, I play a song from Doctor Deathray; as I was upgrading the capacity of my Synology NAS I discovered I didn't need it; don't enable the trash can on your Time Machine drives on a NAS; I am using my extra capacity to self-host Mastodon; running a one person Mastodon instance is easier than I predicted; I love NTFY for notifications; I hate Apprise for notifications; I bought a Trezor hardware wallet to hold all my weird pockets of crypto; the UX of using crypto for anything sucks; Obsidian starts slow on my Android phone; Quick Draft for Obsidian solves a big problem for me.

Here is the direct MP3 download for the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, January 30 2026.

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On this show, I play a song from Mdou Moctar; how has no one noticed I am not qualified to be an adult? the Xmas tree is the worst part of the holidays; I'm good for one thing a day; don't beat around the bush, ask what you want to ask; what good is a gas fireplace that won't light; a failure to wake up led to a positive change in my daily routine; I solved a problem with a cold call; people my age should have the skills to make a call even when you don't know exactly who to talk to; I need to worry about the small bites not the grand plans; where are my Grendel comics? the internal critic is strong in me; nothing is easier to solve than a problem you don't have to live with.

Here is the direct MP3 download for the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, January 23 2026.

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On this show, I play a song from Jill Sobule; the one time I met Jill she was as lovely as could be; I remain not that into Xmas; I had a recall performed on the Audi etron and my range increased; I got serious about my email hygiene; it is a challenge to only get the emails that matter; I am eliminating Substack from my life; I am eliminating Amazon from my life; my System76 Galago Pro is worse for wear; all Windows installs shit themselves over time; Linux Mint made an unusable Windows laptop usable again; trying upgrade and fix things created a self-loathing spiral of inefficiencies and mistakes; it took two years for me to address my Synology NAS cache issues; the RAM was coming from inside the house; upgrading the RAM in the old HP laptop was non-trivial; the band NVMe drive is causing a lot of chaos; one step forward and one step back on fixes and upgrades; I managed to break most of my Docker containers in 5 seconds; I can only record this show in the morning.

Here is the direct MP3 download for the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, December 23 2025.

Links mentioned in this episode:

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On this show, I play a song from Dub Inc; the TOFOP boys realized that they don't need a big production for their live episodes; I usually don't listen to your live episodes or your special episodes; my Reality Break episodes that were fun to produce I thought were the highest quality; Mozilla is to browsers as neo-liberals are to politics; social media scolds don't help; it's a fine line between avoiding supporting terrible companies while still living in the world; why are you asking all these questions when you should be solving the crime? I am recreating the NBC Mystery Movie wheel format in my life; I am partying like it's 1971; McCloud was a big influence on Justified; Macmillan and Wife is goofy but fun; The Gold was an interesting series; I lay out my money laundering plan; I am barely sticking with Down Cemetery Road; I am barely sticking with The Beast In Me; I don't like "close call" shows; I can't stand Celebrity Traitors or Love is Blind; making small talk with the douchebags in the house seems excruciating.

Here is the direct MP3 download for the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, November 26 2025.

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On this show, I play a song from Uwade; the theory of monthly productivity challenges is great but the practice is often the opposite of the intention; I have been fixing the dead drives in my old cheap Mac Minis; Linux Mint is really nice; the iFixit upgrade kit worked a treat; having an always on desktop Linux machine running services means I get to sleep my laptop again; my big monitor is on a swing arm that was $3 from a bin store; I am hoping to get a beta version of the Pocket Mage; I wrote up the directions to set up a Pocket Mage build environment; I hope to port the sync spirit to the Pocket Mage; write down those good ideas no matter how unforgettable; my mother does not reside in the house plant; I am volunteering to scoop cat turds; the cat had had enough.

Here is the direct MP3 download for the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, November 14 2025.

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A few weeks back Rohan and Phil from the Home Assistant podcast were kind enough to have me on their program to talk about my journey with Home Assistant. It was a fun time chatting about home automation and all the nerd stuff that makes up my day. The truth is that being on someone else's podcast that I don't have to edit and produce feels like a vacation. It has all of the fun and none of the work.

They published the episode with me last week. I have been a subscriber for years so it just showed up in my regular feed. It had been just long enough between recording and hearing back that I remembered the broad sweeps of topics but not exactly what anyone said so I heard it almost like a dispassoniate third party. We talked for over an hour and there are so many more topics we could have talked about like strategies in architecting automations, what to do with old IOT devices that have been decommissioned or whether to have one big calendar or lots of specific ones. It was fun and maybe there is enough left to talk about that in a year or two I can be back on.

I am attaching their episode to my feed so regular subscribers will just get it. If you enjoy them, I recommend their show. If you are interested but not yet a Home Assistant user, I recommend that as well. If you are a fan of Zigbee and/or Z-Wave we have some of that talk for you. It's fun stuff!

Enjoy!

On this show, I play a song from West of Mabou; the reason businesses are excited about AI is the prospect of not paying employees; we watched this business rationale play out with outsourcing in the 90s; I tried to use Descript's generative AI function but balked at paying extra money; the failure to find things digital and physical continues; can Johnny.Decimal be a solution and do I want to try? the PARA structure is less applicable when you don't have a job; Google's changes to sideloading APKs led me to shopping for used Pixel phones; I don't need mobile solutions when I seldom leave the house; I am trying to revive my Sharp Zaurus; in a pinch, you can charge a Zaurus with the Skylight frame charger; I am searching for one docker container that would let me cross-compile for the Zaurus; welcome listeners from the Home Assistant podcast.

Here is the direct MP3 download for the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, October 29 2025.

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On this show, I play a song from Home Front; I discuss how Len Edgerly and Nathan Lowell have informed my thinking about production schedules; of all the innovations of the 20th century out current administration has decided secret police is the best one; I was fooled by an ad for cargo pants; the default straight white male tough guy targeting is exhausting; sword fighting for Jesus lost me; every Muslim I've ever met I acted in accordance with their book; no Christian I've ever met acted in accordance with their book; which is more important to your Christian nationalists - Christ or the nation? I test drove a Kia EV 9; my unfinished project list is completely out of control; I am trying to fix a physically broken Vicohome bird feeder; I made the decision to not install the new meter on my Ryobi lawnmower yet; I bought a DIY TRMNL kit; I am trying to get my Ender 3 Pro actually printing 3D again; the Home Assistant integrate to Waze Travel Time is changing my mornings; 17Track is back; I am trying and failing to install Open WRT on my old HooToo Travelmate; I am installing Linux Mint on the cheapo 20015 Mac Minis.

Here is the direct MP3 download for the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, October 10 2025.

Links mentioned in this episode:

You can subscribe to this podcast feed via RSS. To sponsor the show, contact BackBeat Media. Don't forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package. This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Unported. Bandwidth for this episode is provided by Cachefly.

On this show, I play a song from Macka Diamond; goodbye Todd Cochrane; the Ryobi lawnmower both has new LiFePO4 batteries and is mowing lawns; I learned more than I want to about float voltages, battery chemistry and discharging curves; I bit the bullet and bought the factory blade controllers; I installed a power monitoring switch to keep statistics and immediately got confused between 120V and 48V; I used Home Assistant and a Zigbee switch to cobble together a more resilient wifi network; the Home Assistant ZWA-2 is in my house and talking to the mailbox motion sensor; if my lawnmower charger is on a smart switch, why not turn it off in peak electricity hours? I got the calendar based automation working first time, a new personal best; my Galaxy watch died; the Amaztim T3 Ultra is much cheaper and almost suited my needs.

Here is the direct MP3 download for the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, September 12 2025.

Links mentioned in this episode:

You can subscribe to this podcast feed via RSS. To sponsor the show, contact BackBeat Media. Don't forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package. This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Unported. Bandwidth for this episode is provided by Cachefly.