Category: 00 – TOASTERBOTNET BLOG

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Praise Synology

Synology is awesome …. here’s why…

The Blue Blinking LED of Death

So my Diskstation died yesterday. It went down a few times with no apparent reason and at the end was totally toast. I had the infamous Blue Blinking LED of Death. As a compulsive Datahoarder, I started to get nervous pretty quickly. I tried to get the thing working again with all sorts of tips from various forums and websites. No luck. After a couple of hours I gave up and realized this thing is absolutly borked. It’s a few years old and has no warranty anymore…

So I said fuck it… Ordered a new model with overnight express. There goes 400 Bucks.

Migration

I waited 24 hours and was eagerly awaiting dorbell. DING DONG. My new NAS was here. At this point I was expecting to waste at least half a day setting everything up again. I thought I had to do at least some configuration. Or importing a backup of some kind…. to my suprise that wasn’t case. I just plugged in my RAID Array and booted the thing. It asked me if I wanted to migrate and after that it rebooted for a couple of minutes. As soon as it was back online everything was there. Literally everything. Even the Videostation had all settings and thumbnails. The library didn’t need indexing. Every little thing was the same as before.

Now that’s what I call a seamless migration. 20 Minutes after the package delivery I’m sitting here and writing this post. Orilla is back online after 24 hours of outage and I’m back in the Datahoarding business. Very cool. It’s very satisfying when stuff just works.

follow up to a previous post

Psychological Evolution

I have followup to my previous post. While the video was quite interesting I want to clarify that I advice to stay away from this guy if you want to do personal development.

EDIT: Serious talk for a second… Okay I watched some more videos of this guy and looked up spiral dynamics. Spiral Dynamics is interesting and a helpful model to understand people and their very diverse values. Of course you can’t take it literally but you can use it to understand people and value structures…. But I watched some more videos of this Leo guy. And while some of his videos are quite interesting. Some of them are very dangerous to the point where I actually believe he’s a malignant manipulator and hypnothizes people to fuel their ego. I can’t be sure but I have a strange feeling about him. So I think it’s better to stay away from this guy if you are looking to do personal development. Don’t get me wrong he seems to be a smart guy and has some insights which are quite helpful. But he contradicts himself a lot and some of his stuff make the impression that he’s more of a narcisstic cult leader. Remember …. The less you know the more you think you know and he seems to give easy answers to profound questions. Nothing is that simple and nobody is above manipulation. Just be carefull

Psychological Evolution

That was interesting. This dude just made me smile and laugh, as I was recalling events from memory.

That actually explains a lot when I think about it.

If I had to put myself somwhere I would say I’m a big chunk of orange, with some green and given enough free time, I occasionally tap into yellow to the point where I am not even sure what my reality is anymore. So basically I’m just a confused perplexed Hippie with a stock portfolio, who reads too much weird stuff on the internet, is really into science and questions his own reality as he starts to think he’s going mad. Sounds about right…. or wrong … I’m not sure… I’m not even sure if I actually understood the whole talk or if I just think I understood it. But I honestly think I have my yellow moments here and there. Well… as everything it’s up to interpretation. I might as well be beige and just delusional. Maybe a lot of people think they are yellow and in reality they are just high or have mental issues or it’s yet another hierarchical system to put yourself above others. Why the fuck does everything have to be so hierarchical all the time? We need to start thinking more flat… Just kidding… everybody chill and spread the love.

I think I need to take a nap.

EDIT: Serious talk for a second… Okay I watched some more videos of this guy and looked up spiral dynamics. Spiral Dynamics is interesting and a helpful model to understand people and their very diverse values. Of course you can’t take it literally but you can use it to understand people and value structures…. But I watched some more videos of this Leo guy. And while some of his videos are quite interesting. Some of them are very dangerous to the point where I actually believe he’s a malignant manipulator and hypnothizes people to fuel their ego. I can’t be sure but I have a strange feeling about him. So I think it’s better to stay away from this guy if you are looking to do personal development. Don’t get me wrong he seems to be a smart guy and has some insights which are quite helpful. But he contradicts himself a lot and some of his stuff make the impression that he’s more of a narcisstic cult leader. Remember …. The less you know the more you think you know and he seems to give easy answers to profound questions. Nothing is that simple and nobody is above manipulation. Just be carefull

Just my 2 cents

The Cinephile Anticipation-Report 2019 (MAY)

I researched upcoming movies. From the Summer Blockbusters in the coming months to the weirdest Indy flicks with unknown release dates and I currated list with my most anticipated movies coming soon and far in the future. I’m working on this list for a while. Here are my picks:

UPCOMING BLOCKBUSTERS

Well the most anticipated are obvious choices. There’s a new Tarantion Movie , which I can’t wait to see. Also Scorsese’s Irishman with a mind blowing cast. Kevin Smith brings us Fanservice – The Movie and who doesn’t like Star Wars?

But Spider-Man again ? I think I’ve had enough Spider-Man movies at this point. I’m only looking forward to this one because it finally has my favourite villain in it. It’s about time they brought us Mysterio… after we’ve seen the lame Green Goblin about 3 times now.

When it comes to Godzilla, I’m personally more on the side of team TOHO and like the goofy low budget japanese movies way better than the Hollywood adaptation. I’m not exactly expecting much from Godzilla: King of the Monsters, but I’m just interested and curious how this movie will turn out. As far as I know they will follow this one up with Godzilla Vs. kong in 2020.

Yesterday is about a guy, who wakes up in an alternate timeline where he is the only person to remember the beatles. This plot just sounds like a lot of fun. Mix in a lot of Beatles Hits and this is probably gonna be awesome entertainment. Can’t wait.

Midsommar looks like it’s gonna be weird and disturbing. Judging by the trailer alone it makes the impression that we can expect a good horror movie.

There are also some movies which have already premiered and I haven’t seen them yet. Those include The Dead don’t die, John Wick Chapter 3 and Brightburn.

WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS

MOVIES IN DEVELOPMENT, RUMOURS AND WEIRD STUFF. ( RELEASE DATES UNKNOWN )

The onania club


Hanna secretly joins a group called The Onania Club. Its members, strong independent L.A. women, get aroused by the misery of others.

If this doesn’t sound weird enough for you, just watch the trailer which shows women masturbating to 9/11

The Blob Remake

The Blob reportedly gets a remake. I like both the 1958 and with Steve McQueen and the 1988 remake. The blob is a funny and trashy Horror ScFi which is about … well …. an alien blob which just gets bigger and eats people.

FREAK SHIFT

The only thing I heard about this is: A city gets attacked by giant crabs. Sounds fun, I’m in … 🙂 There’s nothing else known about this movie yet.

Inversion

Inversion is currently in pre-production and is a korean project. The plot revolves arround earth losing its gravity, which sounds interesting enough for me to get hyped.

Untitled Wizard of Oz/Horror Project 

Okay now this sounds really awesome. The Wizard of Oz as a horror flick must be hella awesome. I can already imagine how Dorothee and Toto follow the yellow brick road… but it leads to much darker and deadlier adventures … please let this happen.

Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires 

It’s from the director of Bubba Ho-Tep and John Dies At the end.

This prequel to Bubba Ho-Tep finds Elvis shooting a film in Louisiana when he runs afoul of a coven of she-vampires. Buba Ho-Tep was weird and kinda funny, so I’m looking forward to this movie.

HALO

Personally I have never played the video game and I don’t know much about the backstory. The only thing that got me exciting about this movie is that it is written by Alex Garland, whose last two movies ( Ex Machina and Annihilation ) were awesome Sci-Fi flicks and quickly joined my list of my favourite movies of all time.

Machete Kills in Space

Following the last two ridiculous and funny grindhouse style movies from Robert Rodriguez, Machete now goes to space. Some people say the second one wasn’t that good, but I still had a good laugh. Looking forward to another one.

Untitled Ghost Busters Project (2020)

After the 2016 Ghostbusters Reboot, I hope they learned their lesson. Please be good, please be good, please be good, please be good …

Gremlins 3

Gremlins reportedly gets a sequel. It’s about damn time 🙂

DUNE (2020)

Dune comes back to the big screen. I don’t know what to expect yet, but I’m hoping we are in for an epic Sci-Fi adventure.

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST….

LASERPOPE (2020)

As far as I know, this started as a Kickstarter project after the success of Kung Fury. This looks friggin’ awesome. Please make this happen. I love it. Make it happen. I can’t wait.

That concludes my list of most anticipated movies, coming out in the future. I hope you liked it and discovered projects which weren’t on your radar. 🙂

Maybe you know some insider tips yourself and would like to share them. Contact Me and tell me your picks.

So long and see you next year or so, for another Cinephile Anticipation-Report

Rock on and peace out – Toasterbotnet

GOT

The final Season Game of Thrones is what happens when you are trying to be so edgy and unpredictable, that you sacrifice 7 seasons of intricate character arcs and throw complex plot development out of the window just for the sake of the lulz and to be able to say … “Didn’t see that one coming, did you ?” lmao wtf

TOP 100 – 2019 ( UPDATE )

I’m still on my Journey to watch my way through the history of cinema. Meanwhile I keep updating my list of the best movies of all time. I know some of these movies aren’t very good but I rank them according to my own personal preferences, favorites, nostalgic reasons, sentimental and re-watch value. Besides the obvious picks you might discover some weird edgy stuff. If you haven’t seen some of these, consider them as a recomendation for your next movie night 😉

It sure isn’t that easy to come up with a list of 100 favorite movies. So there’s pretty much all of Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Rodriguez and a lot of Edgar Wright in there… because I like all their movies. Who doesn’t ? Also a loot of goofy and weird stuff in there.

HERE YOU GO (click)


Personal Finance Story

STORY TIME !

Getting My Shit Together With Regards To My Finances

GO FROM ZERO TO HERO WITH YOUR FINANCES.

I’m doing a serious blog post now, serious blog posts are cool.
I have the weirdest hobbies sometimes. I get hooked on topics and can’t focus on anything else for months and months. It was the year 2017 and I decided I needed to to something productive for a change 🙂 …
I wanted to improve my finances. I had a decent salary at the time, but I noticed I was throwing the money out of the window as fast as it was coming into my bank account. Something needed to change. Little did I know, I will get hooked in the coming months.

I still have the checklist from two years ago.

  • research apps and tools.
  • move everything to online banking.
  • get an overview of my subscriptions and bills
  • kill some subscriptions
  • use less power
  • do your taxes
  • look into investing

That was the idea.
Well it has been two years and I’m hooked on finances and economics.
Oh yeah and I’m totally aware that this sounds boring as hell.  But you might wanna read what I have to say if you are in the same position I was about 2 years ago.
All of a sudden I started saving a little money here and there. Start saving for retirement is always a good idea. I was already contributing to Riester and decided to put additional money into an ETF savings plan.  Time for an online broker account.
About the same time the 2017 crypto craze started to unfold. Everybody and your Grandma was buying Bitcoin… and so was I.

Looking back now, I know that crypto is the most risky and most insane way to “invest your money”… if you can even call it that.  I gambled… I won … I gambled again … I lost… But after all the up and down, I made a little profit.
The important thing here is that Cryptocurrencies got me into economics and markets. One day you are sitting there buying some Ether and Bitcoin. The next day you are reading Whitepapers, Market analysis and listening to Andreas Antonopoulus talk about the future of money. You loose your mind and get greedy and suddenly you talk about the collapse of the world wide banking system and think cryptocurrencies are the answer. I’m exaggerating here but this was the spark that initial got me into topics about the global economy, the banking system, how money works and how to keep your cool if the market tanks. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. It’s easy to spot the top of a bubble in hindsight but it’s a whole different thing to expirience a financial bubble from a front row seat with some skin in the game until you panic sell. Fun times. I learned a lot of stuff, which will probably come in handy in future investments, risks and crisis.
But enough about crypto, we all know the one and only global currency will be dogecoin.

At the end of 2017 I was thinking of optimizing my finances to squeeze more out of my paycheck. It was fun putting money into stocks and crypto. So I wanted to learn more. At this time I started to read financial blogs, articles and subscribed to a ton of youtube channels.

I started using multiple bank accounts and would add even more later on to seperate different categories. This helped a lot. I used one account for my living expenses, which had a fixed amount of money coming in every month.

  • Savings Account ( Investment and Emergency Buffer )
  • Checking Account ( Bills and fixed costs )
  • Luxury Savings ( For big things like a new computer or vacations )
  • Living ( This gets 400€ a month for gas, groceries, clothes )

I also started tracking my networth which increased by about 30% in the first few months  just by knowing where my money goes.

I made a nice little spreadsheet with fancy colors.

These are fake numbers of course…
You can download the ODS template here : Networth_Template
Sorry I only do libreoffice 🙂
Some people don’t want to add furniture and material goods into their networth. I like to add it in, because I can track if money is flowing into material things and I can see how the stuff I bought is depreciating over the years. Nobody cares anyway it’s just for yourself anyway. Add in whatever you like 🙂
As I saw my networth increase and my investments accumulate some more, I was thinking of ways to further improve my situation and there basically was one thing I haven’t tried yet… doing a budget and tracking every penny.

A lot of work? for sure.
Boring? hell yes.
tedious? probably.
Is there an app for that? tons.

This is when I started using YNAB . Ynab is awesome, It makes budgeting actually fun. Trust me. It’s a zero sum budget. So you give every dollar a job. It’s pretty intuitive and easy to learn. Way better than managing a shitload of excel spreadsheets. And the mobile app makes it possible to enter transactions on the go.

Who would have thought that budgeting can be fun. I for one sure wasn’t prepared for that. Paying for YNAB was worth while. In the first half year of using YNAB I increased my Networth another 31%. I saved so much money, I couldn’t believe it.

What now? I have ticked all the boxes for personal finances, I learned all about Investing, Stocks and Markets. I’m doing a budget. What is the next step, aside from increasing your salary… You might have guessed it.

The FIRE Movement. When you are always looking for ressources and tips to improve your finances, you will eventually end up with the guys and gals of the FIRE movement. It means Financial Independence / Retire early. The most known guy is probably Mr. Money Mustache,  but there are bloggers popping up all over the place.

The movement is getting a foothold in germany as well, called Frugalismus.

These guys have some radical ideas on how to save money and achieve retirement at an early age. The basic math says you need about 25 times your anual expenses in Investments to retire. At that point you can take out 4% every year, without depleting your investment.

(Fake Numbers)

So I crunched the numbers and did the math. And it really is quite simple. If you squish your expenses down and save more you might have the chance to reach financial indepence. It’s also quite fun. Let’s wait and see how I’m doing in a year or so. It is really interesting to shuffle the numbers arround and see how to get the most out of your money. I created a nice FIRE Calculator in Libre Office, but it’s not quite finished yet.

Back in 2017 I never would have thought I will get hooked on financial topics and save that much. It’s actually a fun hobby instead of a chore now.
So to sum it all up and if you want to get a grip of your finances :

  • lower your expenses step by step
  • use multiple bank accounts
  • live of a certain fixed amount you grant yourself each month
  • use online banking / put everything on autopay
  • pay yourself first ( obviously)
  • Learn to Invest
  • Start Investing in small amounts
  • Do a budget ( seriously it works )
  • Once you are on track it snowballs
  • Don’t be afraid to take some risks

I plan to do some future blogpost to go more into detail.
cheers….