Building the war room of my dreams

And of course I got distracted again.
This time it was experimenting with Large Language Models or ‘AI’ as these things are called by marketing droids.

In part this was the result of using Github Copilot at work. That things is both a good mind reader, but really stupid too. You definitely do not want to hand it the keys to your car (or access to your bank account). It also eats tokens for breakfast, so you do want that enterprise level access if you’re going to use that for real at your job.

As a result I’ve started to experiment a bit with Claude.AI and Google’s Gemini to help me with brainstorming. And as with Copilot I’ve noticed that you really need to pay attention to what these things generate as they will hallucinate results that are simply false.

The first one I’ve started to experiment with since this ‘AI’ thing became popular. I’ve picked this one because it was one of the more ethically correct models, although I’m not sure if that is true any more.

I’ve used it to help me pick parts for my new pc and do a little design work on a different project which I may or may not add in the future once I get things done.

Things learned so far:

• it can generate interactive HTML if you ask it to
• it does tend to make (a lot) of mistakes when you are iterating over your designs
• it is relatively easy to hit the ‘maximum message’ and ‘maximum session’ limits in the free version
• every document you generate has a version history, which allows you to view previous iterations
• you can share the documents

I can’t help but think that these limits are there to push you towards subscribing to the paid variant.

When I used it to help me with the design I was not impressed.

Things did change when I tried a brainstorm session to help me with this project. I’m guessing that selecting the ‘brainstorm’ option as I started the chat may have helped.

Things learned so far:

• no limits (yet)
• no version history for your documents
• it generates plain documents by default, but you can change the document type to ‘app’ which creates a html page with basic javascript
• I’ve noticed that it starts to ‘forget’ information during long sessions.
• It is better at creating HTML-page designs, but it still makes mistakes
• you can share documents

Remember that old saying about backups ?

That applies to your conversations with the LLM’s too, especially Google’s Gemini.
So if you use these things then remember to store any documents you create on your local system instead of relying on the files to be available in conversation.

Claude.AI isn’t quite as bad at this, but I suspect it is due to the session and message length limitations.

It sucks to learn this the hard way, but here we are (again).

Lots of bits got disassembled when I moved, so it was time to rebuild and revisit them.

Starting with the lights I had set up for my airbrush.

Full details and build guide in my other project:
https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1860209/

Yay … it’s done.
Well, sort of. There’s a few gaps near the walls that I’d need to fill up somehow.

As it’s mostly hidden under furniture I’m thinking of calling it done (for now).

I did have to dissassemble the table as that thing proved to be a real pain in the posterior to move. I had initially planned to put it on casters (sp?) and push it aside, but lack of muscle power and the weight of the entire thing made that impossible.

Long story short : the tiles have arrived.

The EVA foam tiles with water print are interesting. I’d say they can work as a ‘water/ocean’ terrain mat.  4 tiles total and a bit bigger than 1 square meter.

The black rubber puzzle floor tiles are pretty heavy. They do have that rubber gym floor smell, but they are pretty grippy which is nice. The weight and grip mean that there’s no need to glue anything which is a bonus.

More details and pictures once things have been completed. Weather is promising to be very hot, so I’m not expecting a lot of progress.

This is a bit of an experiment and I probably should have done this as the first thing ever, but then doing things in the correct order requires proper planning and knowledge …

Anyways.

There’s this thing called ‘rubber floor tiles’ that are used for fitness rooms. The stuff is supposed to dampen sound and be nice soft on the feet, which is likely to be useful.

The Dutch webshop I used also had EVA foam tiles with an water texture, which I thought could work as a terrain mat for things like Armada and anything that required an ocean of sorts.

Delivery is supposed to be next week, so I will report back when that’s done.
I predict a lot of cursing as I have to move stuff around, but that’s a future-me challenge 😀

Resources : EVA Foam tiles with ocean theme

See you in about a week with the next update if all things go according to plan (ha! as if … )

Ok … so technically I had the main light installed already.
Except I wanted something that looked a bit better and the amount of light was dissappointing as well. Good enough for a bedroom, but not nearly enough for when I want to actually do some hobby.

So I went to that infamous blue+yellow Scandawegian store and got this:

Agunnaryd (which is the home town of one of the original founders of the company )

They really do know how to create unpronouncable names, don’t they?
Anyway … it had that industrial style I was looking for while not breaking the bank (these things easily cost 250+ Euro … ).

Manual was a bit cryptic as to what I had to do. I had to get a pair of pliers to unscrew/loosen one of the things the manual told me I could unscrew by hand. I’m not sure if that was a me problem or if they had screwed it a bit too tightly at the factory.

It’s a bit late to finish the install, so that will be a ‘tomorrow problem’. I also may not have enough smart bulbs to complete the setup, so that’s going to be fixed as well.

Some choice curse words were used uttered, but it’s done … kind of.
I either have to move the table or the lamp itself.

Only one regular E27 bulb in there at the moment. The other two are Philips/Signify Hue White ambience bulbs. I kind of want to use colour versions, but they aren’t cheap.

Finally sort of organised my network hardware, which removes one item from my todo list.

Hardware summary:

• TP-Link DECO X75-Pro
• Ikea Symfonysk (temporary location)
• 1Gb network switch
• Synology NAS
• Philips Hue Bridge
• APC UPS for power
• Fanless pc running Home-Assistant and Pi-Hole.

Yes … cable management is a bit chaotic, but at least it’s no longer all on the floor 😉

I need a couple more network cables to connect my Surface Pro Tablet and the othe Ikea Symfonysk speaker. Both are wireless but I’d rather not have it using network cable whenever possible.

The rack is FJÄLLBO from the infamous scandawegion store. There’s probably better solutions, but this was one thing I had available so it got used. I may want to look into replacing it with something a bit more enclosed to reduce the noise, but that is a future project.

It’s spring time (again), so that makes this an ideal time for another spring clean challenge 😀

It’s not like I managed to finish it … or is it ?

So let’s see where we are at the moment :

• curtains got replaced by something a little less flowery
• lights are functional, but not perfect
• music: two Ikea Symfonysk speakers have been added

Still to do:

• more storage: all of my games and bits are in generic cardboard boxes
• proper fixtures for my speakers
• a better solution for my server and NAS which now rest on the floor