IT & Computers (8)

Julien ARNAUD

Crown CTD-8125 & iTunes clone for Linux (Sustain)

It's the little things. May 2026, I received a CTD-8125 to replace my Mini DSP 10x10 HD and the two CT8150, in parallel, I wrote a iTunes inspired Linux music player (Sustain). Two fairly small things, but huge quality of life improvement. This one allows me : One blindspot, the CTD 8125 manual said that the amps drew 2W with network, I assumed that the network would always be up, it's not. In 2W sleep mode, it turns of networking. So I had to keep an analog Dante output to…

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Julien ARNAUD

Laptop backup strategy, the paranoid way

My laptop (called Juniperus) has a 4Tb NVMe drive occupied at 75%, content is roughly distributed as such : Having lost a hard drive when I was 16 and having cried a river about it (it was a Maxtor 40Gb on a sunny summer's day)... I now have a strong backup policy. They are spread in 4 places using 3 different backup technologies. This server (called Tsuga) runs Debian and uses a 1Tb Micro SD. It is powered by a PoE hat. The aluminium enclosure only has one RJ45 sealed…

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Julien ARNAUD

Self hosted web services and infrastructure

[this article is a work in progress] I'm a strong advocate for local hosting over cloud services provided by big tech companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM). I have no trust in these corporations, and some of their decisions pose significant threats to civil rights. For instance, Apple's move to scan all your photos for illegal content (initially). The importance of data sovereignty and the risk of surveillance are critical issues. Thus, to the best of my ability, I prefer to host everything myself. At home, everything…

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Julien ARNAUD

Everyday laptop, and computer history

Until around 2007 [0], I was a big fan of powerful desktops as my daily driver. At that point my computer was liquid-cooled PowerMac G5 Quad 2.5 Ghz. This was a beast and I loved it. I then switched to a MacBook Pro 15" Penryn complemented by a NAS to compensate for lack of local storage. I kept on the laptop + NAS train for a while : more recently with availability of 4TB SSDs I went to a laptop-only setup. My previous laptop was the IdeaPad Pro 5 (5800U,…

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Julien ARNAUD

Machine learning desktop

I built a new computer to play with some machine learning. It uses what seems to be the best scoring case for airflow and temperature : Fractal Torrent Compact. The full setup is : The 4090 is capped to 65% TDP as going any further quickly hits drastrictly diminishing returns (anything above 75% should be considered OC). When capped, the card only runs at about 60° ! That thing really is a crazy object and product. During training the computer draws about 400W at the wall. Which sits perfectly in…

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