https://computers.lol/ Recent content on computers.lol Hugo en-us Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://computers.lol/posts/2026-03-02-levinson-keyb-notes/ Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://computers.lol/posts/2026-03-02-levinson-keyb-notes/ these are rough notes where i assess whether i want to debug & repair the keyboard(s) i currently have (max sustainable, possibly max hand ouchies option), diy a new one (max makes me feel like a coolguy option), or buy something prebuilt (max time efficent but also lamest option). in memorium to my first child ever since my capital E employment hiatus since 2023 i haven’t been on the puter much, but then i had an in-office job for a few months this past winter which had me reconnect with my sweet, extremely diy’d babies: https://computers.lol/posts/2025-05-03-explaining-nixos-to-myself/ Sat, 03 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://computers.lol/posts/2025-05-03-explaining-nixos-to-myself/ Though I’ve been using nixOS on and off since 2019, I realized recently that I have trouble communicating what it’s all about without getting into the weeds. I wanted to write a short post explaining (at a high-level) why and how nixOS is neat. Specifically I’m going to make sense of all the serious adjectives it boasts being, ie: functional, reproducible, immutable, and declarative. NixOS: who is she NixOS is a Linux distribution that fundamentally rethinks how an operating system is built, managed and upgraded. https://computers.lol/posts/2024-08-11-blog-with-nix-flakes/ Sun, 11 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://computers.lol/posts/2024-08-11-blog-with-nix-flakes/ Now that my NixOS system is freshly flake’d, I want to figure out how to manage my Hugo blog project (ie this very computers.lel) using nix flakes rather than a shell.nix + channels. This will give me an opportunity to see how flakes for development differs from flakes for NixOS system management. Making sense of my past mistakes Here was my first go at building a nix-backed Hugo blog. Why did I make the blog source private? https://computers.lol/posts/2024-02-02-migrating-channels-to-flakes/ Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://computers.lol/posts/2024-02-02-migrating-channels-to-flakes/ Nuuuuuu I didn’t open my nixos laptop for like 3 years and now everything is different and my nixos-rebuild switch is busted and apparently channels aren’t a thing anymore and everyone uses something called flakes??? ;_;;;;;;;;; I gotta fix my computer Whining aside, I need to get my system up and running again. Resurrection plan Here’s the rough plan: Update my current nix-channel to something more recent (I’ll choose latest unstable) and iterate running nixos-rebuild switch and fixing config errors until the command succeeds again Identify what changes I need to make to have my system be “managed by flakes”, then make them My config files mean nothing to me! https://computers.lol/posts/2023-12-28-cursed-nas-build/ Thu, 28 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://computers.lol/posts/2023-12-28-cursed-nas-build/ I’d been eyeing teenage engineering’s computer-1 mini-ITX case for awhile (despite it being known for having shoddy build quality…) because its a real cutie :’) but I couldn’t come up with a good reason to build in a “bad” case given that I just blew a bunch of monies building a mini-ITX gaming PC like 2 months ago. That is until I came across this post on reddit – someone built a NAS in the computer-1! https://computers.lol/posts/2022-05-28-srecon22-talk/ Sat, 28 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://computers.lol/posts/2022-05-28-srecon22-talk/ Adam McKaig and I did a talk called “How the Metrics backend works at Datadog” for SREcon22 Americas. Overview Datadog is a popular cloud monitoring service which operates at scale in all three major cloud providers, ingesting 10s of GB/s of points across many billions of timeseries into PiBs of hot and cold storage. Naturally, reliability is paramount. In this talk, we’ll show how our very large distributed system works today, and how it grew from a very small not-distributed system. https://computers.lol/unlisted/2022-05-28-srecon22-talk/ Sat, 28 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://computers.lol/unlisted/2022-05-28-srecon22-talk/ Adam McKaig and I did a talk called “How the Metrics backend works at Datadog” for SREcon22 Americas. Overview Datadog is a popular cloud monitoring service which operates at scale in all three major cloud providers, ingesting 10s of GB/s of points across many billions of timeseries into PiBs of hot and cold storage. Naturally, reliability is paramount. In this talk, we’ll show how our very large distributed system works today, and how it grew from a very small not-distributed system. https://computers.lol/about/ Sat, 02 Jan 2021 17:51:42 +0000 https://computers.lol/about/ hello! i’m tahia (she/her). i’m an infra-focused software engineer and i often sidequest into nixos and homelabbing. this is where i brain dump about computers. email: tahia [ at ] computers [ dot ] lol github: ta1hia\ https://computers.lol/posts/2020-12-30-blog-with-nix-hugo-gitlab/ Wed, 30 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://computers.lol/posts/2020-12-30-blog-with-nix-hugo-gitlab/ This goes over how I set up a static website using Nix, Hugo, Gitlab CI/CD and Netlify. The argument for having a nix-backed blog is the usual argument for using nix to build anything - by leveraging the nix package manager to build the dependencies of a project, the project should be completely portable and reproducible no matter where you build it. Nix philosophy aside, I wanted this website to be a nix-backed project because I’m running NixOS on my daily driver and I’m still getting the hang of using nix for development. https://computers.lol/posts/2020-12-28-sup/ Mon, 28 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://computers.lol/posts/2020-12-28-sup/ a blog was born on this day ! _____ < sup > ----- \ ^__^ \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || || /$$$$$$$ /$$ /$$ /$$$$$$ /$$_____/| $$ | $$ /$$__ $$ | $$$$$$ | $$ | $$| $$ \ $$ \____ $$| $$ | $$| $$ | $$ /$$$$$$$/| $$$$$$/| $$$$$$$/ |_______/ \______/ | $$____/ | $$ | $$ |__/ lllllll lllllll l:::::l l:::::l l:::::l l:::::l l:::::l l:::::l l::::l ooooooooooo l::::l l::::l oo:::::::::::oo l::::l l::::l o:::::::::::::::o l::::l l::::l o:::::ooooo:::::o l::::l l::::l o::::o o::::o l::::l l::::l o::::o o::::o l::::l l::::l o::::o o::::o l::::l l::::l o::::o o::::o l::::l l::::::lo:::::ooooo:::::ol::::::l l::::::lo:::::::::::::::ol::::::l l::::::l oo:::::::::::oo l::::::l llllllll ooooooooooo llllllll