Woops, I meant RAID 1. I'll go fix that in my post. But I do have an external 4TB SSD with all my games except for the PS4 games since they're so large. It has about 750 GB of space remaining on it.
I also backed up my games on a friend's NAS in a separate location.
I also purchased a small rack server that can hold 4 hard drives. I want to buy a few 8 TB drives and set up Gamevault on it to better manage my few hundred games in my collection.
I love iNaturalist. I lived out in the woods for several years and would see so many different bugs that I didn't recognize. So when I discovered it about 2 years ago, I started taking pictures of every bug I saw and uploading them to the app to learn what they were. And then in August last year there was an unusual explosion of mushroom varieties in our yard. That's the one area where iNaturalist is a little weak as it really struggled to give me good ID's for a lot of them. But it should only get better with time.
I'll see if I can find some mushroom photos to share here.
Edit: one of my favorite mushroom pics I got during the mycological explosion:
Game preservation. I got into it last fall when I learned about OpenGOAL for the Jak and Daxter games. I grew up with those games and were some of my favorites from that generation.
I then learned how easy it was to rip PS1 through 3 games and how simple it is to set up the emulators for each console. I have a sizable collection of games for those generations, so I started ripping.
I then remembered watching LTT's video about how to jailbreak the Switch. I bought a used Switch from a friend pre-pandemic, but never played the games because I never cared for playing on the Switch itself. So I checked if mine was old enough to jailbreak (Nintendo patched the exploit out of the Switch about a year after it released) and, lo and behold, it was.
It wasn't easy jailbreaking it. It took several hours over 3 days to do it; I would make some progress, then hit a roadblock I couldn't figure out, so I'd stop and come back the next day. I'd get a little further, hit another roadblock, and repeat. Once I managed that, I ripped my (small) collection of Switch games and played them on Ryujinx. Now that I could finally play them on my laptop whenever I wanted, I actually had a desire to play them and managed to get through BotW in January.
Then I figured out how to jailbreak my Wii (which is pretty easy, I recommend everyone do it to theirs), so I could rip those games. It can also rip GC games, so I didn't need to find and jailbreak one of those to do it.
When I learned of shadPS4 this summer and the progress it was making toward playing Bloodborne, I spent $400 on ebay to get a gold PS4 with firmware 9.0 so I could jailbreak it and start dumping PS4 games.
At that point I saw how much space all of the games I ripped took up on my laptop, so I bought a NAS from a friend who was upgrading theirs and set it up with two 8TB hard drives in RAID 1 and stored all my games on there. It's currently about 60%+ full.
Over Halloween I went to a used game store and saw they were selling a Wii U for $160. I bought it and jailbroke that as well and started ripping those games.
I bought an OG Xbox to jailbreak, but I need to open it up to replace the clock capacitor first. Otherwise it could leak and my effort would be for nothing. I just haven't got around to it yet.
I realized this was a passion of mine when I accidentally borked my PS4 and it would only boot into safe mode. I was 100% willing to completely wipe it and start the jailbreak from scratch so I could keep doing it.
All told, I've ripped ~~about 400+~~ nearly 600 games (I finally counted) in the past 15 months, spent dozens of hours ripping them, and have zero intention of stopping. I only think about how I can keep expanding my collection. Right now my next consoles will be the 360, PSP, and Vita.
Edit: rephrasing and adding a little more info
I like that he's being environmentally friendly by using metal straws.
Or is that because real straws would disintegrate in the gasoline?
You're welcome! I remember the amount of distress my hairloss gave me and I'd rather no one else have to go through that.
I understand not wanting to go the topical route. I wouldn't want to risk hurting a pet either.
I've thought about microneedling as I have some smile creases on my face that formed this summer (from what I read it should help with that), but I never thought about it for my scalp. I'll have to see what's available around me. From the little research I've done, it's essentially the same as dermarolling, but even better since the needles only go straight in and out rather than go in at an angle, twist/rotate, then leave at an angle like the roller does.
If I go that route, I'll try to keep you posted. It's also nice to know that a dermatologist recommended it. To me, that gives it more credence.
Obligatory, I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. This is just my own personal experience.
I'm also an enby with some hairloss, but up front instead of in the back. I'm currently taking finasteride, 1mg/day, and have been on it for 2 years now. As far as I can tell it's stopped the hair loss. I was also really concerned about the side effects, but they're particularly rare last I checked the stats.
The one side effect I dealt with was hives near the start, but after a week they stopped showing up and I've been fine since.
The nice thing about fin is if you have any side effects, you can stop taking it and they'll go away. It's very rare for them to persist after discontinuing use. If you do get finasteride, I recommend getting it through Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drug Pharmacy. I know this sounds like a shameless plug, and it kind of is, but their prices are really good: a 90 day supply, with shipping, is less than $15 total. Compared to, last I checked, about $45 for a single month from a local pharmacy.
I tried minoxidil over the summer which did help regrow some hair, but I stopped in August as I didn't enjoy having to apply it twice a day. On top of that, it was a spray type and would travel down my hair, making it look messy almost right away, which I really disliked. That also led to it getting on parts of my skin where I didn't want it.
The spray version also contains ethylene glycol which is a skin irritant and would make that area itchy and red. Though there are foam options that don't contain it, so you could try that route.
I recently started dermarolling that area, but it's way too soon to tell if that's making an impact. It's important to prep the skin if you roll it to avoid any infections/pimples. I wipe the area with isopropyl, then roll, wipe with iso again, then apply some kind of moisturizer. The skin will be red for a day or two, but I only do it once a week.
I'm considering doing a transplant, but I need to look into that more first to see what to expect.
Hopefully this helps! And if you have any questions, I can try to answer them.
Edit: typos
For me it'd be Driver 1 and 2 followed by Lost World: Jurassic Park for the PS1.
The beat for Driver 1's San Francisco theme just slaps
I bought that Saturday morning at full price. No regerts. In 5 days, I dumped about 30 hours into it.
Is it possible to verify if that's actually the case?
It was originally on my towel while tanning and I grabbed my phone to take a pic. After the towel pic, it hopped onto my hand right between my middle and ring fingers. The problem was that was my phone hand, so I could feel it moving around, but I couldn't actually see it. I was hoping it would fly away, but it just stayed there. I carefully took my phone with my other hand and it thankfully started walking down my finger. I think it was after my sweat.
I'm sorry :/ There's gotta be a way to get those screws out. It's 100% worth jailbreaking your Switch. Being able to play BotW and TotK on your 27" 1440p monitor significantly improves the experience.