This will be a quick article - I wanted to show off generally what my little mini hackerspace in the woods looks like. I'm incredibly proud of it, especially considering I'm the only one who lives here and I own the property outright (so I'm responsible for maintenance, construction, design, purchases, etc). Note that this article has a lot of ~2MB images so it may take some time to load if your internet isn't fast.
So, an overview: My home is a two story "Cape Cod" sitting on about five acres of land in the middle of the forest. It has a raised crawlspace, finished (but somewhat outdated) first floor, and unfinished (as in, just wood) second floor. There's a large shed equipped with lots of tools next to it. Power comes in on a 120V, 200A service panel. Internet is both fiber and coaxial (the coaxial will be used for redundant WAN later). I have my own water and septic system, meaning I have pumps, tanks, leech fields, and so on, giving me complete water independence. I have a central AC and heating system, supplemented by a secondary AC window unit for fine-tuned temperature control in the datacenter.
Exterior:
When I say I live in the forest, I mean it. Here's some lovely photos of the front yard.
And my back yard:
I don't mess around with security. You wouldn't either, if you had about $20,000 in hardware inside. I put those in myself too, and it's isolated from the internet!
Shed:
The shed is HUGE. It's almost like a mini home. It has an RV outlet drilled into the side of it, which lets me run an extension cord to one of my home's exterior outlets and get power to the entire thing (via internal extension cords and power strips). While some of the equipment in the below images I don't own anymore, it's still a great space. I have a heater in there too for the winter, and I have a spare AC I could put in the window for cooling if need be.
Crawlspace:
The crawlspace is where the furnace, AC, battery system, wiring, piping, and ducting all lives. It's raised up a bit higher than most normal crawlspaces, at the request of the previous owner.
Second Floor:
Not much here, just junk and a whole floor ready for construction. I ran my camera's CAT5 wiring up here though. There's also a friendly bat living up there who eats all the bugs for me, although I could do without having to clean up after him.
First Floor:
This is where I live! There's the living room / guest room, the gigantic kitchen, a washer/dryer closet, the bathroom, my cats' room, and of course, my bedroom where all the hardware is.
The living room, when converted to the guest room configuration, is really quite cozy.
The kitchen is huge and equipped with everything you'd need, ever.
The cats get this entire room to themselves:
And of course, the best room in the house (please ignore the weeb shit it's a long story):
Bonus image: Switches!
So yeah, that's the whole place! I love it, and find it extremely hard to want more of anything in it (except servers of course).
If you, dear reader, would ever like to visit, I don't mind having guests liven up the place a bit and make it feel like an actual hackerspace for once. Rules:
- I should know who you are. Inviting you into my home requires a high level of trust, especially because you'll be around sensitive lain.la hardware. Contact me at 7666@lain.la - PGP preferred (key is on my homepage).
- You're on your own traveling here, but I'll cover the rest of the expenses for your stay.
- You better not be allergic to cats.
- Stays should not exceed a week except in emergencies (e.g. you're gonna be homeless, in which case my home is your home).
- My needs will still come first - meaning I have to work, do things, run errands, travel, and so on, so you'll have to work around that and put up with me a bit.
- You had better not be a slob. Keep the place looking at least as nice as you found it.
With love,
-7666