Plex
I've been head-down on my Plex project lately and it has been paying off, at
the expense of Portuguese to which I need to return. The nice thing about 
the Plex project is that when it's working, it's working, and I can cross
that off my list. Unlike Portuguese, which, whether or not I have class I
will be "learning" for years to come.

Plex has been fun. So for those of you who don't know about it, Plex is a
VERY interestingly-structured video service. On the top level it's a 100%
legit streaming service that runs ads to pay for streaming all sorts of
conventional shows. 

But underneath, anyone who wants to can run their own Plex server. And where
those people get their shows? Plex doesn't want to know. As a result one
can run one's own Plex server and if it's torrenting shows it ought not
to be torrenting, who's to say? So, legal on top, pirate on the bottom.

And the best thing about the shows on Plex is... no ads! For example, 
I HAVE a perfectly-legal Hulu subscription. But Hulu is a bitch with ads.
So when I watch "Heated Rivalry" it's on Plex, because there are no ads.
Except if an episode is corrupted and won't play, then I switch back
over to Hulu. 

I have until now been watching off exclusively American sources that I had
back in the States, but I've wanted to set up my own server for a while.
I even bought a Mac Mini for the purpose, because a Mac Mini is powerful 
enough to re-encode video streams (called 'transcoding') on the fly. 
If you have a high-quality video but a low-quality connection, Plex can
automatically shrink the quality and size of the file so that you can watch
on whatever swizzle-stick Internet connection you happen to have on hand.

I also bought a small NAS (network-attached storage) device, a UGreen
DH2800, back in August. What was because my 18T drive did not survive
the trip to Europe, and I really quickly needed to pull those same files
down from the cloud where I'd stored them as well. The I found out that
with a little effort Docker and Plex could be installed and run on the
DH2800. Larger UGreen NAS devices come with a Docker app, but mine was
so small I had to figure out how to shoehorn it onto the device by hand.
And then how to install Plex using Docker. And then how to install the
Plex requestor software using Docker. 

Those things having been largely accomplished, I'm almost ready to take
a break from the Plex project, because I have to get back to Portuguese.

And none of those things are "writing books" which is my primary reason
for being retired, so I'd best get to it!