Fair enough. Well, you definitely should be moving those over to Docker then, it’ll be much better for efficient use of resources.

Curious as to why you don’t just run those as separate games on the same server, since Foundry has the functionality for that?

Either way, running Foundry in docker is a solid idea. I’ll grab a link to the image I use when I get the chance.

Also, why two Foundry servers?

You definitely wouldn’t want to use them in any kind of RAID for a start.

Yeah, try to avoid using USB hard drives.

A refurbished business PC is an excellent choice (or, better yet, make friends with someone who works in an IT department and grab a few machines when they’re being thrown out; you’d be amazed how often companies dump perfectly good hardware). Don’t worry about the windows license, you’re not actually paying for it by the time you get to refurb prices.

You should easily be able to pick up something decent for under $200 (hopefully that fits your budget). If you go with a small form factor (not ultra small) you can probably get an SSD and two 3.5" drives in there (watch out for the small form factor Lenovos though, they only have one 3.5" slot). Alternatively, look for a larger desktop tower style that could have 3 or 4 drive bays if you want to do something like a RAID5.

Don’t sweat too much about buying older hardware. What’s old and busted for Windows is lightning fast when we’re talking about self-hosting a file server or a Pihole.

Important note; some WD Reds are still SMR. You have to check which specific type.

Awsome resource. You win the Internet today.

For the record, so are a lot of 3.5s. Always read up on your drives before buying.

Get to grips with Docker. OCI containers are the standard method of self hosting basically everything now, so once you’re comfortable with Docker and compose files, literally anything you could want to host is available as a drop in component for your system.

An excellent way of playing around with Docker is to install Dockge. It’s a web UI with some really helpful features. First, it can convert Docker Run commands into compose files for you (once you start to play around with this it’ll be clear why that matters), and second, its very good at pointing out where and how you’ve made errors in your compose files. But most importantly, unlike Portainer (the most popular Docker UI) it works with the Docker command line rather than trying to replace it. With Dockge you know exactly where all of your files are and if any part of your setup breaks you can repair it very easily. It also doesn’t have Portainer’s problem of flashing error messages on the screen for 0.3 seconds then whisking them away. It exposes the entire Docker terminal output so your debugging process is much, much easier.

You’ll also want to learn about reverse proxies (I reccomend Caddy for its unbelievably simple config file; an entire site is three lines). These are really important for serving multiple different services from one source.

For anything that you can’t run in Docker, VMs are an acceptable solution, and LXC containers are a better solution, but one that requires a little more work to get to grips with (fun fact, LXC has its own web UI, which is fantastic, but almost nobody seems to even know it exists). Since you’re already familiar with Linux, you may want to ignore the suggestion to use Proxmox and just set up a server with your preferred flavour and go from there. All of this can be done with any modern Linux distro, so you might as well work in an environment you’re comfortable in.

Oi, mate!

Very little. Thanks to Docker + Watchtower I don’t even have to check for updates to software. Everything is automatic.

Good for them. My neice just picked up a copy of Welcome to The Black Parade on vinyl. I’ll be getting her Danger Days for her birthday.

And I say this as someone who used to hate MCR when I was younger. Then I got older and learned to stop reflexively sneering at things I perceived as mainstream, and realized I’d been missing out on one of the greatest bands of all time.

To be fair, the gimmick was supposed to be stupid. Like, it’s very obviously a bit.

And I really, really want to love Jericho, especially after his early AEW stuff (Le Champion was peak wrestling), but between the Trump mania and the stuff with Kylie Rae I just can’t stomach seeing him on screen any more.

Danger Days was their best album, and easily one of the greatest rock albums of all time.

Like, that’s not even a fucking debate. Sing, Planetary, Na Na Na, Summertime, DESTROYA, Vampire Money, Save Yourself I’ll Hold Them Back, Kids From Yesterday, S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W… That album is banger after banger after banger.

Mother bastard

To be fair, this is not helped by the fact that British people are often very bad at recommending good places to eat. A lot of people value familiarity over quality.

Disclaimer: All of the below comes with the obvious caveat that it has to be made by someone who knows what they’re doing. Any country’s cuisine is shit if you’re eating at a shit restaurant. That’s not about your choice of meal, that’s your choice of venue.

1. Pies. Britain has basically perfected the savory pie. Steak and kidney, steak and onion, scotch pie, shepherd’s pie, cottage pie, fisherman’s pie… British savory pies are an explosion of flavour. Pair with a good stout or porter; the kind of beer that still looks black even when you hold it up to a light.

2. Good fish & chips is one of the most perfect meals ever created. Keep in mind that the condiments matter; you need the acidity and richness of a good malt vinegar to cut through that fattiness. Never get fish & chips in a pub or restaurant. Go to a proper chippy, preferably in a coastal town.

3. Stews are a British classic. Try a real Lancashire hotpot sometime, with pickled red cabbage and mashed potatoes. Absolutely stunning.

4. Get your ass down to a high quality carvery and try a roast dinner. Lamb or beef are the best bet, but chicken and pork are good too. The true test of a roast dinner is the quality of the gravy. It should be not too thick, and full of savory meaty flavour, not doughy or floury in taste. Also look for vegetables that have some colour on them, not just boiled. Roast lamb leg with a good mint sauce is a thing of beauty. Pair with red wine for lamb or beef, white for pork or chicken.

5. Haggis is a flavour explosion. The real thing, no plastic wrapped forgeries, served with the traditional sides of tatties and neeps, and a glass of really good single malt whisky.

6. Straight up, one of the best meals I’ve ever had was bangers and mash. I was at a high end London restaurant - I forget the name, but John Lennon used to eat there pretty regularly - and it was incredible. The potatoes were the perfect texture with just the right amount of salt and butter. The sausages were made in house, beautifully seasoned and cooked to perfection, and the gravy was stunning. It’s a very simple meal, but simple done right isn’t easy. In a simple meal there’s nothing to hide behind. Every part has to be perfect.

7. Desserts. British desserts are phenomenal. Eton mess, spotted dick, and the absolute king of desserts, sticky toffee pudding served with thick cream. Unbelievably decadent.

100%, they did. Good fish & chips doesn’t need fixing.

The thing about spices in cooking is that - as great as they are, and as much as they enhance flavour - you shouldn’t need them to make good food.

Fish & chips is the perfect synthesis of the “Salt, acid, fat, heat” theory of cooking. Truly delicious food starts with the combination of those elements in exactly the right amounts.

There’s a lot of great things you can do with spices. I love, love, LOVE Indian food, Thai food, Mexican food, Spanish food, Chinese food, Cajun food, etc, etc, etc. But if you don’t understand how to make something delicious without spices, you’ll never really understand how to make good food with them. It’s always about fundamentals.

Edit to add: Here’s another really good way to think about this; people to bring up British food and complain about a lack of spices, but you never see the same complaint about aglio e olio or caccio e pepe, two dishes that contain, respectively one herb and no spices, and one spice and no herbs (parsley, and black pepper).

Good shout, yeah. I actually got mine for free because a friend who works IT in a different company snagged a few on the way to e-waste.

A really nice budget option is an old Lenovo or HP mini PC. These days they make thin client style machines that are absolutely tiny, use about as much power as a small laptop, and still have decent spec.

Storage wise, there’s room to fit a 2.5" drive inside, and newer ones have NVME slots. You can buy them real cheap from a refurb supplier as businesses are offloading them all the time.

In the same vein, a HP, Lenovo or Dell small form factor tower PC will up your power consumption a little, but give you room for a couple of 3.5" drives as well as an SSD. That’s enough to look at putting in a 12TB mirrored RAID for some serious storage. You’ve also got low profile PCI slots, so you can fit a GPU for faster re-encoding in Jellyfin.