Alright so my lab is pretty much functionally complete; it does everything I was hoping it would and much more.
OK so now what :D Do you know of any projects that are self-hostable and serve no functional purpose whatsoever and exist just for fun? Could be silly projects, could be games. I’d like to add a “silly things” section to my publicly facing list of web services.
For instance, I was thinking of hosting a web version of nethack. Also I enjoyed hosting a node of hypermind for a little while just because it was so silly.
I haven’t done it in a few years but I used to run my own weather model. If fed the correct data and given time to crunch the numbers, several times a day you can create your own weather forecast that is probably (hopefully) similar to the freely available forecasts from the weather service, TV, radio and apps.
Which input data is required? Is it hard to setup?
It’s been a few years but I don’t remember it being too hard to set up. I did it on slackware, compiling everything from source, so anybody should be able to do it on a distro with dependency resolution.
They provided a zip file that is updated every so often (hourly?) and contains data for your specific region. I just used that. It does have an option that people can use their own data, but I think it’s because most NWS offices run this model in addition to the national models they get from upstream. No normal person has enough input data to be useful.
I’m running a Minecraft server for me and my sibling, and it’s been fun. I managed to get GeyserMC and Floodgate working so that Bedrock edition clients (i.e. their tablet) can connect to the world.
Little silky that there’s no Linux version of Bedrock edition to be honest, but it’s in Microsoft’s interest to keep Windows as the only option that can run both editions.
No Linux Minecraft bedrock got me and my wife to switch to Hytale instead. Get F’ed MicroSlop.
You could run a BBS! Synchronet and Enigma both have Docker images available.
It’s really the epitome of a pointless endeavor, but it also gives you an entirely new kind of system to learn, tinker with, and customize.
I miss the days of dialing your local BBS
It was the best of times, it was the w… nope. Just the best.
Depending on the specs of your server/VPS you could run a modded Minecraft server. Back in the day I really got into Minecraft and ran a server modded out to the max with shaders, and all manner of accoutrements. It was for fun, but Minecraft is one of those games you can really learn from.
spoiler



I had a World of Warcraft-server running for a while, that was quite fun.
Games on Whales
How about hosting an ADS-B receiver, tracking nearby air traffic. It doesn’t serve any practical purpose other than participating in the crowd sourced network that feeds sites like FlightAware and FlightRadar24 (and you get a free subscription by participating)
Implement GNU Terry Pratchett on your servers:
Awesome
You could host a Tor relay node (or an i2p node). These networks need crowd and bandwidth.
There are lots of game servers you can run. I highly recommend Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart. (Yes, that’s a terrible name, but it’s a very fun game.)
Assuming your server is indeed public facing, try endlessh-go. It’s a tarpit that wastes time/resources of bots/scanners/skiddies
Oh that looks fun. Gonna try that, thanks.
Chat bots are real fun to make and are really useful.
can I name her Sony?






