I tried to run some software on my router. It kind of works, if it fits. Storage was the limiting factor. There’s an option to expand the FS to include a USB stick, but somehow it made something overheat, and the router froze every now and then.

Amanita virosa. You die in horrible pain.

Play video games - Cataclysm:DDA or Dwarf Fortress (tho I stayed on the pre-Steam version as it’s lighter on the CPU).

Learn a new programming language at https://exercism.org

Read a book - tons of free ones around the interwebs, legally or not, as you desire.

Install a new operating system. Try Haiku or OpenBSD. See if your phone is compatible with PostmarketOS. If not, Termux + SSH + port forwarding in your WiFi box, set up a webserver and publish something. Host a Gemini pod.

Learn a craft. Repair something that another person would toss. Start a sourdough culture - it takes a week to mature (read up on how to do this right), then bake a bread. Homemade bread is approx 16× tastier than run-of-the-mill commercial stuff.

Take a walk somewhere you haven’t walked before. Find the nearest forest lake and arrange a picnic. Take someone with you on the 2nd trip.

I’m running my email server on a POCO F1 ex-Android phone (running PostmarketOS now).

I wish I could get NixOS running on it, then I’d move other things also there.

I can drive my manual and eat at the same time just fine, thankyouverymuch :) I think I once submitted a pull request while on the road…

Having an unauthenticated relay imposes the responsibility to configure it correctly (the “only certain addresses” part) and protect it (the “accessible outside the local network” bit). Are you sure it’s not accessible? Did you remember to test with IPv6 too? Will it remain protected after the next time you mess around with your firewall for some totally unrelated reason?

If it works - good for you, but be mindful of all the baggage that comes with a new service.

You’re trading one security issue (profileration of app passwords) to another one (an unauthenticated relay). Is it worth it?

Trying to decide between The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind (OpenMW), Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, doomscrolling in Lemmy, or doing some work instead. So far, work has been winning, but I’m not sure of continued success.

Does this mean it’s off-topic for Mildly Interesting?

👋 There are so many things to do for free.

Take a walk in nature, if it’s in walking distance - or cycling, if you have a bicycle. If you don’t, can you find a beaten-up old bike somewhere (local recycling station?) and fix it? Internet is full of instructions on fixing bikes. Get Duolingo and start learning a foreign language. Install a new operating system (Linux runs on Mac hardware too. If you’re on Linux already, check out some flavor of BSD). Learn some coding, or a new programming language. Take some online course on Coursera or such. Call your mom on phone and ask about something old-fashioned she’s good at (how to make saurekraut, or such), then try it out. Take up gardening. Repair something - take a stock of tools available and be creative. Install LineageOS on your phone, if supported. Music is free on YouTube and adblockers are free to - find a new music genre - if you can sing, imagine how difficult it must be to sing Magnificat by Arvo Pärt cleanly, in tune. Find an old Android phone, install Termux or Nix-on-droid and set it up as a free, low-power-consumption webserver with a built-in UPS. Listen to Orff’s Catulli Carmina and read lyrics+translation in parallel (hoo boy, these Latins were a wild folk). Take up woodworking, if you have scrap lumber - build a bird feeder out of scap boards, perhaps a shipping pallet or such - again, basic tools cost a couple of lunches, and if that’s out of reach - there actually exist people who practise flintknapping, and you can find instructional videos online. Take apart the siphon below your sink and clean it so water would drain faster. Read a book on https://gutenberg.org - they’re all free and legal. Or find where z-lib has hidden itself, books over there are free too, though less legal. Start growing sourdough culture - it’ll take a week or so until it’s ready for baking.

Hoo boy, I wish I had time for everything that’s interesting to me.

I agree with other comments here (about quality, cost of growing, availability, difficulties and especially with tomato varieties being optimized for convenient commercial farming, not taste.

I’m gardening for psychological safety, myself.

When I was a kid, Soviet Union collapsed, economy was in chaos, and though I never went hungry, fancier food (like meat) was unavailable commercially, so we raised it, grew our potatoes and basic veggies. It was a ton of work.

At the moment, stores are full of yummies. However, I can imagine them yummies disappearing - there was a brief food scare at the beginning of Covid (or whenever it was), then the Ukraine war started, scaring the whole Eastern Europe into thinking “Hey, my country is not too different from Ukraine - can we be next?”

Thus we bought a farm, last year, and started a basic garden. Last year we planted some basic foodstuffs - tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, garlic. Two kinds of mint for tea. They produced next to nothing, though. This year, it’s more tomatoes, more cucumbers, potatoes, a selection of different herbs. The mints are perennial, and they’re crazy weeds - you wouldn’t be able to get rid of the beastly things if you wanted to. The yields are OK - I counted around 10 mid-sized potatoes grown from 1 large-sized potato planted, for something like 3x ROI (sample size: 1 plant, the rest keep growing). Tomatoes are sweet and tastier than anything.

You’ll ask if it’s worth the effort. Now I have a summer home (yet with a fiber optic network connection, yum!), for kids to run around in. I invest minor effort and minor funds (except for the farm, heh, hand tools are inexpensive), getting some food that I need to acquire anyway. Growing foodstuffs is linearly scalable. In the possible event of dung-ventilation, I’ll have land, hand tools, and some basic proficiency in growing stuff. Thus it’s like prepping, without really spending any money. Anything I buy will get used to grow food and recoups costs within the season. Oh, and I’m getting some badly needed exercise, spading my plant beds.

I don’t have a plan for the case of zombie invasion (or hungry mobs spilling out of large cities), except being in the middle of nowhere. I’m hoping this scenario won’t come to pass. If it does - the hypothetical robbed me won’t be any worse off than a city dweller, either.

That reminds me - I should call my neighbor and order a tractor trailer full of bullshit (that’s 15 tons, IIRC), costing 200€. I can pay now, get it here, and let it ripen for a couple of years.