u/chrisbartle — reddlx

Notes on Manually Driving Posts

I'm a homeowner who just used a Vevor fence post driver to drive down 8 Lifetime 80" steel posts. These are my notes on the experience.

I set 4 of the posts by myself, 4 with the help of a friend. I definitely preferred having help but I was surprised at how doable it was by myself. It was a bit awkward to balance the driver while walking the post to its precise location but it only takes a few pounds to stabilize the post so that it can stand with the driver on top. Likewise it is fairly easy to plumb the post by yanking on it when it's down only a few inches.

I could not get any of the posts to be perfectly plumb though they're good enough to fool the eye (they all tended to lean away from me, I wonder if this is due to how the post is shaped). One got way off plumb so I used a highlift jack to pull it up and redo. I was surprised at how easy this was - I attached some wood to the post and was able to jack it out in less than 15 minutes. Once it was mostly out I re-plumbed it easily.

It is fairly easy to drive the post down 18" or so but I wanted them down 36". I was able to do this but it is hard work. I could do about 2 posts a day before my hands began to blister.

My posts are installed about 4' above grade and 3' below grade. They do flex more than a wooden post that has been set in concrete but I believe that they will last longer.

Going forward, I think I will try to arrange my time so that I can rent a gas powered driver. I think there are a few situations where it can be useful to use a manual driver:

Small jobs with only 1 or 2 posts
Use the manual driver to set the end posts ahead of time so that the string line is set up before driving the rest of the posts
Using the manual driver to drive all of the posts down the first 18", then rent a gas driver to drive them down the rest of the way
You just don't want to spend the money

In conclusion, it is absolutely possible to hand drive posts but it is a lot of work.

u/chrisbartle — 3 days ago

▲ 4 r/youtubedl+1 crossposts

Installing yt-dlp on Linux Mint (August 2026)

A few notes and instructions for those wishing to use yt-dlp on Linux Mint.

What makes this complicated is that yt-dlp really needs access to a javascript engine in order to download from Youtube which involves installing additional components. yt-dlp does provide instructions for this but they involve using the Python utility pip. Mint does not like pip and insists that pipx is used instead. pip intermingles the libraries it downloads while pipx keeps them seperate; it's a better approach but slightly more complicated. In any case, I haven't found anyplace in the yt-dlp documentation that explains how to knit all of this together.

First, pipx must be installed:

sudo apt install ffmpeg
sudo apt install pipx
pipx ensurepath

Next you can use the following commands to install yt-dlp and deno:

pipx install "yt-dlp[default]"
pipx inject yt-dlp yt-dlp-ejs
pipx inject yt-dlp deno

Once installed, yt-dlp can be used as expect:

> yt-dlp URL

In the future, the install can be upgraded with:

> pipx upgrade yt-dlp

I think this is everything that I installed. If I left anything out, let me know in the comments and I'll update this post.

reddit.com

u/chrisbartle — 8 days ago

▲ 0 r/googlefiber

GFiber ICMP Slow?

I had GFiber (formerly Google Fiber) installed today. Ookla's speedtest app pegs my ping at 2ms but pinging 8.8.8.8 (Google's own DNS server) returns 24ms. Do other GFiber customers get similar results? I'm wondering if they de-prioritize ICMP.

reddit.com

u/chrisbartle — 15 days ago

▲ 3 r/Network+1 crossposts

New Utility to Diagnose NAT Issues

I recently released a utility that is intended to help users diagnose problems with their router's network address translation (NAT). It is named NAT Connectivity Analyzer.

Its main feature is that it acts as a STUN client, connecting to a remote STUN server and using RFC 3489 to determine what type of NAT is running (full cone, port restricted, etc). It also uses PCP, PMP, and UPnP to connect to the local router and determine whether it supports automatic port forwarding. It can even determine whether the port forwarding is one-way or bidirectional (I'm not aware of another tool that does this).

This utility is graphical and standalone. I tried to make it as easy to understand as possible, with lengthy descriptive text available. The application is completely open source and has no ads or tracking.

Application Website

Microsoft Store Link

Github

I hope that this utility proves to be useful to the greater community. I've only been able to test it in a handful of network scenarios; please let me know if you find any problems with it.

reddit.com

u/chrisbartle — 2 months ago