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mothyfamilyour own network

Three boxes, four jobs

The machines

Two big boxes in the datacentre, one desktop at home, and one small machine living inside a box. That is everything we own that does a job. There are no specification sheets on this page โ€” core counts and memory figures do not tell you anything useful about your evening. What is here is what each machine is for, and what breaks when it breaks.

01The lineup

Tap a filter to narrow the list.

Akari Running

ใ‚ใ‹ใ‚Š โ€” a small light in a dark room. The biggest machine we own, and the one that carries the familyโ€™s stuff.

Where
In the datacentre, in a rented room with backup power
Size
About 36 TB of disk, protected against a single disk failing
Holds
The films, the music, the audiobooks, and the front desk for the family
On purpose
It is not an AI machine. A model saturating every core is exactly what makes films buffer, so the two jobs stay apart.
If it breaks
Films, music and logins stop. Games keep working. A disk failure is survivable; a lost folder is not โ€” which is why backups are the top of the queue.

The film shelf is liveMost of what lives here: planned

Shizuku Running

ใ—ใšใ โ€” a droplet. The games machine, in the same building as Akari, with its own block of internet addresses.

Where
The same datacentre, its own address block, no graphics card
Built for
Many game servers at once, with steady, predictable speed
On purpose
Big AI jobs are kept off it. A model using every core is exactly what gives players lag.
If it breaks
Game servers go quiet. Films, music and logins are unaffected โ€” that separation is deliberate.

Games machineBeing tidied

Tsubasa Being rebuilt

ใคใฐใ• โ€” wings. A separate machine living inside Shizuku: the games control room.

What
The half that starts a server, stops it, and shows who is playing
Why separate
So a change on one side cannot disturb the games on the other, and the other way round
Today
A borrowed panel, set up by someone outside the family, on a machine we do not fully control
Next
Replaced with our own control room in the coming rebuild โ€” same games, our keys

In the rebuild

Ichika Running

The desktop โ€” one small box the size of a shoebox, the one that travels in the truck, and the machine that answers when you ask the AI helper a question.

What runs here
The AI brain called Luna, and the quick helper called Lily. The second deep seat is named Veronica by the family; she gets her own model when that choice is made
Why here
It has a proper graphics card, which is the part of a computer that makes thinking fast
Installed
The new card went in on 25 October 2026 โ€” 32 GB of its own memory. That is the single change that made the helpers quicker, and it lets the machine answer two conversations at the same time
If it breaks
The AI helpers go quiet. Films, music and games are untouched.

The AI, in testingNew card installed

02How we choose what a machine is for

A machine is chosen for its job

Just because a box could run something is not a reason to put it there. The games machine has 18 cores and will not run the AI; the AI machine has a big graphics card and will not host the films. Each box was picked for one thing, and keeps it.

A name is worth more than a machine

Every service has a name, and the name is what you use. Behind the name we can swap the box, move the room, or rebuild the lot โ€” and nothing you bookmarked breaks. A machine is replaceable; a name is not.

Why there is no specification table on this page

Because the honest answer to โ€œhow big is it?โ€ is โ€œbig enough for the job, and we measured itโ€. We benchmarked our own machines rather than trusting the marketing, and twice the marketing was wrong. The measurements live in our build notes; the numbers on this page are the ones that mean something to a person holding a remote.