“amazing new OS” "C64OS" for the #Commodore 64 #video #retrocomputing #toread
two-minute #Playdate #video of new Catalog #games for March 02024. Lots of interesting monochrome 1-bit UI idiom experiments on the #memory-LCD.
#Playdate #video with some playthrough videos of new (late 02023) #memory-LCD #games, or so I thought, but it seems like it’s mostly footage of the fucking Playdate website. Eight minutes in we get a playthrough of Taxi Trouble, a 2-D game, which seems to use just three stipples: black, white, and grey. Then Shift, a 2-D matching-pieces-disappearing puzzle game, etc. No actual footage of the screen apparently. I didn’t finish watching.
A “BQAA” brand “mechanical keyboard” model “CE-NIB-175” with a 12.6-inch 1920×515 color touchscreen, aka “"Ficihp" K2” [sic!]
#video on the best of #Playdate #memory-LCD #games suggesting something called “P-Racing”
#video on telephone #decentralization with apparently some newly available mesh networking firmware, "Meshtastic" #radio running on #ESP32 hardware: encrypted text-based walkie-talkies using #LoRa on the Heltec WiFi_LoRa_32_V3 board, which has an ESP32-S3FN8 on board. Not low-power, though; half a watt idle! And the firmware is built on PlatformIO. You can flash it via #WebUSB on flasher.meshtastic.org. But it depends on a custom app on your cellphone for its UI, to which it communicates over Bluetooth (or USB serial or Wi-Fi), because the actual board only has two buttons, though it does have a respectable OLED screen which displays incoming text messages. It also needs the cellphone if you’re going to give it GPS. You can also use a browser app which uses your Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to talk to your local devices. The YouTuber reports he got messages through (spottily) at 5km from his 32nd-floor highrise balcony, using the 90-bits-per-second data rate, but at ground level at the beach, only about 150 meters of range, which he blames on the antenna. It can share private keys over QR codes to set up an encrypted channel, but by default doesn’t.
#video on the "SharpiKeeBo" which looks like maybe it uses a #memory-LCD?
#video on “African-made drones”, deleted (taken private) before I could watch it.
#video #toread #Argentina probably some kind of anti-woke dreck
#video #mechanical hammer reinvented, but badly. The "Hammerfist" is more like driving a nail with brass knuckles, 366-gram brass knuckles which transmit the impact directly into your hand. Apparently it’s easier for kids though.
#video #toread about #manufacturing a simple DIY #ozone generator
#video #toread about #mechanical spherical parallel manipulator
#video 183 wpm steno typing test. Pretty impressive. Using “The #Uni” custom steno keyboard.
#video #hardware #electronics US$10 #calculators as of last year apparently run Android 9 (Pie) with multitouch screens? This “GHLBD” brand four-function calculator has a gigabyte of RAM, a 32-bit quad-core Allwinner A50 507 CPU (1512MHz Cortex-A7), 3+ gigs of Flash, and a 2700mAh LiPo battery. So this wild hacker installed bunch of #retrocomputing N64 #games in an emulator. Doom 3 runs at 16–32 fps.
#video #Cesar about #hoarding cigarette lighters. Demonstrates making a tiny “Bunsen burner” out of the nozzle by brazing a drilled bolt onto some tubing, then epoxying the nozzle (flow restrictor removed) into it with 10' Poxipol. Then he epoxies a 100mm aluminum tube to a nut, then drills a couple of air inlets into the aluminum tube, but never gets a decent premixed flame. To get a solid base, he fills a Nutella lid with plaster. Demonstrates using the striker wheel (hardened steel) as a dremel cutting wheel for engraving glass by peening the tip of a cut-down nail over it. Demonstrates using the tiny aluminum tubes as cold-peening rivets by hammering a conical expander mandrel into them. Demonstrates depositing ferrocerium shavings onto a paper towel and burning it.
#video #Cesar about #hoarding and recycling TVs and monitors. Magnet wire from the CRT yoke, 0.4mm diameter in one case; a ferrite core which works well as a microwave susceptor; a 40MΩ potentiometer; power transistors; the flyback transformer for high-voltage supplies; a 2-digit 7-segment LED display; an IR phototransistor; electrolytic capacitors; high-voltage ceramic capacitors; switches; clock crystals. He disassembles the CRT to show its parts; he suggests using the shadow mask as a fine mesh screen, and harvests the phosphor from the inside of the screen with a paintbrush, then dissolves the aluminum it’s mixed with using lye. #hardware #electronics
#vanlife #video in Rosa’s 2009 #Honda-Element car named Elrond with a Sodastream. A 7-gallon jug of water was inconveniently heavy; her “build” was under US$200, and she’s been living in it for six years plus US$11250 for the car. She cooks on a Coleman 2-burner stove on the tailgate. “My entire conversion is actually held into my car using zipties.” She built it out of plywood from Home Depot and piano hinges. The interior is too small to stand up in, but the car is pretty boxy and voluminous for being a car, and it's 4WD, so like halfway to being an SUV. Also the rear doors are backwards-opening “suicide doors”, so you get a double-door effect. She uses aluminized bubblewrap windowshades with blackout curtain taped to the outside with black duct tape, which she says blends in better from the outside. Rear windows are tinted, which would make the blackout hard to see from the outside. She showers at Planet Fitness. Stores water (two 1-“gallon” bottles) and a tarp and a folding chair in the passenger footwell, and a backpack on the seat, so someone looking in through the non-tinted forward windows would see that the car is being lived in. But she hasn’t made any modifications to the outside of the car, so there are no solar panels, shore power, stove chimneys, etc. To work on her laptop she goes to cafés, libraries, and Whole Foods (“really great Wi-Fi”). On the road for the first few years, she worked seasonal jobs at national parks and resort towns, and Subway and similar chain restaurants. Then, when Covid hit, DoorDash, InstaCart, etc., and now she’s a YouTuber (“#lifeoutofmyelement”). She feels like roof racks or stickers are not good for stealth camping.