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Best Cyberpunk Movies and Books

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 00:33:53 GMT

Cyberpunk 2077 from CD Projekt Red

Lately, the concept of “Cyberpunk” has come back into the general discourse. With the success of the Hackaday Cyberdeck Contest (and my modest contribution to it), not to mention a certain large social media company throwing around terms we’ve all heard for years like they were something new, there’s renewed interest in the entire cyberpunk genre.

To that end, I thought it might be a good idea to look at the books and movies that best exemplify the art form. To that end, I give you my recommendations of the best in Cyberpunk…

Movies

The Matrix – 1999
Not really a lot needs to be said here. This movie came out of nowhere and pretty much reset the whole nerd culture worldview.

Ghost in the Shell – 1996 animated. Remade in 2017 as live action
There’s some wonderful crossover details in this movie with a view of gritty life in the streets and

absolutely jawdropping technology – being able to install a human being into an artificial ‘shell’, granting them what amounts to superpowers. The original anime was groundbreaking in it’s concepts, exploring the concept of self identity. The live action movie did a great job of expanding the visuals into a modern form, but I feel sacrificed story and depth for action.

Johnny Mnemonic – 1995
Sigh. So, for those who don’t know, this movie is based on a short story by William Gibson from Burning Chrome. The story is fantastic, but this movie adaptation… isn’t. I mean, if you’re into the most 90s SF movie you can get, this is it. But lets be frank. It’s not a good movie.

Blade Runner – 1982
There’s a great interview where William Gibson went to see Blade Runner…

I was afraid to watch Blade Runner in the theater because I was afraid the movie would be better than what I myself had been able to imagine. In a way, I was right to be afraid, because even the first few minutes were better. Later, I noticed that it was a total box-office flop, in first theatrical release. That worried me, too. I thought, Uh-oh. He got it right and nobody cares! Over a few years, though, I started to see that in some weird way it was the most influential film of my lifetime, up to that point.
William Gibson

Pretty much no matter how you look at it, Blade runner is the best representation of Gibson’s Sprawl in movie-dom. While the movie was not a box office success when it came out, it has gained a cult status, and for good reason. The story of an overpopulated city and a damaged ecosystem (it always rains), coupled with technology and staggering wealth is unparalleled.

Strange Days – 1995
This is a movie that snuck under a lot of peoples radar, but absolutely exemplifies the Cyberpunk mindset. Sensory link technology co-opted for nefarious purposes far beyond it’s original design. The movie isn’t as well known as it should be, but it absolutely should be required viewing for anyone interested in the cyberpunk genre

Books

It all started with books. Before Netflix, before Youtube, before the movie industry cottoned on to the fact there’s money to be made in hard SF, there were the books. Here’s the best examples…

Mirrorshades – The Cyberpunk Anthology
Unfortunately out of print now (though there’s a free version hosted on Rudy Rucker’s site), Mirrorshades is a short story collection edited by Bruce Sterling. It has the honor of being the first collection to explicitely describe itself as Cyberpunk, and as such, has a place of honor in this list.

Snow Crash

Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
One of the best of the genre, IMHO. So many fantastic concepts, so brilliantly presented. The book hasn’t aged well, as many of the concepts really don’t make much sense anymore, but who can resist

this writing?

“The Deliverator’s car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator’s car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters… You want to talk contact patches? Your car’s tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator’s car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady’s thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.”

Diamond Age – Neal Stephenson
Of Neal Stephenson’s work, this may be one of my favorites. Not strictly cyberpunk as it loosely ties in with Snow Crash but after nanotechnology has become the norm, but still gritty and enjoyable. The world building is outstanding.

Neuromancer
Count Zero
Mona Lisa Overdrive
Burning Chrome – William Gibson
Basically, where it all started. Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy is the G.O.A.T. in the Cyberpunk realm. Gibson was the man to bring the term Cyberspace into full form in his stories, starting with Burning Chrome, and then into the the Sprawl trilogy. Arguably he was the man to define what Cyberpunk looks and feels like, and his influence drives everything

Altered Carbon – Richard Morgan
A great book (and later TV show) that explores what happens when technology is integrated tightly into society, to the point where individuals are, in many ways, immortal. Lives are recorded and uploaded and can be placed into a new body. But as in so many things, this experience is primarily for the wealthy.

Trouble and her Friends – Melissa Scott
Many people interested in this genre may not have heard of this one. The scenario sounds familiar –

netwalking hackers evading deadly IC(E) (Intrustion Countermeasures (Electronic)) using implanted brain computer interfaces – but Scott’s characters in many ways are more human, more real, and definitely not cut from the mold the male-dominated circles have created.

Final Thoughts

I’ve grown quite attached to the concepts of high technology tightly coupled with humanity – and we’re slowly on the road to these sorts of things being the norm. Witness things like cochlear implants, and other types of brain computer interfaces. While what results will likely not resemble the imaginative geometry and immersion described in Snow Crash and Trouble and Her Friends, I feel the barrier between “human” and “computer” continues to thin, and what will happen when that interface is complete, only the SF writers can speculate.

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Google Voice: A slow slide into disfunctionality

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 17:51:39 GMT

I’ve been a Google Voice user for over a decade. The service has been reliable, steadfast, and for the most part, works as expected.

But as with so many Google products, I feel Voice is slowly rotting on the vine, and each day I find another thing that is not working properly, or is simply unfathomable in it’s behaviour.

Lets run down the challenges facing Voice now.

Integration with chat on mobile devices
Google has a dreadful track record when it comes to chat apps / communication. Hangouts, Allo, Chat, Messages, heck even Plus – each of these lived at some point. Some died, some moved, some… we’re just not sure what’s going on. Until Google figures out their messaging strategy and actually executes it, we’re all going to be fidgeting.

The only option for message handling.

Voice originally integrated with Hangouts, but that integration has long since gone by the wayside. Now the only way to use google voice with IM is either in the Voice App on the phone, or via https://voice.google.com/.

The web app
Okay, so there’s https://voice.google.com – a relatively useful webpage for sending//receiving calls, texts, etc. But… it’s a TERRIBLE application. I feel it was written once in 2013 and basically hasn’t been improved since. Some examples:

Contacts integration is dreadful. Trying to find or update a contact in the page is an exercise in frustration.

In the text chat, image handling is completely useless. No paste, no simple “Send this file”, and even when you do send something, it may simply fail with “Not sent” – more on this in a moment. But at it’s basic level, here’s how to send a photo / pic in voice:

The least useful dialog ever

Find your image / pic / whatever you want to sendSave a copy of that image to your desktop

Open the voice app and click the little photo icon in the send boxYou’d think you could paste an image here. You’d be wrong. Click Select photos from your computer

Find the photo you were just editing, double-click on that. This ‘uploads’ the photo to… something. Not google photos – something specific to Voice?

Select the photo. Now it’s a thumbnail in your send box

Click send

It probably won’t send. You’ll get the intensely informative and useful error “Not sent”. That’s it!

Other than that Mrs Lincoln…

Seriously though, other than that, the basic function of Voice is still outstanding. One phone number that rings in multiple places. I can take a call ringing on my cell phone on any desktop machine I’m logged into via voice. That’s amazingly useful. My phone number has been the same for 15 years now – when I get a new service plan or change phones, I can just route my Voice number to it, without having to port any numbers.

I really enjoy being able to use my USB Microphone and desktop speakers for cell phone calls without having to haul my phone out if someone is calling me. The audio quality is excellent and it’s very convenient. I would really hate to lose the product, but I also wish Google would fix some of the rough edges that are just getting rougher as the Voice ages.

If I didn’t have the nagging feeling Google will abandon Voice just like they do so many other products, I’d be a much bigger fan, but the slow eroding of functionality doesn’t give me a lot of hope.

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Overhead LED Light Replacement for RV Camper Trailer

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 15:46:23 GMT

When we got our 2016 Starcraft hybrid trailer, it felt like a great combination of small size, expandable living space, and conveniences. I mean, we have our own bathroom, shower, AC, heating, and kitchenette. Heaven!

One thing irked me right off the bat though. The internal lighting. The trailer came with round 12v ceiling lights that were blazingly bright. No dimmer, no adjustment, and it was direct lighting – ie, it shined directly on whatever you were illuminating, unlike, say, a table lamp, which uses a shade to diffuse the light.

I decided to replace them.

The Light

After doing some research, I settled on the BlueFire 700LM Dimmable LED dome lights. They offered a couple advantages:

They fit the aesthetic of the interior – flush mount, easy to attach
These panels are dimmable. You can use the slider to bring the intensity down to whatever you’re looking for
They have a ‘temperature’ setting that lets you go from ‘electric blue bright’ to ‘soft yellow’, depending on what you prefer.

Installation

Here’s what the old lights look like. They’re pretty basic, just an on/off switch. There’s about 4 in the interior (I’m not touching the ceiling lights, these are just for the sitting areas)

Uninstalling the light was pretty straightforward. Pop off the cover, unscrew the 4 mounting screws. Of course, that revealed this top notch installation job on the part of Starcraft. Looks like they just poked away at it with a small drill until they could smash a hole. Sigh.

After that, it was just a matter of wiring in the two leads, and screwing the new planel into place. I really like how it looks, and nighttimes are FAR FAR more comfortable now, as I can dim the lights down, put some quiet music on, and relax.

I really like being able to do basic changes to the trailer, upgrading bits and pieces, and slowly tweaking it to something I’m really comfortable in. One big project I’m hoping to figure out is how to make the sitting area more comfortable. Those bench seats around the table are uncomfortable as heck. A project for another time.

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Virtuscope Cyberdeck Build

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 21:27:56 GMT

Somewhere in the 2nd year of the pandemic, I stumbled across a posting on Hackster.io about a design for a ‘Cyberdeck’.

A what now?

For those who don’t know, the term Cyberdeck was coined by William Gibson (the inventor of the terms “Cyberpunk” and “Cyberspace” by the way) to describe a piece of computing equipment used to to jack into the net in the future. These fictional machines were basically the hot rods of the grunge tech and hacker scene, able to do anything from simple education stuff all the way to allowing a talented hacker to penetrate the most well protected systems out in cyberspace. They were fast, personalized tech that marked the owner as someone serious about hacking.

BootDSC’s Original Cyberdeck Design

I’ll admit, I’ve read everything by William Gibson, Neal Stephenson (you know, the guy who actually invented the term ‘metaverse’?), Bruce Sterling, and Philip K Dick. In particular, Gibson’s portrayal of Ono-Sendai decks that could jack into and surf cyberspace are well wedged in my psyche. The idea of building and customizing my own ‘deck was too good a concept to pass up, so I took the plunge.

The Printer

There are basically 3 major components to a build like this. The case, the keyboard, and the computer. While it’s possible to build your own keyboard and computer, I wasn’t ready for all that, so I used off the shelf parts for that. The case, however, I’d manufacture myself.

The first phase of this was to get my 3d printer up and running again. I’d been doing a bunch of printing, learning the ropes as it were on how to use TinkerCAD and Cura to take a shape and turn it into a Real Live Thing. I built a healthy respect for people who operated industrial equipment. 3d printing isn’t a push a button, get an object system. It requires constant tinkering, adjusting, repair, and fiddling to keep it all working, and there’s a million small ‘tricks’ you learn in the process to keep a 3d printer running smoothly. It’s a good feeling when you can get your system dialed into the point where you can just power it up, prep the surface, and say “PRINT THIS”, and it works.

Some smooth first layer porn.

My printer (a Creality CR10) had been acting twitchy for a while. I’ve used it for a couple projects in the past, but nothing serious in the last year or two. The problem(s) turned out to be a combination of bad bed levelling, bad bed prep, and a completely horked print nozzle. Once I got those straightened out, I was printing clean, flat prints without any fiddling. I was ready!

The Design

I have to give full credit to BootDSC and the full on Virtuscope design on Thingiverse. This was my first exposure to decks, and I immediately went “I WANT ONE”. Fortunately, the Cyberdeck Cafe website had an entire build page that details all the parts needed. I set up my printer and started printing components, dove into Amazon and various websites to order the parts needed.

Printing the frame, hinges, panels, and other components took about a week. In that time, some of my components had started to arrive, most importantly the Raspberry Pi 4 that was to be the heart of the system, as well as a Geekworm X728 LIPO battery/power module. Screen, keyboard, and other componentry arrived over the next few days.

Display portion of the lid

Gluing the base panels together

This was my first decent ‘build from scratch’ project, and I learned early on I was missing a lot of build supplies. M3 screws and nuts, bolts, a good rotary tool (I had been using an old Craftsman tool I bought 30 years ago? But it died a horrible death partway through the build. The Ryobi rotary tool is excellent, though it really does sound like a dentist drill while in operation).

Eventually I had all the pieces I needed, and I could get on with the build.

I wanted to make one relatively large change – I wanted to use a touchscreen. The 7″ HDMI display I used has a ‘mouse’ function in it that connects to the Pi via USB cable. The problem though is fitting it into the lid of the deck was problematic. I ended up redesigning the lid to give it more ‘depth’ to allow the driver board and cabling to fit. Probably my first real 3d design project – I also had to redesign the component bay lid to make room for the new larger lid and hinge. Multiple prints later, it all fit together the way I wanted it to.

Bench testing the display and controller and realizing the lid needed to be deeper.

This is one of those projects that will really never end. I’m constantly modifying the design, adding new components, removing others. I found that the power connection setup on the back was really awkward, so I designed and printed a USB-C port to go in the opening. This means the whole thing can be recharged via USBC cable, or just run off a power adapter. Win!

I also ran into a problem with the touchscreen USB cable, which, as it came from the supplier, had a 6′ long cable with a ferrite core on it. I picked up a kit to allow me to truncate the cable and put a new end on it, but it turns out I got the wrong connectors. So I ended up just chopping the cable in half and soldering it into an older USB-A jack. I only need about a foot of cable, so that worked great.

The Final Product

I love how this looks. I love knowing that I built it, and there’s no other one thats just like it.

So what’s next?

There’s still stuff to do though:

The keyboard setup (a Royal Kludge RK61 USBC / Bluetooth keyboard), while fitting perfectly into the case, I find sort of difficult to work with. The ‘modifier’ keys are awkward and easy to get confused, and as it sits now, I can’t run it off USB while in the case. I have to pull it to recharge it and reconnect via USB.
The rear panel needs more love. The system is supposed to support a secondary Wifi interface to allow it to run Aircrack-NG and other tools without taking down the primary interface. I have the parts, but haven’t put it all together.
Finding the final location for the ‘stack’ (CPU and power board) is proving slightly problematic, as I need space for the USB connections and other wiring. Until that’s locked down, I really can’t mount the boards. I may jsut drill and mount them anyway to keep things from banging around.
Still need to get hte lid closures working – this can be done with a magnetic plate, but it seems a little iffy. May come up with something else.
Mouse input. Sigh. I had hoped the touch screen would work for this, but it really doesn’t. The screen is small (7″) and my finger is fat. I may explore using a stylus, but I think I’ll need some sort of trackball or thumbwheel or something.
Viewing angle – this may be the killer for me. For the lid / screen to work well, the viewing angle has to be relatively laid back. To do that, the hinge and cabling need to be very flexible, and finding that space is mighty hard. If I can’t solve the viewing angle problem, this will be likely remain a toy project, and not something I can use seriously.

Conclusions

I LOVED doing this project. It looks cool, I can say “I BUILT THAT” and I can keep tinkering and making it better. The Pi4 is enough horsepower to have fun on it, while still having decent battery life. Once I get the mobility stuff fixed up, I’ll start carting it around more.

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Five Days on Cardigan Mountain

Sun, 29 May 2022 19:15:10 GMT

I’m on my sabbatical. That means I get a month off from work to do whatever the heck I want. And what I wanted to do, was go hike. Go camp. Get out. Get off the grid. Turn off the gadgets and the internet and the netflix and the news, and just… detach.

So I did.

Folks may remember a couple years ago I took a backpacking trip to try and make it around the Pemigewasset wilderness on my own. It.. didn’t end as expected, but I came away with a lot of self-knowledge and experience. I was determined to do it again, and this sabbatical was a great time to go.

The Plan

I’ve already spent time up in the White Mountains this year, hiking in Tuckerman’s Ravine and enjoying the wintery landscapes. For all those visits, I’d stay at Pinkham Notch in Joe Dodge Lodge. That’s awesome, and the AMC does a great job hosting, but I hadn’t actually ‘gone backpacking’. I wanted to get more out on my own, and do some ‘detach’ time.

I’ve read about High Cabin, on Cardigan Mountain in western New Hampshire, and even walked by a couple years ago, but I’ve never stayed there. The idea of being in a completely off grid, hike-in only, no power, no water cabin on a mountain, by myself, for a couple days sounded like just the ticket. After a couple phone calls with AMC, I booked the cabin for Monday through Friday. It would be just me. So things were set.

The Leadup

This trip, as mentioned, would be the most ‘committed’ out-back adventure I’ve done. While I wasn’t completely in the wasteland with just a buck knife and my wits, there were a lot of details I had to figure out. I set some guidelines for myself. First, I’d only take what I could carry in one backpack up. I wouldn’t depend on the lodge (a 1.5 mile hike downhill, and then back up on the return) for anything. Second, I’d minimize the ‘distraction’ aspect. I’m a nerd. I like gadgets and toys. But this trip wasn’t about the gadgets and toys. It was about detaching, taking care of myself, and getting as much outdoors time as I could. Which brings me to third: I needed to push myself physically. Vacations are wonderful, and travel and getaways are great. But they’re also recipes for just sitting around and getting fatter. I’m old enough now that I’m very aware of how my body is dealing with idleness. I need to stay physically active to stay healthy. So this trip wasn’t going to be sitting around basketweaving all day. I needed to get on the trails every day.

With these guidelines in place, I looked at what the cabin provides. The short version is – it’s a rustic cabin. It has windows, a roof, screens (yay), a wood stove, bunks, a propane stove, and a limited number of pots, pans, and dishes. Also a composting toilet. That’s… pretty much it. 200 feet from the cabin was a spring that intermittently went dry, so I had to make sure I drew water and kept it on hand in the cabin for cooking, cleaning, and drinking. Everything else I had to bring with me.

The Loadout

My pack, not quite full

Okay, right, this is the fun part. What did I bring? Backpackers / hikers LOVE talking about gear. And I’m sure there’ll be endless discussion about (“you have a WHAT? That’s Junk, you should have a…”), but screw it. This is what I brought:

REI 40 liter internal frame backpack
Generic ’45 degree’ mummy sleeping bag
Hiking poles
Sleeping bag liner
Camping pillow (loaned by a friend, very lightweight)
Camelback-style water system
2 1 liter plastic bottles (carried up empty, used for filtering water)
Sawyer water filter
Waterproof matches
First aid kit
Spork
Toothbrush and Toothpaste
100% Deet bug spray
Hankerchief
Leatherman tool and belt holder
Food / water:
- 2x tubes Nuun electrolyte water tablets (one with caffeine, one without)
- 8 packets of Trader Joes Instant Coffee
- 4 Mountain House scrambled egg breakfastw
- 2 Backpackers Pantry Three Cheese Mac and Cheese
- 2 Backpackers Pantry Lasagna
- 3 Swiss Miss hot chocolate packets
- 4 Nutri-grain bars
- 4 Soylent Mocha packets
Clothing
- Nylon long pants with zipoffs
- 2x hiking socks
- Hiking boots
- 1 lightweight flannel pajama bottoms
- 1 long sleeve tee shirt
- 1 fleece vest
- 1 long sleeve cotton sweatshirt (this was an absolute indulgence)
- 1 pair underwear
- Wide brimmed hat
- Lightweight flipflops (for wearing around the cabin)
- Emergency poncho
- Foul weather rain jacket
Electronics / Gadgetry
- Garmin inReach GPS satellite receiver / messaging / SOS tracker
- Anker 25000 mAh battery
- Headlamp
- LED flashlight + fire starter
- Canon TG-6 waterproof camera with 2 extra batteries
- Samsung cell phone
- Samsung watch and charger
- Kindle Paperwhite Reader

Total pack weight – around 32lbs. Considering this was my entire kit for 5 days, it was a pretty good weight. I was 100% OUT of storage space though. I may have been able to stuff in an extra napkin or two, but that was it. No room left.

Day 1 – Monday – Arrival

I had spent the weekend packing and repacking and making sure I wasn’t forgetting anything. This was one of those “get it right the first time” adventures that challenges my OMG SHINY THING brain to organize and plan down to the oz. I tossed my backpack into the Jeep and headed up the Cardigan Lodge. The drive was pretty straight-forward, about 2 hours or so. I had checked with AMC to make sure it was okay to leave the Jeep parked there for the week, and they were fine with it. I had one last sandwich and coffee from Dunkin Donuts on the way.

By 1:30 I had checked in, gotten the combination for the cabin, and gotten a briefing on Things To Do and Things Not To do. The woman at the checkin counter in the lodge was super nice, and almost apologetically gave me the list. “Don’t write on the furniture or walls. Don’t leave ANYTHING behind, even if you think it might be useful to the next person. Filter your water. No fires other than in the wood stove.” Seemed like pretty basic stuff to me, but they did have to go through the list. Avoiding the incredibly noisy 13 year olds there on a school trip, I filled my water reservoir, settled my pack on my hips, turned on my GPS tracker, and I was off.

On the trail!

It was pretty much perfect hiking weather. Cool, dry, breezy. But, the bugs were DEFINITELY there. I was glad I had my bug spray (I use it very sparingly, just on the back of my hands, and lightly wiped on my neck and forehead). My long sleeve shirt kept them off my arms, and my hat worked well to keep my head all set. I knew from a previous time up Cardigan that the ‘lower half’ of the trail system was relatively easy. I took my time and settled into my rhythm. It took about 45 minutes to reach ‘Grand Junction’, a point in the middle of the lower part of the mountain where a ton of trails come together.

I was amused at the sign warning against going up Holt Trail – I’ve heard that that route is very rough, and that sign definitely warned me off it. I turned to head up the ski trail, but another sign warned that it wasn’t a hiking trail, and we shouldn’t walk on it. Ooookkay fine, a slight adjustment and a consultation with GaiaGPS, and I was off on a slightly different route. This took me a little wider than I had planned, but the route looked smooth and steady, so I headed up.

I made it up to the cutoff for the cabin and definitely was feeling the pack weight by this time (about an hour and a half in). I was pacing myself carefully, I wanted to make sure everything was ‘working right’. Last thing I wanted to do was injure myself on the first day.

After 2 hours I was on the cabin porch, going into what would be my home for the week.

High Cabin is… well, a rustic cabin on a mountain. It’s been on the site for almost 100 years, and has gone through a lot of changes and upgrades and repairs, but it still remains a building with no plumbing, no electricity, and no insulation. The latter wasn’t a problem for this trip, but folks up there in the winter, I’ve heard, go through a prodigious amount of firewood. There was a big pile of wood just outside the porch (I was told later it was 3 cords of firewood that was delivered by helicopter). This is perfect fuel for the woodstove.

Inside, there’s 12 bunks, a big central table, some very well worn plastic/metal chairs, and a kitchen area that has 2 work surfaces, a dry sink, a cabinet with wild assortment of cookware and dishes, and an old-ish Coleman cooler. More about the cooler later

I spent an hour or two familiarizing myself with my new home, unpacking all my kitchen supplies, my bedding, etc. During this time I changed into what would be my ‘casual’ outfit – my flannel pajamas and my sweatshirt, with my flipflops. I’m really glad I brought these because they were a comfortable and a nice change from my backpacking outfit. Downtime wear.

By this time it was into evening, and I started thinking about dinner. The cabin has no water, so I took one of the big soup pots the couple hundred feet over to the spring and filled it. The times of drinking ‘pure unfiltered spring water’ are long past, so my plan was to use the big soup pot as my inside ‘water tank’, and filter water from it as needed for cooking or drinking. The process I settled on was fill one of the 1L plastic bottles with water from the pot, screw the filter onto it, and squeeze the bottle to push water out into whatever I was going to use, be it the other plastic bottle (so I could mix up the Nuun tablets), or into a cup for Soylent, or into the tea kettle to be boiled for dinner or coffee (TECHNICALLY I didn’t need to do this last, as the filter’s main goal is to make sure I don’t get giardia or other nasties into my stomach. Those things would be eliminated in boiling water, but I was also slightly concerned about sediment and other muck in the water, so I filtered the stuff I was going to boil just to be safe.

Once I had water ready to boil, I had to light the propane stove. I absolutely love my littler plasma lighter / flashlight gizmo. It’s like having a rechargeable set of matches. But as I was trying to get the stove started, I realized the propane tank was empty. There was a second tank, so I swapped out the gas line for the new tank (this was behind the building), turned on the valve and… immediately smelled propane. This is why the old tank was empty – there’s a slight leak on the feed line by the valve. This wasn’t bad enough to prevent me from using the tank, but it DID mean I had to turn off the valve after every use. Okay, I could do that. I tightened down the line as best I could, turned it on, rushed back inside, and held my lighter to the burner while turning the inside valve on… hisss… hisss… VOOMPH. It lit. Right. One drawback of the plasma lighter is you have to be VERY CLOSE to what you’re lighting. I figured out a good angle to set the lighter so the lit flame on the burner woulnd’t get close to my hands, but it was dramatic.

I boiled up my water (yay whistling kettles!), and poured it into my vegetarian lasgna packet from Backpackers Pantry. It takes about 10 minutes of a combination of stirring and waiting for it to get ready, but it smelled great from the start.

In what was to become basic ritual, I sat down at the big table, turned on my Kindle, and just… ate and relaxed. The area was incredibly quiet, and I found myself settling into what I’d come to think of as ‘downtime’. No internet, no distractions, it was basically just ‘sit, eat, and read’.

By the time I was done, it was pretty dark. One of OTHER challenges for this trip was I only brought one backup battery. I could recharge my devices from it a few times, but after that, I had no other way of making power. I had considered bringing along some solar panels, but I just didn’t have the pack space (or the money for that matter) to indulge. Given that, I couldn’t just leave my lights on all the time. So I got used to sitting in the dark and turning on my flashlight only when I needed it. I got very comfortable with the Kindle backlighting (which was giving every indication of being able to run the entire week without recharging), but when it got dark there, it got DARK.

I cleaned up from dinner (tricky again because no running water. Used an open flat bottomed dish basin to wash everything up in, then drained it into an outside sort of sump like thing that’s used for dishwater. It drains water into an underground rock field, I believe, so the animals don’t dig around where they smell the food.

I did take a little bit to start the woodstove. It’s been a while since I set a fire, but after only a little bit of fumbling, I got it going. That stove became one of my best friends, because when it gets rolling, it turned the cabin into the tropics. I had to modulate it with the front vent to keep it from melting the furniture. But I was warm and cozy. It continued radiating heat until about 3 in the morning (after I had let it burn down on its own), so while the morning wasn’t that warm, I was able to go to sleep in a warm room, and as it cooled off overnight, I just snuggled further down into my sleeping bag.

I read for another hour or so, then started to settle into bed. The bunks were functional, if not luxurious, but with the little pillow I had brought, and rolling up my sweatshirt and my vest, I was comfy.

A note about the cooler in the kitchen. I came to really appreciate it when I realized late at night that… there’s quite the family of mice living in the cabin. It really gave me pause, as there’s nothing relaxing about going to sleep listening to mice scrabbling / chewing around the walls, and wondering if one is going to scamper across you in the night. But mice are mostly interested in food, and I’m not very tasty (I’m also a big carnivore, so they mostly avoided me). HOWEVER, they absolutely will go after anything that remotely smells like food. I made the mistake of leaving out a couple of my cocoa packets the first night, and lo! One had a hole chewed in it when I went to see what the noise was. From then on, I stored all my food inside the Coleman cooler, with a heavy pot on top of it. The mice lost interest in the kitchen after that, and my food was safe.

Day 2 – Tuesday – Let’s go hiking!

Tuesday I slept in longer than I expected to. I remembered from previous trips it’s common to… go to sleep when the sun goes down, get up when it’s light out again. I somehow missed this memo, and even though sunrise around this time is about 5:30am, I didn’t get up until almost 8. I powered up the Garmin and sent a message to Mrs. Geek saying good morning (turns out the Garmin needs to be out on the porch to be able to reach the satellites, so when I was in the cabin and it was on, I left it on the railing outside. I could hear if it beeped with a new message).

Scrambled eggs, bacon coffee, and reading

I started the meal ritual, but this morning would be scrambled eggs with bacon and coffee. Everything went fine, and I was pleasantly surprised at how good the Trader Joe’s Instant Coffee Packet thingies were. They include cream, sugar, and instant coffee, an two of them in a decent sized coffee mug was JUUUUUUUST right. Those morning cups ended up being the highlight of the day. I could only haver one cup each day, unfortunately, but it was SO good.

My friends Dave and Perley had said they were going to come up on Thursday for my last night in cabin, so I knew there’d probably be a summit hike with them. I wasn’t in a mad rush to get up on top, so I planned out a route for the day that would take up to the Cardigan South peak, the Cardigan Rim Rock, and then if I was up for it, out to Mount Gilman – about 3-4 miles total, with not much ups and downs.

I changed into my hiking gear, put on bug spray, reconfigured my backpack into ‘day hike’ mode (water, first aid kit, emergency stuff), enabled tracking on the InReach, sent a message to Mrs. Geek that I was heading out, and… headed out.

Of course, it can never go perfectly. I realized halfway up to the South Peak that I had forgotten my camera. Well, the trip was all about covering a lot of ground, so I trudged back to the cabin, picked up the camera, and headed out again. I didn’t want to rely on my cell phone for photography this trip — mostly because it was needed for mapping and communication if needed. Running down the battery on the camera isn’t a problem. Running out my phone is.

The views from South Peak were glorious as expected, and I could clearly see the summit of Cardigan (and darnit, those kids on the school trip were swarming all over it. Even though it was a good 3/4 mile away over open air, I could hear them whopping it up. I was glad I was over on my own). I did chat with a nice couple sitting at the South Peak, they were super polite and enjoying the views.

After that I decided to go down to Rim Rock, and then continued on to Gilman. The Gilman hike was really enjoyable, as it was a lightly travelled trail and wound through some beautiful woods and trees. It was quite the hoof, and took about an hour and a half to reach, but was worth the alone-thinky time. The bugs were definitely active when down in the trees, as there wasn’t enough of a breeze to keep them at bay. Hooray for bugspray.

At Gilman I paused for a quick snack (just a bar), and headed back. Eventually I made it back to the cabin, having been on the trail for 4-5 hours. A good first full day on the trails. Once back at the cabin, I changed, rested a bit, and pretty much repeated the previous night’s pattern.

One thing this did start to underline though, and something I was worried about. Boredom.

This cabin is remote and quite primitive. I can’t hike 10 hours a day, so there’s going to be downtime. How do you fill that time?

I preloaded a Kindle Paperwhite with a bunch of books as recommended from friends, and that really covered my ‘downtime’ entertainment. I kind of wished I had enough capacity (carrying, whatever) to have something else for fun. For instance, I didn’t have a way to listen to music (long term battery usage was a problem), and the quiet times would have been nice with some quiet tunes. I did end up using my phone to listen to some Spotify playlists I had downloaded, but only mid-week after I knew my batteries would hold out for the entire week.

Day 3 – Wednesday – In which Dave screws up

Wednesday I decided to go ahead and summit Cardigan, and extend the hike to a ‘full loop’ – basically going all the way around the ‘valley’ that was the mountain approach, with Cardigan Mountain at one end, and the lodge at the other. Mapping it out, it should have taken 5 hours or so, which is what I was hoping to be my average days hike

I headed out around 10am as usually, and after an hour or so, was on top, admiring the views as always. It really is a spectacular area, with the summit 100% open granite, with a fire tower jutting up. The day was clear and sunny, with a light breeze. The bugs on top were a little busy, but if you stayed in the breeze, it was okay. I got to get my face licked by a very cute puppy who had excitedly made the journey up top and they splashed happily in the rain puddle in the rocks.

I continued down the other side of the valley – it was a sharp descent, and involved some scrabbling and clambering, but all in all wasn’t too bad. I decided I was going to make the cross down one of the ski trails (which are marked “NOT FOR HIKING”, but it was going in the right direction and seemed okay. The trail actually wasn’t bad. It was open vegetation with a narrow path through the middle, but was definitely in ‘deep forest’ for most of the time. BUG CITY. About a third of the way down the ski trail (now about 3 hours into the hike), I started… not feeling great. Remembering back to the Pemi hike I did, I began to worry I had blown out my electrolytes again, but that didn’t seem quite right. I had half a bottle of the Nuun water before I left, so that shouldn’t be it. As I continued, I was feeling worse and worse. Fatigued, slightly nauseous, weak. The problem was I had to climb back up to the cabin after crossing the bottom of the trails, and I was NOT looking forward to that. Stopping to rest was problematic because of al the bugs – I really wanted nothing more than to just curl up in a ball on the side of the trail and hide.

Not a happy hiker.

The rest of the hike up to the cabin was horrible. I was tired, weak, worried my water was going to run out (It didn’t. But you can’t tell how much is in the reservoir without pulling it out of the backpack. When I got in, turns out I had about half a cup left). I remembered this feeling from other hikes. I do not recommend it. All you want to do is crawl into a corner somewhere and hide. “Why am I doing this? This is dreadful. I hurt, I’m uncomfortable, I’m tired, I’m hungry, ahhhhh!”). I was worried I had hit my strength limit, but that didn’t seem right as I’d been doing a couple days of hiking already… I didn’t know what was wrong.

Eventually I made it back to the cabin, and the relief of being out of the elements and away from the bugs was immense. I dropped my pack, drank some Nuun water and had a bite of a cereal bar, and laid down for an hour of absolute black-out sleep. I was vaguely worried about killing my sleeping schedule, but screw it, I was WIPED.

After I woke up, changed into my casual clothes, and settled in, I tried to figure out what went wrong. I was feeling slightly better, but still weak, and my appetite was GONE. I made dinner but only ate half of it. Considering I planned to eat about 1200-1400 calories a day (which is far less than I was burning), I should have been starving. But I couldn’t finish dinner. Just had no appetite. I was thirsty though, so I was drinking a fair amount… hmmm.

It took until bed time before I started having a clue what was wrong. When I hiked on Monday and Tuesday, I wore my long sleeve t-shirt, and my fleece vest. The fleece vest has… a collar. And that collar and the vest covered my neck and shoulders. On Wednesday I didn’t wear the vest because it was so warm. So my shoulders and neck were exposed. And on top of a mountain, that means sunburn.

I had burned a stretch of my shoulders quite bright red. That explained the fatigue, the nasea, and the lack of appetite. Fortunately, the burn didn’t seem to get beyond “turn my shoulder bright red” in terms of skin damage, but it did affect my entire state. It didn’t sting so badly I couldn’t sleep or anything, so thank goodness for that, but what an error on my part. It’s made slightly more embarrassing because Mrs. Geek had warned me to bring sunscreen. Sigh. Oops.

That night I turned my cell phone off ‘airplane mode’ for the first time on the trip. I’ve been deliberately staying offline, only using the InReach to stay in touch. Perley was planning on coming up Thursday, but Dave said he had to bail. I wanted to check in with Mrs. Geek just have a quick phone call. It was nice talking with someone close for a little bit.

Day 4 – Thursday – Company’s coming!

Hey, I’m going to have visitors!

Today Perley was going to come visit and stay over Thursday night. We had coordinated a bit over messages, and he said he’d make it up around 2pm. No problem, I’ll take a casual morning. I was still a bit wobbly from Wednesday, so I had a late breakfast and read for the morning. At one point he messaged me and asked if I needed anything… and asked if a vanilla shake is worth dragging up… I tried to dissuade him, but…

Friends, he did in fact put the milkshake in a Nalgene bottle and hauled it up the mountain for me.

Perley and I on top

He got there around 2:15, and… the milkshake was delicious (and appreciated), but… it was really rich. After 4 days of dehydrated food, this was.. maybe a bit much. But it sure did taste good!

After a lunch of (MILK SHAKE) and other snacks, we headed out for an afternoon of hiking and exploring. I took super-extra care to cover up my shoulders and neck (put the vest back on, and put a handkerchief around my beck),

to keep the sun off the sunburn. I never felt any more ‘burn’, so I guess it covered it up fine. It was a good, breezy, cool day, and we had a lovely hike.

That night I had my normal meals, showed Perley around the cabin and how to prepare stuff, as well as warning him about leaving food out, and we turned in around 10:30.

Day 5 – Friday – Time to go home

End of the week. Time to go home.

To be honest, I was READY. I wanted a shower, I wanted to sit on a comfortable chair, I wanted to see my wife, I wanted a cheeseburger in the worst way. I was ready to go home.

Packup and cleanup was super-easy. We followed the posted procedure and swept out the cabin, cleaned all the surfaces, cleaned out the wood stove, and locked up on the way out. Our packs were back up to ‘full weight’, though for me I had eaten through all my food, so that lightened things up a bit (I think I weighed it out – something like 6lbs was food).

The hike down and out was uneventful and remarkably quick (“Wow this seems shorter than when we went up.”). We had a lovely conversation with the staff at Cardigan Lodge where I let them know of any of the small problems I found (like the mice and the possibly leaking propane line). The fellow there was super nice and he told us some stories about previous visitors and stuff left at the cabin.

After that, it was a matter of climbing into the Jeep, reveling in the feel of a comfortable chair and air conditioning, and driving home.

For the record, I didn’t get a cheeseburger, I got a chicken parm sandwich at the Hooksett rest area, and that was just as magical.

After

Coming home was great. We had a sleepover scheduled for the (now) 14yo and his friends, so that was a bit busy in the house, but not as bad as you’d think. The kids were great, and it was just awesome to be HOME.

So how do I feel about the trip? Mostly good, but also a lot of thinky stuff.

Wednesday was awful. It reminded me that there are times on the trail that are just despair and sadness. It left me with the constant “Why am i doing this? This isn’t fun. This is just a way of making myself uncomfortable. Why do this?”

On the other hand, I did detach. My very busy brain… stopped being busy. For those 3-4 days I was alone, I slowed down, like an engine going to idle. It was VERY good for me to get that in at the beginning of my sabbatical.

Does it make me want to do more backpacking? I honestly don’t know. I need to think on this. I think the strongest feeling / experience I got from it was those 4-5 days my entire… experience was based on me and me alone. I took care of myself, I took care of my food, my living space, my body, my gear. The success of that time was based solely on me, my planning, and my execution of the plan. And it WORKED. I didn’t forget anything, I didn’t miss anything, I was fed, healthy, and comfortable the entire time (save aforementioned sunburn). That’s huge. I like that feeling. I wonder if I can do it again, but maybe just be a little more comfortable, and a little less bored? To be honest, the ‘boredom’ thing may be fixable with the ‘comfort’ thing. I didn’t have a comfortable place to sit or relax (just the hard chairs or my bunk), so spending 3 hours reading a book wasn’t the best. I had considered packing one of those tiny nylon hammocks so I had a bit of recreational ‘furniture’, but space in the pack ended up being too tight. Maybe if I do this again, I’ll add that to the list.

Conclusion and Thanks

I have to thank a few people for helping make this trip possible

My awesome wife, who makes it all worthwhile. She enables me, supports me, and keeps me going. Thank you.
Zachary, my awesome kid. They were invaluable for support, advice, and just being a sounding board when I wasn’t sure if this whole hiking thing would work, and if I was going down the wrong path. Thanks Z for listening.
My friends Perley and Dave, who were enthusiastic and supportive and wanted to be In On It. Thanks guys.
The Appalachian Mountain Club, who maintain the trails and the cabin (among other lodges and huts all through the White Mountains).

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Hackaday and VCF East and Handhelds, Oh my!

Tue, 03 May 2022 12:46:14 GMT

Looks like Hackaday has an article about VCF East and I got chatted up a bit on it. Thanks Tom Nardi!

VCF East was a blast, and I had a great time. Most of my chitter chatter and pics are on my Twitter feed. Thanks to everyone who showed up and made the event work. I had some great conversations, picked up some new gear, and got a good solid soar throat from talking for two days straight.

I’m hoping to bring the handhelds page up to date with all the latest acquisitions soon. A recent visit to Near-Fest definitely helped things along on that front!

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My Portable Media Carry-Sack

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 22:43:48 GMT

I have a little Case Logic zippered pouch that I carry in my backpack everywhere I go. It’s where I put USB thumb drives, SD cards, Micro SD cards, adapters – pretty much anything I may need while on the road. It’s gotten me out of so many jams where I’m like “I need a quick Micro SD card… where the heck were they again??”

In particular, when I’m out doing photography, having a couple spare cards at hand is a total win.

Today, I fished out a 32gig card so I could re-image my Octoprint server that drives my Creality CR10 3d printer. I’ve been running the “Python 2” version for ages, it’s time to upgrade.

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The Royal Kludge RK61 Keyboard is Growing On Me

Sat, 08 Jan 2022 02:47:29 GMT

I’m in the middle of A Large Project (stay tuned!), and as part of it, I laid out the money on my first actual mechanical keyboard. If you bring up ‘mechanical keyboards’ in any nerd setting, you’ll get some absolutely rabid folks going on about cherry switches, stroke type, PCB design, blah blah blah.

Me, I just wanted a mechanical keyboard that had a nice feel.

The RK61 fits the model of what I’m building, and it was a good ‘entry point’ into this concept.

The Deets

The Royal Kludge Rk61 is a 60% mechanical keyboard that has both USBC and Bluetooth connectivity. It has a full stroke set of ‘blue switch’ keys that have a good tactile feedback. It includes a decent sized battery, so when on full bluetooth mode, it’ll run for several weeks before needing to be plugged in.

Here’s the breakdown.

60% – This is a ‘60%’ keyboard. This is a loose definition that generally means there’s around 60 keys on it, as opposed to the standard 104 keyboard that most people know. The keys are normal sized, so don’t let the percentage throw you off
USBC connectivity – used for either HID connection or charging the keyboard’s battery.
Bluetooth connectivity – this is nice, in that the keyboard supports 3 bluetooth profiles, and switching between them is just a matter of Function-Q, W, or E. THat’s handy since I’ve been using this for both my gaming PC and my project.
Blue Switch keys. If you talk to any keyboard nerd, this will immediately classify this keyboard for them. The blue switch designation refers to the mechanical switch type used in the keys. In this case, the keys have a very distinctive ‘CLICK’ sound, and a good tactile feedback. This isn’t the best for gaming, but for rapid typing and good feedback, it works well.
Battery – the battery is good. While I don’t type on it full time, I’ve only had to recharge it about every 2-3 weeks, which is just a matter of plugging in the USBC cable.
Lighting – Yes, it has animated lighting. There’s all sorts of pretty patterns you can set the keys to. In my case, since I have a white keyboard, the backlighting is soft blue, and I have it simply set to light the key then fade out after I release the key. You can get as fancy as you like.

Some drawbacks

There are a few drawbacks. Probably the most noteable is with only 60 keys, some keys no longer have unique functions. There’s not a Function key row – those keys are shared with the numerics and puncuation. There’s no separate arrow keys, so those are shared with the right hand modifiers, but most irritatingly, also the ‘/’ and ‘?’ key. I found having the RK61 manual at hand (even in digital form) can be helpful, since there’s very little feedback from the keyboard itself when changing modes.

It’s loud. I mean, it’s a mechanical keyboard, so no duh. But if you’re looking for stealth computing on your project machine, this is probably not the right tool. There’s ways to ‘quiet’ these keyboards using rubber o-rings and the like, but I feel if you’re at that point, you probably have bought the wrong keyboard.

Conclusion

The RK61 is a solid, well built, and aside from some oddities in the keyboard layout, useable keyboard. In general, I’m enjoying it. It’s not cheap, running about $59 on Amazon but if you’re looking for a keyboard that doesn’t take up a lot of space, has a good feel, and you like full stroke mechanicals, it’s not a bad option.

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Baking Adventure: 2021 NYE

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 16:17:29 GMT

At the beginning of 2021, when the Pandemic was in full swing, I took up baking. Nothing particularly fancy, just learning how to bake breads and cakes and similar stuff. It’s fun, people really enjoy it, and, heck, lets be honest, it’s SCIENCE!

As the summer rolled around, I took a bit of a hiatus, and didn’t bake for a while. It’s hard getting motivated to work in a hot kitchen when it’s a bzillion degrees out. So the mixer and bread pans went idle.

This fall, I’ve picked it back up, and made bagels for the family for Christmas (like ya do), so for New Years, I decided to do something again.

Mosaic has a yankee swap every New Years. The pandemic has made this challenging of course, and even though we were optimistic, this year we did it virtually again (believe it or not, it went really well). The 13yo suggested that I bake a cake for our gift item, since ‘no one has ever done that before!’ (honestly I suspect he wanted some himself). So M and I dithered around a while and decided on a standard yellow cake but tried something new for the icing. The icing ended up being a Italian style maple meringue that was AMAZEBALLS. Once we realized we didn’t have a double-boilers (so we put a pot in a big skillet of boiling water, and also realized we REALLY needed a hand mixer to make this work – and was saved by a neighbor who brought one over in mid-stir), the meringue eventually cooked and turned glossy and thick.

Then we burned the cake.

So I ended up cutting out the middle of one, and took one of the bundt mini cakes we had used the extra batter for, and made this , which we able to ‘wrap’ as a gift without making a mess. The little dark bits are cruzeilles, which are AMAZINGLY tasty, and bits of caramel on the top.

Presentation, I give it a 3. Taste, an 8.

Recipe links:

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The Sad, Avoidable Downfall of the E-Book Reader Aldiko

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 17:12:14 GMT

I’ve been a staunch user of the Aldiko ebook reader on Android for many many years. It was stable, easy to use, featureful enough to be a comfortable reading experience, and handled local libraries pretty well.

Then in 2014, Aldiko was purchased by Feedbooks. Not that big a deal, the press releases were all glowy about how much they loved Aldiko, things should continue, we all expected some new features.

Aldiko is now owned by DeMarque

In 2019 Feedbooks was aquired by DeMarque. Apparently Feedbooks was in serious trouble, and this acquisition was purely financial as part of a deal to settle up accounts with DeMarque:

What the press release doesn’t dwell on is that Feedbooks had been in receivership since June 2018 and the merger is the result of a Commercial Court settlement whereby De Marque paid 230,000 euros to acquire the assets of Feedbooks and its subsidiary Aldiko as part of a disposal plan.
Aug 29, 2019 – newpublishingstandard.com

Aldiko Next – the lobotomized version of Aldiko

Somewhere in 2021, DeMarque decided the Aldiko app needed a rewrite. Understandable. Old apps need refreshing and updates, sometimes an entire rewrite is in order.

So they published Aldiko Next – an extremely feature light, barely functional book reader (I won’t call it a ‘version of Aldiko’. It isn’t. It’s a rewrite). That’s fine, new versions are published all the time, and then the users are given time to try the new app, and iron out the bugs.

But DeMarque decided “Nope. We’re going to force the literal 20 million installs of Aldiko to the new version. Without notification. Without an Opt-out.”

Aldiko Next is absolute hot garbage. Don’t believe me? Look at the reviews on the play store. They’re universally panning the app.

DeMarque’s answer to bad reviews?

“Hello, In addition to several new features, Aldiko 4 will offer all the ones that were already available, only improved. We’ve decided to deploy them incrementally. So it is normal that some features from previous versions are not yet available. They will be available as future versions are released. Please note that 4.3.6 has just been released.”
November 9, 2021 Play review response

Note, the ‘will offer’. These features are NOT AVAILABLE. Yet they forced ALL the users to upgrade to the new version. When challenged on why this is a bad idea, Hadrian Gardeur, the founder of Feedbooks, doubled down with a basic “Ignore the reviews. We know what we’re doing”

Yes and reviews tell a different story than usage, so we look at both.

We'll continue to release features on a regular basis (now that we can) but have no intention of going back to fake wood backgrounds or Adobe DRM support, they're both things that we'll keep in the past.
— Hadrien Gardeur (@Hadrien) December 3, 2021

I stopped responding after that message. There didn’t seem to be any point.

So what’s the alternative?

Moon+ Reader on Android

I encourage anyone who is frustrated with DeMarque / Feedbooks destroying a beloved app to simply… take your business elsewhere. I have switched completely to Moon+ Reader, which is an outstanding app, extremely featureful, offers a ‘free, with ads’ and a ‘pro’ version. I’ve simply moved all my books over to that, and things are running beautifully. Everything works as expected, and basic features that should always have been there… are still there, unlike Aldiko.

I understand the need for companies to make a profit, and do business. It takes money to develop, market, and support applications. But there’s also a responsibility to the userbase to not destroy the experience for them. This seems like a no brainer, but apparently, some people just don’t get it.

If you’re going to upgrade an app, then do so. Engage your users, make the migration an accepting and functional experience. Do not slam everyone into an incomplete codebase and then dismiss their complaints.

That is a textbook recipe for how to drive your users to your competitors platforms.

Well done DeMarque. Well done.

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Jeep JKU Overlanding Build - My Covid-19 Project

Thu, 17 Jun 2021 21:04:25 GMT

The last year has been a doozie. When the pandemic got rolling and didn’t look like it was going to be over quickly, I, like many folks, looked for ways to ‘get away’. Some of these plans were born from fear and doom, some from a basic need to just Be Away, and for others, it was a way to do SOMETHING during the pandemic that felt like you were building for the future. An uncertain future to be sure, but a something you could point at and go “I did this. Now I can enjoy it.”

I’ve had a Jeep, off and on, for the last 8 years. Starting with a JKU (which I sold quickly, unfortunately), and then settling into my 2000 Jeep TJ (affectionally referred to as Ol Yeller), I enjoyed having a ‘toy’ that I could go romp in the woods, or just drive with the top off. It was freeing.

I sold Ol Yeller right at the beginning of the pandemic, because I had gotten fascinated with the concept of Overlanding, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized my 20 year old, small (but still fun!) Jeep TJ just wasn’t going to cut it. And, to be fair, the TJ was not exactly a luxury vehicle. It was time to upgrade to a vehicle I could build out into my overlanding vision.

How it started

I began hunting for a JKU (the 4 door version of the JK) in May, 2020. My criteria was:

A relatively low set of miles. 50k-75k was okay.
Manual transmission – Manual cars are slowly going away. This was the last chance for me to have a manual vehicle, I was going to take advantage of it. And besides, it’s fun.
Hard top. I could have gotten a soft top and upgraded it, but either way, I wanted a hard top in the end. In the winter, it’s really the only way to stay warm.
No rust. Jeeps rust. The JK’s are better about it than previous versions, but they still will rust.

The first version of Ghost

I found a JKU that fit the bill, aside from the hard top at a dealership not far away. Took it for a test drive, reviewed it, and it seemed like it would fit the bill. I paid cash for it, and drove it home. While driving it back from the dealer, something felt… off with it. It wasn’t tracking right, and had a bit of a shimmy in it. I had brought up the shimmy with the dealer, and they said they had fixed it, but it still didn’t feel right.

I made an appointment with my local shop (folks I trust a lot), to have them go over it. They did… and… there were problems. It turns out this jeep had obviously been in at least one accident, if not several. The chassis had been shifted forward by an inch on the frame and the body mount bolts were all twisted. The frame had been cut and re-welded (poorly) which threw off all it’s alignment. My shop was definitely of the opinion “This vehicle is unsafe. You need to return it.”

I was, naturally, hurt and felt lied to. I contacted the dealer, relayed all my issues, and they, surprisingly, agreed to take it back and refund ALL the money spent. No restocking, no tax issues, nothing. Just a check back to me. So that’s what I did. I felt a little taken advantage of because I didn’t do a thorough check, but I did have a conversation with one of the sales reps there who said they had another buyer, cautioning him “this vehicle is unsafe. Please take that into consideration when you decide to sell it again.” – I doubt it had any affect, but I had to try.

Second Verse, Same as the First, but better!

So, back onto the market I go. Strangely, I find another JKU, also white, this time with a black hardtop, less than 10 miles from the original dealer. So off I go, give it a test drive, and things look and feel… good! No shakes, it’s smooth and strong, AC works great – I’m cautiously optimistic. THIS time I make an appointment with my shop and make arrangements with the dealer to take the car to the shop for the day for a full evaluation. They agree, and a few hours later, I have a 100% clean bill of health. Nothing wrong with it!

So I became an owner of a white 2013 Jeep JKU Sahara, which was promptly named Ghost.

Ghost was basically stock. Stock Sahara wheels, bumpers, roof, interior. The only ‘enhancements’ were a bit of ‘armor’ on the sides of hte hood, and running boards. It did have the Alpine amp and subwoofer, which was a nice bonus. The head unit was the basic CD player and radio, but everything else was there including steering wheel controls and everything else. Oddly, it didn’t have an FM antenna (??), not sure what that was about. But it was the right price, the right configuration, and felt great. I was ready to get started.

The Build

Over the next 10 months, using whatever tools and basic skills I have, I upgraded Ghost. Through Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, ebay, Crutchfield, and trips to Lowes, I built. There was a LOT of learning. I’ve always been okay doing stereo installs and upgrades, and doing wiring, but this build would require mechanical work. Moving equipment around the engine bay, mounting hardware, figuring out what options to do where. The physical build took months, and wasn’t cheap.

Here’s a simplified version of all the work I did. (If you’d like a fully detailed nitty gritty “show me the rust and bolts” review, checkout my build thread on WranglerForum.com).

Found a GobiRack on Facebook Marketplace – I’ve always wanted a safari rack on the jeep, because I love the look and the flexibility it provides. The fellow who had it was happy to hold onto it for a few weeks until we could get down there. It came with a full on lightbar, and was a very reasonable price. I also learned that these racks were INCREDIBLY hard to come by. The manufacturer was way behind on filling orders, and the prices were through the roof (so to speak). I got this for a good price, and was happy to put it in the garage until I was ready to install it.
A set of XRC Bumpers (front and rear) to replace the stock ones. I was originally thinking these would be needed (on the rear) to mount the rack, but it turns out the rack mounts to the underside of the body, not the bumper. Regardless, I wanted a front bumper to mount a winch, and a rear bumper that was rugged and able to handle towing and getting banged around. This was another Facebook Marketplace purchase. Met the fellow at a rest stop down in CT. Super nice!
A Harbor Freight winch. Yea yeah, harbor freight, blah blah. But if I’m going to be anywhere off road where I might get stuck, a winch is absolutely necessary. I got this during a sale somewhere in November, but didn’t get around to installing it until April this year. It sat on my porch the entire time. My wife is very patient.
A new power control panel and relay box – this is a system that gives you switches on the interior to control exterior lights and accessories, using a separate set of relays. Very handy for high current thing (like trail lights)
A set of grips / handles from Wild Boar. The Jeep is TALL, and climbing in and out of it is a lot easier if you have something to grab onto.
A Vector equipment mounting bar – this goes on the dash and lets you mount equipment to it, like phone mounts, radios, etc.
A Boss BE10ACP-C Android Auto screen to replace the head unit – this took a lot of research to arrive at, but I’m reasonably happy with the result. I find floating screen displays really useful (I know others disagree), and having my gmaps on that screen, plus Spotify, an audio interface, backup camera, etc – a huge upgrade.
A set of new rims (via Craigslist) to replace the stock rims
BF Goodrich T/A K02 Tires.
Replaced the headlights from the stock ‘sealed beam’ whatever those garbage things were with a set of LED lights. The improvement is staggering.

So far so good, but we’re not done yet!

Now everything up until now has been pretty basic ‘kit out your jeep’ type stuff. Folks do this sort of build out all the time, and honestly, the result is pretty awesome. It looks great, it drives great, it’s fun, and it’s comfortable.

But the real goal of this project wasn’t to make another kitted jeep, it was to make something I could go camping and backwoods exploring in, and basically live out of for at least a small stretch of time. To do that, we needed to keep building.

Overlanding Buildout

The next things are parts that any camper would get. I needed a place to sleep, I needed water, food, storage, power, a way to cook, and it all had to fit in or on the jeep in a way that wasn’t horrible.

The first step there is a rooftop tent. This is a type of tent that folds up like a big taco when you’re driving, but unfolds into a big comfortable space when parked. The one I settled on is a Smittybilt Overlander XL tent. It’s quite large, fits me and all my gear and company if needed without a problem, and fits fine on top of the Jeep. This was one of the big reasons I got the JKU – this tent would not have fit on the TJ (of maybe it would have, but would have added more weight in a place that vehicle did not need it. High off the ground.

Once the tent was all set up and useful, I needed to start adding things to make camping out comfortable and sustainable. Anyone who is exploring overland builds will be familiar with this list, it’s the sort of accessory pile that anyone doing camping will understand.

Basic camping stuff like a sleeping bag and the like. I already had all this, so that was easy. The tent has a very nice foam floor on it so its quite comfortable.
A Mr. Heater portable propane heater. This heater is designed to run inside enclosed spaces, so it can warm up the tent REALLY fast and make it quite comfortable. I tend not to run it all night, but for going to bed at night and waking up on a cold morning, one button and you have a very nice toasty room to get dressed or undressed in.
A Gooloo 500w Lithium Ion battery bank that charges from the Jeep when it’s running, and when I’m camped, I can use it to power lights, equipment, recharge various bits, and also power my…
A Foho Portable fridge / freezer! Yes, I have a fridge in my jeep. For food from spoiling without the hassle of ice or ice packs, it’s amazingly useful. When I’m driving, the Jeep powers the battery, which powers the fridge. When I’m parked, the fridge runs off the battery. I can run a day or two in that mode without needing to start things up to recharge.
A full cooking kit that includes pans, utensils, a cooking stove, etc. The stove runs on propane, and I”m thinking of upgrading to a more peppy stove.
A folding table
A 5 gallon water jug
A medical kit
A variety of other gear to keep the Jeep and myself safe, such as recovery gear, spare rope, a shovel, hatchet, spare knife, etc etc.
A bike rack! Having my bike with me means I can leave the Jeep parked and go off and explore, then come back for meals and sleeping.

Given all this, I feel like I have a setup that… i can take just about anywhere. It’s comfortable, it’s complete, and it’s mine. My escape vehicle. Say hello to Ghost.

Conclusions

This has been a year of challenges for everyone. For me, this project has helped channel my needs into a project to build a vehicle I’m enormously proud of (and lets be frank, I love showing off). So far I’ve been camping in it 4 times, and will be going again next weekend. I’m constantly tweaking and adding to the build.

What’s next? Honestly, I’m not sure. I suspect I’ll be fiddling my cooking and heating arrangements a bunch (my current stove isn’t powerful enough). I’m considering a better propane management, something that lets me use a 5lb propane tank with multiple connections. Solar panels have been a thought, but I’m not sure if they’d be helpful (since I tend to camp in the woods). I’m definitely going to be upgrading my radio communications (I have no CB or Ham radio yet), and I want to have a permanent mount for a GPS locator / rescue device.

I hope to go on a couple long trips soon, but we’ll see how the weather, work, and my budget come together. Stay tuned!

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My Herman Miller Aeron Chair is probably Beyond Repair

Sat, 24 Apr 2021 15:14:15 GMT

So I’ve had an Aeron C for, oh, 15+ years. It’s been awesome, and I’ve done a a variety of repairs on it, including replacing the seat pan and the above linked repairs on the recline mechanism.

A month or two ago, I noticed the chair would not stay fully upright. A little weight backwards would cause it to go ‘clunk’ and move back to about 10 degrees recline. I knew this was probably a broken or damaged cam, so I ordered a replacement, and last week, took the chair apart to replace it.

This doesn’t look good.

Unfortunately, it looks like the post the cam is on is bent. I’m not that surprised, I’m a big person, and leaning back in the chair puts an enormous amount of pressure on that post.

I tried hammering the post back into vertical, and was able to straighten it most of the way, but couldn’t quite get it right, and in the process, probably weakened the frame and post (they are one unit, not something that can be taken apart, as far as I can tell).

I put things back together as best I could, and it was slightly improved, but still ‘shifting’ when i leaned back, and wouldn’t hold in place. Turns out that post is weakened and out of place, and won’t hold. Taking it apart again shows the post has shifted again, so I have to assume the mount is weak to the point of not being able to hold its shape. Not only that, but it looks like the entire frame is bent and twisted out of true.

This makes me super-sad, because the chair is so repairable otherwise, but as far as I can tell, this is basically the main frame that’s damaged, and while I could probably get a new frame, that’s really a ton of work to basically replace the body of the chair.

It breaks much of my “buy it for life” models, but I will probably part this chair out and replace it. I may get another Aeron, but I’m also looking at the Autonomous chair (i’m very tall, choices are limited).

Edit: it’s now a month after I originally wrote about this issue, and I’ve replaced my Aeron with one of the Ergo 2 chairs. So far I’m quite happy with it, and it fits my 6’6″ frame just fine. I’m hoping to modify the Aeron to disable the recline mechanism completely so it’ll be useful at my workbench, but as my primary office chair, it has been put into retirement.

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Milestones in Home Automation - Tablet Wall Mount

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 19:25:10 GMT

My home automation projects has been churning along for over a year now. I’ve been able to set up motion detectors for stairway lights, LED strips for colorful lighting, and voice control integration through the whole house. Even my wife admits that having voice control in every room is convenient as heck.

We’ve gotten very used to the ability to turn on or off all the lights in an area, like saying “Downstairs lights off” which shuts off the 3 lamps in the living room as well as the kitchen and dining room lights.

But one thing that has been a steady thorn in my side is the difficulty setting up a wall mounted tablet to show the status of the lights, heating, and motion detectors, and allow you to turn things on and off via this panel.

Nowadays most folks use tablets – anything from an iPad down to the cheapest Android tablet you can find. They work fine, but for me the problem has always been power. The tablet needs to be turned on full time, and to do that, you need power. Running power to a spot in the middle of the wall is problematic and cumbersome. This is doubly irritating in that most tablets only require a simple USB cable to keep running.

The solution!

This lack of easy access to power has stalled my ‘tablet’ rollout for quite a while, until I found this combination USB port / lightswitch from Bryant Electric (model USBB102W). Using this plus a short jump cable, it seemed possible to mount the tablet just over the light switch. And lo, it was!

The lightswitch was a basic “interruptor” – it was wired with 2 black wires, plus a ground. The black wire is the “hot” feed to the ceiling fixture, so opening or closing the switch would open or close the circuit. Fortunately, the people who wired the house also had a neutral wire in there. It wasn’t wired to teh switch, but had a 6 way insertion connector, so it would be easy to wire it up.

Once I had the fitting apart, the wiring on the new USB enabled switch was a little confusing. Fortunately, I found a very nice post (on Amazon’s feedback page interestingly enough) that described how to wire it up:

I was able to replace the press-in connector on the neutral lines with a wirenut, and used proper gauge for the jumper. Reset the breakers, and yay! Everything works!

Once I reassembled the switch and put a new plate on it, I was ready to mount the tablet. I’ve been using ActionTiles to control Smartthings connected devices, so putting that on the tablet was the goal. I ordered a couple short USB cables (making sure the orientation would work for the tablet), and then 3d printed some wall brackets for the tablet. A little VHB tape later, my tablet was mounted and working!

I enabled developer mode on the tablet, and set it to ‘never turn off while plugged in’, and my setup was complete!

So now what?

So where to next? Well, doing the Alexa integration with Smartthings is cumbersome (I’ll write this up at some point). I’ll need to solve this at some point – Alexa is just too useful to have, but the lack of a programmatic API for integrating display devices (like this one) with it is a problem (You can use a ‘kindle fire’ tablet for this, but the interface is not good, and ONLY controls Alexa devices :-/. Same problem, just in reverse.

I also want to add more items to the display board – like indicators about the status of my motion detectors, and possible a camera feed to the front porch. We’ll see!

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The Toyota Prius Prime Dashboard - A Study in Bad UX

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 19:56:42 GMT

The Toyota Prius Prime. In so many ways, a remarkable piece of engineering. Efficient, comfortable, and not so bad in the cargo territory. In it’s plugin form, it can run 20-25 miles on pure EV power, and after that, it still chugs along at 40mpg. For people wanting to dip their toes into the electric vehicle world, it’s not a bad place to start, assuming you’re okay with the styling.

With all that, what the HELL went wrong when they ‘designed’ the dashboard and the information systems?

I’m rarely speechless when it comes to engineering projects, particularly ones backed by such a well respected and successful company as Toyota. But jumpin jehosephat. Who the heck designed the dashboard? It’s… it’s… nnnnng…. well… let me show you.

The Dashboard – An Introduction

First, lets take a look at the interior. This is the 2019 Prius Prime dashboard, directly from Toyota’s brochure…

Now before I go straight to the jugular, lets note a few positive aspects here.

A large, centrally located touchscreen. I like that. It’s easy to reach, everyone in the car can see it, it’s bright and visible.
The steering wheel has easy to reach controls, right under the thumbs. Nice.
The upper display (directly in front of the window) has 3 smaller screens that can show a variety of information panels. The most obvious one is a speedometer, but the other options are battery usage, mileage, map directions, etc. As compared to the Tesla, which puts everything on one display in the middle of the car, these secondary displays that ALWAYS display certain information is a nice touch.

Well, that’s nice, but what’s your beef?

Sounds all peachy so far, right? I mean, it looks all shiny and clean, so what’s wrong?

Turns out, plenty.

Lets start at the meta level. That big central display? It only controls a small subset of the car systems. It’s a bad design to have to go hunting for an external button or switch or toggle or display to get a basic function that the display should have on it.

Another problem with the central display are the buttons on the glass on either side. Those are flush contacts. You have to look at them to determine if you’re pushing them, and there’s no feedback when you do. Talk about distracted driver problems. No feedback contact buttons should be used VERY CAREFULLY in motor vehicles. Why some of these buttons are glass and others in the car are standard switches, I have no idea.

Okay, but lets hear the real fails.

Okay, you asked for it, lets start running down some absolutely batshit decisions made on this car.

Lets start simple. Seat heaters. Everyone loves ’em, right? Took us literally googling and watching youtube videos to figure out how to turn them on. The controls for the seat heaters are tucked under the dash, on either side of the central console. Once I scrunched down in the seat, bent my head to one side, I was able to see them. My wife, who is a foot and a half shorter than I am, never saw them either. Who thought this was the appropriate placement for these switches?
Remember those little screens under the front windshield? Nice, aren’t they? Well, they are configurable. You can change what each one shows. At some point, my wife brought up “Hey, that middle display used to show how much battery time I had left, now it doesn’t. How do you change that?” – I, a systems engineer, could absolutely not figure out how to change those displays. The answer? Tap the right arrow on the steering wheel right control pad. No other feedback that this is how to do this – no menus, no prompts, no information – I had to google this one too. There’s nothing on that nice big central display that lets you configure these smaller displays. They are completely separate.
At one point we were driving around at night, and I was wondering why the central screen was so bright. Most cars switch into ‘night mode’ when it gets dark, but this screen was blazing white. Going through all the menus, I found a screen setting for ‘DAY MODE’ ON/OFF – what exactly that means is sort of a mystery. There was no NIGHT MODE ON/OFF. Just that one toggle. Turns out, you need to use the OTHER screen control. The one on the left side of the steering column around knee height. There’s a dial there that on older cars would set the brightness of the dashboard instruments. Some bright engineer at Toyota decided that if that little knob was spun to a certain point, the central console would always be in day mode. the DAY MODE apparently can override this setting? Who knows – but having to go off-screen to some random control when the option should have been RIGHT THERE on the screen is definitely a fail.
Backup beeper. Did you know the Prius has a backup beeper? Going by Wikipedia :

A back-up beeper, also known as back-up alarm or vehicle motion alarm, is a device intended to warn passers-by of a vehicle moving in reverse. They typically produce 1000 Hz pure tone beeps at 97-112 decibels.[1] Matsusaburo Yamaguchi of Yamaguchi Electric Company, Japan, invented the back-up beeper. It was first manufactured as model BA1 in 1963.[2] ISO 6165 describes “audible travel alarms”, and ISO 9533 describes how to measure the performance of the alarms

Great idea, right? Except the Prius backup beeper SOUNDS INSIDE THE CAR. Not externally. You can’t hear it outside. Who exactly is this supposed to be warning?
The mapping software sucks. I mean, you just can’t get around it. It’s cumbersome, it’s painful to use, the search functions are absolute shit, and it’s just a nightmare to try and use productively. Took us another zillion years to figure out how to turn off the turn by turn navigation (you can’t except via a buried setting – makes listening to music really terrifying – why can’t you just say ‘turn off turn by turn for now, I’m listening to something cool, I don’t need the interruptions telling me that I’ll be on this interstate until the heat death of the universe.’
Most functions are disabled while in motion. This seems to carry over from day 0 of cars getting anything more complicated than an FM stereo head unit. Someone somewhere said “We should disable any function that may be a distraction to the driver, with no option to get around it”, and so it was. But, what if you’re traveling in a modern vehicle that thoughtfully placed the navigation system between the driver and passenger seat, where the passenger has the same access as the driver, wouldn’t it make sense to allow the passe… NOPE! Locked out! You can’t modify your route or destination or settings while in motion. DENIED.

Denoument

I’m sure I’ll be adding to this list as more things come up. What’s bothersome about all this is so much of this can be fixed in software. But as far as I can tell, Toyota is following the auto manufacturer trend of assuming once a model year of a car is complete, so is the software, and it doesn’t need to change. They may do minor tweaks and fixes, but they do not actually revise the systems with major improvements (unlike Tesla, who put out major software updates pretty much constantly, frequently adding new features or overhauling others).

It may sound like I’m bashing Toyota and ignoring flaws in other manufacturers. That’s not the case at all. I’ve written in the past about my issues with the Tesla Model 3, and while I didn’t have a lot of complaints about my Chevy Volt, there were some frustrations with GM. (In fact, I had some UX problems with the Volt as well, but the Volt didnt’ have the big touchscreen that SHOULD have made those problems easy to fix.)

Modern car manufacturers absolutely need to get on board, and stop thinking of the dashboard with a touchscreen as just a ‘shiny’ version of the old knobs and dials dashboards. It’s a fully functioning digital information and control system, and should be treated as such, with regular updates, and some put into UX design. Tesla is the only company that is doing this right. What the heck is everyone else thinking?

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Chasing Things That Bring Me Joy

Wed, 19 Feb 2020 02:33:33 GMT

I really don’t like making New Years Resolutions. It always strikes me as something people do because.. “it’s a thing you do”.

This year though, I inadvertently made one, and it’s turning out to be a good thing.

Over the winter vacation, I had a great conversation with my wife that ranged all over, and was one of those conversations that can be a turning point. The topic was “What is it that’s important to you? What makes you happy?”

Turns out, something that made me happy was definitely not taking a bigger role. I wasn’t making time for it, so it was falling behind.

Music.

Fifteen or so years ago I was in a blues band, playing bass, and having a great time. We were gigging out, we were playing the most god awful bars you could find, but it was fun, and while there were times it was challenging, there were also times of great joy… those moments when things just come together and we rocked the place.

Because of my work schedule, I had to leave the band (lots of travel makes it hard to stay on the performance schedule), and music sort of fell on the wayside. I still had my guitars, I still played… a little, but I definitely stopped growing and learning. Things slowed down.

My kid is getting pretty serious about their music, and has been steadily pushing me to play more. I’ve been resisting under the normal arguments “I suck, I don’t know enough, I’m embarrassed). We’ve played a few times, and it made me sad, because what I knew was too limited, too constrained. And my fingers hurt.

Over the winter break, after that conversation with my wife, I decided it was time to change that. Music is something I truly love, I just never made the choice to dedicate time and energy into learning in all the things I didn’t know, and… of course, I needed to PRACTICE.

So, since somewhere around New Years, I’ve thrown myself into finally learning guitar properly. YouTube is a wonderful source of lessons, demonstrations, and backing tracks. That, coupled with help from Zach, and lots of practice, I’m starting to fill in the gaps in my guitar knowledge that was sorely lacking.

But, most importantly of all, I’ve been sticking with a regular practice schedule with a very simple rule. Play every day. Even if it’s only 10 minutes… pick up an instrument, and run scales, run fingering exercises, play some part of a song. Keep your fingers active, keep the knowledge alive, and keep building.

Since January, I’ve held to this schedule. I play every day. Sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes an hour or two. What’s happened is my fingers are building up calluses, and I’m learning pick and finger control – things I never had before. I’m learning to solo, something that’s always been a mystery to me. Music theory is filling in, though very slowly, and with the possible pitfall a lot of guitarists fall into. A lot of theory on guitar matches to patterns and arrangements on the neck. The theory is subsumed by learning patterns and relationships between positions, rather than the theory itself and how the neck represents it. I’m okay with this for now, but I recognize I’ll need to fill things in later.

I’ve also invested in a new (to me) guitar. It’s an Ovation Balladeer, made in 1972. I’ve always had a weak spot for Ovations, and even though they’re not the magic they were once considered, I still love the feel, styling, and sound of them. I found one on Craigslist that, unfortunately, had a broken headstock. It’s currently at the luthier being repaired, hopefully done soon. For acoustic practice, I’m using a Takamine 6 string I inherited from friends over a decade ago. It has horrible action, an uncomfortable neck, but it sure is strengthening my fingers and building up my calluses. 🙂

My goal is to keep this up through the year. To get to the point where given a key, I can solo and play along with it comfortably. There’s a long road to this, but now, after 2 months, I’m starting to see progress. I spend an hour playing over a backing track on my SX electric guitar (a yard sale find about a year ago), and it feels… good. Still not the expressiveness I want, but it sounds like music, and feels a bit like music. Progress.

At some point, I’m sure I’ll be able to share some things I’m playing – not yet though. But I’m cautiously hopeful that sometime I’ll be able to stand up in front of folks with some friends, we’ll play a song, and at some point we’ll start a go-around for soloing, someone will nod to me, I’ll kick my pedal, and I’ll solo… in a way that will make me smile, and make others smile, and… hopefully… give me joy.

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Epson HX-20 - Worlds First Laptop

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 21:57:10 GMT

Boy am I happy about this one.

I first saw the Epson HX-20 back when I was working a computer store in New Jersey in the 80’s. I believe I read some articles about it in Infoworld or something similar, and thought it was awesome. At some point I got to look at one / type a few characters on it, but never got to own one.

Until now!

Epson HX-20

This came to me as part of a large equipment sale not far away. It is in EXCELLENT shape, complete with carrying case, power supply, and a couple microscassettes. The printer works fine, everything is in perfect working order.

Released to mass market in 1982, this is widely recognized as the very first laptop computer. It is A4 sized, has decent battery life, a full stroke, full sized keyboard, and many expansion ports.

Specifications:

Released: 1982
Original price: $795 ($2040 in 2020 dollars)
CPU: Dual Hitach 6301 CPU at 614khz
Memory: 16k RAM (expandable to 32k)
Display: 4lines at 20 characters
Graphics: 120×32
Batteried: NiCad
Weight: 3.5lbs

The unit works perfectly, and is a true delight to type on and tinker around with. I will be a great addition to my collection. I’m looking forward to learning more about it!

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PDP-11/70 Retrocomputing Build

Fri, 03 Jan 2020 21:11:26 GMT

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I attended a very technical college to start getting my degree in Computer Science. Note, this wasn’t ‘programming’ ‘systems design’ ‘databases’ ‘AI’ or any of that, no, the industry was young enough that just HAVING a computer science degree was notable.

While the college experience didn’t work out well for me, I have a very strong memory of my first semester (back then the college called them trimesters I believe) walking into the computer science building and seeing a glassed in room with a bunch of racked equipment in it. On the front of one of the racks was a brightly colored panel, with a lot of purple and red switches, and many blinking lights. In the corner, it said PDP-11/70, and I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen.

Turns out this machine was used in the undergraduate program to teach students Unix. We had a classroom full of DEC GiGI terminals and students would plunk away at shell scripts, learning ‘vi’ and generally making a lot of beeping noises. There were about 16 terminals, which meant that machine, which was approximately 1/5000’th the speed of a modern Core i7 process (MWIPS 0.535 for the 11/70 vs 3124 for the i7) was supporting 16 concurrent users programming away on remote terminals.

Well, life moved on, and while I did build my own DEC minicomputers, I never actually owned an 11/70. They were temperamental, that were designed to be powered up and left running for years. Not exactly a hobbyist machine.

In the last year or two, some folks have been taking advantage of the SIMH project (a hardware simulation environment) to emulate these old machines, and run the original operating systems on them. When I saw that Oscar had put out a kit for the PiDP-11/70, a fully functional PDP-11/70 front panel that mirrors precisely the original machine, I had to have one.

The kit is powered by a Raspberry Pi-4 loaded with the SIMH package anda . bunch of disk images. The system happily runs any number of old DEC operating systems, as well as Unix 2.11BSD, and various other Unix versions. On bootup, you simply select which disk image you want to run, and after a few moments, you’re looking at an operational console happily booting RSX-11MPlus, RSTS, RT-11, BSD Unix, whatever you’d like.

Total build time was somewhere around 7-8 hours. Imaging and setting up the Pi took about 2 hours (mostly downloading packages), and the actual physical build of the front panel took another 6+ hours.

The experience of using the machine is somewhat surreal. In the past, I spent a lot of time learning Unix and then VMS. I also worked on DEC Pro/350’s for a while, which run a modified RSX-11MPlus, so it feel great to be back in that environment again, but I have so much to re-learn.

Having the delightful blinking lights nearby showing activities in realtime is a delightful way to have a visual representation of the inner workings of computers, something we don’t see a lot of in modern systems.

Here’s some pics of the build in progress. It’s a great addition to the home office collection!

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I Built an Evil Genius Sign for Halloween

Tue, 05 Nov 2019 22:36:54 GMT

It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of Warner Brothers cartoons. My sister and I were basically raised on this stuff, and so much of our cultural reference points (and humor) comes from watching Bugs Bunny when we were growing up.

So, as Halloween approached, I thought it might be cool to recreate an iconic image from the 1952 cartoon “Water Water Every Hare”, where Bugs is taken to a big scary castle on the edge of a waterfall. The castle is inhabited by, naturally, an Evil Scientist, who advertises the fact with a blinking sign on the towers of his castle.

Okay, I’m not really a scientist, I’m an engineer, but I figure I could apply a little artistic license and make a sign like that for my house for Halloween.

I wanted it big enough so I could put it in an upstairs window and have it visible from the pathway. We get a LOT of kids through our community over Halloween, and tons of parents as well (since mostly the parents would get the reference), so it needed to be visible. In order to constrain the glare, I decided to put it in basically a shadowbox configuration. An enclosed box, LED lighting inside, with a cutout pattern on front that would show the text.

First step was to use the laser cutter at the Makerspace to cut out the lettering. As anyone who does stencils will recognize, the second line (“BOO”) would have floating elements in it, and would have to be glued down after the box was made.

I found some old acrylic sheeting that still had one strip of white backing on that, and that made a dandy diffuser, as well as a place to mount the center parts of the lettering.

Next, based on the size of the lettering, I whipped up a box out of some scrap wood, and painted it black. I also painted the letter stencils so the shadowmask wouldn’t show up at night, but the lettering shining through would.

The colored lighting was done with some LED strips and an arduino. The sketch was painfully simple. Just first row on, wait a second, off, wait a half second, second row on, wait a half second, off, then wait a half second and then repeat. The most challenging part was soldering up the strips (I needed 3 rows), and mounting the arduino.

The only thing I had to go ‘buy’ was the backing board. A quick trip to Michaels got me a sheet of the plastic corrugated ‘cardboard’ for $4. This stuff is awesome, and I think I’m going to use it more in future projects. I mounted the LED strips and the arduino to it initially using hot glue, but while that’s the default ‘go to’ for DIY projects, I ended up ziptying the strips to the backing board, and doing the same for the arduino. Since the board is flexible, hot glue just didn’t make sense.

Once everything was screwed together, it was just a matter of putting it in the window and plugging it in. Yay! It worked!

I slightly misjudged the width of the window, so it doesn’t quite have the margins I had hoped, but when it got dark, it looked great. Very happy with the end result!

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Road Tripping with a Tesla Model 3 - Thoughts and Ruminations

Mon, 14 Oct 2019 20:22:19 GMT

This past weekend I finally got to let TARS, my Tesla Model 3 Performance, stretch its legs a big and go for some long distance driving. Over 3 days, we covered almost 700 miles, from Boston, MA to Rochester, NY.

This drive is almost entirely interstate, with the absolutely mind numbing stretch of the NY Thruway between Syracuse and Rochester coming to mind as the most tedious part of the trip. I was looking forward to using Autopilot for that bit in particular, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Preparation

Fully charged, oh, and have a software update.

My Model 3 is normally set to charge to 90%, which gets me about 270 miles of range. According to Tesla, this helps preserve the lifetime of the battery. But for short term trips, it’s okay to go into ‘trip mode’ – charge the battery to 100%. That brought my range up to about 307 miles. Golden!

The next step was to plan the trip a bit. With my battery topped up, the trip analyzer said that I could make it to the Utica, NY supercharger in one go. That’s about 270 miles, and I in theory would have 35 miles left when I get there. Now, I treat these estimators with a heavy dose of skepticism. There’s a lot of factors that impact battery consumption – a static analysis would have resulted in a lot of ‘Yeah, but what about…’ questions. However, this estimation was being done by the car, while I was driving it, with active traffic reports being reported in in realtime. It should be pretty accurate, we’ll see!

Departure

We rolled out around 2pm on Friday and immediately ran into unexpected traffic (later we learned from some friends that it wasn’t just us – all the routes headed west were problematic). TARS kept updating the route onto more and more secondary roads, to the point where I was expecting us to be routed through someone’s garage and down their garden paths. Hopefully I could avoid any empty swimming pools.

Finally, we got past the traffic and on the open road. The car settled into the traffic fine, and I was able to enable autopilot for a large part of the rest of the trip.

Autopilot

There’s an awful lot of jawing going on about the Tesla Autopilot. It’s not full self driving (FSD), no. It’s also not ‘just adaptive cruise control’ (as I’ve heard others yammer). It’s somewhere in between. On an open highway, without much traffic, it’s dreamy. Lane changes, slowing down / speeding up according to traffic changes, dealing with people merging in or passing, it works well. The car software is updated often – anywhere from once a week to every few weeks. And each time a new version comes down, the autopilot gets better, smoother, and less janky.

Here’s a good example. When I received my car in May, it was just after the ‘automatically change lanes’ function was enabled. And it was sketchy AF. Yes, it would signal, change lanes, and continue. But the signal ranges were all goofy, and if there was someone anywhere near your blindspot, the car would sort of ‘stall’ – leaving the blinker on, waiting for the other car to move. If they backed off to let you in (like all nice New England drivers do, right?), the autopilot wouldn’t pick up on the situation change fast enough, so would just sit there with the blinker on. Naturally, the other driver would speed up thinking I wasn’t changing lanes, and then Autopilot would decide there was a threat, and ‘phantom brake’ or jog back into lane. it was unnerving.

With the current version (v32.12.1 – one patch level beyond the v10 release), this process is FAR smoother. I was comfortable letting the car decide when to change lanes to get around slower traffic, or move over to let other cars by.

Interstate changes and ramps were still a little off. When the car does not have clear lines on the road on ramps (which tend to be wider than normal highway lanes), it tends to disconcertingly head toward the outside of the ramp until it’s close to a line, then sort of jog back. It’s jarring and uncomfortable, but it will do it. I let TARS make 2-3 highway changes for me, keeping my hands and brake-foot ready for a sudden takeover.

First Recharging Stop

Eventually we made it to Utica, and pulled into the charging station. At this point, the display was showing we had about 20 miles of battery range left. I had been watching the numbers the entire drive, and even with the traffic, rain, etc, the numbers really didn’t change much. The computer had the advantage of having access to traffic, weather, temperature, and route information, as well as how my batteries were behaving. It didn’t get it wrong.

We jacked into the supercharger and got the message “20 minutes until you can continue your trip” – Huh! 4+ hours of driving, and a recharge in 20 minutes? I’m good with that. Lets grab dinner.

So we walked to the local food joint and had a quick meal while the car recharged.

Getting back in, we were at something like 240 miles of range, plenty of electrons to get us the last 2 hours to Rochester.

We ended up going to our friends house first, then to the hotel, which left us with about 90 miles of range. Plenty for the next day, but we should top it up at some point.

On Saturday, we topped up the car with a very fast stop at the local supercharger (20m on the charger), which got us back up to about 200 miles. This is where I start having some questions.

It looks like not all superchargers are the same. Some have very good high speed charging (500+ miles per hour charging speed), others are lower. It’s not because there’s more cars at the charging station or anything, the level of power coming from each station just seems to vary. This is disconcerting, because when you’re trip planning, some stations may be able to charge your car up to full trip-level charge in 40 minutes, others may take an hour and change. Now, the charging ‘curve’ for a Tesla isn’t flat. To go from 0-75% charge can take as long as it takes to go from 75% to 100%. If you’re doing long distance driving, the time it takes to top up gets important. The station near the hotel was not charging as fast as the one in Utica. That was concerning, because we should be able to fill up before we drove home on Sunday. Timing would be important.

Departure

At the end of weekend, we did the happy party trick of showing off Enhanced Summon in a crowded private parking lot (there were half a dozen cars in our friends driveway, and rock walls all around. I walked a hundred feet away and did a “HOLD MY BEER” by summoning TARS to me. It did it BEAUTIFULLY. The summon feature has improved greatly in two or three weeks it’s been out. Very smooth, and doing exactly what a human would have done to back up, move the car forward and back 2-3 times to line it up with the exit, then roll over to where I stood.

It’s a great trick to impress your friends with. I asked our host “So, getting a Tesla now?” and he, a normally very conservative skeptical person, answered “I hadn’t thought about it before, but now I’m seriously considering it. I’m very impressed.”

Victory!

We headed out to the charging station I had used on Saturday, and had the same rate problem I saw before. So it wasn’t load or anything, it was just that this station sucked. We went for a walk in the local mall, and decided to head out. The mapping system set our next recharge in Lee, MA, about 270 miles away. We should arrive with 20-30 miles of charge left. So off we went.

The drive back was uneventful, with autopilot doing it’s thing for most of the drive. Oddly, my biggest issue was I rest my hand on the steering wheel giving it a little ‘tension’ to let the car know I’m there. After 20 minutes of leaving my hand in one spot, it would get tired and sweaty, and I had to switch hands. Talk about first world problems!

Charging in Lee

We got to Lee and plugged in, and YAY! Plenty of high speed charging! What a relief. We were able to top up the battery enough to get home in under 15 minutes, and we got home to a dog that was extremely happy to see us after such a long time away (Yes, we had people taking care of her, don’t be like that. But she did miss us).

Conclusions

All in all, the road trip was everything I expected it to be. Smooth, fast, comfortable, and best of all, 100% electric. Assuming our chargers were getting elecricity from standard sources, we produced 1/3rd as much carbon as we would have in a normal gas car. I personally buy my electricity from a wind farm, so at least 1/3 of the trip was from renewables, so that reduced our footprint even further.

Someone asked me from a cost perspective, was it cheaper driving an all electric car? I found an article that summed it up like this:

The long-range version of the Model 3 has a 75 kWh battery pack with a 310 mile range. If we still assume the average national electric pricing of 13 cents per kWh and a charging efficiency of 85%, then a full charge will cost $11.47. This is $3.70 per 100 miles of mixed city and freeway driving, or 3.7 cents per mile. This is almost 80% less than the cost per mile to drive the most popular gas-powered cars, which is approximately 20 cents per mile.

This fits my back of the envelope fiddling. I looked at my bill, and the entire charging costs from Sunday’s drive (about 370 miles) was $11.47. So not only was it not putting out any CO2, it was far far less expensive to operate than a traditional car.

I can easily see a future where more and more of these trips are automated, and my input into operating the car will be needed less and less. We’re not there yet, and we won’t be for I’m guessing another 3-5 years. But the progress is absolutely there, and I welcome it.

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Adventures in Woodturning: New Tool Rack (And the death spiral associated with this hobby).

Sun, 29 Sep 2019 16:03:20 GMT

It’s sort of a never ending series…

I like woodturning
I should get a lathe
I’ll need a place to put it – okay, build a workshop
Got the workshop, need power.
Got power, need the lathe. Hi Craigslist!
Also need tools
Gosh it’s dark in here, need lights
Look at all the sawdust! Need a shop vac.
Dayam, my tools are dull, need a grinder
Grinder is okay, but a jig for the tools on the grinder is helpful
Could use a better chuck for the lathe
Hmm, time to start finishing – need sandpaper.
And polyurethane
and stains
and brushes and clothes for them.
My garbage can needs to be larger
Where the heck can I get more wood?

It sorta goes on and on. But, there’s also the point where you can build your own stuff. I can’t make my own tools, but I can build lighting and a new tool rack!

Scraps around the shop put it all together – it was a nice Saturday afternoon project.

Need more wood…

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Adventures in Woodturning - Project #2

Thu, 19 Sep 2019 02:22:00 GMT

My kid has had to suffer with me going through various fascinations and projects, so when they learned I was doing woodturning, I got a request for something.

“Hey, make me a cup or something?”

“Er, like… what kind / what for?”

“Anything really. I’d just like to have something you made. How about something to put my guitar picks in?”

(quiet moment while I try to figure out how I ended up with a 20 year old that talks to their Dad like this)

“Sure thing.”

So I found some old cedar wood, turned it into a simple cup on my Shopsmith, stained and poly coated it, and voila!

Weathered Cedar

I’m learning lots. I need to sharpen my tools (I have the grinder and jig, just need to set it up), and I need to raise my lathe up a few inches so I’m not stooping. But so far, I’m thoroughly enjoying this stuff. And my kid asked me for something. Not too bad.

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Adventures in Woodturning - My First Project

Sun, 08 Sep 2019 03:32:16 GMT

Woodworking. Okay, great, another rabbit hole to go down, right? Well, sorta. Over the years I’ve learned to knock things together, how to saw, hammer, screw, paint, and assemble things out of wood, but I never really understood finishing. How to shape something creatively and come up with something beautiful at the end.

About a year ago I took a class up at Makeit Labs on the wood lathe. Lathes have always been fascinating to me, like potters wheels for wood. Take a primal material, spin it, and (in the case of a lathe) by removing material, shape it into something beautiful and smooth.

Sugar Maple blank on the lathe

The class was great, and I learned the basics of turning. How to use a gouge, how to set up the spindles, and probably most importantly, what not to do to protect both myself and the equipment. I did a little turning after that and made a small parts holder for my work bench, but life stuff got in the way, and I didn’t do much else for a while.

A few weeks ago things were shifting back to slight normalcy in my life, and I found myself with a few hours of free time up at the lab. When I first took the lathe course, I bought a box of sugar maple blanks, about 4″ wide and 5″ long. Maple is hard wood, but can be turned pretty easily. I decided to try and make a type of cup I’d like to use for hand lathered shaving cream. So it needed to be wide enough for the brush and also relatively waterproof. (Turns out after I did the shaping, the size I was using was too small, and making wood ‘waterproof’ is actually pretty hard, so this ended up just being a sample / test piece.)

Shaping complete!

The initial work took about 2 hours to get the shape down to what I wanted. It’s funny. Woodworkers learn this pretty fast, but it takes a while to sink in. The turning / shaping part of the process is the most rewarding and creative, but is the easiest / shortest part of the entire process. I could carve wood like this for hours, but I’d end up with a bunch of carved unfinished pieces. That’s not what I wanted to learn this time around, I wanted to take it to completion. So after the shaping was done, I took the piece home to start the finishing process

First of all, it needed to be stained. Some Minwax cherry stain was acquired. I took a sheet of 220 grit sandpaper to the entire piece, and sanded it smooth inside and out. Learning how to sand the inside of a cup without gouging it is a bit of a challenge, particularly when the opening is only 3″ across or so, but I was able to get it pretty smooth.

After putting on a set of latex gloves (this part I knew. Stain stains EVERYTHING – including hands!), I brushed on on the first stain, and the color jumped right out at me. Hey, I can see the grain! The instructions said I should smooth the stain on, let it sit for 15-20 minutes, then wipe off the excess. I did that, and the result was… good. Not earthshattering, but it was a mark above just a raw wood piece. I began to see problems working with a piece that was this shape… the stain tends to settle on places that were more horizontal, so the base had a darker look than the sides. I resolved on the next layer to make sure the areas that had less color would get more coverage.

First layer of stain in place

After a light sanding to help remove the excess on the flat areas, I stained it again, and the color was better, but still relatively dull. I mean, yeah, I can hear folks going “Duh, you’re not done yet” but I was hoping for a little glow from the coloring. Nope, not quite yet.

The last step was to put a few layers of polyurethane on. Now, this is a tricky topic, and I suspect major fistfights have broken out about how to this properly, what materials to use, etc. As this was my first piece, and I’m hoping to make things more water resistant in the future, I chose an oil-based clear poly coat. This should make it ‘okay’ for this to get wet, but I wouldn’t want for it to be holding buckets of water on a regular basis.

Poly cures slow, so I put on a single coat, waited until it had cured (about a day), sanded it with 220, wiped it clean, and put another coat on. The result is… good. I like it. It has a healthy glow and shine to it, and I can say “See this? I made this.”

Poly coat in place

So now what? I’m going to check around about how to do final polish / finish. Do I sand and buff the poly coat one more time? I think yes, but I need to check. Even if I stop now, I can put this on my shelf and go “I like this. I made it.”

I’ve since picked up a lathe I can use at home to do my own turning, so the next project hopefully will be entirely homegrown. Stay tuned!

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And Life Settles a Bit

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 14:29:13 GMT

The past 6 months have been quite the whirlwind. I’m sure I don’t need to do the rundown, most of ya’ll know what’s been going on, but I have to say, today is one of the first days in a long time where I feel things are settling back to normalcy.

I’m sitting in my living room listening to piano music on Spotify, my dog is happily snoozing on the couch next to me, my family is out of the house – one is at school, the other is out visiting a friend. The summer weather heat has broken and I’m able to sit in my space, doing my job, and just… relax.

It’s a nice feeling.

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Everything Wrong with my Tesla Model 3 Performance

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 03:01:24 GMT

I finally got it. I got the robotic, electric, high performance car of my dreams. Sleek, fast, geeky as all get out, tremendous range – it’s everything a nerd would want in a car.

But it’s not perfect.

People have been coming to me pretty regularly and saying “So, how do you like your Tesla?” – and I answer truthfully. “I love it. It’s amazing. It’s my robotic space car. It’s nerdy and stupendously fast. But it’s not without its faults.” At this point their eyes light up and they get excited. “Yeah? Like what?!?”

The automotive press has not been kind to Tesla. With a strongly outspoken CEO in Elon Musk, it’s lofty goal of bringing affordable, exciting electric cars to the masses, and the base challenge of pushing against an industry selling a few hundred billion dollars worth of cars every year, it hasn’t been easy for them to break into the market and succeed. But succeed they have, pretty much jumpstarting the performance / luxury electric car market singlehandedly.

But there are problems. The car is hardly perfect. I’d like to run down the flaws and issues as I see them…

The Company

Tesla the company is relatively new in the automotive industry. Founded in 2003 right after the dot com bubble burst, they spent some years understanding what it takes to build a new kind of car from the ground up, without carrying all the folderol that the big auto manufacturers have. The Roadster came out in 2008, and the Model S 4 years later in 2012. In that time, the focus had to be on technology, manufacturing, and production.

What they didn’t have a chance to focus on was the customer end of things.

Dealing with Tesla can be an infuriating process. Because they don’t have a ‘dealer’ model similar to current car manufacturers, buying a Tesla is not far from ordering a laptop from Apple. You got to the website, choose your option, click ‘Buy’, and a car will be available… sometime.

It’s this ‘sometime’ can be problematic. Without a salesperson to regularly work with, the delivery process is extremely oblique. There is a nice website that will tell you the status on your car, but it’s not particularly informative, showing things like “We’re putting together your paperwork” for WEEKS until it suddenly changes to “Your car will be available for pickup in 3 days at such and such a location.” Thanks guys.

The Delivery Process

Okay, so now you have a delivery date. What happens at the delivery is relatively normal. You show up at the ‘delivery center’, 1-2 folks walk you through the dos and donts of the car, you sign a bunch of papers, and you drive off in the car. This actually went fine, the only drawback is the people there are complete strangers. No one knew me or anything about my excitement or interest or history. They were basically just like a refrigerator installer. “Here’s yer machine, bud. Seeya.”

The Exterior

I have a Model 3 Performance, which has some nice trim changes, but in general, the Model 3 is BORING. It’s a 4 door sedan. I suppose this is better than some of the more radical car designs floating around (Have you seen the new Civics and Prius’s? Yikes.) But on the other hand, if I’m getting a fairly expensive car, I wouldn’t mind if it turned heads just a little. People who know Teslas will go “Hey! Look! A Tesla!” but for the most part, the Model 3 just blends in with the other shiny sedans out there.

Having said that, there are some Issues – well known, easy to work around, and possibly even understandable for a ‘first generation’ run of this model, but they’re still there:

The delivery person warned us of this, but I did it before he even told me. There’s a nice little hatch that opens and closes over the charging port. You can unlock this hatch from the mobile app or from inside the car, or by touching the bottom of it when you want to plug in the cable. BUT. You should never try to close it by hand. Nope nope. Don’t push on the top of it or move the door, that can break it.

Huh? 🙂
The storage space under the front hood (where an ICE car would have an engine) is referred to as the ‘Frunk’. Apparently, this thing is delicate as heck. The delivery guy went out of his way to tell me to never slam it, nor close it with one hand. Gently set the hood down onto the latch, and then push down with both hands on either side of the latch. This seems like an obvious workaround to a design error, but it’s not something a normal person would think to do.
Much has been said about trim and panel fit. Sometimes the cars don’t fit together cleanly and properly. This was a real problem in the first runs of the Model 3, but far less so in later ones. I received mine in the spring of 2019, and haven’t noticed any particular gaps or bends or points where things aren’t coming together. Having said that, there has been a persistent whistling noise coming from the drivers side mirror. If I stick my hand out while driving, I can make that sound stop, but it’s obvious there’s some gap in the trim that’s causing air to whistle through it.

The Interior

The interior of the car is beautifully simplistic. Comfortable, laid out well, lit well, and easily the most comfortable car I’ve ever owned. The expansive glass roof, plenty of headroom, very adjustable and supportive seats, and the well articulated steering wheel all help make the car extremely comfortable.

But, this article isn’t “everything that’s awesome” – lets look at some of the flaws.

I absolutely detest the door lock mechanism. For those who have not been in a Model 3, there isn’t an actual ‘door latch’ that you pull to open the door. There’s a button. You touch the button, the window slides down about an inch, and the door unlatches – and then you push it open. There’s a sort of emergency latch that you can pull up, but the Tesla rep warned me never to use it, as it might damage the door. This just seems like poor design or an afterthought. It’s taken some time to get used to the ‘push button to open the door’ methodology – I almost never get confused now, but it’s really a very bad choice of design.
The center console is a mess. There’s several chambers, each quite deep and having a different ‘lift’ or ’tilt’ mechanism. They’re also cavernously deep, so putting something in them is akin to dropping the one ring into Mt Doom. You will likely not get it back easily.
No drink holders in the back? Well, they are sort of there, but they’re in the center console between the back seats. That’s… sort of weird, particularly if people are sitting 3 across.
It took looking up in the manual to figure out where the emergency 4 way blinker lights are. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to try and find the control next time they’re in a Model 3. We couldn’t find it until we looked it up in the manual. This is an EMERGENCY BLINKER button. It should be trivial to locate. It isn’t.
Why doesn’t the front drink holder have removable silicon liners? Those things get DIRTY. Even inexpensive little toyotas and kias have silicone liners for the cup holders.

Controls

Okay, lets start talking about the controls. This section isn’t about the software that runs the center display / functions of the car, this is basic control layout and usage.

The Model 3 has a very simplified set of operator controls. The steering wheel (obviously) two foot pedals, two control stalks (one on each side), and two thumwheel / joysticks. And the horn. That’s it. Everything else is done via the touchscreen. But lets look at those controls.

The stalks are useful and well placed, as are the thumbwheels. I never lose track of where they are. And there were some logical decisions made about what each set does. The left thumbwheel is ONLY audio controls (volume up/down, next/previous track, pause and unpause). The right thumbwheel is for quick commands to the autopilot / cruise control system. Pretty easy to work with.

The stalks are more complicated, because they service multiple purposes. The left one is your turn blinker, obviously. It also controls your high and low beams for the headlights, as well as a ‘quick touch’ to turn the windshield wipers on and off (assuming the auto wiper system doesn’t work).

The right stalk is sort of like your gear shift. You control what ‘gear’ you’re in (drive, reverse, park), as well as the state of the autopilot system. I haven’t figured out a lot of the wiggle functions on that stalk, other than engage autopilot and ‘go into drive’.

Sounds basic, so what’s are the issues? Well, there’s a bunch:

First, the mechanism for turning on and off turn signals is confusing. A light push on the left stalk, up or down, will blink the turn signals 3 times. If you hold the stalk, they’ll keep blinking until you release it. There’s a ‘secondary’ level of push though, that means “turn the turn signal on until… something tells them to stop.” – this part is the confusing one. The turn signals will stop blinking if the car thinks you’ve completed a turn, or… you signal some other way. How to turn off a turn signal seems to involve some invocation I still haven’t worked out. I find myself signaling in the opposite direction sometimes, or just wiggling the stalk around until the signals stop. This is hardly safe communication with other drives. On a normal car, the turn signal stalk locks into position until it either is automatically returned to a neutral spot, or you force it back to the center. The Tesla turn stalk doesn’t do that. It is always in the ‘neutral’ position whether you’re signalling or not. This is confusing.
Second, you can only sort of control your wipers via the end button push. A quick push will wipe your wipers once, and a longer push will turn on the spritzers. The wipers are normally controlled via the center touchscreen (with intermittency and automatic settings controlled there). But there’s numerous times i find the ‘automatic wipers’ don’t really keep the windshield clear enough, so i find myself pushing the button a lot. Or navigating the touchscreen to turn the wipers on and off faster or slower. You don’t want to be fiddling with the touchscreen while driving. This is not a very good setup.
High and low beam headlights work as you’d expect, though the ‘automatic’ high beams is gimmicky and works poorly. More on that in the Software section below.
Oddly, the right stalk is mostly okay. the gear position mechanism makes sense, and the ‘double press’ to engage autopilot is intuitive and works well.

The Software

I’m going to lump a couple topics into this section, but first some preamble.

So much of what makes a Tesla a remarkable vehicle is the decision to base as much of it’s functionality as possible around software. This is why there’s only one display system (the touch screen), and virtually every function is managed and displayed through this interface. It makes it easy to change, easy to upgrade, and easy to tune. All the ‘smarts’ of the car (it’s sensors, battery management, and yes, even the power train) are controlled via software. Some of that software is visible to the operator directly, but a lot of is internal. The operator doesn’t see the battery management, the heating / cooling systems, the adaptive drive for the motors, etc. The operator mostly sees the interface on the display. So lets focus on that.

Model 3 Center Console

The Tesla Model 3 has one large 15″ LCD touchscreen in the middle of the dash. There are no other display systems in the car. No turn signals, no idiot lights, no dashboard. Just this display. This ‘one screen to rule them all’ makes the Tesla much easier to upgrade and modify. In a traditional car, you can’t move the heater control from one place to another because, after 6 months of use, you realize the original placement was poor. But on a single screen like this, it’s a simple software change to rearrange controls. This has disadvantages as well. The center location of the display is awkward for the standard driver who expects basic operational information to be directly in front of them. The speedometer is in the upper left corner of the screen, as are basic status lights like blinkers, hi/lobeams, and what gear you’re in. All other controls and information is located at different points of the screen ,and sometimes that info may be hidden or on a different tab. This absolutely takes time to get used to, but it means improvements can be made via software. By comparison, my Chevy Volt had the WORST design ever for it’s center console, with horribly placed buttons that were impossible to understand. The software interface on the touch screen was mediocre at best, and over the 3.5 years I had the car, they made absolutely zero UI improvements to that display, when any number of changes could have been made – just not to the button layout.

But enough background. Given this amazing technology, the interface and tools must be awesome and perfect, right? Oh hell no. Lets investigate…

There’s a system in the Tesla that allows the hi/lo beams for the headlights to automatically adjust based on oncoming traffic and other cars. On the surface, this seems pretty straightforward, and it works relatively well. Until it doesn’t. Hi/Lo beams are also a mechanism most drivers use to communicate with other drivers. “Your lights are off” “Something dangerous is ahead” “I’m a jerk”. The Tesla software will turn the hibeams on and off depending purely on distance to another car in front of it (if it sees it), and if another car is coming towards you. That’s it. On the highway, the highbeams can flicker up and down automatically several times in a minute depending on how far behind another car you are. This is irritating as heck for other drivers. While a nifty gimmick, I disabled it.
The windshield wiper automatic system is supposed to turn on the wipers when it starts raining, turn them to ‘fast’ when needed, and off when things are dry again. I find myself many times going “Why aren’t my wipers on?” The system is very cautious about when to turn them on. Once they’re on, they’re fine, and will turn themselves off after the rain stops, but I do find myself hitting the ‘wipe now’ button regularly because the automatic system hasn’t yet figured out the window is wet.

The Autopilot

For some, this is it. The holy grail of the Tesla. The much vaunted ability for the car to drive itself. The model 3 has 8 external cameras that can ‘see’ to a distance of about 250meters. In addition to the cameras, there’s also a front facing radar that gives very accurate distance measurements to the computer. These systems together provide the autopilot computer in the car enough information for the car to drive itself. It can see obstacles, react to changing circumstances and environments, and navigate it’s way in relatively complex situations. It couples that information with maps that are constantly updated with traffic and construction changes. The car’s GPS will locate you on the map (though the Tesla won’t use GPS for very high detail information. You don’t want to depend on GPS for autopilot, then go into a tunnel, for example).

So, given all this technology, is it actually dependable as a self-driving system?

Hell no.

The autopilot has many many problems. It’s definitely not ready for prime time. While it is an absolute technological marvel, it is nowhere near the level needed for full autonomy. Even in the best possible driving situations for autonomous navigation (a mostly open highway), the system makes many many errors in judgement. Most of the time those errors are not threatening or dangerous, they’re just uncomfortable or irritating. A few examples:

The autopilot can change lanes as needed for faster / slower traffic or when approaching an exit. If there’s any form of traffic in the way (someone coming up quickly behind you, or a crowded lane), it’s handling of the lane change is infuriating. Not for me the driver, but mostly for other people on the road. It takes far far too long to make the decision to change lanes – and by the time it does, the ‘gap’ it was shooting for doesn’t exist anymore, so the car can swerve back into its original lane. Again, not particularly dangerous for me the driver, but irritating and alarming for people around us.
There are regular ‘phantom braking’ problems. You could be going along normally, and suddenly the car will ‘brake’ abruptly for no apparent reason. A moment later it’ll resume normal speed. This is jarring. I’m sure it had a very good reason to do that, but there’s no indication to the driver or passengers what just happened.
Autopilot HATES wide lanes. Onramps that don’t have middle dividing lines, or secondary roads that aren’t perfectly sized – the autopilot will ‘hunt’ from one side to another trying to guess which is the proper side of the road to be on. Ung.
The ‘navigate on autopilot’ feature which is supposed to allow the car to happily change from one highway to another using ramps without driver intervention gets easily confused on anything less than perfect interchanges. If the lane markings aren’t crystal clear and well sized, the car will jump around trying to determine the ‘best’ path on the ramps – and will frequently guess wrong.

The system is not ready. Having said that, Tesla is doing the right thing to get it there. Their software is constantly ‘learning’ how to drive properly – every Tesla on the road is collecting data on how people handle these weird road conditions, and that goes into the neural network that the navigation computer uses. And each update, it gets a little better. But I can’t see a driverless Tesla, or a ‘door to door automated driving’ Tesla on the road in the next 5 years.

The Toys

So we’ve talked about basic software tools and functions in the car. In addition to those things, there’s some stuff that’s just plain goofy and fun to have. Since the Model 3 is basically a computer with a touch screen attached to a car, there’s some silly stuff you can do.

Tempest!

My question is, is this stuff really adding any value?

For instance. You can play games on the display. That’s sort of fun, and the display is good and uses the existing car controls to play the game. But that means you can only play in park. And from the drivers seat. This seems more of a ‘Hey kids, look what my car can do, neener!’ feature than something I can use as a selling point for the car.

Performance

Yeah, I have the Performance version of the model 3. That means the extra motor, the low profile wheels, the painted calipers, the whole shebang. Those extra options added another 25% to the base price of the car. What do I get for that? Well, to start there’s that neck-snapping 0-60 in 3.3 seconds acceleration. Driving a car with this much power, with an always-available 450HP and 470 ft-lbs of torque is intoxicating. It changes how you handle traffic, navigation, everything. That power is ALWAYS there. No downshifting, no revving / turbo spool up. This car is the modern day equivalent of Neal Stephenson’s Deliverator from Snow Crash:

“The Deliverator’s car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator’s car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car’s tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator’s car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady’s thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.”

But, the performance version has some drawbacks. The cost? I’m not sure if it’s worth it. Is it really necessary to have THAT much power at your beck and call at any minute? I don’t think so. The only time I’ve really used it is to impress people I take on test drives. That’s not worth the money.

But let’s also talk about those low profile wheels. The short version? They suck. They’re fragile as hell, and they are NOT covered under warranty. Yes, everyone ‘knows’ that low profile wheels are the worst thing to happen to cars since they added ‘tiptronic shifting’ to every hyundai on the planet, but at $750 a pop for those wheels, hitting a pothole gets real expensive, real fast. Ask me how I know.

A model 3 AWD Long Range will get you 0-60 in 4.5 seconds, for $12k less. Do yourself a favor. Unless you’re dripping money, if you want something that’s still faster than most cars out there, just get that.

Conclusions

So where does that leave me? Do I like my car? Yes. Am I excited everytime I get in it and drive? Definitely. Am I proud that I am using a vehicle that emits absolutely zero carbon dioxide, and I’m powering from energy I buy from wind farms and solar? Absolutely. Do I think this is the future of cars in the world? No question.

Is the car perfect? Absolutely not. Not even close.

But it is, by far, in my opinion, the best electric vehicle on the market today.

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Nokia N770 Linux Tablet

Sat, 17 Aug 2019 03:27:08 GMT

The year was 2005. The dotcom days were over, and even though the fear of Windows NT taking over the world was fading, Linux was still considered a “hacker” OS – something not to be taken seriously. Of course, the cool kids all knew that Linux was going to take over the world. Right? Right?

In May 2005, Nokia announced the N770 tablet. A full on tablet computer, with bluetooth, wireless, audio tools, all running Linux in a handheld configuration. While not the first portable handheld Linux device (my Sharp Zaurus SL5500 is an earlier example), the N770 grabbed my attention as something truly exciting. I wanted one in the worst way.

Nokia N770 Linux Tablet with Power Supply

Alas, the reviews of the N770 were not kind. It was slow. It had very limited memory and storage. The battery life wasn’t so hot. I still wanted one, but couldn’t bring myself to fork over the couple hundred bucks to make it happen. Not 2 years later Apple released the iPhone, and the world of handheld computing was forever changed.

On the inside, the specs are interesting, but not particularly staggering:

CPU: 252 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP 1710
Memory: 64meg RAM
Storage: 128meg Flash, but supports RS-MMC cards
Display: 800×480 4″ LCD Color capacitive touch
Connectivity: 802.11g wifi and bluetooth
Introduced: May 25, 2005

I’ve always wanted to tinker with the N770, and at the last VCF-East (where I picked up my copy of Wizardry), a nice fellow gave me one that he wasn’t using. I was ecstatic. The device is much as I had read – small, lightweight, in a neat little aluminum shell it can slide out of. However, there was no power supply, so I couldn’t turn it on. Nokia devices in this generation (including the phones) used a very very small barrel connector for power. I didn’t have one of these. A quick ebay search and I found a power supply, and ordered it.

Two weeks later I had my power supply, and plugged in the N770… and… nothing really happened. After a few minutes, the Nokia logo would flash, then flash again, then flash again. My N770 was busted.

FINE, sez me. I had the fever, and nothing was going to stop me. eBay again! This time I waited a few days and ended up purchasing another N770 for $40 delivered. Take that!

THIS one arrived with a power supply, and in fairly decent shape (no stylus though – the first one I got did have one). I plugged it in, powered it up , and yay! It worked!

Impressions

Okay, yeah. It’s slow. Connecting to wifi can take 2-3 minutes (!), and if you get the password wrong, you have to go through the process again.

Nokia N770 Linux Tablet

The interface is… confusing. I understand it’s Maemo, which is a GUI on top of the linux core, and has been updated and modified a lot since then but there’s a lot of guesswork involved between the navigation buttons, the touchscreen controls, and the buttons on the top of the unit. It really feels like they didn’t quite know what to do with a tablet. Is it all touchscreen stuff? Or are there buttons and light keys, with the touchscreen stuff being tacked on as a ‘cool’ factor?

Nonetheless, its’ a cute little toy to play with, and I love having a working one as part of my collection.

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