Tweets
“money is good, but time is better.” that’s what I’ve been thinking today. but of course it’s not that simple. There’s a time to trade time for money, and a time to leave money on the table if it means more time. maybe the thought is, it pays to know when you’re at the threshold.
(original)
One last time: making the case for Nick Carraway as the gay protagonist of a great queer American novel. Here he describes Jay Gatsby’s smile, and the smile of his (supposed) love interest Jordan Baker. Hey, I’m just asking the questions your ninth grade English teacher wouldn’t.
(original)
Replying to @Hamitron and @andy_schauer
“Not this again…”
(original)
Replying to @josecastillo
coda: sunset clouds over lake michigan. Today was a good day.
(original)
Replying to @jamesvasile
Thanks!! And for what it’s worth, I soldered this particular prototype together with nothing more than a hand-held soldering iron and a syringe of flux. I’m aiming to make the next rev simpler still, with bigger passives and even fewer parts. https://twitter.com/josecastillo/status/1401605385190969346
(original)
Replying to @josecastillo
But that’s a tomorrow problem. For today, I’m on just my second airport layover in a year and a half: drinking a local Minnesota beer, writing in my journal, and soon watching a Tuesday evening sunset from 30,000 feet. Breaks are good. but tomorrow it’s back to the work. /thread
(original)
Replying to @josecastillo
ANYWAY. the other bit of Open Book work I did was around the BOM. Not as encouraging as I’d hoped, but I think the material cost for the Abridged Edition may come to about $30, including battery. Which still feels high once labor and margin factor in. I need to work more on this.
(original)
Replying to @josecastillo
I also recommend reading it if you’re at all queer. TBH I’m shocked that there’s not more discussion of this. Nick is into men, and F. Scott has woven it in so subtly that everyone missed it despite the protagonist’s novel-length obsession with his straight next door neighbor?
(original)
Replying to @josecastillo
and side note: what a book. It’s public domain now so you can read it on Gutenberg. I know we all read it in high school. Still it hits differently in your 30s, when you actually have choices to regret, and a past that’s obviously and forever out of reach. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/64317/64317-h/64317-h.htm
(original)
Replying to @josecastillo
The Pi Pico Open Book (aka the Abridged Edition) performed brilliantly. Reading a novel-length work over the course of two weeks, I encountered exactly zero glitches or hiccups, and the gadget did the one thing it needed to do: it stayed out of the way and let me read the book.
(original)
Brisket eaten and margaritas drunk, I’m hitting the skies after an excellent 12 day break. Did a little for the job and almost nothing for the work; about the only Open Book progress was a few minutes on a BOM spreadsheet and finishing Gatsby on the new prototype. A brief thread:
(original)
this artifact on the other hand is definitely coming with me to NYC. Everything about it is fun: the grippy rubber case and flip-up phone jack for the 14.4 modem. The blue-green EL backlight. The Windows CE upgrade that claims the entire Flash slot. This was a gadget of its time.
(original)
well, I got the parts that I would need to revive the keyboard on this artifact. alas, I’m flying back to New York today, and I don’t think I want to risk shoving it into an overhead bin. this might be a project for the next time I find myself in Texas.
(original)
RT @rose_n_adams: Who did this hahahaha
(original)
RT @NehhLmao: The way daft punk flipped the sample for one more time is still so crazy to me
(original)
Replying to @atomicthumbs
alas not quite free, but I like Fitbod for this; you can tell it what equipment you have and it’ll generate workout routines for you. I just have a couple of dumbbells and a bench, but between that and body weight exercises it keeps a decent variety going. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fitbod-workout-fitness-plans/id1041517543
(original)
Every time I go somewhere with frilly umbrella drinks, I can’t help but tear them apart to examine the recycled newspaper pages that make up their structural bits. I guess this one traces back to the city of Beihai, a major port in the southern part of Guangxi province.
(original)
it was a minute and a half ago… https://twitter.com/kfury/status/1405713790662893572
(original)
Replying to @yacky_yam
Yep that’s part of the thought process! The module is compatible with several larger (and smaller!) displays; questions would all be around refresh rate, functionality and cost. The 4.2” screen hits a sweet spot in terms of fast refresh, 2-bit grayscale capability and low price.
(original)
Replying to @rohansingh
I definitely have one here somewhere, but tbh I resisted wifi for a long time. I was skeptical and convinced it wouldn’t catch on, so for years I had our house set up with home phone line networking (HomePNA). may have backed the wrong horse there 😬
(original)
Replying to @_initrd
interesting! But weirdly backwards? Like the goal there is to put a computer on a card, not peripherals. what could be interesting is something that maps like mPCIe to a form factor with room for external ports… tho realistically, USB-C works, and we already live in dongleworld.
(original)
one last artifact. Actually from inside yesterday’s thing. Remember these? PCMCIA cards. Technology from a pre-USB era. I guess dongles accomplish this now, but still, it was cool to add ports right there on the side of your computer.
(original)
Replying to @theavalkyrie and @PaulStoffregen
i should add, this isn’t a gendered thing; I’m just as intimidated by boys who are cute and smart and adept at confronting eldritch horrors. this is probably why I’m still single.
(original)
What’s missing is that with roommates this can go down to $900 a month, or less if you’re willing to share the fan. https://twitter.com/jaketropolis/status/1405360062852390916
(original)
Replying to @GoodDisplayCN
Absolutely, I’d be stoked for y’all to make use of this photo! Feel free to use it on your site with a link to the Open Book repository, where there are schematics and documentation about how the display is used: https://github.com/joeycastillo/The-Open-Book
(original)
nope https://twitter.com/boztank/status/1405239978326585345
(original)
Replying to @theavalkyrie and @PaulStoffregen
then again, who’s more intimidating: she who wields godlike powers, or she who tames the hellbeasts? 😈
(original)
RT @RebeccaDavis: You don’t get that 63% raise walking into HR’s office solo on your lunch break…just sayin. https://twitter.com/newyorkerunion/status/1405281870925819907
(original)
Replying to @amusinglymuse
Yea, but, I decided to go on a walk because it’s nice out, and realIzed there’s no way to do that from mobile (and tbh even the inspect element hack is pretty inaccessible to most folks). It does feel like a failure worth calling out, especially if I can’t fix it from where I am.
(original)
Replying to @josecastillo
I also realize I could have cropped this to a more readable aspect ratio, and I would delete and repost, but Twitter makes it impossible for me to see the alt text I entered for the photo (much less copy it) so I’m sorry but y’all get the poor usability that they foisted on me 🙃
(original)
the “Zoom Video Technology” brag on an old laptop sent me down a fun rabbit hole today, figuring out A, what it was, and B, how one might do something like it today, all before realizing: there’s no point. We have surpassed the limitations that made this kind of hack necessary. https://twitter.com/josecastillo/status/1405185776451719170
(original)
Replying to @apocraphilia
Like not to say that the availability of tech is the limiting factor, but the ubiquity of surveillance tech and the power of cheap compute lets a small company like Clearview deploy world-altering AI to fascist regimes large and small for the price of a couple of EC2 instances.
(original)
Replying to @apocraphilia
I kind of have a response to this, but it’s hard to make when the point of comparison is nazis and genocide. My inkling of a thought though is that there’s a difference between “a nation can deploy tech for evil at scale”, and “literally anyone can deploy tech for evil at scale.”
(original)
Replying to @josecastillo
to unpack this point, lest anyone chalk it up to nostalgia: this was the moment in personal computing when systems became accessible enough to empower people, but not so powerful, connected or ubiquitous that they could disempower people (or, y’know, accidentally eat the world).
(original)
More artifacts. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: we could have stopped computers right here and we would have been just fine.
(original)
Replying to @yacky_yam
Y’know? Maybe. I got two options from LCSC, but the smaller one was very smaller and I thought it was too small for the book. But maybe I’m wrong. maybe it is the right part for the job. https://twitter.com/josecastillo/status/1371625487676665857
(original)
Replying to @rglenn
Awesome: https://texelec.com/product/foam-capacitive-pads-keytronic/
(original)
Replying to @cliffcheney
I’d love to figure out how to refurbish it myself — looks like the foil contacts have tarnished, and the foam underneath disintegrated. Going to look into what I might need to revive it!
(original)
Replying to @rglenn
Looks like it’s definitely foam and foil — thanks, I would have had no idea what to call it! Now I know what to look for if I try to refurbish it.
(original)
Replying to @josecastillo
yeah I’m gonna take a wild guess and say it’s the lack of shiny on those surfaces that I presume used to be all shiny. Still, what a gorgeous old PCB design! Backside says it’s from @Keytronicglobal, assembly date November of 1983.
(original)
Replying to @josecastillo
now the challenge is I can’t get any further because the keyboard doesn’t really work. I mean, if I mash some buttons, eventually a few key presses seem to get through. Wondering if opening that up could yield any insights…
(original)
OH MY GOSH! I was wrong! The artifact lives! Gently opened it and didn’t see any obvious scorch marks, so I chanced plugging it in. The disk error didn’t surprise me; it’s been in that drive for decades. What did surprise me: after I ejected and replaced it, DOS actually loaded!
(original)
Replying to @josecastillo
sadly it doesn’t boot up anymore. It did as of maybe a decade ago, but a few years after that I turned it on and some sparks flew out near the switch assembly; maybe a bad capacitor, but who knows. Still I would love to revive this old computer someday. I like this one.
(original)
Another artifact: my first computer. The Compaq Portable. I inherited it from my aunt, prolly at age 8. She used it to write her dissertation in WordPerfect in the 80s; I may have written some basic BASIC here, now lost to bit rot and the sands of time. Check out that manual tho!
(original)
Replying to @josecastillo
(the case to include both footprints: the chunky SOIC part is 45¢ at quantity, whereas the tiny 1506 part is <4¢ and just as easy for a machine to pick and place. the ideal design should be both easy to hand-solder, and optimized for manufacturability)
(original)
TIL they make resistor arrays in SOIC packages. this dovetails nicely with my discovery last week that the resistor arrays are the trickiest parts left to hand-solder on the Open Book.
🤔
(original)
back in texas and encountering artifacts that I’ve saved over the years. To be honest I wasn’t very good at making things in 2005, but I clearly had aspirations. Also: shouts out to the @adafruit crew, sharing knowledge for like a decade and a half now :)
(original)
RT @atomicthumbs: While looking at the replies to this thread, I noticed people claiming that the desert is “empty,” “barren,” or otherwise…
(original)
Replying to @ajbauer
I’m also hoping for a classic bit of satanic panic between now and then. for a minute I thought Lil Nas X was gonna bring it back for sure.
(original)
Replying to @derekcaelin
to the moon!
(original)