@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

gadgetoid

@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org

I’ve been a hobbyist games and technology writer for over 20 years. I keep the lights on by writing MIT-licensed embedded hardware drivers at Pimoroni in Python, MicroPython and C++.

Hobbies include music, videogames, skateboarding, baking and making videos about frothing milk.

Tech @ https://gadgetoid.com
Software @ Pimoroni
Pi pinout - https://pinout.xyz
Pico pinout - https://pico.pinout.xyz

He/Him.

#Technology #RaspberryPi #Making #VideoGames #MiniComputers

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

gadgetoid, to random
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

Whipped up a quick article about my off-grid office plans. The what, the why and the how. https://www.gadgetoid.com/2023/06/21/off-grid-office/

gadgetoid, to random
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

The value of a programmer is not only their achievements, but their failures. Not their raw productivity but the hours they wasted teasing out an obtuse bug. Fancy next word predictors don’t replace domain experts any more than StackOverflow or Ask Jeeves did.

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@ahnlak I mean it's generally sensible just to never agree to help debug anything 😆 - it's hard enough doing it when you're sat nose to nose with the code, but add playing a game of telephone in the mix and it's a chore. That said, rubber ducking works great- I've helped a lot of people solve their own problems by just getting distracted while they type out their issue. Haha!

buzzyrobin, to random
@buzzyrobin@chaos.social avatar

Related to https://chaos.social/@jacqueline/110573109629695198:

Phantom power is just DC bias. You know how audio is just kinda tiny-AC, little voltage wobbling around a ‘zero’ value? What if you simply had it wobble around, like, +40V instead, and used that bias / offset / extra power for other stuff that’s using the same wires as the microphone signal or whatever?

anyway this shit is wild and im learning lots

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@gsuberland @buzzyrobin I’m convinced 1-wire was invented by someone who successfully talked to some i2c sensor and wrote half a driver library before realising they’d never connected VCC and GND. It probably wasn’t, but I’ve had so many prototype boards where parasitic power has made things appear to work 🤣

steamdeckhq, to random
@steamdeckhq@mastodon.world avatar

It still feels hard to believe, but today is our 1 year anniversary! With that, we have a couple of BIG announcements today...and you can read about them here:

https://steamdeckhq.com/news/steamdeckhqs-first-anniversary-is-here-whats-next/

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@steamdeckhq damn. Achieved in a month what I’ve been treading for 23 years 😭

Well played. You saw that open door and went full send 🤣

steamdeckhq, to Steamdeck
@steamdeckhq@mastodon.world avatar

Wallet running dry, but craving a new game to play on your ? Well check these ones out! Some are time-limited though, so make sure you get to them quick!

https://steamdeckhq.com/news/free-games-to-get-for-your-steam-deck-6-17-23/

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@steamdeckhq can I just get some free time to play the ones I already have please?

My steam account is old enough to have kids of its own and has more unplayed games than AVGNs basement 😭

Edent, to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

Weird reports in the media about how panels "don't work when it is too hot."

Bollocks!

There may be a small efficiency dip, but our roof still generated over twice our daily use of electricity.

https://botsin.space/@solar/110544413684731551

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@Edent it’s an “oh shoot we better come up with a plausible narrative for why we’re caught with our pants down again and haven’t made satisfactory investments into renewables” play, I guess. Some A class confusion phrasing like “0.34 percentage points” 😐

My solar panels showing up any day now…

astrid, to random
@astrid@fedi.astrid.tech avatar

having undiagnosed ADHD growing up is like having a black hole behind them making their stuff disappear, but no one else sees the black hole except you, and they all just think you're stupid and you suck and you keep losing things. they've told to you a million times to not lose things and you still keep doing it, you fucking idiot, you worthless piece of shit, you subhuman trash,

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@astrid not me losing a whole carton of milk and finding it on a cupboard days later 😭

gadgetoid, to random
@gadgetoid@mastodon.gadgetoid.com avatar

Juicing up the EcoFlow DELTA 2 Max. It’s a 2048Wh monster! My office currently runs from a 20A car charging circuit, disabling the charger, I’m hoping to switch to solar but first I’m testing this hulk! Maybe I can load shift?

The LCD shows a charge level of 32% and an input of 2262 Watts. It’s estimated to finish charging in 55 minutes. The close up reveals two normal (12W) and two “fast” (100W) USB A ports. The USB type C are 100W each.

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@jann @gadgetoid wait, solar panels you can't get wet? Panels you need to put outside? Where it's wet sometimes? What even!

gadgetoid, to random
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

Vision Pro is step 1 of rich people just blanking out the poor and the homeless with black rectangles and white noise.

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

Framed in the wider market of phones, Apple’s glitzy marketing and focus on rich twats and fashion models fills a little branding niche. Phones are more or less ubiquitous and relatively accessible. But apply this same glitzy sheen to a purported new paradigm of computing and suddenly it feels very, very problematic.

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@ahnlak seems to be most everyone now. Amazing how little of a stand people will make.

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

It doesn’t in any way look aspirational anymore. It looks dystopian.

gadgetoid, to random
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

Wayhey Windows continues to confound me. You might know it caches USB enums/drivers. It also caches joystick devices names. Per VID/PID. Got a multi-endpoint joystick? Tough. They're all named "GamePad 1". Good luck.

alcinnz, to random
@alcinnz@floss.social avatar

Why am I seeing so much (mostly) defense of FlatPak over the past couple days?

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@alcinnz something something Libre Office?

steamdeckhq, to random
@steamdeckhq@mastodon.world avatar

Do you dream of a fully transparent ? Well a recent tease from JSAUX over on Reddit suggests those dreams may become a reality!

https://steamdeckhq.com/news/jsaux-tease-transparent-front-shell-for-steam-deck/

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@steamdeckhq more like nightmare, why would I want to see the janky innards? They don’t even look good 😭

There’s a good reason people aren’t transparent!

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@cliophate thanks, I hate it 😆

If you want to look at bare PCBs we sell a whole bunch of cool stuff that doesn't even have a case!

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@cliophate non transparent purple also pretty based!

paul, to random
@paul@tapbots.social avatar

Wait a second, I'm on the highest Netflix plan which I thought was a family plan? Now they want me to pay extra just because I have kids off at college? Makes me want to either just downgrade or cancel all together.

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@paul they must be pretty strapped for cash if they had to add tacky mobile gaming ads to their paid-for streaming client.

gadgetoid, to random
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

Would be cool to rally a little demoscene style event around our up-and-coming dual RP2040 HDMI doodad. Though having a - theoretically - 400MHz MCU dedicated to application code and another just to creative DVI signals may strip the whole thing of any particularly gripping challenge.

rasterweb, to random
@rasterweb@mastodon.social avatar

Does the UK have anything like the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)?

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@rasterweb Equality Act? https://www.gov.uk/definition-of-disability-under-equality-act-2010#:~:text=You're%20disabled%20under%20the,t%20apply%20to%20Northern%20Ireland.

Edent, to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

🆕 blog! “How do you stop people accessing data they shouldn't?”

I used to work in a call centre for a Very Big Company. Every week, without exception, we'd get a bunch of new starters to train. And every week, without exception, a newbie would be fired after looking up a famous person's data. This was in the days before GDPR. There was a lot less […]

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/05/how-do-you-stop-people-accessing-data-they-shouldnt/
⸻

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@Edent I’d have fixed whatever byzantine nonsense policies and UX failing warranted so much telephone support and fired the whole call centre but I think telephones are the work of evil devil people and should be illegal anyway 🤣

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@Edent it particularly hurts my soul to have to pick up the phone and communicate to a third party to press a button via their web browser that I could have just logged in and pressed myself if they weren’t so obnoxiously focussed on retention and manipulation.

What volume of these calls were deliberately self inflicted? 🤣 or are we talking before any meaningful web portal could exist?

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@Edent that wasn’t so long ago to be fair, feels like it needed ubiquitous smartphones for it to really work. You’re not old until someone’s carbon dating you.

soller, to random
@soller@fosstodon.org avatar

What are your favorite DOS games?

gadgetoid,
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

@soller I’m going to go with Azrael's Tear above all else because people need to know about it 🤣

But also Simon The Sorcerer, Discworld, Big Red Racing, Ignition, Commander Keen, The Incredible Machine, Comanche Maximum Overkill, C&C Red Alert, Descent 1 & 2, Sim City, uhh this is basically just a list at this point.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • JUstTest
  • khanakhh
  • kavyap
  • thenastyranch
  • everett
  • tacticalgear
  • rosin
  • Durango
  • DreamBathrooms
  • mdbf
  • magazineikmin
  • InstantRegret
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • megavids
  • ethstaker
  • ngwrru68w68
  • cisconetworking
  • modclub
  • tester
  • osvaldo12
  • cubers
  • GTA5RPClips
  • normalnudes
  • Leos
  • provamag3
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •