Photo of the Day: Garmin Instinct Solar

This is post of appreciation of my Garmin Instinct Solar watch, which has travelled the world with me and been an indispensable tool in many adventures . It has GPS recording, altimeter, thermometer and sunset time, but thanks to the monochrome display, the battery lasts for month (+recharging from the sun), not like your silly "smart" watch :p

I also like to use different straps all the time, so that when I look at watch, it looks fresh and doesn't get too mundane.

#PhotoOfTheDay #survival #gear #prepper #MilitarishAesthetic #travel

Pagefind: a perfect search for a static website/blog

I fancied a search function for this blog , mainly so that you, dear readers, would be able to click on tags like #DIY and #Tip and see all the posts I have humbly written for you. Bloated blog engines like Hugo or Jekyll achieve this by generating an extra html page for each tag, but this goes strictly against my understanding of minimalism. By the way, minimalism is the reason why this blog uses no engine at all and is generated by a bunch of regexes .

To my shame, previosly, I used Google for tag functionality, clicking on tag lead to a Google search like www.google.com/search?q=site:developer.run+%22%23DIY%22 . And I was looking for a better search solution just for my blog.

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Building a Nixie Clock is easier and cheaper then you might think

The Nixie Tube Clock is an example of geek luxury. It's rare, it looks cool, and there are only a limited number of tubes left in the world, adding to the elitism. And it gives your lab that evil genius vibe. But with the right knowledge and skills it is easily obtainable.

A set of 6 new tubes will cost you around $60, the closer you live to Eastern Europe - the cheaper. Just search for nixie IN-12B on Ebay. Used tubes are even cheaper, but bear in mind that they have a limited lifespan (5-10 years). And by "new" I mean made in the 1980s, because around that time mass production stopped.

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Keyboard Scroll Wheel mod: Now with STLs!

Created 3D printable STLs for mounting keycap sized rotary encoder (EVQWGD001). Because every keyboard needs a scroll wheel . In Alice-like layout you can put encoder in the middle, the regular keyboard - replace Caps Lock. Cable raceway for Alice-like layout attached as well.

Grab on Thingiverse !

#DIY #MechanicalKeyboards #STL

Built a Macro Pad with Knob and Display

I did not have time to build a full mechanical keyboard (and I'm happy with X-Bows Lite ), so I built myself the macro pad. Extra buttons are always useful, especially a knob for volume control.

Buttons are mapped to: Play/Pause, Next Song, Start/Stop Pomodoro, and one for later use.

I've even found a practical application for an OLED display:

• When I'm playing fullscreen games, display shows GPU/GPU temperature and overheat warnings to not overcook the chips. And the current time so I don't overcook my brain by forgetting to sleep.
• When media is playing, display shows title of currently playing song or Youtube video.
• When rotating the knob, the display shows the percent of volume. The trick is that it shows the actual OS volume, so it will be correct even in case the volume is changed by other means (like os interface). This is achieved by sending the current system volume to the device when handling volume keypress in Linux .
• When idle, the display shows some awesome monochrome logos I've shared previously . Just like the way it looks.

To communicate with the display made a script to send any text, or show logo or progress bar on the macro pads display. On the receiving end is some QMK trickery , of course.

Wire with fancy "aviator connectors" goes to a custom Scroll Wheel I've put in the center of a keyboard. This is an evolution of my QMK Scroll Wheel project by adding some extra functionality to Raspberry Pi Pico.

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Photo of the Day: Radiation Detector

As this is my personal blog, and Pinterest views are over the moon, I've decided to occasionally share cool photos I am making.

My faithful radiation detector Radiacode 102 is super tiny and convenient, but not as cozy looking as the iconic CDV-700. So I think I made a perfect lock screen wallpaper for the phone!

#PhotoOfTheDay #survival #gear #prepper #MilitarishAesthetic

My perfect playlist for programming

Let me share my Spotify playlist , primarily inspired by the soundtrack of the best computer game of all time - Space Rangers 2, and other space exploration games like FTL. Turns out this music is perfect not only for playing these games but also for programming.

My Space Rangers playlist contains 89+ hours of psytrance and similar beats. Thats two full 8x5 work weeks of music (or four days if you listen 24x7), and if you enable shuffle - even more! You may wonder what is the difference from Space Station Soma ? Difference is that this playlist , is curated to avoid boring ambient-only tracks (where you got 10 minutes of barely audible hum). Also avoiding "dharmic" tracks that are too trippy. So most of the audio contains alive beats that will keep you awake and productive.

And if this type of music is not up to your taste, my another go-to recommendation for work is Rekt FM online radio.

Space Rangers playlist on Spotify

#Spotify #Audio

Music Control Tip

Did you know that you can "blacklist" songs on Spotify, by automatically skipping them? Or automatically switch to the next online radio station when there is a song you don't like. Or skip songs containing Live in title, because I still can not undertand why people put such things on the web. Basically, any media control automation you can imagine.

All you need is a playerctl . What it does, it allows to listen media for player events, for example, do action on song change. Also, it allows universal control of media players, for example pausing or skipping the song. Works with any player with MPRIS D-Bus support, so VLC, Spotify, Youtube in the browser, etc. You can write scripts in Bash or Python (for Python bindings install libplayerctl-dev gir1.2-playerctl-2.0 ).

#Tip #CLI #Spotify #Audio

Contemporary quote about AI

I don't usually drop smarty-pants quotes in this blog, but this one sounds too relevant nowadays. Forget me if I'm being dramatic, but too many people poison everything with AI just for the sake of a quick couple of bucks and hype.

I have not seen quote used recently so let me share it here:

You have no care for your species. For thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons. Only now are such things possible. And what would you be paid with? What would your price be, for aiding this thing to free itself and grow?

— William Gibson, Neuromancer

#AI

Get Url Preview with Image and Description in Markdown Notes

Your notes are important in the long run, and note-taking apps come and go. Some note-taking services have a lifespan of instruction for paper shredder, while others slowly and painfully become obsolete . Special shout to those using Google Keep: "Somebody just likes to live dangerosly , oi!?".

To keep notes accessible over the years, you need to store them in the simplest and most common format, so switch between the note-taking apps is frictionless. Also notes should be readable even without specific tools. Like plain text. Or Markdown because it is almost plain text with some conveniences. Then you will be able to access important information no matter what the future of computing will look like.

That's why I store all my notes in a Markdown format, edit in Sublime Text, and sync via Git. Sometimes with ASCII WordArt , symbols , diagrams , internal links ³ and even embedded images, but still a glorified text files. Speaking about images - modern text editors have a Markdown image preview feature - my Sublime Text has MarkdownImages plugin , I'm sure your editor of choice has it too.

When saving URLs for later, often I need a little bit more info about the page. Especially when collecting links for shopping, a little image is a must. Another example - image preview is a huge convenience when gathering information for DIY projects . And in case the website will disappear, I will still have an image at least.

So we want to get some extra info by URL, page preview, and description (like modern chat apps do). Most of the web pages provide this already in a Open Graph format . If not - we can grab a title and a first meaningful image. Let's automate this process!

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