Our new album is out today! A sincere request to help spread the word!

I need a thing.

Ah, the internet. Where I can start out watching a video documenting the process of refurbing CRTs and wind up buying 3 CDs of 80s synth music in a buy 2 get 1 deal from a book reseller a thousand miles away.

That's a bummer. The Maxx is one of my favorites, easily top 5 comics. His work on Sandman, Zero Girl, Four Women, and so much more... Gonna go dig up my trade paperbacks and issues and read them again.

I can't seem to figure out JLCPCB's tooling hole requirements. I put one in each corner. I specified in the order I had added tooling holes. Yet they went and added their own within a couple mm of mine! What gives?! Are min too close to the edge??

I have a project in mind that reads multiple RFID tags so I bought a bunch of readers. In the time it took for them to arrived I realized it wasn't going to work the way I thought. So here's what 10 RFID readers looks like. They'll go into a storage container for a rainy day.

On Georges Méliès’s re-discovered 1897 sci-fi short, and the enduring anxiety of technological replacement: www.inverse.com/entertainmen...

Last day to get any Alpengoodies!

"You cannot explain away a wantonly immoral act because you think that it is connected to some higher purpose!" -Picard 6:3

I need more coffee. Been staring at code for the last 30mins wondering why it was skipping every other byte. I mean, pos modulo 1 should be flipping between 1 and 0 as I increment pos. right? RIGHT?! oh. oh yeah. anything divided by 1 has a remainder of 0. pos % 2 hey, the code works!!

blizzard hits tonight. so I check my lone flashlight. ah, a battery leaked. I'll clean it. But it's still crusty, wth?! Oh, no, it's not battery juice, that's just where the battery juice eroded the aluminum housing. the crater is a good mm deep! Right, all good. Now, do I have any C batteries?

wanted to code new stuff today. instead spent the day rethinking and rewriting stuff I have rethought and rewritten about a dozen times now. surely I've cracked it THIS time!

I've previously bought the Krampus and SMT Garden kits. Both are wonderful. If you want to get some cool soldering practice in or want a pretty electronical of your own then definitely check Alpenglow out while you still can!

One last (virtual) ride. Dinosaur closes tomorrow. I wonder what'll happen to the replica of Sue (a T-Rex skeleton on display in Chicago). youtu.be/4MofIhWR2cI

For a distraction, I sat down with this TNG effects generator keychain given to me by a friend. The batteries inside had leaked and eaten most of the copper pads that provided the LR44 battery connection. And in taking it apart I destroyed the speaker and had to order a replacement.

Next Stop, THE MOON! NASA's SLS rocket has made the 11 hour trip from the VAB to LC-39B, ahead of the launch of the crewed Artemis II mission to the moon for the first time since 1972, launching NET February 6. Stay with NASASpaceflight for all updates on this historic mission.

Reviving ReBoot With a Tape Deck Repair

Happy 85th birthday to Hayao Miyazaki ♡

Was gifted this yard sale find a few months back. It's a "Cool Keys" music toy from the 90s. However, not all the keys were cool. The bond between the carbon track ribbon cable and the keyboard and logic PCBs was failing. So I replaced it with a couple connectors and a ribbon cable. Is it cool now?

another robot highlight for 2025: man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls

Posted a new video today taking a look at The Stranger legacy lightsaber from Galaxy's Edge. Should have stopped to read the instructions, but who does that? youtu.be/NsJrulg4btA

The control board from a UV sanitizer case that was being tossed. It has three LEDs inside, two UVA/B and one UVC LED. Confirmed UVC with a UVC detector. Surprised it's not a scam. PCB has two separate DC boosting LED drivers. It also has a sounder to alert you after 1 minute of use.

Was asked about accessing the battery on a Qui-Gon legacy hilt. Found how to get in. Remove the covertec wheel (2mm hex) and pry up the black plastic oval piece nearest the base. Some light heat and/or IPA may help. I used a hobby knife and spudger. The electronics housing pulls out.

Ever sit down to code or draw or write or whatever, get caught up in it for a few hours, then take a break to grab a drink and find the coffee you made 3 hours ago sitting there, waiting for you?

Intel's 386 processor (1985) was critical to the success of Intel. With 285,000 transistors, it was too much for Intel's design process and the schedule started slipping. Intel pivoted to "standard cells", an automated technique for chip layout to get back on track. Let's look closer...

YOU GUYS WANNA SEE SOMETHING CURSED???? HOW ABOUT NEON GENESIS LEHIGH VALLEY PHANTOMS HOCKEY?????

lost a 3 pin header the other day working on some electronics. in totally unrelated news, the enter key on my numpad has been acting up recently and not registering keypresses about half the time. almost like there's something stuck under the key preventing it from depressing fully.

Blue Origin is starting the webcast for the NG-2 launch. www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9Wp...

At the end of my last YouTube video I mentioned that the day after Halloween you should go buy some discount decorations for modding. I did just that. I've turned this 1 dollar Halloween necklace into an accessory for droids from Galaxy's Edge.

Just put up a new video about adding motion activation to a light-up Halloween decoration. Just in time!

the LA Dodgers organist is GOATED tonight. doing this while Will Klein gets his shoe scraped in the 18th inning

Finished modding this Halloween decoration of a skull inside an astronaut helmet Originally the light was only on or off. I added a motion sensor to it, which requires a boost converter give it 5V from the 3V battery pack. Came out nice. I did accidentally wire the switch backwards. Oh well.

Made a holiday accessory for R-Unit droids from Galaxy's Edge. Was inspired after picking up an R2-H15 holiday droid and found the personality chip that came with it had no accessory sounds. Why not? Lack of holiday accessories? So I made one.

Uploaded a video about taking a (simple) surplus PCB, figuring out what it's for, populating it with spare components and writing firmware for it. youtu.be/JBHq7uUumTI

Uploaded some photos from my teardown of a Tron Identity Program figure from Disney World. I had thought face images were stored digitally on the identity chip. Nope! They're printed on a slide that's projected by an LED into the face. www.flickr.com/photos/ruths...

"Vagh ghay'cha' baQa'!" -Picard 4:24

I'm designing a PCB to hold through-hole addressable LEDs. There's a limit on how long a PCB can be so I stitched segments together to get a 31" blade. I'm using wire soldered to plated through-holes on the power and ground rails to connect the segments. So far they're working really well!

WTF is going on with me. There was a continuity error on my dream and I pointed it out IN MY DREAM.

A tale as old as time: went to the hardware store for $2 worth of screws and spent $50 on stuff I don't think I really need, but was very certain I did when I saw the display.

RIP Maru. 😢 The first and only internet cat I subscribed to, and still my favourite to this day. May heaven be filled with boxes that are slightly too small. 📦

Working on a Mac SE I picked up for $20 a couple weeks ago. I took it apart and cleaned it up. I cleaned and lined the floppy drive It boots! Pretty cool! But...

Attempt #347 at figuring out details about the proprietary audio code used in Galaxy's Edge holocrons. This time sniffing SPI comms to understand how the silence and mark tables work.

My goto is to ask LLMs how many states have R in their name. They always fail. GPT 5 included Indiana, Illinois, and Texas in its list. It then asked me if I wanted an alphabetical highlighted map. Sure, why not.

always fun to buy brand name ICs because the noname stuff isn't working right in your breadboard setup. only to discover it was just a wiring issue MINUTES after receiving the email confirming the order has been shipped. safe travels my ICs. the parts bin will be ready when you arrive.

In 1983, Philips produced the first FM radio receiver on a chip, leading to products such as the FM radio wristwatch. Let's look at the tiny silicon die inside this chip and see how it works. 1/N

finally got my hands on an updated Galaxy's Edge droid control board. These were introduced in early 2024 and carry a new Bluetooth SoC. Unfortunately, the tilt switch mod to wake the droid after it goes to sleep, will not work on this chip. time to experiment!

I didn't need another broken, old computer. But the asking price ($20!) was just too good to pass up. So I guess I have a Mac SE now. I'll crack it open maybe this weekend. Won't plug it in until I check for RIFA caps in the power supply.