We woke up just before September ends: our August 2025 Projects of the Month is live. Tetrises, RPGs, hardware projects, for graphing calculators and beyond: see what our creative hobbyists have been making, and vote for the best: www.cemetech.net/news/2025/9/...

Another month, more progress towards constructing my full-scale train simulator, now with laser-cut hardboard to test out its 1:1 component layout: z80.me/blog/tsc-das...

Yeah, Acelabrate is pretty cool, but have you considered Acelabread? #amtrak #acela @amtrak.com

Native code programmability (C/ASM) vanished from my dearly beloved TI-84 Plus CE calculators with an OS update in April, after irresponsible developers showed off embedding an ESP32 with a camera in a calculator to use it to cheat. The community just released a jailbreak: youtu.be/6MeHya0LJX8

A Tail of Two Kitties.

A very accurate summary of my day today. #GreatestGathering #SoManyTrains

It may just be cardboard, but physical prototyping of my Class 80x train simulator at 1:1 scale has been very helpful in figuring out if I've gotten the size and layout right, not to mention reasonable for my desk: z80.me/blog/tsc-das...

Less than seven years late, Cemetech's calculator-hacking exhibits at World Maker Faire 2018 - and what the loss of the Faire in 2019 has meant for showing off DIY, making, and hacking, inside and outside the calculator community. www.cemetech.net/news/2025/7/...

In another project completed recently, I added UK-style horn controls to my burgeoning train simulator. 🔊 Thanks to my reusable CAN bus controller, it took an afternoon, mostly of soldering and crimping: z80.me/blog/tsc-hor...

I've been writing 3D graphing programs for assorted graphing calculators since at least 2003. Now, after starting a 3D grapher for the TI-84 Plus CE and then pausing for eight years (coincidentally roughly the time since @geopipe.ai was founded), I've released it: www.cemetech.net/forum/viewto...

When I next take the Caledonian Sleeper from London I'll be www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgy.... 🚂🤘

@kermmartian.z80.me and I are hiring for a staff-level DevOps engineer! @spackpm.bsky.social expertise is particularly welcome.

Jerry did I ever tell ya I was high school buddies with the guy who made DoorsCS7? Used to go over to his house to watch Stargate on SSD and play with his sick TI-84+

Trying to figure out why my Osaris won't read CF cards formatted by Windows, but will when formatted by my digital camera. I think it's the partition ID that's the issue that can be fixed in DISKPART with SET ID=06 (Windows uses 0E by default). Can even get my 1GB card to show up now!

My Train Simulator controller project continues as time allows. This time around, moving my CAN controller out of my air pressure gauge to allow it to fit into my dashboard, and the tribulations of learning to use lead-free solder: z80.me/blog/can-air...

What do a dithered puppy, row-major LCD graphics routines, and an update to a 29-year-old black-and-white arcade game have in common? They're all projects in Cemetech's April Projects of the Month update: www.cemetech.net/news/2025/5/...

Achievement unlocked: realized I've actually been to today's Worldle, quite a few years ago for an academic conference.

Better late than never: March 2025's hobby STEM projects on Cemetech covered the usual gamut, from games to an emulator to a MIDI player. Check them out, and vote for the best! www.cemetech.net/news/2025/5/...

What do you do when you want to build a train dashboard, but you don't have a train to measure? You figure out how to parse an obscure 3D model format, derive the planes the buttons lie in, and build a papercraft prototype. z80.me/blog/tsc-das...

yes this is a Lego flex. IYKYK

Okay, that works, and the RS-422 interface spits out...something. Now how do I talk to you?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: vote for your favorite Cemetech graphing calculator software project of 2024: www.cemetech.net/news/2025/1/... . You have plenty of options, including games, programming tools, math apps, and shells.

Am I taking crazy pills?

No thank you, we don't do that here.

Reverse-engineering, CAN bus sniffing, anticompetitive practices, and trains? How the whitehats who fixed Poland's broken trains as widely publicized earlier in the year did it: media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12142...

Caturday: the more shy of our two void kittens briefly being social (on a graphing calculator pillow).

It's quite flattering when one of the three "Godfathers of AI" (who also partially advised my Master's thesis) calls a graphing calculator project of mine "pointless-but-heroic": www.linkedin.com/posts/yann-l...

I recently finished documenting a project to identify handwritten digits directly on the TI-84 Plus CE. Draw digits with a mouse, and in 18 seconds, a CNN running on the ez80 CPU classifies them. Video (excuse the clickbait title): youtu.be/olcZdTRdnQg ; technical details: z80.me/blog/calcula...

My new monitor has arrived...

If you feel like we just posted a Projects of the Month, you're not wrong - but Cemetech's news editors were efficient with November 2024. Projects included games, math tools, a physics simulation, and even a shockingly powerful 3D renderer. November's projects: www.cemetech.net/news/2024/12...

Zephyr (left) and Acela have joined our lives and promptly made them significantly better. #cats

"Do you prefer metal or Java?" Nanowar of Steel: "Yes." github.com/NanowarOfSte...

Another Black Friday, another reminder to check camelcamelcamel.com to see that nothing is actually a deal any more.

Including my Graph3DC! Great job to the programmers and hackers of the graphing calculator community for another productive month.

Thanks to the DC chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society, I enjoyed an in-depth tour of Amtrak's Ivy City maintenance facility. I was particularly struck by the pride the folks there expressed in the quality and speed of their work and its importance in keeping the railroad running.

It's certainly a *choice* to say your name, credit card details, and zip code on speakerphone on a crowded Amtrak train. If that guy's credit card gets stolen, I'd start with his fellow passengers.

The rest of the world to the US, probably.

I'm porting a 3D graphing program I wrote for another platform to the ez80 TI-84 Plus CE; among today's progress was switching graph color themes to palette-swapping. Recalculating per-point RGB values and converting to RGB332 is now an instant change.

Cemetech's Minecraft 1.21+ survival server will be launching tomorrow, October 12th, at mc.cemetech.net. Come explore and build bases, cities, and machines with Cemetech! www.cemetech.net/news/2024/10...

Metro North kindly opened up their Croton Harmon facility for a great open house yesterday, a previously annual event of which I have fond childhood memories. #trains #metronorth

I hope the fx-CG100 has programmability that the released French version lacks: I would be highly disappointed if you could no longer program the Casio Prizm in C!

Today in rare #calculators that have joined my collection: a TI-Nspire CAS+ prototype, similar to the TI-Nspire CAS that was released in 2007. I'm glad they reworked the center "joystick". www.datamath.org/Graphing/NSp...

People waiting for an NYC->Boston flight make me irrationally angry, when travel from NYC to JFK + security + boarding + the flight + deplaning + travel from BOS to Boston is not only infinitely worse than just sitting on an Amtrak #train, but is also slower.

In my ongoing quest to build a #train #simulation rig, here's Part 1 of how a real power/brake controller from a UK Class 365 passenger train is making its way into my rig: z80.me/blog/tsc-pbc...

Another Projects of the Month: Cemetech's programmers worked on impressive graphing calculator and computer software in July. Check 'em out: www.cemetech.net/news/2024/8/...

It has been two years since I last posted one of these: if you (or your kid) needs a graphing calculator this year, here's what I recommend: www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_wa... #calculator #backtoschool #edtech

My UK Networker power/brake controller is now here (in bits), and I have the fun challenge of reverse-engineering the connections to its massive 48-pin milspec connector. www.cemetech.net/forum/viewto...

I bid a very fond farewell to the peerless, $18 Perixx #gaming #mouse that has served me incredibly well for over 10 years. Here's hoping the replacement is as dependable (cheers to geekboy1011 for the new recommendation).