Carrying a laptop in a grocery bag to a Cloudflare board meeting sparked comments. The author prefers inconspicuous bags, leading to the discovery of the perfect solution: a silent movie prop grocery bag. Looking like a typical brown paper bag, it's actually fabric, durable, nearly silent, and perfectly sized for a vintage MacBook Pro. It's the ultimate in understated practicality.
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The author connects a 1976 KIM-1 microcomputer to a modern terminal. The KIM-1 uses an obsolete current loop interface, requiring a simple circuit modification. By modifying a readily available USB-to-RS-232 adapter, the author successfully enables communication between the KIM-1 and a modern computer, allowing program uploads using minicom and even emulating punched tape loading. The process vividly demonstrates the charm of combining hardware restoration with innovation.
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Oddly Specific Objects is back with a solderless upgrade for the classic Casio F-91W: the Sensor Watch Pro. This upgrade features an accelerometer and a custom LCD, allowing for more complex display options. A browser-based emulator simplifies firmware flashing. The upgrade process is straightforward, involving disassembly and component replacement. The author customized the firmware, removing imperial units and the 12-hour clock, and adding a counter, accelerometer, and light sensor displays.
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Launched in March 2023, Low-background Steel (https://lowbackgroundsteel.ai/) is a website dedicated to archiving online resources untouched by AI-generated content. Using the analogy of low-background steel (metal uncontaminated by radioactive isotopes from nuclear testing), the site curates pre-ChatGPT Wikipedia dumps, the Arctic Code Vault, Project Gutenberg, and more. Its goal is to preserve and share pristine text, images, and videos, combating the explosion of AI-generated content since 2022. Submissions of uncontaminated content sources are welcome.
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Around 1990, the author debugged a client's Lotus 1-2-3 setup via fax due to expensive transatlantic phone calls. By guiding the client through commands like `/ppomr` and `/ppoml` to obtain printer margin information, the issue was resolved. This highlights the 'Zeroth Law of Debugging': use the smallest, fastest test case for rapid iteration and efficient problem-solving.
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The author purchased a replacement motherboard for their classic Casio F-91W watch from Crowd Supply. This project retains the original Casio LCD but replaces the motherboard with a modern microcontroller and open firmware, resulting in a watch with extended battery life and added functionality. The article details the process of replacing the motherboard, including disassembling the watch, soldering components, installing the new board, and compiling and installing custom firmware. An emulator was used to test the firmware before successfully upgrading the watch with features like a stopwatch and thermometer.
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Blogger John Graham-Cumming recounts his 2002 experience commissioning custom voice recordings from Elwood Edwards, the iconic voice of AOL. For $30, he ordered two phrases, "Mail classified by POPFile" and "Use the source, Luke!" for his machine learning email filtering program, POPFile. Edwards even included a bonus "You've got mail, John!" This charming anecdote reveals a personalized touch of the early internet and the humor of tech pioneers.
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Blogger John Graham-Cumming shared the complete text of Richard Brautigan's poem, "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace," on his blog. While the poem is somewhat known in tech circles, a complete PDF of the original 1967 publication proved elusive. Interpreting the copyright notice as allowing free republication, Graham-Cumming provides a scan of the entire book, a delightful find for tech and literature enthusiasts.
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Blogger John Graham-Cumming recently shared on his blog the intro video from his 2004 MIT Spam Conference talk. The video cleverly uses the "All your base are belong to us" meme, adapting it to discuss spam and machine learning, and paying homage to Paul Graham. It showcases early machine learning applications in anti-spam and the blogger's creative and humorous approach to tech communication.
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