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You know what, I was kind of busy last week with my OCC project, and I was also building a website for a friend who is opening her own doctor's office, and so I completely forgot that my blog turned three years old last Thursday! Well I actually didn't completely forget, but I was convinced that the date of my first post was July 19th, while it was actually July 9th. Whoops. The human brain is weird, I still remember the birthdays of people I haven't seen or spoken to in 25 years. But then…
This past week I've been writing a lot, first the Walkman post and then my IR sensor project. I've gotten some really nice feedback on both; the Walkman post in particular seems to have resonated with a lot of people, which is interesting. I wasn't even sure if writing a post about it was worth it because it was such a basic fix. But now I'm glad I did. I'm sure if you have a blog, you know the doubts that sometimes creep into your mind. The feeling of "should I even write about this", "who…
Since the coding part is now done, I decided to solder the Arduino and IR sensor on a bit of perfboard, and then put it in a case. I don't have a case though; but what I do have is a 3D printer, so I'm going to try my hands at designing one. This was interesting because I've never really designed anything before. I've always printed out models from Thingiverse or Printables, or if I needed something custom I kind of crudely put something together out of basic shapes in the slicer. Today I…
Now that the IR receiver is working and I can receive key presses from the remote on the Arduino, it's time to think about sending them to the PC somehow. The remote I'm planning to use is the small Apple remote that came with old Macbooks. It has five buttons for Play/Pause, Vol +, Vol -, Next Track, Previous Track and Menu. The keyboard library For sending key presses from the Arduino to the PC via USB I found two libraries. One is actually already built into the IDE, and an example for how…
Okay, enough theory. Time to actually start implementing. First step is to download the latest version of the Arduino IDE, which is currently 2.3.10. I've worked with version 1 before so I think I'll get by, but there are also a number of tutorials available to get you up to speed. The Arduino IDE The Arduino IDE That's what it looks like at first boot. Very simple. The Arduino programming language is really just C with a number of useful functions and defines added to make life easier.…
Yesterday I announced that I'm planning to build a USB-IR receiver for my media centre. Let's look in a bit more detail at what I'm trying to do here. I have three components: An infrared receiver An Arduino A remote Infrared receiver, Arduino clone, Apple remote I want to connect the infrared receiver to the Arduino so that the Arduino can receive commands I send from the remote, convert it to something the computer can easily understand (maybe by acting as a keyboard and sending keycodes) and…
It's that time of the year again. For the past three years I participated in the old computer challenge every year, and I always had a lot of fun, so I wanted to do something this year, too. The topic for this year isn't strictly about old computers, but rather about making something yourself, to combat the onslaught of AI slop that we're all being subjected to on a daily basis. I like this topic, and so I've been racking my brain without much success on what I could (and want to) make. I…
It keeps happening. I can't control it. Sometimes, I feel nostalgic for some old piece of tech, and before I know what's happening, I'm already browsing eBay looking for one. That's how I ended up with an old Thinkpad from 2004 recently. And now it happened again, and so I'm now the proud owner of a Sony Cassette Walkman. Despite not having any tapes anymore.... Ok, so I got nostalgic for Walkmans (Walkmen?) and tapes recently, and as I was browsing eBay I found this one, sold as not working,…
I recently had a "phone support" call with my parents, where they needed help with their computers and smartphones and the internet router. They regularly ask me for help, because they're completely overwhelmed and out of their depth when it comes to modern technology, and it makes me sad to see how much they struggle with their devices. We have incredible technology these days; things that 40 or 50 years ago were pure science fiction, like a supercomputer that you carry around in your pocket…
It's July again! Soon, anyway. And this means two things: Heat waves (hate it) and computer shenanigans thanks to the Old Computer Challenge (love it). This is what I started this blog with three years ago, and I've participated every year since. Last year the community was a bit meh, and for a while it looked like nobody was interested this time, but Tekk came up with a nice concept and updated the website accordingly. This year's challenge is again not strictly defined, but I like the topic:…
I recently discovered that Bubbles offers the option to embed a widget on your website, to show how often your post has been upvoted and also to nudge people to go upvote in the first place. I'm not sure if I really want this on my blog and if it really has any kind of benefit... The idea behind it of course is to get your post in front of more eyes and increase your reach and visibility, and this leads back to the question why I write a blog in the first place. Is it just to get my thoughts…
This week, the new Commodore under CEO Peri Fractic (actor turned Youtuber Christian Simpson) announced the release of their latest product, a flip phone they called the Callback. And people online went nuts. Some love it, but most seem to hate it and the feedback has been overwhelmingly (very) negative. I have some thoughts too, so I thought I'd write them out here. The device itself I actually like it. I used to own a Samsung Z230 flip phone in the late 2000s and I absolutely loved it. The…
In Hyde's recent Over/Under series of interview posts, David left the question "If you could be transported back in history to a period of time, when would it be and why?" for the next participant, who happened to be Elena Rossi. She gave a great answer, and then David and Hyde answered the same question too on their blogs, so I thought I'd chime in with my two cents as well. If I could be transported back in history to a period of time, when would it be and why? If I had a time machine, this…
A few weeks ago I gave myself permission to skip the intro of these posts if I can't think of anything interesting or clever to say, and I skipped it twice since then. Well, I've been informed that people miss the intro, so I'm going to do my best to bring it back ;) There's just not a lot happening in my life currently, and I'm in a bit of a writing slump, so I struggle to come up with interesting or funny things to talk about. That's also why I haven't been blogging a lot recently. I guess…
Articles No Juniors Today, No Seniors in 2031 — Blog | Filipe Brito Ferreira — Front-End EngineerA depressing article about where the tech industry is headed thanks to short-sighted CEOs replacing junior positions with incompetent AI. (via Les Orchard) Software/Services GitHub - mplsllc/macsurf: A modern web browser for Classic Mac OS 9 PowerPCSomeone ported the lightweight Netsurf web browser to classic Mac OS, so if you're still rocking your Clamshell iBook like it's 1999, then first of all…
When I was young, I was a huge AC/DC fan. I started listening to them probably around the time I got my driver's license, maybe a year or so earlier, and I remember driving around in my Dad's tiny blue Ford Fiesta blaring AC/DC at full volume. I loved it, while everybody else probably thought I was a complete dork. Good times. Fast forward 25 years, and I recently realised that apart from hearing the occasional song here and there on the radio, I haven't really put on an AC/DC record in years.…
I think I say this every year, but I'm really not a fan of summer. At least not when it's over 30°C, that's just too hot for me. Well we just had a week of 30°C and more, and it's not even June yet! If that's the temperature in May, I'm really not looking forward to what we get in July and August... maybe it won't be so bad, but I think it's time to dust off my portable AC and make sure it's ready for what might be coming. Articles Linux Fu: Fake Webcams Have Many Uses | HackadayLinux makes it…
I love the Windows 98 era of computing and gaming, but until now I didn't really have a good Windows 98 computer. Old Pentium systems are increasingly hard to come by and expensive, especially if you also want to have a period correct GPU like a 3dfx Voodoo card. Not to mention that a desktop PC takes up a lot of space. But there are still lots of systems on the market that can be found for very little money, and thanks to modern patches and drivers Windows 98 can be made to run on hardware…
Articles Google Search as you know it is over | TechCrunchGoogle is turning up the enshittification to 11. Here's a very accurate summary of Google's latest I/O conference. Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract - Jeff GeerlingAnd another product that's getting worse for the end user... it's always the same story. Software/Services The Virtual OS MuseumI haven't tried it yet, but it sounds amazing - a pack of hundreds of operating systems, all pre-installed and ready to run and…
I enjoy playing around with old computers and software from the 90s and early 2000s. My childhood computer was the Amiga 500 which I still have and which I love dearly, but the Windows 9x/XP era of computing is the most nostalgic for me because this coincides with my teenage years and my early 20s, and there are just so many great things about it; 3dfx games, the early internet, Napster, ICQ, Winamp... it was a fascinating time in tech. One problem with computers from this time period is how to…
Last week I shared a post by David about backing up his blog. Except, due to a brain fart on my part, I called him Glyn, who is someone else entirely. Why? I have no idea... maybe I started writing the post before I had coffee. Thankfully people are paying more attention to what I write here than I am, because not long after I posted, I got a message from David asking why I called him Glyn. And almost at the same time I got a message from Glyn, asking why I called David by his name. So we went…
Recently I've been struggling to find things to write in the intro of these posts, or finding things to write on the blog in general. I'm kind of in a creative slump it seems... and I don't really know what to do about it except wait it out and see when the creativity comes back. Don't worry, the linkdumps aren't going to stop, but they might appear without an intro sometimes. I think it's better to do it this way rather than try and force myself to come up with something just for the sake of…
It's time somebody invented beaming. And it doesn't have to be beaming a person at first, though that would be ideal... but maybe we could start with small objects. For example, I usually write these posts at my favourite café downtown. But I haven't been feeling too well the last couple of days, so I have to stay home. And now it would be awesome to have a small beaming device, maybe the size of a microwave, where I can put in an empty coffee mug and beam it down to the café where they fill it…
Yesterday the new Commodore, run by YouTuber Perifractic (Christian Simpson) announced their new product, a faithful recreation of the C64C, the second revision of the Commodore 64. Essentially it's the same as the first one they released, but it uses the case of the old C64C which has the same design language as the later Amiga machines. To produce the cases they're using the original case molds which had a small design flaw: “The C64C molding was created using a 2-point flow pattern that…
Life, uh, finds a way. That's what the internet recently feels like to me. Tech bros and corporations are doing their best to fuck things up and make everything AI generated and agentic and an absolute nightmare to use, and yet the indie web is thriving. People are blogging and writing newsletters and sharing their diy projects, and new services like Bubbles are popping up which make discovering new human created content easier. It feels like in recent years more and more blogs are turning up,…
I've been reading mostly blogs lately, and it kind of shines through in these link dumps. Most of the links I've been collecting recently are blog posts, and only occasionally do I see something that fits in any of the other categories. A lot of things seem to be just about AI or politics, and neither are topics that I want to give too much room in here. Thankfully personal blogs are thriving, and there's a new service in town which aims to make discovery easier, so there's no shortage of go...
Last week I shared a link to a post about which data is processed when you verify your identity with Linkedin. A friend got in touch and noted that this post and in fact the entire site seems like it was written by AI to him. He pointed me to GPTZero, an AI detector and indeed according to this the post was likely written by AI. Now that doesn't mean that the content of the post is not valid; maybe the author is just not a good writer and decided to let an LLM brush up his writing. Or do the...
Thanks to Zak I just learned that today (April 9th) is CSS Naked Day, a day to strip your website of it's CSS and show what it looks like underneath in plain HTML. By sheer coincidence I worked a bit on making the HTML more readable without CSS yesterday. So this is what this site looks like without CSS. Not amazing, but still usable I think. I still would like it to look better, like a true 90s website. Maybe next year...
Right now as I'm writing this, humans are travelling to the moon for the first time within my lifetime. I'm not the biggest space nerd, but spaceflight and especially the Apollo moon program have always kind of fascinated me. And so I'm loosely following their journey to see how it's going and how far they've already gotten. Right now their distance from earth is around 91,700 km and ticking up by several kilometres every second. There are a few good websites where you can track the progress...
Dear readers, we have some exciting news to share! Starting right now, this blog will be written exclusively by AI. Yes, you read that right — AI is the author and the future for 82MHz has never looked brighter! Why this matters, and why it's so exciting We're kicking this blog into overdrive! Relentless creativity: Instant brainstorming, bold angles, and plot twists on demand — like a writer who never sleeps (and never misses a deadline). Faster content, fresher ideas: Expect more posts, mo...
