#introduction

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a gravel road winds through the forest. on the right, a "private road" sign reads "eratee" (est.)

Time for a new #introduction post. Hello! My name is Gosha, and I'm a middle aged dude living in London with my partner and our daughter. My day job is in software building, and I'm interested in many topics, including photography, music, cycling, travel, etc. These days I'm mostly trying to (re)discover new layers of meaning, and to learn to live life as intentionally as I can, making many mistakes in the process.

Here's a picture of my daughter and I taken by my partner, @Tingyi

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A colour photograph of a baby with her face in a bowl of noodles, and the author taking a photo of her from across the table.

today @holo_memory and i launched 3 new MNT Pocket Reform related products on the shop, check them out:
- Pocket Reform Mainboard 2.0 with lots of little goodies incl. USB-C DisplayPort alt-mode and closed-case debugging via USB-C https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-pocket-reform-mainboard-2-0
- the improved Pocket Keyboard PCB 2.0 with a "bring your own switches" option and new browns (tactile) switches option https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-pocket-reform-keyboard-pcb-2-0
- Pocket Keyboard USB-C adapter (for recovery/programming or standalone use) https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-pocket-reform-keyboard-usb-c-adapter

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photo of MNT Pocket Reform Mainboard 2.0

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photo of MNT Pocket Reform Keyboard 2.0 with no keyswitches soldered

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closeup photo of the MNT Pocket Reform Keyboard USB-C adapter

doing some MNT Reform Next production part checks, esp. cables and some PCBs... can't believe it's starting to come together after those years

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2 MNT Reform Nexts im various states of (dis)assembly

Opinions on this work in progress logo for the #EVi editor? I had to learn #Inkscape for this.

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The EVi logo, using a heavily modified VIm logo. It's been tilted on it's side as a square, with it's colours a more orangey brown wish a gradiant. The letters "EVi" can been seen in the middle.

I've added easily customizable color theme support to Cucumber. Simply edit the settings.ini file on the SD card and define your color theme!

This LCD doesn't capture well on camera, but here's the Solarized "dark" theme ported over.

More details are on the project page: https://github.com/TangentDelta/cardputer-uxn

#uxn #m5stack

There is always time for blinkin lights!!

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Blender/116482997785333001

And related to this, #Blender already has Claude slop commits.

It's all fucked, Blender went dark.

https://github.com/blender/blender/commit/336b5d0de12a438614846961b7961bbf35399eb3
https://github.com/blender/blender/commit/79e02e1405a98884cc8fd5505cc54df2c2dc5d21
https://github.com/blender/blender/commit/7ee94c067cf71845727672ed77dc25f088cd5b32

Not to mention one user has specifically admitted to using AI code review for commits that are in Blender's codebase.

https://github.com/blender/blender/commit/b80b3e040dd3ac979e97540b4bb0f18a1c5ad021
https://github.com/blender/blender/commit/eaadb0c3043288d78b897b15bcc8d336c749de15

#NoAI #FuckAI #AntiAI #Tech #Technology #Animation #3DAnimation #Claude

Blender 🔶 » 🌐 2026-04-28
@Blender@mastodon.social

Welcome Anthropic as a Corporate Patron sponsor of the Blender Foundation’s Development Fund! This support will be dedicated towards general Blender core development. More details at https://www.blender.org/press/anthropic-joins-the-blender-development-fund-as-corporate-patron/

#b3d #DevFund

Was looking at the digital audio in Another World (aka Out of This World) and found it pretty fascinating.

The game has an all-digital soundtrack and supports digital playback on SoundBlaster, AdLib(!), and PC Speaker(!) I was curious to see how it manages to do digital sound across all these devices and came away pretty impressed.

For SoundBlaster it's straightforward, since the SB supports digital audio directly. However, the way the game runs the audio is unusual: it configures the PIT to generate 10,000 interrupts/second, and manually feeds a single 8-bit sample to the SB on each interrupt, rather than using PC's DMA controller to send data like almost every other game.

For PC Speaker, it uses a similar technique. But since the PC speaker is essentially a 1-bit DAC, it can't just feed an 8-bit sample to it. Instead, it changes the timer connected to the speaker, which is normally in "square wave" mode, to run instead in "one shot" mode. This means whenever a new timer count is written, the timer drives the speaker low until the count is expired, then the timer goes high again and remains there. By programming different values, the game essentially does pulse-width modulation at 10kHz to produce surprisingly reasonable digital sound.

For the AdLib, which is an FM-only chip, it uses a clever hack. It programs one channel for playback with instant attack and forever sustain, and starts a note playing. Then, almost immediately afterwards, it changes the note's frequency to 0, which causes the phase counter to stop counting and essentially locks the channel's output to whatever position within the sine wave it was when the frequency was nullified. With proper timing, it will be near its peak. At this point, the game can alter the channel's "total level" (aka volume) and change the magnitude of the locked output, basically making it into a DAC. The total level is only 6 bits, so it's lower fidelity than the SoundBlaster, but still sounds pretty decent.

I don't get all the hype, I've been a prompting engineer for 40 years!

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Black screen with white pixely letters saying "Starting MS-DOS... C:\>_"

I got tired of losing my own reference photos, and I really didn’t want to lock them all in the cloud

So I built Sortie! A local-first gallery manager ദ്ദി(˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧ Pinterest-style layout, natural language search, tons of filters, and you can pull new images from Pinterest without an account and without ads.

Free on Windows / macOS / Linux: https://nighten.itch.io/sortie

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Screenshot of "Sortie", showing a masonry grid with various images from anime, memes, pictures, in a wild range of style. A search bar at the top is visible.

1/2

Apple in 2007: here’s 400 videos playing at the same time, with interactive search and real-time animations (via https://t.me/ilyabirman_channel/12350)

This feels wise for the #EU:

“We don't need a "European [add US social media platform]" – that would be just a different kind of centralised trap – we need a commitment to open protocols for our digital infrastructure. By moving our digital hangouts and town squares to decentralised protocols we ensure that no single entity – be it either governments and/or a volatile billionaires – can pull the plug on our democratic discourse and… 🧵 1/2

Since we moved from city to rural land, to a house where the bathroom and kitchen are outside, my boy observed: “This year there are way more full moons.”

/me: was you day productive?
/also_me: define productive!

#OpenBSD #WindowMaker #DockApps #sndiod

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Three dockapps

This is so cool. For their graduate thesis, writer & crafter, Alanna Okun made a game about knitting and hand knitted an arcade console to put it in.

The game: https://alannabean.itch.io/loose-ends

More info: http://www.alannaokun.xyz/

marion selgall
astrid uus

#regilaulupodcast vi hooaeg [estonian]

Been playing with the Acme editor from #plan9port. Very much out of my comfort zone (vi-like editors) but so far I quite like it. My goal is to install #9front on my old Thinkpad T430 and use it for writing in my bedroom once I've properly gotten to grips with the editor. Seems like a solid choice of OS for reducing distractions and I find a lot of the ideas behind #plan9 really appealing.

General use daily driver is – and will remain – #openbsd, of course.

o_O

no, thank you
#grapheneos

Are you sure you want
computer now?

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Picture of Basilisk II (68k Macintosh emulator) running on the PAX S920 payment terminal. There is Mac OS 7 running inside of the emulator and it's asking the user if they "are sure they want computer now"

“but how would you know what the IP address was, grandad?”

“well, that’s the thing, it didn’t have one.”

“oh, so how would you update the firmware then?”

“it had none. it was just a tea kettle.”

“woah.”

#microfiction

🆕 EU Longest Train Journey 🆕

Kemijärvi 🇫🇮 - Lagos 🇵🇹

🦅 Geodesic: 4088.33km
🛤️ Route-km: 6251.5km

⏱️Trip time: 87 hours 29 minutes
🚆Trains: 16
💶 Cost: around €400, with Interrail

All mapped and explained here 👇
https://eulongesttrainjourney.jonworth.eu

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Map of the longest train journey in the EU

Guess leaving the winter tires on the car for a bit longer was the right decision

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Photo of an apartment block covered by thick, fluffy snow taken from a balcony. The railing on the balcony has a few centimeters of snow build up as well

Rate my counterculture* computer corner

#homelab #offgridFlaki

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Prominent ultrawide monitor takes up the most part of a standing desk, its orange-accented stand gives a splash of color and goes well with the Keychron mechanical keyboard's orange accented keys. There is a large deskmat with blue geometric patterns under the keyboard. There is a tiny computer tucked away in the corner behind the screen. It has no top but a large passive copper heatsink protrudes from the inside of the case that looks like the wireframe of an upside-down cone. In the corner of the house there are various boxes and tools stacked on top of each other in front of a large glass windowpane overlooking the grassy outdoors. There is a wooden shelf behind a desk even more stacked with various tools and electronics components

When Julia draws, I write.

My mobile setup with  @ia their Writer is excellent! I am missing a better, adjustable stand for the phone. Recommendations?

#noad

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A person types on a small wireless keyboard at a wooden table with two drinks, pens, a notebook, and a iPhone on a stand.

A new UNIX snapshot from 1977 to be released soon!!!

#unix #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing

On the topic of software enshittification and AI upsell: I'm used to Chrome doing vile Google stuff, I'm used to stupid paid bookmarks in Firefox, but I'm scared by what Firefox has became. I run Debian-oldstable, OpenBSD and NetBSD, and in all of them Firefox has clickbait links in new tabs and "AI search" and the likes. The one shipped with Debian also spooked me with "Chat with this tab". How did we end up here 🥲

Edit: yes, by all means, use good forks, and encourage others to use good forks, but don't forget that most people won't use a fork, and thus it is important to keep pushing for upstream to be good and ethical

A progress report on my "Migrate from MacBook to Net?Open?BSD" mini-project.

Are we there yet? No. Were important lessons learned? Yes!

🧵

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A photo of a Dell laptop on a table, with the screen showing a guitar application PowerTab running on NetBSD. The song loaded in it is Black Dog by Led Zeppelin