My new daily driver

Written Jun 14, 2019 - Blog

As I mentioned in my post about my mental health, I am using an X230 as my personal daily driver. I have yet to go completely crazy and swap the keyboard for an X220 keyboard (which I’m actually not sure I’d want to do - I like both keyboards and can’t say for certain which I like more), nor have I upgraded the display to either an IPS 12” or 13” panel (which I am more keen on doing when I have the money).

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Why would anyone spray paint a mouse?

Written Jun 8, 2019 - Blog

This story is going to seem like it is going nowhere, but trust me, it only kind of goes nowhere. Last year, someone asked me for advice on a pair of headphones for under $50, so I started watching random collections of tech stuff under $50. This led me to randomfrankp. After finding out that he was an Eagles fan, I decided to keep watching his videos, and eventually I saw the single best looking computer mouse of all time.

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I've gone completely insane

Written Jun 4, 2019 - Blog

I have gone completely insane. Within the month of May, I have ordered four ThinkPads. X201 Tablet My first purchase was an X201 Tablet, with an i7-640LM, and 4GB of RAM. It came with a battery and a charger, but no storage. I slapped in a 120GB SSD with Arch Linux, and all was well. I also spent $18 on a new pen for it. The laptop itself was $57 off eBay.

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Hacktoberfest 2018

Written Oct 31, 2018 - Blog

To be honest, I haven’t posted in a while, and this is really just an excuse for me to do so. Anyways, I’ll just briefly be talking about my experience with Hacktoberfest this year. If you’re not familiar with Hacktoberfest, you can read more about it here. I’ll admit that I shamefully only did the minimum 5 pull requests, but I’ve had a very busy month. Hopefully I will do better for Christmas, when I should have more free time.

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Finally using the Model M on a desktop

Written Jul 31, 2018 - Projects

Now I know the first time I wrote about my Model M keyboard I said it wasn’t worth it to leave a $10 dev board attached to the keyboard, opting instead to use an adapter, but I’ve changed my mind. My change of heart came about for two reasons: I couldn’t get the $5 adapter to work. Being able to remap keys on the fly is definitely worth $5. That second point is in reference to my recent blog post.

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My new favorite thing - CircuitPython

Written Jun 15, 2018 - Blog

Back when I did my arcade machine, I encountered two pretty big problems. First of all, writing the code to mimick a USB keyboard was not straightforward at all, and I resorted to copying some sample code and modifying it. But I didn’t understand the sample code at all. I know the TI boards are probably aimed at a more hardcode audience, one that wants to have as much control over the hardware as possibl, and while I usually love that sort of thing, there are days where I want to just write simple code.

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Internet of Graduation Caps

Written May 26, 2018 - Projects

During my last summer internship, a thought popped into my head. I realized that it wouldn’t be too hard to stick an LED matrix under my graduation cap, to have one that would be totally unique. Well, it turns out someone beat me to the punch, but I could still make one that was totally unique by stealing ideas from other places too. Reddit’s r/place was really cool. I figured I could recreate that on a 32x32 board.

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Spring 2018 Semester-in-Review

Written May 13, 2018 - Blog

My last semester is over, which is pretty sad. I was pretty busy for most of it, so this is actually my very first blog post all semester; I didn’t even do a semester in review post for last semester, other than the “What I’ve Been Up To” post. I did finally finish my GameCube adapter for the front of my computer, though. So, I took A History of Computing, Ethics, CSE Service Projects, and Introduction to Droid Building, and I did undergraduate research.

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