brad

@brad@posiwid.net

electrical engineer, synth designer, ham radio operator. alt of @kr4dio@mastodon.radio
website: ✔ https://posiwid.net
pronouns: he/him
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[?]brad »
@brad@posiwid.net

Turkey vulture basking in the morning sun

Photo of a turkey vulture with its wings spread wide

Alt...Photo of a turkey vulture with its wings spread wide

Photo of a turkey vulture with its wings slightly spread

Alt...Photo of a turkey vulture with its wings slightly spread

brad boosted

[?]George Takei :verified: 🏳️‍🌈🖖🏽 »
@georgetakei@universeodon.com

A reminder that if the government can send migrants to a prison camp without any due process, it can send U.S. citizens there, too. I know because this happened to me and my family in 1942.

[?]ɗ𐐩ʃƕρʋ »
@deshipu@fosstodon.org

Oh no, an idea for a project!

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[?]ɗ𐐩ʃƕρʋ »
@deshipu@fosstodon.org

Looks like that might actually work...

a xiao sub-micro servo shield

Alt...a xiao sub-micro servo shield

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[?]Bill Plein🌶 »
@bplein@bvp.me

@deshipu Do share!

I've been playing around with KiCad for the first time, and I'm quite the noob. I was going to make my own INA3221 board to simplify (and clean up wiring) I've experienced with other INA boards.

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    [?]brad »
    @brad@posiwid.net

    @bplein@bvp.me if you ever want a hand or a second set of eyes on a kicad design, I'd be happy to help

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      Ed W8EMV :radio_tower: boosted
      in reply to »

      [?]brad »
      @brad@posiwid.net

      @w8emv@mastodon.radio Depending on terrain, a handful of fixed infrastructure nodes can be really helpful in making the mesh usable until it can reach critical mass. It's been cool watching our Austin mesh develop from a dozen people messaging "ack?" to fairly robust coverage through most of the city over the past year.

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        [?]brad »
        @brad@posiwid.net

        One of the first signs of spring: my Texas Redbuds are budding

        small pink-red flower buds on thin branches

        Alt...small pink-red flower buds on thin branches

        closeup photo of red-pink flower buds

        Alt...closeup photo of red-pink flower buds

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        [?]brad »
        @brad@posiwid.net

        A dust storm from West Texas blew through this afternoon, turning everything sepia

        Landscape photo with rolling hills and hazy dirt colored sky

        Alt...Landscape photo with rolling hills and hazy dirt colored sky

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        [?]brad »
        @brad@posiwid.net

        I spent all day re-arranging stuff in my office to make space for my new plotter -- this thing is a beast!

        Photo of a big red IBM power toggle switch

        Alt...Photo of a big red IBM power toggle switch

        Photo of the IBM badge on a 7375 pen plotter

        Alt...Photo of the IBM badge on a 7375 pen plotter

        Photo of the control panel of a 7375 pen plotter with several numbered buttons and a joystick

        Alt...Photo of the control panel of a 7375 pen plotter with several numbered buttons and a joystick

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          [?]brad »
          @brad@posiwid.net

          Are you familiar with the Citizen Weather Observer Program? http://www.wxqa.com/

          There are thousands of independent weather stations publishing their conditions over APRS, some via radio and some via the internet. You can grab the raw stream of data from any APRS server, or see it visualized on a site like https://aprs.fi

          CC: @xan@xantronix.social

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            [?]brad »
            @brad@posiwid.net

            I use miniflux (self-hosted): https://miniflux.app/

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              [?]brad »
              @brad@posiwid.net

              @KC8JC@mastodon.radio I recently switched from nvim to helix, and I'm enjoying it.

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                [?]brad »
                @brad@posiwid.net

                In that case, I hope you get a chance to see them. Vai and Danny Carey are great "young" additions, and Adrian is still a rock star :)

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                  [?]brad »
                  @brad@posiwid.net

                  @Ricardus@mastodon.sdf.org I saw BEAT in Austin a couple of months ago and thought it was great at the time. But after more reflection, I felt like it wasn't much more than a nostalgia experience. I really preferred the 2017 tour incarnation of KC with Fripp and the three drummers across the front of the stage.

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                    [?]brad »
                    @brad@posiwid.net

                    @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io This may just be my own personal journey, but I feel like the early-mid aughts were a special time with blogs, blog-rings, RSS, and aggregators. I remember building a proto-social-media site where local blogs were aggregated into a forum for discussion. A friend and I did a weekly podcast about underground rock bands in Shanghai. Pre smartphone photo blogs were amazing. Non-commercial sites like shanghaiist (gothamist franchise) and metafilter could survive on adword revenue. Google search still worked.

                    My memory of the "personal web" at that time is that it felt like it was a linear progression from BBSes, gopher, Usenet, and IRC. More graphical and more widely accessible, but with a lot of the same community spirit.

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                      [?]brad »
                      @brad@posiwid.net

                      I just realized my good ol' days ended about the time smartphones became ubiquitous. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. How much of that old feeling could be recaptured just by using a desktop computer to "go online?"

                      CC: @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

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                        [?]brad »
                        @brad@posiwid.net

                        Travis County decided my house is worth about 4x market value, so I get to spend several hours this morning waiting for them to show up for my "scheduled" protest hearing.

                        Photo of the Travis County Central Appraisal District building with blue sky in the background

                        Alt...Photo of the Travis County Central Appraisal District building with blue sky in the background

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                        [?]brad »
                        @brad@posiwid.net

                        The neighbors' falling-down shack finally fell all the way down. The kids and I were doing crafts when we heard a loud crash outside. The building was about 10ft from our property line. Before pic is from last summer.

                        Small house missing a couple of walls, leaning precariously

                        Alt...Small house missing a couple of walls, leaning precariously

                        Pile of construction debris

                        Alt...Pile of construction debris

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                        [?]brad »
                        @brad@posiwid.net

                        Back home in Austin, and our sage bush correctly predicted this morning's rain

                        Texas sage bush with pink-purple flowers in front of a blue sky with wispy white clouds

                        Alt...Texas sage bush with pink-purple flowers in front of a blue sky with wispy white clouds

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                        [?]brad »
                        @brad@posiwid.net

                        yt-dlp can also download subtitles, including automatically generated closed-captioning.
                        Formatting and screen captures would take some manual work, though.

                        CC: @Mnemonic@hackers.town

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                          [?]brad »
                          @brad@posiwid.net

                          Weekend project! Arduino based eprom programmer: https://github.com/walhi/arduino_eprom27_programmer

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                            [?]brad »
                            @brad@posiwid.net

                            While playing with my kids at Jinjiang Action Park (锦江乐园) earlier this week, I had a sudden rush of memories from my first time there in 2002-03. At the time, I still carried a paper pocket dictionary everywhere, but my Chinese had gotten good enough that I was able to make friends with people who didn't speak English. A couple of my "local" friends, S and X, wanted to check out this huge new ferris wheel that had just opened up. We walked around the outer wall of the park until we found a some construction debris we could use to climb over, then just hopped the wall. I don't remember what the ferris wheel cost, but it seemed expensive at the time, so S talked an attendant into letting us ride for free. They say the wheel is going to be torn down later this year.

                            photo of an amusement park with merry go round and ferris wheel

                            Alt...photo of an amusement park with merry go round and ferris wheel

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                            [?]brad »
                            @brad@posiwid.net

                            Bluetooth audio has been broken on my Ubuntu Macbook since the upgrade to 24.04, but I finally got around to seriously looking for a solution today. After quite a few useless stackoverflow comments, I found the answer. Turns out it was as simple as blacklisting the snd_soc_avs module: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pipewire/+bug/2063150

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                            [?]brad »
                            @brad@posiwid.net

                            @w8emv@mastodon.radio Sounds interesting. Do you happen to have a link to the PDF?

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                              [?]brad »
                              @brad@posiwid.net

                              If you've had ducks before you likely know better than I do, but I had better flow and fewer clogging issues with my garden fish pond drain when I switched to a dome-shaped bottom drain (think inverted salad bowl 1/2-inch above floor)

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                                [?]brad »
                                @brad@posiwid.net

                                It's apparently a real word, but my brain independently invented the term eco-brutalist when I saw the 1000 Trees building looming over Suzhou Creek this afternoon

                                Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters beside a river

                                Alt...Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters beside a river

                                Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters

                                Alt...Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters

                                Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters

                                Alt...Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters

                                Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters covered in scaffolding beside another highrise

                                Alt...Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters covered in scaffolding beside another highrise

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                                [?]brad »
                                @brad@posiwid.net

                                I feel fortunate to have had the chance to see a collection of Roman Verostko works in person at MUD Gallery in Shanghai. He was a great pioneer of generative and plotter art.

                                Artwork by Roman Verostko, colorful lines, thick black line

                                Alt...Artwork by Roman Verostko, colorful lines, thick black line

                                Artwork by Roman Verostko, colorful lines, thick black line

                                Alt...Artwork by Roman Verostko, colorful lines, thick black line

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                                [?]brad »
                                @brad@posiwid.net

                                Uspol [SENSITIVE CONTENT]@requiem@hackers.town I'm not an infosec expert, but I don't see how the US government can monitor or limit what software people run on their own computers, as the first paragraph of the article implies.

                                The article goes on to say that Kaspersky is banned from providing software to US users, which I guess is possible to enforce to a certain extent.

                                I'm in Shanghai right now, seamlessly using a VPN to access blocked content (including the linked article), so I'm a little skeptical.

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                                  [?]brad »
                                  @brad@posiwid.net

                                  @ripper@chaos.social If you have a lot of PCBs to change, it's possible to use a regex in your language of choice to modify the file directly

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                                    [?]brad »
                                    @brad@posiwid.net

                                    @ripper@chaos.social select all, edit menu, edit text and graphics properties

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                                      [?]brad »
                                      @brad@posiwid.net

                                      I took a little walk around Fengjing Ancient Town (枫泾古镇) on the outskirts of Shanghai this morning

                                      old Chinese buildings along a canal

                                      Alt...old Chinese buildings along a canal

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                                      [?]brad »
                                      @brad@posiwid.net

                                      @tony@mastodon.radio @W1CDN@mastodon.radio Seconding this. I spent a lot of time tweaking controller settings in RetroArch to make my 8bitdo Pro controller usable for N64 games, and I'm still not really happy with it.

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                                        [?]brad »
                                        @brad@posiwid.net

                                        The park by the National Palace Museum is pretty nice

                                        zig-zag bridge over a pond with koi

                                        Alt...zig-zag bridge over a pond with koi

                                        zig-zag bridge over a pond with koi

                                        Alt...zig-zag bridge over a pond with koi

                                        view of park with pond and pavilion

                                        Alt...view of park with pond and pavilion

                                        tropical trees with lots of air roots

                                        Alt...tropical trees with lots of air roots

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                                        [?]brad »
                                        @brad@posiwid.net

                                        Sunny morning in Taipei

                                        View over the rooftops of Taipei with Taipei 101 skyscraper and mountains in the background

                                        Alt...View over the rooftops of Taipei with Taipei 101 skyscraper and mountains in the background

                                        View over the rooftops of Taipei

                                        Alt...View over the rooftops of Taipei

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                                        [?]brad »
                                        @brad@posiwid.net

                                        We're on our way to Shanghai (via Seattle and Taipei)

                                        Airplane at gate with jetway attached and Delta baggage trolley

                                        Alt...Airplane at gate with jetway attached and Delta baggage trolley

                                        brad boosted

                                        [?]Paris Marx »
                                        @parismarx@mastodon.online

                                        Farmers in Bastrop, TX were hopeful when Elon Musk bought land nearby, but now he’s turning the area into “an environmentally hazardous industrial park.” Authorities won’t do anything because they’re understaffed and “intimidated by their powerful new neighbor.”

                                        texasmonthly.com/news-politics

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                                          [?]brad »
                                          @brad@posiwid.net

                                          @paulrickards@mastodon.social I didn't have a modem for my VIC20 or C64 when I was a kid, but I happen to have one of those VICmodem cartridge near the top of my retro computing project pile. I was thinking about sticking an esp32 serial-wifi thing in the case.

                                          VICModem cartridge, Hamtext VIC-20 cartridge, and serial port cartridge for HP85 on top of a TRS-80 pen plotter

                                          Alt...VICModem cartridge, Hamtext VIC-20 cartridge, and serial port cartridge for HP85 on top of a TRS-80 pen plotter

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                                            [?]brad »
                                            @brad@posiwid.net

                                            @dylanbeaudette@mastodon.radio I use RG400 for no particular reason other than (I think) it looks fancy

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                                              [?]brad »
                                              @brad@posiwid.net

                                              @brad@posiwid.net @dylanbeaudette@mastodon.radio I try to always have a BNC adapter or jumper handy

                                              RG400 coax jumper cable coiled with male RF connector and female BNC

                                              Alt...RG400 coax jumper cable coiled with male RF connector and female BNC

                                                ...
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                                                [?]brad »
                                                @brad@posiwid.net

                                                There's been a lot of talk about enshittification lately, and this Baffler article is a really good look at the history of SaaS: https://thebaffler.com/latest/spreadsheet-assassins-king

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                                                [?]brad »
                                                @brad@posiwid.net

                                                The boys and I hiked down to the bottom of our hill this afternoon

                                                Two boys facing away from the camera, climbing up a rocky hill with sparse vegetation under a blue sky

                                                Alt...Two boys facing away from the camera, climbing up a rocky hill with sparse vegetation under a blue sky

                                                Two boys facing away from the camera, walking down a rocky hill with sparse vegetation under a blue sky

                                                Alt...Two boys facing away from the camera, walking down a rocky hill with sparse vegetation under a blue sky

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