Samathy @s@social.samathy.space

I've been stacking up a long list of guitar pedals I want to try and make: Reverb/delay, Op-amp overdrive, low/high pass filters, tremolo, ring-mod. 🎸

Its quite a list!

None of them are hugely complex, electronically. At least, making something that works isnt hard, I'm not saying that it'll sound great though.

I need to do a big components order to get hold of some ICs, transistors and stomp-switches.

There are probably ways to do this - I believe Dreamwidth has functionality to show posts to a specific sub-group.
Mastodon& Facebook also has this to some extent.
But they miss the 'Show me only updates from _these_ people' part.

I generally dislike the idea of a 'Group chat ' for life updates. Seeing as its super easy for things to get lost in there.

And, as mentioned, existing platforms lump posts from all the people you 'Follow' into one feed, rather than specific, separate feeds.

It'd be nice to, every week or so, check my family feed and see what everyone has been up too. Optionally interact there, but also not feel any pressure to 'answer'.

In the book I'm reading at the moment, Abbadon's Gate - James S.A Corey, there is the concept of a "Family Feed".
An asynchronous platform where family members post life updates and questions for consumption by other family members at their leisure.

We have feeds like this now ( Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon... )- but they normally include vast numbers of friends, family and people we barely know. I like the idea of multiple specific, closed feeds for different social groups one is a member of.

@s The ICs used to be kept fairly out of the way (so no one used them) and now they're just... In cardboard boxes on the floor.

But, equally useless since you can't really know what's available.

If anyone needs a whole bunch of Z80 PIO chips, apparently Nottinghack is the place to find them 🤷‍♀️

Today was good!
I was at the hackspace all afternoon working on pendents, spending time with @iguana and doing a bunch of sorting and tidying with another fellow hacker.

I made a blue pendent for a friend that turned out really well.

We discovered that Nottinghack has an obscene amount of (mostly sorted and labeled) integrated circuits in some cardboard boxes. Various kinds.

@s Really enjoyed tidying up the electronics area with a fellow hacker.
Its been super nice to get that social time with someone, and also to feel like I'm contributing more to the space.

I think Electronics is the most well stocked area of the Nottinghack.
Which is great, but that also means we have a LOT of electronics stuff to store and manage. Until I started a couple weeks ago, no one was really taking charge of it.

@s Pendents MK2 are looking good, with the transparent epoxy.

Some work to go on getting the epoxy to just surround the LEDs rather than pool under the piece.
I tried putting less on the front, and then also putting epoxy on the back to surround the LEDs.

Future plans include new shapes, and potentially fitting some SMD resistors in the pendent to reduce the painful brightness levels of the LEDs.

I've been sick with a cold for the past 2 days 🤒
Still, managed to get some good tidying up done at the hackspace in Tuesday along with some makin' of my LED pendents.

Also been playing a bunch of Tomb Raider Chronicles on my PlayStation. Videogame haven't managed to be that higher priority in a long time.

Worked on my upcoming talk too! It's going to be a good one.

So this week a hasn't been a total loss.

@s I explained how I feel about Halloween to my partner as "Imagine if you'd never done Christmas until your early 20s, but everyone else has been doing it since they were born".

Id probably be similarly baffled by the whole Christmas thing, and similarly have no idea what the right and wrong things to do are.

@s I probably won't be doing that much again this year, because I haven't got time or energy to make a good costume. And... I really don't understand how it's worth my time to do so?

Theres a thing on at the local Hackspace, so I'll go to that. It'll be a good combination of people who made some effort, and people who made zero effort, but like the idea of being in a space with other people. (I am the latter).

It's coming up towards Halloween again and once more, I'm not really prepared, nor am I particularly interested in it.

I didn't take part in Halloween at all until Uni. As a result I really don't know _how_ to do it.
I don't have much of a feeling for what one should do, when, how much effort should it be etc.

I never felt comfortable wearing, or preparing a costume - probably because I never feel like I've done it correctly.

Today I went to a retro video games fair.
I came home with a PlayStation (SCPH-1002, PAL), Tomb Raider 2, Tomb Raider Chronicles & 3 fancy semi-transparent Japanese PlayStation memory cards.

I'm still missing Tomb Raider, The last Revelation on PlayStation, and Angel of Darkness on PS2.

Later we went to a board games shop, where I found this 1987 Star Trek Compendium.

Finally, we visited Nottingham's Goose Fair.

Busy day!

I've been reminded that it's another year's #hacktoberfest2019.
Perhaps this will be the motivation I need to finish those PRs to the Dub project that I've had open for MONTHS.

Its not that it's hard to finish them, but it takes a fair amount of consecutive hours where I also have brain energy to do it, which I don't often have.

Ich in der Regen und Dunklen gerannt, mit The Expanse Musik. Es war Awesome!

Super atmospheric and gritty and just fantastic.

The bonuses of having a largish personal technical library are very similar to the bonuses of having a good stock of electrical components.

When I need to get references for a talk, I have a stack of books already in my shelves to start with.

So far, it's been a nice way to get some inspiration for the shape of the talk. 📚

What tools do you use to get things done?

I use Todoist a LOT - but I'd like some idea for other tools/methods for tracking todos, targets, goals, daily habits etc...

Danke ❤️

Heute ich bin in Nottingham Hackspace der Crapathon machen

Machen ein problem kein leute haben!
Eine lösung machen!
Ein scheiße preis gewinnen!

Das Thema ist 'Artificial Stupidity'.

----

Today I am at Nottingham doing the 'Crapathon'.

Create a problem no one has! Design a solution for it!
Win a really crap award!

The theme this year is Artificial Stupidity.

I swapped the battery in my 2014 laptop because laptops haven't increased in power, or screen tech enough that I really need to get a new one.

Its a i5-4200u with a 1080p IPS screen. It only has 4GB of RAM, but I rarely fill that up.

The battery was very, very dead though. Miss-reporting it's capacity and just conking out at random times.