ReCalendar

As the year comes to a close, I began thinking I need to prepare my reMarkable PDF agenda for 2024. I first discovered the concept from
Vitaliy Kudryk’s latex-yearly-planner then found the amazing website ReCalendar that allows you to build your own personalized calendar PDF for Remarkable tablets. It is how I have been mostly using my reMarkable this year, and the only little complaint I had about the calendar is that it has lines instead of dots:

So, as we are enjoying a loooong holiday weekend here in Spain I thought I would try and prepare a PDF calendar with dots!

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Podcast Glory

I am currently living in a podcast glory moment of tremendously enjoying and taking advantage of the golden age of podcasts that we are currently living. And the best part is that this is due to adopting two technological changes I was totally against and had resisted until a series of circumstances helped force the change.

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Happy Birthday iMac!

I just read an email from Steven Levy about the 25th anniversary of the launch of the iMac. I never had one of the original iMacs and in 1998 I was on the side that thought Apple was a company that was done for but what a perfect occasion to share a few remembrances I have about Apple.

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PiMame

In early June 2013 I saw a guide on Adafruit about using a Raspberry Pi as a Mame game console. What I really loved was the idea of using the GPIO (general-purpose input/output) pins to directly connect the joystick and buttons. Not long after I was reviewing material in a warehouse to ensure that none of our networking equipment was stored there because the next day a chatarrero (scrap collector in spanish) was coming to take everything away. I did not find any of our networking equipment, but I did see an old Sony Trinitron security monitor that I immediately thought would make a great game console due to it’s form factor like the old Vectrex from my youth. So read on for the implementation and evolution of the project!

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Blog Security Review

I have spent the last few afternoons down in a security rabbit hole that started with a certain someone complaining that my blog was reported as unsecure because it did not support HTTPS. As this rabbit hole is quite deep, I invite you to ensuring you have a cool beverage or hot cup of coffee close at hand if you decide to continue reading…

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Raspberry Pi computers

On Wednesday February 29th 2012 Modern Family aired the “Leap Day” episode, which I loved because Phil was so excited that he had an extra day he took it off to spend with this family. Mr Eben Upton also took full advantage of the extra day and released the Raspberry Pi model B credit card size computer that cost 27.7€. The origin story I remember hearing at the time was that Eben and a friend were drinking a beer at a pub lamenting about the knowledge level of the computer science majors at a university where one of them taught. They remembered how they had been baptized with some government subsidized computer in the early 80’s that introduced them to programming and hacking (using this term in a good way to mean really playing with and understanding how things work) but the new students knew a little HTLM and thought they knew everything. So they thought what if we turn More’s Law on its head and instead of doubling the capacity, pack everything that was possible into a computer for a price point of of $20. With a computer for $20 anyone could hack away without too much fear of breaking something, and it would be possible to equip whole computer labs for the price of one regular computer.

So on that particular extra day back in 2012 I did not take it off, but I did spend hours in a virtual line trying to buy my first Raspberry Pi.

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