Mostly technology in small bites
While trying to clean up some office wiring I grabbed a new spare 4-port Gigabit hub and discovered that it was missing its dongle power brick. That’s not the first time I’ve received an electronic device missing its power supply and figured I might be able to find one as it needs 5v and 0.6A. […]
As discussed in the prior post around switching to LaunchBox for retro gaming, I decided to convert my early 2013 Macbook Pro 15″ Retina to Windows. It had the latest version of MacOS on it and I could (and probably should) have simply followed the steps to convert it to a dual boot configuration using […]
Over the last week or so, my attempts to create a really straight forward retro gaming systems took a number of unanticipated twists and turns. As documented in my previous post, it started out with installing the latest version of Linux Mint on an older Intel Core i5-based laptop and then overlaying that with RetroPie. […]
If you are reading this, you probably know that I’ve slowly but surly been adding more and more IoT smart devices to my home. Over the course of the weekend I added three Shelly 1 Plus devices to control our porch lights and the light in our sun room. The objective is to create an […]
An essential accessory for every laptop!
I am super stoked about my retro gaming system project. I discovered that RetroPie includes support for retro PC games via integrated DosBox. To take it for a trial run, I loaded an old (1993) game from Apogee Software called Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure. After some fiddling around to get the install right and the screen […]
Over the years I’ve collected a number of aged laptops that are of limited use as daily Windows 10/11 daily drivers due to inadequate hardware specs, worn out batteries, and/or mechanical issues like unreliable displays and keys. I’ve struggled with finding a real use for them as I have plenty of server horsepower already between […]
Simple technology, but think where we would be without it!
I am finally getting back into updating our smart home. Lots of smart switches out there that plug into mains voltage, but few that are small, operate off wifi and battery. So I pulled out the electronics kit and whipped up this simple smart wifi usb switch using an ESP8266 chip. Now to design a case and […]
Since I would be taking a trip to visit relatives, I put the printer to work cranking out a few fun toys to play with and as painting projects for my 9-year old grand niece. One toy we had a ton of fun with at the park was this whirlybird gizmo. It was fully 3D […]