Tim Burbank @robotfriend@squid.cafe

Day 999 of....whatever this is

It feels like I'm in the place with electrical engineering that I was with writing code 10 years ago. I have no idea what I'm doing, but can kinda get it to work.

Except that I went to school for writing code and very much did not go to school for electrical engineering

wheee hyperfocus is fun.* I think I spent seven(?) hours today looking at the parts available with different wire connectors (JST PH, JST SH, IDC) and came to the conclusion I need to make custom cables

*"fun" meaning oh god I need to eat

Today I'm trying to see if I can use org-mode for electronics inventory. Because when your only tool is an eldritch swiss army knife every problem looks like it should bend to your will

But it fits pretty well into the stack of otherwise-legitimate music gear

https://zynthian.org/ "we made an open hardware synth platform with a Raspberry Pi in a really graceful small form factor"

me: "it's gonna be in a box, 1m wide, with a CRT. There's gonna be a 4 track tape recorder involved"

What I didn't mention in the writeup, is that I've had the Raspberry Pi that controls the keypanel lights connected with a breadboard for the last two years.

I've now properly(ish) soldered it! (Because I needed the breadboard)

I love this hardware because a) it's very pretty, and b) there's no computer in it. Just some very specific integrated circuits

I wrote a thing! About learning how to talk to part of an old video router https://www.timburbank.com/reverse-engineering-video-router/

Anyways, unrelated but https://www.timburbank.com/ now contains no YouTube embeds or other third party content

The fun thing about building your own website is any attempt to post something new easily turns into "what if I redid a bunch of the structure instead" (part 200)

Idk why, but Moon dot NASA dot Gov is a very good domain

Lunar eclipse tonight! Starting 10:30pm on East Coast
https://moon.nasa.gov/

Note: In a pinch, "ending the day by writing a failing test" can mean "test_thing(): raise NotImplementedError"

I'm also learning to end the day by writing a failing test, so when I come back the next day it automatically tells me what I need to do

This has been a real hard week to focus on writing code, and I've been relying a lot on my test-driven process.

"I don't need to figure out what to do next, I just need to write a failing test"

And like, I've needed to learn more about guitar pedals for the last 10 years. But also it didn't have to be this weekend