hackshack · HackerTrans

Oh no! That keyboard was incredible. Very compact, built in TrackPoint (tm) pointing stick, and option to use USB dongle or Bluetooth. It was the perfect KVM / server rack keyboard, and uniquely great as a VR headset keyboard. I remember it was frequently out of stock and would sell out very quickly. Cannot understand why they would discontinue this keyboard.

hackshack

4 miesiące temudiscuss

USB-C has a mode to run analog audio over its cable, called "Audio Adapter Accessory Mode." It uses the D+ and D- pins for Right and Left, and SBU1 and SBU2 for Mic and Ground.

Texas Instruments explains the scheme in a document, "tidub66.pdf."

I know USB-C connectors aren't quite what you had in mind, but they are smaller and more rugged than the 3.5mm connector (in my opinion).

Downside is it is not widely supported, but it is possible. The host device needs to support a way to detect the analog USB-C audio cable (recognized through four shorted pins) and then to split off the analog audio signals before they hit the internal USB transceiver chip.

hackshack

4 miesiące temudiscuss

This person scraped phosphor out of a broken fluorescent tube and made several experimental CRTs: https://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/crt/crt6.htm

From the site: "The cathode ray tubes that I am describing here are crude and they are relatively easy to make at home. They are in fact, much easier to build than most technically minded people would ever imagine."

hackshack

6 miesięcy temudiscuss

Between this, and icon-only toolbars and ribbons, I think we're reinventing Chinese, badly. Ideographic characters can often convey meaning succinctly.

My vote is to either go back to picture icons, or use Chinese characters with localized pronunciation, so 車 or 车 is car, and so on.

hackshack

7 miesięcy temudiscuss

"Remembering the Kanji," by James Heisig, will set you up real good. I recommend this to anyone who starts in with the 3000+ character thing. It is fundamentally different from rote memorization that they would have you do at school, instead using mnemonics and stories.

hackshack

7 miesięcy temudiscuss

You're on to something. I tried this too, a few months ago, with offline Ollama/Magistral on Mac. "You're a dungeonmaster for a single player adventure game, with me as the player..."

It lost track of things almost immediately. But the foundation was there.

Maybe if we had a MUD-tuned model...

If it has an approximate way to track state, and a "pre-caching" method where it can internally generate an entire town all at once, room by room, so hallucinations are rarer... actually starts to sound like a traditional DM's method of world building for a campaign.

Maybe something like an LLM-assisted Inform (interactive fiction engine). https://ganelson.github.io/inform-website/

Side note: been playing Aesir, then the Aesir 2 MUD since 1994. It's still up!

hackshack

7 miesięcy temudiscuss

+1; thanks from another satisfied user. I have an annual SOLIDWORKS plan, but SolveSpace is my go-to for quick stuff. It makes CAD fun. There is a clarity of design behind the software that gives it a zen-like feel.

hackshack

9 miesięcy temudiscuss

radmind had this philosophy. https://radmind.org

It let you create diffs of a filesystem, and layer them with configurations, similar to containers. Useful for managing computer labs at the time.

hackshack

10 miesięcy temudiscuss

Consider checking out this fellow's project. He's making an e-ink text editor: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5jL92TrQ803IKtdFwmUC...

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