Alright
7
Replies
5
Boosts
I have managed to successfully do Computer Stuff for two days in a row!
(That's even sort of not true. It's more like a month, but most of what I was doing prior to two days ago was either maintenance I'd put off or "wouldn't it be neat if I set up a local IRC server and a couple of MS ComicChat clients?"
I was doing bullshit.
The last couple of days have been significantly more structured.)
I have some plans (some of which are personal, some of which are professional, some of which are community oriented (communal!))
Before I get too deeply embedded in my own Computer Bullshit, I'd really love to hear from you.
What are interesting hardware and software projects happening right now?
Who's doing weird stuff with computers?
What are projects that haven't gotten enough attention.
I was, when I was paying attention, really into LoRa mesh stuff, project gemini/smallweb stuff, retrocomputing, and anything that positioned a microcontroller as a PC replacement or companion.
I was carrying a palm, or a HP200LX, and I was doing a bulk of my daily work on an HP Omnibook 430 (or 425?) running MS-DOS and Win31 from ROM on AA batteries (It's the best computer that ever existed.)
@ajroach42 I'm going to plug the same stuff I always do, which is literally everything MNT Reform is doing. It's niche, but awesome in so many different ways. But you already know about that.
I'll also say that a lot of the retrocomputing stuff -- like the 15$ macintosh "emulator" system -- and the cyberdecks, things like the clockwork pi -- are really where a lot of innovation seems to be these days.
@ajroach42 One thing, I got some meshtastic hardware recently, but haven't made real use out of it. But I've also just noticed you can use it to do actual tcp/ip networking, and this seems a lot more useful to me than the largely unencrypted "text messaging" that most folks are using it for.
I haven't had the spoons to really do anything with any of this, though. And I suspect you know way more about literally all this stuff than I do, and it's not quite what you're looking for.
@ajroach42 Oh! Back in the early 2000s, post Palm/Pilot/Visor, I carried a Sharp Zaurus for awhile. It could do IP over it's usb dock to a host, but also had both SD and CF slots, and you could put a CF wifi card into it.
It was fantastic. I had a full SMTP mail system (nullmailer), emacs, c compiler, everything, carried around in my pocket. You can do this with android/graphene/whatever phones and apps like termux now, but this was 20+ years ago. I miss it.
