It's a bummer that MoofTCP came out only 4 days ago. At Finnish RetroCon, we couldn't get MacTCP to work on the venue's Wi-Fi. MoofTCP includes DHCP and probably would have solved all of our problems!

How to fake out a Finn: greet them with “Hey”, which is super natural for an American Pacific Northwest/Mountain West guy like me, and is “Hei” to them which just means “Hi”. Then get ready for the fallout of them throwing a bunch of Finnish at me that I can’t keep up with… 😅

WHAT. Ok, dragging things to the macOS trash needs to be a more common UI paradigm, just because it’s cool.

Basic Apple Guy@basicappleguy.com · 2d ago

I was today years old when I learned you can delete colours just by dragging them into the trash.

Siri AI is shockingly good, but it really doesn’t like to translate anything. You have to push it or rephrase to keep it from pushing you to the Translate app. Frustratingly, Finnish is not supported by Translate.

At Finnish RetroCon! Come say hi and enjoy surfing the web on blazing fast 28.8k dial-up (with Wi-Fi)!

I feel like I need some personal rules for when I will and will not use AI, such as: 🚫 "Won't use it to make art that someone would try to admire" 🚫 "Won't use it to change someone's opinion" 🚫 "Won't implement someone else's idea w/o them being involved" Needs thought. Real thought, of my own.

As a tech-savvy parent, I'm calling it: Apple's parental controls are an absolute nightmare to set up and use. I've spent hours on this and it JUST DOESN'T WORK. The worst part is that the system from iOS 26 almost worked great. It just needed a few UI fixes to be good to go.

12: "I don't think the new time limit function functions."

I've been wasting tokens on this "Ring Simulator" thing. It's clear to me that: 1. Halo: Combat Evolved's skyboxes are meant to look cool, not be scientifically accurate. 2. When it comes to orbital mechanics, I am totally lost. It would be fun to post it and accept PRs, but the code is a mess.

Edge Huckleberry Cider, from Idaho. One can left in Finland after this.

This one is punched down T568A! I wonder if that’s standard in Finland, or if it was punched down incorrectly. That might explain why I’m not getting a link, but I do have one broken pair just inside the wall according to the TDR.

Work needs me to upgrade (LIDAR for demoing, modern phone for video shoots), so it’s time to say goodbye to the iPhone 13 mini. 3.5 great years with it, and a couple of years with a 12 mini before that. iPhone 18 Pro also negates my desire for an iPad mini.

I'm convinced that matchmaking on The Master Chief Collection is just broken. The games always feel unbalanced and one-sided. On @insignia.live, the population is much smaller, but games are consistently balanced and fun (as long as you can find players).

Here’s the top of the Apple AirPort Extreme A1034 with the can all sealed up. The shielding is impressive. It’s interesting to me that there’s a separate antenna diversity card in the RF chain, with a third cable for an external antenna.

Here’s the tip of the Apple AirPort Extreme A1034 with the 802.11g card and massive heatsink. It’s weird to me that the top thermal pad (which touches the top half of the can) has the plastic pull-tab on top of it.

Today I’m investigating the apparently dead modem on my Apple AirPort Extreme A1034. The modem is an Apple U01.029.C.00, which apparently shipped on some iBook and PowerBook models.

Every infosec professional this week:

Here's a weird one: the 56k modem in my Apple AirPort Extreme has disappeared. The configuration utility doesn't show the "Modem" or "Dial-in" options anymore. Factory reset, firmware update, no fixes. Any ideas?

Day 3 of working on my #WLPC talk about transmit power. The only solid takeaway I have is that I am an idiot who can't seem to maintain a semblance of a train of thought or do basic arithmetic. Or transmit power is stupidly complicated. I'm learning pretty hard towards the former, though.

My time doing tech support at HP early in my career scarred me in a few ways, but in particular: bright white lights. 50+ hours a week under fluorescent lights broke me, somehow. All these years later, I struggle to work under bright white office conditions.

Last night’s project: replacing Original Xbox Controller S analog stick modules with Hall effect Xbox 360 replacements from Ginfull. The orange ones have the right pinout and magnet direction, so I swapped in all orange parts. So far, so good but I want to compare with OEM modules side-by-side.

Something I don't get: How do normal people remember things? I'm always amazed at how people can keep track of 1,000 different things down to the tiniest details, and accurately recall them instantly without any notes. I have to meticulously write every single thing down to even have a chance.

I caught a tiny bit of aurora over Helsinki last night.

Small table service annoyance: "We'll take the check." "Ok!" *proceeds to clear table* Why not wait and clear the table after we leave?

Missing piece of the puzzle for my Finnish Retro Con showcase: a USB 56k modem. The supply of them online seems to have dried up. There are some random AliExpress ones, but they'll barely arrive in time and it's a total dice roll if they'll work. Not looking good.

I just had a moment where someone demonstrated that a manual process I was doing could 100 percent be done with AI. I don't know how I feel. Embarrassed that I didn't think to try it? Depressed that AI is the "answer to everything"? Why don't I feel happy that AI has taken something off my plate?

The skeuomorphism in my UI makes no sense, here. What are the drop-shadows on my buttons and tab bar landing on? The canvas is a 3D field, with depth!

I like my Meraki MX75 firewall, but since it doesn't support UPnP, but I haven't been able to get it to work with my Original Xbox and Insignia (Xbox Live replacement). It should just be a matter of creating a DHCP reservation for the Xbox and forwarding UDP on port 3074, right? Wrong... strict NAT.

One of the kids is watching The Martian at school this week, so we did a speed-run of the book and movie last night. I loved the movie when it came out, but consuming them back-to-back made me realize how many problems the movie has. Spoilers ahead.