Obsolete Nerd
@obsolete.eurosky.social
Making, hacking, breaking, and (sometimes) fixing. Replaced by newer, better, faster nerds.
The daily global average sea surface temperature has reached its highest level on record. On 22 August 2026, data from the #CopernicusClimate showed 21.1°C, exceeding the previous record set in March 2024. 🔗Read the press release: climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-d... @ecmwf.int ⬇️
Ballarat Hackerspace is hosting a monthly #IndieWeb Meetup starting this Wednesday the 26th August, and happening on the 3rd Wednesday of every month going forward. Come play with HTML, learn to host your own website, manage your own domain name, etc: ballarathackerspace.org.au/calendar/
Ballarat Hackerspace - Non-profit self-led community workshop in Ballarat, Australia.
ballarathackerspace.org.au
Harvard astrobiologist Steven Benner reanalyzed the raw Viking data for his new book Meet the Neighbors and argues the original positive result was right — and that the counter-theories used to dismiss it were wrong, steering decades of timid Mars
Viking lander's 1976 Mars soil test may have found life after all
In 1976, NASA's Viking 1 lander found strong "life affirmation" results in a Martian soil sample. Robert Jastrow, then director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said, "Short of…
boingboing.net
Testing my new (40 year old) macro lens... a winter bee sticking its tongue out for a photo.
Without a doubt the hardest piece of furniture I've ever made. Welded steel frame, top made from very old Tasmanian hardwood from a barn. Getting the angled legs right and just the amount of sanding/filing required to make it look all smooth took more hours than I can count. #woodwork #metalwork
We were commissioned to build an interactive art installation for the Ballarat Heritage festival. You can go see it in the Mining Exchange on Lydiard St. This has been a truly massive undertaking and we're very proud of it. You can dial a year and hear real facts/stories from Ballarat's history.
New daily driver until I can find someone to fix my jammed Olympus OM-1. Canon AE-1 with a vintage Japanese analog light meter on top (internal light meter doesn’t work). The light meter is complete superfluous hipsterness considering I have meter apps on my phone but I like the process it creates.
The fact that I can impulsively get something printed out of stainless steel will never stop blowing my mind. AMAZE! Grace figurine from Project Hail Mary, 3D printed in stainless steel.
Final night in Tassie for our holiday last night, lying in bed at midnight about to sleep for our morning flight home, when my brother messages me and says “You still awake? Go outside”… and this is what we were met with… Aurora Australis.
Finally finished my micropython-powered pedestrian crossing lights. Currently has "timer mode" for kids to use as a trampoline timer and "manual mode" for me to toggle red/green as a workshop safety indicator when I'm welding/grinding and it's not safe to come in. obsoletenerd.com/making-old-p...
People keep competing for smaller and smaller mechanical keyboards. Here is my contribution... a Raspberry Pi Pico powered binary-chording 8-key keyboard where you play piano-style chords of binary values representing the ASCII table. This message may have taken an hour to type, but it works!
Teaser for a big LED project in the works for Ballarat Springfest, where we have a stall this year showing off some of our creations. This one is 2.2m high and almost 3m wide and will certainly grab some attention.
Hydroponic strawberries are flowering and have their first berries forming. Still manually controlling nutrient percentages but next step is to add automation there.
I've now had 3 of these Mirabella Genio "smart plugs" fail in a very dangerous and scary way, over the last year or 2. Both have been in use in our home for a few years now, neither have been "abused" just used to schedule fish tank timers/lamps/etc. Details in thread.
Spent the last few weekends fabricating this steel bracket that connects to the factory CRT points in the Sega OutRun cabinet to mount modern monitors. The 3D printed VESA adapter lets you put any modern monitor in, and keeping the area behind empty of stands leaves plenty of space for the PC.
Tiny (<35mm to each side!) binary clock desk toy, using an ESP32-S3 and a GlowBit 4x4 RGB matrix. It checks the time using NTP then displays it in HH:MM columns, with the rows being binary values of 1/2/4/8 top to bottom.
Made a little grip-training thing that clips onto my home gym and lets me do climbing/grip training. Scrap metal plate with a welded loop on top, then designed mirrored holds in Blender and 3d printed them. It can be used in a few different ways to focus different muscles and grip types.
I found this old 8088-based PC at an e-waste place and can't find *any* information of its existence online. The only branding anywhere on the whole thing is on the keyboard, saying "Nan Tan Computer Co" and "NTC CO" but no reference of them building PCs, just keyboards. #retropc #retrocomputing
The world's smallest Canon DSLR remote shutter? Was mostly just curious how the pins work on the proprietary connector, with the ultimate plan of making an ESP32 remote-shutter for input-based triggering.
Over the last few days we converted the original high/low single-switch toggle shifter to a 2-switch sequential shifter so it works in modern racing games. Getting the mechanism working was a much bigger job than expected, but we finally got the right springs and switch-angles and everything sorted.
Still a lot to do, but it "works" and we drove our first laps today. Assetto Corsa running in a 1986 Sega Outrun arcade cabinet. Original steering and pedals are now working and calibrated in Steam via an Arduino Pro Micro. Next we'll modify the shifter to work as a sequential gearbox.
JUST IN - Our Twitter (X) account has been locked. They claim we published "people's private information without their express authorization and permission." We published names and email addresses of people working for the government. We will not be intimidated.
Latest project I’ve been working on at @ballarathackerspace.org.au Arduino Pro Micro + a bunch of custom wiring looms convert the old wiring to JST. Goal is to use all the original hardware as inputs for modern sim racing games and use mods in Assetto Corsa to make a new version of Outrun.
Ballarat Hackerspace@ballarathackerspace.org.au · 2y agoSteam and Assetto Corsa on an original Outrun arcade cabinet, using the original cabinet inputs? Don’t mind if I do… Still lots to fix and tidy up but we officially have the gaming PC installed inside the cabinet and all the original pedals/steering inputs working in Steam.
Fucking wild that a $699 device that is not even a year old (released April 2024) will "stop functioning before the end of the month, at 12 PM PST on February 28, 2025". Absolutely criminal.
TechCrunch@techcrunch.com · 2y agoHumane’s AI Pin is dead
** It's happening!! ** We managed to convince Google to open source PebbleOS. Took a while, but they just did it today! github.com/google/pebble With that, we're bringing Pebble back! I blogged about it - ericmigi.com/blog/why-wer...
Why We’re Bringing Pebble Back
Eight years later, you still can’t beat a Pebble
ericmigi.com
Why buy stickers when you can make stickers. Threw this together today at @ballarathackerspace.org.au using Inkscape and a vinyl plotter.
Nothing but the highest quality equipment in my workshop. Paint booth made from a camping gazebo, a spotlight zip-tied to the ceiling of it, and a heat gun hanging from some scrap wire. Worked great though!
A bucket list project of mine was to make a mask completely out of circuit boards and LEDs. I finally made one. youtu.be/dZ4IUd8FqbU
Become Anyone 2.0
YouTube video by SeanHodgins
youtu.be
