TechnologyIQ

  To mark the 20th anniversary of the iPod, Cabel Sasser shared some photos of one of the coolest artifacts in the Panic Archives: a prototype of the original iPod. As you can see, it’s… quite large! We’ve always assumed that this mighty shell was designed to fit the large breadboards or circuit boards that were used during the earliest days of iPod development, until everything was eventually sized down to actual iPod-size. (It also has the Jobsian side-benefit of keeping the engineers in the dark about what the final device will look like.) I can’t get enough of those chunky, clunky, clicky black buttons wired up for navigation. Read A Prototype of the Original iPod via kottke.org An interesting link found among my daily reading

  Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is the first quad-core SBC from the Raspberry Pi Foundation with the Raspberry Pi Zero form factor. Based on the RP3A0 system-in-package (SiP) comprised of a Broadcom BCM2710A1 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor and 512MB LPDDR2, the new Pi Zero W 2 board offers the exact same interfaces as its predecessor. This includes a MicroSD card socket, a mini HDMI port, two micro USB ports, a MIPI CSI-2 camera connector, as well as an unpopulated 40-pin GPIO header. The wireless module appears to have changed but still offers WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 4.x BLE, and it’s using the same VideoCore IV GPU to handle 3D graphics and video encoding and decoding up to 1080p30. Read $15 Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W launched with quad-core CPU, 512MB RAM via CNX Software – Embedded Systems News An interesting link found among my daily reading

Another part of daily life these days, at least your iPhone can be useful in one more way. — Douglas     As Apple continues to expand the utility of its digital wallet, a new feature allows iPhone users easier access to their proof of vaccination. The latest software update iOS 15.1 released Monday now supports adding “verifiable” COVID-19 vaccination information as a digital vaccine card directly in the Wallet app, making it more convenient to provide proof of inoculation status without carrying a physical card. Various states have already launched their own apps and services for the digital storage of COVID-19 vaccination proof — especially those that have implemented vaccine mandates, like California and New York. Apple already offers iPhone users the ability to store vaccine and test results in its Health app, but the company says this update will make it quicker to access. Here's how you can get that digital version for yourself: Read COVID Vaccine Proof Can Now Be

DIY solar tracker - Hackster.io This system can track the sun all day long, can be used for harvesting 15% more energy than typical static Solar Plates. When we use typical static solar plates, a great amount of solar energy is wasted because of the angle of the sun. Using this system we can move the solar plates according to the sun, harvesting more and more solar energy. Read DIY solar tracker - Hackster.io

  Raspberry Pi has released a new board called the Zero 2 W — and, excitingly, it costs just $15. It has more than five times more power than its predecessor, thanks to a new quad-core CPU. This makes it ideal for building small media servers, pet monitors, or any number of similar development projects. Before we talk about how it compares with the Zero W, let’s take a look at its specifications. Read This new $15 Raspberry Pi is like mana for at-home programming projects via The Next Web An interesting link found among my daily reading

While brainstorming ideas for Maker starter projects with a seasonal slant, we played with the idea of 3D printing holiday ornaments. We wanted to make a project starter that was easy to do at an event like a Makerspace Open House, faculty meeting, or as a quick Maker skill builder that can be done in those flexible periods before winter break. This generator works by creating a shape that is then copied and rotated around the Z axis. You can adjust the shape, thickness, and number of copies to create ornaments with fins, ridges, smooth surfaces and more. The generator finishes the ornament with a cap and loop for hanging. Read Ornament Generator With Tinkercad Codeblocks : 6 Steps (with Pictures) via Instructables   An interesting link found among my daily reading

I am still a BIG user of RSS feeds to gather new and interesting info from around the Internet and I recommend it to many people. There is something very useful about information that comes to you instead of forcing you to go out and search for it yourself. This definitely falls under the rule of working smarter, not harder. — Douglas     I am not a big social media guy anymore. Over the last few years I’ve been actively avoiding it. I’m not a fan of each platform’s privacy concerns, and users need to be very cautious to avoid flamewars and infinite doomscrolling. If we aren’t careful, social media’s default state seems to devolve into just destroying trust and goodwill. I prefer society in real life. However, avoiding social media means that we lose a lot of interesting articles, funny memes, and informative videos that are shared on those platforms. Maybe that’s okay since there’s a lot of unproductive and even destructive activity happening on social media. But, I still want o

As I am old enough to remember hard disk access lights on everything, having a heartbeat indicator like this makes me feel warm and cuddly when working on a headless application. Sometimes you just need to know the project is doing something before you start looking for or firing bugs in your program. — Douglas A simple way and example of how you are able to add a visible heart beat indicator into your sketches to show they are alive & kicking.   Read Implementing a Heart Beat in your code via Explore all projects An interesting link found among my daily reading

Advent of Code 2021 Hi! I'm Eric Wastl. I make Advent of Code. I hope you like it! I also made Vanilla JS, PHP Sadness, and lots of other things. You can find me on Twitter and GitHub. Advent of Code is an Advent calendar of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill sets and skill levels that can be solved in any programming language you like. People use them as a speed contest, interview prep, company training, university coursework, practice problems, or to challenge each other. You don't need a computer science background to participate - just a little programming knowledge and some problem solving skills will get you pretty far. Nor do you need a fancy computer; every problem has a solution that completes in at most 15 seconds on ten-year-old hardware. Read About - Advent of Code 2021

  Allison George has created Neural Networks from Scratch, which is an interactive guide to neural networks for beginners. Build a neural network step-by-step, or just play with one, no prior knowledge needed. It’s covered under a Creative Commons Zero license, so feel free to share or use wherever! (if this made its way into a classroom, I’d be so thrilled). Read Neural Networks from Scratch, an interactive guide for beginners @aegeorge42 via Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! An interesting link found among my daily reading