A Geek Goes Flying

I initially backed (on prelaunch.com) the Kickstarter BYOK project on August 7, 2024. Yesterday, January 7, 2026, one year and five months later, it arrived (about a year after the initial projected . I've now had a chance to unpack it and play around with it a little bit. Getting it working with a keyboard was ... interesting. The USB-C cable I carry with me everywhere didn't work on a Tokyo 60 board , or with a RK71 in cable mode. The RK71 in Bluetooth mode was seen by the BYOK and paired successfully via Bluetooth, but the BYOK did not recognize any input. I finally used the cable that came with the device to connect the Tokyo60 and that worked, and it's what I'm using to type this. The device works well enough, so far. There's a tiny bit of lag as I type, and getting the contrast dialed in takes some practice (the device really seems to want to be viewed at an angle, vs. straight on).  I splurged on a case for the device, which fits it perfectly - maybe a lit...

So, it arrived, and I have it setup. (I don’t have the whole listening station re-setup yet, there are several requirements pending before I can do that. Sigh.) The WiiM Pro and the Modius are both drawing power from the Anker 351 ’s built-in USB A ports. The Modius is of course hooked up to its AC/AC power brick. The WiiM Pro is connected to the home Ethernet via a GS105 , and to the Modius via a short TOSlink cable . The Modius is feeding the Magnius via XLR connectors . So far I’ve only really tried it out with the HIFIMAN HE400SE Stealth Magnets headphones  pictured hanging off the UpLift headphones stand (Walnut sample block ); they’re connected to the Magnius via Hart Audio’s HC-9: Dual 3.5mm headphone cable for Hifiman, Focal, Meze 109 / Liric headphones and more (Modular, Balanced Capable) × 1 Red / [M] 4-pin XLR cable kit . There are parametric or 10-band EQs available, and you can save presets. Here, I have the oratory1990 Harman curve for the HE400se headphones dial...

So, I got RockSmith 2014 working on the Mac Mini (a late 2014 model with an Intel® Core™ i5-4278U CPU @ 2.60GHz, 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM, and 256GD solid state storage (Apple SM0256F)). That machine maxes out at macOS Monterey, and I have no reason to upgrade it past that point; it’s just running Yousician and now RockSmith. (And I understand RockSmith 2014 won’t run on the newest macOS versions.)  (The Mini was a cheap eBay purchase that was meant to be a music streamer, but I never really ended up using it for that.) Although I have the “ Real Tone Cable ,” I didn’t have it handy when I was setting things up. I’m trying to keep things more or less wireless, because of the puppy. I’m wirelessly connected to the NUX Mighty Air amp. That, in turn, is connected to the Mac Mini via a USB C to USB A cable. The Mac (and thus RockSmith, as a “Microphone”) see the NUX as an audio input source when so connected: One quirk of this method of connecting things is, I hear the guitar through th...

Apple Watch Things app I guess I’ve always known, or at least suspected, it was possible to use Things with Siri, not sure why I haven’t been. Maybe because Reminders is so well integrated. But then I had two inboxes, and had to remember to move things out of Reminders and into Things. That’s ... not ideal. I need to be able to create a reminder for myself as I think of things, with as little friction as possible. Turns out, on the phone, I can create entries in the Things inbox by simply specifying “in Things” when talking to Siri . There’s also Things integration on the Apple Watch, though it wasn’t installed by default, by going into the Watch app on the phone and tapping “Install” for the Things app:     The first time you long-press the crown and ask Siri to add something to Things, you’ll be prompted to open the app (“You’ll need to continue in Things,” with a button to “Open Things”), and then Things will take a few moments to transfer data from Things’ cloud. Once that...

O ne of my NYRs is to practice guitar more diligently. Towards that end, I picked up a “used” 2019 serial number EC-256 in immaculate condition at a price no one could say no to (basically $150!), picked up a very lightly used NUX Mighty Air wireless modeling amplifier for less than half price from a guy who lives down the street, and, finally, splurged a bit on the 50% off sale (archived) for Yousician (currently using their desktop app on my MacBook Air, but there's also, of course, versions for the iPad / iPhone, Android, Windows...) This system is kind of a trip. All the nostalgia (and addictiveness ?) of Guitar Hero . But in this case you're actually developing fretting skills, getting more precise with timing, etc. Any time spent practicing guitar skills is time well spent, IME. Jamming along with a (so far, snippet of a) recognizable song connects for me a lot better than playing a song's guitar parts in isolation, or even with most of the backing tracks you fin...

After stripping everything down to minimalism to comfortably host Thanksgiving this year, I’ve decided to redo my reading/listening station . Getting rid of the IKEA side table, the clusterfuck of cables, etc., and getting down to basics. Moving the Schiit stack to the built-in bookshelves, which aren’t deep enough to comfortably host the Mac Mini, let alone the shelf I built . Also ditching the iPhone 12 setup, since I just never really used it. But I still do want streaming capability. (I tried, I really tried, to use / like the Logitech Media Server setup on the mini, but, alas.) Wiim Pro Enter the streamer After too much research, and considering the Arylic S10+ and LP10, and the Eve Play, and some other devices, I settled on the WiiM Pro , especially once Amazon dropped it from $150 to $125, a pretty good price . If I ever use Spotify, it integrates (though I probably won’t ), and apparently it works with the Pandora and SiriusXM I do  have ... But mostly I anticipate using it...

I’m doing more with Things integration and PHP is a quick-and-dirty, but way more powerful than BASH , way to do what I’m trying to do. But tweaking permissions, bang-bash lines, etc., is more than I wanted to deal with. So I’m wrapping some PHP code in a BASH script with a .command extension. This may not be the best way to do this, but, again, quick-and-dirty. #!/usr/bin/env bash clear PHP= `php --version` EXIT= $? if [[ $EXIT -ne 0 ]] then echo "PHP not installed, running brew install php..." brew install php fi UUID= "`uuidgen`" DIRECTORY= "`dirname " $0 "`" cat > /tmp/ $UUID .php << 'FNORD_EOF' <?php print "Hello, world. Running in directory: " . $argv[1] . "...\n"; print_r($argv); ?> FNORD_EOF php /tmp/ $UUID .php "$DIRECTORY" rm /tmp/ $UUID .php