A Geek Goes Flying

Very brief, and incomplete, but I’ll add to it as I go. In the beginning (the 1970s), CPUs shipped in Dual In-line Package (“DIP”) packaging: DIP These were ubiquitous in the late 70s and early 80s, but they became impractical above 40 pins, which led to some interesting design compromises, like the 24-bit address bus and 16-bit external data bus of the Motorola 68000: But these could be through-hole mounted, or socketed, and it was what it was. Following that, we start getting into interesting diversions, like 68-pin PLCC (Plastic Leaded Chip Carrier) and 68-pin Ceramic LCC (Lead Less Chip Carrier) packages, commonly seen on the 80286, starting in the early 1980s: PLCC CLCC Starting more-or-less around the era of the 80386 and the 68030, came Pin Grid Array, used for, e.g., socketed (and through-hole soldered) CPUs through the mid-2000s at least, when Intel switched to Land Grid Array (LGA) for the Pentium 4 (and a couple of years later, moved Xeon over) (AMD still uses PGA for ma...

I’ve been using Google Authenticator on my phone for sites that require MFA. But picking up my phone to obtain a code is fraught with potential distraction / derailment. (Kind of an event boundary / doorway effect kind of thing.) So I was stoked to figure out I can add an Authenticator extension to Chrome to retrieve tokens ( authenticator.cc ). To export my accounts from the phone app, I had to go through one by one to generate QR codes, AirDrop a screen shot of the code to my laptop, and then import in the extension. A bit clunky, but I really only have to do it once (well, once for every device you want to use the extension on, sigh...). Adding the extension In Chrome (or apparently, also, FireFox, though the instructions will differ somewhat), use the ⋮ menu, Extensions, Visit Chrome Web Store, and search for Google Authenticator. Add the authenticator.cc extension: Me, I like to have something I’m going to use that often, pinned to my toolbar: Exporting accounts from the iP...

The rOtring Freeway is ... fine ... but it’s feeling kinda loose and needed replacement in my daily carry kit. Wanted something inexpensive and stumbled across this Porsche Crest Carbon-Look Ballpoint Pen ($25). (Echos of the Porsche Design Tec Flex Steel Ballpoint Pen someone got me after I got my first Porsche, the 968 Cabrio.) Only ... it’s not a ballpoint pen. It’s a roller ball. Which is what I wanted. The included refill writes fine and is about as generic as you can get (it’s got a green “quill” logo with an ®, 2025-04 marking, and reads “International Roller Pen Refill 0.7.” I tried the Pilot, G2 Gel Ink Refill and it  almost  fits, but the tip is recessed a bit into the pen and the diameter is like a hair’s breadth too thick (it got stuck in the tip). It appears this is probably equivalent to a Schmidt 5888M rollerball refill . Edit: It’s not. The tip of the refill gets stuck going into the tip of the pen. Amazon’s AI suggests a Schmidt 888 , or the Graf Von Faber ...

Not sure why it took me this long to learn how to do this (it took like 3 clicks). The Displays control panel in system settings

Per Slashdot : Raspberry Pi is launching a new add-on board capable of running generative AI models locally on the Raspberry Pi 5. Announced on Thursday, the $130 AI HAT+ 2 is an upgraded -- and more expensive -- version of the module launched last year, now offering 8GB of RAM and a Hailo 10H chip with 40 TOPS of AI performance. Once connected, the Raspberry Pi 5 will use the AI HAT+ 2 to handle AI-related workloads while leaving the main board's Arm CPU available to complete other tasks. Unlike the previous AI HAT+, which is focused on image-based AI processing, the AI HAT+ 2 comes with onboard RAM and can run small gen AI models like Llama 3.2 and DeepSeek-R1-Distill, along with a series of Qwen models. You can train and fine-tune AI models using the device as well.   $130 is lower than I expected, based on the price for the other Hailo stuff. More on the Hailo H10 . Could probably put together a “play around with” setup for ~$200, a bit less than I ultimately have invested...

Solterra charging The cheap BLRENT charger lasted about a year. The cable started to separate from the charging box (I think just the insulation, but it was still unnerving to look at), and then one day I couldn't get the J-1772 plug to disconnect from the car charging port, it had become slightly separated and the push-button wasn’t providing enough leverage to disconnect the latch. Sigh. It was ... fine? ... while it lasted. (About the same price as a tank of gas for my old Jeep, so I can’t complain too loudly.) This time around I decided to go as inexpensive as possible while doing things “more right.” I also figured I’d future-proof a bit in the process. Folks recommended the Grizzl-E stuff (and the Mini looked like it could have worked, for $479), but I don’t see that it works with the L6-30 plug I have access to at the office. Primecom ships an L6-30 24A unit , but it too is $449. Instead, I went with a used Tesla Gen 2 Mobile Connector I found on Facebook Marketplace, fr...

Trying to create a folder on my WebDAV share, using Cyberduck , but couldn’t: The logs: # tail -f /var/log/httpd/ssl_error_log [Mon Feb 02 12:20:36.415327 2026] [dav:error] [pid 50869:tid 50979] [client 192.168.1.1:53060] The locks could not be queried for verification against a possible "If:" header.  [500, #0] [Mon Feb 02 12:20:36.415404 2026] [dav:error] [pid 50869:tid 50979] [client 192.168.1.1:53060] Could not open the lock database.  [500, #400] [Mon Feb 02 12:20:36.415412 2026] [dav:error] [pid 50869:tid 50979] (120002)APR does not understand this error code: [client 192.168.1.1:53060] Could not open database.  [500, #1] [Mon Feb 02 12:20:36.526440 2026] [dav:error] [pid 50868:tid 50966] [client 192.168.1.1:53061] The locks could not be queried for verification against a possible "If:" header.  [500, #0] [Mon Feb 02 12:20:36.526476 2026] [dav:error] [pid 50868:tid 50966] [client 192.168.1.1:53061] Could not open the lock database.  [500, #400] [Mon ...