so my desktop's expansion slots are filled from top to bottom except for one.

it's a PCI expansion slot and I'm not exactly sure what to put there?



I was kinda leaning towards an IDE/Floppy Controller card but I've also thought about putting an old soundblaster card with FM synthesis there.
still I'm curious if anyone has a better idea.

any thoughts or ideas on something cool to add there?

so I got this from a friend of mine for $25 and dinner.

I'd say it's a great deal considering what mac's go for these days used, even old ones.

so I'm going to post about my new project, as I work on it!

to start with here's the system in it's current condition.



It's missing the right shift key



it's battery doesn't hold a charge for very long.

and this issue here... 



Kernel Panic!

luckilly that last one can be fixed with an OS load of mac OS 9.22 or any OSX up to 10.4.11 because this is a power PC I-Book and not an intel based one.

my next post will detail what I plan to load on it to test and how that turned out.

Apple has long been known to have fostered a somewhat greedy ecosystem in many respects when it comes to profits. And this has been compounded over the past few years. Think about the removal of the headphone jack on the iphones (the new ones don't even come with a dongle anymore) and the $70 fast charger that is not even included with new iPhones. Then it was the macbooks that had extremely pricey keyboard repairs and no ports, requiring a dongle to convert a single USB C port to any other port that you would need. 

And now... they will be bricked and rendered useless if a third party repair to a screen, SSD, memory, or anything else is done to the computer. They are doing this by requiring a proprietary system diagnostics system to be run after a hardware repair, which is something only Apple will have access to. 

And it's honestly unfortunate for a few reasons. Firstly, cost. Screen repairs alone at Apple will cost several hundred dollars, whereas a local shop can easily do one for less than $150. Secondly, old macs are generally considered legacy after five or six years, meaning Apple themselves won't even repair it. Mine is six years old. It will probably be considered legacy soon. 

I love macs to death. I truly do. But my computer is getting a bit old. I hate the 1280x800 screen, it has had RAM problems (which I fixed by removing a bad stick, thereby slowing down my computer and running RAM in single channel mode), and has a 3rd generation i5 that can't really handle Mojave that well and is no good for any kind of gaming whatsoever. I'd love to get a new one, but I'm almost unsure of what I would replace it with. The new macbooks are almost impossible to repair, very expensive, have no ports, and have keyboards that are unusually hard to type on. 

Looks like I'm either getting a 2015 air (actually not a bad computer), or just sticking with this one. Not quite ready to go back to a PC yet, but for the time being, not sure the Mac is going to be a better option in the long term either. 

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/4/17938...t-software

So for the past few days I've been tinkering with ways to make my own website more efficient, especially the tech mods section because that's going to have a lot of content and scrolling through it all to get to what you want might be a bit tedius.  Because of this I've been searching for a few days on how to create collasible boxes.  The main problem I ran into is that most sources say "use javascript, you have to use javascript, etc." However I found a source that actually gave explanations on how to use HTML and CSS only to create one.

This turned out to work really well, so well I've decided to share the details and any minor tweaks I made to make it suit better for columns and such.

now originally my CSS looked a little something like this.

After having my place of residence more or less destroyed by the hurricane, I have now finally moved into temporary housing and have a new place to live for the next couple of months while they rebuild. I also have internet once more, so I should be around a little more from the days coming forward without having to use a slow hotspot to connect. 

Being "homeless" (and by homeless, I mean staying with friends) is not the most fun thing in the world. It makes you thankful for the things in life that you do have, and manages to put things in perspective a bit. 

Oh, and I also got some monetary assistance from FEMA. Definitely very helpful during this time.

Forgive a screenshot that leaves a lot to be desired (internet and computer knocked out during hurricane). But I got this from the Wayback machine, and this is from the original make station, powered by none other than SMF in 2013. Thought it might be interesting to share, for those who might be interested!

Edit: it looked better then. It wasn’t missing so many images. Still a heathy dose of nostalgia and a beautiful reminder of our past.  

Hi, had some intriguing ideas today.

As many people might be aware, there is a global network of radiation/environmental sensors called uRADMonitor.

I had a thought, could they be supplemented with more accurate timekeeping so that gamma ray flashes (TGFs) can be tracked as well
as overall radiation level?

TGFs are believed to originate from electron-positron annihilation events inside thunderstorms as well as conventional X-rays.

The detector grid would need to be synchronized to a few us to get any sort of useful data on these, ideally using something like an MSF/Droitwich radio  similar to the ones used in weather stations.
In this case each "node" would also have an OCXO or similar with its reference used to "tag" detected events.
This would also provide precise details of location using basic triangulation with each sensor position known via web interface.

Anyone have any ideas please?

-A

What are your home audio setups?

In my bedroom at my desk I have a Logitech z906 5.1 setup, but I mostly listen through my Sennheiser HD650s with a Fiio e10k dac/amp.
In my living room I have a Yamaha R-S202 stereo receiver and some shitty Sony 30 watt home theatre speakers hooked up to it. I've also got an Audio-Technica LP60 record player.

I know it's been a long wait but it's finally done, the genesis mega amp install tutorial and review video!



Feel free to ask any questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

My hugest apologies for the downtime everyone! We are back online, and rest assured, we are sticking around for the long haul! 

Our host did some critical software patches to mitigate some of the Intel CPU security vulnerabilities, and they had to restart every VPS in the process. Unfortunately that reboot screwed ours up in the process, and left our website down for a fairly substantial part of the day. 

Rest assured we are back, and everything is in good working order once again!