Follow up from https://bmorton.com/posts/pye49/ The Pye radio lives again! I’m pretty happy with how this turned out. It was in worse shape than I’d anticipated – the varnish was pretty far gone and the paint was chipped. The wood had swelled from water damage at some point. A bit...

Check out my “new” MS-DOS workhorse – the Presario 433. I picked it up alongside an old Acorn machine (yet to be fixed). It’s been scrubbed with a toothbrush, and matching speakers added. Looks sharp. Probably most importantly – I’ve found a replacement floppy drive which fits the unit...

Here’s a little project I’ve been working on – a way to add a glossary to any page. Words in the glossary are subtly underlined, and clicking them will show the definition. This should work on any page, you just need to create a glossary at glossowary.com, add the...

Here’s how I got MongoDB working with MAMP (an Apache/PHP server) on MacOS. There was a bit of messing about involved, including building the MongoDB PHP extension, so I’ve documented it for my future self – hopefully it helps others too. Prequisites Getting MongoDB working with MAMP’s built-in PHP...

Out of the box, VLC seems to frequently crash when running full screen on Raspberry Pi 4’s. Keyboard and mouse input will stop responding, and playback may or may not hang. It’s not possible to force a clean reboot either, so it’s quite an inconvenience. I’ve had this happen...

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I needed a quick and dirty Wifi bridge and the Pi Zero W seemed perfect. However, it did not automatically configure the USB ethernet adapter I was using. Here’s how I got it working. The Setup The aim here is to supply internet to the Pi via WiFi and...

This is a living document outlining the technical writing process I’ve been using, cobbled together after reviewing the materials provided by clients along with their expectations and comments/feedback received during the editing process.  It will be updated as I learn and tweak things. This process includes mitigation steps for...

Your clipboard contains a lot of sensitive info – passwords from password managers being the most obvious. Any app or website can read from the clipboard, so having this data just hanging around is a bit of a problem – a password could be read by some unintended app...

I photograph the odd collectable for gadski.com – and my flat is the worst possible place for it. It’s dimly lit, at best. To solve this, I’ve put together a cheap (less than 5 pounds) photography lightbox. The construction is simple: Ingredients 2x 2.5L Coke bottles (or the largest...

I’ve published my first Laravel package. It’s simple, but useful. My Laravel databases have been getting far too large, a result of 1) Long session lifetimes and 2) Sessions being created periodically by various bots and uptime monitors. This middleware solves this by allowing you to specify a list...

I’ve had a few friends and family members moving from Windows to Mac in the last few months, so I’ve put together a quick single-page cheat sheet showing where to find everything. It’s a bit rough at the moment, improvements will be made based on user feedback, but it...

I’ve made a site for sharing your collectables with other collectors – check it out at: https://gadski.com/ It’s come together pretty well and I already have a list of suggestions and improvements to get to work on so go check it out!...

I built a Raspberry Pi and Python powered PACHINKO machine. The build was easy, so you can try it yourself. See the full instructions here....

Here’s an old Roberts Rambler which was too far gone to restore to original condition (water damage, battery leak). The damaged speaker has been replaced with one from a car, and a bluetooth module added to make a cool bluetooth set for summer. The bluetooth module is wired to...

The final update to the Raspberry Pi/Python powered tank is up – with better code and a more nimble tank....

Tired of breathing in soldering fumes? Here’s how I built an Arduino powered temperature activated extraction fan for LinuxScrew.com...

Another project for LinuxScrew.com – this time using an Arduino to make a morning task checklist with LEDs and toggle buttons....

I fixed up a 30 year old Olivetti D33 Laptop AKA the Triumph Adler Walkstation. The best bits are all on video, or scroll down for a gallery and links to other resources for this (barely) laptop. The most important bit was the pinout for the PSU DB-9 connector....

The thrilling sequel – this time for LinuxScrew.com I write about how I built a browser-based remote control for the Python/Pi Powered Tank....

I hooked up a Raspberry Pi 4 to a vintage mac to get it online and (sort of) useful again. Check it out here!...

I built a Python and Raspberry Pi powered toy tank! Link to the full LinuxScrew.com article below. Part one covers replacing the internals with some custom hardware to make it move....

They keep asking so I keep writing – another LinuxScrew.com article! Here’s how to build a mini Magic Mirror using a Raspberry Pi Zero...

Check out my latest LinuxScrew.com article – Scraping data from the web with Python and displaying the result as a system notification....

Another article I’ve written for the folks over at LinuxScrew.com – Using Python to build a command line app to resize and watermark images Check it out here!...