Never underestimate what you can do in excel.

A hobbyist has created a 16-bit CPU that was built and runs inside Excel at a 3Hz clock rate and has 128KB of RAM, a 16-color 128x128 pixel display, and a custom assembly language that all runs in the popular spreadsheet. In fact, you can even try out the CPU with files the creator has made available via Github. 

I've meant to fix this Amiga 500 for a few years now.  I had originally stopped working on it when we moved into the house and it's only been lately that I've been able to return to it.

I originally tried to update kickstart 3.1 with a board to make this version of the motherboard work correctly with this kickstart ROM.I originally tried to update Kickstart 3.1 with a board to make this motherboard version work correctly with this Kickstart ROM.  This caused a black screen during boot.  I removed the 3.1 Rom and returned to the 1.2 Rom, which still didn't work/stopped on a yellow screen.  Somehow I zapped the machine and now it all is working correctly.  It's very strange, but it's all good. I tested the floppy drive and it's working fine.  The last hurdle is getting the keyboard working correctly & building out a cable for analog RGB.

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I have the case of a Mac Cube I've been meaning to turn into a Linux box and I'm tempted to buy one of the trash can 2013 Power Macs since the prices are pretty damn low on eBay nowadays. There are a ton of fun weirdo machines out there!

Each machine listed below was manufactured and sold to the public—no prototypes here. These computers highlight not only Apple's innovative spirit but also its willingness to take risks and experiment with design and functionality. It's worth noting that what is "weird" in this case is a matter of opinion, so you might have your own personal picks that we missed. If that's the case, let us know in the comments. And we'd love to hear what the Macintosh means to you on this 40th anniversary.

I've long wanted a mowing robot, but have been pretty disappointed with what is available.  This looks like a promising project.

Maker Clemens Elflein devised OpenMower after being let down by the current generation of robotic lawnmowers. The only models he could find simply drive themselves in a straight line until they hit a perimeter wire buried in the ground, at which point they turn around a bit and then set off in another straight line. OpenMower is able to localise itself using very precise real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning, meaning it can mow a patch of grass much more efficiently.

I'm definitely planning to build one of these!

This Raspberry Pi digital audio workstation (DAW), created by maker and musician Stone Preston, takes the Raspberry Pi 4-powered synth idea to a whole new level. The project, known as LMN 3, is entirely open-source and packed with tons of cool features to make custom jams just the way you want them—with plenty of input options and tons of flexibility when it comes to sound wave manipulation.

I'm very pro monitoring and pre-emptive alerting, but these alerts have to be relevant and the monitoring has to be of the correct thicorrectngs.

The expectation with monitoring is that when you’re paged, the issue is urgent, real and requires your direct investigation and intervention. But the gap between that expectation and reality is bigger than the Grand Canyon: 59% of surveyed cloud native developers reported that only half of the alerts they receive are helpful or usable.

These days These days, I'm more interested in the Razzies than I am in the Oscars.

“After strikes, lingerings of a worldwide plague and a general sense of universal agoraphobia, the decline of the cinematic experience goes without saying,” said the organizers. “Thankfully, a doll pic and a bomb movie jump-started the Industry, which still left behind a trail of Pooh for the Razzies to pick up!”

It's a bit of an older article, but in particular, I loved the highlight on the loss of focus on delivering value toward how to make estimates better. Our job as devs is not to be the best estimators, but to be able to deliver business value quickly and consistently.

To me, the important thing in Real Agile is to pick the next few things to do, and do them promptly. The key question is to find the most valuable things to do, and to do them quickly. Doing them quickly comes down to doing small slices of high value, and iterating rapidly. Story cost estimation doesn’t help much with that, if at all.

So if the existence of an estimate causes management to take their eye off the ball of value and instead focus on improving estimates, it takes attention from the central purpose, which is to deliver real value quickly.

This makes me think that estimation, be it in points or time, is to be avoided.

It’s coming up on October 31st again which means it’s time for our household to start building out our Halloween decorations. We enjoy Halloween in our neighborhood. There’s quite a few kids on our street and we get into the spirit.

Now when I say get into the spirit, I mean that through the lens of a child. There are plenty of houses that go for the scary theme. For us, it’s more a matter of spooky. The other houses can be Universal Horror Nights, we want to be Disney’s spooky time and aim for the feel of the Haunted Mansion at Disney… spooky and not scary. It should be a little scary for the little tots, but not so scary that they can’t come and get their candy.

Last year we did a pretty great theme based around toxic waste and mutant candy corns.

We love the fact that you can pretty much make all of this stuff yourselves with UV paint, plaster of Paris, Home Depot runs, as well as some simple motors to drive the animatronics.

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We also do a custom window animations that we love to make and is something that requires the design and skills of both my wife and myself.

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This year we’re going to do something a little different, still the same kind of goody atmostphere, but something that’s a little more involved from the animatronics and staging.