Remote
Tim 🎮
@timixretroplays@digipres.club
hometown 4.6.9+hometown-1.3.0Aussie gamer making new memories from the old. He/him. Writing from Ngunnawal/Ngambri land.
I built a giant Gravis GamePad and am working on USB adapters for old controllers. I beta-tested Secret Agent HD and UnDune2. I once made Toshiba mad at me over copyright. I post mostly #retrogaming, #3dprinting and #arduino stuff here.
Projects:
#Plasbeams
#Thrixels
#CGAPrints
#SerialStinger
#SimpleBreakouts
#SolderingStation
#GravisGamePad
1273 Followers
251 Following
50 Posts
Joined August 29, 2023
My YouTube channel:
My 3d designs on Printables:
Stuff I've preserved at the Internet Archive:
My previous Mastodon account:
Replying to
My bread is a cube, your argument is invalid.
Turns out a 300g flour recipe will make a perfectly adequate 12cm cube of bread if you actually let it rise for long enough - this thing sat in the cube tin for about 90 minutes in the early spring sun.
I got one unnervingly perfect square of bread out of it before it started to bend under the force of being cut. Having solved the shape question, I now need to upgrade my bread knife to one that actually cuts.
Boosted by @trending@homestead.social
My work laptop: hi! I'm one of the most powerful computers you've ever had at your disposal, with more cores and RAM than your first decade and a half of personal computers combined. I have now launched my operating system, and then your email client, a web browser, and two different flavours of team collab software, all of which are packages chiefly needed to deal with plaintext, and I am now so out of breath that I must spin my fan up for several minutes to catch up.
Boosted by @trending@homestead.social
France: Nuclear power reactors are having to shut down because the rivers they source cooling water from are too hot (28C!), the Louvre shuts early because its climate control can't handle the afternoon heat from its patrons, and people are drowning in rivers trying desperately to cool off.
I wish I was reading these things in a Michael Crichton novel, not the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/23/heatwave-france-spain-italy-europe
Replying to
The point is, I keep looking *somewhere* that isn't on my screens for this information when I want it. Adam Savage says (and I 100% agree) you should store things where you expect to find them when you go to look for them.
I feel like I'd be the kind of person to have a giant QRG poster on the wall with an Arduino Uno and 50 example functions, but I don't feel like I have the wall space for it.
Replying to
Three bits of data to add to this thread today:
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A Hyundai Kona's windscreen washer bottle will take exactly four litres of water before it starts to rush up the filler tube.
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ACDelco Optikleen mixes at 10mL per L of water, so the litre of it I bought will give me 25 full refills in my Kona.
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While putting the Optikleen away in the garage I found a full, unopened 1L bottle of Bar's Bugs I have zero memory of acquiring, so I now have approximately a lifetime supply of washer fluid.
Replying to
Decided I wanted a bespoke little measuring and pouring container for my unexpectedly diverse windscreen washing fluid collection. This little guy is a 38mm hollow cube with 1mm thick walls, approximately 45mL of volume, and a little spout for accurate pouring. I flattened one corner and printed it on that, and the resulting object is surprisingly strong for how dainty it is.
I will probably do the final version in clear polycarbonate for looks, and maybe even resin coat it. #3DPrinting
Replying to
This is my mildly irresponsible purchase: a #SEGA Mega Jet. It's a handheld-ish #MegaDrive from 1993; mine is the '94 retail version, but these were initially sold to Japan Airlines to rent to harried parents on flights to keep their kids occupied. The original JAL-branded version plugged into a proprietary flip-out LCD screen in the arm rest so you could play games in flight, either from the plane's library or you could BYO cartridges.
This thing's story is wild. Stay tuned. #retrogaming
This guy is making a real, physical #SpaceCadetPinball table using #3DPrinting and off-the-shelf electronics. I don't think you could target a project more accurately at me if you tried, so I've been following along pretty religiously.
The third instalment is out, covering how he's designed *the wormholes* to work. There's also a playtest section at the end with a partially assembled table, and there's something special about seeing it come to life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wvKlX_NsGk
Every time scientists come along and announce they've discovered the absolute highest cuteness quotient possible in the known universe, this creature simply rolls over and proves them wrong once again. #Cats #CatsOfMastodon #SiameseCat
Boosted by @GroupNebula563@mastodon.social
Replying to
@NanoRaptor@bitbang.social I contributed to the early right-to-repair fight by pissing off Toshiba: https://www.wired.com/2012/11/cease-and-desist-manuals-planned-obsolescence/
I ran a small tech blog and freely hosted laptop service manuals for as many models as I could find, Toshiba noticed, told me to knock it off. Chaos ensued.
I hit #1 on Reddit the day I posted about it, got that article written about it in Wired, met Kyle Wiens of iFixit (absolutely lovely guy).
Replying to
I propose a new kind of time-keeping device: once a minute, it asks 100 random people on Fedi how they pronounce scone, and uses the ratio of 'gone' to 'cone' answers (and its trend over time) to figure out the ratio of Americans vs Brits and Australians who are awake and online and thus what the likely time is.
Also, this scone may be the single most photogenic bit of food I've ever made. #baking
Replying to
@PaulaMaddox@mastodon.social @mike@social.chinwag.org not a problem at all if you also ban new software made after 2010
Today I learned, and you should too: heatshrink label printers are a thing.
They look like a normal laser printer except you feed them cartridges with white heatshrink tubing, they print text *directly onto the heatshrink* and then you put that on your wiring.
Looks like they're maybe AU$100 for a bundle with some supplies. Not entirely impulse purchase territory, but the next time I'm tearing down and recabling a desk from scratch or some other massive wiring project, I'm getting one. #maker
Replying to
Revisited this idea today and topped off the cube-jar with an M12-1.75 thread, modeled with #BoltGen in #Rhino3D and then physically cut into the correct geometry using the M12 die from my cheap metric tap-and-die set. That seems to have worked, so next up is a matching lid with a thread to be cut with the same kit.
This was also printed with random seam placement and scarf joint seams - that seems to work well these days, leaving an interesting but not undesirable texture. #3DPrinting
Replying to
@nycki@critters.gay that orientation and arrangement of controls also says "pinball" to me
"...connection issues were mostly being reported in Australia's eastern states". Is this not simply a map of #Australia's population density? #Telstra
(Article here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-09/telstra-outage-still-impacting-triple-zero-calls/106895430)
Replying to
Don't get me wrong, I'm ordering from there tonight. I'm sure the food will be great. He's a newly invested restauranteur trying to drum up business, and he's doing so with a tool that's been conveniently put in front of him.
But this ain't right.
Replying to
Yeah, this just became another "tip your Mastodon server admin" thread. They keep your shit available and visible to others for free, you should support them in that endeavour because the alternative is capitalism ruining your little library of stuff for everyone else.
Replying to
@len@nyan.network I use Firefox mobile on my android phone which lets me use an ad blocking plugin, which also works on YouTube's website, but android detects when you're browsing to YouTube and begs you to use the app every time, so it's not something I'd suggest for anyone not already techie.
A VPN that blocks ads, or a bespoke app that plays YouTube videos without the ads are my suggestions in this case. There are such apps floating around, can't remember any names but someone else might jump in with one
She came out of the factory a bit wrong, but we still love her dearly. #Cats #CatsOfMastodon #SiameseCat #Caturday
Replying to
Why does this actually matter? Because the new interface does so much fucky shit that I can't copy/paste someone a link and expect with any confidence that they'll actually be able to see the thing I'm referring to. It's an unreliable narrator.
Twitter as a meaningful resource was dying for a long time for many reasons, but the day they required you to log in to see a thread absolutely killed it as even as historical reference. If this change holds, Reddit will go exactly the same way.
So goose is out, fish is in now?
Replying to
@lordkhan@social.cologne pushing for nuclear power means pushing for the status quo for decades, plus a lot of profitable contracts that don't get looked at too closely for a long long time. Not saying nuclear power can't be an ethical success - there's plenty of it around the world, especially Europe - but that boat has sailed, anyone starting up a new nuclear project today should get a slap upside the head and invest in renewables instead, you can now plant a solar or wind farm and start generating *today*.
Replying to
And I can't find a straight answer on how big my windscreen washer bottle is - there's plenty of AI slop articles with meaningless random numbers that vary from page to page, including one claiming a Corolla's washer bottle is 300mL in size - but the consensus seems to be "about a gallon" among Americans on the topic so probably four litres ish is a reasonable volume to plan for.
Replying to
@frenshape@beige.party I have a Dymo Letratag bought on sale at my local supermarket. It's not been a serious area of hobby investment so far - interesting though that there are multiple options out there!
Replying to
@Lydie@tech.lgbt @apzpins@some.apz.fi I spent one of Sydney's hotter summers in a barren concrete block of apartments with windows that tilted out like in the photo. They're really not suited for portable aircon units, you could rig it up and seal it with tape against airflow but it'll be terrible at insulating against heat. You'll end up with a cool spot in the room in front of the A/C and it'll be super loud the whole time but if you have nowhere else to go it might be worth it to be vaguely comfortable at home.
Replying to
@uncycliste@hostux.social good spot, thanks - I've updated the post to reflect that. Good thing I'm not a journalist
Replying to
For anyone in Sydney, Genuine Edge in Lidcombe sell 500mL and 5L bottles of ACDelco Optikleen, and it's 20% off for a few days: https://www.genuineedge.com.au/acdelco-optikleen-windscreen-washer-concentrate-5l
They don't ship the 5L bottle, so it looks like I might be buying the little one from them. Can't spot anyone selling it off-the-shelf in Canberra.
Replying to
@zzt@mas.to I like the concept, but honest feedback - I don't think anybody I know who does hiring would expect to do any kind of serious business with a website called "Awful Systems", much less use it to hire people
Replying to
I appear not to have died in the night after eating food from the restaurant with the AI generated image but also it was some of the blandest, most generic and underwhelming food I've ever had. I'm not sure I even want the leftovers.
Google having some issues in Australia maybe? Gmail and Youtube are dead in the water to me.
Hi, I'm a #Samsung washing machine, and I think the solution to not being able to drain water out is to ADD MORE WATER TO THE PROBLEM
When did active matrix LCDs become a thing in consumer #electronics? I think I've stumbled on an unasked and unanswered question in #retrogaming history and the answer hinges on the above question. #AskFedi
Replying to
@no_brainer@sueden.social is your system particularly old? The inverter they've included in the quote says it's a 10kW unit, my understanding is that would be the amount of power it can pass through at any given moment so boiling the kettle off the battery shouldn't be an issue.
Replying to
@xssfox@cloudisland.nz what is this RP2040 USB host board exactly? I think I need about a dozen of them in my life
Replying to
@apzpins@some.apz.fi @Lydie@tech.lgbt oh, 100% - I've seen others from hot climates chime in and say "actually 40 degrees is nothing, it's the humidity that kills ya" without actually understanding the different climate and how your houses tend to be built.
Replying to
@no_brainer@sueden.social is that the "balcony solar" sort of system I've read a bit about? Makes sense to have that low an output if it's connected to the house regular plugs.
The battery they've quoted me says maximum 9.8kWh charging/discharging power, so I don't think this would be an issue unless I take up competitive kettle-boiling as a hobby.
Replying to
@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems I'm interested in reverse-engineering digital protocols from old game controllers, and understanding stuff like PS/2 and serial mice and Apple ADB devices, things of that vintage. I have a couple of cheap nanoDLAs, would having a Glasgow make any part of that easier?
Replying to
@SuperDocteur@mamot.fr @uncycliste@hostux.social I don't think this is just a French thing - putting a theoretical Australian slant on it, I can see people going "it got a bit hot so they went for a dip in the river, bloody typical".
I don't think being desperate for a reprieve from a heatwave has a nationality. Thinking back to my worst summer here, in a concrete block of an apartment with no fans, no aircon, and windows that didn't even fully shut, I might've have gone and jumped in a river too if one was nearby.
Replying to
@NathanMurdock@mastodon.social fortunately I live in Australia, not France, so this isn't affecting me directly - but we get our own brand of awful hot weather in summer, so I'm not looking forward to it this year.
Hey #solar power enthusiasts of #Australia and/or #Canberra, how big a system (ballpark) would you expect a household of 2 people to have? I've just been quoted $18-20k for a system with 9kW of panels and either a 9 or an 18kWh battery and that sounds like A Lot for a little townhouse.
My power bill spreadsheet says I use about 18kW/day of power during winter (11-12 in summer), and that's before I add the insulation I've also been quoted on so I expect that to drop dramatically.