I collect vintage computers and phone systems. Why? They frequently require repair, obscure knowledge, or dwindling parts supplies. Let me tell you how and why.
Continue readingMonth: January 2022
Brief thoughts on right to repair issues people don’t think about
While making devices more repairable is pretty much seen as universally a good thing, right? Unfortunately, engineering involves tradeoffs, but some of those tradeoffs that are seen as bad for repair (or are actually desirable in spite of it), or actually improves reliability. These are some things I suspect right to repair advocates forget.
This article is intended to unify some disparate thoughts on the subject I’ve had on Lobsters comment, this blog (i.e. the ThinkPad one), etc. as one post. I intend to do this more often for other things…
Continue readingWhat the Sporks? How We Built a Reasonably Competent Blog
After being successfully up and running for over a year with very few major changes needed, now seems as good a time as ever to break down how sporks.space runs, what secret sauce we use to run it how we like it, and so forth.
Continue readingWhat’s on my (alyx’s) desk?
Inspired by cb’s post earlier this week, and by the same friends’ musings, I felt it would be fun to go over what my every day equipment is. This probably won’t convince you to use it, but serves more as a clarification of why I use it. With that out of the way, let’s talk about what’s on my desk.
Continue readingWhat systems and applications do I (cb) use?
This is a stream of consciousness (so don’t expect my usual polish) based off of some friends’ musings on the tools they use. I’m doing this to explain some of the tools I use, in the hopes of conveying my feelings on them. I doubt (and sometimes probably hope I won’t) I’ll convince you on the merits or if you should use any of these tools, but you’ll at least know why I care. As I write this, I consider the tools I use to be fairly pedestrian, but perhaps this document might have sentimental or historic interest later. Consider it like usesthis.com – and I also use a Mac!
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