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My Thoughts on the Thumby After Making a Simple Game

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Last year, I backed a Kickstarter project called Thumby, a very (very) tiny game console. It has an RP2040 processor, a 72 x 40 monochrome display, and is only 18 x 30 mm. They arrived last week, here they are next to an Adafruit PCB ruler! smol First impressions I was expecting to be surprised by how small it is, but… I guess Thumby is a descriptive enough name that it’s exactly what I expected.

Using a Palm PDA in 2022

Mon, 28 Feb 2022 00:00:00 -0500

Last year I picked up a Palm m500 PDA. While they’ve been long displaced by modern smartphones, Palm PDA’s played a large part in popularizing portable computing, and they were widely successful at the time. I like messing with older devices, and I want to explore offline-first computing, so tinkering with an early 2000s PDA has been a lot of fun.

A Quick Fix for the PinePhone Keyboard's Top Row

Wed, 12 Jan 2022 00:00:00 -0500

In my last post, I wrote up my first impressions of the PinePhone keyboard. Overall I’m really happy with it, but one issue I had was that the top row of keys (escape, backspace, numbers) is a lot more difficult to press than the other keys. Once I’ve pressed the key enough for it to bottom out (once you feel it click, or go down past a “bump”), I still have to apply extra pressure to make it register a key press.

I was hoping this was just a defect with my unit, but now that more people are receiving the keyboard, it seems like it’s a very common issue.

Fortunately, there’s a very simple fix, and all you need is a sheet of standard printer paper and a pair of scissors (or a 3D printer - more on that later) to make your own shim.

PinePhone Keyboard First Impressions

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 00:00:00 -0500

On new year’s day, Pine64 released the PinePhone keyboard case and fingerprint reader case (along with others) on their store. I ordered them that afternoon, and they arrived just over a week later, which was surprisingly fast compared to my past orders from them. I’ve been playing with it for a couple of hours and wanted to jot down some of my initial thoughts.