Author: Peter Jones

This might be the kicker. That and the juice. A laptop without the juice isn’t much of a top. I still have the world’s tiniest Vaio that I’m going to pry the screen from, but the question is, how much power is out going to take. Some nice (but expensive) new screens are available, but even they take a chunk of power. Going off of AC is easy, but if I want to maintain mobility, I need to have the power to take care of business. Decisions.

Ceramic tiles? Looked into it, not feeling the aesthetic. What about glass. I can cut glass relatively easily and accurately. I could cut it, paint the back side white, grind the edges and sand blast in the characters. This sounds tempting. Better yet, do an overlay before they’re cut and blast em all at once. It might look dope and would have the tactile sensation I’m thinking of right now. I’d use baby teeth, but that sounds crazy expensive. I might look at mother of pearl also. If only ivory cane from a tree…
Ebony with white wax might be fun.

Square layout, none of this staggered bs. Dice style font for the keys. Number lock adds in a backlight for them. Backlighting in general for status updates? In the corners of the ten-key keys use small dots like on dice. Engrave or whatever the keys and fill in with crayon 1st Edition style.

During the commute, which took way too long and had people who stank of radishes, I started to research reverse engineering LCDs from the abstract perspective. It’s painful. Now then, the BBB has plenty enough juice it should be able to directly drive one, of only just, which got me thinking. I wonder if I could get away with only tackling single colour? I’ll confine on this line while also researching a holy grail of LCDs. This weekend it might be time to desolder that keyboard…

So I guess the first question is needs, followed closely by budget. Basically, how much bang per pound? Do I intend to use this as a mobile programming/educating station for myself. Battery should last a few hours, but doesn’t need to run the whole day. Gutless is fine, but I do prefer me The Juice. VALHALLA! Small because I’m lazy, no ten key is needed. Should I look into building my own? Grab a display and battery, solder a keyboard from parts, strap it all to a Beaglebone?
Oohhh… I could strap a Sparkfun Thing to give me wifi and battery charging circuit. Now that’s just dirty. That’s shiny and chrome right there.

Or in the market for Linux.
Not sure why it’s so hard for manufacturers to make Linux compatible hardware. I’m looking at you you Dell, HP, Lenovo, and the rest. Each of you sells laptops with Linux instances. It’s just, you charge an extra 500 or so.
Step 1, find working drivers for Linux, for the hardware you have in your Windows laptops.
Step 2, do an install and run a test suite to make sure did works.
Step 3, charge $500.

The search shall continue, kinda looking at System 76…

Transferred the beer to secondary, and cleaned my gear in preparation for my next brew day.
Disposed of Leviathan’s tank. It had an odor that may have been attached to his failed health. Another day. RIP.
Started working on the Shipper’s Dilemma. I began with the display part, and immediately started running into learning opportunities. First round through made a screen with a square in the corner. Next, I made an array of colors, and started iterating through them. The thing is, it just started the same color. Took a little bit (yeah rusty skills!), but I saw that I was delaying my variable to increment, assigning out a value, and assigning the color, all in the loop inherent to processing. A while loop inside the loop, or declaring the variable outside the main loop around have done the trick. Now it’s time to work on either a multi-dimensional array, or some clever way to keep track of XYZ’s. If ABC is easy as 123, does that mean XYZ is as easy as 242526? Is it an issue that I just went back to originally typing xyz and changes it to XYZ, just so I wouldn’t have to take into account the difference in ascii code from X to x? Also, phone keyboard, you don’t know the “word” ascii? Bwahahaha…
I also trimmed my beard and hair.
Reasons.

I’m inspired by the show Jessica Jones on Netflix. Jessica, as a raging alcoholic, keeps making light of being a day-drinker. This, minus the alcoholic, seems like something I should do. Idea:
Take pictures of myself with cocktails.
Title like pulp vampire books.
Apply titles and filters to images making book covers for The Day-Drinkers.

I totes amuse myself.

Self, this is for you. Yes you.
1108 NW 52nd.
Stoup.
Your welcome.

Getting back to the Shipper’s Dilemma.
Make a 3x3x3 matrix to use as a test setup.
Make an array of pseudo pieces to fill that area.
Display adding the pieces in, one by one in a isometric layout.
Show a counter for passes.
Show a time stamp for beginning to end.
Have a stop button which stops everything and changes to a Go button.
Stop on success.

Pieces are chosen, and rotation applied based on a random number. Use an incremented seed.

After success do this again, but bigger.