Scroogie Boy

Velcro strips are your friend

The Walksnail Goggle X Extension Board arrived just in time for me to try flying an analog tinywhoop quadcopter that (hopefully) will be easier for a beginner to manage in a small back yard. I don’t have much to add about it, especially now that “real” reviewers have had time to …

BetaFPV Meteor85 first flight hot takes

The unboxing and first flight experience with the BetaFPV Meteor85 (as a first-time quadcopter user) was… Something. Because the Meteor85 flight controller has SPI ELRS on board, flashed with ELRX 2.x firmware, the first thing I had to do was to flash the latest Betaflight firmware on the …

Getting the Walksnail Avatar Goggles X to work with a Mac

Getting the Walksnail Avatar Goggles X to work with a Mac is rather annoying, but not quite the impossibility Caddx claim it to be: The first challenge is dealing with the recessed HDMI-in micro-HDMI connector. In the end, I ordered a cable with a plastic (rather than metal) connector body and …

Goggles X HDMI-in "gate"

Walksnail Avatar Goggles X update: as reviewers noted, the HDMI-in connector (a mini-HDMI connector, as noted) is recessed and 🤬 is it difficult to find a mini-HDMI cable to fit! It seems that I’m going to be buying a bunch of cables from Amazon until I can find one that has a skinny enough …

Walksnail Avatar Goggles X first impressions

They are a lot smaller in-person than they look in pictures. The IPD range is generous, but definitely needed — I am almost at the widest end of the range. The diopter adjustment range is sufficient for me. Putting the goggles on is a learned skill: you have to focus on a distant point in order for …

All the HDMIs

Wow. The electronics industry will apparently never learn. After the whole USB connector history, I discovered today that HDMI has done the same damn thing: in addition to HDMI, there is mini-HDMI (a.k.a., “type C” – as used by FPV goggles), not to be confused with micro-HDMI …

PFV drones are one weird hobby

I can’t say that I’m short of hobbies, but I decided to look into FPV drones. I originally was tempted by camera drones, but I don’t live anywhere photogenic or travel to one, plus they are definite Karen magnets. I think that one thing that attracted me to FPV drones is the fact …

Disney Bundle? Disney Boondoggle!

Tried to merge my Disney+ and Hulu accounts into a bundle. Nope. Can’t do that. I need to delete them, wait for the end of their billing cycles and only then re-create my account as a bundle. Well, the accounts are deleted. I sure hope I remember to create a new one next month…

OrbStack

One of those “Holy shit! How did I miss this?” moments: I ran across a mention of OrbStack in a discussion thread recently and checked it out. The way people describe it as a better Docker for Mac is true, but it also is basically WSL2 for the Mac, too. Don’t get me wrong, having a …

Modern air travel, timeless pet peeves

This trip is teaching me the difference between the merely annoying (my luggage being delivered 4 days late thanks to United Airlines) and infuriating (SAS airport personnel playing the “head of the line says you don’t need any forms, the end of the line says you do need the forms, go away and get …

I guess that I can only have as many YubiKeys as I have nail polish colors to identify them…

The disappearing web

For all the Internet is this unforgiving permanent record of everything stupid you ever posted, going through my Squarespace-hosted blog’s contents to find anything to bring over here has also shown me that no link is forever. So much link rot in so little time!

Repost: Obsessively tracking one's new Texas-bound BMW (or MINI)

There have been a number of articles on tracking your new US-bound BMW in transit published online (usually based on this BMWBlog article or its i3 follow-up), and they do get the basics right. I have learned a couple of new things since then. The main thing that is different in my experience is …

Moved again

I guess that I just can’t stop myself: after… checks notes… just over 7 years (talk about a seven year itch!), I’m trying out a new blogging platform. After 11 years on Typepad and 7 on Squarespace, I guess I want to try something new (micro.blog, as the case may be). …