I made a ridicously hilarious hack recently. My refrigerator it's broken, it has a huge leak of water, my hack was to let the water flow in a plastic box and make a circuit with two water level sensors, a relay and a PIC16F628A to activate a pump that sucks water away through a tube that I wedged intlside the gasket of the washbasin. This gave me the time to buy a newer and better one.

The project where I realized I wanted to go from chemist to pro dev.

I built a flow-chemistry spectrometer with monitoring backend in Haskell.

Spectroscopy is where you add a reagent to a glass tube, it changes color, and by measuring the exact color it tells you how much of something (for example, a toxin) is present in the sample.

I had to do that a lot on factory samples, writing down measurements using pen & paper.

I'm lazy so I decided to do the logical thing: Automate it. I bought a second hand spectrometer, stripped the casing, did a shitload of glassblowing and hooked up tubes to the production pipelines, so I could get samples, mixing them in the correct ratio with reagents in continuous flows using valves.

I ended up using 2 home-crafted arduino-like boards (etching PCBs is fun!).

One to calibrate the mixture against known samples and control solenoid valves to continuously cycle through various reagents and deionized flushing water, the other to record the measurements and send them to a server running a Haskell/Yesod API.

The server collected the information into InfluxDB (A time series database), displaying all data on a graphite dashboard.

Eventually I wrote Haskell plugins for most of the chemistry processes, from pH & temperature measurements to polymer property and pigment tests (they made a lot of printer ink).

Then I was fired because they didn't need chemists anymore, and the code "could be maintained by the intern" (poor guy)...

But I did find out that I loved functional programming, chemistry automation projects, and crafting my own electronics during that time.

When you see it..

Hopefully gitkraken is up to date with v4.0.2

I have this little hobby project going on for a while now, and I thought it's worth sharing. Now at first blush this might seem like just another screenshot with neofetch.. but this thing has quite the story to tell. This laptop is no less than 17 years old.

So, a Compaq nx7010, a business laptop from 2004. It has had plenty of software and hardware mods alike. Let's start with the software.

It's running run-off-the-mill Debian 9, with a custom kernel. The reason why it's running that version of Debian is because of bugs in the network driver (ipw2200) in Debian 10, causing it to disconnect after a day or so. Less of an issue in Debian 9, and seemingly fixed by upgrading the kernel to a custom one. And the kernel is actually one of the things where you can save heaps of space when you do it yourself. The kernel package itself is 8.4MB for this one. The headers are 7.4MB. The stock kernels on the other hand (4.19 at downstream revisions 9, 10 and 13) took up a whole GB of space combined. That is how much I've been able to remove, even from headless systems. The stock kernels are incredibly bloated for what they are.

Other than that, most of the data storage is done through NFS over WiFi, which is actually faster than what is inside this laptop (a CF card which I will get to later).

Now let's talk hardware. And at age 17, you can imagine that it has seen quite a bit of maintenance there. The easiest mod is probably the flash mod. These old laptops use IDE for storage rather than SATA. Now the nice thing about IDE is that it actually lives on to this very day, in CF cards. The pinout is exactly the same. So you can use passive IDE-CF adapters and plug in a CF card. Easy!

The next thing I want to talk about is the battery. And um.. why that one is a bad idea to mod. Finding replacements for such old hardware.. good luck with that. So your other option is something called recelling, where you disassemble the battery and, well, replace the cells. The problem is that those battery packs are built like tanks and the disassembly will likely result in a broken battery housing (which you'll still need). Also the controllers inside those battery packs are either too smart or too stupid to play nicely with new cells. On that laptop at least, the new cells still had a perceived capacity of the old ones, while obviously the voltage on the cells themselves didn't change at all. The laptop thought the batteries were done for, despite still being chock full of juice. Then I tried to recalibrate them in the BIOS and fried the battery controller. Do not try to recell the battery, unless you have a spare already. The controllers and battery housings are complete and utter dogshit.

Next up is the display backlight. Originally this laptop used to use a CCFL backlight, which is a tiny tube that is driven at around 2000 volts. To its controller go either 7, 6, 4 or 3 wires, which are all related and I will get to. Signs of it dying are redshift, and eventually it going out until you close the lid and open it up again. The reason for it is that the voltage required to keep that CCFL "excited" rises over time, beyond what the controller can do.

So, 7-pin configuration is 2x VCC (12V), 2x enable (on or off), 1x adjust (analog brightness), and 2x ground. 6-pin gets rid of 1 enable line. Those are the configurations you'll find in CCFL. Then came LED lighting which required much less power to run. So the 4-pin configuration gets rid of a VCC and a ground line. And finally you have the 3-pin configuration which gets rid of the adjust line, and you can just short it to the enable line.

There are some other mods but I'm running out of characters. Why am I telling you all this? The reason is that this laptop doesn't feel any different to use than the ThinkPad x220 and IdeaPad Y700 I have on my desk (with 6c12t, 32G of RAM, ~1TB of SSDs and 2TB HDDs). A hefty setup compared to a very dated one, yet they feel the same. It can do web browsing, I can chat on Telegram with it, and I can do programming on it. So, if you're looking for a hobby project, maybe some kind of restrictions on your hardware to spark that creativity that makes code better, I can highly recommend it. I think I'm almost done with this project, and it was heaps of fun :D

Anyone else missed a train because they were reading devRant?

I only just discovered this site yesterday, downloaded the app for the long commute home, this was my first mistake!

Sat on the underground (subway for the Americans) chuckling away to myself and/or relating to the rants. Completely missed the fact I had long passed my stop to change.

I had managed to go 5 stops before I realised, jumped off the train and ran to the next platform just in time to miss the tube. When I did finally get to the mainline station to catch my connection I got there just in time to see my train pull away from the platform...

30 minutes later I'm on another train on the way home, trying to thinking of a good excuse to tell the better half! In the end I was too busy reading devRant to come up with anything.

Once it really hit me hard. The father of my brothers wife once told me that I'm not fit for IT in general. He thinks that I have pseudo knowledge of IT and Programming.

He just works parttime at home as "computer scientist" and sells routers, pc and such stuff to some private customers. Before he used Filemaker and sayd that he already coded his own CRM with it.

When he said that it really made me sad. But after we talked I looked back what I already achieved:

1. I build for me and friends custom PC's with Case mods and Hard Tube watercooling
2. I can programm in HTML5, CSS3 and PHP
3. I raised a Community with over 60 people in it. We got 2 dedicated Linux Roots (I7-6700K, 64GB RAM, SSD)
4. I manage the Linux Servers on my own with VoIP, Mail-, Web-, MySQL- and Gameservers
5. I built up a complete Community Solution with Game Groups, Forum, Tournament System and a lot of custom scripts.
6. Now Im almost finished learning the C++ Basics to code and manage to learn the beginning of GUI/UX programming.
7. Next thing Im gonna learn is Javascript (Browser) and Java, so I can complete my Web Skills and also can code Java Desktop Apps and Java game plugins (don't rant, Javascript is not the same as Java, I know 😉)

So I thought to myself "maybe in the eyes of others Im not a computer scientist, but then Im on the way to be one at least"

But please dont be a douche (the father) and prejudice me, before you don't know what I already can and achieved.

Just because you're are selling computer parts and installing them doesn't mean, that you are a computer scientist and telling me that I'm not 😉

In IT you're the smith of your own merit!

31st December 2016, I had signed up for devRant.

It's my cake day today. Feels so good to be part of this community, have learned so much, made some of the greatest friends here.

2021 was a mind fuck. Taxing and draining. Very little growth and even less learnings.

I realised that I am in a toxic environment.

Lately, no philosophy, therapy, supplements, activity, work, etc. has been helping me to get back to my original self.

I used to spiral down with a lot of negative self talk and playing the victim card.

Just day before yesterday, I decided to listen to some affirmations on the Tube and that actually helped me bounce back.

I started socialising and stepping out to attend gigs and just be outdoors as much as I could.

My surroundings changed and so did my thought process.

Hence, I made a decision to continue affirmations and slowly change my surroundings, even if that demand domestic relocation.

Things are starting to look positive after a long, loooooong, time.

I also need more sun exposure for my vitamin D3 deficiency and steady dose of serotonin.

I feel lot clear in head and heart. My goals are clearer and I am ready to start working hard and be my original past self again.

I love you all and I really wish you all achive all your wishes and dreams, be happier and healthier in 2022 with ton of success and money.

Go to Denver with a friend for an Iron Maiden concert. I try edibles for the first time, which of course means take way too much. Hallucinate that lead singer is an arm flailing inflatable tube Man. I have a pretty good time. Walk back to the motel at midnight and have to launch a client's website from stage to production on the slow Motel Wi-Fi. I'm ready to pass out at this point, but I got my laptop, and I got my VPN running. So I spend the next 6 hours moving the site from one server to another while occasionally passing out for 20 to 30 minutes at a time.

One of the best road trips of my life. Five stars would do again.

Inappropriate experience at work? Here is another one:

The IS department manager 'John' bought a blowgun and was shooting at a box down the cubical farm hallway. Only a little annoying to hear him puff on the tube, but then someone walked out their cube and almost got hit.
Dev: "Dammit John! What the hell are you doing?!"
John: "Maybe you should pay the hell attention to where you're going. You heard what I was doing. Don't be a baby, those darts wouldn't have hurt you anyway."

I've attached a pic of what the darts looked like.

!(dev || rant)

Dudes and dudettes, i shall ask you all one question: what is the thing/hobby (or things/hobbies) that you always wanted to get into and never gor the chance?

For me i thing first would be brewing, as i would love to refer to myself as a "Brewmaster" like in Warcraft (bonus points if i wear a panda costume) more then an "Engineer" (a trust worthy one even), but i think i might have the chance to as soon as i will have the chance (and means) to move alone as i already know a few things from my dad. The second would be something really cool i saw on reddut and made me remember the old times when i will watch timelapses in this topic on you tube: Crystal growing! Like, middle school chemistry, not meth! At least for now.. 🤔 Anyway, here is a nice pic with some dude's work, looking forward to hear abiut yours!!

PS: Bonus Points for a pic related to the thingie!

Ooh come on .... The fluecent tube of our bathroom mirror was broken. So my girlfriend bought a new one. Still didn't work. So it must be the starters. Nope they work. So I took the damn thing apart completely and ripped out the PCB and meassured every transistor, diode and capacitor. And even replaced one that gave some fishy values just in case. Still didn't work. Then I opened the side door of this mirror and found a switch that I must have switched off by accident ... Switched on: lights on 🤔🤗😌

So I log into a great new site with my development machine. 64G of RAM, and 2 hex core CPU's; GTX 1070 video, SSD, etc. 4K display screen. (Motherboard is 5 years old, not trying to brag, just give context). I regularly put 8 pages of text on the screen side by side. Split ergonomic keyboard.

It wants me to load a mobile app for "full access".

Yea, why look at the world with wide open eyes when you can view everything through a cardboard toilet paper tube and type with your thumbs???

== John ==

My dad let me use how computer and have me a VB6 book when I was like 5.

I took it from there though it seems it tube in the family.

Dad's a Dev
I'm a Dev
My younger brother is also a Dev
My mom is QA, though used to be maintenance dev I think

I told you it'll never work. If one .50BMG bullet is enough to destroy the entire tube thing, we have a deal-breaker. Not to mention large vacuum chambers are a bitch to maintain.

Ok so apparently somebody at Google gcp thought it would be a great idea to be able to select more than one instance at a time and select something like delete and it goes ahead and deletes it without any sanity checks.

3 days down the tube

Time to change the copyright numbers on the bottom of my website, i guess i should have automated that a while back...

Happy new year anyway!

Old but gold 😎

Fucking mobile single player online games.

So there I am, sitting on the tube, being passed around London like a unit of sweet corn taking a ride on the mud salad that decorates the interior of the common worm.

Game can't boot. Sorry, You paid but it wont start until you pay with your personal data we're trying to upload first things first.

One day some psychopath who sees what they're up to is going to find out where they live and then there will be no where that they live.

On another note. This is devrant. Vent, be angry, let it out.

It's turning into some pathetic joke.

Stop pussy footing around you bunch of pussyholes.

Have a shout, have a bout, have a laugh none of us nerds have ever had a bath because none of it is real, it's just a nerfed/gussied up forum you waste of cum.

Squeeze your phone to activate assistant. It's my phone, not a fucking tube of toothpaste.

A small ATM room which is equipped with 2 ACs and 4 tube lights, working 24x7 , is asking me not to print receipt to
save environment 🤔 🤣

Ads in Youtube makes me hate the product
and unskippable ads of a products makes me hate then even more.
Youtube doesn't have ads, Ads have youtube in it.
#ad-tube #Adblocker OP

We had to work in Unity once. Our goal was to create a tube, which is striped with two alternating colors and we should make it look like the colors are moving upwards to symbolise some flow inside the tube.
In Unity there is a way to do this with particle effects, sadly we weren‘t able to do this as it always looked 2D in the VR.
As the deadline rushed closer i had the most hacky idea i ever had.
I created a long one colored Cylinder and one very short and slightly bigger cylinder in the other color.
I then wrote a script, which spawns a big number of the little cylinders and slowly moved them towards the other end, where they get destroyed eventually.
It worked
It looked great
We never told anybody about this hack

Just walking on the internet

Coincidence? I think not!

Pro tip for laughing ur ass out.

Watch a you tube video and read the transcript.

Ah ffs, its 1 AM and my tube light stopped working all of a sudden.

Climbed on a table to check the tube, the tube didn't glow and I lost balance and BANG! I fell. I hope I didn't wake up dad. Man, I should seriously lose some weight.

I hope I didn't break my laptop. Too scared to check. Plus leg hurts. Bruise.

Feels like I shall have a swell leg in the morning. But again, I wouldn't have to go out. So that's a plus.

on the tube.. got stuck on devRant and i think i just missed my stop. damnit! another 20 minuters wait..

Oh no. Im shitting for too long on my throne and now my legs are feeling numb! I can't stand or walk. Fuck. How do i wipe this shit or clean hands. Shit. I need a standing toilet or a tube in my asshole so i can shit better. Like a devops pipeline

You're as usefully as a bag of bath tube plugs.

I wish some tube or hose can be stuck inside my asshole so i can put the other end of it in the toilet, that way i could just sit on my chair and not have to get up every 60 minutes to take a big shit. I could just code on my chair while I'm shitting a big shit that goes through the hose and straight into the bathroom. The amount of big shits i shit per day is outrageous. I shit so much. Im the biggest shitter. Im the mfking ShitBeast

I point out to a guy which documentation and which section he should read to solved his problem, 30minutes later I swing by and the dude sits and watches tutorials on YouTube. I ask him "did you figure it out and solved the problem?", he replies " nah! This tutorial is really great, it shows step by step...blah blah.. I can send it to you! We should all watch it tomorrow after standup" ... Really? He honestly believes were getting paid to drink latte watch tutorials on YouTube? I almost imploded at that point, went into "whatever"-mode and seriously pondered how much mentoring sucks some days. But seriously tutorials on the tube were targeted for 14year old beginners a last time I checked,did the world do a double revolution and left me behind?? Or is that guy just plainly trying to hide the fact how incompetent he is at reading docs?

How do I do it I wonder ? Get stuck with the same retards playing the same strange shady personality types I have to dodge ? Seriously wtf

Betcha if I stuffed a tube steak in them both they'd be more warmed up heh

It's like why do I have to constantly deal with some twitchy copy of some person I previously knew who is doing his impression poorly of some weird introverted jackass with a funny hairstyle from 2001 ?

And what fuckinh sense did that ever make ? Doing something to stand out if you prefer lack.of interaction and attention ?

Only crazy bitches who thought everyone was out to rape them until you found a way to flip their slut switch acted like that in my age group !

Of course I yet know how they actually are God need to find another job