iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Copernicus ECMWF @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

The daily global average sea surface temperature has reached its highest level on record. On 22 August 2026, data from the #CopernicusClimate showed 21.1°C, exceeding the previous record set in March 2024. 🔗Read the press release: climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-d... @ecmwf.int ⬇️

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Ballarat Hackerspace @ballarathackerspace.org.au · 21/08/2026

Ballarat Hackerspace is hosting a monthly #IndieWeb Meetup starting this Wednesday the 26th August, and happening on the 3rd Wednesday of every month going forward. Come play with HTML, learn to host your own website, manage your own domain name, etc: ballarathackerspace.org.au/calendar/

ballarathackerspace.org.au

Ballarat Hackerspace - Non-profit self-led community workshop in Ballarat, Australia.

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Boing Boing @boingboing.net · 10/08/2026

Harvard astrobiologist Steven Benner reanalyzed the raw Viking data for his new book Meet the Neighbors and argues the original positive result was right — and that the counter-theories used to dismiss it were wrong, steering decades of timid Mars

boingboing.net

Viking lander's 1976 Mars soil test may have found life after all

In 1976, NASA's Viking 1 lander found strong "life affirmation" results in a Martian soil sample. Robert Jastrow, then director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said, "Short of…

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 19/06/2026

Testing my new (40 year old) macro lens... a winter bee sticking its tongue out for a photo.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 04/06/2026

Without a doubt the hardest piece of furniture I've ever made. Welded steel frame, top made from very old Tasmanian hardwood from a barn. Getting the angled legs right and just the amount of sanding/filing required to make it look all smooth took more hours than I can count. #woodwork #metalwork

Tasmanian hardwood and welded steel coffee table

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Ballarat Hackerspace @ballarathackerspace.org.au · 21/05/2026

We were commissioned to build an interactive art installation for the Ballarat Heritage festival. You can go see it in the Mining Exchange on Lydiard St. This has been a truly massive undertaking and we're very proud of it. You can dial a year and hear real facts/stories from Ballarat's history.

An early-1900s telephone on a wooden plinth, in front of an antique side table decorated with a lamp and old book.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 20/05/2026

New daily driver until I can find someone to fix my jammed Olympus OM-1. Canon AE-1 with a vintage Japanese analog light meter on top (internal light meter doesn’t work). The light meter is complete superfluous hipsterness considering I have meter apps on my phone but I like the process it creates.

Canon AE-1 35mm film camera with a vintage Japanese hot-shoe light meter.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 07/05/2026

The fact that I can impulsively get something printed out of stainless steel will never stop blowing my mind. AMAZE! Grace figurine from Project Hail Mary, 3D printed in stainless steel.

A figurine of Grace from Project Hail Mary, 3D printed in stainless steel

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 26/03/2026

I remember flying international alone as a teen and the cabin crew would regularly let me go sit in the cockpit and chat to the pilots for hours. It gave me a life long love of aviation and planes, though I despise actually going to airports anymore.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 21/01/2026

These were just taken with my iphone, hand held. I took a heap of photos with my tripod and DSLR but still need to sort them.

Aurora Australis over the top of Bicheno, Tasmania.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 21/01/2026

Final night in Tassie for our holiday last night, lying in bed at midnight about to sleep for our morning flight home, when my brother messages me and says “You still awake? Go outside”… and this is what we were met with… Aurora Australis.

Aurora Australis photo taken from Tasmania

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 13/11/2025

Finally finished my micropython-powered pedestrian crossing lights. Currently has "timer mode" for kids to use as a trampoline timer and "manual mode" for me to toggle red/green as a workshop safety indicator when I'm welding/grinding and it's not safe to come in. obsoletenerd.com/making-old-p...

Pedestrian crossing lights being used as a trampoline timer

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 02/11/2025

Yep, control codes work. The first 128 entries of the ASCII table work, though the first ~30 are mostly useless on modern computers other than backspace, escape, maybe 1 or 2 others?

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 02/11/2025

People keep competing for smaller and smaller mechanical keyboards. Here is my contribution... a Raspberry Pi Pico powered binary-chording 8-key keyboard where you play piano-style chords of binary values representing the ASCII table. This message may have taken an hour to type, but it works!

My 8-key mechanical keyboard where you type piano-style chords of binary values representing the ASCII table.

The wiring for my 8-key mechanical keyboard where you type piano-style chords of binary values representing the ASCII table.

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Ballarat Hackerspace @ballarathackerspace.org.au · 24/10/2025

Teaser for a big LED project in the works for Ballarat Springfest, where we have a stall this year showing off some of our creations. This one is 2.2m high and almost 3m wide and will certainly grab some attention.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 22/10/2025

Hydroponic strawberries are flowering and have their first berries forming. Still manually controlling nutrient percentages but next step is to add automation there.

Strawberries growing in a home made aquaponic system

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 22/09/2025

These were not plugs that were used a lot, with things being unplugged/plugged. They sit running fish tank filters, lamps in the kids room, etc, and have only been unplugged maybe 2-3 times ever, otherwise just sitting there tucked away doing their thing.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 22/09/2025

The plug was "rattling" inside, so I pulled it apart and all these pieces fell out. Internally the plastic pieces that hold the 240V prongs in place had all snapped off, leaving the prongs "floating around" with nothing else fixing them in place. These were barely used, just sitting running lamps.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 22/09/2025

I've now had 3 of these Mirabella Genio "smart plugs" fail in a very dangerous and scary way, over the last year or 2. Both have been in use in our home for a few years now, neither have been "abused" just used to schedule fish tank timers/lamps/etc. Details in thread.

Mirabella Genio wi-fi smart plug packaging

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 11/08/2025

Spent the last few weekends fabricating this steel bracket that connects to the factory CRT points in the Sega OutRun cabinet to mount modern monitors. The 3D printed VESA adapter lets you put any modern monitor in, and keeping the area behind empty of stands leaves plenty of space for the PC.

Custom steel chassis that lets you put modern monitors in old arcade cabinets

Modern monitor and gaming PC inside an old Sega OutRun cabinet

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 19/07/2025

Tiny (<35mm to each side!) binary clock desk toy, using an ESP32-S3 and a GlowBit 4x4 RGB matrix. It checks the time using NTP then displays it in HH:MM columns, with the rows being binary values of 1/2/4/8 top to bottom.

RGB LED matrix showing the time in binary

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 03/07/2025

Made a little grip-training thing that clips onto my home gym and lets me do climbing/grip training. Scrap metal plate with a welded loop on top, then designed mirrored holds in Blender and 3d printed them. It can be used in a few different ways to focus different muscles and grip types.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 27/05/2025

Harddrive inside is a Seagate ST-238R with a whopping 32Mb of storage space.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 27/05/2025

The sticker on the bottom of the keyboard. It says it was made in Taiwan, and all the chips inside say Made in Malaysia. No mention anywhere of this brand ever selling desktop PCs though, just keyboards and some laptops.

Manufacturers sticker on the bottom of a retro computer keyboard.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 27/05/2025

I found this old 8088-based PC at an e-waste place and can't find *any* information of its existence online. The only branding anywhere on the whole thing is on the keyboard, saying "Nan Tan Computer Co" and "NTC CO" but no reference of them building PCs, just keyboards. #retropc #retrocomputing

An old 8088-based PC with a blue case, blue keyboard, and blue monitor. Unknown origin.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 08/05/2025

Now in a tiny little 3D printed case.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 07/05/2025

The world's smallest Canon DSLR remote shutter? Was mostly just curious how the pins work on the proprietary connector, with the ultimate plan of making an ESP32 remote-shutter for input-based triggering.

Tiny little Canon camera remote shutter, made with 2 buttons on a piece of protoboard wired to a headphone jack.

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Ballarat Hackerspace @ballarathackerspace.org.au · 28/03/2025

Over the last few days we converted the original high/low single-switch toggle shifter to a 2-switch sequential shifter so it works in modern racing games. Getting the mechanism working was a much bigger job than expected, but we finally got the right springs and switch-angles and everything sorted.

Original Sega OutRun gear stick mechanism

Our modified shifter mechanism using 2 switches and a Pro Micro

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Ballarat Hackerspace @ballarathackerspace.org.au · 14/03/2025

Still a lot to do, but it "works" and we drove our first laps today. Assetto Corsa running in a 1986 Sega Outrun arcade cabinet. Original steering and pedals are now working and calibrated in Steam via an Arduino Pro Micro. Next we'll modify the shifter to work as a sequential gearbox.

Assetto Corsa racing simulator game playing on an original Sega OutRun arcade cabinet

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Reposted by Obsolete Nerd

2600 - The Hacker Quarterly @2600.com · 09/03/2025

JUST IN - Our Twitter (X) account has been locked. They claim we published "people's private information without their express authorization and permission." We published names and email addresses of people working for the government. We will not be intimidated.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 23/02/2025

Latest project I’ve been working on at @ballarathackerspace.org.au Arduino Pro Micro + a bunch of custom wiring looms convert the old wiring to JST. Goal is to use all the original hardware as inputs for modern sim racing games and use mods in Assetto Corsa to make a new version of Outrun.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 23/02/2025

We got the firmware sorted and all the inputs working yesterday, so now just need to finish fixing the broken gearing in the old steering system and we should be able to do some proper testing. I reckon a red Civetta Bolide in #BeamNG should suit the cabinet pretty well for a first official drive.

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arturo182 @arturo182.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Fucking wild that a $699 device that is not even a year old (released April 2024) will "stop functioning before the end of the month, at 12 PM PST on February 28, 2025". Absolutely criminal.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 28/01/2025

Just finished watching the video earlier, then spent the next hour with my 10yr old messing around in the demo. We had a load of fun. I think there's definitely potential there for a little game with the growing-snowball and chasing or being chased by penguins.

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Eric Migicovsky @ericmigi.com · 28/01/2025

** It's happening!! ** We managed to convince Google to open source PebbleOS. Took a while, but they just did it today! github.com/google/pebble With that, we're bringing Pebble back! I blogged about it - ericmigi.com/blog/why-wer...

ericmigi.com

Why We’re Bringing Pebble Back

Eight years later, you still can’t beat a Pebble

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 24/01/2025

Why buy stickers when you can make stickers. Threw this together today at @ballarathackerspace.org.au using Inkscape and a vinyl plotter.

MacBook with a large sticker saying “You can’t stop the signal, hack the planet”

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 29/12/2024

Nothing but the highest quality equipment in my workshop. Paint booth made from a camping gazebo, a spotlight zip-tied to the ceiling of it, and a heat gun hanging from some scrap wire. Worked great though!

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Sean Hodgins @idlehandsdev.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

A bucket list project of mine was to make a mask completely out of circuit boards and LEDs. I finally made one. youtu.be/dZ4IUd8FqbU

youtu.be

Become Anyone 2.0

YouTube video by SeanHodgins

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 28/11/2024

Went out to support our school at the Energy Breakthrough race where kids race pedal-powered tadpole/reverse trikes. It's such a cool event and I loved seeing all the home-made trikes built by the kids. (The forged-carbon factory-built private school ones were a bit cringe though).

Kids racing pedal-powered tadpole trikes at Energy Breakthrough 2024

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Ballarat Hackerspace @ballarathackerspace.org.au · 22/11/2024

Our group project #Picocade is still moving ahead. We now have an info overlay working and the ability to do a clean shutdown by holding the menu button. We can also adjust the brightness #picocade #pico8 #retrogaming

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 25/10/2024

Progress on the Pico-8 arcade cabinet. Everything “works” and now it’s just about tidying up the documentation and the software installation process to make it more user friendly, and adding all the vinyl decals. #pico8 #ballarat #hackerspace #ballarathackerspace

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 24/09/2024

Coming very soon (hopefully Friday). We’re doing final assembly on the first “complete” unit on Friday and then we start tidying up the project/documentation/etc for sharing, and will take lots of pics/video.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 22/09/2024

PICO-8 arcade cabinet we've been working on at Ballarat Hackerspace. Far from a "Raspberry pi emulator and computer monitor" setup, this has a 1:1 native LED display suited to the PICO-8 resolution, custom graphics daemon to run PICO-8 natively and feed the LEDs, and a very slick laser cut cabinet.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 30/03/2024

How about a keyboard... with a built in keyboard. Yo dawg.

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 30/03/2024

Midnight retro vibes. Apple G3 iMac, Gateway 2000 Pentium III 500, and some random IBM PC clone from Malaysia? #retrocomputing #Macintosh #gateway2000 #imacg3 #retro

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Obsolete Nerd @obsolete.eurosky.social · 26/03/2024

First tomatoes from my potted tomato plants that get watered by an ESP32 reading weather data. Nom.

Fresh tomatoes from my potted tomato plants.

Home grown tomatoes on toast, on a home made chopping board.

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