J. Kael Peregrine @kaeliri - Tumblr Blog

Just a quick follow-up on the router project. This little box now has an upgraded WiFi and an LTE Cat 16 4G modem -- connected via PCIe instead of USB! It's capable of gigabit routing, it's got a gigabit WiFi, gigabit LTE, and gigabit gigabit Ethernet. It looks like a spider. Its villain name was originally GigaSpider, but it quickly morphed into the GiggleSpider when it inevitably switched sides.

kaeliri

This thing is finally alive, well after a year. Between posting this and now, this thing was stuffed in a box, forgotten, transported thousands of miles across an ocean, rediscovered, put aside for later, and finally dug out from deep storage because its time had come. I had forgotten everything about it and had to re-learn a lot — plus the toolkit for managing an embedded device like this had to be reconstituted — but it didn’t take all that long to get it running.

The cellular link is our auxiliary Internet connection while we work to get a fiber connection dug and buried. It’s a 100Mbps 4G connection, testing a hair over 100Mbps down and 45Mbps up, for somewhere around 16€ a month. The cool thing is that the WiFi on this thing is way stronger than expected: 5GHz WiFi’s carry to the far reaches of the house! I’m guessing it’s the antennas that make a difference; it took a while to find the correct antennas for this thing.

Sadly pfsense doesn’t see the LTE modem so OpenWRT it is. Just as well: I’ve been curious about OpenWISP stuff lately and, I believe, it uses OpenWRT. Fleet management and low-power embedded platforms are my jam. Plus it’s nice to get exposed to a different platform.

Now onto generalized performance testing and, after that, it’s time to load it with the collected knowledge of the humankind!

Ropecon 2022

This past Sunday we had an impromptu trip to Ropecon 2022. We almost didn't make it. First, it was hard to get out the door on time to grab the train. Then, there were difficulties grabbing tickets at the station. Thankfully it all got sorted out in time, and we took a family daytrip to the largest non-commercial roleplaying convention in Europe.

We hope this was one of many, many excursions we'll do in the coming years. The past few years have been really, really weird (more on that later) and it's been difficult to get out into events like these -- when the events haven't been canceled due to the covids.

#ropecon #ropecon2022 #finland #photography

Big clouds. Somewhere in Finland. It’s gorgeous out there.

Child’s first erasable, random-access, non-volatile storage floppy disk. No seriously. It’s a bubble popping toy, kind of like bubble wrap, but it can store 28 bits of binary data O_O

#personal projects #miniserver #firewall #router #Internet-in-a-box #way too tiny connectors on the LTE modem #the connectors on miniPCIe cards were small enough #but the connectors that M.2 wireless cards use are just tiny #and the number of antennas is crazy #three antennas for wifi #four antennas for cellular #now I need to load it with the collected knowledge of humanity #I’ve big plans for this thing

This is the dome where the Hale telescope lives in the Palomar Observatory near San Diego.

#photography #Palomar Observatory #Hale Telescope #One day while living in San Diego we realized the Palomar Observatory was near us #and the next day we up and drove over to check it out #It was sort of closed though the gift shop was kinda sorta open #It was hot in San Diego but snow was on the ground up in the mountains #It’s really quite pretty up there

Sunset at Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood, Oregon.

#photography #mount hood #Oregon #An older picture #this picture is the one that made me realize that I can make pretty #and larger than life pictures with a camera #it’s probably what made me stick with photography #and started the process #of developing a personal style of photography

My latest project is building a combined travel router-firewall and miniserver. It’s based on PC Engines APU2 (specifically apu2d4) embedded platform running either pfsense or OpenWRT. Turns out that there are fewer and fewer miniPCIe form-factor LTE/5G modems, so I’m experimenting with an m.2 to miniPCIe adapter to see if an m.2 cellular modem could be an option. Physically the adapter just fits!

Notes to self: M.2 and miniPCIe carry both PCIe and USB in the same physical connector. The APU2 mPCIe slots 1 and 2 support PCIe 2.0 and USB 2.0. An LTE modem using USB 3.0 data link must be able to fall back to USB 2.0 gracefully or it won’t work. Aside from improved frequency band support, anything beyond LTE Cat 6 card is wasted unless it uses a PCIe data link. It’s possible that PCIe-based LTE/5G modem can work at full speed; possibly worth experimenting if not too expensive.

#miniserver #personal projects #PC Engines #APU2 #Internet-in-a-box #embedded computing #firewall #this thing is super low power consumption #but the processor is also pretty slow #albeit faster than most consumer router-firewalls #still it’s got at least a terabyte of storage #and wifi #and cellular #and 4GB of ECC memory #and a cryptoprocessor #and it can route at gigabit speed #it’s both making-do and extravaganza #depending on how you look at it #and I like to make things do more than they were meant to

So I was trying to find a good flatbed scanner in 2021 and this is what we ended up with. Future is weird.

#future is weird #lots of decent scanners out there #but there's a sharp divide between affordable and great scanners #especially art scanners in tabloid size #or book scanners

Recently I rented both Fujifilm X-T4 and Nikon Z6 ii cameras so that I could evaluate them against each other. The Nikon used 50mm f/1.8 prime lens and the Fujifilm had 35mm f/1.4 and f/2 primes; they had roughly equal field of view for their respective sensor type, and 50mm focal length is my favorite.

I’ve been using Fujifilm cameras for years and years but the Nikon’s excellent weather resistance and workhorse reputation appealed to me, and this also gave me a way to get actual hands-on data on the practical differences between a full-frame sensor camera and an APS-C sensor camera. I also compared them to my X-T3 and X-H1.

#Fujifilm X-T4 #Nikon Z6 ii #Camera comparison #While I had them I focused on getting a sense on ergonomics #and what it’s like to actually use them day to day #Now that I’ve sent them back I’ve been going over the pictures I took with them #To get a sense of practical differences #TL;DR is that they’re more similar than they’re different #More complete evaluation will follow #Fujifilm X-T3 #Fujifilm X-H1

What follows is my wholly subjective and fact-free evaluation of an Apple iPhone 12 Mini and the Sony Xperia 5 ii.

The TL;DR is that for Apple you’re the customer while for Android you’re the product.

Mind you, an iPhone isn’t necessarily healthier for you than an Android phone. The ways you’re monetized are simply different. Apps and iCloud are big money makers for Apple, so they’re pushed agressively. iPhone’s design itself promotes engagement above all else. Apple is really good at giving customers what they want, even if it creates almost an addictive experience: smooth continuous scrolling that never gives you a natural pausing point, notification system that requires deeper engagement to check, less realistic but more pleasant screen colors. UX that’s generally less efficient but feels futuristic and cozy. Stock camera app with larger-than-life colors out of the box so you can go #nofilters while still making pleasant pictures. Taking and sharing screenshots is incredibly easy because sharing drives engagement — especially if you’re sharing gossip or enragement.

In many ways Android UX is more classically user friendly. You're encouraged to act naturally because observing you in your natural habitat is lucrative. Google doesn’t care if you’re using an app or a website, you’re being watched either way. Google is the company that stopped updating its apps on iOS when it would’ve had to be upfront about what data it collects and what it does with it. Sometimes Google is overt about it, like when Google Maps asks you to review things you were near, and sometimes covert like when using a smartwatch was tied to having to keep location services enabled. Google’s app store treats apps as kind of a nuisance that are better left for a bot to manage. Google has been known to randomly shut down your Google account, and you have absolutely zero recourse. If you order a phone directly from Google, and there’s a warranty problem with it that Google fails to address, Google has the power to de-platform you from ALL of Google’s services if you make too much of a fuss; do you feel like gambling with your Gmail account by buying an Android phone?

It really is pick your poison thing. Neither is especially kind to the user.

I really really like the Xperia 5 ii, but went with the iPhone in this round. I’ll likely switch back to an Android in the (near-ish) future.

#I like to overthink things #ultimately both iPhones and the better Android phones are Just Fine #on Android side you have to be on the lookout for sketchy phones #that device makers have weaponized into data collection and ad delivery platforms #even moreso than Apple and Google already do #Sony is very much one of the better ones in this regard #though they still include a quasi-unremovable Facebook #that you have to jump through some hoops to remove #I wish Nokia had a decent recent water resistant model with long support

My current phone, the Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact on the left, is several years old. It’s working quite well, but no-longer gets OS-level security updates. It’s time to replace it. I like small(er) quality phones, so I’ve been evaluating my current phone’s successor, the Sony Xperia 5 ii, against the new iPhone 12 Mini. I’m thankfully not deeply embedded in either Apple or Android ecosystem — I prefer the third option — so the two phones are surprisingly close to each other. At the moment the iPhone is winning by a nose, albeit the iPhone UX definitely has more friction if you’re not fully in the Apple ecosystem.