Researching, I learned that China does make some good Soldering Stations, Hot Air Stations, even some good hybrids. The problem is they assemble them wrong. VERY WRONG! DANGEROUSLY WRONG! They don’t always do them wrong, but it’s best to assume it’s wrong. If you’re up for a challenge, have another iron at your disposal, and are willing to do the homework, you can fix your cheap Chinese Iron. Replacement parts are extremely cheap, so even when things do break down, it wont cost you much to keep it going (or replace it outright)....

I dabble with micro-sized computers. Things like this. The device above is something called the Orange Pi One, a cheap Chinese designed and manufactured board. Costs about $10 + shipping (~$4 to Canada). Unlike the highly regarded Raspberry Pi Zero, it has a Quad Core ARMv7 CPU (vs. a single core ARMv6, slooow), a full sized HDMI, full sized USB, and an Ethernet Jack. Pretty amazing little machine for a tenner....

I did a bunch of homework on Multimeters. Here’s a good beginners guide. And here’s a more technical guide to buying a good meter. There’s a ton of great information packed in that video, but unfortunately dude is an experienced no-compromise electrical engineer, so his minimum recommendations cost around $100. And actually, his advice is correct if you have any interest in doing any real electronics work (Cars, AC devices, or really anything more than microcontrollers)....

Summary. The PICkit connector is 6 pins, but the last pin is the Auxiliary pin. This pin doesn’t seem to be used that often. The setup could be simplified by snipping the 6th pin. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1897710270/digirule-the-interactive-binary-ruler/posts/1444571 http://www.bradsprojects.com/the-digirule/ After looking in to it, it seems the PICkit 2 is discontinued. http://www.microchip.com/Developmenttools/ProductDetails.aspx?PartNO=DV164121 There isn’t even a download link there for the software. I found the source code a rather backwards way. The link is here:...

Short set of notes. The most reliable way I’ve found to connect to a remote device is to open a connection immediately after connecting the USB cable to the PC. At this time, I haven’t figured out a clean way to disconnect and reconnect without physically unplugging. Closing the screen session (ESC->CTRL+A->SHIFT+D->SHIFT+D) makes follow-up connections via the same line unreliable. EDIT: This should work: http://askubuntu.com/a/661/364657 Connections require the Black GND (Ground), White TX (Transmit), Green RX (Receieve) pins connected....

I don’t write blog posts anymore. I write notes. 🙂 ...

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EDIT: Final version is over here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/2015/11/05/how-i-ended-2014-and-plan-to-end-2015-a-non-jam/ This is a story. Near the end of 2014, I started researching how to makes stuff for Commodore 64. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. The Commodore was the computer I grew up with as a kid, but as a kid, I only ever wrote some lousy BASIC programs on it. I never made anything that truly utilized the hardware....

Another day, another note post. 🙂 ...

The following are a bunch of notes and numbers. I am gauging the performance of various devices reading from and writing to their memories. ...