Boredom-bred Tech Ideas

I've always wanted a "supercomputer" or rather the feel-good feeling of saying that "My computer has 20 cores and 5GB of RAM"     - Timothy And of course, "It's not about the RAM, it's the core count that counts"     - Timothy You might be wondering why I would want such a computer. Well, first off, you're not my mom, and secondly, wouldn't it be great to be able to use such a powerful computer to do awesome stuff? But hold up -- how am I going to go about building this cluster? Well, since buying 5 laptops is not a practical way of doing things (duh), we'll settle with something a less expensive and less space-consuming. Of course I'm talking about the ARM-based Single Board Computers. Specifically either Orange Pis, NanoPis, or ODROIDs. If we want to make full use of the computing power, we definitely need 64-bit CPUs, and fast RAM. Storage speed is usually not a problem in High Performance Compute Clusters (HPCC). Now your qu...

For some time I have been wanting to build my own PC. What's stopping me is the lack of living space to actually have a PC and its spare parts laying around. Then I thought - why not custom build a laptop? It's much smaller in form factor and footprint, and at the end of the day we get a portable machine that is (hopefully) lightweight. Reality struck me. x86-based boards are... Murderous in pricing and form factor. It is impossible for me to be able to build a compact all-in-one system, keep the price low, and make it portable at the same time. Looking to alternatives, ARM-based SBCs seem like a better choice to help make this build come true. So the first device that came to my mind was... The Raspberry Pi 3B+. And it got turned down quickly within for reasons discussed in  a previous blog post . So I went on a quest to find something suitable for my build. Subscribe to the blog to keep up with this build as well.

I have never enabled any of the voice assistants in any of the device I own/owned, nor have I owned any voice assistant devices. " WHATTTTTTT??? " Yes. I have never liked the idea of a company being able to use my voice to allow them to earn money. Don't believe me? Use your personal assistant and ask it to search for something. The next time you visit any webpages that serves advertisements, keep an eye out for advertisements that was tailored to the search term you used. While I understand that these companies need to keep our voices to improve their speech to text services, I am not comfortable with the fact that our voices can be used to serve us advertisements. Thus effectively earning money out of our voices. Also, I agree that such devices are out there to make our lives easier, lazier, and cozier (in a good way). And they are versatile too! You can connect these devices to make your home a smart home. It still does not change the fact that our voices are used to g...

For starters, let me provide some context - I am a lover of retro gaming. Primarily because I think the current state of the gaming industry is in a mess, to say the least. I remember when I was young I always watched my father play the original Super Mario Bros, Ice Climber, Adventure Island, and many more games on a Famicom (NES) clone. My cousins on the other hand had their childhoods spent buried in their original Gameboys, and to save you the trouble of listening to my life story, here is a list of all consoles that I have actually had the chance to play some games on (not necessarily owning it, up to the 5th generation consoles). Nintendo Famicom (clone) Nintendo Gameboy DMG Sony PlayStation Nintendo 64 (Project64 Emulator on PC) Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP Various Arcade games ( MAME ) Some of the consoles formed most of my fondest memories throughout my childhood. Games like Super Mario 64 (N64), Tumblepop and Joe & Mac (MAME), and Donald Duck Goin' Quacker...