Hi everyone, holy shit, you've supported me to the tune of £80 a month! Thank you so so much.
A quick rundown of the past few weeks:
On September 2nd, I got the news that a client will have to drastically reduce the hours she can pay me. This isn't anything I've done, but obviously came as a huge blow. I wrote a post about that on the day for some more info.
I won't lie that it sent me into a bit of a spiral. With having just finished my degree, and my partner finding some full-time work, I was relying on the relatively light workload of that client to allow me to take a 'break' (ie: not be constantly scrambling for more work), but back to the scramble I go.
In the following week, I finished up a website for another client, Alice Bell. She was an absolute joy to work with, and I love any opportunity to do some illustrations alongside website development! Thankfully having that bit of extra work, and my last bigger invoice for my main client, it means I'm not immediately missing important bills, but I'm still in an extremely dire situation, don't get me wrong. My girlfriend's income alone isn't enough to cover everything.
I've been slowly adjusting to a new routine, both because I'm working less for my main client, and because my girlfriend is now working in office, which means more strict sleep/wake times. I don't adjust the best to those, and especially when already stressed.
However, as much as I'm still terrified for the future, I did manage to get some small projects done. I log all the things I do every day, so here's a list of the things I've done that I think are of note.
- I installed Cider on my PC. I got it a while back. It's an alternative Apple Music client. Cross-platform. It is much more responsive than the default one (especially on Windows). It still does feel a tiny bit janky at times, but I have a few fairly large and esoteric playlists. The main issue I have with Apple Music is that it seems to just not show some of my playlists at all! Makes browsing and adding new songs really difficult.
- Organised some workmen coming. For those who don't know, I also have a GoFundMe to help me find a new place to live. There's a lot of issues with this house, and a new one that popped up the day I got the news about work, was one of our windows had a broken hinge and could not be shut. The workmen did not show up the day they were supposed to. My landlord still ignores my messages about the hole in the bathroom wall.
- I worked through our existing finances once payments came in. While it's not looking great so far, every piece of support helps us, and the combined income of Ko-Fi, my lowered work with my client, and my girlfriend's income might actually put us close to even! It's not comfortable by a long stretch, but potentially less catastrophic than I thought. My car insurance will reduce by £100 a month in November.
- A small silly thing, but I practiced on my keyboard (instrument) for a while on the 10th of September. I adore making music, and I'm far too out of practice. It was nice to plug it in and noodle even if it was only for 10 minutes.
- I 'fixed' our MX Master mice! We got replacement mice a while back, but I'm never one to throw something away. The first generation LogitechMX Master has a few flaws. Firstly, both the ones I owned had the latch mechanism immediately break, keeping the device in 'free wheel' mode.
Secondly, 8 years after buying them, the rubber around where you keep your thumb degraded, causing the thumb-button to constantly keep pressed. This happened to both mice within a month of each other. I 3D printed a replacement part that I found on thingiverse, cut around the broken rubber, and tested the new part. It works really well, and after some sanding, is probably more comfortable than the part before!
The MX Master has a, frankly, dogshit sensor in it. It has a terrible polling rate and the mouse just isn't suited for gaming at all. However, it has 3 profiles, and a low latency option as well as bluetooth. Plus lots of configurable buttons (and it's really comfy!). I'm glad to have them as emergency mice, and it saves them from the landfil.
- Our TVs can now all watch the 'office' AppleTV stream. Not just the TVs either, actually. I'm going to write a separate post about this, I think. But basically, the AppleTV in the office is connected to an RTSP server so any device can watch it. Getting it low latency enough to use is a bit of a pain, however. They still aren't perfectly in sync.
- I printed a mount for my Playstation Eye, to use it as a timelapse camera for my 3D Printer. As expected, something already exists on Thingiverse. This specifically is for bolting to one of the struts on my Ender 3. It works really well!
- I cleared M2S in Final Fantasy 14. Hey, not everything I do has to be productive in some way! I'm typically a fairly casual player of the game, but that makes it the third Savage fight I cleared.
- I disassembled my girlfriend's Huawei W1 watch. A few weeks ago it died during a game night. Weird issues with turning off and the screen had green lines going across it.
It was not healthy. I believe the battery went bad and pushed against the screen. Sadly, a replacement battery did not fix it, although it appears to turn on and boot, there is no display. All the ribbon cables seem fine and there are no obvious marks. Replacement parts are hard to come by, and at this point it may not be worth it. If you'd like to see a proper video or writeup on it though, please let me know!
- I reorganised some of my Home Assistant automations. I may share these, depending on security concerns. Our very cheap robovac supports HA, so we get little random messages when it returns to its dock or is stuck (as it runs around an hour before we wake up). Also some other integrations needed cleaning up, and I am now alerted if one of our cameras goes down. I'm quite paranoid about this stuff after an attempted break-in.
- I cleaned up my PSP! One of my tasks while I have this spare time was to go through our lesser used game consoles / handhelds and ensure they're working and up-to-date. My girlfriend and I are both passionate about games and I like to be ready to use an older device if the mood strikes us.
My PSP is modded, it was one of my first forays into that scene, and it's clearly changed since!
I got the PSP second hand in 2007 I think? And it arrived with a freaking hair inside the screen assembly. 17 years later I finally got rid of the fucker. And gave it a general cleanup while I was at it. This thing saw use!
- I also took some time out to actually work on my coding skills, and began working on a gif player for the Thumby. A ridiculously tiny Gameboy-like microcomputer, based around an RP2040 and with a 72x40 OLED display. It's very fun, and my first foray into micropython. I'm still learning the spec of gifs and LZW compression, and the device CPU is extremely slow, so making it run fast enough is very difficult.
You can see a short video of it running here (Ko-Fi doesn't like YT shorts for some reason). It's far from perfect, but it's neat to get something running on a tiny device like that!
I uploaded the source code as well, so you can try it yourself or improve it
- That's the majority of the bigger projects I've worked on! However, I've of course been keeping up on house tasks, cooking nice meals, cleaning my environment, trying to care for myself, and my plants. Focusing on my relationships with friends and partners is hard too but I'm doing what I can. Keeping busy is what helps me. I just wish it were more fruitful. And it goes without saying, but I'm still searching for work! I am looking independently, but also please let me know if you hear of anything.
Future plans! Panic?!
I have an endless list of projects and ideas to work through, and while the dream would be to have the financial security to plod through them all and document, I can at least do what I can with my spare time.
I have a few more posts planned, hacking a Gulikit controller (that's been in the works for 6 months??) and detailing my bizarre AppleTV streaming setup.
To leave a quick recommendation, this week I watched Terminator Zero. It's an 8 episode anime, and while it may not be a good 'terminator' entry, I really enjoyed it along the likes of the Animatrix or Ghost in the Shell. I love a sympathetic robot and questions about the existential nature of artificial life.
If anything else interests you, I welcome any comments or suggestions, and please share this if you find it interesting or know someone who will!
Right now, I'm trying to take things casual, but I'd love to grow this into a regular thing where I detail what I've been working on and share recommendations.