Pi 5 M.2 Hat in Two Cases

September 8, 2024

Last month I installed the official M.2 hat on a Pi 5. I’d heard this combination would fit in the official case with the fan and lid removed, but had trouble finding a picture of the result.

Here is a picture of the Pi 5 with the M.2 hat in the official case with the fan and lid removed:

Pi 5 with M.2 hat in official case.

Pi 5 with M.2 hat in official case.

I also installed a 1TB 2230 NVMe SSD (shown above) and set up NVMe boot.

This worked, but I was unhappy having the disk was exposed like a muscle car supercharger. I also noticed CPU throttling during CPU-intensive tasks because of the additional heat and reduced airflow from the M.2 hat.

I added an active cooler and switched from the official case to a KKSB Case for Raspberry Pi 5, a taller metallic case with more airflow.

Assembly was a hassle; the KKSB case has a lot of screws, does not come with instructions, and does not have enough room inside to access some of the screw holes.

Once I got everything assembled I was happy with the result:

Pi 5 with M.2 hat and active cooler in KKSB case.

Pi 5 with M.2 hat and active cooler in KKSB case.

Pico W Temperature Sensors and Sensortron

September 7, 2024

We have several Raspberry Pi Pico Ws throughout the house which collect temperature and humidity measurements and a corresponding web interface which shows the current measurements, charts of recent measurements, and the weather forecast for the next few days.

I put together a Temperature Sensors article which explains the history, the hardware, and the software for the project.

Sensortron web interface.

Sensortron web interface.

Sony WF-1000XM4 Battery Failure

August 25, 2024

I have owned my Sony WF-1000XM4 bluetooth headphones for 2 years. Over the past few weeks the battery life has dropped from ~7 hours to less than 1 hour.

Apparently this is a common problem:

I follwed the recommendation in the reddit thread and contacted Sony support. After a brief chat they offered to email a shipping label and repair the headphones at no cost.

If you own a pair of WF-1000XM4s and the battery life decreases suddenly or they get very warm while charging, then you should:

  1. Stop using the headphones immediately because they could explode.
  2. Contact Sony support and ask for a repair or a replacement.

Sony should cover the cost even if the headphones are no longer under warranty (mine weren’t); the battery life for a pair of 2-year-old bluetooth headphones should not deteriorate so abruptly.

Update (2024-08-26): I don’t know how long the WF-1000XM4 repair will take, so I bought a pair of WF-1000XM5s.

Overall the WF-1000XM5s are a moderate improvement over the WF-1000XM4s; the audio quality is better and the earbuds and case are smaller.

Unfortunately the Headphones Connect phone app has gotten worse.

Previously the phone app tried to railroad you into signing up for an unnecessary Sony online account during setup. Now you also have to opt-out of integrations with a handful of third-party services (which I don’t use). Sony also removed the option to control the volume by double- and triple-tapping the left earbud.

Instead, double- and triple-tapping the left earbud can only be used to activate the third-party integrations (which I don’t use). You can still adjust the volume by tapping the earbuds, but only by quadruple-tapping (!?!):

Quadruple-tap to adjust volume.

Quadruple-tap to adjust volume.

Update (2024-09-07): The repaired WF-1000XM4s arrived in the mail this afternoon. I’m going to continue using the WF-1000XM5s as my primary earbuds and keep the WF-1000XM4s as a backup.

Home Office

July 30, 2024

We finally set up my home office. No more soldering on the dining room table or assembling computers on the living room coffee table.

Pictures and a description of my new home office of are available here.

Corner desk in office.  Guard cat optional.

Corner desk in office. Guard cat optional.

Gadgets of the Ages

July 13, 2024

Found while unpacking boxes last night:

Gadgets.

Gadgets.

Shown above, top to bottom, left to right:

Not shown (lost, recycled, or still buried in boxes):

Current gadgets:

  • Google Pixel 8 Pro: Current smartphone and the first one I’ve owned that is waterproof. I’m very happy with it. Great camera. Screen is large enough to read eBooks. Used to take the picture above.
  • Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e (Wi-Fi): Current tablet. Immediately installed LineageOS because I prefer it to One UI. I use it to read eBooks and with the detachable keyboard as a second laptop.
  • PowKiddy RGB10 Max: Current handheld game console. Only used for playing emulated games. Lighter and has a larger screen than the Anbernic RG350m shown in the picture above. Rarely used.
  • Sony WF-1000XM4: Current Bluetooth headphones. I use these daily for meetings and to listen to music and to watch TV shows past my bedtime. Great audio quality, battery life, and charging speed. My only complaint is the phone app tries to railroad you into an unnecessary Sony account during installation. Update (2024-08-25): I had to send these in for repair because the battery life deteriorated rapidly.

Update (2024-07-26): I found the Nook, Cliq, both Nexus 7 tablets, an iPaq, and two digital cameras. Everything except the Cliq is shown below:

More gadgets.

More gadgets.

Those are some massive bezels!

Site Backend

June 2, 2024

On Friday I posted a long Site Backend article which explains how the content on this site is managed, speed and security tweaks, Hugo customizations, Apache configuration, and more.

Editing this site with Vim and Firefox.

Editing this site with Vim and Firefox.

dk-sort Browser Extension

June 2, 2024

Last week I released a browser extension for Firefox which sorts entries in Daily Kos live update articles in chronological order and adds a sort toolbar.

Install Firefox Add-On, Git Repository

dk-sort toolbar.

dk-sort toolbar.

Background: Several months ago I created a bookmarklet (available here) which sorts entries in Daily Kos live update articles from oldest to newest. Unfortunately the bookmarklet was difficult for people to use because:

  • Installation required copying minified JavaScript into a text field, and
  • You had to click the bookmarklet after loading a live update article in order to activate it

To address these problems, I converted the bookmarklet into a browser extension. I also added a couple of features during the convdrsion.

Note: The extension isn’t Firefox-specific, but it’s unlikely I will port it to Chrome because I recommend people ditch Chrome.

Time to Ditch Chrome

June 2, 2024

This week Google announced they are moving forward with the plan deprecate Manifest V2. Despite claims by Google, this change has nothing to do with security and everything to do with hobbling ad-blockers.

Last year I switched to Firefox in anticipation of this change and in response to several other user-hostile changes,

At this point I recommend everyone do the following:

  1. Switch to a non-Chrome browser. I recommend Firefox.
  2. Install an ad-blocker. I recommend uBlock Origin.

This recommendation applies even if you don’t care about ads or privacy; the current "don’t be evil" incarnation of Google has been a poor steward of Chrome and it’s only a matter of time before they do something that you do care about.

Update (2024-06-27): Don’t forget that ad networks regularly serve up malware as well.

Vim Books

June 2, 2024

While perusing Vim scripts, I noticed that there are several Vim books. A couple of them piqued my interest:

I bought both books and I’m about 300 pages into Practical Vim. So far it’s great. I have been using Vim for over 20 years but I still learned a few things; for example, I did not know about the \v “very magic” prefix for patterns.

If you buy the books from the publisher instead of Amazon you can download the eBooks as DRM-free PDF, EPUB, and MOBI files. I read the PDFs on my desktop and the EPUBs in the Kindle app on my phone (imported via Send to Kindle).

Unlike many technical books, the EPUBs render very nicely in the Kindle app. Example:

Page from “Practical Vim” rendered by the Kindle app on a Pixel 8 Pro

Update (2024-06-15): I finished both books. Practical Vim is great and I recommend it. Modern Vim is a bit of a tossup:

  • Pros: The introduction to neovim is helpful and so is the section on fzf integration.
  • Cons: Several chapters are a subset of material from Practical Vim (examples: chapters 2 and 4). Also Modern Vim does not cover modern Vim features like the terminal command, which I use regularly.

To be fair, :terminal is mentioned briefly in the “What’s Next for Vim 8” section of Appendix 1, and it was not included in a stable release until after Modern Vim was published.

Site Updates: Dark Mode and About Page Pictures

May 27, 2024

A couple of site updates:

Dark Mode

Dark mode uses a prefers-color-scheme media query to determine the default theme, so it should do the right thing™ for people who have their system configured to prefer a dark color scheme. The theme can also be set explicitly using the “Switch Theme” icon on the right side of the menu bar.

There is a minor refresh bug and probably a few rough edges with older content, but I will get them sorted as time permits.

Screenshot:

New dark theme active and "Switch Theme" menu icon highlighted.

New dark theme active and "Switch Theme" menu icon highlighted.

I strongly prefer dark mode and have wanted to add it here for years, so this change is a big victory for me.

About Page Pictures

There’s not much to say here; the About page now has a couple of pictures.

Adding the images in a way that I was satisfied with turned out to be a lot more effort than you might expect… This site is statically generated with Hugo, the theme is a heavily-customized version of Bulma, and blog posts and articles are written in Markdown.

The features that I wanted were:

  • A responsive layout containing a horizontal row of images on desktop which gracefully falls back to a vertical list of scaled thumbnmails on mobile.
  • Multiple image format support (in other words, the <picture> element).
  • Accessibility (title, alt, aria-label, <figcaption>, etc).
  • Ability to specifily all of the above in the article front matter.

In order to support everything above, I ended up copying my existing pe-figure shortcode and modifying it to support image “carousels” in articles.

In any case, it’s done now. Here is the result:

Image carousel at bottom of About page.

Image carousel at bottom of About page.

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