I'm a ridiculous, machine-oriented retiree.
Public Key
npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Profile Code
nprofile1qqs9f8z5hw3tejp9hyewrlfkrjdx8agwxwdmayl4dt05plf82m744aqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds5nza9k
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Published at
2025-07-22T13:19:14Z Event JSON
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"content": "{\"name\":\"Trevor Flowers\",\"about\":\"I'm a ridiculous, machine-oriented retiree.\\n\\nSmol dogs run my life and I'm OK with it.\\n\\nTrying to leave it better than I found it.\\n\\nI am slowly converting a cargo van.\\n\\nProfile pic: old beardie goof\\nProfile header: smol dog napping in sunlight\\n\\npronouns: generally avoided, but they or he work\\ndefault: silly\\n\",\"website\":\"https://machines.social/@trevorflowers\",\"picture\":\"https://machines.social/system/accounts/avatars/000/000/001/original/f579688527054e59.jpg\",\"banner\":\"https://machines.social/system/accounts/headers/000/000/001/original/ec15b99fddb0e19a.png\",\"nip05\":\"[email protected] \"}" ,
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Last Notes npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Oh, I think you misunderstood. I'm used to living on the West coast of the US so the weird part is that the nearest event will be in New York state where I'll be on that day. The event isn't weird. I am! 😸 npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Huh. The closest-to-me @npub1hn2…kl6z meetup on the day (May 24) will be in Brooklyn. Weird. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers If you'd like a second example, hobby SCUBA diving can also be dang expensive. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers As someone who could totally get into macrodata refinement, this build gave my innie a bit of joy. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers On one hand, it's amazing that we can sign and notarize a big stack of documents via a web app with video conferencing of all parties. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers To be clear, I carry a phone with GPS and regularly use its map app. It's very difficult to maintain effective operational security and I am just a retired tinker who plans to go camping more often in 2025 and who casually enjoys paper maps. 😹 npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers People are currently grumpy at VW for being both shady about and inept with vehicle location data. If you buy a vehicle with a GPS unit then even if it doesn't have a network connection they can download and store those data if you go to a dealership for maintenance. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers My house sings in high winds. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Perhaps an "invert" key? npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers The hardest aspect of design for mechatronic bodies for theme park rides is durability and longevity. I will be very impressed if the new Universal monsters stay online given they're moving faster, with more mass, and with more complex routines than I've seen outside of a short-lived prototype. They do look cool af and I'd love to poke around inside to see how they tick. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Groggy morning thought: It would be funny if I moved into a bigger shop space and began making 1:1 and larger reproductions. Who wants a 2:1 VT100? 😺 npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers In related news, I'm land hunting in the NY Appalachians for acreage on which to build a small place to go be weird by myself until I die, probably from tripping over a tiny dog and falling down the stairs, hopefully many years from now. 😸 npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers That and pathological demand avoidance is a wicked combination when attempting to interface with normie jobs. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers My attention span for anything resembling paid work seems to max out at three years. I get a fair amount done, learned, and earned but then I'm ding dang freebirding my way out the door. 🙃 npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Fastest, maybe. Smartest or kindest, rarely. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers It took a bit of hassle and phone time but as of this moment I am enjoying a symmetric 1Gbps connection from my sofa. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers If you're interested in what's inside the 1:3 scale VT100s that I just shipped out then you're in luck! I made a quick video showing what's inside the main case and the working USB keyboard. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers The future they stole from us. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Hey, friends. This is your gentle reminder that there are oodles of cute retrocomputer miniatures with microcontrollers and displays available over on https://store.transmutable.com npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Knee deep in tiny keebs. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers For example, a shipment of 20 LCD panels just... disappeared. I'm guessing that they were stolen because the courier is just like 🤷♂️. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Making and selling goods in a small shop is, for me, the most satisfying work I can do right now. But y'all, there are roughly 4.3 bazerkillion aspects to make it happen, even for limited runs. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers The number one smol floppy organizer size that people requested is for regular size SD cards. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers While we're talking inventory, I also have a few of these smol friends in stock. They have ESP-32 S3 boards inside with wifi and bluetooth so I've made mine into a clock set via nntp. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Smol floppy organizers are back in stock! npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Thinking about the phrase "seize the means of production" lately, it seems like we should invest in benchtop chip and PCB fab tools more than handing bazillions of dollars to Intel and friends to drive down feature size on the mainland. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers I am bummed that Lychee slicer is dropping Linux so I did a bit of digging about how to slice files for an Anycubic printer. It turns out that Wine runs Anycubic's weird slicer, Photon Workshop, with no issues, at least not in my first few projects. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers This is a slick little pocket terminal with an e-ink display and a nicely organized case. The keyboard looks like it might be a pain to use though any other approach is tough in that profile. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers I only have one project that involves LLMs and it's so low on my project list that it'll probably never happen: ask an LLM to hallucinate interesting fictional retrocomputers and then use those images as design guidance to actually build them. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers This is a dry fit of a smol DECtape TU56 into Eurorack rails. Ignore the finish (that's a paper print instead of vinyl, draft quality 3D prints, etc) as this is a size test more than anything. Imagine a couple of these racks on your desk, filled with SMBs, SSDs, and a variety of hardware both fun (tiny spinning tape drives!) and useful (floppy drives that read SD cards!). That's the Desktop Computer Lab concept. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers This is a prototype of a DECtape (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECtape) panel for a miniature server rack system I'm working on, the Desktop Computer Lab. It needs switches and lights. Once those are in I'll print and cut vinyl to add labels and the border lines like the originals. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Ok, putting in the PCB order in 10mins. Last call. *blinks lights* You don't have to go home but you can't stay here. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers The labels and borders vinyl design for the DECtape unit is now prepped for printing and cutting. Inkscape has an integration plugin for my cutter so the workflow is to simply create two SVG layers, one for print and one for cuts. The plug-in adds fiducial marks on the edges of the print so that the cutter can detect them and register the cuts to the ink. There are quirks to the process but they're consistent so after the initial learning period it's been a reliable tool. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Soda can for scale. The little round thinger is a smol DECtape reel and it's sitting on a plate that will hold four reels, the tape heads, and various lights and switches. I plan to make vinyl stickers reproducing the switch and light labels and the color panels. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Tomorrow I plan to put in the PCB order for the 1:3 scale VT100s (https://store.transmutable.com/l/small-vt-100) so if you're already considering a purchase and you want in on this batch then now's the time. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Ideally, all of the lights and switches on both the control panel and the tape storage panel will function and can be lit up or read, respectively. Maybe they'll expose an I2C or serial USB interface. I don't know, yet. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers This miniature 70s-era server rack for the Desktop Computer Lab project is taking shape. I decided to replicate and smol-ify a particular PDP-11/70 (this one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-11#/media/File%3APdp-11-40.jpg) so that I can get a physical understanding of the scale I have in mind. Each panel in this ensmallened rack is around 75mm tall. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Here's a bigger green box that's the size of a mini-ITX motherbord. There's not much room for cards like a GPU but a motherboard, a fan, and a 2.5" SSD can fit in the bottom half of a rack. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Now that the VT100s are in production I'm back on the desktop computer lab. For scale, the green box is the size of an RPi 5. The more complex panel is a smol PDP-11/70 controls panel with the thonky switches. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers "I have a theory that chasing things that scale makes you need therapy, and the therapy is pursuing things that can’t scale." npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers I've thought about it. I can probably make everything at 1:3 scale in my workshop except the print head. Fitting that many actuators and precisely moving the small pins could be a bear, especially if I'm trying to make more than one. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers My current workstation: npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Oh, wow. People are buying smol VT100s. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers After a ~year of development, the 1:3 scale working VT100 terminal is ready to go! npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers Here is a full set of 1:3 scale #VT100 keycaps loosely held in a fitment plate. (that's the reason they're not perfectly aligned with each other) npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers I'm a believer in modding tools to make them fit for purpose and that has the nice side effect of making them feel more "mine" instead of controlled by the manufacturers. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers It's a tight fit inside the 1:3 scale #VT100 terminal case with an SBC, display panel, a serial to USB adapter, and associated cabling. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers There are two silicone rubber membranes inside the keyboard and they take ~15 minutes to laser engrave and cut and then another ~10 minutes to weed and clean. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers The 2D printing and cutting for this first tranche I'll do in one day while doing other work so it's hard to estimate per-unit costs. Each terminal gets a printed and cut logo, a certificate of authenticity, and a thank you note. Together with the shipping box and packing materials, that's all of the paper craft. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers The keycaps are resin printed, washed, UV cured, and then I wipe a contrasting color of polymer clay into the glyphs. Then they go into a toaster oven to harden the clay. The print takes around 40 minutes and then the rest takes around 1.5 hours. After that comes the slowest part which is separating and installing each cap into a plate that goes into the keyboard assembly. npub12jw9fwazhnyztwfju87nv8y6v06suvumh6fl26klgr7jw4hatt6qghdhed Trevor Flowers As I approach the initial production design for the 1:3 scale VT100 I mostly believe the time and filament estimates coming out of my slicer. These numbers are for the filament printed parts of a single terminal and keyboard.
