If you ignore the health, ethical, social, moral, financial, environmental, creative, cultural, privacy, quality, legal and geopolitical concerns, then this thing really has legs!!

well, fuck 😑

not the end of the world, but a thing i worked on on and off for more than a year fell through

I don't own a car. I take public transit everywhere, and I do think personal vehicle use has real environmental costs. But I don't think driving is inherently unethical.

I live in Seoul, and the city makes transit easy for me. That's not a virtue. It's a condition I happen to benefit from. Some people live where transit barely exists, or where it doesn't get them to work, school, or care. In those places, driving is not optional.

The same is true of flying. In parts of Europe you can cross borders by train. In island nations, or in places with weak land connections, flying may be the only realistic option. “Just fly less” means very different things in those places.

A lot of what gets called my ethical choices comes from the conditions I live in. That makes me wary of turning structural failures into personal morality. If the alternative is missing or unusable, shaming people for not choosing it solves nothing.

When environmental harm gets framed as individual moral failure, attention shifts away from the structural changes that would actually matter. It's not an accident that oil companies spent decades popularizing the idea of the personal carbon footprint.

Repair Day is tomorrow at @xHain_hackspace Come work on your broken music gear or prototypes with help from volunteers and equipment from xHain.

https://codeberg.org/gndbuzz/gists/src/branch/main/20260222-repair-day-xhain

#repaircafe #berlin #makerspace #hackerspace #electronics #diyelectronics #diymusic

Silly, but I just found out that there's a wood kind called Basswood.. what!? has anyone made a… bass out of it?

#woodworking #luthier

@loriemerson have you heard or seen any examples of this ⬆️ by any chance?

Are hams involved in any way in events in Minnesota?

My largest concern with the hobby is the amateurs commitment to be "apolitical." The ICE operation tests the limits of that.

On one hand, it's an unfolding disaster & people need help. Amateurs have the abilities & the tools to help.

On the other hand, taking a side in this conflict means expressing a political view (helping people is political. surprise surprise)

What are people choosing to do?

#hamradio #amateurradio #minnesota #ice

Do online radio aggregators exist? Is there something like RSS to get the schedule & currently playing?

#onlineradio

Shellac seems to be a really nice alternative to lacquer. All natural. The flakes can be stored forever. The finish is not perfect, but good enough for lots.

Yet I can't even buy it in construction / home improvement stores, especially not in the form of flakes.

Why is that?

Genuinely puzzled.

#woodworking #shellac

My right wrist started hurting recently, if I sit at a computer for a few hours. I didn't change anything about my setup. Any tips on what to try, who to talk to about that?

The setup is:

* DIY desk, the surface is 73cm from the floor
* Regular non-adjustable wooden chair
* Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard
* Microsoft Sculpt mouse

#ergonomics #workspace

Thinking of recycling, because the way it's currently implemented is not working.

Wouldn't it be nice if every business that sells you a thing would be responsible for taking it (or parts of it / packaging) back for recycling?

And we make it propagate all the way up to raw materials?

The expert knowledge and ability of recycling something is there at a place of production. It's not there at a garbage sorting facility.

#recycling #repair

So.. we paid 360€ for the privilege of bringing, sorting and throwing stuff out ourselves.

The people at the hof were super kind and helpful, but dang! Is there no better option?

We could have asked BSR to come pick everything up themselves for probably less money, it's just we'd have to wait a couple of weeks.

Otherwise the incentives seem to heavily favor the Zu Verschenken option :/

(2/2)

#Berlin #recycling #bsr

Decided to do a sensible thing and, instead of leaving a bunch of furniture and building materials on the street, bring it to the BSR recycling hof.

Never used those before, so was a bit nervous. We've loaded a full (rented) van of stuff and went there 3 hours before they close for the weekend.

They turned out to be open (yay). Also it turned out the free limit is 3m³ of stuff. For 3-5m³ they charge 180€ (!!) We had, in their approximation, 7m³.. (1/n)

#Berlin #BSR #recycling

Hosting an overdrive pedal soldering workshop next Saturday December 13, at Pedal Markt in Berlin Neukölln.

There's a holiday discount too :)

https://pedalmarkt.com/collections/upcoming-workshops/products/build-an-overdrive-soldering-workshop

The pedal is a color and texture device. With different clipping and brightness options it can act as a boost, an overdrive or a distortion. It stacks well with other pedals, responds to your playing and is a classy beast all around!

#diyelectronics #soldering #Berlin #solderingworkshop #synthdiy #pedalsandeffects

Linus Torvalds bringing his DIY effects pedal to a famous computer YouTuber's video was not on my bingo card 😅

Maybe that's a sign I need to look into Linux for audio after all :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfv0V1SxbNA

#synthdiy #diyeffectpedals

Repair Day is today at Pedal Markt, Berlin. Come work on your broken music gear and DIY projects:

https://pedalmarkt.com/blogs/news/repair-day

#electronics #diyelectronics #synthdiy #repair

About last night

#synthdiy #circuitbending #berlin #pedalmarkt

Here's what's out there for comparison. How much energy does that color screen consume? How do you use the touchscreen with your hands inside your pockets or in gloves or sweaty? Why are they so freaking huge!?

Look at this! People used to be able to make these!! Brilliant people at Sony close to its peak, but people! Humanss!

An mp3 player

- with a headphone jack & bluetooth
- with a monochrome LCD (or e-ink) screen
- physical buttons
- dedicated volume control
- usb-c
- shows up as a hard-drive when connected
- and/or has an sd-card slot
- smol

So easy to find in 2010 (minus bluetooth & usb-c)

Absolutely impossible to find in 2025

#mp3 #mp3player #ipod