I need to relocate my email provider. Microsoft sounds good right now. Nobody being able to reach me for a sustained period of time… it’s literally all I’ve ever wanted in an email host.

Beings of mastodon: what’s the one thing you see that just pleases your very soul more than anything else in the world? I want to hear your biggest non-sexual kink. (Which, I must stress, has nothing to do with sex)

I’ll start: seeing the silent gestures which live musicians use to communicate with each other… and then feeling the music flow in a different direction as a consequence. It scratches a very special itch in my brain.

I'm beyond proud to be a part of the team that builds #emfcamp. It's full of talented, driven, hardworking people who Get Shit Done. Even in a brutal heatwave. In a field of neurodivergent people who are moderately-crap at looking after ourselves, we will gently bully each other into taking care of themselves. It's a weirdly self-balancing system. I had an absolute whale of a time. I'm still very sad it's over.

We have to make the real world a little bit more like EMF. Just a little bit more ❤️

The longer I spend here the more I can live in denial about #emfcamp being finished 😭 . So many wonderful and fascinating talks by incredible speakers ❤️ https://media.ccc.de

This little fan travels with me everywhere and I’m kinda amazed by how well it works, how easily it fits into a suitcase, and how much better it is than all the crap you find when you search product listings for “desk fan”, most of which are dirty, dirty USBA. I think the only change I’ve made since its creation is to wrap the fan’s white cable with fabric tape from car wiring harnesses to make it a little more durable.

RE: https://mastodon.scot/@herdingdata/114337371362811585

PSA for those in UK who, like me, struggle with heat and are wondering wtf happened to the weather #heatwave ☀️🥵

1) you can make a surprisingly powerful, durable and compact USB-C desk fan out of a computer cooling fan with the secret search phrase in quoted post. My bodged lego technic stand has been surprisingly good so far.

2) Thick curtains/ blankets over windows work very well at keeping heat *out*. Similarly if it’s hotter outside than in, close windows until that changes in the evening.

“Why should I be the only one who hears my inner monologue?” ❤️ #StarTrek #StarfleetAcademy

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. It really is the show the world needs right now. I’m being very careful in what I write here so as to avoid spoilers.

Themes of being lost, helplessness, pain, suffering and grief.

Yet… in stark contrast: the value of community, purpose, what leadership looks like, finding our own agency in trying times, & above all service to a wider goal. It’s such a beautiful show that I can gladly forgive the occasional stumble along the way. ❤️❤️❤️ #StarTrek #StarfleetAcademy

It’s funny how some niches get EXTREMELY well-solved with good engineering (e.g. computer cooling) and yet never marketed for use cases beyond the original very narrow case, despite being very capable & cross functional.

I often reverse a large trailer in unfamiliar places at night. I was looking for 2x “red torch” to be markers. Every torch I found was either hideously expensive or not rechargable / only charges with USB-A. Until brainwave: rear bicycle lights are cheap as chips & USBC!

It amazed me that looking around for a USB-C fan to come travelling, most of what’s out there is A) cheap plasticky trash;and B) mostly USB-A.

I refuse to buy USB-A accessories in the year 2025. The format is dead to me. I want to always have the right cable with me for all my devices (don’t even get me started on this being extremely not solved for USB-C 😅)

I am very chuffed with my recent discovery that with the following components you can make a very portable, compact and powerful (yet efficient!) USB-C desk fan:

1. Arctic P14 max (computer cooling fan, large) £12
2. Couple of 140mm metal grates £6
3. “PWM 4pin speed controller” (literally a 3d printed case around a very simple circuit with a USB-C input) https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/296502185149 £6
4. Some teeny tiny bits of lego technic to make a stand

I had access to a ps5 last week. I enjoyed playing little big planet 3. The first game in the LBP series I’ve played in quite some time. Great little game. But I was dismayed to see that 1 & 2 are not available to buy on the store, and the servers which once hosted REALMS of user generated content have been switched off.

There was no book burning fire to stand around. I wish to stand around the embers and mourn the lost worlds.

Proposed next goal in capitalist regulations:

You want to write off a film/tv show for tax reasons? Or withdraw digital content from being on sale? Go ahead. Oh, but you are compelled to release it to public for free in perpetuity.

You sold a product which relies on servers which you now wish to turn off for cost saving reasons? Go ahead. Oh but now you are compelled to publish all your code and provide a way for consumers to run their own server so their products remain usable.

(It’s important to clarify that when I say “gchq” I do not in fact mean the government entity, I mean the EMF village name inspired by some guys who discovered in the pub one day that the domain gchq.net was vacant and purchased it for a tenner. Delightful.) #emfcamp

I quite enjoyed the gchqnet treasure hunt. We had to find the “hexpansion” chips that had been scattered around site. #emfcamp

Particular highlight was finding Dan, one of the organisers of this quest. After I chatted to him for a bit he said “now that you’ve met me, here’s a hidden hexpansion” and offers me a secret one from his pocket. Mindblowingly cool - I’ve only ever experienced something like this in a game.

We can make the world more like this. We can reward people for being curious.

For example, here is the start of one side quest #emfcamp

If there’s any one thing I’m determined to bring more of to the real world, it is SIDE QUESTS. There were so many. Some were puzzles, others were treasure hunts. I still haven’t managed to find adequate words to capture that on saturday I didn’t feel like doing the “main story” and so instead spent a day quite literally walking around a field doing side quests. In real life. #emfcamp

An installation which nicely sums up one part of what #emfcamp was like: the random midi keyboard left quite literally in a grassy field, vaguely facing null sector (where the party is at). There’s no sign. It just silently SCREAMS “play with me”. Turns out this keyboard controls the lasers which go out across the whole site! Deeply satisfying to play with.

We can make the world a little more like this. We can reward people for being curious.

I am still surfing the wave of “omg #emfcamp was simply an amazing experience”

A friend’s response after hearing a fraction of what we got up to: “that’s incredible. How can you go back to your day to day life now? Isn’t it really boring in comparison?”

This is an excellent question, if a little terrifying to think about. I don’t have an answer. So I must conclude… the status quo is not enough: we need to make it our mission to make the real world more like EMF.

Time for a new profile pic, featuring the #emfcamp #glitterbeard. Thanks for taking such a nice photo of me @unlobito! ❤️