Oversleeping and Alexa, a new Dave video, and a dog-related AirPods story
Plus, singing Klingons, my Mac Studio, the National Archives, a bunch of old bones, BASIC is way old, and more.
I’m David Gewirtz. Welcome to this week’s Advanced Geekery newsletter. It’s been an exciting week. Let’s dive in.
My latest video
It’s time for another Dave video. So here you go: Unboxing the future of 3D printing: Anycubic Kobra 3 Combo. It’s a look at how the multi-filament Anycubic Kobra 3 Combo is packaged, as well as some fun behind-the-scenes coverage of how I shoot this very dynamic video without a crew.
My articles
Let’s kick it off with a quick recap of the articles I published in the last week on ZDNET.
The 13 Mac Studio peripherals I can't live without - and why: Looking to upgrade your Mac? Here's why the Mac Studio's unmatched port selection and performance make it the ultimate choice for creators, especially if you rely on multiple devices.
Do you talk to Alexa in your sleep? Here's how to check: Learn how Alexa's voice activity history reveals whether you are oversleeping your alarms, and find the hidden data Alexa keeps on your morning habits.
My dog's barking muted my AirPods Pro 2 - here's why and the simple fix: Are your AirPods Pro 2 muting at the wrong times? It's a feature, not a bug. But with this simple fix, you can stop your dog's barking from ruining your listening experience. If you like incredibly cute Pixel pictures, click into this article for a new one.
Here’s an updated article, originally published when Generative Fill was in the Photoshop beta release, and just updated for the current release. Apparently, people are still struggling to enable it, and I have the (rather weird) answer how to make it work.
What to do if Generative Fill is grayed out in Adobe Photoshop AI: Adobe's Generative Fill AI features are game-changing, but for some folks, it's been nothing but disappointment. Here's how to enable the feature if it's grayed out on your computer.
Must-watch YouTube
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
Continuing our look at the National Archives, 60 Minutes did a nice piece on why the National Archives is an important American institution.
Yep, Generative AI is everywhere. Amazon is using it to help deliver packages faster. Here’s the inside scoop.
For our nerdy musical selection of the week, I give you Klingon Style. So many questions. So much I just don’t want to know.
Interesting reads
And now, some good stuff from around the Internet, well worth reading.
SJVN wrote a great ZDNET piece on BASIC turning 60. Did you program in BASIC? Let us know in the comments. Tell your BASIC story.
Archeologists have discovered that a knight is buried under the oldest European-style engraved tombstone in America.
Speaking of corpses (and no, that’s not a BASIC reference), a different set of archeologists think they’ve finally confirmed the identity of Christopher Columbus’ remains.
Send in your projects
I’d like to regularly spotlight a reader project or two here. Your project doesn’t have to be a big Kickstarter launch. If you’ve built something cool, it has some pretty pictures, and you’re proud of it, I might be able to share it here.
If you have a photogenic reader project, send an email to me at david@zatz.com with the subject “READER PROJECT,” a few pictures, and a short one-paragraph description. If you have a social media link or a link to the project, include that, too.
Both my EPs are now streaming
Available on all your favorite streaming services.
More clicky
I’ve got a lot happening all over the web. Here are links to my various stuff:
House of the Head: home for my published music
ZATZ Labs: where I host my published software projects
Feel free to dig around, visit, and say hey!
Leave some comments
Substack supports comments, so feel free to leave some. I promise to read them. Just, please, let’s keep our personal politics out of any discussion.
That should do it for this week. This newsletter is really starting to pick up subscribers. Please help it out by sharing links on all your socials.
Have a great week!
Great story. I remember using tiny BASIC back in the day. And FORTRAN. And CP/M. In fact, I disassembled CP/M to add new functionality to it as part of my thesis project. Good times. Good times!
As usual, another great article. I’ve been wanting to give you some feedback for some time but never got around to it. You had mentioned about using BASIC on the job and yes, I used it on several jobs that I had over the years.
I had learned BASIC in the late 70’s when I worked for Sperry UNIVAC. My programming experience at that time was writing machine code pressed through a maintenance panel and later on with Assembly Language. I never used BASIC while at UNIVAC but thought that the language greatly simplified writing programs.
After five years at UNIVAC, I found a job at an Army Depot writing Automated Test Program Sets on the HP 1000. This system could troubleshoot and isolate problems on failed circuit boards using the programs that we wrote for that particular card. Although HP had its own programming language for the majority of the testing being done, we sometimes had to augment the test program with special code written in either FORTRAN IV or BASIC.
My next job that required BASIC was working for the Department of Interior for Hoover Dam. As luck would have it, I ended up programming environmental Data Logging Equipment. These were first generation Data Loggers that took remote field measurements on the Colorado River and elsewhere. The BASIC used on these Data Loggers was referred to as ‘Tiny BASIC’ that was interpreted. This BASIC was slow, crude and extremely limited. We could use 26 total variables A-Z. Also reading STRING information from an RS-232 port was done by a character to character basis. Learning to implement BASIC was pretty crude as the vendor supplied several snippets of code as programming examples. Even with the limitations of TINY BASIC, we could refine the measurements to be more accurate.
One thing you learn in time is ALL equipment has a lifecycle. When the vendor was developing the new generation of its Data Loggers, I had been asked to be a Beta Tester. The new equipment had a better BASIC. In this version that was compiled, the differences and abilities were like comparing going from driving a Yugo to a fancy race car. Measurements could be refined. I could talk to third party instruments without any difficulty. Man… It was a game changer.
I wrote many routines over the years. All specialized stuff. The company that we had been working with over the last two decades was bought out and it was time to design a new data logging product. The new generation would utilize PYTHON as the goto language. I was asked to be the Beta Tester but retired before I had their product in my hot little hands.
So what about BASIC? It had (and still is) being used in the Data Collection of water from the Colorado River in both the river and the distribution points from Hoover Dam to Mexico. As the river is the life’s blood to the Southwest and to the millions of people that rely on it, probably one of BASIC’s more noteworthy roles…