Hacker News: blakesmith

New comment by blakesmith in "No Calls"

blakesmith — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 14:00:14 +0000

Love this anecdote. Having a really capable sales team that actually listens to customers unique needs, and feeds that back into a better product can be such a huge asset. Your sales team is usually a huge repository of unique customer pain and problems (opportunities!)

New comment by blakesmith in "Reading QR codes without a computer"

blakesmith — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 18:15:17 +0000

Reminds me of how the first generation iPod firmware and keys were reverse engineered. They blinked out bit patterns on the LCD backlight and used a camera to read the data in! https://mastodon.social/@bagder/111538350617290554

New comment by blakesmith in "Open Sourcing Ferrocene"

blakesmith — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 18:00:32 +0000

This is really cool. A really big step forward for the Rust ecosystem. Being able to use Rust in safety critical systems is a big win.

Congrats to everyone involved!

Learning Homebrew Game Boy Development in Assembly

blakesmith — Fri, 12 May 2023 14:18:13 +0000

Article URL: https://blakesmith.me/2023/05/11/learning-homebrew-game-boy-game-development-in-assembly.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35916727

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by blakesmith in "Show HN: Garnix, fast and easy CI for Nix"

blakesmith — Sat, 08 Oct 2022 17:20:15 +0000

This looks really cool, and showcases how simple CI can be if every git repository exposes a nix flake. Congrats on shipping!

New comment by blakesmith in "A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight"

blakesmith — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 18:06:18 +0000

It's usually tradition that your 100th jump is supposed to be naked, at least amongst the skydiving communities I was a part of.

New comment by blakesmith in "Why keyboard shortcuts don't work on non-US layouts and how devs could fix it"

blakesmith — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 23:17:47 +0000

Another Dvorak typist here! Personal funny anecdote: I learned vim modal navigation after I learned Dvorak, and never bothered to remap the keys. Totally debilitating if I'm using a coworkers QWERTY keyboard for vim navigation, but at least I can still navigate on remote servers without reconfiguring anything!

New comment by blakesmith in "mRNA's next challenge: Will it work as a drug?"

blakesmith — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 19:50:19 +0000

I've been a little out of the loop on how COVID vaccines were different than others. In case you're like me, here's a nice primer on "mRNA vaccines": https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different...

New comment by blakesmith in "Early Work"

blakesmith — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 13:27:16 +0000

This article reminded me of the same quote! Here's the original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE

New comment by blakesmith in "Ami, a tiny cube on wheels that French 14-year-olds can drive"

blakesmith — Sat, 12 Sep 2020 14:37:16 +0000

I converted an old 1978 Puch Maxi moped that wasn't running to fully electric. Was a great way to learn how EVs work, and build a quiet around-town cruiser. https://photos.app.goo.gl/jgL4VmpmSWA5csba8

New comment by blakesmith in "Dumping MiniDisc Media"

blakesmith — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 11:26:01 +0000

Looks like a cool project! I have a box of old mini discs (and a Sony player) in the basement that I've been wondering what to do with. I would love to give the project a try and get them converted for digital archival.

New comment by blakesmith in "Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?"

blakesmith — Sat, 21 Mar 2020 18:34:28 +0000

I play mandolin, but come from playing the cello: so chords are less familiar to me than scale based melodies. This looks really useful, thanks for sharing!

New comment by blakesmith in "Show HN: Gameslab, a FPGA powered handheld game console"

blakesmith — Thu, 26 Dec 2019 05:57:24 +0000

Thanks! Love the video. I love the brushed and beveled panel. I'll definitely look at something like this for some of my designs.

New comment by blakesmith in "Show HN: Gameslab, a FPGA powered handheld game console"

blakesmith — Wed, 25 Dec 2019 19:41:12 +0000

This is awesome. The case fabrication looks great. What materials and fabrication process did you use? I'm particularly interested to hear more details of how you made such a pro looking design.

New comment by blakesmith in "Actix-web 1.0 – A small, pragmatic, and fast web framework for Rust"

blakesmith — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 16:23:02 +0000

Agreed. Rocket has been an absolute pleasure to use. I'm looking forward to it being able to run on Rust stable at some point. Procedural macros abound!

New comment by blakesmith in "Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch"

blakesmith — Sun, 17 Feb 2019 13:56:18 +0000

This project was more about learning the schematic, PCB, firmware and laser cutting work. There might be some fun learnings from 3D printing the keycaps, but I didn't want to expand the scope of this too much, since there were already quite a few "risky" parts of the build (given my current electronics skillset). The top and bottom plate design was mostly about simplicity.

New comment by blakesmith in "Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch"

blakesmith — Sun, 17 Feb 2019 12:45:46 +0000

Thanks for the kind words. It was also a lot of fun, and full of good learnings for future projects.

New comment by blakesmith in "Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch"

blakesmith — Sun, 17 Feb 2019 02:34:06 +0000

Whoa, sweet project. Your assembly video is drool worthy cool. I've thought about doing my own laptop some day, but figured I'd work my way up to that difficulty with some other smaller projects to keep learning. Any advice to share for doing a custom laptop?

New comment by blakesmith in "Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch"

blakesmith — Sun, 17 Feb 2019 02:06:33 +0000

Nope! In fact, I run mine with a Dvorak layout by default. A lot of people who use the QMK firmware do all kinds of custom modifiers, macros, and what not. And if you're doing your own PCB, you can arrange the buttons any way you want, with any switch type.

New comment by blakesmith in "Making My Own USB Keyboard from Scratch"

blakesmith — Sun, 17 Feb 2019 00:08:21 +0000

There are a lot of people who 3D print keycaps I believe. I skipped that and bought DSA blanks from Signature Plastics.