2026-10-30 22:00:00
There will never be a leap second again. At least not for UTC.
At the CGPM, they decided the last leap second we'll ever see for UTC, or Coordinated Universal Time, happened back at the end of 2016.
Of course they made that decision while I was out on vacation, so I'm just getting this video up now:
But what's the CGPM, why does this matter, and why am I excited about it?
2026-10-28 00:37:00
Since this will be the only source of this process on the Internet1, I figured I'd document a quick fan swap I did on a piece of test/reference equipment I'm running in my Atomic Clock Tower.
I took my Torx T10 screwdriver and popped off the top cover. The screws required some force to loosen, as they were all secured with Loctite.
The inside is simple and serviceable. There's a SpectraTime GRClok-1500, with an integrated timing-grade GPS module, and a stabilized 10 MHz output2.
2026-10-23 21:00:00
Since learning about the effects of high CO2 concentration on attention and cognitive performance—especially at levels much higher than 2000ppm—I've started monitoring CO2 and other air quality indicators in my house, at my studio, and even on the road.
I have a few other air quality monitors I'll be covering in the future, but today I wanted to focus on one I only heard about in the comments on a recent video tearing down a cheap no-name 'Air Quality Detector' from Amazon.
2026-10-21 22:10:00
This morning, two critical PHP Security Advisories were published:
If you're running PHP for any service, you need to upgrade immediately to 8.2.35, 8.3.36, 8.4.27, or 8.5.12. And if you use Remi's repos on RedHat-derivative Linux distros, you need to switch to official repos temporarily as Remi's on vacation and can't update his community repo. (Reminds me of xkcd 2347). Remi pushed updates even while on vacation!
2026-10-14 21:00:00
Formlabs sent me a Form Studio 1 resin 3D printer to test after years of back-and-forth about their Form 4 printer.
Like the Form 4, it's an SLA (stereolithography) printer, but unlike the Form 4 (which starts at $2,600), it's affordable for a hobbyist. It's not cheap, coming in at $699 (or $749 with a flex build platform, which I highly recommend), but it is affordable.
I can't say as much about this printer as people who are well-versed in resin printing and use other SLA printers (all my experience until now is with FDM, or Fused Deposition Modeling1, printers). But I can convey my first-time experience using this printer and with the entire SLA experience.
2026-10-10 04:00:00
There was a time I'd look at a board like the Radxa Dragon Q8B (at left, above) and be like, "there's no way I'd spend $209 on an SBC with 8 gigs of RAM". But we're in 2026, and seeing the 8 gig Raspberry Pi 5 going for almost the same amount, I figured I'd give it a shot.
On paper, the Q8B beats the Pi 5 in pretty much every way. A lot of that is thanks to this Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip, which is the same chip I tested on Microsoft's Windows Dev Kit 2023.
