2026-05-22 08:00:00
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2026-05-21 08:00:00
I enjoy playing around with old computers and software from the 90s and early 2000s. My childhood computer was the Amiga 500 which I still have and which I love dearly, but the Windows 9x/XP era of computing is the most nostalgic for me because this coincides with my teenage years and my early 20s, and there are just so many great things about it; 3dfx games, the early internet, Napster, ICQ, Winamp... it was a fascinating time in tech.
One problem with computers from this time period is how to get them online. They either have no wifi or severely outdated wifi modules which at best do WEP encryption, but they can't connect to a modern WPA encrypted wifi network. So in order to get them online you would either have to downgrade the security of your wifi network (terrible idea), set up a dedicated wifi network for these machines with only WEP security enabled (also terrible) or connect them via ethernet, which is easy enough as long as you have an Ethernet connection available.
But what if you want to get an old Windows 9x/XP-era computer online somewhere where there is no ethernet connection? Here's a deceptively simple way to do it:
And that's it. As long as you have automatic network configuration via DHCP enabled on the PC, the phone should automatically assign an IP address to the PC and bridge its wifi connection to the wired network through the Ethernet adapter. And this should work with every old (and new) computer, as long it has an Ethernet port.
I admit, it's not the prettiest of solutions (I need to get a shorter Ethernet cable), but it works and it's really simple to set up. So why did it take me so long to figure this out? I have no idea.
I tested this with a USB-C docking station which has an Ethernet port too, and it worked just as well, but required external power to the docking station, meaning an extra power cable is required.
I don't have an iPhone, so I have no idea if it would work with iOS, too.
2026-05-15 08:00:00
Last week I shared a post by David about backing up his blog. Except, due to a brain fart on my part, I called him Glyn, who is someone else entirely. Why? I have no idea... maybe I started writing the post before I had coffee. Thankfully people are paying more attention to what I write here than I am, because not long after I posted, I got a message from David asking why I called him Glyn. And almost at the same time I got a message from Glyn, asking why I called David by his name. So we went back and forth a bit on Mastodon, which led to quite an amusing morning last week. Moral of the story? If you want people to get in touch with you, mess up their names!
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2026-05-08 08:00:00
Recently I've been struggling to find things to write in the intro of these posts, or finding things to write on the blog in general. I'm kind of in a creative slump it seems... and I don't really know what to do about it except wait it out and see when the creativity comes back. Don't worry, the linkdumps aren't going to stop, but they might appear without an intro sometimes. I think it's better to do it this way rather than try and force myself to come up with something just for the sake of having an intro.
Also, I did an update on my laptop a few days ago and now palm rejection of the touchpad doesn't work anymore, and the mouse curse jumps around randomly as I type and my palm touches the touchpad. It's not annoying at all! Thanks, Arch Linux.
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2026-05-01 08:00:00
It's time somebody invented beaming. And it doesn't have to be beaming a person at first, though that would be ideal... but maybe we could start with small objects. For example, I usually write these posts at my favourite café downtown. But I haven't been feeling too well the last couple of days, so I have to stay home. And now it would be awesome to have a small beaming device, maybe the size of a microwave, where I can put in an empty coffee mug and beam it down to the café where they fill it up and send me back a nice hot cup of coffee. Why has nobody invented this yet?
And yes, I know I can just buy a good coffee machine and get the same result, but you know... it would be so much cooler if they could beam a cup of coffee straight to my kitchen. A man can dream.
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2026-04-29 08:00:00
Yesterday the new Commodore, run by YouTuber Perifractic (Christian Simpson) announced their new product, a faithful recreation of the C64C, the second revision of the Commodore 64. Essentially it's the same as the first one they released, but it uses the case of the old C64C which has the same design language as the later Amiga machines.
To produce the cases they're using the original case molds which had a small design flaw:
“The C64C molding was created using a 2-point flow pattern that resulted in the plastic cooling unevenly in the original production run, creating feint, semi-circular, flow marks that have largely gone unnoticed. By using the original tooling, we’re even bringing these back. [...]”
The quote is taken from this article, which has more details and also a picture showing the defects:
My dad had this exact model of C64 when I was a kid, and I remember playing Pitstop II with him on it. We had the game on tape, and it often wouldn't load correctly, so when we got it to load we left the computer running the whole day so we could come back to it later. And because we didn't have a monitor, we connected the computer to the living room TV, which meant we had to set it up on the living room table, run all the cables and then put everything away later once we were done. We used computers like this until 1996 or 1997 when we got our first PC, which came with a monitor...
Anyway, I still have this old C64C. My dad was never going to use it again, so I just brought it home with me a couple of years ago. I haven't used it in a long time either, but my dad has this habit of sometimes just throwing stuff out when it bothers him, so I thought I'd better keep some things I remember from my childhood from ending up in e-waste or landfill.
I just pulled the computer out again and had a good look at the case, and it does indeed have these flow marks, just like they said it does. They're hard to photograph, but under the right light they're clearly visible. Some are even in the exact same spot as shown in the picture above:
That's kind of cool. And it's exactly like they said: None of us ever noticed.
I don't know if it's possible to find out exactly which mold my C64 came from, but hypothetically if the new C64 came from the exact same mold as the one I have, I might just be tempted to buy one...