weekends are for leisure

A recent scroll through my blog posts got me thinking about the personal projects I’ve worked on in recent years. Last month I built my own wifi router over a three week period. It was invigorating. Similarly hardware-related, I came across a three-year-old blog post from when I built my current desktop PC. It still meets my needs quite nicely so I’ve no need to upgrade, which is a nice feeling. On the software side, a much older project is a web application I call Tracker. It’s something I use roughly 355 days a year.

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For the past year I’ve been using a TP-Link WDR4300 wireless router. I tried installing OpenWrt on it but it became unusable so I reverted back to stock. Last month I decided to build my own wireless router out of the beagleboard-xM I bought three years ago.

What are the benefits of building my own router?

• It could provide network attached storage via a USB drive or MicroSD card. Could use something more robust than the FAT filesystem too.
• It uses less power by 3 watts. 5v @ 3A compared to 12V @ 1.5A. I think this comes out to a savings of $2 per year.
• The Beagleboard with an external USB wireless adapter is slightly smaller than my current router
• When new wireless technologies come out (like 80211ac) I could simply buy a new USB wireless adapter rather than having to replace the whole unit.
• With 4 USB ports, I could add extra wireless adapters to cover the 5Ghz spectrum

TL;DR version of all the hurdles I encountered along the way:

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The National Park Service tells the Associated Press that it’s about to order all 401 of its parks to ban unfettered use of drones on their grounds.

I kinda want a drone, or some sort of flying radio-controlled vehicle of my own, but nevertheless I’m quite happy about this.

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Today I gave money to support Soma FM. iTunes radio is starting to remind me of Pandora with it’s repetition (and ads!), so I figured I should support Soma FM and add them back to my rotation. They’re ad-free and they keep adding stations … kinda blows my mind.

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The New York Times has a rover tracker. The first image from sol 540 is beautiful.

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Learn how foreign aid reduces overpopulation, dependency on aid for impoverished countries, and makes a sustainable future for our planet.

This letter is a great read. It invigorates my optimism. “In just 25 years, new cases of polio were reduced from 350,000 annually, to less than 400 in 2013.” Simply, wow.

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Wow:

* The moon is rich in rare-earth elements. Sounds kinda funny when you think about it. The moon is rich in unrare-moon elements.
* There is a US rare-earth element mine, and it has recently opened back up. If only mining had fewer long term environmental risks.
* And of course, recycle your cell phones.

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We recently visited the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, and today I watched the live stream of SpaceX’s launch. Lots of awe lately.

Soon I’ll live nearer to Cape Canaveral and plan to watch future launches in-person. Woo!

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Online art community deviantART is announcing that it has received a strategic investment from software company Autodesk. The financial terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, but deviantART co-founder and CEO Angelo Sotira told me this makes Autodesk his company’s largest investor…

Two months ago I started working for deviantART as a software developer. I couldn’t have started at a better time!

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