Notes
Things worth writing down.
Mostly problems I hit and solved, kept here because I will need them again and so might you.
01
Embedded & Sensing
Sensors, drivers, calibration, and the hardware/software boundary.
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usbeehive: Vibecoding a Linux USB Tool, and Where It Needed a Human
Porting a C++ USB-C cable diagnostic to Rust with an AI agent: what worked on day one, and the bugs only real hardware and the spec caught.
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Crypto-Heating: Three Years with an Antminer L7
Three winters heating a Colorado home with an Antminer L7: ducting, noise, furnace interplay, dust, gas and power bills, and a hash-board failure.
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SCD40 Below-Sea-Level Altitude Compensation
Compensate a Sensirion SCD40/SCD4x CO₂ sensor below sea level: why setSensorAltitude() can't, and how setAmbientPressure() does it instead.
02
Linux & Systems
Filesystems, distributions, networking, and keeping machines coherent.
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AWS Bedrock Says You Have Access to Claude Sonnet 5 and Opus 5. The Quota Says Zero.
AccessDeniedException on Claude Sonnet 5 or Opus 5 in Bedrock while every access API says AUTHORIZED? Check the per-model TPM quota. It's pinned to zero.
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Starlink on the Road
Months of Starlink on an RV: in-motion use, foliage and signal reacquisition, measured power draw, PoE cabling, router bypass and custom DNS.
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Fixing ZFS Filesystems That Do Not Automount on Ubuntu
ZFS pools gone after every reboot on Ubuntu 22.04? Install zfs-initramfs so ZFS lands in the initrd, and enable zfs.target in systemd.
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Refreshing Rust
Back to Rust after five years, to merge a 700 MB ddrescue log into a few kilobytes: compiler errors, the linter, inline tests, Cargo.
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PowerShell: Check if a File Was Fully Copied
Spot interrupted copies on Windows: a PowerShell function that compares a file's size with its size on disk, and a loop over a whole directory tree.
03
Engineering Practice
How software gets built, and what it costs when it is built badly.
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GSD Core in practice: plans, reviews, and cost control
A field guide to planning, reviewing and measuring AI-assisted software work, with lessons from building a multi-project GSD command center.
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The Hidden Cost of Bad Engineering
Hacks are an unpaid credit card bill. When to pay down technical debt, the rule of three, naming variables well, and state diagrams anyone can read.