Dave Slusher - Hacker/Maker

Evil Genius Chronicles Podcast for November 14 2025 - Irritatingly CapableDownload audio

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On this show, I play a song from Uwade; the theory of monthly productivity challenges is great but the practice is often the opposite of the intention; I have been fixing the dead drives in my old […]

I need to follow more hashtags on the various apps on the #fediverse. Like every one I see on topics that interest me.

Photo of an opened cardboard box containing several Airheads and a Muzi Works sticker.

Photo of an opened cardboard box with a container labeled "WiFi LoRa 32 V4" and a box labeled "H1".

Heltec LoRa 32 V4 arrived from Muzi Works! I'll admit, I expected at least a QR code to a getting started reference. I'd have preferred that to the candy.

Welcome to #meshtastic newbie, jump in that deep end. If you don't drown I'll be over there.

#unboxing

FYI @nlowell I downloaded 2699 just fine but 2698 is giving a 404 error on download. Keep on walking and talking!

Downward-shot photo of my coat pocket, LED safety light and a $5 bill

Happy #ADHD treasure season (finding lost things in your coat pockets from last winter) to all who celebrate

Screenshot of an app screen for an IOT birdfeeder. The key part is the battery icon at 26% with a light charging lightning bolt icon.

Charged it a little with a wall charger so I could turn it on and see what was happening. Plugged it up and put it back in the tree. Turns out the son of a bitch is charging!

I'm looking to fix the external panel since the one in the roof of the […]

[Original post on social.ellijaymakerspace.org]

We got a cheap wifi camera bird feeder on sale a while back. Through various wind events first the off-board solar panel cable was severed and then the connector for the on-board solar panel was also broken. This thing has sat inoperable for almost a full year.

I got motivated. The on-board […]

Your periodic reminder that when you refer to Twitter with the one letter name, you are helping normalize Musk's obsession with his weird grandfather. The one who was in a technocratic secret society that added Xs to everything. Also the one so racist that he emigrated to South Africa to […]

New nerd avenue to explore: #meshtastic ! I just ordered one of these to start playing with it.

I live in a hurricane area and am getting more serious about disaster resilience. I now have a generator interlock for long-term power loss situations. Would also be nice to communicate out. My […]

The most important lesson for Democrats from Mamdani's victory is this: abandon the decades-old practice of triangulating to win the center. Instead, grow the base with a positive, joyful vision for what government can do when it gives up on being shackled to a Republican base.

It makes me mad because it shows I am capable of it when I give a shit. Which apparently wasn't about my Sharp Zaurus or Handspring Visor but it is about some piece of crap no-name holiday lights that I could rebuy for $3 at a bin store tomorrow.

I put up these little cheap halloween lights. I took out the coin cells and discarded the ones that were dead. I put the remote, same as every cheap Chinese light you have bought in the last decade, in the bag with them. Nice and organized. I should be happy, right?

I am livid with myself […]

@evilgeniuschronicles.org This was super fun! It was great to talk #homeassistant with the public voices of the project. They aren't the founders or core developers but I've heard them discuss it weekly for years and years so they definitely have a place in the canon of the project

A few weeks back Rohan and Phil from the Home Assistant podcast were kind enough to have me on their program to talk about my journey with Home Assistant. It was a fun time chatting about home automation and all the nerd stuff that makes up my day. The truth is that being on someone else's […]

Evil Genius Chronicles Podcast for October 29 2025 - Only a Retired Person or a Maniac Would Do ThisDownload audio

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On this show, I play a song from West of Mabou; the reason businesses are excited about AI is the prospect of not paying employees; we watched this business rationale play […]

I am "signed up to a Saturday morning seminar on beekeeping" years old.

Some of them, like Cameron Reilly reminiscing about the early days of G'Day World, are almost certainly righteous mentions that are really talking about me. Do I care what is said? Is it better if I do or don't? If I do, I'm self-involved. If I don't, I'm disinterested in a history in which I […]

These are almost entirely shows where it is plausible my name is mentioned. Friend's shows, sometimes people I don't know but are talking about the early days of podcasting. Some of these are shows of which I'm a patron so my name is probably in a list of some kind.

Now here is the real […]

In my Podcast Addict, I have a "virtual podcast" that is a search on my name. It occasionally turns up episodes where I am a guest or even more rarely, when I am mentioned in the show notes.

Overnight, that thing blew up with the full 50 episodes of various shows from the past 21 years. I […]

I just went to LinkedIn to check something. I find 5 minutes with that site exhausts me for the day.

When I am unable to order ahead at Starbucks after dropping a kid off at school, my first thought is "AWS outage." I'm right about 85% of the time.

This is the time of year that I remember that #hacktoberfest is a thing and that I forgot to register.

I have been running multiple Mastodon accounts for multiple personas for years now. This one for nerd/computer/hardware type stuff, @geniodiabolico@wandering.shop for comic book/sf/fandom stuff. Also @geniodiabolico@bookrastinating.com for my Bookwyrm account.

It has been fine the whole time […]

I wouldn't have known at all except I was searching on the #trmnl tag. It's hard work keeping up with the products and projects that have dickheads at the helm. Especially since it rounds to all of them.

I didn't know anything about the #trmnl founder being a MAGA dickhead until this morning. I think I'll stick with my decision to keep my Seeed Studio OG DIY machine and running my own byos_laravel server while never sending any money to the actual company. This started as a cheapskate nerd […]

Evil Genius Chronicles Podcast for October 10 2025 - Stop Starting, Start FinishingDownload audio

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On this show, I play a song from Home Front; I discuss how Len Edgerly and Nathan Lowell have informed my thinking about production schedules; of all the innovations of the 20th century out […]

A DIY TRMNL e-ink screen sitting in a holder. It is displaying a formatted version of notifications from the same Mastodon account posting this.

I think this data-clamp thing is down to a real bug in the byos_laravel server. Going to file a Github issue on it today. I also stopped cutting-and-pasting existing recipes like some cargo cult and sat down with the #TRMNL Framework docs to […]

[Original post on social.ellijaymakerspace.org]

I ended up getting a 2TB version of the Crucial SSD and just swapping drives while it was fresh in my memory. I screwed up many fewer connectors this second time.

I also set up Linux Mint for the third time in a few days. This time I opted for the old MacMini Fusion blade to be /var and the big […]

I am still trying to figure out the #TRMNL CSS classes. I cannot figure out why it is showing the full toot when I have the data-clamp="2" enabled, for example. Still it is doing something useful so I can't be too bugged about that. I'll continue to fiddle with it over time.