Simon Monk

What the West Gets Wrong About China Many people have wrongly assumed that political freedom would follow new economic freedoms in China and that its economic growth would have to be built on the same foundations as in the West. The auth...

I found this very interesting. hbr.org/2021/05/what... #china

25.05.2025 08:08 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Accessible FM Radio Case Study - Part 2 - PCB Antenna [Part 1]  [ Code and Design Files ] In the first part of this series, I looked at the overall requirements for the project. A key one of the...

I've just published part 2 of my blog series on making an accessible FM radio. This post concentrates on a PCB coil antenna. www.doctormonk.com/2025/04/acce...

15.04.2025 07:50 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I've written a Python interface to this low-cost sprectrum analyser. github.com/simonmonk/rf...

13.04.2025 19:52 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Part 1 of a blog post out now, describing a work in progress, designing an accessible FM radio. www.blogger.com/blog/posts/5... Key requirement - no eye stabbing antenna. I'm not going down the Internet Radio route.

13.04.2025 19:50 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

GitHub - blogmywiki/smolBASIC Contribute to blogmywiki/smolBASIC development by creating an account on GitHub.

You can read more about smolBASIC here: github.com/blogmywiki/s...

01.04.2025 18:09 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

You can now buy our LED Arc from our friends at PiHut in the UK. Instructions, buy-links and datasheet here: monkmakes.com/led_arc.html Rings for use with @microbit_edu and pins for other boards.

24.03.2025 17:18 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

The End of Programming as We Know It

As @timoreilly.bsky.social writes, #AI may be the end of #programming as we know it, but it is not the end of programming. It's a new beginning. We’ll be designing and building new kinds of software, software that we couldn't have imagined a few years ago. www.oreilly.com/radar/the-en...

05.02.2025 17:26 — 👍 5    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 0

small rectangle of silicon against a gold background in soft focus. from the edges, eight bond wires shoot off in various directions. a delicate tracery of microscopic aluminum wire connects the nine transistors in the circuit. faint rectilinear outlines of diffusion regions can be seen -- these form transistors and resistors.

this is the uA702, the first commercial analog chip (an op-amp). it was designed by the legendary Bob Widlar and went on the market in 1964 for $300 each. that's $2500 adjusting for inflation!

05.02.2025 03:09 — 👍 190    🔁 30    💬 7    📌 3

I got my 3 body problem simulation running on the RP2350. So much better with a floating point unit and faster CPU. Running on a #Pimoroni Pico Plus 2 and their 2.8” display pack. I may have to buy a #Presto now! #Pico2 #RaspberryPi

24.01.2025 21:08 — 👍 37    🔁 4    💬 1    📌 0

Proper decoupling practices, and why you should leave 100nF behind Ever wondered why 100nF is a go-to value for decoupling capacitors? This number has pervaded in datasheets and electronics advice going back to the 1980s, and is still widely present in the datashe…

Very interesting. TLDR use 1u MLCC decoupling caps instead of 100n. codeinsecurity.wordpress.com/2025/01/25/p...

26.01.2025 09:39 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Just in case you missed it.

09.01.2025 17:00 — 👍 16    🔁 6    💬 0    📌 0

A 3 year old I know and love has started to tell, people whose conversation she's bored with, to 'skip' in the same way I talk to Spotify on my smart speaker! I'm now speaking respectfully to smart speakers -- she doesn't know they are not sentient.

12.01.2025 08:56 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0