I helped set up many households with kids on Pi-2s and 3s, running Raspbian and Kano. All you needed was a keyboard, mouse, and a monitor. It all worked fine with Scratch, Minecraft, LibreOffice, Web, and email.

At least, until the kids outgrew them.

Super-Intelligence has been achieved.

Arduino is based on the ‘giant loop’ model, where you initialize settings in the setup() function, then wait for events (inputs, timers, handlers, etc) in the loop() function.

Each time, the loop() function has to finish before it can be called again. So if there are timing related actions, there’s a chance they may fall out of sync or stutter. If you want to advance an animation frame, you’ll need to maintain all the state, and hope the loop gets called often enough so the frame can advance. If you want to sync up the animation to an RTC, then you’ll want to track whether the current loop syncs up with a time code before deciding whether to advance the animation (or not). Pretty soon your giant loop will likely get complicated and messy.

Another option is to look at something like SoftPWM for controlling LEDs and see how they set up animation timing. Or to use the millis() function instead of delay() to manage timing. Adafruit has a nice tutorial on that: https://learn.adafruit.com/multi-tasking-the-arduino-part-1/using-millis-for-timing

To get more asynchronous activity going, the next option is to move to a more task-based system like FreeRTOS. Here you set up ‘tasks’ which can yield to each other, so you can have more asynchronous events. But the mental model is very different than the Arduino loop. The toolchain is also completely different. Here’s a decent primer: https://controllerstech.com/freertos-on-arduino-tutorial-part-1/

If your target device is an ESP32, the underlying OS is actually FreeRTOS. Arduino is a compatibility layer on top. So you can use the Arduino IDE and toolchain to write FreeRTOS tasks. Many peripheral device drivers can also be shared between the two. However, the minute you switch to tasks, the Arduino loop doesn’t work any more. Examples here: https://randomnerdtutorials.com/esp32-freertos-arduino-tasks/

From your description, it sounds like you may want to switch to FreeRTOS tasks.

When do we get to try it out against the creative, destructive power of a hangry toddler?

Tyranny of the Right-handed.

Hol’ up. Coffee and red wine OK to give cats?

New New Year’s resolutions unlocked.

OK, just tried it with one of those old forms. Added a text field overlay and a signature. Even flattens before saving. Works great. Awesome, thanks!

Sounds like he’s on-the-fence about it.

Went to look up what XFA forms were (https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-learn/forms/document-services/pdf-forms-and-documents).

Most of the non-fillable forms I encounter are what that document lists as “Traditional” PDF forms, likely generated using older tools from print streams. For example, a school athletics release form, or a membership application for a small organization. None of them have any fillable PDF fields. The original expectation might have been to download and print out the PDF, hand-fill it, then fax the result back.

I’ll dig up a form like that I had to fill a few weeks ago and give it a try.

He notes that LLM vendors have been training their models on Wikipedia content. But if the content contains incorrect information and citations, you get the sort of circular (incorrect) reference that leads to misinformation.

One irony, he says, is that LLM vendors are now willing to pay for training data unpolluted by the hallucinated output their own products generate.

This looks great!

Can you use it to overlay text fields and fill them?

Most of my uses are basic. Like filling out a PDF form that doesn’t have proper form entry fields. These are usually older government or bureaucratic/healthcare/school forms.

I end up adding text boxes and entering values, or adding an X on top of a checkbox, adding a signature PNG file and scaling it to fit the size. Sometimes I have to add a highlight overlay. Then I save it all as a single flattened PDF file.

Amazingly, this is hard to do in Acrobat and a lot of apps. I end up using a janky, 10-yo desktop app that is no longer supported.

When designing large, complex systems, you try to break things down into manageable chunks. For example, the bit that deals with user login or authentication. The payment bit. Something that needs to happen periodically. That sort of thing.

Before you know it, there are tens, or hundreds of chunks, each talking to each other or getting triggered when something happens. Problem is, how do these bits share data with each other. You can copy all the data between each chunk, but that’s not very time efficient. And if something goes wrong, you end up with a mess of inconsistent data everywhere.

So what bits of data do you keep in a shared place? What gets copied around from place to place? And what gets only used for that one function to get the job done? This is the job of software architects to sort out.

The author says the more copies of something you make, the more complexity and ‘state’ management you have to deal with. He’s right, but there are ways to mitigate the problem.

Where’s the Baclava? Or if truly culturally insensitive, the Balaclava?

The Catch: https://youtu.be/7bLt2xKaNH0

“It’s over, Anakin. I have the high ground.”

Actions designed to equip faculty and staff with AI resources for improving efficiency and productivity include the following examples and more:

• Adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot

• Ubuntu desktop - the whole shebang including office apps
• PiHole ad-blocker
• Jellyfin video server
• Minecraft server
• Local LLMs
• On-site VPN service
• Home Assistant smarthome controller

So many things, and much more…

This is outstanding!

Not being based on “rengagement” or “monetization” means it’s purely interest-based, with a touch of serendipity.

One of BSKY’s distinctive features was to have “pluggable” algorithms. Fediverse would do well to support it so people who are not into the technical weeds could choose how their feed is curated.