Welcome to Nick's Random Musings

If you try and run the DigiIPLIl.exe application on Windows for reprogramming, and it will not start with an get an error involving "Side-By-Side" issues, you need to install the software libraries it depends on for access to the USB and video display. From microsoft, this is the mfc90 redistributable, which can be found at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26368. Run this to add this classic windows library.

Then you may need to run it as Administrator to properly get access to scanning the USB "COM" ports to find your hardware.

A great way to speed up accurate cuts on a paper cutter is to use a flashlight to backlight the paper being chopped. You can clearly see the lower blade on even a large piece of semi-opaque paper.

Well There's Your Problem
A podcast about engineering disasters, with Slides.

Trashfuture
The future? It's trash. Technology, Politics, Economics, and scams scams scams.

The Black Athlete w/ Louis Moore & Derrick White
Insightful analysis, opinion, and experience from really amazing professors who get great guests.

Lions Led by Donkeys
Lions led by donkeys. When war isn't hell, it's stupid, wasteful, and wrong.

Wide Atlantic Weird w/ Cian
Critical, but never cynical, an amazing detailed look at cryptids, aliens, and supernatural matters. A wonderfully referenced look back at history that ties together history, personalities, and permutations of belief.

Embedded.fm
Elecia & Christopher White look at the many fascenating aspects of embedded devices and their intersection with people, art, science, math, nature, education, and fun.

Technology Connections
Great investigation and celebration of technology in the world around you.

Cpp Weekly
Great way to keep up to date on a variety of aspects of C++

Say you want to sound like you are huffing Helium.

Recoding with Cheese, save a file (on Fedora 37, this becomes a .webm)

Cut the audio out of the video:
ffmpeg -i 2023-02-13-203611.webm  -vn -acodec copy "output.oga"

Shift the pitch up:
ffmpeg -i output.oga -filter:a "rubberband=pitch=2.059463094352953" 
out_balloon2.wav

Then add the audio to a 
ffmpeg -loop 1 -y -i balloon.png -i out_balloon2.wav -shortest -acodec 
copy -vcodec mjpeg the_ballon_knows.avi

The Balloon Knows Where It Is...

If you want to debug a pytest within a framework,

import pytest;pytest.set_trace()

at a point in a test you want to break at, then

./pytestrun.sh tests/foo_engine/test_my_grits.py --pdb

and it'll break there in your pytest to the debugger.