tomchuk

On a whim, I did EMT-B training a few years ago. Part of that course is a responder-level CPR cert. Through muscle memory, one of my fellow students jumped on scene during the evaluation, and the first thing she did was instruct a bystander to "Call 911!"

To which the evaluator responded, "You are 911"

Wired up Twilio & Anthropic API on a Cloudflare Worker so I can chat with Claude via Garmin InReach during a 3-week backcountry trip to Alaska's North Slope. Location metadata is included in the system prompt for accurate location-based info (weather, hunting regs, etc). Waiting to hear back from Garmin sales for access to their professional plans, which include their inReach Portal Connect inbound/outbound APIs.

Also working on a small, portable USB-PD bench power supply: Regulated 3V3, 5V, 12V & unregulated PPS/EPR AVS pass-through. RP2040 running the show, driving a little OLED screen & some buttons for configuration. Includes a separate, galvanically isolated USB-C port in CDC-ACM for data: Dumps CSV data by default, then switches to a native protocol via handshake with a desktop/cli app. Desktop app shows live graphs for all outputs, exposes configuration, alarms, etc. CLI can turn every config knob, give live readings, or run a TOML-defined test plan. PyO3 wrapper around the protocol lib for easy scripting. Firmware is Rust/Embassy, GUI/CLI is Rust/eGUI/Ratatui. Goal is for it to be about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

Oh, you’re right, I do have the DM16L!

… and a M1 MacBook will source 5V/3A all day long to a non-PD negotiated sink. Somewhere between the M1 and M3 Apple decided to buy into USB-IF compliance and limit to 500mA.

Has lead to some very embarrassing “works on my computer” situations on prototype boards shared with my EE colleagues (I’m a software guy who dabbles in hardware when I need to)

IAM, Cloudfront, Route53, ACM, Billing...

Can't mention Fibonacci and memoization in the same sentence without me breaking out my favorite Python party trick:

    def fib(n, cache = {0: 0, 1: 1}):
        if n not in cache:
            cache[n] = fib(n-1) + fib(n-2)
        return cache[n]

Very relaxing. Until impossibly small $15 Incabloc springs start flying around the room. I'm convinced these sublimate into a vapor the moment they fly out of view of your loupe.

I have a shell function I use all the time to keep track of both calendar and timezones where our teams are located

  now() {
    cal -3
    echo
    echo -n "Local:       "
    date --rfc-3339=s
    echo -n "UTC:         "
    date -u --rfc-3339=s
    echo -n "New York     "
    TZ='America/New_York' date --rfc-3339=s
    echo -n "London:      "
    TZ='Europe/London' date --rfc-3339=s
    echo -n "New Zealand: "
    TZ='Pacific/Auckland' date --rfc-3339=s
  }

I have an older iPad mini for this purpose (but an old iPhone without a data plan would work too). I setup a separate home@<domain> iCloud account under my family plan and use it exclusively for streaming music vi AirPlay, cooking w/ recipes on Paprika, HomeKit controls, reminders, timers, etc. - no Slack notifications, no calls, no calendar reminders. The AppleTV goes on the same account too. It's really been a great solution.

I’ve divulged my camera & network setup. Sure, you could use that info to sneak up to my house, turn the gas off to my generator, cut the power, wait 3h for the batteries in my UPS to run out….

Or you could walk up and smash a window wearing a balaclava.