2023-11-08                         from the editor of ~insom
   ------------------------------------------------------------

   There's a lot happening right now, but I decided to nerd out
   a little as a way of establishing calm; doing things I can
   control.

   That ended up okay, but in the middle the computing was
   being very frustrating and having the opposite effect. In
   the end, winning out over UEFI and getting some new
   computers built for the home lab (out of spares) was, in
   fact, calming.

   One last computer-related challenge for the day was to get
   the Pi 400 that I bought during the early part of the
   pandemic to work with a screen I built out of a broken
   laptop panel. That panel has a 1366x768 native resolution
   which is effectively the _only_ common resolution the Pi
   does not work well with by default.

   There's a lot of _stuff_ on the forums, but in the end
   turning off the 3D and only allowing one framebuffer let me
   just choose the mode directly. I am not sure why that isn't
   reported more widely; I remember reading it one time long
   ago (I had this screen and Pi combination working once
   before) -- hooray for remembering things and not just
   searching for them, I suppose.

   Anyway. _That_ lead me to setting up a little cozy computing
   environment on the Pi. I have one xterm taking 2/3 of the
   screen, Firefox taking 1/3 and Firefox is lying about its
   user agent so it's getting served the mobile versions of
   sites (which is more appropriate for the speed of the
   processor and the screen real-estate I have available -- so
   far so good!).

   The screen was propped up at a gentle angle and it made me
   feel like having a go at making a cyberdeck. Again.

   Anyway I just ordered a 12V to 5V buck convertor. I reckon I
   can at least make something that runs from a single 12V
   input with most of the wires contained in a box. The Pi 400
   keyboard totally sucks, so I'd like to connect my Keychron
   via USB, but I won't build it permanently in because that's
   kind of a big commitment for what is a generally useful
   keyboard.

   Cycles.