dream: Load UK rail ticket onto Panic Playdate so I don’t have to fiddle with my phone at the station

reality: the ticket gates can’t read Playdate’s screen very well, likely due to contrast / backlight reasons

next steps: something something e-ink display

A Panic Playdate showing a UK Rail ticket for a journey from London to Birmingham. It has a barcode on the left and the ticket details on the right. &10;&10;Caption generated by AI, checked and heavily edited by human.

Want to visualise the temperature changes in my flat that’s too hot ↓ Buys temperature logger ↓ Curious on room temperature’s correlation with outside temperature ↓ Use openweathermap to get weather data ↓ ???? ↓ Using AWS dynamoDB to store raw jsons triggered by a Lambda func cronjob

IKEA Student Bundles and Their Multi Item Barcodes

IKEA’s “Student Boxes” in the UK feature a data matrix barcode that encodes multiple item codes, facilitating returns and regional bundle creation, but it could technically be misused to fraudulently add items to a cart.

should have realized earlier: best way to shoot a Tesla coil is to use a long shutter

London Museum of Water & Steam: Gaussfest, 2025-09-07

A dramatic display of electrical sparks from a Tesla coil is seen in a dimly lit room with people observing in the background.&10;&10;this alt text is generated with AI, reviewed and revised by me.

Problem: I want to know when groceries expire (or “expire”), alongside when I have purchased the item.

Solution: Learn enough C# to operate a commercial label printer

A small label coming out from a label printer. It says Purchase Date 2025 08 31 Sun, and "Expiry Date" 2027 08 31 Tue.

(WIP) The Hitchhikking Guide to the London Underground

Currently working on a fully offline TfL guide. Requirements:

  • Fully offline. The final product is a PDF I can load on my e-reader. The London underground is a challenging environment for internet connectivity, and I have seen way too many instances of apps tripping themselves due to poor mobile service.
  • Shows where the way outs / transfer exits are (i.e. where to get on the train so I will be close to the exit)
  • Shows first / last trains for any given station

This is still a very work-in-progress project, but currently:

  • London Underground, DLR, Overground, and Elizabeth Line are covered
  • “Covered” as in, each station has its own page, showing previous & next stations, and lines available at the same station.
  • The stop locations are still being implemented. This is largely a manual process on the data ingestion side because I will not miss an excuse to take more trains.

Using Python (Interacting with TfL API + most of the data wrangling) + SQLite (stop location) + Typst (rendering to a PDF). Previously also using memcached to cache TfL API results but dropped it in favour of just writing responses to disk (it’s fine – we are not doing cloud microservices here).

An e-reader showing information for London Underground Metropolitan Line Euston Square station. The page shows the zone the station is in (zone 1), with a link to the station's timetable. It also shows a simplified version of the platform map, indicating which carriage is closest to the exits. &10;&10;Towards the bottom of the page there are links for switching to other lines in the same station, or travel on the same line to different stations.An e-reader showing information for London Underground Jubilee Line St. John's Wood station. The page shows the first / last trains for the station.An e-reader showing information for London Underground Metropolitan Line. It lists the stations in alphabetical order, with a color coded switch-panel in the bottom for switching to similar pages for other lines.