📷Abandonware Cameras, Make Fun Sites, and Sun Chasing

Making old tech work

David Nichols

Sep 16, 2024

Hey friends! Welcome to this week’s issue of The Land of Random.

How’s your September going?

It’s been rainy here in Tennessee - and the temperatures have been hovering around 70 - 80 degrees.

C’mon - where’s that 65-degree all-day weather. The leaves are already starting to turn.

Did you watch SpaceX’s spacewalk? That was pretty wild! WILD. I didn’t stay up late but I watched the highlights.

Now back to Earth . . .

Apparently - there are rumors of Pinboard having more and more issues these days . . . it seems the guy running it is quite unresponsive.

(For those of you who don’t know - Pinboard is an OG bookmarking software. The owner actually bought what was left of del.icio.us back in 2017).

It was interesting to see Raindrop get mentioned so often on Hacker News in this thread. Still the best bookmarking software around!

Oh - by the way we all missed out on Jello’s official chairs the other week - all sold out.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

📷Abandonware Cameras

Sooooo. I saw something a little crazy on Amazon.

Do you remember the Light L16 that came out back in 2017?

The crazy camera with 16 lenses????

I have a very vague memory of reading about it in the Verge and being curious.

WELL - I got an Amazon ad for “new in the box” Light L16’s that was selling for only $130.

What - I said to myself - I should give this a spin. So what if it’s abandonware that hasn’t been updated since 2019, and ancient updates/software have to be downloaded off random githubs, and the company killed the website, got absorbed by John Deere, and hasn’t made a peep about the camera since?

Soooo. I’m giving it a spin.

The reviews are HILARIOUS - ranging from the “yeah I know I signed up for a crazy project and it takes epic photos” to “ThIs Is ThE WoRsT CaMErA EvEr.”

(Seriously - read them here).

The “Worst camera ever” reviews left me feeling a little like this.

The Light L16 is talked about rather frequently on Reddit - such as this post or this one - with cool pics to boot!

(There’s lots of fun post-mortem articles on the internet too - like this one).

FORTUNATELY - It’s not too hard to update the Light L16.

You gotta get the apk’s from a Github like this one or this incredibly random website that was a sticker in the box I got from Amazon.

THEN - to find fellow Light L16 users - you gotta go hunting for the Light L16 Discord (gotta go Reddit hunting for that) or the Light L16 Facebook group.

It’s a wild adventure!

I don’t have any test shots to share yet, but I will when I’ve got some good ones!

Check it out at Amazon! Let me know if you decide to join this crazy adventure too lol.

Light L16

💻Make Fun Sites

It appears mmm.page may have a competitor in town.

No nooo - I think it’ll end up being more like a successor to e.gg or the late landing.space, orrr a more advanced Pinterest Shuffles.

While mmm.page is a fully fleshed out website builder, verse.surf is more of a AI powered collage creator with the ability to add links and a Spotify integration.

I took it for a spin the other day and found it rather delightful.

It’s like a cross between Pinterest Shuffles ( but with less content) and a super low-tech mmm.page experience.

There are likes, comments, a browsing experience where you can find other creations . . . and a cool little spinning song you can add to your page.

This is like Facebook’s e.gg but mobile-optimized and with AI and music.

It’s kinda neat! Go check it out.

I appreciate that you can browse people’s creations online too without downloading the app - and the links to other people’s stuff work independently of the app.

as opposed to all those wretched SiGn Up tO vIeW tHiS crap.

Here’s an example I threw together in two minutes.

Go check out Verse at the link!

Verse.surf

🌤️Sun-Chasing Solar Panels

I can’t say that the thought of a solar panel that follows the sun ever crossed my mind.

The flowers do - why not solar panels too?

This little Hackster project is called the “SunChaser” and is optimized to find the Sun throughout the day.

I did a little research - and apparently though this kind of tech can produce more electricity - it adds a great deal of cost to any Solar Panel setup.

According to a study published in 2022, tracking solar panels can output between 10% and 60% more energy than a fixed system. While this range is highly dependent on property location, time of day, and single vs. dual-axis systems, most sources estimate that sun-tracking solar panels output between 30% and 40% more power each year than a fixed installation. (source)

Apparently it makes sense for commercial projects (more ways to distribute the cost), but not so much for residential.

However, and I didn’t realize until I started looking into this that I had a however - there’s a residential/commercial system called the “Smartflower” that will unfold like a flower and follow the sun.

Here - watch this video demo.

Neat right? It’d be fun to have a few of these . . .

Go check out the nifty Sun Chaser project at the link!

The Sun Chaser

🐙The Land of Random

Shall we dive into some random links?

Volv* - TikTok for Smart People

*partnership with The Land of Random

Volv is a Snapchat-backed social news app that consolidates the most important, viral, and interesting content from around the web into 9-second stories that you can just scroll through like social media. Users call it “TikTok for smart people”, since they use Volv instead of TikTok and Insta to discover quality content that they would’ve never read otherwise. So far, users have read 60 million stories on the Volv app!

Here’s a code you can use to get Volv Premium free for a month: VOLVLR

Get Volv

Fridge Magnets

Do you miss your younger days of playing with fridge magnets? Well IT’S TIME TO DIVE RIGHT BACK IN with this delightful website. (NSFW at times - people write some crazy stuff with fridge magnets).

Fridge Poetry

Porter Robinson

Have you ever been to Porter Robinson’s website??? This site is WILD.

Porter Robinson

Shelter

One can’t mention Porter Robinson without the awesomely epic Shelter song / music video.

Ad For Anything

Put up an ad for only a little over a buck. This idea has been “spun up” many times - but it’s always fun to check out a new variation.

Ad for Anything

The Asian Andy Squatter Saga

I’m SURE you’ve watched one of those “Scam the Scammers” videos over the years. This is more PEAK TOP TIER internet content. Streamer Asian Andy goes to “war” against a squatter.

Squatter Saga