❌Kill Your Laptop, NFC Music Player, and Canvas Chaos

play music from business cards!

Dec 20, 2021

Merry Christmas friends! How are you doing this fine Monday?

I’ve made a wonderful discovery this week - Have you ever used one of those tools to shave the pills and other fabric detritus off a sweater or jacket?

They are an absolute game-changer. If you haven’t bought one yet - you need to.

The sad part is that I’ve definitely gotten rid of clothes that have become “pilled to death.”

You may be wondering - how the heck did I get on this topic . . .

I saw someone restoring a sweater on TikTok and I instantly thought to myself - why haven’t I bought one of these yet?

I hope you’ve gotten all your shopping and preparation done! There are just a few more days left before Christmas . . .

If you’re looking for some random gifts you could always go with the ole 6 dollar t-shirts and say they’re “on the way.”

Maybe some NFT’s?

I’m a sucker for wandering around Five Below at the last minute, or FYE.

Well, let’s hop in shall we?

🔪 Kill Your Laptop

What would you do if someone stole your laptop?

Probably be really upset, maybe cry - and start changing passwords if your laptop wasn’t encrypted.

What if you could instantly KILL your laptop if the worst happened?

That’s the premise behind Buskill.

How does it work?

“BusKill is a Dead Man Switch triggered when a magnetic breakaway is tripped, severing a USB connection.”

Once the Buskill is armed - tripping the breakaway will result in a instant computer lockscreen or . . . the death of your laptop.

The GUI app currently supports the ability to trigger a lockscreen on all three platforms. Even better, we’ll soon be releasing built-in triggers to shutdown the computer when the cable disconnects.
Advanced Linux users can manually add auxiliary triggers, such as a self-destruct trigger that wipes the LUKS header, making the entire disk permanently inaccessible (even to rubber-hose cryptanalysis). Note that this is an advanced feature that is intentionally inaccessible upon startup. BusKill will, of course, not ship with any destructive triggers! (source)

For most use cases - the instant lock screen would be the easiest solution - along with some good ole encryption.

I don’t think it would be a good idea to turn on the “instant death” unless you really need it. Dropping a cup of coffee and insta deleting a laptop sounds like an absolute nightmare.

Argh.

However - if you tend to be the type to store keys to BTC wallets in your docs and scour intel from the internet that shouldn’t fall in the wrong hands . . .

Better be careful of your coffee.

It’s currently being backed via Crowd Supply ( a Kickstarter alternative). It looks awesome! It doesn’t look like vaporware to me but always do your own research and spend wisely.

Go check it out!

Buskill

🎶NFC Music Player

Do you ever wish you could interact with Spotify/Apple Music like a CD or Vinyl?

There’s something nostalgic about sorting through a stack of CD’s and selecting the one you want to listen to.

Jon Hicks found a really cool way to merge the ease of Spotify with the physical.

I've been looking for ways to restore some kind of physicality to my digital music collection, and this has led me to create a setup using a square Moo 'album' card with NFC tag sticker, to trigger an iOS shortcut and play an album to an airplay speaker with the least amount of friction. (source)

Absolutely brilliant!

Here’s a shot of the setup

With a Iphone XS or XR or higher - all you have to do is tap the card to the back of your phone (once you’ve got it all set up).

If you’re interested in creating this, check out this list of compatible phones.

Out of all the tutorials I’ve laid out in The Land of Random this one actually looks like a mid afternoon project.

Actually, I’m really tempted to do this

I really encourage you to read all of Jon’s steps for the necessary steps but here’s the super short version to pique your interest.

1). Buy a 50 pack of Moo square business cards + find 50 album arts

2). Buy a pack of NFC stickers (that are compatible with your phone)

3). Program all your NFC stickers to map to each album

Not too bad!

It could make a really fun birthday gift for a family member or friend.

Go check it out at the link!

Moo Card Player

Canvas Chaos

Ever stared at walls of Graffiti and wonder who were the taggers, what the messages are . . .

You could say the same thing of social media networks with more anonymous profiles like Twitter or 4chan.

I’ve discovered a website that literally feels like one massive graffiti wall - and it’s absolutely insane.

It’s called “Your World of Text” and it’s literally one massive canvas you can write on.

Seriously, it’s like one massive google doc with no rules.

There’s tons of ASCII art

There’s entire herds of animals

And strange possibly existential comments like this

It’s one of the strangest websites I’ve ever stumbled upon. From strange to profane, there is bizarre content all over this “land” of text.

You can write whatever you want - and edit whatever you want.

To the best of my abilities, there appears to be no “end” to the screen. I’ve found text and weird ascii art out in the middle of nowhere.

Fortunately, you can turn on x and y coordinates to save a location if you find something particularly interesting.

It’s a really fun “living and breathing website.” There’s no guarantee anything you find will still exist the next day - or even 5 minutes later.

If I was the owner - I would probably allow people to make their content (provided it’s harmless ASCII art or something) uneditable for 5 or 10 bucks.

There’s some fun towns and other art that’s pretty cool!

Heck - you can even create your own world if you want to!

I created one for kicks and giggles.

Go check out the main page at the link! I didn’t see anything too crazy offensive - but use your own discretion.

Your World of Text

🐙The Land of Random

Random stuff for Christmas conversation? Ofc

Tech Horror Stories

This Twitter thread is full of horror stories from the world of tech. Companies running off servers that require floppy disks? Yup. Fascinating and Horrifying read.

Brandon Rohrer @_brohrer_

War stories please. What’s the jankiest piece of tech you’ve seen a company depend on?

Fish Drinking Beer?

Old Youtube was a weird place guys . . .

BURY ME WITH MY MONEY

Bury me with my money?

Bury Me with my money

Lofi Homepage

This Lofi website comes with a todo list, productivity timer, pleasing background aesthetics, and other cool features! Could be a great homepage for work.

Lofi Home