Published in aphex.cx·Jul 10, 2019How I built a Bluetooth connected, 840 LED, message scrolling marquee totem for EDC (and how you can, too!)This year (2018) was my third Electric Daisy Carnival, AKA the largest electronic music festival in the US. But as someone who’s usually more at home on Burning Man’s playa than a garbage encrusted NASCAR racetrack, I wanted to do something more than just go. I’ve always found the former’s…Arduino15 min readArduino15 min read
Published in aphex.cx·May 23, 2018The Pixel 2XL is a phone that can’t play audio or take videosUpdate (5/23/2018): while the video recording issues seem to have been resolved, there is still no USB audio dongle that works well with this phone, according to the long-running xda-developers dongle testing thread, full of people who are still tirelessly searching for one that does. Original post (12/1/2017): I returned…Android3 min readAndroid3 min read
Published in aphex.cx·Jul 22, 2016Iconoclast — a child prostitution hunterI recently talked to Thorn — a nonprofit that uses technology and data science to find and rescue sexually abused children. It turns out over 75% of child prostitution is advertised online — mostly on backpage.com (essentially, a seedier Craiglist). Their Innovation Lab here in San Francisco is hiring engineers…Scala4 min readScala4 min read
Published in aphex.cx·Aug 25, 2015Dashlane’s In-App Login implementation slows your phone to a crawlI’ve been a very happy Dashlane Android user for many months now — I’m ecstatic to have a password manager that just works between all my devices, encrypts my passwords in transit and at rest, and has a responsive dev team. First, some background on In-App Login. The killer feature When I first…Android4 min readAndroid4 min read
Published in aphex.cx·Jan 23, 2015The Google Maps API is broken on Android 5. Here’s a workaround for multiple map fragmentsAs I reported on the GMaps-API tracker here, there’s a critical issue affecting apps that use more than one map fragment. Lollipop devices seem to be the only ones affected. …Android4 min readAndroid4 min read
Published in aphex.cx·Dec 10, 2014ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISEGUILT AND SELF-LACERATION ARE INDULGENCES SELF-AWARENESS CAN BE CRIPPLING SYMBOLS ARE MORE MEANINGFUL THAN THINGS THEMSELVES These are truisms by Jenny Holzer. I was introduced to Holzer and her prolific works through my friend and fellow Android hacker Ari’s post from last month. Lydia Laurenson, writing at http://lydialaurenson.com/abstraction-is-a-type-of-decaden…/ …Twitter1 min readTwitter1 min read
Published in aphex.cx·Aug 5, 2014Use Git for your PDF and Word .doc files!Sure, you’d love to do this, who wouldn’t? Word and PDF are awful file formats, but they’re still widespread and if you’re housing your important documents in them, and you’re like me, then you want them version controlled. …Git2 min readGit2 min read
Published in aphex.cx·May 14, 2014Insanely DifferentFor the first time ever, I’m now using a Mac as my main work machine. Work just got me a brand spanking new 2013 Retina Macbook Pro, fully loaded, go-to-apple-dot-com-choose-the-15-inch-drag-all-the-hardware-sliders-to-the-right monstrosity with 500GB of SSD and 16GB of RAM. What a machine. Too bad it’s running OSX. Yep, I’ve been…Apple3 min readApple3 min read
