Tag: devices

Design that is neither digital nor minimal

In an age when the default design approach for devices tends towards minimal and digital, it’s great to see devices that go in a different direction. Take this device:

If it weren’t for the dial, you might have a hard time determining it is a very fun FM radio. I love it. It reminds me of Italian design from the 1980s.

Or take this analog device:

It’s a brilliant way to know the weather outside! I highly recommend you go here to really get a sense of well it is designed and all it can do.

Check out the link for the radio as well. It’s also innovative in it’s design.

In praise of teenage engineering

How great is Teenage Engineering? Let me count the ways. Or devices. In this case, three very special devices designed by them.

Device #1: the play.date

First up is the Playdate, a unique game playing device with a black and white screen and a crank. Is it any good? It is according to this: Playdate, all it’s cranked up to be (The Verge). You can read more about it, here:playdate – teenage engineering.


Device #2: Rabbit R1

For the second device, there is a chance you’ve heard of the rabbit, “ a pocket companion that moves AI from words to action”. I have one and I like it. Is it good AI? Yes. Is it brilliant design? Definitely.

If you’ve only ever read disparaging things about the device, then read this: Rabbit R1 Explained: What This Tiny AI Gadget Actually Does (CNET) and this:I just spent my first day with the Rabbit R1 — here’s what this AI gadget can do | Tom’s Guide.

Device #3: the EP–1320 medieval.

finally for the third device, you might exclaim, what is that?? Well let the folks from Wallpaper explain: Teenage Engineering EP-1320 Medieval: back to the Middle Ages.

What I love about the 3rd device is a) who knows what kind of market there is for this if any, and b) they don’t care, they made it anyway!

I love how different these devices are from most current handheld devices. The form factor is different, the colors are bold, the inputs are unique. They are small pieces of equipment, but they are not minimalistic pieces of equipment. I love them.

For more of teenage engineering’s great products, go here. For the longest time I wanted to have something from them, but most of their musical devices would be wasted on someone as non-musical as me. (Although if I ever get around to building my own computer, I am getting this:)

Tiny DOOM! And other things I find interesting in tech, February 2022


I’ve been doing work in a number of areas recently: IT architecture, Azure, Kubernetes and more. As I do that, I collect a number of links, which I have below. As well, I put together some Raspberrry Pi links, because I love my Pi. Also DOOM because I will always click on a DOOM link. Lots of good material. Let’s review!

IT architecture: I’ve been thinking much about IT architecture these days, and I’ve been writing about it here: BLM on IT. One thing that helped me think about it was this: 5 diagrams you need to document your solution architecture. This is also helpful: Editable architecture diagram resources: IBM IT Architect Assistant. In addition, something on DDD:  Apply Domain-Driven Design to microservices architecture.

Devices: These two pieces are on new trends in devices:  Dell envisions a sustainable laptop allowing you to replace parts creating a design you could grow old with and Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 Laptop.

On the other hand, we have this: BlackBerry phone with keyboard is not dead. Remember netbooks? They were great little devices. Here’s a piece on them: Netbooks: The Form Factor Time Forgot.

Cool: Here’s something fun: The Best of 404PageFound and Other Primitive ’90s Websites That Still Exist. I love DOOM, so: Is this one of the smallest playable DOOM devices? and Pocket-Sized Doom Is Actually Playable. Speaking of small things, we have this, A VM in your browser,  this Writing a simple 16 bit VM in less than 125 lines of C and this System/360 simulator. Also this: CHUNGUS 2 – A very powerful 1Hz Minecraft CPU.

Raspberry Pi: for Pi fans, here’s some good links:

Cloud and DevOps: here’s some things I found worthwhile in that space

IBM: Here are two good initiatives my employer is providing: Good probono program from IBM to help environmental groups  and A good initiative from IBM to help on the matter of Racial Justice.

Azure: I have been doing tons of research of Microsoft’s Azure and so I have many links on it here. Enjoy!

Kubernetes:  I have been doing some Kubernetes work too which lead to these links in

Finally, here’s some other useful links I didn’t want to lose: