Projects
Things were going good until June 19, 2025.
MediaCow Touch 2
I did not reach my June 8, 2025 deadline for MediaCow Touch 2 but I still would work on it. Once again, it was unrealistic and I was dealing with other things. It was this week last year I started to work on MediaCow Touch 2.
With MediaCow Touch 2 Lite, I removed so much from the project that something always feels like it is missing. The fix for that is to establish what is needed in the design before continuing circuit design. This is a mistake I did on MediaCow Touch 1, where I had to add the buttons as an afterthought.
The best course of action I can think of is:
- Make the block diagram in draw.io
- Document what features are to be implemented
- Continue with circuit design
last.fm
On June 17, I finally started using last.fm to publicly showcase what I am listening to.
Since I do not use Spotify, Pandora or any other streaming service and instead rely on my own storage server or locally stored files for music, I had to figure out something that can report track information. I came across Multi-Scrobbler that can read what I am listening to from VLC. It took me a while to figure out how to set it up. I had to set up an API account on last.fm for the Multi-Scrobbler client to use.
This gave me a good reason to finally add or fix metadata on locally stored music files. Instead of listing random bands when asked what I listen to, I can just link to last.fm: https://www.last.fm/user/ctcl.
AI Usage
I am trying something different here; I am going to start to have more opinionated content in these posts.
I cannot stress enough how important the democratization of AI is. I noticed ChatGPT and Claude will censor outputs with asterisks which is incredibly annoying and does not help anyone. I already paid for it for the month of June and I am going to use it until I can't anymore. Though there is a good chance I may pay for another month since I just don't have the hardware, resources and knowledge to do this myself.
Maybe if I used it for what I actually expected to use it for: writing code and making sense of component datasheets, I would not have this problem but this is definitely significant for any user; it should not censor its output. I don't mean the "this violates the OpenAI policy", "I can't help with this" or "you should contact 988" but the direct censorship seen in outputs. I have seen Reddit r/ChatGPT posts and Instagram Story posts of my friends with this behavior showing.
When I pointed it out, ChatGPT even mentioned that the model itself is not censoring; it is the formatting that does it. Due to usage limits with Claude, I have not really tested this with it. It is likely the same formatting that puts all the em dashes and curly quotes everywhere no matter what it is told to do. However, unlike em dashes and the curly quotes, it is quite inconsistent on its censoring, sometimes it lets a censored word slip through while most of the time it does not since I tell it not to. No matter how much ChatGPT is told to not use em dashes, it will do it anyway (there was one case it did not do it but it is very rare). Later on, I discovered that it also replaces terminology such as blacklist/whitelist with blocklist/allowlist even when told not to which was also mentioned by the model to be part of OpenAI's formatting.
Only issue is: GPUs that can actually run models are incredibly expensive so it is only available to a small minority of people; the rich. Like the H100, a US$30,000 GPU as of June 2025. Nvidia DGX systems literally have to be shipped in armored trucks due to just the incredible amount of money they cost. I am surprised they even let people like me near the DGX system at VCU, let alone take selfies with it. The cost of this hardware leaves the rich in control of such an incredibly powerful tool. I have not even tried Gemini because I expect Google to be the worst at it given what GBoard does with voice input and whatever is going on with YouTube nowadays. I could imagine Microsoft just uses it for forcing users into doomscrolling for financial gain like what happens already on Windows 10 and Windows 11. Any good models on Huggingface have proprietary licenses and either cost a large sum of money or have highly restrictive usage terms while not being nearly as in-depth as GPT-4o or other private models.
That's the end of the rant, at least for now.
Greatly ironic I am going to be feeding this into ChatGPT to analyze it.
Note: I did start to write this slightly intoxicated and during a medication comedown so it is not the best writing and is overly emotional.
WBPC "Polypropylene"
I have been using the ASUS KCMA-D8 + AMD Opteron 4386 system sparsely for AMOXA. I am actually scared to leave the machine plugged in, use it or even touch it due to the extreme rarity of the memory it uses.
The memory modules are Patriot Registered ECC DDR3 modules but they are special due to their use of Qimonda DDR3 ICs, specifically ones made within literal weeks before the shutdown of the Richmond plant as seen with the Week 12, 2009 die code; meaning some time between March 16, 2009 and March 22, 2009, after the February 2009 announcement of the shutdown. The die codes start with "FVV" which I presume indicates that the silicon was made in the Sandston, Virginia plant near Richmond, Virginia.
I do not know how I was able to find these modules just listed on eBay back in 2023 but I seemed to have gotten lucky.
I make use of these modules despite their extreme rarity since I find it better to use them be used to create something one last time instead of collect dust forever on a shelf.
Samsung Plasma TV HP-T5044
I recently found out that the plasma TV that we had since I was like three to four years old (2007-2008) uses a couple of Qimonda SDRAM ICs. I was able to peek through the back vent and see the ICs after noticing that equivalent boards on eBay used Qimonda DDR SDRAM.
I may be the only one in the world who actually cares about Qimonda this much with its history and its nostalgic aesthetics. I may be this obsessive about it to cope with living near and operating within Richmond, Virginia. Richmond has been a painfully difficult place for me to like, especially after 2020. Qimonda actually gives this city some interesting history that is not about being built on hundreds of years of human rights violation and acts as a distraction from what the city has become within the last decade.
Personal
With turning 21 on June 7; last week, I have mostly started to feel like I am getting old. Going online, seeing that majority of Discord users are like 13-18 years old, I definitely feel like I should be using my time more wisely.
Mental Health
Like the last two weeks, I saw major revelations in my mental health.