Notices by joey castillo (joeycastillo@mastodon.social)

true HOLY FUCKING SHIT moment this morning: over the holidays, my sticker guys were having a special on red octagons, so I designed and ordered 250 "Slop Sign" stickers — but while I was in China, someone stole them out of my mailbox. Bummer, I figured; they probably trashed them as worthless. anyway while walking to the subway I FOUND ONE OF MY STICKERS STUCK TO A MAILBOX! Whoever swiped my stickers is sticking them up around the neighborhood! This is the best thing that could have happened!

I wanted a Christmas tree for our house, but the Bushwick vendors wanted too much money for even a tiny tree. So I printed perhaps the most unhinged 3-D print I’ve ever attempted. ”Oops, All Overhangs!” reliably triggered spaghetti warnings every half hour, until I figured out that turning off the light in the build chamber prevented the Bambu’s computer vision system from detecting this ~~abomination~~ extreme cleverness. https://makerworld.com/models/1949917

I hope this email finds you saying to yourself: my god, what have I done?

I hope this this email finds you asking yourself: how did I get here?

“One of my chefs mentioned that if they could cook the steak on the grill they could get it right the first time. This is not an acceptable attitude in the microwave era. Also they’re worried I’m planning on firing all of them. That’s true, but not relevant here.” https://www.colincornaby.me/2025/08/in-the-future-all-food-will-be-cooked-in-a-microwave-and-if-you-cant-deal-with-that-then-you-need-to-get-out-of-the-kitchen/

Would you like to pair with our lord and savior Jesus Christ?

By way of explanation: I have shipped four variants of #SensorWatch over the years, and this is me testing the release candidate firmware on all of them. Because you can’t test a wearable on a workbench alone. You have to wear it.

Update: I have severely improved my predicament.

This is me now.

men will literally become nazis instead of going to therapy

we considered ourselves to be a powerful culture

“We didn’t design them to last 30 years or 40 years. We designed them not to fail.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/voyager-1-breaks-its-silence-with-nasa-via-a-radio-transmitter-not-used-since-1981-180985399/

Welp. One year late, I managed to get my @hackaday #supercon badge hack working, just by looking at it with fresh eyes for 15 minutes. The thing that kills me: I designed the hardware right, and I got it built in time, AND the software was essentially correct. If not for a one-bit configuration error, I could have presented this demo on stage.

AI, ladies and gentlemen!

“Your order includes a white friend device and a white case.” I mean, the jokes write themselves. https://www.friend.com/product.html

a (human) friend texted me this link with the question “is this real?” and maybe I’ve been in the mountains for too long but it can’t possibly be real, right? Like as a critique or a satire it’s both incisive and clever, but as an earnest attempt at a product it’s just… deeply unhinged?

“When will I receive my friend?”
“Pre-orders will start shipping Q1 2025.”
Questions frequently asked by the utterly deranged. https://www.friend.com/product.html

wow okay apparently it’s real, and they raised $2.5 million dollars, AND they spent $1.8 million of those dollars buying the domain name friend-dot-com, which is downright hilarious. I just spent $1.99 on the subway ride home buying the domain “enemy.lol”; anyone with web design chops wanna get in on this? I think “enemy” is a AI pendant that texts you to poke at your deepest insecurities. (with a premium plan it'll send your friends recordings of you talking about them behind their backs)

New battery test, day 625: 2.89 volts. Technically day 626, and probably closer to 2.885, but I intended on logging every 25 days, so there you have it. Ben reports from Paris that his watch (yellow line) died just a few days ago, which I think means I can estimate battery life between 1.7 and 2+ years, depending on how my watch does.

New battery test, day 873: it's over! Feels poetic that the battery died at #HOPE. (Also I was demo'ing it all afternoon at the @crowdsupply table.) I actually logged the battery yesterday at 2.19 volts — low enough that the LAP indicator was on, which meant the battery was on its last legs. Point is, the February 2022 firmware lasted 2.4 YEARS on a single 100 mAh coin cell, which is not bad! I'm now ready to claim 1.7 to 2.4 years of battery life — and that's backed by real-world testing :)

New battery test, en route to @crowdsupply #teardown at day 850: 2.52 volts. I missed the check-in at day 800 (2.72 V) but the trend line is clear: it’s going down. Probably 8% of charge left. I’m guessing I’ve got another 74 days on this coin cell, which puts it dying in early September. With some luck — and a lot more hard work — I might just have Sensor Watch Pro ready by then. 🤞🏽