Kevin Boone's website

We're used to computing devices being electronic.

Nothing says '80s pop' like a DX7.

Denshi block kits were a unique way to learn about electronics back in the 70s.

These days, there are comparatively few up-to-date smartphones that can run a well-supported, non-vendor firmware.

There are good reasons why these handsets are so popular with de-Googlers, even if we have to grit our teeth and try to ignore the vendor.

Is this a minor irritation, or the end of Android as we know it?

Some guidance, mostly for science and engineering students, on how to write a scientific paper or technical report.

If you can't run an alternative, privacy-sparing firmware on your Android device, you can still assert a measure of control by disabling certain packages.

If you were worried about tracking cookies, you really don't want to know about browser fingerprinting.

How are these alternative smartphone firmwares similar and different?

Which is the easier way to get to a phone you can feel safe using, without your personal data being sent to goodness-knows-where?

The costs and benefits of this somewhat controversial procedure.

Is it possible?

What's changed in the last two years?

Getting a proper dark theme for the e-mail home screen widget is worth spending hours building the app from source.

The terminal stage of de-Googling is to go back to using a 90s-style dumb phone.

My article on calculus of variations assumed without explanation the basic form of the Euler-Lagrange equation.

This article describes how AppImage packaging works on Linux.

These platforms both offer a Google-free, privacy-sparing smartphone experience.

Ten years after cellphone manufacturers stopped putting headphone jacks on their devices, you still can't buy a USB-C headphone adapter that you can be sure will work.

Why did this splendid toy um... run out of steam?

Perhaps it's no bad thing that they don't make'em like this anymore...

If you didn't like it, it's because you didn't use it.

Hi-fi snobs and complacent manufacturers colluded to rob us of our tone controls in the 90s.

Animated musical scores are quite common on YouTube, for educational and promotional purposes.

You'd think you could improve the cooling of a laptop by fitting extra fans under its air intakes.

I don't much care for how hot my laptops run, before the cooling system takes action to bring the temperature under control.

The L298N is a convenient and inexpensive H-bridge motor controller, which interfaces nicely with the Pi Pico.

FastMail is a good, Google-free provider of e-mail, calendar services, and the like.

Despite eBay's claim, it isn't now "free to sell" for private sellers.

MX and antiX are both Linux variants that offer some hope to people who want to keep their old-ish computers running.

We can play sampled audio from a Pi Pico, using the built-in PWM controller, a single GPIO pin, and a handful of discrete electronic components.

An exploration of various aspects of English law, as they apply to the owners and managers of small, private woodlands.

What offers the convenience of a cassette tape, and the sound quality of a CD?

Do Meshtastic, MeshCore and the like revolutionize off-grid communication?

This is the first of (at least) two articles on loading and running arbitrary executable code into RAM on the Pico, and running it.

BMW's C1 was an odd combination of car and motorcycle.

AC circuit analysis relies heavily on complex numbers, and the concept of 'complex impedance'.

3D movie technology is fading away.

The bicycle that did for our legs what the Sony Walkman did for our ears.

Pimoroni's 'GFX Pack' is an inexpensive, low-power LCD display, with modest resolution.

I frequently have to read documents that look as if the writer was given a bag of capital letters, and told to use them all up.

It's not my fault that my avoidance of social media makes me hard to contact.

For too long, mega-corporations have been able to avoid liability for defective software.

A series of simple, progressive examples that demonstrate the essential features of programming in ARM assembly language.

It's an old scam, but it's recently resurfaced in a slicker, more convincing form

There's no shortage of guidance on writing English that people will want to read.

As part of my campaign to eliminate wall-warts and external power supplies that don't have on/off switches, I've built a USB charger that has a mains switch.

In a market dominated by the Amazon Kindle, it's easy to forget that Sony, not Amazon, made the first commercially-successful e-book reader.

How worried should we be, that we're wasting electrical energy for no benefit?