I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the firehose of information that is constantly hitting me in the face. Since I don’t see any reason I should suffer alone, I thought I’d share at least some of the flow here, so below is a random mishmash of “stuff” for you to peruse and ponder.
Did you see my recent column on EEJournal.com — 5G Meets 50,000 Fans at Super Bowl 2025 — in which we considered the sort of infrastructure that will be required to deploy 5G in the not-so-distant future (click here to see all my columns on EEJournal.com)? Well, it’s rare that a day goes by without my chum Jay Dowling sharing something interesting he’s run across on the internet, and one such thing is an article that questions the safety of 5G. I must admit that the thought of holding a 60 GHz transmitter close to my ear doesn’t instill a great deal of joy.
On a more cheerful note, Jay also pointed me at this video by Scott Manley who notes that there are over ten thousand satellites in orbit, but only the largest ones in low earth orbit are visible in the hours just after sunset. Scott then poses the question — what would the sky look like if you could see everything in space? So, he took a took satellite data and rendered a view of the night sky for an ‘average’ viewer in North America (note that you can use the controls in the top left-hand corner to manipulate your viewpoint).
The last one from Jay that we’ll consider in this blog is this video of a radio controlled (RC) ornithopter that flies like a bird. The early parts of the video provide a peek into the design and construction of this bird-like beauty, but it’s when it starts to fly at time 2:50 that you say “Wow!” to yourself.
Another downer came from my chum Charles Pfeil, who pointed me at this video of Edward Snowdon explaining how our cell phones can be used to spy on us.
In a somewhat related vein, my wife (Gina the Gorgeous) emailed me a link to an article that tells us why we should Stop Using Public USB Ports to Charge Our Smartphones.
The problem — which is known as “juice-jacking” — is that there is a potential for public USB ports to be hacked such that when you plug your phone in, they can install data-stealing malware. The solutions are to (a) use a wall wart power supply plugged into an AC outlet to charge your phone, (b) use a charge-only (no data) cable, or (c) use a data-blocker adapter to convert your standard cable to charge-only.

As an aside, I constantly receive emails from readers asking to see a picture of Gina because they’ve heard me talk about her so much over the years. I know she’s going to be displeased if she hears I posted a photo (so don’t mention it to her), but here’s one that was taken just a couple of weeks ago. The guy in the next office — we’ll call him Bob (because that’s his name) — just popped in for something. When I told him what I was doing, he said, “No one is going to believe that beautiful woman is your wife.” I also remember that, when Gina and I got married, all my friends told me to make sure she never got her eyes tested. Now I’m wondering if people are trying to tell me something, but we digress…
As you may recall, it was my chum James “Chewy” Vroman who originally alerted me to the forthcoming Commodore 64 Retro-Rewind, THEC64, which is scheduled to hit the streets in the UK and Europe on 5 December 2019 — see also Speaking in [Archaic] Tongues (BASIC).
Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, this bodacious beauty’s creators don’t have plans for distribution in the USA. Well, I simply couldn’t resist. I ordered one from Amazon.co.uk to be delivered to my dear old mom who will ship it to me as soon as it lands on her doorstep.
Yesterday, I went on eBay and ordered three old books: Commodore 64 User’s Guide, How to Program Your Commodore 64 Basic for Beginners, and More Than 32 Basic Programs for the Commodore 64 Computer. These little scamps should arrive next week, so I’ll have a happy time perusing and pondering the little rascals until THEC64 arrives.
In response to a question, I posted a comment on my LinkedIn posting about my Speaking in Tongues blog saying, “I just ordered one to be delivered to my mom’s.” Mike Hibbert immediately responded, “I hope she likes it” (good one, Mike) and my old friend Alvin Brown said, “I can pick it up and test it for you” (it’s not going to happen, Alvin).
I also emailed Chewy to tell him that I had THEC64 on order. He emailed me back saying, “You rat!!! I cannot wait to see the review!!!”
Speaking of Chewy, he just sent me a link to a project on Hackaday.com describing A Radio for the Apocalypse. This little beauty is an AM radio made from a hand-wound coil and an oxidized British penny (I bet you can guess what I’ll be doing when I get home this evening).
Chewy also sent me a link to a video of a Steampunk Commodore 64, saying he’s thinking about building one of these for himself and asking if I had any suggestions for making it even better (of course I do).
As we see, the case is oak, and the lid contains a 12″ LCD panel. There are also four speakers — two in the lid and two in the base. As soon as the video started, I recognized this creation as being in the style of my chum Paul Parry of Bad Dog Designs in the UK.
Whenever I go to the UK to visit my mom, on the last Friday before I return, a gaggle of my techno-geek friends descend on my brother’s house and we spend a happy day showing off our latest creations with my mom providing “Ooh” and “Ahh” sound effects as required. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that Paul is a fully-fledged member of this techno-geek gaggle.

Last, but not least, for this blog, I just heard about an Indiegogo crowd-sourced project for something called the Peakago 7-inch Windows 10 Computer.
Weighing in at only 539 grams, with a screen resolution of 1920 * 1200, the Peakago claims to be the world’s first 4G network integrated 7-inch laptop. As the Peakago folks say on their Indiegogo page: “Peakago raises the bar for portable devices. Big time. It’s redefining the look, size, and feel of laptops, combining the benefits of tablets, smartphones, and laptops into a pocket-size technological 4G powerhouse that lets you work or play ANYWHERE.”
I must admit that this does look rather tasty, including the fact that you can fold the keyboard all the way back and use the device as a tablet. If I ever lay my hands on one of these little beauties, I’ll do a full review.
Well, that’s all for this blog. Dare I hope that you’ve wasted as much time on these topics as did I? If you have a moment to post a comment, I’d love to hear which items you found to be the most fun, interesting, or scary.
After all this time that’s the first time I’ve seen a picture of Gina the Gorgeous. If that really is a picture of you’re wife (and I’ve got my doubts), then you definitely married up!
What can I say — when my wife met her soon-to-be mother-in-law’s eldest son, she was bedazzled by his outrageously good looks and his erudite charm 🙂
OK, that explains her first marriage. Or, you have an older brother you’ve never mentioned. Regardless, your comment still doesn’t explain how she ended up with you… 😉
ROFLOL — It’s like something a read in the Reader’s Digest — some woman says, “My oldest girl asked what it was like to have a perfect daughter, and I replied: ‘I don’t know, you’ll have to ask your grandmother'” (oooh, burn!)
Does this C64 rewind support the original C64’s peripherals, for those of us who might still have any lying around? If not, what does it use for storage, and how are folks expected to transfer their old files and software over?
The Retro Games website is pretty useless in this regard, but they do show “CBM 8-Bit ROMs” as being copyrighted (although they don’t use the term anywhere other than the copyright section). I did find this picture http://bit.ly/2pCJvAY that shows a cartridge slot — actually — this led me back to the Indiegogo page (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/thec64-computer-and-games-console#/) where it says “We are creating matching joysticks, cartridge converters to allow old original C64 cartridges to work with the new machine, potentially original joystick converters if the demand is there, and so on. We want to create the perfect experience for old and new fans alike.”
Also they show USB and SD memory card slots — and somewhere it says you can save and load programs to USB sticks. One thing they don’t show is a printer port (which would be useful if you are writing your own programs), but maybe you can plug one into a USB slot.
I think I still have the maintenance manual for my old Commodore 1541 5-1/4″ floppy drive around here somewhere………
I’m scared to think what your house must look like with all the stuff you say you have there LOL
Our house is quite modest. It looks like a Police Box from the outside, but the inside is actually quite spacious.
I want one of those — by comparison, ours looks spacious from the outside, but Gina assures me there’s no room for my flashing light projects inside LOL
Regarding “Juice jacking”- a couple years ago one of my co-workers plugged his phone into a vacant USB connector on my office computer while I was at lunch so he could top off the charge on his battery.
When I got back from lunch my computer was infected with the Stuxnet virus.
Not exactly “Juice jacking”, but same thing only different.
I bet there was much gnashing of teeth and rending of garb that day!
Festo (the hydrauliuc/pneumatic company) has done quite a bit of work on the ornithopter which they call “smartbird”
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnR8fDW3Ilo
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7PNQiHT1Q
or google it for more.
Awesome videos!!!