March 2023 notes
Working on RFID improvements, a real-world editor, & having another open house
Folk March Notes
What we've been up to
RFID localization project:
New bill of materials with new antennas, amplifier, etc
Omar now has the radio setup working in his apartment & we’re going to be helping a sponsor set another one up — will have a replicable process for getting people started with radio tracking soon
Current work is getting rid of the +/-1 wavelength ambiguity and adding 2D/3D support (multi-antenna) and speeding the whole thing up
Added better drawing & made a small zine about it
Working on a Folk in-system code editor, so you’re not dependent on laptop
Folk is spreading out! We now have systems in Boston, Atlanta, a couple in NYC
Working on getting systems running in LA, DC, SF
Ian’s gotten his system up and running in Atlanta
Ian’s using the smallest printer we could find, this cat printer
March open house was lovely:
Folk lang improvements:
Jacob made an Overcooked demo in Folk
Jacob added Web endpoints to Folk:
We added negation to the Folk language, so you can check if statements of some pattern _don’t_ exist
We added Commit to the Folk language, which is a new construct for dealing with state (you can commit statements that stick around, then stomp that set with a new commit/transaction)
In part, this is to prepare for moving more camera/display/keyboard/other I/O management inside the Folk system, which should hopefully all be able to use committed statement sets to communicate between threads
Improved docs for design, code structure, and the language, as we’ve been onboarding more people
What we're up to next month
We want to start working with people in small in-person projects on Folk: Learn more & apply here
Links we’ve enjoyed:
Andrés:
typst - “a new markup-based typesetting system that is powerful and easy to learn.“
Outlander Magazine@StreetFashion01Keyboard Puffer by Liminal! (2023)
11:28 AM · Mar 31, 20235.02K Reposts · 37.6K LikesWeathering Software Winter — fantastic talk from Devine Lu Linvega on building resilient small tools yourself, like your own VM, your own stack machine, your own OS :) by way of contrast it’s also about the fallibility of our internet connected, 11GB-over-the-air-updating modern software
UTM - an app for QEMU virtualization!
A Caret for Your Thoughts: Adapting Caret (Ꮖ) Navigation to Visual Editors
Omar:
“who called it a printer and not a siege engine to demolish the walls between realities“
- andrew🦆blinn@disconcision@rsnous who called it a printer and not a siege engine to demolish the walls between realities10:06 PM · Mar 31, 20224 Reposts · 16 Likes
Cards were big this month:
- RFNM, Inc.@rfnotmagic@Kurtulmehtap Correct. That's what makes it cost-competitive! You can do your processing (like FFTs) in the DSP cores.3:21 PM · Mar 22, 20231 Like
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18519735
High Resolution Timing on the Raspberry-Pi
“Just to be clear, this post is about measuring the times at which events happen. Making things happen at specific times is a completely separate (and much harder) problem."