Nostr notes by joey castillo

AT LONG LAST! Open Book Touch is LIVE on ...

2026-07-09T15:18:51Z

AT LONG LAST! Open Book Touch is LIVE on [@crowdsupply](https://hachyderm.io/@crowdsupply )! I'll have a LOT more to share soon, but for now I'll just say this: literacy is arguably the original technology. The written word and its ability to share ideas across continents and centuries, changed our minds forever. We shouldn't cede that tech to the billionaires and the bastards. We deserve open source e-book hardware, and I want to make it happen. https://www.crowdsupply.com/oddly-specific-objects/open-book-touch/updates/six-years-in-the-making-open-book-touch-is-here

open book book cover work (in progress) ...

2026-03-03T01:41:14Z

open book book cover work (in progress)

true HOLY FUCKING SHIT moment this morning: over the holidays, my ...

2026-02-25T19:01:57Z

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'm going to be honest: I felt intimidated when I saw that ...

2026-02-13T01:25:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…s3f6
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I'm going to be honest: I felt intimidated when I saw that product launch. But now I can say quite honestly, working with the prototype Open Books I have here and the firmware I've been building for them: I'm not the least bit intimidated anymore.

this is going to be vague, but I don't know how to offer ...

2026-02-13T00:32:57Z

this is going to be vague, but I don't know how to offer details without explaining everything, which would take a lot more words than I have available on a platform like this. in short though: Open Book Touch is going to blow your freaking mind straight out the back of your head. Even if you know to expect it, I promise: you may think you're ready, but you're not.

Watch this space. https://www.crowdsupply.com/oddly-specific-objects/open-book-touch

in the future there will be no 404 pages. instead, a ...

2025-12-29T22:27:45Z

in the future there will be no 404 pages. instead, a statistically derived hallucination of what might have been there, had the page existed

(previously in the lab window) ...

2025-12-02T23:17:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…m9wg
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(previously in the lab window)

when I get home I'm going to print this out and put it in the ...

2025-12-02T23:06:52Z

when I get home I'm going to print this out and put it in the window of our lab https://existentialcomics.com/comic/629

I’m headed to Tromsø in Norway this weekend to chase the ...

2025-11-27T00:50:25Z

I’m headed to Tromsø in Norway this weekend to chase the northern lights. To start to acclimate myself, I’ve been wearing a Sensor Watch on Tromsø time, and following the shortening days. Today my watch is showing something I’ve never seen before outside of testing: sunRISe on the 27th: None.

what a great lede: “OpenAI is a money pit with a website on ...

2025-11-26T19:40:36Z

what a great lede: “OpenAI is a money pit with a website on top. That much we know already, but since OpenAI is a private company, there’s a lot of guesswork required when estimating the depth of the pit.” https://archive.ph/PyLnT

The first rule of tautology club, is the first rule of tautology ...

2025-11-09T07:23:39Z

The first rule of tautology club, is the first rule of tautology club.
The second rule of tautology club is the second rule of tautology club.
The third rule of tautology club: if it’s your first night at tautology club, it’s your first night at tautology club.

This is maybe the biggest FINALLY in my career as a purveyor of ...

2025-10-23T18:09:19Z

This is maybe the biggest FINALLY in my career as a purveyor of Oddly Specific Objects: The Open Book is in prelaunch at Crowd Supply! But it's not the same old Open Book; we're launching the all-new, completely reimagined Open Book Touch with WiFi and Bluetooth support, a higher-resolution display, capacitive touchscreen, and frontlight with adjustable color temperature. Subscribe for updates here! https://www.crowdsupply.com/oddly-specific-objects/open-book-touch

sometimes i think about the fact that unicode, our single ...

2025-10-22T04:49:35Z

sometimes i think about the fact that unicode, our single repository for encoding the fundamental components of all human language from cuneiform and hieroglyphics to english, persian and esperanto, had to reserve space for and subsequently standardize a code point for “face melting emoji” in 2021, because that’s a thing we needed to express ourselves, y’know, as a species.

I love getting to present slides like this to master's ...

2025-09-12T19:58:12Z

I love getting to present slides like this to master's students.

wow okay there are dark patterns and there are DARK patterns… ...

2025-09-11T22:17:41Z

wow okay there are dark patterns and there are DARK patterns…

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

2025-08-26T04:41:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…cv5h
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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 ...

2025-08-26T03:06:53Z

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 ...

2025-08-04T18:10:32Z

“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? ...

2025-05-27T03:48:18Z

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

Update: I have severely improved my predicament. ...

2025-05-22T21:04:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…gfgg
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Update: I have severely improved my predicament.

By way of explanation: I have shipped four variants of ...

2025-05-21T22:53:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…xhm8
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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.

This is me now. ...

2025-05-21T21:09:52Z

This is me now.

As a side note (and not to get too political): I paid a tariff ...

2024-12-13T01:04:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…hsaq
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As a side note (and not to get too political): I paid a tariff bill of $1,000 to get these 2,000 boards into the country. That was money paid by me, a small U.S. business owner, not by China — and it’s a cost I’m passing on directly to you, my customers! Because that’s how tariffs work! I’m just relieved I paid it on December 11th and not January 21; it’s been a mad dash to get everything I need imported before the tariff fairy turns my dreams into so many pumpkins.

tho they do look nice under the (Pixelblaze’d) tree ...

2024-12-13T00:56:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…qe94
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tho they do look nice under the (Pixelblaze’d) tree

crap, I think my finger may have slipped. Did I click “200” ...

2024-12-13T00:44:54Z

crap, I think my finger may have slipped. Did I click “200” on this order, or “2,000”?

I will be bringing a couple dozen of these with me to Hackaday ...

2024-10-28T18:43:11Z

I will be bringing a couple dozen of these with me to Hackaday Supercon. The “Sensor Watch” SAO is not Sensor Watch — hence the quotes — but it is an I²C segment LCD driver that’s easy to control with MicroPython. To get folks started, I have once again put copious documentation on the back side :)

Last night I finished the most rudimentary activity tracking ...

2024-10-20T15:06:00Z

Last night I finished the most rudimentary activity tracking proof of concept for Sensor Watch Pro: it counts the number of orientation changes the watch experiences per hour, and the number of times the accelerometer was “awake” at the top of the minute. This adds 600 nA to the power budget, and the data strongly hints that sleep tracking should be possible. Sensor Watch data at left; Oura data at right. Note that period of Deep Sleep, and that period of low motion counts from 1:00-3:00 AM…

okay I am emphatically not an AI guy, but I decided to try out ...

2024-09-30T14:39:08Z

okay I am emphatically not an AI guy, but I decided to try out google's new AI podcast generator on NotebookLM, and it's very unsettling that it… kinda works? To be clear I'm absolutely not going to integrate LLMs or GPT's into my practice. But it worries me that this is where we're at.

said this to someone on my discord on the topic of making open ...

2024-08-27T04:38:10Z

said this to someone on my discord on the topic of making open hardware products; felt relevant to share:

it's hard to do these things at all, it's excruciatingly hard to do them well, and it can be overwhelming, in every sense of the word, to do these things in the open. at teardown another maker told me that making open hardware is a lot like getting punched repeatedly in the face, so, yeah: i have mad respect for anyone who braves all that and gets an actual product over the finish line.

finally upgraded Manager, the accounting software I use, after ...

2024-08-26T01:28:48Z

finally upgraded Manager, the accounting software I use, after ten months of coasting on an old version, and I could not be more thrilled with their tweaks to inventory management. If you're a small maker-oriented business, I recommend it highly: free as in beer, runs locally and offline on Windows/Mac/Linux, and it seems to be made by folks who just _really_ love accounting. https://www.manager.io/

on the one hand, this was a colossal waste of time and money. on ...

2024-07-31T05:13:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…uhhv
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on the one hand, this was a colossal waste of time and money. on the other hand it wasn't that much time. (or money.) https://www.enemy.lol

i have too many things to do to be wasting time on this ...

2024-07-31T04:26:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…k4gw
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i have too many things to do to be wasting time on this

wow okay apparently it’s real, and they raised $2.5 million ...

2024-07-31T03:30:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…dt4q
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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)

“Your order includes a white friend device and a white case.” ...

2024-07-31T02:53:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…nj02
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“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 ...

2024-07-31T02:52:18Z

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