DREM – MFM/RLL hard drive and Floppy emulator

DREM – MFM/RLL hard drive and Floppy emulator

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Connecting old floppy disk drives to modern hardware is not easy. Resurrecting old MFM and RLL hard drives is even harder. The primary method would simply be to get an old PC with the legacy hardware to read the hard drives. But now there’s DREM.

DREM is based on the high performance FPGA platform and does not require the use of a PC for any file encoding operations. DREM is equipped with an VGA output, PS/2 keyboard input and file manager software. A user can browse the SD card and insert DSK images into virtual drives.

DREM uses DSK disk image files, which contain the raw dump of a disk. The raw image consists of a sector-by-sector binary copy of the source medium.

If you’re just looking for floppy emulation, I recommend GreaseWeazle or other solutions.

https://www.drem.info/drem

Also available, but doesn’t seem quite as well baked, is the pdp8online MFM board emulator.

Catholic Shops for 2024

Catholic Shops for 2024

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I was recently looking for good baptism gifts for an adult joining the church.

Multnomah homeless plan has utterly failed and cost millions

Multnomah homeless plan has utterly failed and cost millions

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Yet another report has come out demonstrating the incompetence and failures of Oregon and Portland leadership – this time (again) due to Multnomah Vega Pederson. It’s a story of incompetent management, millions poured down the drain, doing things for political show, and hiding failures of leadership.

The “Housing Multnomah Now” initiative was supposed to use $14 million to house 300 people into apartments. A year later, however, the program has only placed 37 individuals or households in apartments.

Over the last month, Vega Pederson and other county officials repeatedly refused to answer questions on the record or provide details about how they set the program’s initial targets, identify officials who set them or say whether any review or analysis was conducted.

Read more about how badly this has gone from this article on Oregon Live.

Three-pete. Portland population continue to decline for 3rd straight year

Three-pete. Portland population continue to decline for 3rd straight year

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The bad news continues for Oregon and Portland. Populations are actually shrinking city, county, and state-wide.

Multnomah County has had a net lost of nearly 27,000 residents from 2020 to 2023 — a 3.3% drop in population, according to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Tidbits:

  • 50% of out-migrant households from Portland’s tri-county area went to central Oregon, Washington, Texas and Arizona
  • Clark County, Washington (just across the river in Washington State), saw a 3.1% increase in population from 2020 to 2023

https://www.axios.com/local/portland/2024/03/25/multnomah-county-population-decline-continues-census

Rock formations of the Ulakhan Sis

Rock formations of the Ulakhan Sis

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The Ulakhan-Sis Mountain Range is in the Sakha Republic, Far Eastern Federal District, Russia. This range is one area of Yakutia – which is one of the most isolated and distant portions of northern Russia. What makes it interesting is that the area is marked by fascinating baydzharakhs rock formations. Kigilyakh rock formations are also found on this range, some of them quite impressive.

Baydzherakhs are formed by a cryo-lithic process in which polygonal ice-wedges thaw within the permafrost and reach heights of 15-30 feet. They form a landscape of unearthly spires. Not that different than the Penitentes in the Atacama desert.

This area is largely unexplored and uninhabited – only being first mapped in 1870. They’ve been getting a little more exposure lately with climbers and visitors making the treacherous thousand mile trip to the range.

North Plains’ battle for city expansion

North Plains’ battle for city expansion

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North Plains approved a 855 acre expansion to their urban growth boundary to help grow their small town as well as help build much needed housing. A problem plaguing the US and especially the strictly regulated Portland metro urban growth boundary.

The Oregon state legislature attempted to stop the move by slipping in a ban on such votes by local cities into a bill that bans them RETROACTIVELY back to 2023 – an unheard of and unprecedented move to squash local government and maintain their iron fist on Portland urban growth boundaries that has created one of the worst housing crisis in the country.

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Optimizing your resume

Optimizing your resume

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Applicant Tracking Systems are used by many companies to sift and sort the countless resumes they get. Unfortunately, that means your resume could be filtered out – even if you are perfect for the job. Why? Because you used the wrong keywords.

Jobscan makes a tool that takes a job description and reviews your resume to see if you’ll get past the ATS systems.

Tiktoker burns eyes flexing the eclipse

Tiktoker burns eyes flexing the eclipse

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The Tik Toker dannyboyy_ flexed hard getting what was probably a very expensive flight that traveled through the eclipse path. He did get some great footage:

@dannyboyy_

The most beautiful vid you’ll see of the solar eclipse #solareclipse ✈️

♬ Saturn X Slow Dancing In The Dark – reavesaudios

It looks like, however, he forgot to wear glasses and then posted a video of having to go to the optometrist after having damaged his eyes.

@dannyboyy_

Stay safe during the solar eclipse #solareclipse #storytime

♬ i like the way you kiss me – Artemas
Rabbit R1

Rabbit R1

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Co-designed by Teenage Engineering, what makes the Rabbit R1 special is the interface: instead of a grid of apps, you get an AI assistant that talks to your favorite apps and does everything for you.

You could get the R1 to research a holiday destination and book flights to it, or queue up a playlist of your favorite music, or book you a cab. In theory, you can do almost anything you can already do on your phone, just by asking. It remain a lot of questions over exactly how it works and protects your privacy in the way it describes.

Pre-orders are available at the Rabbit website with deliveries expected around March/April 2024.

Let’s hope it does better than the Humane AI pin that is already floundering and laying off staff. At least the Rabbit doesn’t require a monthly subscription.

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