News on Intelligent Dithering

Dual Screen DIY CyberDeck

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 10:52:46 +0000

A cyberdeck is a custom-built, portable computer, often with a cyberpunk aesthetic, designed for accessing and interacting with cyberspace. In science fiction, they are used by hackers to connect to digital worlds, often for activities like hacking, data theft, or controlling machines. Real-world cyberdecks are typically built around single-board computers and designed to evoke this cyberpunk style and scratch an itch for the maker who designs it.

There are plenty of “cyberdeck” builds out there but this latest one from Sector 07 has really caught my eye. It is a Dual Screen DIY Cyberdeck built around the Raspberry Pi single board computer featuring twin rotating touchscreens.

This one has it all.

Stunning retro-futuristic look
Dual rotating touch screens
Snap-fit 3D printed enclosure
Access to GPIO for prototyping
Integrated keyboard
Open source files and parts so you can build your own
Extensive documentation

The attention to detail that Sector 07 have given to this device is amazing. It looks like a finished product and the aesthetic is super cool.

Take a break to watch the video below, it really is worth your time and if you decide to build one yourself or have other cyberdecks you think we should know about let us know in the comments.

iOS 17.2 released - reasons to upgrade

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Apple has released iOS 17.2 and iPadOS 17.2 today. There are several improvements and new features worth knowing about that make this an update you don’t want to miss.

Journal App

Apple have finally released their Journal app. It will prompt you several times a day to reflect on your mood and what might be causing you to feel that way, in an attempt to step back from the feelings and analyse your behaviour. Journalling has been shown to help with many mental health issues and I use it myself, but I am not sure I will switch from my Obsidian plain text method to this.

Apple says:

Journal is a new way to reflect on and relive special moments. Capture your thoughts on life’s big events or everyday activities. Add details to any entry with photos, music, audio recordings, and more. Mark important moments and revisit them later to find new insights or set new goals.

Your iPhone can create personalized suggestions of moments to remember and write about based on information like your photos, location, music, workouts, and more—all using on-device machine learning.

Other apps can tie into the Journalling app using an API, so I expect this feature to bloom over the coming months and will revisit it when new use cases appear.

Catch-up in Messages

This is a small feature but very useful, and honestly one I am shocked has taken so long to appear! When you open a conversation with a lot of unread messages, you can tap on the little ^ symbol in the top right to scroll to the first unread message in a thread.

Favourite songs playlist

If you open the Music app on your iOS 17.2 device, you will notice a new Favourite Songs playlist. This will highlight all of the songs you have ever hit the favourite button on over the years and will automatically update as you add new ones.

You can ask Siri to ‘play my favourite songs’ now and you know you will get things you like!

AirDrop Upgrades

As well as NameDrop (for quickly bumping phones together to swap contact details) iOS 17.2 can also use this proximity feature to share other items such as boarding passes, movie tickets etc.

This is a nice little tweak to make sharing things quicker.

Smart Autofill for PDFs

If you receive a PDF that contains form fields you can now auto fill some of these with your saved contact details. Huge timesaver if you frequently do this with PDFs!

If you want to have a clock widget on your home screen, you previously had to make do with various analog options. No more! Now you can have a quick, easy to read digital version on your home screen!

If you are a weather nerd, the Weather app has been upgraded to include more details including precipitation and snow conditions of the next ten days, wind map snapshot to see wind patterns (useful for kite-surfers!) and an interactive moon phase calendar to see what phase it will be in at any point in the month (useful for astronomers and night photographers).

Spatial Video recording

If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or 15 Pro Max, you can now record videos in the new “Spatial video for Apple Vision Pro” mode. Not a huge amount of use at the moment, but any videos recorded in this mode will appear 3 dimensional when viewed on the upcoming Apple Vision Pro AR headset. Only 1080p and 30fps for the moment.

Action button translate option

If you have the new iPhone 15 Pro you can allocate a new feature to the Action button (it is the one that replaced the mute / silent switch). Now you can have it fire up translate for automatic voice-to-text translation between two languages. If you haven’t tried the Translate app you really should give it a go, it feels like the universal translator from Star Trek is not too far away!

Qi2 Charging support for iPhone 13 and 14

If you have an iPhone 13 or 14, you can now take advantage of Qi2 compatible chargers. These contain magnets to better align the charging coils in the two devices and unlocks up to 15 watts of charging power, resulting in faster and more efficient charges.

What features are you most excited about having in this update, or what did Apple miss? Let us know in the comments!

Raspberry Pi 5 Announced

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Raspberry Pi Trading Company have just announced the Raspberry Pi 5 and it is available to pre-order now, shipping in late October. Of course they announced this less than 24 hours after I wrote a post about using the Raspberry Pi 4 for Digital Signage! This new Pi will be even better for that as you will be able to run two 4K screens at once with it!

So what is new and exciting in this updated single board computer? Read on to find out!

CPU - 2-3x faster

The CPU has been replaced with a new Broadcom BCM2712 64-bit quad core ARM Cortex-A76 processor that is between 2 and 3 times faster than the one on the Pi 4. This will be a noticeable boost in performance for all users.

GPU Updated

The Raspberry Pi 5 has a VideoCore VII GPU on board able to run dual 4Kp60 displays without breaking a sweat. This upgrade should also be a major boost for the retro gaming emulation solutions out there, which will make the Pi 5 pretty much the ultimate retro gaming machine!

USB bandwidth doubled

USB ports now have double the bandwidth on the Raspberry Pi 5 and there are 2x USB 3 and 2x USB 2 ports. This will make running from portable drive significantly faster and should allow for more scope when building network attached storage solutions using the Pi. Plex server on the Pi could be on the cards again!

MicroSD slot twice as fast

The MicroSD slot has been upgraded to be twice as fast on Raspberry Pi 5, and combined with the CPU upgrades I think this will really be noticeable in daily use. Boot-up times will feel incredibly quick with this upgrade as long as you get a decent SD card to take advantage of it.

PCI-Express!!!

Yes you read that right. The card has a port to break out a single lane PCI-Express port which should open up tons of possibilities for connecting high speed peripherals in the future. Think 10Gig ethernet cards, possibly graphics cards and fast storage RAID solutions. This is a space to watch!

Dual camera / display slots

These dual CSI/DSI ports will support any combination of up to two cameras or displays. But beware, the connectors are different on the Raspberry Pi 5 compared to the old CSI ports so you may need to buy new ribbon cable adaptors to make your existing kit work. Plenty of the usual stockists will have these cables ready for launch.

Raspberry Pi 5 gets a POWER BUTTON!!

This might be the biggest FINALLY of all! They have added a power button to the Raspberry Pi 5 so you no longer have to pull the USB cable out or go hoking under your desk looking for the power switch. And the new Raspberry Pi official case comes with an outer button lined up to this for easy access.

Real-time Clock

The board also has a built in RTC which you can power with a two pin connector to a coin cell battery. This is fantastic for projects that require time and date but may not have Internet access to set the clock on each boot. Very welcome addition.

Others

There is also a dedicated fan header for connecting PWM fans to (the new Raspberry Pi 5 official case will come with a fan included). And a dedicated UART header for making debugging simple.

It should also be noted that the Pi uses less power than it’s predecessor but they sell a beefier 5v 5A power supply with USB-PD support to allow for overclockers and also to provide increased power to the USB ports if you wish to run more power hungry peripherals.

Conclusion

Overall this is a fantastic upgrade to the Pi 4, which was an amazing single board computer. The speed difference will be very noticeable and I think this firmly puts the Raspberry Pi 5 into the realm of being a perfectly good daily computer for most normal users.

The Raspberry Pi 5 will be available at launch in 4GB and 8GB flavours priced at $60 and $80 respectively. They can be pre-ordered now and will ship on 20th October 2023.

Do I need one? No, I have many Pis already.
Will I be ordering one? Almost certainly.

And I will continue to until someone starts Pi Users Anonymous so I can get some help!

New iOS 17 update: Features I will be using immediately

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The iOS 17 update has just released for iPhone and iPad and it has some fantastic new features. Many are small but they have a big impact. Here are a few of my favourites.

Live Voicemail

This is great. If someone is leaving you a voicemail message you can see it as live text coming through. If it is someone you want to speak to you can answer and interrupt the voicemail.

This allows me to silence all unknown callers and be confident that I wont miss something important. All while still keeping all those scam calls at bay.

Standby mode

Standby is a new mode in iOS 17 that activates when your phone is charging and is horizontal. Luckily my charging stand still works when my phone is horizontal so I tried this last night and it is awesome.

You can choose some widgets to display (I just chose the date and the clock to start) and if the ambient light is low it will display in a muted red colour which is perfect when you wake in the middle of the night and need to check the time without searing your retinas!

Interactive widgets

This is huge. The widgets that you already can have on your home screen are now interactive in iOS 17. I am using this with Things (my task manager of choice, why not check out my Things I use page for other cool things I like to use) so that I check things off my list without opening the app.

This is also great with the Home app so you can turn lights on and off directly from the home screen without opening the app. This one is a great quality of life improvement.

Oh and don’t forget to update your apps, as many app authors will be thinking up even more clever uses for these widgets over time (and make sure you check out WidgetSmith which allows you to create your own custom widgets!)

Verification codes email autofill

You know when you log into a site and they send you a 6 digit codes as a text? In iOS 16 they would autofill those for you which was super convenient but only for SMS messages. In iOS 17 it now detects codes in your email too! This is such a great addition and I will be using this a lot!

Offline Maps

In Maps in iOS 17 you can now choose to download Offline maps. If you are planning to go for a hike or a long drive and you might not have data coverage, this will be super useful.

Autocorrect corrected

You know how when you are typing and you type a word the phone doesn’t recognise and it corrects it? Then you go back, put it back the way you want it and then it corrects it AGAIN! Well that little infuriation has been fixed. Which also makes it much easier to use swear words. About ducking time!

Check in

In Messages there is a new Check in feature. This allows you to have your phone automatically alert someone when you reach a specified location, for instance to let them know you got home safely. You just tap the plus button when in a message with the person you want to alert and choose Check In.

If you don’t arrive at your location, or it looks like you have stopped moving towards it, it will prompt you to see if everything is ok. If you don’t respond, it will send a message with your last location to the person you are checking in with.

I think this will be excellent for parents so their kid doesn’t forget to let them know when they reached their friends house, or if you are waiting for a friend to get an Uber or taxi home safely.

Multiple Timers (FINALLY)

FINALLY! Now you can add multiple timers. In the kitchen being able to add timers for multiple things at once is table stakes (pun intended) and it is kind of silly how long it has taken for Apple to add this. But it is here now! Rejoice!

These are just a few of the new things I am loving about iOS 17 and I am sure I will find more. But these are a great place to start to get more from your devices!

The new Raspberry Pi 3 Model B!

Mon, 29 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The Raspberry Pi Foundation have just celebrated their 4th birthday today (although due to leap year technicalities they are claiming it is only their 1st birthday!). And what better way to celebrate than with the release of a fresh new Raspberry Pi!

What is a Raspberry Pi?

The Raspberry Pi is a low cost credit card sized computer. This style of computer has become much more prominent since the foundation released the first model back in 2012.

More companies are springing up offering these “single board computers” but none have achieved the same traction and community engagement as the Raspberry Pi. Over 8 million computers have been sold so far making them the most successful British computer manufacturer ever!

The Raspberry Pi allows connection of electronics such as sensors and motors to enable a wide range of projects to be dreamed up. Hobbyists and tinkerers love devices like this, and with each iteration it just gets better and better.

It was designed with the main goal of making computers for tinkering affordable so that every child could have one to help solve a programming skills shortage in UK universites, and at £30 it is certainly affordable. They also sell a Raspberry Pi Zero computer for just £5.

So what’s new?

The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is 10x faster than the original Pi, and is between 50 - 60% faster than the Pi 2. It also comes with built in WiFi and Bluetooth (standard and LE). The addition of WiFi and Bluetooth is a major advantage and has been a long requested feature. This will allow connection to the Internet out of the box and the use of wireless keyboards and mice without using up those precious USB ports.

The board is the same shape and size as the previous models which means all the old accessories and addons should work without modification.

Mine is ordered from the excellent Pi Hut and should be here tomorrow! They also sell a brilliant starter kit on Amazon with everything you need to get started.