TechnologyIQ

The Analog Life: 50 Ways to Unplug and Feel Human Again via InsideHook [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Sat, 8 Nov 2025 11:22:00 -0800

The Analog Life: 50 Ways to Unplug and Feel Human Again via InsideHook

In 2006, a UX designer named Aza Raskin invented a concept called “infinite scroll.” The feature provided an alternative to internet pagination — anytime users reached the end of a feed, timeline or results page, they could just flick the screen down for more. And like magic, more always arrived.

Raskin knew exactly what he’d built: “If you don’t give your brain time to catch up with your impulses, you just keep scrolling,” he explained in a BBC interview. “It’s as if [you’re] taking behavioral cocaine…sprinkling it all over your interface. That’s the thing that keeps you coming back and back and back.”

Read this entire article – The Analog Life: 50 Ways to Unplug and Feel Human Again via InsideHook

Notable people Interactive World Map [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 08:10:04 -0700

Notable people Interactive World Map

Using data from Morgane Laouenan et al., the map is showing birthplaces of the most "notable people" around the world. Data has been processed to show only one person for each unique geographic location with the highest notability rank. Click to show people only from a specific category or click on a name to see personal data

Check out this interactive map

An engineer restores pay phones for free public use via NPR [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 10:09:00 -0700

An engineer restores pay phones for free public use via NPR

Patrick Schlott often finds himself in a cellular dead zone during his drive to work.

"You go down the road, you turn the corner and you're behind a mountain and you'll lose cell coverage pretty fast," he says.

The 31-year-old electrical engineer says poor reception is a common frustration for residents of Vermont's Orange County. To address this issue, he's providing his community with a new way to stay connected.

Schlott has taken old pay phones, modified them to make free calls, and set them up in three different towns across the county. He buys the phones secondhand from sites like eBay and Craigslist and restores them in his home workshop.

Read and Listen to this entire article – An engineer restores pay phones for free public use via NPR

I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display via Ben Holmen[Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 10:38:00 -0700

I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display via Ben Holmen

Six years ago I had an idea to build a large, inefficient display with a web interface that anyone could interact with. I've enjoyed Danny Rozin's unconvenional mirrors over the years and was inspired by an eInk movie player that played at 24 frames per hour that got me thinking about a laborious display that could slowly assemble an image.

I landed on the idea of a 40×25 pixel grid of pixels, turned one by one by a single mechanism. Compared to our modern displays with millions of pixels changing 60 times a second, a wooden display that changes a single pixel 10 times a minute is an incredibly inefficient way to create an image. Conveniently, 40×25 = 1,000 pixels, leading to the name Kilopixel and the six-letter domain name kilopx.com. How do you back down from that? That's the best domain name I've ever owned.

Read this entire article – I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display via Ben Holmen

MacPaint Art From The Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today via decryption's blog

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 16:29:00 -0700

MacPaint Art From The Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today via decryption's blog

I really enjoyed browsing the BMUG's CD-ROM and discovering early 80s art made in MacPaint, so I browsed all 18,000+ MacPaint images on Discmaster to see what gems I can unearth. Here is some what I found.

Check out all the artwork on decryption's blog

Bill Atkinson: Polaroids showing the Evolution of the Lisa GUI via Computer History Museum [Video] [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Sat, 2 Aug 2025 11:13:00 -0700

Bill Atkinson: Polaroids showing the Evolution of the Lisa GUI via Computer History Museum [Video] [Shared]

Bill Atkinson shows and explains his binder of Polaroid photos which he took during the development of the Lisa, documenting the evolution of its graphical user interface.

Watch this entire 25 minute video

New California tool ranks extreme heat danger by neighborhood. Here's how it works via LAist [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 11:53:00 -0700

New California tool ranks extreme heat danger by neighborhood. Here's how it works via LAist

It’s going to be hot this summer. And a new tool can help you figure out the risk that the temperature can pose to your health.

The California Communities Extreme Heat Scoring System — which the state is calling CalHeatScore — can tell you the level of heat-related health risk you face and point you to cooling resources in your area.

This pilot program ranks risk from extreme heat into four categories, from mild to severe. A ranking of “severe,” for example, could correspond with a higher temperature inland, as opposed to at the beach.

Read this entire article – New California tool ranks extreme heat danger by neighborhood. Here's how it works via LAist

Visit the heat index web site

WeatherStar 4000+ [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 14:47:00 -0700

WeatherStar 4000+

This project aims to bring back the feel of the 90s with a weather forecast that has the look and feel of The Weather Channel at that time but available in a modern way. This is by no means intended to be a perfect emulation of the WeatherStar 4000, the hardware that produced those wonderful blue and orange graphics you saw during the local forecast on The Weather Channel. If you would like a much more accurate project please see the WS4000 Simulator. Instead, this project intends to create a simple to use interface with minimal configuration fuss. Some changes have been made to the screens available because either more or less forecast information is available today than was in the 90s. Most of these changes are captured in sections below.

Relive the Weather Channel’s Local Weather Display from days past. Retro Gold.

Video Game History Foundation Library – Digital Archive [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Tue, 8 Jul 2025 13:30:00 -0700

Video Game History Foundation Library – Digital Archive

The VGHF Digital Archive is the portal for our digitally preserved content. You can directly access our digital collections and search through the full text of documents, magazines, transcripts, and more.

This library is a permanent work in progress. Not all materials are currently cataloged or digitized, and our library system may change in the future. For a more complete list of VGHF’s holdings, visit the Library Catalog.

Check out the entire digital archive

Internet in a Box - Mandela's Library of Alexandria [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Tue, 1 Jul 2025 08:44:00 -0700

Internet in a Box - Mandela's Library of Alexandria

Internet-in-a-Box “learning hotspots” are used in dozens of countries, to give everyone a chance, e.g. in remote mountain villages in India.

It works without internet — like a community fountain, but for the mind — wirelessly serving anyone nearby with a smartphone, tablet or laptop.

Now you too can put the internet in a box and customize it with the very best free content for your school, clinic or family!

Check out a variety of Internet in a Box configurations and build your own.

CARDIAC (CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation) via Adafruit Industries [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 07:51:00 -0700

CARDIAC (CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation) via Adafruit Industries

Back in the 1960’s and early 70’s Bell Labs made some very sophisticated educational kits available to high schools and colleges. Designed for classroom use, they included wonderful manuals written by Bell Labs staff. One of these kits, introduced in 1968, was CARDIAC: A CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation.

CARDIAC is a learning aid developed by David Hagelbarger and Saul Fingerman for Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1968 to teach high school students how computers work. The kit consists of an instruction manual and a die-cut cardboard “computer”.

Read this entire article – CARDIAC (CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation) via Adafruit Industries

Atkinson Hyperlegible Font via the Braille Institute [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 09:32:00 -0700

Atkinson Hyperlegible Font via the Braille Institute

Is this font easy for you to read? Good—that’s the idea.

At Braille Institute, we’ve created a family of hyperlegible™ fonts designed to improve legibility and readability for individuals with low vision. These carefully crafted fonts feature clear, highly distinctive letters and numbers that make reading easier and more accessible.

Our award-winning font has made reading easier for millions upon millions of people and continues to change lives daily. Good news, it’s free for everyone—from personal use to all commercial applications.

Start reading with ease today!

Review and download this free font

Wonders of Street View [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Mon, 19 May 2025 12:21:00 -0700

Wonders of Street View

Random Interesting Sights on Google Street View

Wander through these quirky street view locations around the world

This Venn diagram-inspired AI image generator is strangely satisfying via Creative Bloq [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Thu, 8 May 2025 11:40:00 -0700

This Venn diagram-inspired AI image generator is strangely satisfying via Creative Bloq

There are already more AI image generators than the world could possibly ever need, even if AI art does become the norm. But that's not stopping people from experimenting with new ways to present them.

Many AI image generators let you request a particular artistic style or combine several to influence the look of the image you want to generate. Super Random Studio has come up with a clever UI design to allow styles to be quickly changed and compared along with environments.

Try out this AI Image Generator

I Ditched the Algorithm for RSS—and You Should Too - Joey's Hoard of Stuff [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Fri, 2 May 2025 10:24:00 -0700

I Ditched the Algorithm for RSS—and You Should Too - Joey's Hoard of Stuff

I waste too much time scrolling through social media. It's bad for my health, so why do I keep doing it?

Because once in a while, I'll find a post so good that it teaches me something I never knew before, and all the scrolling feels worth it. But I've stumbled upon an old piece of free and open source tech, relatively unknown today, which is THE solution of solving the problems with modern media without sacrificing accessible, good content: RSS.

Read this entire article – I Ditched the Algorithm for RSS—and You Should Too - Joey's Hoard of Stuff

Vanishing Culture: Punch Card Knitting via The Internet Archive [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Thu, 3 Apr 2025 12:23:00 -0700

Vanishing Culture: Punch Card Knitting via The Internet Archive

Punch cards are a fascinating binary data storage format that aren’t just history—they’re still used by knitting machines today! Thanks to the Internet Archive and other collections, we still have access to historic punch cards, but there are some technical challenges to using them in the format they’re stored in. Meet a few folx working on those challenges.  

Read this entire article – Vanishing Culture: Punch Card Knitting via The Internet Archive

Old Maps Online [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 15:29:00 -0700

Old Maps Online

A new way to discover history

Explore the past on an interactive map with a timeline. Search for detailed high-resolution scanned maps and see what happened in your chosen place in the past.

Check out the maps!

Sounds of the Forest [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 12:04:00 -0700

Sounds of the Forest

We are collecting the sounds of woodlands and forests from all around the world, creating a growing soundmap bringing together aural tones and textures from the world’s woodlands.

The sounds form an open source library, to be used by anyone to listen to and create from. Selected artists will be responding to the sounds that are gathered, creating music, audio, artwork or something else incredible, to be presented at Timber Festival 2021.

Visit the Sounds of the Forest Site and Listen

Summer Wallpapers for Your Tech via Centsational Style [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 13:02:00 -0700

Summer Wallpapers for Your Tech via Centsational Style

Summer is around the corner! To brighten your tech I made five more seasonal screensavers. Find them below, sized to fit the ratios of a desktop, laptop, tablet, and your phone too. Links to all four sizes for each pattern. Enjoy!

Check out the wallpapers

Histography - Timeline of History [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 12:14:00 -0700

Histography - Timeline of History

tec

Visit the website

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 11:35:00 -0700

WikiTok

A TikTok-style interface for exploring random Wikipedia articles.

Miniatua Puts the Micro in Microchip in a Series of Remarkably Precise Miniature Computers via Colossal [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 13:22:00 -0700

Miniatua Puts the Micro in Microchip in a Series of Remarkably Precise Miniature Computers via Colossal

“I think it’s important to understand our roots, where the technology we use came from, and I believe these machines and the people who made them should be celebrated,” says Nicolas Temese, a.k.a. Miniatua. By day, the Montréal-based artist works as a technical director at an animation studio, and in his spare time, he tends to the exacting details of minuscule, vintage hard drives, floppy disks, and keyboards.

Read this entire article – Miniatua Puts the Micro in Microchip in a Series of Remarkably Precise Miniature Computers via Colossal

History Maps [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Wed, 5 Mar 2025 12:15:00 -0800

History Maps

Once upon a time, I loved reading picture books at the local library. Today, I'm still fascinated about stories that happened "a long, long time ago" from "lands far, far away". When I decided to study History again, I wanted to create something to help me. This was how HistoryMaps started.

History is Fun

Learning History involves remembering dates, places, people, and events (who, what, where and when). Remembering things for the sake of remembering is boring! I thought there has to be a better way to learn, remember what I've learned...and make it fun!

History is a Story

Most history websites prioritize SEO over providing meaningful educational content; they are just awful! Wikipedia is the only relevant online History resource out there, but its thematic organization can make it challenging to follow a narrative sequentially. To understand the full context, you must navigate across various pages. I craft each story by curating events in a chronological timeline so it has a clear beginning, middle and an end.

View the chronologies, stories and maps

This large format camera is made of Lego – and it takes AMAZING photos via Digital Camera World

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 12:22:00 -0800

This large format camera is made of Lego – and it takes AMAZING photos via Digital Camera World

While the recently released Lego Polaroid camera was cool, it didn't actually take photos. Now, however, we have a camera made out of Lego that produces real photographs – and it's large format, too.

Earlier this month, Alternative Process Photography reposted the result of a passion project made by Cary Norton – a self-described “photographer, tinkerer, and general dweeberist.”

Back in 2009, Norton created the Legotron Mark I, a fully working 4x5 camera constructed almost entirely from Lego bricks. After realizing he wasn’t getting on with the Lego Builder app, he borrowed a ton of Lego bricks from his friend Gregory and set to work building the Legotron.

Rad this entire article – This large format camera is made of Lego – and it takes AMAZING photos via Digital Camera World

Public Domain Image Archive [Shared]

techiq@welchwrite.com (Douglas E. Welch) — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 09:09:00 -0800

Public Domain Image Archive [Shared]

Explore our hand-picked collection of 10,046 out-of-copyright works, free for all to browse, download, and reuse. This is a living database with new images added every week.

Visit this site