River MacLeod
Latest posts
RSVP to PostgreSQL Edinburgh Meetup May 2026
Paterson’s Land, Room M2 - COL, Mezzanine Lightning talks. I plan to give a talk about TimescaleDB and weather sensor data.
RSVP to Open Circuit Edinburgh
“Open Circuit Edinburgh where Scotland’s embedded community come together to explore the latest technologies, tools and best practice.” CodeBase, Thursday, May 7, 5 PM - 7:30 PM
Improved image handling on this blog
My last post was delayed by the long desired improvement of the image handling facilities of this website. I implemented a basic “Photo” post type a long time ago, but always had to add pictures manually to blog posts by copying their urls and writing an <img> tag. I spent far too much time recently improving this, and other aspects of images on the site. The main goal of making blog writing…
.cat
I’ve moved my homepage and identity to river.cat . I’m a cat called River so it make sense, but that’s not what the .cat domain is for. It’s for Catalonia, intended to promote Catalan language and culture. As part of the deal, I’m going to do that. It’s not too hard, because Catalonia has something in common with Scotland, where I am from. Catalonia is a nation of people located around the area of…
I link one of my favourite oh no comics, becaus...
I link one of my favourite oh no comics, because it always takes me ages to find it again when I need to show it to someone.
I'm having a look at TimescaleDB. I'm going to ...
I’m having a look at TimescaleDB. I’m going to try using it for weather sensor data, and maybe other boat stuff. I see someone has made something called PostgSail already, but I want start by doing some of it myself.
RSVP to Homebrew Website Club Edinburgh
Holy Water
The Temple of the Purification of the Dishes
CR2032 Welding
I made up a thinkpad backup battery with the spot welder that appeared at the lab.
Thinkpad X1C USB-C Port Replacement
I replaced the USB-C socket on my Thinkpad X1 Carbon 7th. Unlike a previous Thinkpad power socket repair , which was a matter of plugging in a new one, this required some fiddly soldering. I have owned many Thinkpads now, and it is very clear that the quality goes down with each newer model. The X1 Carbon was my first of the modern, thin designs. It loses most of what makes a Thinkpad, and becomes…
X1 Carbon 7th USB C Connector
Original USB-C connector. Area masked to protect from hot air soldering.
X1 Carbon 7th USB and dock connectors
The part on the left seems to be a custom component with proprietary ethernet connector and USB-C, for a docking station. On the right is a normal USB-C connector, for which replacements can be obtained. This picture shows the replaced connector.
I successfully replaced the USB-C port on my Th...
I successfully replaced the USB-C port on my Thinkpad without breaking anything, and think I levelled up a bit in soldering.
Calton Hill thinks it is a ship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafalgar_Day
T-Rex
A laser engraved vegvisir
Also a rubber stamp I made by laser etching rubber and a plywood handle. :)
Refreshments
Quicko soldering iron with added Thinkpad standard power input
Electronic cat!
Pixie kit CW transceiver
Revspace bike key
Project gallery at revspace
Mate supplies at revspace
New wallmount patch panel
Putting in a new patch panel and cable. Panel was from aliexpress, seems quite solid though. Metal, claims Cat 6a.
Aneng AN8009 Multimeter Capacitor Upgrades
Aneng AN8009 Multimeter Upgrade
I modded my multimeter, roughly following this guide: https://www.jackenhack.com/aneng-an8008-modify-for-better-accuracy-faster-readings/ I used the parts I had, which for the 3V rail were 100nF and 10uF ceramics, and a 470uF Rubycon. The voltage reference also got a 10uF. The replaced cap was a 100uF Chong. Autoranging is still frustratingly slow, but I think it is probably a bit faster once it’s…
EHYC Burgee
A burgee for the Edinburgh Hacklab Yacht Club.
JLCPCB Cat
JLCPCB sent me a cat!
LCSC cat customer box
How does LCSC know I am a cat? Are all their customers cats? (It’s a picture of an lcsc box with a cat on it.)
My CampGNDd hacker campsite
Frack Hacksaw
Frack hackerspace in Leeuwarden built a hacksaw :D
Cataccino
A cappuccino with cat face in cocoa powder.
Coffee Stencils
Picture of two stencils laser cut from acrylic. They are cats. :)
Cat Download Complete
Stretching cat print on a Prusa 3D printer.
You wouldn't download a cat...
A model of a stretching cat in the Prusa 3D printer Slic3r software. Downloaded from https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1565405
River Eider Map
Matespresso
This is what happens when you leave me alone with a coffee machine. (Yerba mate in a portafilter). I sieved it first to remove the sticks.
Go black
Gary the Unicorn
This consular unicorn from Aberdeen made it all the way to FRACK in Leeuwarden!
Matespresso shot
Yerba mate brewed in an espresso machine seems to give good crema, and actually tastes pretty good!
New Toys: Heltec LoRa boards
Cheapest LoRa things I could find on Aliexpress. Hardware seems nice, documentation and software leaves a lot to be desired.
Horse Detector
The Vaisala WXT510 horse detector seems to be working. It emits NMEA0183 messages. The last field of the $WIMWD sentence, before the checksum, is ‘V’ for horse detected, and ‘A’ for no horse.
Soft dog
Famous for the soft dog error of the Hacklab’s laser cutter.
Grumpy cat loaf with oranges and olives
The loafs in this park may be grumpy because they have burst eardrums from the explosion the previous night.
Bombed building
Bombed building
Bombed building
Bomb Cat
A black cat sits in front of a damaged building, where a bomb exploded the previous night.
Flashing x230 firmware
Using a pi to program the SPI flash chips in a Thinkpad x230.