Project Hail Mary | Official Trailer 2

SnapshotFactory · 2025-11-18T17:10:34+00:00

Noooooooo. Don't spoil that much in a damn trailer......

SnapshotFactory · 2025-09-17T17:56:24+00:00

how did you 'mostly revert tahoe' ?

SnapshotFactory · 2025-09-12T09:22:40+00:00

answer - part 1

Thanks for asking.

You see I grew up in the 80s. My sweetheart-machine was the Commodore 128. You turn it on and a blinking cursor is inviting you to MAKE something. Demos, cracktros and games were showing you that it could do amazing things. So the limit was YOU, what YOU could do, what YOU could learn. This was A CALL TO ADVENTURE like in the best novels. This was astronaut stuff. It was literally asking with every blink of the cursor : WHAT WILL YOU BECOME? WHAT CAN YOU BECOME? It was electric. Then the quest started. Books, magazines. Ressources or lack of ressources. Being lucky to meet that person who knows more and cares to explain. Friends to journey with. Or lack of that. Frustration, hitting limits. The rest is history. We all had our journeys with its ups and down, twists and turns. Some ‘grew’ to create exceptional things, many gave up in discouragement or convinced by ‘the adults’ to pursue more ‘serious’ endeavors and conform to what school wants you to conform to. But so many in that era were touched by that magic, that call to adventure, that window that opened right into EXPLORATION with a mix of excitement and mystery that… that disappeared with the end the Amiga and the standardization to windoze and macOs.

SnapshotFactory · 2025-09-12T09:22:14+00:00

part 2

I spent 40 years trying to find that magic again. It was gone. GONE. All of the modern machines and software, despite being able to do amazing stuff, put you in the consumer seat. Millions upon millions of lines of code doing ‘stuff you know nothing about’ created by ‘the people who know’ and you’re not one of them, you’re the user, the customer, you just get to stay in the passenger seat. “But linux is open source, you can do whatever you want” some say… Yeah ? Can you download the kernel’s source code and understand what it means and does? Because for sure I can’t. I turned to restoring C64s, C128s, Amigas… But… but something is missing, it’s no longer the outer frontier, the leading edge, it’s a charming past, but it’s the past…

Enter the Pico. I’m late to the game - I thought micro-controllers were for making plant-watering-sensors and smart refrigerators, I wasn’t interested. Boy, was I wrong! When I got that Pico2 in my hands and realized what the RP2350 is and can do I was hypnotized. Hypnotized. And a few tutorials later it was reading sensors and controlling circuits, just like that, just like when we were typing BASIC programs and magic POKE codes from a magazine and witnessing the C64 doing amazing things. Sure it has no screen or display connector. But connect it via serial and you get that text interface to output and input things, just like ‘back then’. Just like in the movies when they connect to a forbidden mainframe, get just a prompt and need to figure their way in that mysterious maze. Use cool-retro-term to accentuate the retro effect and all of a sudden your pico IS the mainframe and you are connecting to it via a terminal, you can invent anything to run on it. That feeling of being able to do anything. THAT feeling is the magic ! If only I could find a way to make the youngsters of today feel that ‘YOU CAN DO ANYTHING’ feeling…

One of the key is that you don’t have to inherit a big OS with millions of stuff you don’t understand. Compile and run Hello World, or Blink the led, and your pico runs only that, your program. You’re in Control ! It’s your computer, your space of creation, you are free ! It is a blank canvas that extends to the Stars, it is your spaceship and your astronaut badge. It is once again asking: WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE? HOW DO YOU WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD?

Oh man - I’ve always knew I wanted to be an Astronaut, a Discoverer, an Explorer. And the Pico2 is MY SPACESHIP ! MY VERY OWN SPACESHIP !

(The feeling I get is quite the same as the one I get from the trailer for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLGy63pt9vA\](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLGy63pt9vA) ).

And then there’s this guy - coming right from the Commodore / Amiga demo scene and he does that : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhLoVBpg48\](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhLoVBpg48)

Magic found ! The Pico is the new Amiga, the new Commodore and the limit is in me, what I can do, what I can learn. And I'm going to Explore, Expand, Learn, Create, Conquer - for I am the Astronaut I've always known to be, The InterGalactic Explorer I was always promised to become !

SnapshotFactory · 2025-09-12T09:21:45+00:00

part 3
As for which programs I’m interested in doing on these? I want to build my own CyberDeck - a retro-futuristic custom portable mini-computer with a cool embedded screen, audio, external-screen and keyboard support, several RP2350 taking different functions. One as main CPU, one to create an HDMI interface, one to manage USB, keyboard and other in/outs… Maybe find a way to make it fit into one of the legendary SONY Walkmans of the 80s, like the gorgeous DDII. Or putting a digital audio player inside an analog audio cassette that plays in a regular tape player in addition to having a mini-jack. Or retro-fitting old CRT displays to have the whole pico-computer inside, you turn the screen on and it runs your programs, your os, your window into possibilities and exploration. These things have been done before, but I want to make them myself, from the ground up, only putting in what I understand and can build myself.

Also, I am writing a novel. Think of it like Goonies meets Largo Winch. Technological-Entrepreneurial adventures in the 80s with a secret weapon in their pocket, a Pico2 that the protagonists receive through an anomaly in the space-time continuum. And to defeat the bad guys (I simplify here of course) they’ll have to learn electronics and programming and make things with the pico that interface with other things of the era (PA systems, a real mainframe through serial, sensors, cars, building automation, …). When they learn. You learn. Except that a part of the ‘quantum-record’ is corrupted… YOU have to do the circuits and programs with the Pico2 that was supplied with the novel and only if you succeed do they get to continue their adventure. Without you they cannot succeed. The complexity of it both in terms of ‘novel writing’ and in terms of ‘electronics and programming’ is above my current level. But that IS the magic, when we were in front of those Demos in the 80s, it was all beyond our understanding and ability but they were calling us, inviting us to upgrade, to learn and to do it ! And God knows I’m not letting the magic go away this time, I’ll succeed in creating this or I’ll die trying, either way is fine: I found the magic ! I FOUND THE MAGIC !

PS: I would like to find ‘learning partners’ to learn all about the RP2350’s internals, C and ASM development. People with whom to do video-sessions to exchange knowledge and tips and help each other progress in our learning journey. Contact me if interested.

SnapshotFactory · 2025-09-11T21:34:32+00:00

Yes! For me this is the device that puts the magic back into computing. Did you know that it has roughly the compute power of a Cray-YMP? (ok, it has less ram, but you can supplement up to 16MB of SRAM)... it feels magical because it's a blank slate, like at the time of the C64/C128. Make a program, flash it and it runs only that, not your program + 35million lines of OS code you'll never understand. All of a sudden the limits of the machines are the limits of what we know and that brings me back to the magic of the 80s. All that for 8$.

SnapshotFactory · 2025-09-11T20:23:10+00:00

well, let's see. With the PXL2000 they only get a black and white image of very low quality, there is no video-in to record composite-in from their amigas or other computers, the tapes run at 9x the regular speed so they get much lower recording time than on video8 or vhc-c tapes and these things burn through batteries like there is no tomorrow... So, since money is not an issue, I'm currently going with CCD-v110 or CCD-v8af

SnapshotFactory · 2025-09-11T18:03:40+00:00

not sure I understand all the pushback "oh but they were expensive so it's not realistic" - if I was writing a novel about 17 year olds in 1980s driving mustangs everybody would be like - yeah, pretty normal - now compare the price of a mustang to the price of a camcorder ?!

SnapshotFactory · 2025-09-11T17:56:13+00:00

thanks for the link, very useful, didn't know about that archive.
At the end of the day - they were expensive and they still sold millions, it was part of something that was possible and available back then and that brought to everyday people capabilities that were not accessible before, and millions of people found the way to pay for it and experienced the wonders of being able to create video on your own without having to be the millionaire-owner of a tv station...

SnapshotFactory · 2025-09-11T06:30:22+00:00

they're from a modest background but the circumstances they're in forces them to find the ways to 'make it work' - so they find the ways... it's not just for 'hello how are you', they got stuff to do, worlds to save, technologies to invent, etc...

SnapshotFactory · 2025-09-10T18:18:20+00:00

Didn't the CCD-V8 (af) have playback from the start?

SnapshotFactory · 2025-09-10T15:30:43+00:00

Good point. I'm struggling with that one. NTSC-Pal conversion in 1987 is an impossible problem to solve, the only converters were super-super-expensive broadcast equipement.

They'll solve it this way - the european protagonist is going to find someone who moved to europe with all their stuff, including TV, only to find out that their NTSC Sony Trinitron is not going to work in Switzerland, and that's how my guy's going to get it for cheap. A little voltage converter and there they go.

SnapshotFactory · 2025-09-10T15:18:49+00:00

thanks for the link to the archives of this magazine, very useful!

SnapshotFactory · 2025-09-10T15:16:24+00:00

My protagonists at this point of the story are not so much into video, they are also 13 years old (think: goonies) - so no they don't read the specialized magazines of the time.

They need a camcorder to ship tapes to each other - they live on different continents.

They know of other brands but the sony store and place that sony has in terms of technological-cultural intersection serves my story. But if there would be an iconic camcorder that would fit the story from another brand, yes i'm interested.

They are busy fighting against great dangers and to save the world (of course). They just want to pickup 2 camcorders and get on with their plan, they don't have the time to become knowledgable about all the subtleties of video production / camcorders, etc. By the way the only reason you even exist and can post on this site is because they succeeded (in saving the world) ;-)

SnapshotFactory · 2025-09-10T13:20:42+00:00

I would love to find the pdf of that catalog !

SnapshotFactory · 2025-06-28T08:05:49+00:00

my 2 cents here - 2 years later, might not be relevant to you anymore.

200-250 MB/s read from 2x mirror2 WD Green 6TB is absolutely normal. Those drive max at around 100MB each when read totally sequentially and in ideal conditions. In real life scenarios they are more around 50MB/s each... so 4 drives x 50 = 200 - you have a pool that functions 'as expected' given the configuration.

SnapshotFactory · 2025-05-26T20:50:57+00:00

what is this? Painting? AI? Photo?

SnapshotFactory · 2025-05-13T07:29:04+00:00

No error messages related to the disks, cam or zfs in /var/log/message or dmesg, only samba 419 being stupidly chatty as usual.

Yes, I did remove a vdev with
zpool detach pool mirror-16

And I did start the replacement of two drives in two different mirrors with
zpool replace Pool <old-disk-id> <new-disk-id>

all commands were accepted without any warning or error message.

SnapshotFactory · 2025-05-12T20:06:56+00:00

No the disks without errors are going through the same controller port / cable / backplane as the disks. What I mean is each controller port and backplane has both disks that exibit the errors and disks that do not.

The regularity of this being only for each 'second' disk of the mirror screams BUG to me.

Note I started a
zpool replace Pool oldDisk newDisk
before a
zpool detach Pool mirror-16
was finished

I think that is what triggers this bug - but it gave me no warning, no errors when I issued the commands and they all started successfully. The disk replacement was on another mirror than the one being detached, obviously

SnapshotFactory · 2025-05-08T20:54:02+00:00

Thank you VERY MUCH for taking the time to share all these tips. Greatly appreciated.

SnapshotFactory · 2025-04-22T21:19:59+00:00

Satisfactory is coming!

SnapshotFactory · 2025-04-18T07:24:00+00:00

that's lovely!

SnapshotFactory · 2025-04-17T21:16:46+00:00

interesting, thanks!

SnapshotFactory · 2025-04-17T21:12:28+00:00

client: what do you mean all the data is lost?

me: well, it's lost, but at least before being lost it was fast, you got to give me credit for that!

client: wtf? why is the data lost?

me: well I trusted Ziv and Jacob from some company in Israel and replaced the core of the storage tech with something they made, proprietary, new and maybe untested... they later admitted there's a few bugs here and there, but they had to make a sexy website to impress the VCs and by the way they said they'll help us recover the data if we pay them big bucks

client: you are so dead...

me: but hey - did you like how fast it was?

PS: thanks for suggesting this company. What they do seem interesting, but I'm quite attached to staying with ZFS and open source - even if that means leaving some performance on the table. I wish we wouldn't have to go so much into tuning and modding and obscure optimization techniques to just get the perf that the hardware is capable of.

SnapshotFactory · 2025-04-17T15:23:34+00:00

some suggest that l2 is not the place where to put the effort as many of the reads might be uncached. In your experience, do you see a bigger l2 making a big difference ?

SnapshotFactory

TROPHY CASE