I enjoyed the Oculus 2, upgraded to Oculus 3 yesterday! Father’s day. For the last two weeks, I have only been using FitXR for about four to six ten-minute sets a day, most often in groups of three. If you, like me, have always been too lazy to go to the gym, this is a great thing. Especially convenient is that you can exercise whenever you want to break up the routine between meetings and other work during the day.
I also have a 10kg vest and 1.5kg wrist weights for this device.
I finally got to the Meta Oculus Quest and it’s really something! FitXR (that’s a fitness game) is particularly sweaty. Objects of various shapes fly at you to the beat of the music and you have to punch them with different movements, using hands, legs, and torso; the pace is high, almost no time to think, and after 10 minutes, you’re totally worn out. That’s the kind of gaming I like!
The air purifier broke down, so I bought a used one with a new cartridge for the price of a replacement cartridge plus $40. I completely disassembled the old one, extracted the reusable components, and figured out how it works. Just like in school 🙂
Inside, it comprises:
– an ESP32-WROOM-32D controller. But a part of the board responsible for voltage burned out, so it’s trash now.
– a CO sensor MQ-7 (unfortunately soldered to the board, but can be desoldered). Though, it needs a heating cycle for correct operation. First 5V (60 sec) for sensor cleaning, then 1.5V (90 sec) for measurement. But, it can also be used elsewhere.
– Plantower PMS9103M — a high-precision laser sensor for measuring airborne particulate matter concentrations (PM1.0, PM2.5, PM10). Can be connected to Arduino, specification available.
– a microwave motion sensor (radar), model RCWL-0516. Can be connected to Arduino, very simple interface. Detects motion up to 5-7 meters around within 360 degrees.
– 200W Snowfan YY225H310B motor. Also quite simple to connect, but it requires 310V DC plus 15V for speed control. But that’s all.
– a Hall sensor (magnet)
The motor is the most valuable part. It’s priced at $100 on eBay. Though, it should probably be tested first to see if it hasn’t burned out.
When working with certain tasks, the difference between a CPU and a GPU is simply astounding. For example, I need to create many (millions) of embeddings, model BGE M3. Running this on my quite powerful 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor takes 45.85 seconds to create 500 embeddings, while using an NVIDIA 5090 GPU, the same task is completed in just 0.36 seconds. It is so fast that I specifically wrote this benchmark to figure out whether my GPU is being utilized at all. The program that sends requests to TEI does it in test mode not actively enough (roughly a couple of times per second), and the GPU load graphs are practically zero.
— Testing http://localhost:8080/embed — <– CPU version
Requests completed: 500
Total time: 45.85 sec
Throughput: 10.90 req/sec
Average latency (Avg Latency): 4386.11 ms
P95 latency: 5021.88 ms
— Testing http://localhost:8090/embed — <– GPU version (NVIDIA 5090)
Requests completed: 500
Total time: 0.36 sec
Throughput: 1398.69 req/sec
Average latency (Avg Latency): 31.38 ms
P95 latency: 53.18 ms
========================================
RESULT: http://localhost:8090/embed is 99.22% faster
At the beginning of the year, I bought an NFC smart lock for the front door for 170 bucks. Recently, I wrote a review on Amazon stating that the batteries lasted only a month and a half, and if it continues like this, I will end up paying almost the same amount annually. The manufacturer has responded saying they will refund the money. They didn’t ask to remove the review, and I don’t even know if that’s possible.
Update: figured it out, looks like the lock needs 6v + 6v for different purposes. Maybe the power part and electronics.
Anyone who knows electronics, help me understand. Red wires are connected to contacts that respond to the tester. A total of 8 batteries. I can’t see a classic snake configuration here. Can’t understand why the lower right ones are responding. I want to connect an external adapter
Looking for alpha-testers. As part of R&D and for my own tasks, I wrote a productivity tool (I actually wrote about this in my last post, but Facebook said that because I put a link in the post, only 12% saw it). Now I want to check if it will be useful to anyone else. If the idea resonates with you — let me know, and I will share access.
Website smartfolio dot me. What’s the main idea?
It’s an online notebook for working with text and PDFs, organized as a graph. It looks like Google Docs, but there’s an important difference: you can attach “child” documents to specific parts of the main text to expand on details or clarify concepts. These “comments” themselves are full documents and can have their own nested branches.
If there’s a fragment in the text that is unclear, you can ask the system to explain it (this will require your Google Gemini API key).
The system uses the full context of the document to generate a response.
Explanations are permanently attached to a specific place in the text.
This is super convenient when reading complex scientific articles. For instance, you can highlight the authors’ surnames in a PDF and instantly get a background on them — the information will be attached right to that fragment on the page.
Typical workflow
Upload a complex text and read it right in the app from either a mobile or a computer. As you go, add manual or AI-generated notes to important or unclear sections for future reference.
I do not store your documents, PDFs, images, or API keys on my servers. All data is stored in Turso DB (SaaS, free up to 5 GB).
Screenshots on the website’s main page best describe the project.
How to try?
To register in the app, you need an invite code. Just write me in the comments or in a private message, and I will send it.
Website smartfolio-dot-me
Can you guess what this is?;)
I assembled a plotter from a kit. It’s practically a Lego set – you spill out the parts from the box and then read the manual. It worked right away. I have some ideas about what to do with this thing, I’ll tell you sometime.
It would be interesting to have a camera somewhere on the end of the phone, so you could film more or less covertly.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 