Yesterday, I'm building a DIY battery pack out of cells harvested from old laptops, thinking "Man, I wish I knew someone with an old broken e-bike or something".

Very next day. I go for my daily walk. 1 block from my house, e-scooter on the curb, with a sign that says "FREE". "Sold!" I said out loud, and carried the thing one-handed quickly back home (okay I only made it a few houses before I switched to two hands).

The escooter itself was held upright with zipties, rear wheel was present but not attached, rear tire was blown, and while it did power on and show something on the screen, the throttle didn't do anything, and it was physically sticky (and thus very dangerous). And e-scooters are banned in my town (my whole province really), and they're pretty dangerous, and I'm stupid enough to ride without a helmet, so I decided to scrap the scooter for batteries.

I found 30x DMEGC INR18650-26E, rated at 2600mAh at 0.5C, and rated for up to 3C discharge: https://e-foton.pl/userdata/public/assets/Testy_ogniw/DMEGC-INR18650-26E.pdf

I have no use for a 36v series battery pack or its BMS, so I pulled a single cell out of the nickel stripping and threw it in my tester, set for 2A discharge, 2A charge, 5 cycles, 10 minute rest period between:

https://i.imgur.com/egbT45Z.png

I got just over 2500mAh at 2C. Cell only rose ~3°C at end of discharge curve. Cell dropped from 4.1895v unloaded to 4.0250v under 2A, indicating internal DCIR 82.25mΩ. Datasheet states <25 mΩ(ACIR), but I don't have an ACIR tester, however these DCIR values are very good and well within the expected difference.

TLDR: Got free e-scooter batteries. All my testing indicates they are near-new, in perfect health, and quite safe. 280Wh of energy storage, enough to watch old TV episodes on my phone for the first few days of the American Invasion.

Southern Ontario, Canada, Sept 21 2026

https://github.com/yucandu/ClockV3

MCU

STM32L412K8T6

Display

ST7305 168×384 2.9" MiP LCD ("Memory LCD") @ 0.25hz

Sensors

AHT20 — Temperature & Humidity
BMP280 — Barometric Pressure
DS3231SN — Real-Time Clock
MAX17055 — Fuel Gauge

The AHT20, BMP280, and DS3231SN are powered directly from MCU GPIO pins to minimize standby power consumption.

Power System

30 mAh LiPo battery (Bluetooth earbud battery)
TP4054 charger configured for 50 mA charge current
DFM8001 energy harvesting module
Two 30 mm × 30 mm × 3 mm amorphous silicon solar panels
    Recycled from dollar-store garden lights

Runs at ~150uA avg, according to INA228 coulomb counter (used as poor man's power profiler). Sitting upside down on a desk in regular indoor lighting at night, solar panels harvest ~200uA. Coded entirely for STM32CubeIDE.

Video posted online shows a CN freight train crew halted midjourney near Armstrong, Ont., on July 13 as wildfires burn outside. CN Rail says it has temporarily suspended operations in the area and relocated employees. Ontario Provincial Police say dozens of wildfires in the region have resulted in mandatory evacuations in at least six communities so far.

It was not fun. I learned nothing. But I did beat my old low current hiscore, so that was nice.

Powered by ESP32-4848S040, an all-in-one ESP32-S3 + 4" 480x480 TFT display.

Mama had been gone for 2 days and it went below freezing, I was super worried bout those buns, but she came back this evening! Boy were they ever thirsty.

lil guy poked his head through like the Homer Simpson meme. cutest thing ever.

shot by my sister, 12/29/2025

Ontario, Canada, 12/24/2025

Little fella remembered me feeding him in that same spot all summer, so I gave him a peanut. Then about 30 more peanuts. He/she was hungry.

I must resist the temptation

No squirrels were harmed and I worshed my hands after.

EDIT: Also I feed the squirrels, we're chill, that's why this one was so comfortable having his back turned to the gate. He just got a little too greedy.

Start with you. Become well-informed by doing your homework. Formulate a plan. Research cults and coercive control. Don’t make the mistake of trying to rationally argue. Learn about mind control techniques and which communication strategies are most effective. Don’t fly blindly. [EDIT: Removed author's book shilling]

Build rapport and trust. Rebuild your relationship, if it’s broken. If you were the one to break contact, apologize. Reach out and be warm. Remember the good times. Focus on common values and areas you both enjoy (children, pets, music, dancing, fishing, sports). At first, don’t talk about controversial topics. Avoid “hot topics.” Just try to connect with the other person and have positive interactions. Build credibility and sustain positive interaction. Build a long-term relationship based upon respect, compassion, and love.

Do what you can to remove or minimize media that continually indoctrinates to only one point of view. This may only apply to certain types of cult groups. But it may be in the form of social media, videos, or television. You can even agree to make a pact to go on a media fast together. Don’t make this about “them” or “their problem.” Make this a fun thing to do together as a “break.” Be prepared to honor requests on your end.

Ask thought-provoking questions while being warm and curious. Be prepared to listen deeply. You will know if you have listened well if you can repeat back to them what they said. Be humble and open to hearing what they say.

Keep conversations positive, productive, and civil. Never get angry. Stay resourceful. It is better to end the interaction than to say something counter-productive. It is better to return to the conversation at another time, rather than the person cutting off all communication out of anger or fear.

Adopt a general tone of curiosity and interest in their positions. Pretend you’re an impartial counselor. Really try to get inside their beliefs.

Try to connect them with their authentic identity before these extreme beliefs. Remind them of past experiences together. Talk about the connection you once had and how you miss it.

Don’t “tell” them anything. Help them to make discoveries on their own.

Try to get them to look at reality from many different perspectives. This can include many things.

Teach them about indoctrination and mind control. Use examples for which they have no attachment.

Use examples of cult leaders with similar qualities to their group's leader(s) and have conversations about it.

Share feelings and perceptions, not judgments. Use “I feel” statements. Don’t claim to be “right.” Stick to what your perception is when reflecting back to them.

Ask a question and then wait for them to think and respond. Be patient. You do not need to fill silence.

Caution: an abundance of facts won't necessarily help. Do not overwhelm them with information, especially if it attacks the leader or doctrine.

I'm a very impatient man. I want my tea at a drinkable temperature immediately.

Labour day is fun when you're dyslexic.

It's a Panasonic BQ-390 AA charger, which used to be renowned as the best "smartest" AA charger.

The addon is an ESP32C3 with a 96x64 color OLED display, and an ADS1115 ADC.

The flashing dots indicate which cell is currently charging, as the charger only gives 0.5A to one cell at a time. The delay in voltage display is due to smoothing and filtering out stray voltage readings.

It can be powered either from the 5v regulator coming from the AA charger itself, or external USB power using a switch - the regulator in the charger isn't strong enough for the ESP32C3 to connect to wifi, so if I want to track charging status over wifi, I have to give it the extra USB power.

I got a lot of help from this ancient Japanese blog post I found of someone else who did a similar thing to the same charger:

http://act-ele.c.ooco.jp/jisaku/BQ390/bq390.htm

I am autistic and I fucking love sensors and data. I put all of them on one screen. It's like heroin for me.

Here is the code:

https://github.com/yucandu/Reginald

It consists of an ESP32-S3 "Supermini" dev board, a 2.0" IPS TFT, and some switches and buttons. $15 CAD total. I already had an old LaCrosse lying around. Lots of help from ChatGPT and Claude parsing the MLB JSON API.

Completely removed all its internals, some cutting of plastic involved.

It needs to be the S3 and not the cheaper C3 because the MLB live game API, which has all the latest pitch details, is so fucking huge. >1MB of text data, need RAM. A Raspberry Pi would be better suited but would be more expensive.

If the strikezone looks tiny, it's because it's to scale - maximum height of 4'7 (thanks Aaron Judge), the rectangle automatically adjusts for each pitch based on the reported strike zone size.

I wanted something that shows all the pitches and their speeds with different icons for the pitch types, like they use in Japanese baseball.

I plan on adding more features later. I managed to incorporate the two switches from the LaCrosse unit as well as adding a 5-way switch of my own. Not sure what to do with them yet.

Code is found here: https://github.com/yucandu/desktopfps