Adrian here. I'm typing this on my long-awaited new laptop. It's a StarBook. I ordered it last March(!) and after a bunch of chip-shortage and supply-chain delays it finally turned up a few weeks back.

Switching over—given how many bits of software, and project environments I have on my computers—has taken a few weeks in itself. There are still a couple of projects which haven't fully migrated, but I moved my email-and-RSS across last week, which feels like the true marker of which is my main machine.

I'm enjoying the new screen lots. The keyboard is nicer than on my old Thinkpad (I think the fold-back-on-itself tablet mode of that meant the keyboard design suffered), but I'm still retraining my muscle memory for the new position of the ancillary keys. I'm not a huge fan of the trackpad; it's missing a middle button, and it's a bit wide, so I keep catching the right edge of it when scrolling around. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Aside from commissioning a new laptop, I've been busy with client work. There's been rather too much re-jigging the build system for an ESP32-plus-Arduino project for my liking, but I do now have a better understanding of how those different parts can be configured.

A collection of cardboard boxes containing lots of bags of electronic components, some PCBs and a stainless steel stencil

Chris has been cracking on with more photogenic work.

Green circuit board plugged into a USB supply with perhaps more components than is justified for the single lit red led

The bare PCBs and all the components for the test samples of the version 2 My Bike's Got LED boards arrived. Chris got a couple soldered up in the reflow oven and has been working through getting code on them and testing the various areas of functionality.

It's looking like we might need to tweak things, but this is why we got a few boards to test first. However, as you can see, we have got lights from it!