Alex Glow (merlin)
LightNews LightNews
banner
alexglow.bsky.social
Alex Glow (merlin)
@alexglow.bsky.social
2.5K followers 1.1K following 750 posts
Sustainable electronics, robots, PCBs, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, open-source DIY hardware... + music, languages, art • Masto: @[email protected] • Was @glowascii on bird site • she/her • thoughts & feels my own.
Posts Replies Media Videos
alexglow.bsky.social
Going live in a few to recap #Supercon! Plus: a vintage #electronics parts haul for my retro #cyberdeck, #HackOClock on my MicroSD data-storage #PCB #jewelry, travel hardware #EDC, etc. 👀

Pic by @hacksterio.bsky.social !

▶️ youtube.com/glowascii
▶️ www.twitch.tv/glowascii
▶️ linkedin.com/in/alexglow
"Coming up shortly" graphic – a sick-ass cartoon of Alex riding a mechatronic rhino (offscreen), with Archimedes on her shoulder and a giant soldering iron strapped to her back, doing something cool with a laptop and hardware desktop. (This was created by a human designer Hackster.io contracted years ago! I don't own it, but it rules.)
November 7, 2025 at 9:50 PM
alexglow.bsky.social
Also ended up on a whole bone-conduction audio tangent – incl. showing this ridiculous photo of my "Bass to the Face" project (which entailed feeding audio into a DC motor with a glue stick impaled on it, back in uhhhhh 2015??)
Alex, back when the hair stood up more, with a motor shaft clamped between her teeth, plucking a flame-red bass guitar that's plugged into a pathetically tiny Orange amp. A USB battery dangles from the motor, providing some extra Orange-flavored juice. Various art/tech projects clutter the area.
October 23, 2025 at 7:40 AM
alexglow.bsky.social
Also made a couple designs to hold those pixel-art emoji I designed earlier this year, but it feels kinda egotistical to put my face on stuff. I do think the art is cute, though – and they'd be collectible :V

[Decided to just make some and Let The People Decide™]
Yellow hexagon sticker with a pixel-me smiling, plus "Alex Glow" and "Hack on!" in white text. Same, but with the skully version for Halloween :) Smiling pixel-me over a big ol' "ALEX GLOW" in white Impact font, on yellow. Same, but skully – and with "Hack on!" on the side (as in the first two).
October 22, 2025 at 9:02 PM
alexglow.bsky.social
Oh man, that stream was like 5 kinds of nerdery in one :D

Here are the sticker designs I'm trying to choose between. All will be HEXAGONAL (per the Hexbin standard: hexb.in). Helppp?
Pixel art of the head of my owl companion bot, Archimedes, with a drop shadow, above the text "Superb Owl" – flanked by "Est. 2018" and "Alex Glow". Sticker is a white hexagon, shown on a teal field for contrast. Very similar design, except with an 8-bit font instead. Archie's head sits on top of "Owl". White hexagon sticker. Similar design to the above, but this one is yellow and has no drop shadow. "Superb Owl" is in Impact font, and Archie's head sits atop the text. Same as the last one, but with a drop shadow under Archie's head.
October 22, 2025 at 9:01 PM
alexglow.bsky.social
Keep meaning to come back to these Halloween-flavored KiCad footprints, but I'm also trying desperately to get a minimal new PCB &/or some stickers shipped in time for Supercon 😅

So here's a peek; hopefully I'll develop them some more (then link w/ schematic symbols & share) in the 10 days left!
"Halloween components for KiCad [set 1, WIP]": a kittycat (CR1225 battery holder), moon (6mm button), double-pupiled eye (1x2 header), flame demon (through-hole LED), dagger (SMD LED), set of fangs (SMD resistor), bone (through-hole resistor), and skeletal hand (switch with stabilizing legs).
October 21, 2025 at 7:54 AM
alexglow.bsky.social
Finally, here's that page with upcoming events (and an overview of the various livestreams I do – #HacksterCafe, #DayGlowShow, #HackOClock, and #SpaceSongSunday): www.notion.so/alexglow/Liv...

...Now featuring this amazing #MakerFaire Bay Area moment with Valkirma :D
Alex gives a silly grin, stabilizing Archimedes (a blue 3D-printed robot owl with bike inner-tube feathers and accents) while leaning in for a pic with Valkirma, who wears her stunning costume-assemblage. It's a dazzling black-blue-and-neon-green avian outfit, with ruffled collar and variegated wing feathers, surmounted by a crown of crow beaks.
October 4, 2025 at 3:36 AM
alexglow.bsky.social
New @raspberrypi.com 500+ out now! Also my first try at a tech video with binaural stereo audio – it came out SUPER quiet, so you gotta turn your headphones up 😅

Thanks to the Pi team for this wonderful surprise!

www.raspberrypi.com/news/the-ult...

// #RaspberryPi #HacksterIO #keyboard #cyberdeck
September 25, 2025 at 11:08 AM
alexglow.bsky.social
It’s #HackOClock 🛠✨ Going live in a few to get my owl #CompanionBot, Archimedes, ready to co-host #HacksterIO Impact Spotlights tomorrow and rock #MakerFaire this weekend!

More on Archie: alexglow.notion.site/Archimedes-O...

▶️ bit.ly/hackoclock
▶️ www.twitch.tv/glowascii
▶️ linkedin.com/in/alexglow
Two versions of Archimedes, my owl companion bot who usually rides around on my shoulder. He’s mostly 3D-printed in blue, with a scarf or bandana covering the electronics, and has a beak made of cut-up CDs. He also sports a little top hat with a white arcade button. V1 (right) has a camera and speaker in his eyes; V2 (left) has LEDs set behind moonstones.
September 24, 2025 at 9:19 PM
alexglow.bsky.social
Danggg! earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

4.6, right in the East Bay: scedc.caltech.edu/recent/Maps/...

Fill out a "Did you feel it?" report to help with building a picture of the event: earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

#BayArea #earthquake
A screenshot from the USGS/UCB Seismic Nets, showing a map of the Bay Area with a big red square over much of Oakland and Berkeley, plus numbers showing a magnitude 4.6 in the last hour, 2km ESE of Berkeley.
September 22, 2025 at 10:10 AM
alexglow.bsky.social
Seriously... and funnily enough, I've just been grabbing the Rosewater/Wormwood trilogy for a reread as well :)

Almost exactly 5 years since I listened to those while moving into my last place! What a rollercoaster 🫠 Well-narrated fiction makes everything a little better.
My most recent Libro.fm audiobook acquisitions, including two of Tade Thompson's Wormwood Trilogy (Rosewater) books along with the Area X / Southern Reach series
September 16, 2025 at 8:18 PM
alexglow.bsky.social
Listening to the @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social Southern Reach quadrilogy again... This line in _Annihilation_ echoes "Kubla Khan", and now I'm stuck on how both indulge in extended, rapturous descriptions of uncanny natural beauty.

Ice vs. the brightness...

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43991/...
"Rough channels of water meandered out in a maze" – highlighted part of a paragraph from Annihilation: "Now a strange mood took hold of me, as I walked silent and alone through the last of the pines and the cypress knees that seemed to float in the black water, the gray moss that coated everything. It was as if I traveled through the landscape with the sound of an expressive and intense aria playing in my ears. Everything was imbued with emotion, awash in it, and I was no longer a biologist but somehow the crest of a wave building and building but never crashing to shore. I saw with such new eyes the subtleties of the transition to the marsh, the salt flats. As the trail became a raised berm, dull, algae-choked lakes spread out to the right and a canal flanked it to the left. Rough channels of water meandered out in a maze through a forest of reeds on the canal side, and islands, oases of wind-contorted trees, appeared in the distance like sudden revelations. The stooped and blackened appearance of these trees was shocking against the vast and shimmering gold-brown of the reeds. The strange quality of the light upon this habitat, the stillness of it all, the sense of waiting, brought me halfway to a kind of ecstasy." "Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran" – highlighted in an excerpt from Kubla Khan: "But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As eer beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!"
September 16, 2025 at 1:36 PM
alexglow.bsky.social
I've seen otherwise informed and thoughtful people mesmerized by this misdirection... fixating on potential machine "people" – for good or ill – while ignoring present harms.

Meanwhile, this has been a real-world issue since at least 2017 (and almost certainly before)!
www.vice.com/en/article/s...
An excerpt from the article: "Inside the King Abdullah International Conference Center where the summit took place, Sophia's citizenship announcement was met with cheers and applause. Once news spread, however, many of Sophia's fellow Saudi citizens were less enthused. Some claimed that the robot was already being granted rights that actual Saudi women do not have. For one, Sophia presented to a large group of men dressed in neither a headscarf nor an abaya, the traditionally black loose-fitting garment worn by Saudi women. In the past, Saudi women have been arrested for so much as posting a picture of themselves without these garments on." Another excerpt: On Twitter, women wondered where Sophia's male guardian was and if she was required to have one as all Saudi women are under the country's guardianship system. Following the announcement on Wednesday, the hashtag صوفيا_تطالب_باسقاط_الولايه# [apologies if the OCR is wrong!] or #sophia_demands_that_guardianship_be_dropped gained traction. "I want to become Sophia one day and get my rights," tweeted one Saudi woman under the hashtag. Others condemned the country for granting citizenship to a robot when its citizenship laws for humans remain extremely strict and are criticized by human rights organizations globally. Women who are citizens of Saudi Arabia cannot pass on their nationality to their children or their spouses. Further, the KSA has a history of treating its population of over 9 million foreign workers very poorly, refusing them citizenship and the ability to leave the country freely.
September 6, 2025 at 9:08 AM
alexglow.bsky.social
From Mastodon (jorts.horse/@nasamuffin/...): an excellent analogy ✨

Dovetails nicely with the other one about privacy and "I have nothing to hide": dropping a deuce is normal, and there's no shame in it, but that doesn't mean you want anyone else to see.
Caption: "anonymity is not the same thing as privacy" Original alt text: "the toilet in my hotel room. it's open to the room except that it has a round sliding frosted-glass door that comes around it; from the outside, it's apparent that every act will still be visible enough through the frosted glass, although your features will be unclear"
September 2, 2025 at 6:20 AM
alexglow.bsky.social
They're so good! Have you had the little fruits? They're not everybody's favorite, but I love a ripe one.
A round, bright red fruit – shaped like a large cherry on a stem, but with nobbly seeds like a wild strawberry – hangs in the branches of a madrone tree. Alex holds up a bitten fruit against the evening sky. Its flesh is soft and orange, with no stone.
September 2, 2025 at 6:12 AM
alexglow.bsky.social
NSFW meme: been re-learning about how flux adds most of the hazardous stuff in solder fumes, and FINALLY picked up a fume extractor~

Been using lead-free for years (and always open windows, wash hands, etc.), but have avoided this 'cause of the fan noise. Realized my headphones + earplugs fix that!
A still from Tay Zonday's iconic "Chocolate Rain" video, with the caption "I move away from the mic to breathe in" – but "mic" is scribbled out & "solder fumes" substituted
September 1, 2025 at 1:12 AM
alexglow.bsky.social
Lol. The first person I ran into at #DefCon this year was a chill fox furry I've met at several events before, who happened to be 2 rows in front of me on the plane. (Hey @rechner.solutions, sorry I didn't make it to lockpicking village 😅)
A meme comparing "Run" (a person jogging) vs. "Run as administrator" (a fox furry running across a cool wooden bridge)
August 30, 2025 at 7:29 PM
alexglow.bsky.social
Next episode of #DayGlowShow is set for Thursday, Aug. 28! Topic is TBA… but @ishotjr.bsky.social and I have been exploring some interesting displays. Will I get my computer to play nice in time? 😱

⏰ Noon Pacific / 3pm Eastern / 7pm UTC
👉 All the links: dayglow.show
Show graphic with digital drawings of David & Alex, plus the scheduling info (3pm Eastern / noon Pacific, Thursday August 28).
August 20, 2025 at 7:28 AM
alexglow.bsky.social
Going live for #HackOClock: assembling my new #HacksterIO SAO (my first #PCB built in Fusion), which debuted at #DefCon33 last weekend :) I'll also share some tidbits from the event.

▶️ bit.ly/hackoclock
▶️ www.twitch.tv/glowascii
▶️ linkedin.com/in/alexglow
Video thumbnail, showing a round, dark-blue board that links to bit.ly/hackstersao . It also has a parts list, "Hackster.io SAO v1", my name + the year, and "Hack on!"
August 16, 2025 at 7:31 AM
alexglow.bsky.social
My first #SAO, first #PCB commission (for @hacksterio.bsky.social ), & first PCB designed in #Autodesk Fusion – a simple light-up board that also works as a hanging pendant, earring, keychain, etc. :3

Limited-edition (test run w/ dark blue) for #DefCon33 – come grab one if you're still here!
A circular, dark blue circuit board with the Hackster.io logo in white. It's labeled with the parts – including places for a 1206-size SMD LED and resistor.
August 10, 2025 at 8:28 PM
alexglow.bsky.social
Goodnight! Trying to get my first @hacksterio.bsky.social #SAO in time for DefCon, so I've spent the last few days learning Autodesk Fusion ECAD from scratch. 5am & just realized it says R2 😅

As usual, it'll work as an earring (thanks to the 45° through-hole headers), even if the circuit fails. :)
A simple, round PCB with the Hackster.io logo and a 2x2 pin header. Back of the PCB: blue solder mask with an LED, resistor, and markings for the SAO header. Also, info including the components and an inactive link to the upcoming tutorial.
July 31, 2025 at 12:20 PM
alexglow.bsky.social
#Alt4You because this is lovely
Almost everything is greyscale. A person with shoulder-length hair, glasses, and a downturned mouth looks at a machine. It has a big red "PRESS" button and a red telephone receiver. Panel 2: Handset at their ear, they press the button; it speaks, "you're valuable". Panel 3: They pause, hand lifted, receiver at ear, looking at the machine; they look surprised and perhaps a little less unhappy. Panel 4: Eyes closed, they kneel on the floor by the machine, cradling the receiver. They've duct-taped the button down; through a quasi-umbilical red cable, the receiver continues to whisper "you're valuable" over and over.
July 30, 2025 at 7:19 PM
alexglow.bsky.social
Attend Open Healthware (an @oshwassociation.bsky.social conference) for free on Aug. 1-2!

As a preview, I chat with Herine Palacios and Avinash Baskaran on #HacksterCafe, today at 10:30am PDT 😄

Watch on @hacksterio.bsky.social :
▶️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8zy...
▶️ www.linkedin.com/events/73556...
The video thumbnail, featuring the two guests, the Open Healthware conference logo and URL, and Hackster Café branding.
July 29, 2025 at 9:24 AM
alexglow.bsky.social
Everyone else's is way cooler, but this lock screen is incredibly useful for events. (It goes to my Linktree)
A QR code and "Alex Glow (Glowascii)" over a gradiented blue circle. It's also 4:04 pm, which is kinda cool
July 25, 2025 at 11:06 PM
alexglow.bsky.social
Excellent background for some late-night Archimedes upgrades~
A blue 3D-printed owl bot, its head in Alex's hand; the movie (playing on a phone) shows a tense '50s car chase. Alex's owl companion bot, with its head off and wires mid-transfer to another board; in the background are some 1950s teens saying stuff like "you got a bum squeal, mister!"
July 22, 2025 at 7:58 AM
alexglow.bsky.social
Industry Day at @opensaucelive.bsky.social with @hacksterio.bsky.social ! Rideable robots, customizable tools, and big personalities.

Check out our IG Stories for live updates 👀

🔗 opensauce.com

// #HacksterIO #OpenSauce #Robot #DIY #Maker #MakersGonnaMake #3DPrinting #WearableTech #StarWars
July 20, 2025 at 12:44 AM