David Coles 🌠

@dcoles.net

337 Followers 16 Following

Principal Software Engineer and Systems Architect at Sony Interactive Entertainment (PlayStation). Rust, Linux, System Architecture, Hijinks. They/them | 🏳️‍🌈 | dcoles.net

A person standing in front of the illuminated set of white PlayStation symbols while wearing a Hawaiian-themed PlayStation symbols shirt.

A notification from Google Chrome titled "Shop with confidence". The body reads "Track prices across the web and get alerts if the price drops on any site".

A screenshot of the Amber app showing that the PV solar system has fully topped up the battery and now exporting excess solar to the grid at 2¢/kWh.

Cropped image of the "Remote control" section from the Siemens REV24 thermostat explaining how a remote control unit can activate the "Remote control" temperature setpoint of the controller by a potential-free contact connected to terminals T1 and T2. The page goes on to explain several suitable remote control units (telephone modem, manual switch, windows contact, presence detector, central unit, etc.) and how to set the temperature setpoint for when "Remote control" is active.

A time-series chart showing the values of four temperature sensors from 3 pm to around 11:30 pm. There are two bands, with two sensors hovering around 19.2°C and two sensors around 18.8°C.

A photographer of bushland behind damp decking seen through a large glass sliding window door. In the foreground is part of a leather couch.

A standard dynamic range photo of a vase of flowers.

A 20x4 LCD display showing 24-hour times (HH:MM) for London, Tokyo, Melbourne and Los-Angeles. As the time in Los-Angeles clicks over to midnight it shifts to the top of the list.

A video of the level Lakeside Limbo from Donkey Kong Country 3 with a filter applied to emulate the look of CRT composite video.

A post-processed screenshot of the stage Klobber's Karnage from the SNES title Donkey Kong Country 2.

A photograph of a Flipper Zero showing the example output values for Day 1 of Advent of Code 2025. The screen is displaying the following text: "Advent of Code 2025; Day 1; Part 1: 3; Part 2: 6".

A photograph of a 2010-era Nexus S displaying a 3D render of the Rust language mascot Ferris by github.com/RayMarch.

A photograph of an unpowered Google (Samsung) Nexus S and matching official charging dock.

A photograph taken out of the window of a plane. In the foreground a city can be seen progressively disappearing deeper and deeper into the low-laying fog layer.

A photograph of a partially disassembled smart outlet with individual pieces strewn across a desk.

A video showing someone starting an app called "Embedded Graphics" on a Flipper Zero. The app initially shows a triangle, a square and a circle with the text "embedded-graphics" underneath. A few moments later it switches to a full-screen digital clock which shows the time updating for several seconds before returning to the menu.

A photograph of a tea pot swaddled in tea-towels to keep the pot warm.

A photograph of pair of double cabinet doors used for ducted heating furnace. All the edges and center have been taped over with blue painters tape.

A Flipper Zero connected to a Arduino Nikla Sense ENV showing several measurements including temperature (25.1°C), humidity (28.9%), ozone (0 ppb) and nitrogen dioxide (213 ppb).

A vintage style close up photograph of an eggbug plush.

A small microcontroller PCB with soldered pins. The pins have about a 15° angle off being square with the board.

A photo of a Flipper Zero "geek multitool" connected via four coloured wires to a Winsen ZPHS01B gas sensor board consisting of several different types of gas sensors modules. On the orange-backlit display of the Flipper Zero is the following text: "Winsen ZPHS01B Gas Sensor; PM(1,2.5,10): (0,0,0) ugm3; CO2: 500 ppm; VOC: clean; Temp: 15.9 degC; Humid: 55%; CH20: 0.018 mgm3; CO 0.5 ppm; O3: 0.00 ppm; NO2: 0.01 ppm".

A screenshot from Steam's "Recent Games" tab showing 4.5 hours of 'Against the Storm' played in the last two weeks (all in the last 24 hours) with a total of 86 hours played.

A photograph of the poster standing in a room that is full of orchids hanging from the ceiling. The floor is mirrored making it look like an infinite backdrop of flowers.

A modified xkcd comic showing a stick figure character sitting and typing at a computer desk. From offscreen a voice asks "Are you coming to bed?" to which the stick figure character replies "I can't. This is important." The offscreen voice asks "What?" to which the stick figure character replies "It's time for Advent of Code!".

A photograph of a package of Arnott's Monte biscuits. The tag line on the package reads "Delicious crunchy biscuit covered in Arnott's REAL CHOCOLATE".

A "frame-by-frame" composite photo of a 1970s neon "flicker" bulb in various stages of flickering. Inside a regular E12 "candle" style glass bulb a stylized flame-shaped cathode can be seen flickering a simulacrum of a flame effect.

A desktop screen capture of a basic Magic Wormhole GUI in action. The user drags an image file onto a blue drag-and-drop area in the 'Magic Wormhole' app, the blue area briefly turning green. The app then displays the text "Code: 2-councilman-stopwatch" under the blue area. The user then switches to a terminal and runs the command `wormhole-rs.exe receive` and then enters the "Wormhole Code" from the GUI app. The text in the GUI app changes to "Connected!". They are then prompted if they want to "Receive file 'a-llittle-too-much-water.jpg (1.7 MiB in size)? (Y/n)". After typing "Y" both the console app and GUI briefly show the file transfer progress and the file appears in the open folder name "Received".

A photograph of a small cast iron teapot with the lid removed. The teapot is so full of water that a meniscus has formed both on the main opening and also the kettle spout. In the background is a black mug and the teapot lid. The teapot also has a red ribbon attached.

A plot of the functions f(x) = x² and f(x) = 1 - √(1-x) for the range [0.0, 1.0]. Both graphs start at (0.0, 0.0) and end at (1.0, 1.0) and bow towards the x-axis, but x² has a more aggressive curve at the start while 1 - √(1-x) has a more aggressive curve towards the end.

A photograph of a 64x32 pixel LED matrix display showing a mountain scene. The LED matrix display is on a desk in front of a keyboard with a piece of paper on top to act as a diffuser.

A PlayStation branded desk light with the four shapes (pink square, blue cross, red circle and green triangle) the a set of wires coming out the cracked open case. The leds are pulsing in a pleasing pattern. In the background is a PlayStation 3 controller showing buttons with the same colours.

A block diagram showing 5 boxes linked by arrows. The first box has JSON-like set of values including a string, array and map. The second box shows a Rust struct for these values. The third box (linked by a "Serialize" arrow) has a pseudo binary format that approximates the FlexBuffers binary format. The fourth box (linked by a "Deserialize" arrow) has the Rust struct again. The final box (linked by a "To Native" arrow) contains a low-level C struct with fixed sized buffers. There is also a red dotted "Deserialize" arrow between the FlexBuffers box and the C struct that would bypass the Rust "Deserialize" type.

A box diagram showing a box titled "Self-describing format (FlexBuffers)" with a "Deserialize" arrow pointing at a box titled "C struct (v1)" and a "Serialize" arrow pointing back again. Below "C struct (v1)" is "C struct (v2)" showing the addition of a new field and a change to one of the array lengths.

A 64x32 matrix-style LED display currently showing a progressive gradient of yellow, cyan, red and blue spread across the four corners.

A screenshot from Windows Security Center showing an entry marked "Severe: Threat found - action needed" dated 10/25/24 at 1:48am. The body reads: "Detected: Trojan:Win32/Wacatac.B@ml. Status: Active. Active threads have not been remediated and are running on your device. Details: This program is dangerous and executes commands from an attacker."

A screenshot of a work-in-progress static version of David Coles' cohost posts. There is the basic outline of the cohost page, including layout and primary colours, but no branding images. In the middle of the page is a list of posts looking pretty close to what would be seen on actual cohost.

A screenshot taken of Google's 'My Ad Centre' with a red arrow pointing at the 'My Ad Centre' icon that looks suspiciously like a pile of *something*.

A wiring diagram showing three screw terminals. The diagram instructs that the left terminal ("brass plated screw") be connected to the black (hot) wire, the right terminal ("ground screw") be connected to the ground wire and the center terminal ("silver screw") be connected to the white (neutral) wire. There is also Spanish translations for each callout.

Screenshot from the Plume App showing an AQI of 104 (Very High) at 19:44. It reached this level around 16:00 and isn't likely to improve until early hours of the morning. The detailed breakdown shows NO₂: 66, PM2.5: 97, PM10: 104 and O₃: 16. The current weather shown is 22 °C with 1 km/h winds and 48% humidity.

Three Jujube (Chinese date) sitting on a small notebook with a picture of a Froakie (Pokémon) on the front. A pen is included as a size reference.

The largest one is about the size of a golf ball whilst the smallest one is about the size of a walnut. They start out a pale yellow-green and turn more of a copper-brown as they ripen. These ones are a mottled mix of the two colours.