Welcome to Arcana Labs
The best puzzles are those not intended to be solved.
-- Unknown
Providing Software, Hardware, and other Amusements, Arcana Labs is a small, independant technology exploration and development hobby shop operating out of Atlantic Canada. My past work has focused on security and disaster recovery, with present work focusing on creating toys, games, books and puzzles, such as through my flagship project, PETI. I’ve organized my projects into a few categories: hardware, software, writing projects, how-to guides, and a blog.
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Latest Updates
Longevity, Repairability, and the Ethics of Manufacture
2025-02-24 00:00:00 -0600
It’s kind of held as a truism, at least in the west, that we become more cynical as we age. That’s certainly been my experience, though of late, I’d prefer to fight that impulse. With the ongoing decay of my personal mobile devices, and microsoft pushing people off of their Windows 10 installs, and Nintendo making noises about a Switch 2, I’m starting to notice that one area where I’m particularly cynical-of-late is in new device releases. I find it hard to get truly excited when an old favourite studio announces a new game, or a manufacturer announces next year’s model of phone, or when it’s time to get a new laptop. Part of that is just the reality that I’m an adult now, we’ve had several years of local-record inflation, and I haven’t had a pay scale change to match it. But I think that also runs a little deeper.
The Kindle DRM Situation
2025-02-14 00:00:00 -0600
At least a few of you Sanity Line fans are at some risk because of a coming change at Amazon/Kindle: starting February 26, you will no longer be able to download your books directly, but will have to read them on a kindle device or using the kindle app. This was something Amazon did unilaterally and has nothing to do with myself as a publisher or author.
PETI gets PWM Audio
2025-02-12 00:00:00 -0600
For the last few weeks, particular during our scheduled lab livestreams, I’ve been working on the 0.5.0 firmware update for PETI, our house-developed virtual pet. While the main focus of the update is going to be the Bathing and Bathroom gameplay features, the update also includes some window-dressing changes and an important change to support the Revision D development kit, which should be coming out sometime this spring. This last bit is the piece we’ve just implemented: the use of Pulse-Width Modulation to drive an audio signal on the pet.
Reclaiming Techno-Optimism
2025-01-22 00:00:00 -0600
It’s sort of the vogue right now to be a techno-pessimist, and to be honest, the position has appeal. It’s hard to look at what is currently being lauded as grand technical achievement, now that we’re nearly done the first quarter of the 21st Century. It’s even harder to satirize the idea - I came up with the phrase “AI-driven air freshener for gamers’ basements” and then found out that GameScent Exists. So much of the technology of the contemporary era comes to us like Jurrassic Park - we concern ourselves with Cans rather than Shoulds. We get everything from the dangerous (radiology-interpreting “AI” solutions that misidentify cancers) to the pointless (AI-driven lapel pin that gives no functionality the smart device you already carry doesn’t) to the dangerously pointless (Space-X catching its booster stage with the launchpad rather than having a seperate landing pad). But I don’t think it would come as a galloping shock to anyone to say that I - or most engineers I know - came into the tech industry motivated by techno-optimism. By and large, the industry is full people who think they’re helping. So how did it get this way, and how can we reverse the trend?
Resuming PETI Work After Some State Loss
2025-01-13 00:00:00 -0600
As is the running tradition around here, I can open this post by hooping my thumbs through my suspenders and saying “Boy, it sure has been a while since we had a PETI update, huh?”. For a project that’s been running for multiple years now, the progress certainly seems slow when you view it on the aggregate timeline. That’s why I have good news: the next firmware update is coming soon!