My first half-week with Kindle

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• Reviews · shares #hardware
  The Hidizs AP30 Music Boy

  I saw the Hidizs AP30 Music Boy on Reddit and got curious enough to reach out to Hidizs to see if they’d send me one to review. It’s a palm-sized DAP that launched on Kickstarter on 23 July 2026, and it’s pitching itself as a companion device rather than a standalone player, something to clip to a bag, hang round a neck, or snap to the back of a phone. I’ve had it for five weeks now, including a holiday where I used it out and about, long enough to have formed opinions beyond “this is a cute novelty.”

  August 2026 • 14 min read
• Reviews · shares #hardware
  Why I'm using a low-profile keyboard (for now)

  For years I was firmly in the mechanical keyboard camp, and specifically a 60% person. No numpad, no function row, no arrow cluster, just the keys I actually used, in a footprint small enough to leave room for the mouse. A handful of boards came and went, but they all had the same shape: clacky, and a bit of a statement piece on the desk. There’s still a couple in the photo on my now page, left over from that era. Lately though, I’ve drifted somewhere unexpected: low-profile, and further than that (off mechanical switches entirely). I’ve been daily driving a Logitech MX Keys alongside an MX Master 2S, and enjoying it more than I expected to. The original reason I picked them up had nothing to do with typing feel, it was for multi-device pairing. Both can be paired with multiple machines, one over the USB receiver for automatic switching, and up to two more over Bluetooth via a button on the device. Back then I had a Windows PC and a MacBook, and hopping between them without re-pairing was exactly what I needed. What’s kept them on my desk is something I didn’t plan for though: now that I’m on macOS day to day, Universal Control does most of that job for me, no more relying on third-party apps like Synergy2 or Duet to move a single keyboard and mouse between machines. The original reason has quietly become less important, and I’m still using them anyway. The keyboard charges over USB-C, wakes from a light touch on the frame, and is already ready to go by the time my hands land on the keys. The mouse, frustratingly, charges via micro USB (the newer MX Master 3S fixes that gap). But the bigger surprise has been the typing feel itself. I expected to miss the travel, the tactile bump, the clacking sound. In practice the low-profile scissor switches have been comfortable enough for long sessions that I haven’t gone looking for a replacement, quieter and flatter than the taller boards I used to run. The thing I do miss is the customisation, going through keycap sets bought because the key profile (obviously XDA is the best key profile) or key legend caught my eye. There’s no equivalent here, same slab of keys every day. None of those old purchases were extravagant on their own, but it added up over years in a way I didn’t notice until I totalled it up. This one, by contrast, was one purchase: £96 back in 2023, and that’s been it since. Old habits die hard, mind you, the numpad sits there on the right collecting dust, a little monument to a decade of telling people I didn’t need one. I don’t think I’m done with mechanical keyboards for good, but for the keyboard I reach for every day, low-profile and boring-in-a-good-way has won out, for now.

  July 2026 • 3 min read
• Data & Experiments · shares #hardware
  Every Kickstarter project I've backed

  Between March 2011 and October 2021 I backed 19 Kickstarter projects, spending £386 and $565 across the lot. Here they all are, in order, with what became of each. March 2011 Minecraft: The Story of Mojang $30filmstandalone My first ever Kickstarter was 2 Player Productions’ documentary about Mojang’s first year. It delivered in late 2012, and I took the DVD tier, so my name is in the credits. I no longer own anything that can play the disc, but it’s a neat thing to have. On launch day 2PP uploaded the film to The Pirate Bay themselves, asking people to buy it if they could rather than pretend piracy wasn’t going to happen, and it went free on YouTube the following year. January 2013 GCW-Zero $155consolestandalone An open-source Linux retro handheld built around the Ingenic JZ4770, pitched as the spiritual successor to the Dingoo, by Justin Barwick (a Dingoonity regular). It delivered in 2013, but the shipping was a mess. We hosted the official GCW Zero subforum on Dingoonity, and it turned into a wall of “where’s my order?” posts despite us having nothing to do with fulfilment. I still have mine. It was underwhelming: by the time it arrived I had countless other devices that did the same job, often better. The community software carried it, but the hardware itself was nothing special. March 2013 Sweetbox II £32accessoryraspberry-pi A case for the Raspberry Pi. It arrived, but it fit an old model of Pi, so it stopped being useful fairly quickly. I’ve had better cases since, and these days I’d just 3D print an equivalent if I needed one. July 2013 Fairywren £50diyraspberry-pi A mini-ITX baseboard for the Raspberry Pi. It arrived. I never used it. I had aspirations and never got round to it (ADHD caveman brain). September 2013 RFIDler £24diystandalone A software-defined RFID reader, writer and emulator. It arrived, and I never worked out a good use for it. Writable RFID tags got cheap enough to buy and write straight from my phone, so I never needed it. I’ve got a backburner idea to make custom Tonies for the kids’ Toniebox, but they’ll probably grow up before I get to it. November 2013 Kano $120diyraspberry-pi A build-it-yourself computer kit wrapped around a Raspberry Pi, aimed at teaching kids to assemble and code. It delivered in 2014, a couple of months late, which for hardware is nothing. It seemed like a nice bit of kit, so I gave it to a nephew that Christmas. As far as I know the bright orange keyboard is still going strong. Kano itself became a real London company, raising around $45 million, doing the Harry Potter coding wand and a Windows machine with Microsoft, before drifting away from Pi kits entirely into Stem consumer audio (the Kanye West Stem Player) and splitting into two companies in 2023. March 2014 Planets³ $20videogamestandalone A voxel-based open-world RPG. It half delivered. Renamed Stellar Overload, it reached Steam early access, but Cubical Drift went bankrupt around 2018 and pulled it from sale unfinished. Backers were left with a Steam key for a dead game. I can’t even remember playing it. April 2014 LAST LIFE $15videogamestandalone A sci-fi noir adventure about investigating your own murder on Mars, with Double Fine attached as publisher. It never came out. Double Fine dropped it, the creator kept expanding the scope, the money ran out, and it ended up sitting unfinished on his hard drives. A complete write-off. June 2014 MyPifi LED board £6diyraspberry-pi An LED board kit for the Raspberry Pi. I remember soldering it together. I couldn’t tell you where it is now. June 2014 TerraTech £10videogamestandalone Physics-based vehicle construction and combat from Payload Studios. This one delivered properly. It left early access as a full release in 2018 and is still a supported game. I have no memory of playing it. November 2014 Espruino Pico £17diyespruino JavaScript on a USB stick, and the first of four things I backed from Gordon Williams at Espruino. He’s a local creator and the campaigns were always fun to back and tinker with, so once I’d backed one I kept coming back. It delivered, as all of his did. August 2015 The imossi N1 wallet £29accessorystandalone An RFID-protected wallet. I used it for about six years. These days I’ve got a MagSafe card holder on the back of my phone and mostly pay by contactless, so it’s retired. November 2015 Tingbot £50diyraspberry-pi A Raspberry Pi gadget with a screen, meant to make the Pi fun to build on. It delivered and I got into it for a bit, but in the end I needed the Pi for another project. It’s still in parts in my parts bin. I’d love to get it running again, but I don’t think the software stack is supported any more. December 2015 Pine A64 $41diystandalone A cheap 64-bit single-board computer pitched as a Raspberry Pi rival. It arrived barebones, the OS images weren’t great, and I already had Pis that did the job, so it was in a drawer before long. The company stuck around where most “Pi killers” didn’t, and Pine64 went on to make the Pinebook, PinePhone, PineTime and a line of RISC-V boards. The thing of theirs I actually use is the Pinecil, a USB-C soldering iron I bought later and still reach for often. July 2016 Puck.js £47 for twodiyespruino Gordon’s Bluetooth beacon, again running Espruino’s JavaScript. I spent proper time with these, contributing to a media-control script, nextSongPuck, and actually used it. August 2016 The Superbook $164accessorystandalone A laptop shell that turned an Android phone into a laptop, from Andromium, later Sentio. It raised nearly $3 million, one of the biggest hardware campaigns on Kickstarter at the time, then unravelled. They shipped about 75% of units before running out of money around 2019, with a distributor allegedly making off with $300,000 of inventory. Mine did arrive, after a very long wait, and it completely missed the mark. A 2016-era Android phone driving a laptop shell was beaten by any number of cheap old laptops, several of which I now own. I’ve still got the sheet of keyboard legend stickers and the Sentio-branded sleeve. The Superbook itself, I couldn’t tell you where it is. November 2019 Bangle.js £46wearableespruino Gordon’s hackable smartwatch. JavaScript on a watch (yes please, in principle). I wore it and gave it a proper go, but it was chunky and the software side was a bit of a bodge, so I went back to a better-supported watch of the time, a Pebble or similar. January 2021 Paper Apps Dungeon $20 for twotabletopstandalone A dungeon game in a 3x5 notepad. Delivered, and it still ends up in my bag from time to time. It’s a nice way to play something without a screen, and I’m holding onto it for when the kids are old enough to enjoy it. October 2021 Bangle.js 2 £75wearableespruino The second-generation open smartwatch from Espruino, and the last thing I’ve backed. Much the same story as the first, though nicer made. I bought it mostly to support Gordon. It sits in a drawer with my other watches now (I wear a Pixel Watch 2 these days). I’ve not backed anything since the second Bangle.js. Time and money are part of it: I’ve less of both spare for a bet that might take three years to arrive, if it arrives at all. The rest is the platform. In 2011 Kickstarter felt like funding things that wouldn’t otherwise exist. A lot of it now reads as drop-shipped tat with a slick video, or projects carrying enough red flags that another Superbook feels more likely than not. Almost everything above did arrive. Not much of it stuck.

  June 2026 • 2 min read

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