On a personal note, I learned from my doctor that they want me to return to "what I did in 2021", referring to my most significant drop in LDL (bad cholesterol). That "what I did" was start adhering to a vegan diet. In the last year or so I had gradually worked away from that diet, which mostly involved incorporating dairy products back in. Consequently, my latest blood test this month showed my numbers climbing back up. This is not to say that diet is the only factor - there's a mix of genetics, exercise, and diet that impacts everyone differently in terms of cholesterol. As much as I am tempted by non-vegan foods (mostly cheese), getting the push from my doctor is exactly what I needed to get back on track. I started back on the vegan diet Friday November 29th, and intend to make it permanent. I look forward to seeing improvement in my numbers by the end of February, when I get tested again!

And it worked! I was able to get the ordering correct by changing the part of the bash script that writes the feed to use for f in $(ls -d * | sort -r); do for reverse sorting the directories. Each directory is in YYYYMMDDHHMM format. Including the minute is a bit excessive, but it removes any concern about making multiple posts in a row sometime in the future.

I could keep tweaking the build scripts, but I think they are in a good place now. If I find the script to be slow months or years from now, I could consider consolidating the little text files I'm currently generating into a single settings file. Maybe that would be faster

I've also been working on a variation of the 16nx build. Of the five boards I had to order because of manufacturer minimums, I used one, build another 16nx for a fellow Merveilles person, and gave away two more boards. This left me with one last board that I wanted to experiement with. I tested out a rotary potentiometer of the right value, and it seemed to work, so I ordered 16 panel mount pots and 16 panel mount mono jacks so that I could bodge wire them by way of a redesigned top panel. Bodge wiring the jacks might not have been necessary, but it allows me to have the top panel be completely independent of the circuit board, so I can use whatever spacers work best once everything is in place. This is nearly done, I just need to do the complete wiring (time consuming) and wait for the knobs I ordered to arrive.

Another project is in the works too, but just in the mental consideration phase. I'd like to make a little device that can take a picture of a small drawing and post it somewhere. The idea is to create a friction-free way to collect doodles into a kind of gallery.

Lastly my long-running project of a media player with enhancements has a fully functional circuit, and just awaits a final housing. A metal plate sandwich design has been drafted, but I'll need to do some 3D printed prototypes to make sure it will all come together correctly.