iPhone 16 Pro boasts a 6.3" - good move, product manager of iPhone 16 series, but it doesn't explain how big my YouTube videos would look, relative to my Pixel 3 - a spare device I use to tune into DIY or entertainment videos on YouTube, most of them bear a 16:9 aspect ratio.

I'm gonna compare how bigger a typical YouTube video looks on the newer 6.3" iPhone 16 Pro versus the Pixel 3's 5.5" screen. There's some high school math involved, but you can compare video size displayed on your existing phone with a new phone you are about to purchase/pre-order online, to give a sense of how big would a video look on that gorgeous new screen?

Math involved is as simple as using Pythagoras’ theorem. The missing element here is aspect ratio: iPhone 16 Pro boasts a 19.5:9 aspect ratio 6.3" (16 cm) screen, while Pixel 3 boasts an 18:9 aspect ratio 5.5" (13.97 cm) screen. Screen sizes are always specified diagonally.

Now, for the math,

For iPhone 16 Pro,

(19.5x)^2 cm +  (9x)^2 cm = 16^2 cm
i.e. x ==> 0.7449 cm

16:9 Video Height i.e. 9x = 6.70 cm
16:9 Video Width i.e. 16x = 11.91 cm

-- --

For Pixel 3,

(18x)^2 cm + (9x)^2 cm = (13.97)^2 cm
i.e. x ==> 0.481 cm

16:9 Video Height i.e. 9x = 6.23 cm
16:9 Video Width i.e. 16x = 11.08 cm

Can you imagine the possibilities? You can pitch your current phone against any new phone you are about to purchase online, without visiting a store. You'd know exactly how big your Youtube videos would look, by drawing them on a piece of paper. The 16 Pro would be a definite upgrade from my current iPhone 13 mini when it comes to video media consumption.

You know how you lose track of time when working on your computer for extended hours, thanks to the teeny tiny clock sitting either at top-right or the bottom right corner of your mac or windows machine (gets even worse when using a full screen app). I felt the need of having a small digital clock (and not my wrist watch or the old school alarm clock) that used seven segment display, instead of LCD, so that every often when my eyes wander around the room in reverie, it can clearly catch a glimpse of time through those brightly lit bold red displays.

This dumb device does one thing right - it displays time, for now.

Tilted for optimal viewing when working with MacBook on a table. The bubble displays are incredibly bright, each segment seeping in ~ 3 mA current (power save move), for a total of ~ 23 mA for the entire display array. HP did a fantastic job of creating these minuscule 8 segment modules and enlarging their size with the addition of those ginormous bubble-like lens. I had these bubble display modules laying around in my junk box for quite some time. I know TI calculators had bubble displays (TI-30 from mid 70s), however HP was the only manufacturer that commercially sold these, to be primarily used in for their test equipment lineup up until mid 90s to my knowledge.

It uses two HP 5082 series bubble displays and Atmega 8L.

The two PCB stacks can be dissembled to replace the uC, test components or resolder loose joints.

Those hook looking metal rods are connected to MOSI/MISO/SCK/RST of uC. The Atmega runs on internal oscillator (a mistake I later realised for RTC applications), however it provides reasonable accuracy of +/- 8 seconds per day (that's after compensating RC osc. generated clock jitter through OCR1A padding). Moral of the story: Use an external watch crystal through TOSCx pins, so that the RTC can be accurate and one can put the controller in power save mode, instead of idle mode.

Soldering was a mess - I also made the mistake of purchasing a roll of subpar 32 AWG wire, whose insulation sheath melted even with a gentle touch of solder tip, hence those white tape patches to prevent insulation from melting due to excessive heating. Guess I should have etched PCB, instead of this wired mess on strip board. I tried to ensure that most solder joints are accessible, in case if they ever need any repairs/modifications.

When unplugged, Atmega will automatically fall into sleep mode, cutting the I/O off from backup power source i.e. CR2032 to keep the timer interrupt up and running, thereby eliminating the need for me to set this clock every time it's plugged/unplugged from a USB power source.

Each element of the clock i.e. hh/mm/ss has its own dedicated button. Okay, my mistake, the time set should have been 09:44:00.

Using this as a desk clock or in this picture as a floor clock. The display is astonishingly bright and quite a sight during night time in low light.

When Apple came out with iPad Pro 10.5”, I was one of the firsts to drive down to their Cupertino store. The premise of 120 Hz ProMotion screen with noticeable fluidity in writing: I’ll buy that.

But this 10.5” beast was the dawn of camera bumps on tablets - TABLETS. Quite sure tablet is loosely a portmanteau for “let it stay flat on table”, besides the stone tablet our ancestors scribbled upon.

Really, with camera bump on table, one cannot avoid the occasional, "Will it bend if I lay my palm on surface when using Apple Pencil?". And if you have Magic Keyboard, I’m quite sure you had this vulnerability wonderment. But then as I was emptying trash at my folks' place, something transpired,

Based on thickness of this cake box, I had to bind two layers of cardboard cut-out to compensate for camera bump depth, when the iPad is supposed to stay flat on desk for what we might say the iPad Pad. Now for the camera bump through-hole,

Take this “stencil” and stick it back on pad’s cut-out from earlier,

You can carve out this camera bump through hole using paper cutter and ruler. You don’t need to curvature cut corners of this through-hole, except the outmost corner, which should be truncated diagonally to avoid making the adjoining area flaky.

I then joined both these cut-outs using double sided tape. Although not needed but for peace of mind, I ended up covering the bottom side of camera cut-through using Post-It note.

If the camera bump doesn’t fit through-hole, your can always carve out sides 3 and 4 with paper cutter to reduce friction between bump walls and cut-through edges. Just don’t muck with sides 1 and 2! The end result with before/after shot,

Pretty sure a large leftover box from Amazon delivery would have been equally usable, given its average 2-4 mm thickness. That being said at least at least I don’t have to worry about having an bent iPad, due to age, given the uneven stress by palm whilst using apple pencil on flat surface!