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Comment by tom1337890 | Hacker News Reader

Awesome write up. Love it. And good thing you documented it, since in half a year you'll need it again.

My takeaway: You should have just gotten the SD card and trusted the previous owner. Sometimes "simple users" do know. ^^

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Yep. I didn't get into it in the article, but in reality the previous owner had already (accidentally) thrown the SD card in the trash, and was pretty much asking me if they want me for them to go digging through their trash to find it, and I told them not to worry about it.

Nice writeup. But IIUC you can change it so that it automatically updates the time every 6 months?

“No worries, I’ll hit HN’s front page instead” - much more fun!

Why did the previous owner ever remove the card in the first place if they knew it broke things?

Because if OP didn't want the card, then the card could be sold on ebay for 60 euros.

>...in reality the previous owner had already (accidentally) thrown the SD card in the trash...

That's kind of you :-)

I’m a little confused by the description of that interaction - why wouldn’t you take the SD card? Did they want to charge extra for it? Seems like even a 10 year old map (plus apparently other functionality) is something you’d want.

In any case, glad it took you on the wild goose chase that led to the write up!

Because OP refused to believe that he, a technically literate person, wouldn’t be able to find the correct settings page and assumed that the previous owner was just not the brightest bulb. Which, in my opinion, is reasonable, because a reasonable person wouldn’t expect infotainment systems settings being only available with maps SD card.

This is the kind of trap that I constantly fall for no matter how much I try to avoid it. "Surely it can't work that way" and yet it does.

> And good thing you documented it, since in half a year you'll need it again.

Man this is too real for personal projects. I really need to write down my findings and thoughts more for future me.

I started using an "engineering notebook" for things like that. They are called other things in other lines of work or school (lab notebook, captain's log, ...). In an actual engineering notebook, you would use a sewn binding where you can't add or remove pages, the pages are numbered, you have an index in the front, entries are made in strictly chronological order, you'd have someone else witness and sign pages, draw a diagonal line across empty areas so you can't remove things, only cross things out with a single line, etc. All that because you might need to prove you invented something and other legal CYA reasons. Most of these requirements, you don't need for personal projects, though. But the things that are useful: keeping track of projects, what settings you've tried, what the results were, and so on. That way you don't have to reproduce it from scratch again later. "What settings did I need use to create the gerber files in kicad for manufacturing? How did I set ___ in the oscilloscope? What parts did I use to make that thing? What things did I wish I had checked last time? Where did I put those files?" You can also print things out and tape them in for reference.

I love the ergonomics of hard bound engineering notebooks. The cost is more than I'm willing to pay for the pedestrian kind of notes I take, though.

I got a few of them, partially-used, from a canceled project and I really enjoyed using and carrying them.

I just use composition notebooks which are like $1-$5 depending on the quality, store, sales, etc. That's also what we used as a lab notebook in chemistry class when I was in high school, which follows a similar discipline, so to me it's fitting.

MEMORY.md is your friend.

I’d rather read my own internal wiki tbh

That’s the part I don’t get: just take the damned card, you never know. Worst case: hey, free SD card!

Just add a cronjob?

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