Imperial Valley Sand Dunes


The 987.2 Porsche Boxster is one of the best values in the used sports car market today. There is so much to love about the vehicle, but the OEM headunit is not one of them. It's very dated, clunky, and doesn't support CarPlay (!), so one of the first things I did after picking up my car was purchase and install a new headunit. I selected the Sony XAV-AX1000 headunit because:

- It's one of the only aftermarket headunits with a physical volume knob
- The matte black plastic finish very closely matches my Porsche's interior
- I didn't need wireless CarPlay
- It's relatively cheap

![Sony XAV-AX1000 headunit installed](/media/posts/porsche/headunit.jpeg)

I also picked up [this dash kit from Crutchfield](https://www.crutchfield.com/S-TxiEMBKWi3K/p_003POR911B/American-International-POR911-Dash-Kit-Painted-Black.html) as well to have the install look as factory as possible. I will say that the fit is _very_ tight (it's a friction fit) so triple check wiring before sliding this into the dash. If you do happen to get the kit stuck with the headunit in it, I've had luck freeing it with the help of a metal putty knife.

My 987.2 has the Sound Package Plus (SPP), which is the middle tier between the basic speakers and the Bose speakers (which are much more difficult to connect). The connector I needed as a result was the Metra 70-9003 harness. The connector may come with a fuse tap, but I opted to just use a separately purcahsed unit that fit well in the fuse box without needing to drill any holes. Note that the Metra 70-9003 harness may not work with the base package.

Other supplies needed:

- Electrical tape
- Assorted t-taps
- Assorted spade connectors
- Low-profile fuse tap
- Metra 70-1787 harness (seperate from the Metra 70-9003 harness, this is just a donor for the RCA cables)
- Stranded red wire (used to connect power from fuse tap to headunit)
- Banana plug adapter for connecing SiriusXM

Tools needed:

- Heat gun/heat shrink
- Screwdriver set
- Soldering iron/solder
- Wire strippers
- Scissors

Also of note that my Porsche did not come equipped with steering wheel controls. If you vehicle does have steering wheel controls, you may need to purchase extra materials in order to get those to work, if so desired.

![Sony XAV-AX1000 headunit](/media/posts/porsche/headunit-desk.jpeg)

The first thing I did was assemble the headunit inside of the dash kit and set it aside on my desk. The screws that come with the dash kit don't work great but seem to be able to self-tap into the headunit. Just sure you screw them in flush, otherwise the unit won't fit in the vehicle.

Next, it's time to wire the Metra harness. You can view Crutchfield's wiring diagram [here](https://pdf.crutchfieldonline.com/ImageBank/v20161026152100/Manuals/120/120709003.PDF). Next, you can splice the donor RCA cables from the 70-1787 harness with the speaker wires in the 70-9003 harness. Using your wire strippers, remove the outer layer of shielding from the RCA cables, exposing the positive wire and the stranded negative wire. Twist the stranded wire together and put the heat shrink tube over the cable. Solder the positive wire to the 70-9003 harness positive wire and solder the negative wire to the 70-9003 negative wire for the same speaker. Wrap each connection tightly with electrical tape, slide the heat shrink over the connections, and use your heat gun to set. Repeat this for the three other pairs of speakers.

Moving on to the install, removal of the headunit in the 987.2 is straightfoward, only requiring the removal of a few screws. [This YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9iRykamWKE) explains it well. I reccommend disconnecting your battery first if possible, as you should do whenever working with your car's electrical system. Be delicate as the OEM headunit is still valuable and you may want to swap it back before selling your vehicle.

You can now remove the trim around the fuse compartment and tap the fuse; I used C6 as it turns on and off with the ignition. Crimp a length of the stranded red wire to the tapped fuse connector and snake it through to the headunit area. I had the wire rest on the trim below the steering wheel and it hasn't caused any issues. Re-attach the fusebox surrounding trim and use a spade connector to attach the fuse tap wire to the power input for the headunit. I wrapped the connection with electrical tape to prevent shorts.

At this point you may want to tap the parking lights in order to control automatic dimming of the headunit. I did not do that during my install, so you'll need to look at a diagram to see what color to look out for. I will note, however, that you are able to easily manually dim the display in the settings.

Now, plug the RCA connectors into the respective pre-amp outputs on the headunit to connect the speakers. When you disconnected the original factory headunit, there was a twelve-pin blue connector. The pink wire with the red stripe powers the vehicle's amplifier (under passenger seat in SPP-equipped vehicles). I used the _"Remote Out"_ wire in the new headunit to power both the amp as well as the powered AM/FM radio antenna. Use t-taps to connect both the red and white striped wire and the powered antenna wire (thicker, solid blue wire in the main harness). At this point you can also connect the SiriusXM adapter if your vehicle is equipped.

Finally, after you've checked all of your connections you can (carefully!) slide your headunit into place, reconnect the battery, and test it out! If you are noticing a fair amount of feedback, you can optionally add an inline ground loop isolator between the pre-amp output and your harness to reduce some of the interference.

Enjoy your new radio and feel free to [email me](mailto:me@noahbuscher.com) and I can try and answer any questions you may have.

_Please note I am not an expert at this and am not responsible for the safety of yourself or and damage to your vehicle, the headunit, etc._


Radio Install in a Porsche Boxster

Mecca, CA


I have been a dedicated [Nova](https://nova.app) user for over three years. I switched over from [VSCode](https://code.visualstudio.com) after tiring of the slow performance and "uncanny valley" interface. I'm a sucker for a well-done native app, and Panic really hit the sweet spot with Nova: a beautiful, minimal editor that felt right at home on macOS. It was also extremely fast to boot, indexing files and rendering 50,000 LOC+ without even breaking a sweat on the M1 Pro.

Unfortunately, I've been looking for an alternative as of late due to the high frequency of Nova crashes and lack of updates from Panic. Still, the editor scene hasn't changed much from what it looked like half a decade ago, with a smattering of Electron apps, Coda/Nova, some stalwarts such as Sublime Text and TextMate, and, of course, the venerated Vim/Emacs/Neovim trio.

I'm not one to spend a lot of time messing around with my tooling; I just want whatever editor I use to have a shallow learning curve and be _performant_. Somehow, looking for a new editor last week, I came across Zed's [tweet](https://twitter.com/zeddotdev/status/1636034629848403968):

> Zed is officially in public beta for macOS! We've been building Zed in Zed for a year now, and here's what we're loving most about it... 🧵

Since then, I've been playing around with and [customizing](https://github.com/noahbuscher/zed) the editor to see what living with a Rust-powered, minimal editor could look like.

### Install & Setup

Zed was very simple to set up; after downloading the '.dmg,' I had an instance ready to code in a matter of seconds. That's instant points over terminal-based editors. I will note here that Zed is currently _only_ available on macOS. [Support](https://github.com/zed-industries/community/issues/174) for Linux and Windows, according to the team, is:

> [...] planned, but it is not being prioritized in the short term.

Customizing the editor was also very straightforward. They have a default editor configuration that you can use, but I found it easier to open a custom settings file and see what was available via their beautiful autocomplete.

![Zed's settings page with autocomplete open](/media/posts/zed/zed-autocomplete.png)

There are a few things that I was surprised I wasn't able to customize yet, such as:

- Setting the interface's font
- Setting the interface's font size, independently of the editor
- Enabling (or disabling) icons or colors for the file tree view
- Allow hiding hidden files

### Performance

This is where Zed really shines. Loading a `package-lock.json` with over 7500 lines is instantaneous—quite literally. Even Nova would take at least a few hundred ms to parse and color a blob of that size, however, Zed doesn't even flinch. There is also zero scroll lagging, autocomplete delays, etc. that I could notice in any of my testing. I'm not sure of the actual numbers, but in my initial testing, Zed felt like the fastest editor I've ever used.

That is to be expected, of course: the editor was written in Rust and, as stated in their docs, performance was a top concern while developing the app over the course of this past year. Put another way, VSCode is a 2000's Land Rover Discovery with tons of buttons and features, whereas Zed is a sleek McLaren F1 - minimal, extremely fast, and with three front seats. Why three front seats?

### Multiplayer

Zed's big bet is on multiplayer. The editor comes with first-class support for real-time pairing, bundled right into the editor. By no means do you _need_ to use the feature in order to derive a lot out of Zed, however, as more people hop on the Zed bullet train, I can see it becoming an integral part of many people's (and companies') workflows.

As stated by the team:

> [Multiplayer] makes it easy to have nuanced, real-time conversations about any part of your codebase, whether the code in question was committed last year or hasn't yet been saved to disk.

VSCode does have [Live Share](https://code.visualstudio.com/learn/collaboration/live-share), but it feels tacked on to the interface, whereas in Zed, pairing feels just like any other feature within the editor: seamless. It almost invites you to collaborate with your team.

### Ecosystem

As Zed is still in public beta, there is surely a lot coming down the pipeline. For the time being, however, there were a few features I definitely missed from Nova:

- No extension market (1st or 3rd party)
- No way to add/edit themes (it comes pre-bundled with a number, however)
- No dark/light mode based on system
- Limited git integration
- No markdown preview
- Limited language support
- No spellcheck

I could not find anything regarding Zed Industries' plan for supporting extensions (if there even is one), however, I hope they do allow for writing extensions with a scripting language such as JavaScript. Forcing developers to build in Rust may be good for performance, but in a world where _everyone_ is building VSCode extensions, it will cripple the marketplace's offerings from the start.

Besides the aforementioned list, Zed really has most of the niceties I'm used to built right in. I have come across a few small bugs, which is to be expected at this stage of development, but none of which have detracted me from getting my work done.

### Recap

Zed is a fantastic editor - it's eye-wateringly fast, extremely minimal (and beautiful), has a talented team behind it, and is a natural transition for anyone who has familiarity with both terminal and GUI-based editors. However, in a world that is dominated by the free, open-source VSCode, I am curious to see how Zed's extension ecosystem grows and what Zed Industries' plan is for monetizing their product.

For the time being, I have found the editor a pleasure to work with, and I will be using Zed as my daily driver moving forward. If you're tired of VSCode's large size, cluttered interface, and slow performance, I urge you to [download](https://zed.dev/download) Zed's beta and give it a try. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.


Zed Public Beta

Impala

Lush Hike


Soukie Modern approached me in mid-2022 regarding their need to modernize their existing online shop, as they were looking to start leveraging e-commerce to show potential buyers their expansive collection of vintage and contemporary Moroccan rugs.

After some time getting to know the company and the founder, Taib Lotfi, I set out to design a website as expressive and beautiful as their offerings.

![Soukie Modern shop page](/media/projects/soukie-modern/soukie-shop.jpeg)

Given the large format and level of detail of the rugs, having large product images front-and-center was definitely at top of mind throughout the design process. We wanted potential buyers to see each rug in as much detail as possible.

![Soukie Modern product page](/media/projects/soukie-modern/soukie-product.jpeg)

![Soukie Modern workshops page](/media/projects/soukie-modern/soukie-workshops.jpeg)

![Soukie Modern footer](/media/projects/soukie-modern/soukie-footer.jpeg)

To develop the website, I settled on using Next.js Commerce, an amazing solution that offers a fantastic starting point for e-commerce sites. Given that Soukie had their products on Shopify, it was just a matter of configuring the `shopify` package to fit the needs of a retailer with hundreds of product offerings and building a gorgeous web interface around that.


Soukie Modern

Desert Walk


In May 2021, I was contacted to build the initial UI for racOS for the grammy-award-winning music artist RAC along with @trolldart. I was instantly thrilled when I saw the designs: a gorgeous Poolsuite-esque retro look that would be a fun challenge to bring into the browser.

A few weeks later, it was done: complete with custom window management, custom scrollbars, a desktop, volume slider, and more. After my work on it, the amazing HiFi Labs took it to the finish line, adding in additional UI polish and functionality.

![racOS main screen](/media/projects/racos/racos.jpeg)


racOS


I had some downtime in early 2022 so I took a week to build a embeddable slider SaaS for photographers, videographers, etc to demo their editing abilities, presets, LUTs, and more. The final design and platform came together rather quickly, and was powered by Auth0, Stripe, S3, and Next.js.

![Slideover homepage](/media/projects/slideover/slideover.jpeg)


Slideover


I worked with designer [Coleman Tharp](https://colemantharp.com/) to build a React Native iOS app that allowed users to customize Spotify playlists with images from their camera roll and Unsplash prior to the feature being added to the Spotify app.

<div className="bg-black w-full rounded-[8px]">
	<video width="250" height="auto" controls className="mx-auto">
		<source src="/media/projects/prism/prism-walkthrough.mp4" type="video/mp4">
		Your browser does not support the video tag.
	</video>
</div>


Noah Buscher

Sr. Software Engineer, Dave

Noah Buscher

Sr. Software Engineer, Dave

Hi, my name is Noah Buscher. I am a software engineer and designer living in Palm Springs. I work remotely and travel often, bringing my camera along with me. Sometimes I write. Here's what I'm up to now.

Radio Install in a Porsche Boxster

Zed Public Beta