I can't believe how long this page ended up. But if you want to know the state-of-the-art for Ratfactor project completion "tips" and "tricks" and haunted crypts, this has got it all...

Here's a fun technique I've been using a lot for the last couple years - calling upon a text editor and simple text files as a powerful and flexible "user interface" for command-line programs...

I'm sorry, that previous title was very misleading! I also added a whole new example that I'm hoping will get the idea across a lot better...

A fun little creativity/art tip I've been wanting to write for a while...

A little bit of philosophy to get through the tough spots...

I hope this comes across as fun rather than preachy! At least it has some drawings...

It's starting! Those sweet, sweet email replies shall begin to make their way starting now...

A year later, another piece of text I had to get off my chest. I trust I won't have to do this again in another year? I did not enjoy writing it, but I had to write it...

My rather long book review and/or collection of notes from reading Richard W. Hamming's opus.

SECRETS REVEALED!!! I know a lot of you have been waiting for this update. The unfolding of a brand-new fitted sheet set. What will we discover? Let's find out...

This website has moved to a new OS and web server and host! You shouldn't really notice anything different, but there are probably more broken links than usual...

Another OpenBSD article. There's at least two more coming, so brace yourselves. This one is about setting up OpenBSD as a router and controlling traffic with pf (Packet Filter)...

I slowly read this paper while brushing my teeth at night. I really enjoyed what it demonstrates about language design...

I've hit the last straw with Mozilla's antics in Firefox. I've been a Firefox champion for years and years. But every danged upgrade has some new insane junk I don't want or need and they keep popping up these little "tips" to rub my nose in it. I'm sick of it. I'm done. THANKFULLY we have LibreWolf to solve all of that. I'm a heavy browser user migrating from the fox to the wolf and here are my notes so far...

Related to the Faceclick Emoji picker two entries ago, I've learned how to make custom subsets of fonts and package them as Web Fonts (and how to use and debug them).

Hey, want to learn something new? And now for something completely different...

It's done! A side-quest that turned into a project of its own: An Emoji-picking popup library with 130Kb of Emoji data into 70Kb (un-minified, un-gzipped, with comments and everything)...

A relatively quick and much more "blog-like" entry today...

We all deserve something shorter and sweeter in the RSS feed for the weekend. This whole concept brings a smile to my face...

The human race can survive my website because of a tree in my front yard...

Luanti is a FOSS voxel game engine. I made an illustrated tutorial for creating a first mod that makes a new block with a custom texture...

This page started as a tiny kernel of three ideas, little more than just some notes. But I think it ended up being a pretty fun read...

I really enjoyed the feedback I got on Implementing a Forth. It's a fun subject! I updated it with new notes, an even smaller 'Forth', and a link to this oversized "card" that resulted from thinking about smallness...

Clickbait summary: Here's a fun thing you can do with Post-it notes that might save your poor brain from a meltdown...

This is tangentially related to the previous entry. I'm really looking forward to using this little script for its intended purpose. One more thing popped off the paper stack! Anyway, look at how cute that is...

A new wiki appears! Here's the thing I alluded to in the previous two entries. It's one of those "mini-sites" that appear on this feed from time to time with: A project page, a repo, and a 5-part "making of" article series that I hope is fun and interesting...

Oh no! That wiki editing interface was TOO easy to make...

From the ashes of WYSIWYG rises a lightweight markup language "interface" to the HTML pages in the wiki, and I think this is going to work...

A real quick cardboard project to go with that paper "project stack" post in June...

The asterisk after "Easy" is explained. This is how I'm pushing Web software changes for my little PHP projects these days...

An extremely tiny family posting site (lets a handful of people post text and images and that's it!). Written in PHP, JavaScript, HTML, and SQLite. About 1K lines of source combined! Stupidly simple. The only interesting thing about it is that it's mine and it uses my RetroV JS library for virtual DOM UI rendering...

In revisiting Naur's paper, I had some additional thoughts about how it applies to our current era...

In the next couple days, I expect to be posting a link to a "mini-site" of content about a fun programming subject. With that upcoming example in mind, this seems like as good time as any to explain why this feed doesn't contain the full text of the linked "posts", amongst other things...

As I teased in the previous item, this update links to what basically amounts to a "mini-site" of four web pages and one software repo. This is exactly what it says in the title as well as my personal review of Snobol4 and related thoughts...

Here's an essay I started last month and finally finished. I read something that helped me sort out what happened the last time I put my foot in my mouth online...

Hello! It feels like ages since my last update. This has been baking quite a while in the oven and it's a great relief (and also a little scary) to put it out into the world. You can see what it's about from the title...

It came! I like it...

I've finished a new tool to add to the site - I made this one to "do the counting" for my daily physical therapy exercises...

Hey RSS readers! Time for another RSS-only article. I really need to vent about this because two days later, it's still bothering me...

I've finally added a feed to the site! This link is very meta.

Though much of it is sparsely commented, the Zig standard library is quite readable. Nevertheless, being told to "go read the source" is intimidating. How can we make it easier to explore the library source?

I figured out how to decode I2C serial data from a microcontroller to another device with my Siglent SDS1202X-E Oscilloscope and it was totally awesome! I put together this guide (with pictures!) for noobs like me.

I made a cardboard "laptop" or "luggable" computer featuring a 7-inch LCD display and a Raspberry Pi Zero. It was a fun weekend project that scratched an itch I've had for a long time. Motivation and pictures in the article!

***RSS Club*** Shhhh! It's a secret! This is my first feed-only article. Check it out!

(RSS-Club: this missive is feed-only. Hello readers!) I'm getting in on this whole "humans.txt" thing. Anything to make the 'Web and 'Net a little more weird/personal/delightful!

This is an idea I've been mulling over for a long time: keeping a personal timeline of history. By "personal" I don't mean a timeline of things in my own personal life. I mean a timeline of general history containing only events that interest me, personally. I finally started mine.

*** RSS-CLUB EXCLUSIVE! *** I want to put more of my personal collection of notes up here on this website, right out in public. Here's why!

I'm making good on my earlier promise to start publishing more of my notes in public so others can benefit from them and where I am more likely to find them myself! Here's my notes from today's excursion into getting Apache working with PHP-FPM (specifically on Slackware Linux, but the instructions are quite vanilla because Slackware doesn't mess with upstream packages.)

Websites with designs that appear to end at the bottom of the screen have always been a problem. But I've run into some examples lately that have actually confused me.

I'm very excited to have finished a hardware project: a productivity "multitimer" based on the Raspberry Pi Pico (PR2040 microcontroller). It has a keypad for timer categories and LCD display for elapsed minutes in each category. It is also very colorful.

Over the last three months, I've developed an unusual little nighttime routine: after reading bedtime stories to the kids, I hop into bed and instead of reaching for a fiction book, I'm turning on my 14-year old Asus eeePC 701 miniature laptop and writing x86 assembly language. This is turning out to be an insanely good use of my time...

Really pleased with how easy it is to examine the parts of the voxel destruction physics game Teardown. Gotta "hack" games for the kids, you know. :-)

**RSS Club Exclusive** This is a bit of a rant, but I want to get it off my chest and I'm tired of unloading this stuff on my long-suffering wife.

**RSS Club Exclusive** Hi, my name is Dave and I have a Web surfing problem.

I had a dream: * A low power, always-on computer I could SSH into from any other computer in the house. * All of my projects and data in Git repos available for cloning and updating from any computer in the house. * My personal Linux/UNIX configuration ("dotfiles") available to any computer in the house for instant and granular installation. * No dependencies on any computer outside my home network. Time for a new setup!

I call it my "log system" and I've been keeping it for almost a decade. Read all about my notebooks (96 and counting), the digital transcription, and the meaning of life. And pictures of notebooks!

Okay, I've done it! I've started a Zettelkasten. Only, I'm not following anybody's rules. I'm just calling these "cards". I'm already loving this. (Oh, and just so you know, all content up there right now was plotted out on actual paper index cards. So it's *totally* legit.)

After tiring of jumping through ridiculous hoops to privately share Wordle results with family, I created a really simple Perl CGI application to do the job... This is what software would be like in a utopia.

I already knew this, but sometimes it's really pleasant to turn yourself into a factory worker on your own project...

This was just a "shower thought", but it turned into into an IndieWeb "reply". For that reason, I'm adding it to this feed. :-)

*RSS Club* Exclusive followup to the previous "nosurf" post. Great news, everybody!

I resisted the urge as long as I could. Because Dave Doesn't Need Another Hobby. But needle felting is cool! I'm updating this page as I make progress. (This post is mostly pictures with descriptions.)

I've made a big addition to my "Setup2" article about personal computer management with Git and Stow. A check-repos script now helps me quickly check for changes that need to be synced on each machine...

*RSS Club* Hey, if you read my feed, I guess you care what I'm up to. So Mastodon is what I'm up to! Check it out.

My OpenBSD exploration begins! Well, began a while ago, but now I'm SeRIouS about it. This first post is about the installation experience...

(OLD PERSON RANT WARNING) It turns out, I do regret posting this to my Virtual Box of Cards. But not for saying it. I stand by what I wrote here for now. Also, this new title isn't much better, but at least it's still pretty short...

*RSS Club* Exclusive SECOND followup to the previous "nosurf" post. Getting closer and closer to the truth...

I was afraid I'd lost the beginings of a new project when my old EeePC (circa 2007) drive finally became corrupted. But I was able to do the simplest, stupidest recovery you can imagine to recover the project...

I now have two machines set up to auto-login and I love it. These instructions may apply to some non-Slackware Linuxes as well. Also, gnome-keyring-daemon needs some UI help...

*RSS Club* HATE-FILLED RANT: What the hell is going on at my local public school system?

*RSS Club* Wow, I wasn't expecting yesterday's rant to appear HN. My only regret is that I didn't state my actual frustration well and I was clearly misunderstood...

Another FORTH interpreter roams the Earth! It's my NASM assembly port of JONESFORTH. Because I'm a human being, it was over a year in the making. "Unfortunately, no one can be told what FORTH is. You have to write one for yourself."...

During Assembly Nights Season One (porting JONESFORTH to NASM), I kept having ideas for other Forth-like things I'd like to try. But I was good: I wrote them down and stayed the course with the port. But when the port was done, one of those ideas just wouldn't let me rest and I was compelled to start on it immediately! Now when the lights go out and everyone else in the house has gone to sleep, I start writing assembly code...

In one of those eerie "out of the blue" coincidences, I found myself thinking this morning about Aaron Swartz. It turns out today was his birthday: November 8, 1986...

My Assembly Nights: "Season Two" project now has its very own page and maaaayyybe also a cute logo. If you just can't get enough assembly and Forth-like programming madness, or if you like cute logos, I've got what you need...

Wow! I just self-published a real physical illustrated children's book. I did the watercolor illustrations in my sketchbook in 2017, but it took until now to assemble the book and publish it through Amazon. This is so cool...

My guided book tour of OpenBSD continues. Highlights include the ports system and /etc info. Nothing too exciting...

Two more OpenBSD chapters complete. The exploration continues...

Whoooosh! That's the sound of me getting this done in the year 2022 so I have one less thing on my plate for 2023! I review six more book chapters and give my conclusions so far...

Guess what? 2023 is The Year of the Microcontroller! Well, it is in MY house...

I'll be giving a presentation fairly soon and I needed something simple. So I made something simple in about an hour after work today...

First follow-up to The Year of the Microcontroller. This "chapter" wraps up the first eventful week of my year-long foray into MCs. I think you (YOU!) will dig what became of that cardboard computer...

I just finished drawing 78 Tarot cards in 52 days. I'm not gonna lie, it feels good...

(RSS-Club: this missive is feed-only. Hello readers!) I'm taking a firm stand. There is NO "MACHINE LEARNING"-generated content on this website. In the year 2023, the /humans.txt file suddenly feels like a battle cry rather than a cute "hello". I'm not even slightly interested in a debate about this. Thank you! I love my RSS readers! You are all awesome. Hope 2023 is going well.

Super happy with this little Vim thingy I've been wanting to make for a long, long time. It turned out to be way easier than I'd expected thanks to Vim's typically weird but flexible folding settings...

It's done at last! I put my whole digital life on hold to finish this game jam entry...

I gave this talk at work today. It's full of amusing drawings and should still make a fair amount of sense without hearing my commentary. I've attempted to unlock what makes Forth *really* tick - from the what, to the why, to the how...

I've installed Slackware 15.0 a lot in the last couple months. So I decided it was finally time to write up a page about the process (whether I'm qualified or not!) while it's still fresh in my head. This is how I install the only operating system that helps YOU get more life-giving SLACK and gain in POWER every day!...

Just some scripts here. Nothing too exciting, but might give you some ideas for automating the tasks in your life. The *coolest part* is definitely using a fuzzy matcher (zf in this case; FZF is also very popular). There are *so* many uses for fuzzy search menus to take the pain out of common CLI tasks...

Installing the Hare programming language on Slackware just got easier thanks to yours truly. But this is really a love note to the tireless volunteers at slackbuilds.org...

A saga nearly a year in the making: Then a new Linux kernel and a new video card make the whole thing trivial...

So I basically lost my mind for two weeks and the result is a new JavaScript VDOM library. This was a side quest I did not need in my life and the world probably did not need in general. But you know what? I'm proud of this little thing and I'm really glad I made it. The link here is basically a whole mini-site with tutorials, tests, demos, and articles. See where my nights and weekends have gone...

Simply asking for help was the best thing I've done in a while. Scroll to the bottom for my t-shirt design. I can't wait for mine to come in the mail...

I think it's usually a mistake to try to write a "correct" program from a blank slate...

I wonder what it would be like if we all approached software development with a "build it twice" mentality...

*RSS Club* Exclusive FOURTH "nosurf" post. Distractions can't compete with these two techniques. The only problem is that they're both pretty indulgent...

I'm back on track! This second "chapter" of The Year of the Microcontroller is finally complete...

It's alive! I did the math and made a thing move in the real world. Also dusted off the oscilloscope for this one...

This was a really great "chapter" for me. I'd done some I2C with Micropython before, so I decided to tackle something more challenging with an OLED display. I ended up writing some tools in Zig to stream cat pictures to my device! Check it out...

It finally dawned on me that I should write up summaries of the [computer science] papers I read and put them somewhere so the thoughts aren't lost forever. Here's the first one. Prepare to raise your fist in the air as Peter Naur tells it like it is...