** week notes **
I’ve been experimenting. I’ve been concocting a recipe for vegan kugel, and rediscovering little features and edges of my website I’d forgotten I baked in. Like chocolate chips hidden in an oatmeal raisin cookie.

One chip most recently re-discovered: support for per-page custom styles?! All I gotta do is include an optional bit of meta data, bespoke-css, that points to a style sheet. I may play with this feature more. I do love myself some css. I can tell exactly when in my life I added this feature because th … ⌘ Read more

** Ideas for making accessibility and equity a core part of the software development lifecycle **
In accessibility and the product person I said

we need to make accessibility a core part of our processes

Here, I want to talk about that in more detail. I want to briefly explore what making accessibility a part of core processes looks like, and how that is different from centering access … ⌘ Read more

** Moon maker **
I recently re-read Peter Naur’s“Programming as theory building”. Afterwards I set out to write my own text editor. The paper posits that it’s really hard, if not impossible, to fully communicate about a program and sort of gestures at the futility of documentation…what spun around inside my head as I read was that our primary programming medium — text files — is silly. Like, some folks would totally 100% s … ⌘ Read more

** Accessibility and the product person **
This post is a slightly modified version of a talk I presented to the product practice at my work. It presents a few ways that product designers and managers can help to move accessibility forward. It is a little bit different than what I normally share, here, but, I thought it may be interesting to some folks.

[![Picture of a slide with the title “Why though?” It also includes a quote from Kat Holmes’ book Mismatch. The quote reads: “There are many challeng … ⌘ Read more

** Accessibility updates **
I’m feeling pretty chuffed! Last week I wrote about my intention to make this website more accessible. My motivations were many-fold, but, primarily, mostly shame. I’ve worked as an accessibility specialist in the past, and now spend a bunch of my days at work looking for ways to make public infrastructure online more accessible. It seemed fitting to at least make sure the little bit I contribute to the web here is also accessible.

I thought it was going t … ⌘ Read more

In reply to: Oatmeal - week notes

The worst kind of blogging is blogging about blogging, so, I’ll keep this blogging about blogging short!

I’ve made some minor updates to the design of the website that have improved it’s usability a wee bit, and are a step in the right direction toward upping my accessibility game. The major remaining accessibility issues are around color contrast and some structura … ⌘ Read more

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“I am Batman.” ⌘ Read more

** week notes **
It got a wee bit cold here in Maine this weekend. It was thankfully uneventful for us. We hung around inside and watched it get real cold outside. Our home faired pretty well, too. Honestly pleasantly surprised about that!

We picked this weekend to go all in on potty training — pantsless days, treats, rousing bouts of encouragement sung, and a lot of spot cleaning. Fueled by hubris, I thought we had this potty trainin … ⌘ Read more

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“I’m on a boat.” ⌘ Read more

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Snorlax leaning into the whole vibe of her namesake. ⌘ Read more

** I read some books in 2022, and have some thoughts about computer science writing **
At the start of this year I set out to revive my long dead reading habit. After having kids it fell by the wayside. I’ve read 41 books so far this year. Mostly a mix of science fiction and nonfiction computer science books. Here’s the complete list of everything I’ve read. I’ve got mixed feelings about keeping track and sharing cou … ⌘ Read more

** Thoughts on accessibility in smol computing **
What follows is my attempt to spark a conversation in a few converging, but separate communities I lurk in.

I’ve already had a bunch of amazing conversations around this topic with a lot of people. Those conversations helped to shape what follows. Thanks to everyone who was willing to think this stuff through with me.

Before I get into it I want to say at the top this isn’t meant as an accusation against anyone in these communities, nor the goals of t … ⌘ Read more

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** December adventure **
Over the past couple years I’ve done the advent of code to varying degrees. I thought I was going to do it again this year but decided to try something different. I’ve been calling what came together a“ December Adventure.”

It isn’t anything fancy; throughout December I aim to write a little bit of code everyday. So far I’ve written a bit of apl, bash, elisp, explored a bunch of flavors of scheme, and star … ⌘ Read more

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We visited a troll in the woods this evening. ⌘ Read more

In reply to: chreke’s blog - Little Languages Are The Future Of Programming

The idea is that as you start to find patterns in your application, you can encode them in a little language—this language would then allow you to express these patterns in a more compact manner than would be possible by other means of abstraction. Not only could this buck the trend of ever-growing applications, it would … ⌘ Read more

In reply to: Oatmeal - My programming language odyssey

A while ago someone asked what I liked about the programming languages I like — forth and lisp specifically.

I’ve noodled on it for a bit now, and I think the reason I like forth and scheme and other languages with something like a repl is because when I start a new project I’m dropped right into the entire language and t … ⌘ Read more

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Happy birthday hugs ⌘ Read more

** Occasional notes **
If they aren’t weekly, I guess they’re occasional?

3rd repair procedure to fix brain bleed was a success. I have a few more scans and follow ups, but, knock wood I think I’m through at this point.

I’ve spent about a week laying low and taking it easy navigating some wild pain, but that is subsiding now. I watched a bunch of stuff. It was a nice change of pace. I don’t typically watch much television or many movies. Stand outs (all things I revisited) include:

• Michael Clayton
  
• Point Break, the o … ⌘ Read more

** uxn exit **
This evening I sat down on the couch sleepy. We’d just gotten the kids into bed. I hadn’t planned on writing any code but figured I’d round the evening out with some reading.

First I read through the docs and glossary of uf, a forth system for uxn. Then I read through an example program provided by uf.

…with my palette whetted I [re-visited some other forth documentation](https://eli.li/_assets/bin/P … ⌘ Read more

** uxn laboratory **
As I look to assembly nights 2, and think of trying my own take on it, I wanna have a cozy space ready to play with uxn.

The setup I’ve landed on is sort of inspired by plan9port.

• in home directory, create au directory
  
• inu clone uxn and build it
  
• add~/u/uxn/ to your path as $UXN
  
• add$UXN/bin to your path
  
• moving forward we’ll put any and all*.rom files into … ⌘ Read more

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We found a big mushroom. ⌘ Read more

** week notes **
Am I allowed to call them“week notes” if I don’t do them weekly?

I went in for what was supposed to be my final brain scan, a diagnostic angiogram (don’t look that up). The good news is that the repair has officially cured my brain bleed! The bad news is that they saw another vessel that looks primed to bleed; I’m due for another repair procedure sometime in October. I’m pretty bummed to not be done with this ordeal, but trying to remain optimistic that this new one was caught before it bled and because the surgeon s … ⌘ Read more

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** Miscellaneous this and that **
Since my brain injury (which I’ve since learned can be called an“ABI” or“acquired brain injury”) I’ve noticed that I have trouble focusing on programming tasks; I’m able to do what I need to do for work and family but, when it comes time for hobby projects I’m just gloop. Totally oozy.

Because of that I’ve been drawn to do more reading and game playing, but also still wanna code…I’ve found that it is easier to use more“batteries included” kinda languages, namely scheme, over what I’d … ⌘ Read more

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In reply to: episode 8

👋 Oh hai!

I was interviewed on a podcast! ⌘ Read more

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In reply to: A simple mess

This is also something people keep getting wrong about Markdown as originally presented. Markdown isn’t a format. It’s a convenience tool that helps you write some of the boringest and commonest parts of HTML easier, and you can easily drop into more wonky HTML at any time.

Yes yes yes yes yes yes! ⌘ Read more

** Lamination for a lost explorer **
I remember the days when Kicks Condor used to update regularly. I miss those days.

For a while every post seemed to unearth some new, yet weirder corner of the little internet (maybe not yet the smol web).

There are folks doing similar web archeology…I do some of it myself…but no one does it like Kicks was doing it; there was often a feeling of unknown, but ulterior motive behind the curation — bits building towards a cohesive something.

Perhaps … ⌘ Read more

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🌱🦛 ⌘ Read more

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In reply to: Oatmeal - That one time when Buffy the Vampire Slayer maybe saved my life?

After giving my brain bleed time to heal the neurosurgeon called me back in to hospital; the plan was to reassess, attempt to fix it using the minimally invasive technique that they tried once before, and if that didn’t work, do something a bit more squidgy dir … ⌘ Read more

** That one time when Buffy the Vampire Slayer maybe saved my life? **
A secret pleasure of mine in high school was getting home before my parents and watching 30 - 60 minutes of TV. I technically wasn’t allowed to do it, but I suspect they new I snuck this time whenever I could.

My favorite show to watch in this secreted me-time was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of all the episodes 3 have stuck with me the longest — the musical one…because of course…and the a pair of episodes;“I Was … ⌘ Read more

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I’m toying with the idea of becoming a full time Mac OS System 7 developer. ⌘ Read more

** My programming language odyssey **
While I wouldn’t say I’m wicked adept at any one language, I’ve dipped my toes into many different languages. Here, I try to roughly recreate my programming language journey.

The web. A marvel, a terror. I started here, more out of ease of access than necessity, but was able to get far enough to make a career out of web dev. I should also add SQL to this list.

[Elm](https://elm-lang … ⌘ Read more

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An unexpected visitor came to the tree in our neighbor’s yard today. ⌘ Read more

In reply to: ~karlen

I was recently introduced to this series by @dozens where blogposts that are at least a year old and feature the phrase“no one will ever read this but” are read allowed…and…it is remarkable. ⌘ Read more

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Signs of spring ⌘ Read more

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Birch poly pore. ⌘ Read more

** 2022-02-24 feature/6.0 Android test plan **

Will test the upgrade path from a known state to new version to ensure that settings and app state are maintained during upgrade process.

V. 6.0 of libro.fm android app introduces an entirely new local database. This testing is focused on ensuring that local data remains intact between versions.

This evening I was mostly focused on setting up a successful build of feature/6.0 on my test device or the emulator. So far, no dice. My next … ⌘ Read more

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From where to what? ⌘ Read more

** What is an addressing mode? **
In a recent post I referenced addressing modes. But what the heck are they!?

The instruction register holds the program instruction that is currently being run.

A fixed number of bits within the instruction register represent the operation, e.g. “op. code” — examples of these instructions include things like add, subtract, load, and store. We can imagine the instruction register like this:

[![ASCII diagram of … ⌘ Read more

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** Notes on 6502 Assembly **
The NES runs a very slightly modified 6502 processor. What follows are some very introductory, and not at all exhaustive notes on 6502 Assembly, or ASM.

If you find this at all interesting, Easy 6502 is a really great introductory primer on 6502 Assembly that lets you get your hands dirty right from a web browser.

Numbers pre … ⌘ Read more

** ** ⌘ Read more

** Chess Rules **
I love when folks say stuff like“there are only a finite number of states a chessboard can occupy, therefore a computer can play chess.”

To the folks who say such things — I wish you to play chess with my 6 year old.

Be not confined by rules! The only things governing chess in this house here are the laws of physics!

…and even then, not all need apply.

For instance, during a recent game the opposing kings left the board in order to go out on an adventure. They returned later with a large, plastic dragon. The dra … ⌘ Read more

** A quick and dirty intro to the .pbm file format **
I’ve been fiddling with writing programs that draw pictures. I started with PostScript for this, but have since moved to writing programs that output in the .pbm format.

My goal here is to write noise to a .pbm file.

A .pbm file is the lowest common denominator among image file formats.

An example of the format,

”`hljs plaintext
P1

5 5
1 0 1 0 1
0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 … ⌘ Read more”`

** ** ⌘ Read more

Eagle-eyed folks may have noticed that I made a few wee changes to this website.

The biggest, and most noticeable one is that I’ve filtered out all of the like type posts from appearing on the main feed, from rss, and in the archives. There were waaaaay to many, so filtering them out makes the entire website a lot more navigable. They are not gone, though, and I’ll probably keep sharing like type posts, but now they ar … ⌘ Read more

I feel like it took me a bit longer to fully understand how to work in Smalltalk than it did most languages. The IDE is different than anything I’ve used before, and probably anything you’ve seen as well. You’re not going to be opening myscript.st in your favorite text editor, and then run it from the command line as you would a Python program. It takes a little mental adjustment to start with.

That’s not the warning, howe … ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Virtual Pet Jam - itch.io ⌘ Read more

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🙌 Liked: Vlojure ⌘ Read more

** Forth, a tool for cultivating community **
I watch most of the recordings of the Forth2020’s Zoom chats. A topic that comes up from time to time is how to get more folks interested in Forth — especially younger folks. In my weird little corner of the internet I can say that there are certainly young folks interested in Forth!

I wonder if the issue at play is less one of interest, and more one of cross c … ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Mimic — Buried Treasure ⌘ Read more

In reply to: The Whippet 137: Please don’t make me fight a fire ant

It’s named after Texan exterminator Tom Rasberry, but you can call it a Raspberry Crazy Ant if you want and no one will notice I bet.

The Raspberry Crazy Ant, for some reason, loves electronics, so it will come and chew through wires and get electrocuted. When an ant dies, it releases an … ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: NASM Assembly Language Tutorials - asmtutor.com ⌘ Read more

** Star Wars, and a year in review **
I tried to write a“ year in review” kinda post, but it got wicked melodramatic pretty fast. This year has been a slog…it really fucking sucked.

Rather than reflect on it further, I thought I’d write about something vapid that I’ve been thinking a bit about lately instead: Star Wars.

Despite my best efforts, I’ve always loved Star Wars. As a child I spent hundreds of hours pouring over novels, and comics, and books of sch … ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Stampadia, print and play roguelike ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Hempuli’s blog >> Snake nest ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: generative artistry, interactive tutorials ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Lisp in Life - Conway’s Game of Life ⌘ Read more

** Olophont.js **
In Lord of the Rings there are creatures that look like giant elephants. JRR Tolkien named these creatures“olophonts…” simply replacing every vowel in the word elephant with an o. Here is a javascript function to do the same thing.

 javascript
<span class="hljs-function"><span class="hljs-keyword">function</span> <span class="hljs-title">olophont</span>(<span class="hljs-params">string</span>) </span>{
  <span class="hljs-keyword">let</span> replaceVowels = <span class="hljs-string">""</span> ... ⌘ [Read more](https://eli.li/2021/12/20/olophont-js)

** Introducing Guava **
I’ve been fascinated by Forth and concatenative programming for a while now. I can’t remember how I initially stumbled in to it, but once I got going I’ve been unable to stop. I’m a wee bit in love with it.

Wanting to play a bit with implementing my own spin on things and having opinions about tooling, I picked up a little scripting language called [Ripen](https://felix.plesoia … ⌘ Read more

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The watcher returns. Visited at the beginning of the now endless pandemic, we moved house, thinking that the eye wouldn’t follow. Now, years later, the eye has opened. We are seen. Perceived through an endless void. A summoning. ⌘ Read more

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Pick your character! ⌘ Read more

** ** ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: About Forth Haiku ⌘ Read more

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Cat in a cardboard egg ⌘ Read more

** Operators in C **
Following up my notes on Data Types and Variables in C here are notes on operators in C.

An operator is a symbol that represents a mathematical or logical operation. An operator effects operands.

C provides a number of operators.

Some arithmetic operators include,

”`hljs plaintext

*
/
%
”`

% is the most exciting of the list, it is called modulo and it returns the remainder after division. Of note, modulo c … ⌘ Read more

I got a menu in the mail from a new Chinese food restaurant. Across the front of the menu, beneath the phone number is a note,

“Open Christmas!”

I feel seen. ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Hallucinating Facts: Psychedelic Science and the Epistemic Power of Data, by Emma Stamm ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: JohnEarnest/Mako: A simple virtual game console ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Byte Magazine Volume 07 Number 12 - Game Plan 1982, Cosmic Conquest ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Resurrecting a 40 Year Old Forth Strategy Game ⌘ Read more

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Up and up and up ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Famicom Party ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: BQN: finally, an APL for your flying saucer ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: historicalsource (Historical Source) / Repositories · GitHub ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: #273: Weird Browsers | CSS Tricks ⌘ Read more

I realized this morning why I’m put off by super hero movies. They are fun, and I’ve always loved comic books, but the super hero movies of the last decade specifically, (I mean, beside being military propaganda) totally omit the potential future of any sort of utopia. They cannot envision their own undoing.

The stories are predicated on the super heros always needing something to be super against, despite having fantastical abilities to help usher in some sort of uto … ⌘ Read more

** What is Solar Punk? ** ⌘ Read more

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Woods walk. ⌘ Read more

** Data Types and Variables in C **
I’ve been writing a heap of Lua lately — this has lead to my becoming interested, again, in C. Here are some ancient notes I dug up on the most basics of data types and variables in C.

All of a computer’s memory is comprised of bits. A sequence of 8 bits forms a byte. A group of bytes (typically 4 or 8) form a word. Each word is associated with a memory address. The address increases by 1 with each byte of memory.

In C, a byte is an object that is as big as t … ⌘ Read more

In reply to: MEMEX - The Small Website Discoverability Crisis [2021-09-08]

A proposal, dear reader: Create a list of bookmarks linking to websites you find interesting, and publish it for the world to see. You decide what constitutes“interesting”. ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Building Tiny Raspberry Pi Linux Images With Buildroot ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Climate Change Is the New Dot-Com Bubble | WIRED ⌘ Read more

In reply to: Sable: Kotaku Review, My Top Game of 2021

Sable’s world is not a broken machine, it’s doing fine. You’re not on some grand quest to save it, or return the planet to its former glory. You’re just a girl growing up in this place, and growing up means choosing a new mask.

Closing,

Sable imagines identity and growth as playful, joyous, and nearly impossible to fail. It promises you that chang … ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Patterns in confusing explanations ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Concrete: The material that’s ‘too vast to imagine’ - BBC Future ⌘ Read more

** How to install Uxn on macOS **
Uxn is an esoteric stack-machine with 32 bit instructions. It exists someplace at the intersection of a GameBoy, 6502 ASM, an Apple II, Forth, RetroForth, the z80, a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and“what if Nausicaä from Studio Ghibli’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind used a computer?” It is tiny, unlike most anything else around these days, and, once you wrap your head around it, pretty fun.

I won’t go into how to develop for it … ⌘ Read more

In reply to: Kids who grew up with search engines could change STEM education forever - The Verge

This, for me, points to the arbitrariness of the“desktop” as a prime metaphor in computer user interfaces.

It made sense at the birth of contemporary computing — business suits and what not — but maybe there’s a new paradigm worth explori … ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Interactive Fiction: The Computer Storygame “Adventure” : Mary Ann Buckles : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: WDR paper computer - Wikipedia ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Paper Computing ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Pixel Art Tutorials - Saint11 ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Bringing the Unix Philosophy to the 21st Century - Brazil’s Blog ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Jett: The Far Shore’s fictional language started life as gibberish choral music | Rock Paper Shotgun ⌘ Read more

🙌 Liked: Single bee is making an immortal clone army thanks to a genetic fluke | Live Science ⌘ Read more