I write about the past, present, and future of technology across three sites. imapenguin.com explores retro computing and programming fundamentals, milkcrunch.com covers modern software development and engineering culture, and evadot.com examines commercial spaceflight and the new space movement.
Posts
- This is why I went back to buying physical books and movies. I can’t read this at the hotel because my Kindle hasn’t been able to verify the DRM this morning. It was online YESTERDAY. Make paper great again.
- A Gentle Introduction to LFSRs · imapenguin
- Found these in a bin this morning. I can throw away all of my other electronics now that I have 4 do anything chips :)
- The Spudger is the most used tool in my shop. I need a 10 pack of them.
- Quick Post: Printing binary numbers in Commodore BASIC 2.0 · imapenguin
- Any calculator where the manual mentions two's compliment is a keeper in my book ;-)
- In 2021, I did a deep dive into Swift; I no longer use it. In 2022, it was Julia. I don't use it anymore. 2023 was Elixir; my usage is dropping off. In 2024, it's going to be Rust. Will it remain in my toolbox or be another tangent for me? Time will tell.
- My all time favorite book
- Just finished building this guy. It's a fun project and a decent learning environment to mash the RP2040 C++ environment with 6502 Assembly. It's an unlikely but surprisingly good pairing. What would be better on the RP2040, though? Rust.
- A little Logo fun this morning on the C64 since I saw a few snowflakes outside.
- Don't be a drone
- 21 years old, still a useful book. Not many computer books can say that.
- Day 6 of #AdventOfCode part 1 was a snap for the PET
- Alright Mr PET, you’re sitting #adventofcode2023 out today. Today’s is a doozy and you’ve earned a break.
- I appreciate modern conveniences more: first principles are worth it. Today's #adventofcode2023 in Python was 14 lines. Was 68 on the PET. Things like re.split("\s+", line) and list(map(int, parts[2:12])) feel like cheating. Do y'all even know how any of this works? ;-)
- It's just a big screen
- Didn't have much trouble with #AdventOfCode today BUT I'm reminded of how modern languages can do things like s.split(":") and get a nice list. Appreciate how much work went into that built-in function we take for granted. String splitting 1979 style for that 1st set of cubes...
- When is it cheating?
- Just popped over to the local Sears to get some new paddles. Totally rad.
- Wow, #AdventOfCode Day 1 was much more challenging than how it usually starts