A personal site of Adam Wolf's, containing posts and projects, ideally more digital garden-y than bloggy
Summary : StreetComplete is an Android app offering simple quests to fill in nearby missing OpenStreetMap data. Tags : links , maps Created : 30 July 2026 StreetComplete finds missing map data in your vicinity and displays it on a map as quests. Solve each quest by visiting the location on-site and answering a simple question to update the map. The info you enter is directly added to OpenStreetMap…
Summary : "Where do Hyrule's Rivers Go?" (33:04) by Any Austin is a funny and informative video essay filled with curiosity about the river systems and how water moves in the Zelda games "Tears of the Kingdom" and "Breath of the Wild". Tags : links , zelda , video Created : 19 March 2026 Where do Hyrule's Rivers Go? (33:04) by Any Austin My son, a bigtime Zelda fan, found this video and asked to…
Summary : " E. coli chemotaxis: the baffling intelligence of a single cell " is an engaging, interactive systems biology introduction into how E. coli bacteria sense and navigate their world. Tags : links , biology Created : 25 June 2025 “ E. coli chemotaxis: the baffling intelligence of a single cell ” by James Somers Since reading " I should have loved biology ", I try to read everything James…
Summary : rebase.missingCommitsCheck="error" protects against accidentally losing a commit when using git rebase . Assumed audience : folks who use git Type : tip I often interactively rebase git commits at the command line. The editor shows a list of commits. Each entry has one of a few actions. For example, “pick” means to leave the commit alone, while “squash” or “fixup” will combine a commit…
Summary : I've collected a set of guidelines to maintain consistency in my writing voice and presentation. Assumed audience : Future me and curious folks Tags : meta Created : 17 April 2025 Editing takes me a long time. Having a checklist and guidelines makes me faster. I like to collect folks’ personal writing guidelines, style guides, and their reasons to write. I found them helpful when writing…
Summary : I learn about shaders to make a post-processing effect for model-viewer that adds outlines to highlight detail in 3D CAD models. Assumed audience : curious folks on the web. You shouldn't need to know already know 3D graphics, shaders, or OpenGL. Don't lose heart! The world rewards curiosity. Project : part of Showcasing 3D CAD Models on the Web Tags : 3D graphics , web , computers…
Summary : I use Blender to export models from Fusion 360 to model-viewer, and I investigate unexpected visual problems. Assumed audience : folks on the web Project : part of Showcasing 3D CAD Models on the Web Tags : web , computers , 3D graphics Created : 10 June 2024 After exploring options for showcasing 3D CAD models on the web and compiling a list of desired features, I’m ready to experiment…
Assumed audience : Folks who can read English and might be interested in Esperanto Tags : Esperanto , They Might Be Giants Created : 05 June 2024 Esperanto words are often made of roots extended with affixes and an ending. For instance, arbo , “tree”, is the root arb with the –o ending for nouns. –ar– is an affix meaning “group or collection of a bunch of things of the same type”. We can smush…
Summary : " Adventures in Esperanto " is a fun blog written in English about Esperanto, enjoyable for Esperanto enthusiasts and anyone who loves language. Tags : links , Esperanto Created : 03 June 2024 If I were to write an Esperanto blog, I would hope it would be like Adventures in Esperanto . The author, Andy, has been writing about Esperanto since at least 2011. The posts are playful and are…
Ze Frank released a video a day for a year from March 2006 to March 2007. This seems like ancient history to many, but "I was there, Gandalf. I was there three thousand years ago." In retrospect, it may be difficult to see how much credit “ the show with ze frank ” deserves, because it was such an influence on the medium. Years after “the show” ended, he launched a new creative endeavour with the…
Summary : Vale checks prose style rules across plain text and markup files, like Markdown and HTML. In this quick tip, I set Vale up to check this site. Assumed audience : anyone Type : tip I came across Vale , an open-source command-line tool that checks prose style. It’s like a linter or traditional style checker, but instead of code, it’s for text. I’ve been looking for something like this for…
Summary : Choosing a text encoding for friendly, easy-to-say, difficult-to-misunderstand identifiers can be tricky, with important choices in density and characters. Assumed audience : folks at least somewhat familiar with character sets and encoding data. If this doesn't describe you, don't lose heart! The world rewards curiosity. Tags : math , computers Created : 14 April 2024 I needed to create…
Summary : I list goals for a viewer meant for showcasing 3D CAD models on the web. Assumed audience : folks on the web Project : part of Showcasing 3D CAD Models on the Web Tags : web , computers Created : 08 March 2024 My hopes and dreams for a 3D CAD model viewer may be nitpicky and particular, but they’re mine. I’m planning to write about CAD models, and I want to point to details in an…
Summary : I investigate 3D model viewers for the web, including model-viewer , Sketchfab , View3D , and ThreePipe , to showcase CAD models on ATOM WOLF . I decide to start with model-viewer . Project : part of Showcasing 3D CAD Models on the Web Assumed audience : folks on the web Tags : web , computers Created : 06 March 2024 We’ve been putting 3D models on the web since 1994 , but doing it well…
Summary : git absorb helps you update a series of git commits. Assumed audience : folks who use git Type : tip I sometimes find myself in a particular situation with git. I have a small series of logical commits in a pull request. I need to make some edits. I could always make the edits on top of the logical commits and push the new commits, but usually, I’d rather edit the logical commits. My…
I added a fun MakeCode Arcade demo Bouncing DVD Logo to Projects . Watch the demo! MakeCode Arcade can be a slick way to introduce folks to game development. You write and play games in a browser. The programs can be loaded onto little handheld devices like the Adafruit PyBadge . The editor and handheld electronics aren't the only places you can run MakeCode Arcade games. Their kiosk provides a…
Summary : Logseq PDF citations show the page number and the quotation, but not the document name. I patched Logseq to include an optional customizable document name. Assumed audience : not Logseq users looking for a maintained, polished plugin Tags : Logseq , annotations , citations , open source , computers Created : 21 July 2023 Background Logseq has relatively best-in-class PDF annotation…
I’m working on a commissioned art piece where we’re looking for thick, exaggerated 3D printer layer lines. I bought a 1.2 mm high flow nozzle, much bigger than I’ve used before, and started tuning the settings. For a demo piece, I used a Benchy , scaled 2x. My first print with the nozzle was with a 0.9 mm layer height. The chonky Benchy fills my hand, and feels quite solid. It turned out great,…
I recently designed a case and stand for the Adafruit ESP32-S3 Reverse TFT Feather . The case/stand is a single piece, and snaps onto the board. The feet hold the electronics off the table whether it’s on its back or on its side. The little fins prop the board up at an angle when it’s standing. The buttons on the front flex and do a decent job preserving the clicky feel of the buttons on the…
Assumed audience : folks who use the command line Type : tip I frequently need to do simple parsing. Often I resort to grep and cut, or a regular expression I send through Python. I rarely use something like awk. I needed to look for a pattern in some text coming through a pipeline (“Configuration backup archive complete”), split that line up by colons, and print the second field. This is what I…
Assumed audience : folks who use GitHub Type : tip Sometimes, I want to watch for changes in a particular file on GitHub. When I’m part of the development team, sometimes a CODEOWNERS file works. GitHub will automatically flag me on upcoming changes to particular files or directories. If I’m not a member of the repository, a CODEOWNERS file won’t work. I found out recently that GitHub has RSS/Atom…