Thumbnail decoding challenge
A small Sunday challenge for people who like image processing and are better at it than me.
colin@colino.net
news for few, stuff no-one cares about. Made with zero 'AI'.
Latest posts
Fixing a Quicktake 150 serial connector
Notes on the wiring of the Quicktake serial Mini-DIN-8 to the ICs handling its signals.
Assembling the CISD (Colin’s Integrated Serial Device)
Assembly instructions for the CISD, Colin's Integrated Serial Device.
Upgrading my Apple II serial setup
Replacing my Apple II ad-hoc bunch of generic cables and generic switchboxes with a custom-made switchbox that integrates everything I need.
The Macintosh serial cable (Mini-DIN-8, 590-0552-A)
A few gotchas about the Mac serial cable. The one with two Mini-DIN-8 connectors that is used to connect ImageWriter II printers.
PCBWay sponsorship: full-size SD module for Arduino projects
My experience making assembled PCBs with PCBWay.
BurgerDisk news
A new option for the BurgerDisk, two new devices, USA distribution, and sourcing unobtainium connectors thanks to very kind people.
More Apple II chainable hard drives?
The BurgerDisk gets two little siblings.
The challenges of porting Shufflepuck Cafe to the 8 bits Apple II
An in-depth write-up about how I made Shufflepuck Cafe run at 60 fps on an 1MHz computer - including two-player network games.
BurgerDisk tests
Summary result table of BurgerDisk testing
BurgerDisk enclosure and the cardinality of options
My thought and test process to arrive to the simplest solution fitting all use cases of the BurgerDisk.
Handling Daisy-chaining storage on Apple II
Apple II storage: Notes about what is necessary for a Smartport device to be a good team player on the bus.
Why I forked the SPIISD project
The SPIISD is a very good, cheap solution to add storage to the non-slotted Apple IIc. But it was not working well enough for my use-case.
Optimizing a 6502 image decoder – part II: assembly
Second part of the article about image decoder optimization, this time focusing on 6502 assembly tricks.
Optimizing a 6502 image decoder, from 70 minutes to 1 minute
A little walkthrough on an image decoder algorithm's high-level optimization, in order to make more digestable for a 6502 processor.
Apple IIc serial setup, “quick and easy”
A memo to myself about the serial cabling on my Apple IIc.
Speed-coding for the 6502 – a simple example
A real-life example showing how to scale an image in either 10 seconds, or 0.2 seconds, using 6502 assembly.
Aligning cc65’s Apple2 runtime to hardware capabilities
It is now possible to use lowercase and 80 columns on the cc65 apple2 target. This article explains the changes.
Yes, the Apple II MouseCard IRQ is synced to the VBL
Some people thought it was not, but experience showed it is. Now theory joins practice and we can collectively be sure. A deep dive into synchronisation via cycle counting.
Beta releases of Shufflepuck for Apple II
Dear lovers of old computers, it is with great pleasure that I feel I can push the first beta version of my Apple II port of the famous Shufflepuck Cafe.
Glider for Apple II development log
A few technical details about my first 6502 assembly game, a rewrite of Glider for the Apple II.
Apple II: a simple way to play sound samples
I wrote a sound player samples generator to be able to easily play sounds from assembler on Apple II, using ca65.
Don’t optimize prematurely, BUT
But please do, at some point.
Porting Fujinet code to SURL serial protocol
How to port a Apple II Fujinet program to a different proxy system, surl-server.
Fuck capitalism in general and fuck Youtube in particular
Today in Capitalism fucking up shit since two centuries: the main reason why it is hard to play videos on an Apple II.
How I stream audio+video through an Apple II serial ports
My way of streaming audio+video to the 1MHz Apple IIc with no expansion slots (example video included)
How I stream video through an Apple II’s serial port
My way of streaming video to the 1MHz Apple IIc with no expansion slots (example videos included)
The Apple Quicktake 100 and 150 serial communication protocol
The basics of communicating with a Quicktake 100 camera over the serial port.
A debugger help for cc65 Apple II programs and MAME
A MAME debugger helper that allows visualizing symbols and source files/lines for Apple II programs developed with cc65.
Tracking and killing a cc65 corruption bug
How to track and kill a gnarly bug in the cc65 compiler toolchain on an emulated Apple II.
A very basic nginx-based SSL stripper proxy
Implement an SSL-stripper proxy using only nginx and 10 lines of configuration
Accessing the Internet with an Apple //c
This describes the solution I created to access Internet with my Apple IIc. I wanted it to require no special hardware, only a serial cable attached to a modern computer running a little bit of "proxy" software.
Advent of Code 2022 on the Apple //c
What it was like to do the 2022 edition of the Advent of Code on an Apple //c
Nerdy Advent of Code
Comment envoyer facilement du code et du texte vers un Apple //c.
WordPress: Fix thumbnail on Mastodon’s preview cards
How to fix missing thumbnails of Wordpress posts when shared on Mastodon
Automating ESP32 deployment via Ansible
ESPHome does not simplify deployment enough in my taste. Let's deploy ESP32s with Ansible!
#DIY: building an elliptical table with a butterfly extension
I've built an elliptical table to replace the current one which was a bit wonky, hard to clean up and too dark in my taste. The goal was to have as much room as previously for our five person meals, with an extension for when we have a number of guests - which is...
DIY: Clean Raspberry shutdown for RuneAudio
I made a second RuneAudio player this weekend.. The main difference, apart from the physical box, is power management. On my first setup, toggling the switch abruptly cuts power to the Raspberry, which can cause filesystem corruptions on the MicroSD card (and experience shows, in just ten days, that the MPD database sometimes ends...
Quick tip: Add multiple users with multiple public SSH keys with Ansible
...
Stravomatic: an Android app to automatically start Strava rides
This week-end I remembered that when I got my new phone, it counted my steps on its own, and I looked up why. I discovered that there's a Google Play Service that enables developers to get the user's activity (walking, running, cycling etc) and I decided to try to code my first Android app: Stravomatic....
My own homemade BB-8
After having seen the latest Star Wars movie, I, like numerous other geeks, fell in awe with the BB-8 droid, and, like numerous other geeks, I wanted to try and build one. So, I started by getting a 300mm plastic ball and another of 180mm diameter (which was more of a 160mm ball according to...
HP Laserjet P3005: fuser disassembly and gear kit replacement
Here's how to disassemble the fuser on an HP LaserJet P3005 printer, and replace the gear kit (which is a part that fails often, reference CB414-67923). First remove the sliding plastic part at the back of the printer, then remove these two screws : Then remove the big plastic panel, bottom first so it disengages...
How to act like an idiot and cost a free software project money
A few monthes ago, a user made us a 5 donation for Claws Mail's Windows version. Then asked me over email and Facebook friend request for support on "error messages that pop is starting up prior to sm something da da da" (actual quote). I just replied that this seemed like he'd need to...
Claws Mail donations: what are they for, what aren’t they for?
First of all, happy new year to everybody ! I'd like to talk a bit about the donations one can make to the Claws Mail project which I'm part of since approximately 12 years now, and tell a tale of something that luckily happened only once. There are three kinds of donations possible for the Claws...
iReport: adding QRCode to Jasper reports the easy way
After testing various complicated solutions to embed a QR Code into iReport Jasper reports, the easiest way I've found is this: 1) Put ZXing's Core and JavaSE jars in the classpath (using Tools/Options/Classpath if compiling locally, or the classpath property if using Ant and net.sf.jasperreports.ant.JRAntCompileTask) ZXing Core jar ZXing JavaSE jar 2) Add an image...
How to add the ATV4 orbit data to Stellarium
(English version - see also French version) ESA's ATV-4 Albert Einstein was successfully launched yesterday and is now orbiting Earth for nine days prior to its automated rendez-vous with the International Space Station. As for each satellite, it has TLE (Two-Line element) data publically available and it can be downloaded from celestrak.com for example...
T-shirts and other things for wannabe astronauts
I prepared, as a surprise for my space-fan child Paul, a T-shirt featuring the ISS - International Space Station. While I was at it, I took a bit more time and decided to make more, maybe some people will like it. So there are various ISS T-shirts, some Soyuz-based T-shirts, and some gadgets. I made...
Claws Mail’s Fancy HTML rendering plugin on Windows
Finally, after adding four packages and a huge build-fix patch, I've been able to build Webkit inside our cross-building infrastructure. That made Fancy buildable and allows for a better, more stable HTML rendering than with the old Gtkhtml2Viewer plugin. You can download and test it there: claws-mail-3.9.0cvs125pkg35.exe. Don't forget to unload GtkHTML2 and load Fancy...
Panorama, Hugin, Stellarium and three.js: Creating equirectangular panos
It's been a long time since I didn't post any geek stuff here, so here we go. At last! I've recently installed Stellarium, which is a great planetarium software, helping a lot to figure out what's above our heads at a given time, what will be, or what has been, which is great to learn...
Gaspard, 18 months old, and the rest of things
It seems I got somehow overwhelmed with real life these last days, months or even years... I just realized I didn't even mention here that my second son, Gaspard, is born on June 1st, 2011 ! So, as a matter of fact, Gaspard's born on June 1st, 2011 :) He was a healthy boy, 52.5 centimeters long...