I left my last job in software almost 2 years ago, and I planned to take some recovery time and then start my own business. Of course, I assumed I’d start a software business since that’s what I was immersed in. But as I spent time less time online and more time with my city, I started seeing ways I could transfer my skills into a project that resonates with my local community. Hubert’s is a…
I recently developed a custom Game Boy game, flashed it onto physical cartridges, and sold them at a local makers festival . The whole process was surprisingly straight-forward, and I think more professional developers should give it a try. As a career-long software guy, it felt rewarding to exchange real money for a tangible good. My game, Hot Dog Race, is based on the 4th-inning show at…
Google seems to intentionally handicap it’s “subscribe from URL” feature by limiting how often it resyncs. In an ideal world, users could provide an ICalendar (ICS) URL and easily select how often they want to check for updates. Most calendar clients work this way already. Google Calendar is a lone holdout here though—users cannot set their own intervals, and syncs can take days . As an individual…
I feel obligated to write this post given how difficult it was to find prior art online. At one point in the journey, my Google search yielded only a single (albeit helpful) Mastadon toot. Hopefully, the content here assists the next wandering soul who ventures down this seemingly reasonable path. Here’s the summary for those just here for the solution: you can deploy a web server, like Caddy, as…
Multi is a macOS app for creating native wrappers around your favorite websites. Since Multi apps use Apple’s WebKit engine, they are generally less resource-intensive than their Electron equivalents. The Multi runtime also connects web platform APIs to macOS native widgets, like notifications—the little feature that turned the 3.0 release into a complete rewrite. Prior to this release, Multi used…
I typically start new front-end prototypes with a single HTML file that I view using a file:// URL. I enjoy this practice of incrementally growing my projects, so I’ll keep working in that single file for as long as I can. Once it becomes unwieldy, I’ll split out the CSS and JavaScript into dedicated files. Then when manual DOM manipulation gets too complex, I’ll reach for a front-end framework.…
I occasionally make music . And like many a programmer-turned-music-maker, my musical process often devolves into writing code to optimize various parts of my workflow. Typebeat is my latest contribution to that tradition. It’s a virtual groovebox that’s entirely keyboard-operated: Edit (2022-03-19): I decided to make the source code public as well. Enjoy! github.com/kofigumbs/typebeat You can…
Perhaps my favorite phase of any project is when I get to call it done. Multi has come a long way since its initial announcement . It was neat to have built a tool that (1) had become part of my daily workflow and (2) had so many interesting opportunities for extension. Neither of those points are true for me today, so I decided to make Multi free for new users. Selling Multi earned around $1500.…