Tidal Cycles
Notes and resources on Haskell and the Tidal Cycles REPL, and integrating it with Neovim.
Loosed Design & Technology Blog
Blog posts, tutorials, and technical papers written by creative technologist, Dan Tompkins, on the Loosed Blog.
Latest posts
3D Printing
Notes and resources on 3D printing, including various printing technologies, popular printers, slicing software, and tips for successful prints.
Ender 3 Pro
Notes, tips, and tricks for using, maintaining, and upgrading the Creality Ender 3 Pro 3D printer.
Distro Hopping
As a kid, Windows and macOS were the only consumer-ready operating systems that I knew existed. I started on Windows 95, and didn't have an understanding about the underlying differences in kernels, filesystems, and user interfaces. I started playing with Raspberry Pi and Ubuntu and discovered...
Coding with Vibes
Dictating is often a lot faster than typing, especially with sophisticated transcription tools. Because of its logical structure, code is a lot harder to dictate than normal speech. LLMs, however, are perfect for translating natural language into code. I never thought I'd consider vibe coding— conversational programming— a viable work method. Although, after setting up my own AI-assisted…
Streaming
Knowledge about streaming tools, techniques, and software.
OBS
Tutorials and usage guides for creating content with the Open Broadcaster Software (OBS).
From QED to Neovim
From QED to Neovim, this blog post unveils the history and evolution of the digital text editor. Modern systems require a method to precisely select, input, and arrage text. It's natural that this tool should become indispensable.
Terminals
This documents some of the most popular terminal emulators— commenting on the speed and features of Ghostty, Alacritty, WezTerm, and more.
Ghostty
Ghostty is a terminal emulator written in Zig, designed for speed and modern features like ligatures, undercurl, and image support.
Next.js
In this page I share my experience using Next without Vercel hosting— and its associated costs ($$$), instead hosting on a generic VPS.
Neovim
Drop your IDE and make Neovim your programming daily driver. Explore the incredible features of this modernized fork of Vim— including asynchronous events and Lua scripting.
Graph
A force-directed graph of nodes and edges which visualizes the relationships between articles (blog posts and knowledge base) and their tags.
LLM
Large language models (LLMs) have proven to be powerful way to interact with digital information in a conversational manner.
Privacy Policy
This is the privacy policy page for l-o-o-s-e-d.net
Terms and Conditions
These are the terms and conditions for interacting with the l-o-o-s-e-d website.
About
What is l-o-o-s-e-d.net? Learn more about Dan Tompkins, the architecture school graduate developing and writing for this private lifestyle/tech blog.
Knowledge Base
The index of the Dan Tompkins' personal knowledge base, zettelkasten, or wiki. Discover the rare curiosities of the Loosed knowledge base here.
What I Use
Check out my gear and let me know in the comments what you're using!
Live
Live page
Vim Clutch
Hacking together a Vim Clutch from the foot-pedal control of a dictation machine. Learn how to make a Raspberry Pi 0 be recognized across operating systems as a plug-and-play Human-Interface Device (HID), or keyboard. See me struggle with Python and solder some really tiny leads.
Cars and Fish
Far too many of us have been in the same gut-wrenching situation. You're late. The doors slam as you rush into your car. Then you turn the key, and ... nothing . If you're less unlucky, you might still hear a click— or see the flash of a dash icon...
Regolith Linux
When did you first use a computer? I remember sitting at the corner desk in my childhood bedroom playing Descent II. It was probably the first video game I had ever played. The keyboard controlled the...
WSL2
In 2001, Microsoft's former CEO— Steve Ballmer— was quoted by the online tech news publication, The Register , saying: Linux is a
Microfactory 02
During my undergrad in architecture, one of the things that most excited me was the opportunity to work in a fabrication shop. At the time, my school had a modest metal shop and a slightly more expansive wood shop. They also provided students with two 3-axis CNTMotion CNC mills— each with a 5x10' bed. I've used these machines professionally as well, and (while they cost as much as a new Porsche)…
The Hug of Death
When people are actually reading your blog, it might crash! Over the span of a couple days, this website got 8000+ unique visitors to the Signs of Life post— I was "hugged" when I shared it on Hacker News.
Vim
From Vi to Vim to Neovim, here are some useful tips for shortcut enthusiasts, terminal geeks, and serious software engineers alike.
Microcontrollers
Some microcontrollers are used together to form single-board computers (SBCs). These are computers on a single chip!
DevOps
Developer operations (DevOps) is an important aspect of software engineering. Here are some of my notes and other useful DevOps tips.
Docker
Notes on Docker (and Docker Compose)— the popular containerization platform for building portable application images and containers.
Microfactory 01
In high school, there was no shop class. Sometimes I'd work on a project in the garage with my dad. Most of his tools are older, corded, and often uncooperative. I remember using saw-horses that wobbled— and a slightly rusted Skilsaw— to cut down ply for a Boy Scouts derby car. It had a hand-brake and a rope for steering. My dad seemed to stub his fingers and rake all the splinters…
Environments
As a software engineer or systems administrator, you'll want to know how to set up a BASH environment and configure an editor like Vim.
Bookmarks Dump
Exactly what the title says! I'll try to keep this page going with an updated dump of my bookmarks. You can export yours too— the tutorial's screenshots are outdated, but it still gets you to the right place. I used a couple simple Javascript functions to pull in the downloaded JSON file from Firefox, parse through it, and then styled the list with some basic CSS.
Introduction
More and more accounts of people (often programmers) using the KB structure to store frequently referenced information led me to begin building my own.
warTOR
Oddly, I don't remember when or how I got my hands on the Toshiba FlashAir card. These WiFi-enabled SD cards are made to transfer photos from a digital camera to a
Freego
The Boston Freedom Trail is a major tourist attraction for exploring many of the important monuments and sites of our nation's early history. My collaborators (Alicia Valencia, Hüma Şahin, Mallory Nezam) and I were tasked to address this historical pilgrimage— to observe and reflect on these sites in their past and present contexts.
Rosie, the Roomba Remix
You've probabaly seen the incredible kinetic artwork of Theo Jansen. In 2007, a TED video was released featuring the Dutch artist's Strandbeest — a skeletal-looking, beach crawler. Jansen's unique mechanical design allows the "beest" to walk across the sand, propelled by the wind.
Inhabiting an Other
Empathy… involves a lot of respect towards others… a tolerance to otherness without the projection of our feelings onto others, without stealing their voice and narrative. There is total acceptance of the difference in the other's (object's) feelings. Empathy is the way to understand another human being's spirit and mind, not only his feelings. In a confrontation with the other, and…
Hot Tub Phone Repair
You shouldn't be allowed to have nice things when you forget your phone in your swimsuit pocket— not once, but twice ! The first time was a Motorola Razr. I was swimming at my grandma's condo and came out of the pool with a dripping flip phone...
Bernie's Bills
Love Bernie's platform of student loan forgiveness? How could he actually achieve something like this?? Take a look at his bill.
Democratic Debates
Livestream and discussion as we follow candidates through the Democratic Debates.
Archive
Find all the previous Loosed blog posts together on one page!
Abstractions II
Abstractions is a kickass Web developement conference started in Pittsburgh. This was only the second Abstractions ever!
What the Blog?
Blogs?? That's right. You haven't time-traveled. We're 19 years past the turn of the millenium. People are giving up their writing to Medium , leaving Facebook (not MySpace), and YTMND is disappearing...
Killing a Startup
Together with Sam Piecz, I co-founded a web application for visualizing personal financial data and test-building portfolios. Since 2016, I worked as a designer and— eventually— as the go-to Javascript (JS) coder, for...
Reading List
If you're interested in a decentralized Internet, if you wonder how technology infiltrates politics (for better or worse), or if you're simply itching for a good read— take a look at one of the titles below. You'll find a mix of the pleasurable and the scholarly; but undoubtably something interesting.
Signs of Life
FM radio headphones were given out at the door. Each set was tuned beforehand to receive a broadcast from my programmed station. Visitors were then invited to walk around the room, contemplating the artifacts of the exhibit.
Public Internet
Nearly a decade ago, Facebook pioneered the concept of social media . However, it wasn’t until recently— as the platform boasts 2.1 billion users— that the full consequences of such an ubiquitous network have burst into the public eye. Now, Zuckerberg’s famed motto, “move fast and break things,” may have in fact contributed to a broken democracy. In his recent testimony before…
Public Domain
In the previous post, I took a quick look at Cass Sunstein's #republic — particularly, at the mechanisms of online polarization. I'm also empathetic to Sunstein's hopes for a dedicated online Commons . Here, I wanted to write some observations on the quality of designed spaces for shared experience— looking especially at the application of public art. Sunstein calls for a public…
A Republic, If You Can Keep It
Nicco's class Media and Journalism in the Digital Age is centered on what we're forced to loosely refer to as "news", or perhaps "news media". We talked about print news, which I feel (with the admitted naivety of a Millennial) conjures the most powerful image of News — or the ideals of a journalistic practice. No doubt The Post (the recent film) has sought to reinforce that feeling. It had…