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In September I looked back at my '25 resolutions and turns out I'd gotten something done for once. For 2026 I'm not setting resolutions as I don't feel I can be resolute about them right now. Time is scarce and my mind is fickle. Still, there are some things I'd like to do, including writing more. So I'm writing something down just for my own accountability as much as anything. 2025 Final Status…
Excuse my language, but I feel it's necessary to explain the levels of my confusion right now. Like it or loathe it, generative AI has changed the coding game. I've not played with a lot of tools, and have really only used Claude Code in anger for a couple of months, here's a brief overview to set the stage: Claude Code - I'm using this for work. It's impressive but it's performance fluctuates…
Turns out I've not written a thing this year, though I haven't been entirely slack. I figured an update would make sense just for my own sanity as much as anything else. A Reminder These are the goals I set for myself: Finish the port of the ZX Spectrum Next game Get a fully playable 'demo' (i.e. at least one level) of my STE platformer - a complete vertical slice Get the engine out of the Honda,…
I wrote a post last year detailing some goals for the year, in the hope that some structure might help me actually finish something for once. It kinda helped, I did look back it at once or twice, but success was a mixed bag, because as usual one thing led to another and one hobby project got dropped for three more. Status check on 2024 Sort out the Atari STF that I bought and need to sell I…
Let's cut to the chase. I remembered this game. I knew it existed. I knew it played something like Indiana Jones' Desktop Adventures. Could I find it? No. Does it exist? Yes. Have I found it? Very yes. Striking Gold Searching online for this think I came up with nothing, though I tried a few times over the years I never found myself getting any further, though one fateful day I did find a reddit…
For some time I've run a Minecraft Bedrock server for my kids on an old 2013 Macbook Pro, which was running Ubuntu 18.04. Apart from occasionally updating the Minecraft server software I've barely had to touch it, but that process was still a little tedious, and then recently I hit the point where I couldn't easily update Ubuntu because that release was no longer supported. I attempted to do an…
If you're using an SD-Card with an Atari machine, you'll need a driver to make it work. There's ICD Pro which is old, but free, Pera Putnik's drivers which he sells quite cheap for the specific machine configuration that you request, and then there's Dr. Uwe Seimet's venerable HDDriver . This costs a fair bit more but it supports all Atari ST-line machines and just about any disk hardware. I…
Today I discovered a blog post that I wrote years ago and had completely forgotten about, a list of 4 coding resolutions for 2013 (I was being a smart arse and wrote 100 in the title for a binary representation of 4). I don't think I ever went back to the post, but in short they were: Learn more ARM Assembly Contribute to Haiku Finish a Game Continue to Participate in the Force.com/Salesforce…
So yesterday I finished up hitting an assertion in brownout, one of the tools that comes with the brown versions of the GCC compiler, and I seem to recall it does some format conversion of, well, something. brownout: brownout.cpp:418: std::map >::iterator get_section_for_va(elfsectionboundsmap_t&, uint32_t): Assertion `_va >= reference_bound->second.first' failed. make: *** [Makefile:190:…
AGT (Atari Game Tools) is a set of tools and libraries built by DML, aka Douglas Little, and to be frank the guy's knowledge of Atari ST/STE/Falcon development is humbling. AGT makes it quite easy to get started moving sprites and backgrounds around the screen in ways that would have dropped jaws back in the day, because Douglas has done the hardwork for you. What it doesn't do is bring down game…
As per my last post, I've been busy futzing around with an old PC, and in doing so I wanted to hear it's audio output. Due to a rather restricted setup I reasoned the best way to do this would be to use the line-in on my main PC since it's pretty much always on when I use that other machine. In Windows this was very easy indeed, visit the old sound settings panel (not the new UI one), go to input…
The Backstory Some years ago I picked up on old PC from eBay for $20 with a few to check whether it worked (it was listed as not working), see if I could fix it, and hopefully shift it on. What I didn't count on at the time was an onslaught of nostalgic feelings for old PCs. Beige boxes have never been that exciting, and the evolution of PC so gradual (apart from a few notable moments [1] ) that I…
Somehow almost all of 2022 passed me by without a post, bit with the recent release of the Haiku R1/beta4 I figured it was about time that I finally worked out how to get it dual booting with Windows 11, rather than just settling for booting via USB whenever I wanted to use it. Warning! I'm no expert on EFI booting. This is simply a writeup of how I got Windows 11 and Haiku R1/beta4 booting side…
I rarely use Office, it's something I have to deal with time-to-time as a part of working with clients, and out of the suite Excel is the tool that gets used the most. If you've got a licence for it, it really is a solid piece of software for working with relatively small (say 1/4M) data sets. Sure I do some CSV manipulation using standard *nix tools such as sort , head , cat etc., but in some…
I recently finished reading Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and it was an interesting ride to say the least. First and foremost it's a book on philosophy, which is something I wasn't accutely aware of, though I knew it was involved from various scraps of information I'd picked up over the years. Secondly it's a semi-autobiographical account of a road trip across the…
Recently I undertook a bit of a road trip, the kind that involves the better part of thousand kilometers. The kind that also includes three young children (read: five and under) in the back of the car. Clearly, entertainment was going to be needed. Our car actually has an after-party roof-mounted DVD player, which is great, but we only have a couple of DVDs that are in the correct region for it,…
Dark themes are all the rage, and have been for a few years now. On the one hand they can be great, on the other they sometimes still suffer from the same problems I encountered when trying to tweak my *nix desktops to be dark fifteen years ago - elements sometimes get missed, and either stand out horrifically, or simply get lost. Just today I logged into the Office 365 admin tools for our…
It's pretty common during interviews for software development roles for the interviewee to be asked about any side projects or hobby code, and rightfully so this is often seen as unfair. Coding in your spare time should not be a requirement, many people don't have the time for it, others may just want to spend their spare time doing something else, and they shouldn't be punished for that. Ever.…
On a niche podcast I host with a friend of mine, I mentioned how Chip's Challenge was released on Steam for free, and that somehow the size of this game was somewhere around 100MB. This may not sound big for a game, and today it really isn't with new AAA titles coming in closer to 100GB, but the thing is, Chip's Challenge is an old game. In fact archive.org has a copy of the Windows 3.1 version ,…
I tend to go through phases of reading books related to development, often reading a few back to back and then taking a break for a few years at a time. This isn't intentional but seems to be a natural cycle for me. Recently I've been reading them again, and the most recent book I read was John Ousterhout's A Philosophy of Software Design, and I wanted to make a few comments about it and to…
This is a blog related to programming, and such articles will be forthcoming, but I feel it's important to set the tone before going any further, and I genuinely struggle to work without music. When I started on this post it was supposed to include a variety of music, but I quickly realised it was taking on a very D&B slant, because once I'd included one track I wanted to include others that I…
For many years now I've blogged on and off at laceysnr.com , primarily around the Salesforce development ecosystem, but ocassionally on other more general programming topics too . I may move some of those posts here at some point, but probably not. I want this site to be a place where I can write about more generic programming interests, as well as make a home for my projects. For the latter it's…