Crossword: “Rain sounds”
I’m publishing a crossword on this blog for the first time — I hope you enjoy it. I’ve added some notes below the puzzle, offset with some space to avoid any spoilers.
parker higgins dot net
parker higgins is an artist and activist in brooklyn, new york
Latest posts
Fill Harmonics, the crossword puzzle music machine
Today I’m releasing Fill Harmonics, a music machine that takes its rules and styling from the world of crossword puzzles. The name is a pun: in crossword lingo, “fill” is the stuff that goes into the grid. This project is a collaboration with Natan Last, one of my cruciverbal inspirations and the author of “Across The Universe,” a very fun upcoming book on the history and culture of crosswords…
Cascading GitHub Action workflows for rebuilding static sites
A common pattern for building static sites on GitHub Pages (or similar) is to just trigger a new build every time there’s a change in the repository. This is very straightforward and well-tested, and works until you want to also trigger builds when something changes outside the repo. Then you run into some issues — but the solution, which took me some time to hunt down, turns out to be simple. The…
Recurse Center return statement, or What I did on my coding vacation
I’ve just wrapped a 12-week batch at Recurse Center, a self-directed coding retreat that provides an environment for people to become better programmers. I’m a huge fan of RC, and previously did a full batch in the summer of 2017 and a week-long minibatch at the start of 2019. It’s common for people finishing some time at Recurse Center to write up some notes afterwards, which are cutely called…
Generating an infinite sea shanty in the browser
For a project I’m working on, I wanted to generate an endless looping soundtrack that felt like a sea shanty continuing indefinitely without a fixed melody. This proved to be a fun exercise for both musical and technical reasons, so I thought I’d write up some thoughts on how that came together.
You can’t fork your own GitHub repo (but you can get pretty close)
I wanted to fork my own GitHub repo the other day, and it turns out you can’t. Instead, I got most of what I needed by duplicating the repo, and adding the original as a second remote.
A new website for Malaika, tracking crossword publications
A few weeks ago, my friend Malaika Handa nerd-sniped me with an interesting request. She is a very prolific crossword constructor (think: multiple publications a week) and she keeps comprehensive records of those publications in a spreadsheet that is always up to date.1 She wanted a site to display that history in a clean and browsable way. You may know about her 7xwords project, which published…
The Calendar of Song, by Michael Atkins
Over at Michael Atkins’ blog, he’s released a lovely artist’s statement on Calendar of Song, a new (and old) project I’ve helped to get working over the years. Through various tech stacks, the basic premise has stayed the same: Michael picks a song of the day, usually highlighting some lyrical relevance or historical coincidence, and some Parker tech “publishes” it.
Using Google Sheets as a database for projects
As a software developer who enjoys working on hobby projects, especially with less technical collaborators, I have found myself using Google Sheets as a good-enough database in a lot of circumstances. I have lots of qualms about having the biggest of Big Tech in a load-bearing spot on these projects, but the practical benefits and the existence of a reasonable exit route have helped to quiet them.
A Signal messenger API on your tailnet with Docker Compose
I’ve got a new configuration for sending Signal messages on the command line, and it’s powerful and flexible and finally gives me a nice ergonomic interface to use from other programs. Even cooler, it is accessible over Tailscale from any of my devices, which means I can securely reach it from multiple machines without going through the rigmarole of configuring and maintaining multiple copies of…