November 29, 2021

Typing from the Back Porch

Commenting on the banal November 2021 is almost over. In some ways it seems like March 2020 just got here. Back then, not that I knew it at the time, but I was finishing up a gig at a small town newspaper. Part of the reason it was wrapping up was due to COVID-19, part of it was due to a mystery illness that was probably COVID-19, and part of it was stubbornness that kept me at my desk when I couldn’t do the work.

September 21, 2021

Fractal Mountains in Pygame

A fractal mountain, 1987 style. Sorry, no, the generator doesn’t use a CRT shader just yet. During the 2020 shutdowns, I decided to revive a really old interest of mine. Back in the 1980s when I was just a kid, my parents subscribed me to Compute! Magazine. For the folks who didn’t have the pleasure of living through those times or didn’t have a computer back then, software would be distributed as source code in books and magazines; the folks at home would have to type in the program to see it run.

September 17, 2021

September sunset

A couple of nights ago I was walking between buildings and just happened to catch this thunderhead at dusk. My phone’s not got the best camera ever, but in terms of beauty, the visuals and the rest of the weather were in sync that night.

September 16, 2021

Titlecase Indesign Script

I can’t take credit for the script; I used David Gouch’s Titlecase script and added in Mozilla’s Array.prototype.map() polyfill code. I worked at a newspaper for a while which insisted on New York Times style titles, which is what Titlecase tries to do. Almost none of the submitted headlines actually used Titlecase, so after a while my creative laziness kicked in and insisted on a more automated solution. Download here.

September 15, 2021

New Year, Same Old Site

I figured it was high time I started modifying my old blog. The content is getting embarrassingly stale. As in, some of that stuff was written when my kids were little, and now they’re in junior high and high school. (Oof.) Plus, I’m trying to get some paid writing off the ground. The last update was in 2016, right after a trip to Galax, Virginia. I got a recording of my wife’s cousin Dennis and his friends covering “One Horse Town,” with my phone at the time being the only place the recordings existed…and then broke the phone shortly after.