New Renderers for GTK
Recently, GTK gained not one, but two new renderers: one for GL and one for Vulkan. Since naming is hard, we reused existing names and called them “ngl” and “vulkan”. They are built from the same sources, therefore we also call them “unified” renderers. But what is exciting about them? A single source As mentioned […]
A writer fabricated a series of stories for Atlas Obscura
The story was charming: a short article about soups, continually replenished for decades, secreted in jars across oceans. The soups, according to one source, were “older than Taylor Swift.” I devoured the article, published in December 2022 on Atlas Obscura, an online publication billed as “best-in-class journalism about hidden places, incredible history, scientific marvels, and […]
Nix-direnv is a quality of life improvement
The reason I discovered an ancient blog post the other day was that I had something new to say about Nix for the first time in over two years. The thing I want to say is this: nix-direnv is great. It fixes roughly every problem that I’ve had with nix-shell, and does so in a […]
Two handy GDB breakpoint tricks
January 28, 2024 nullprogram.com/blog/2024/01/28/ Over the past couple months I’ve discovered a couple of handy tricks for working with GDB breakpoints. I figured these out on my own, and I’ve not seen either discussed elsewhere, so I really ought to share them. Continuable assertions The assert macro in typical C implementations leaves a lot to […]
GitHub Spam is out of control
Spam is nothing new, spam on GitHub is also not particularly new. Any site that accepts user-generated content will need to figure out how to prevent people from submitting spam, whether that is for scams, malicious software, or X-rated material. I have been getting tagged in Crypto related for the past 6 months or so. […]
Dorf Fort (2020)
Dwarf Fortress Preramble I played Dwarf Fortress more back in 2006 when it still was 2D but still check it out every now and then… mostly just fooling around. The threshold to get into it now is even steeper, with the 3D and all. I don’t use any utilities or mods, but I do modify […]
How the FBI Targeted Camus, and Then Sartre After the JFK Assassination (2013)
Today, as you must surely know, marks the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination and also surely marks a revival of interest in the myriad conspiracy theories that abound in the absence of a satisfactory explanation for the events at Dealey Plaza on November 22nd, 1963. One theory I’ve never heard floated before comes to […]
General purpose MCUs built in to LEDs emulate candle flicker
Years ago I spent some time analyzing Candle-Flicker LEDs that contain an integrated circuit to mimic the flickering nature of real candles. Artificial candles have evolved quite a bit since then, now including magnetically actuated “flames”, an even better candle-emulation. However, at the low end, there are still simple candles with candle-flicker LEDs to emulate […]
I need to grow away from these roots
~ vitling // David Whiting, 2023 Score A Enumerate every possible Major, Minor, Major 7th and Minor 7th chord and all possible inversions, beginning with A2 and ending with D5.Choose a random chord from the set.Play the chosen chord for 8 secondsFind all the chords from the set that have all but one note in […]
Fungi survives outside international space station
The McMurdo Dry Valleys, located in the Antarctic Victoria Land, are considered to be the most similar earthly equivalent to Mars. They make up one of the driest and most hostile environments on our planet, where strong winds scour away even snow and ice. Only so-called cryptoendolithic microorganisms, capable of surviving in cracks in rocks, […]