** Broughlike dev log **
I’ve been working on the broughlike pretty steadily since my last update. The gameplay loop is pretty much unchanged, but I’ve added a fair bit of polish, and fixed a lot of bugs. I think it is honestly sort of boring to play, but I am excited to have this as the starting point for future projects…can you smell the roguelike!? I can!

The major fixes and improvements that I’ve made since my last update include:

• better way finding … ⌘ Read more

** Broughlike **
The Roguelike Celebration happened this weekend. Every year I think about participating, and every year I let it slip me by. In honor of it, though, this weekend I made a Broughlike…which I’ve creatively named “Eli’s Broughlike.”

It runs in the browser. It should work on most anything with a keyboard, or with a touchscreen — the about page ha … ⌘ Read more

** Sleepy garden beds **
This afternoon I put the garden to sleep for the fall; in the past we’ve had some fall and winter vegetables going, but this year that didn’t happen, so, I emptied out the rain barrels, cleaned them out, trundled them to a place where they wouldn’t get blown around by any winds, mulched some of the beds, weeded and generally plotzed around like a garden goblin.

I’ve fallen into the habit of making a big thing of rice over the weekend — I always intend to do something with this rice, but instead I use it for s … ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

A photograph of silhouetted trees in front of the northern lights. A large gravestone is barely visible in one corner of the image.

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** 📸 Photo **

A photograph of silhouetted trees in front of the northern lights.

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** 📸 Photo **

A photograph of silhouetted trees in front of the northern lights. They’re visible as sheets of pinks and reds.

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** 📸 Photo **

A blurry photograph of a child in colorful overalls holding a mini golf club high over their head standing in front of a “life size” brachiosaurus.

Dinosaur golf before it shuts for the season. ⌘ Read more

** Guitar driven development **
I’ve found myself in possession of a guitar. Actually, the guitar that I had in middle school has come back to me after a decade’s long jaunt with someone else. I don’t really play guitar, but, I figured I should restring it and tune it.

I’m really very bad at tuning, so, rather than get good at that, or use any of the existing tools within reach of the internet to help me with that I made a thing. Tuner is a little web app that does 2 things: using a device’s … ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

A photograph of a sleepy cat lounging in a sunny patch on a bed covered in a grey blanket.

Solar powered. ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

A relatively close up photograph of many yellow and white flowers in a meadow. The sky is blue and the image is processed to have a warmer hue. It is out of focus.

I had time to take a walk before running some errands and getting a flu shot and a Covid booster this morning. ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

Two kids in shorts and sweaters standing on a lumpy rock looking out over some Rosa Rugosa at the sea.

It is starting to smell like fall! ⌘ Read more

** A playground for sharing scrappy fiddles **
I shared some snippets of JavaScript in a recent blog post and was wicked irked that I didn’t have an easy way to share interactive code on my own thing…so… I made a totally static JavaScript playground for running little experiments and sharing scrappy fiddles!

It is pretty simple — it allows folks to enter and run JavaScript, includes a console so you can easily log thing … ⌘ Read more

** Constants, variable assignment, and pointers **
After reading my last post, a friend asked an interesting question that I thought would also be fun to write about!

They noted that in the reshape function I declared the variable result as a constant. They asked if this was a mistake? Because I was resigning the value iteratively, shouldn’t it be declared using let?

What is happening there is that the constant is being declared as an array, so the reference … ⌘ Read more

** Reshape, in JavaScript and APL **
In APL the rho, ⍴, called reshape is used to both construct arrays of a given shape (dimensionality), and to reconfigure arrays into new shapes.

Sometimes I wish I had reshape in JavaScript…so I wrote it!

Here are two functions that, when combined, a la Captain Planet, can stand in for APL’s reshape in JavaScript.

Ravel is the simpler of the two, it takes an array of any dimension and ret … ⌘ Read more

** September summer **
I finished reading Robin Sloan’s Moonbound today. It was fun, and light. The blurb likens it to Narnia, and, while a bold claim, I think that was a correct assertion, but more about the intended audience than the book’s subject matter. If a sequel is ever written I’d most certainly give it a look. It seems like a great gift book for a kid between like 8 and 15…or you know, perhaps, anyone who likes fun stories that aren’t scared of bein … ⌘ Read more

** You, and me, and the HTML5 canvas, pixel art, and quest logs **
As we start to round out the summer I haven’t been reading as much, so I don’t have much to report on that front, but I have been keeping busy!

I made yet another pixel art drawing tool, pixel pixel pixel pixel pixel pixel allows folks to draw chonky pixel art creations on pretty much any sized canvas. This was fun to make. I’ve spent so much time with the HTML5 canvas lately that I’m rea … ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

Two young children in swim things are next to each other in the surface. They’re jumping over a small, crashing wave. Above them an overcast sky stretches waaaaaay out to sea. There’s some sea weed out on the drying sand, because the tied is going out.

Home beach. Last day of vacation for me. ⌘ Read more

** Evidently I’ve become a guy what that makes camera apps? **
I really like the unpredictable depth of field and color handling of single-use cameras. The day before we left for a little vacation to down east Maine I wrote another weird little camera app, lut cam. Lut cam attempts to simulate some of the aspects of a single-use camera by allowing you to apply color profiles to the raw image produced by a devic … ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

Two young children in sweaters and shorts, each with reddish hair and white skin sit on a large granite rock by the Atlantic Ocean. They’re looking out to sea. It is fairly foggy.

Summer vibing, fog horn whooping. ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

A photograph of a rocky coastline leading to the Atlantic Ocean. Beyond a large stretch of water is a point of land. There are some big fluffy clouds above it all.

Rocky shore. ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

Two children sit next to each other on a path in the woods. They’re surrounded by dense brush, and conifers. There’s a lot of hanging old man’s beard all around.

We took a boat to a teeny tiny island called Bean Island. We walked around the entire edge of the island’s rocky coastline.

There were some gloriously regal looking black backed gulls along the shore, as well as a pair of juvenile bald eagles who were making hilariously squeaky noises. ⌘ Read more

** Dithering the Shire **
In my last post I said that

I’ve had a few ideas for other personal experiments I wanna build on those walks, but haven’t actually wanted to do much programming — maybe this fall or winter will be a good time for that?

Welp, it wasn’t even an idea when I wrote that, but I made another implementation of pico cam, this time using swift for iOS. I won’t release it to the App Store because I d … ⌘ Read more

** I wrote some APL at work and I like historical fiction **
This summer my oldest kid — 8 years old — asked to learn more about programming. They’ve already got about a full time job’s worth of experience with Minecraft’s red stone, Super Mario Maker 2, Logo, and Scratch so I knew we weren’t starting from nil, but, despite having done a bit of teaching about programming with kids in the past, I hemmed and hawed. After hemming and hawing for a bit, though, I realized that I was hemming and hawing abou … ⌘ Read more

“It’s hard for a hungry man to swager”

This line from The Tale of Thorleif Earl’s Poet has gotta be one of the greatest lines from all of Icelandic saga literature. ⌘ Read more

** I made another thing, and continue trying to learn about logic programming **
After having dithering-fun making dither it and pico cam I made a little game, currently called“ puzzle dungeon,” which I admit isn’t a very good name at all. Puzzle dungeon is part logo, part dungeon crawling rogue-like … ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

Frog search. ⌘ Read more

** One trip to the beach inspired me to make two programs this weekend **
This weekend we traveled 20 minutes to a sort of secret beach. It was a grey, overcast day, and we timed our trip to line up with low tide so that we could walk waaaaaaay far out into the ocean all the way to some little islands. It was fun, and we saw some neat birds, including an Oyster Catcher. While on this adventure I took a picture. Later at home I thought“it’d be nice to dither this!” I usually reach for [Dit … ⌘ Read more

** The story of life **
Or at least the story of life as I implemented it in swift recently as a little learning project because I haven’t written any swift since walking away from mobile dev a few years ago (no regrets)!

First there was the universe! Well, first there was some requisite boilerplate, but then there was the universe! A 2 dimensional grid, an array of 10 columns and 10 rows.

”`hljs swift
import Foundation

let rows: IntRead more”`

** Astronomical occurrences **
In the span of two posts here I’ve witnessed two astronomical events! First the total solar eclipse, and then more recently the aurora borealis. Both were amazing, especially the aurora. I’d never seen either before and both were pretty incredible to behold.

I left my old job at the start of the month, and, after a few days off, I’ve started a new one! I’m really excited for this one, though around day two the anxiety and im … ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

A photograph looking up at the night sky. Sheets of aurora are visible across the sky in bands of green and purple.

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** 📸 Photo **

A male yellow rumped warbler showing off its dashing blue plumage and big old blue rump.

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** books, the end of winter, video games and javascript **
Since my last update I’ve read a handful of books. Some standout reads include Tales from Earthsea, The Other Wind and The Left Hand of Darkness, all by Ursula K. Le Guin. I’d read them all before, accepted for The Other Wind. I thought I’d read The Other Wind, but hadn’t! Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick was also a fun read. I liked it for the rabbit holes it invited me down; I’ve been thinking a lot … ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

Photograph of an eclipse during totality. The image is all black, with a black disc obscure the hallow of the sun.

Solar eclipse from Kingsfield, Maine. ⌘ Read more

** In reply to: Scaling accessibility beyond compliance at VA.gov through community and culture - Ad Hoc **
In reply to: Scaling accessibility beyond compliance at VA.gov through community and culture - Ad Hoc

If“accessibility as compliance” is a staircase where outcomes are restricted to the normative limitations of the law, Accessibility Beyond Compliance is an exponential curve. It isn’t limited to fulfilling legal constraints, and we can use it to explore, understand, and b … ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

A fuzzy silver and black cat lazily lounges on a yellow couch. Its grinch paw draped over its face.

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** 📸 Photo **

A black and white dog sleeps tightly curled in a small patch of sun dappling down through a window on to a yellow couch. Behind the couch a bunch of drawings made by kids are adhered to the wall.

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** Valentines, patron saint of bees, plague, and sushi **
Hot on the heals of recently being interviewed by Manu, I was interviewed by Kristen Foster-Marks from the Developer Success Lab. It was a lot of fun! We had a wide ranging conversation, but often came back around to the importance of“learning … ⌘ Read more

** Two good stories **
I just finished reading The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi. I loved it. When I finished A Memory Called Empire I assumed it’d be my most favorite book of the year — it has already been unseated!? I mean, if I kept track of favorites. As I finished The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi I immediately wanted more, so looked to see if there is a sequel (alas, no (or not yet, I hope!?)). I’ve got a gigantic l … ⌘ Read more

** Arkady Martine and Virginia Woolf **
As an undergrad and a grad student I was obsessed with Virginia Woolf. Woolf’s writings appeared in my citations pretty much regardless of the class or subject area I was writing on.

I have recently finished reading an engaging and lovely novel by Arkady Martine,“A Memory Called Empire.” Of course, I was excited to pick up the sequel, but, also, I had this feeling, this Woolf’s scent — I’ve always felt that Woolf’s nonfiction was more lucid and p … ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

The sun struck yellow rain boots of a kid, haphazardly left in the hall by a bright yellow wall. The floor is made of brick.

It’s been very damp. It was, however, recently sunny for a bit. Here is the proof of the sun’s continued existence. ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

A majestic, magnificent, teeny tiny White-throated Sparrow perched on an even teeny tinier branch. It is winter. It is grey. It is cold. The bird is royalty. A sovereign among fathered beasts. None know more regent a beast — Gloriana, but a dinosaur-footed, be-feathered friend.

Break thrones; build tables. ⌘ Read more

** A scrappy fiddle **

A screen recording of a teeny tiny browser window. The window starts by displaying a grey surface with a subtle white grid on top of it. A computer cursor moves around, occasionally it clicks to open a context menu that lists 3 choices, “circle, square, triangle.” When the cursor selects a shape that shape is inscribed within that grid cell.

I’ve had fun playing at implementing a very basic visual programming system over the last few days. I like the direction I’ve s … ⌘ Read more

** New year **
The last weeks of 2023 have been very enjoyable. Other than having to deal with a cascade of car issues, there’s been a lot of time to hang out with the partner and kids, wander around outside, and poke at fun personal projects…and I mean, work, too, but…you know.

The other evening I pulled together a fun Markov chain toy. It isn’t anything fancy, but I wanted the ability to feed a madlib style script to the program and have it use that as a template to fill in. The resulting program is beak and … ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

A photograph showing two children in light winter kit walking down to the ocean. It is very foggy out, making the ocean hard to see.

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** 📸 Photo **

A photograph taken from the center of a pedestrian bridge over a tidal river outlet looking out to sea. It is very foggy so that you can’t see all the way to the ocean which is about a quarter of a mile in the distance.

Foggy Christmas adventuring ⌘ Read more

** Accessibility-first **
Whereas mobile-first design and development invited folks to think more expansively about the physical reality of the devices people use, accessibility-first design and development invites folks to think more expansively about the lived experiences, and physical reality of actual people. ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

Photograph shows a young child in a purple winter coat, a beanie and fuzzy mittens holding a dog’s leash walking in a cemetery. It’s pretty foggy. The child and the dog both face away from the camera so that we see both of their backs.

Soggy winter ambling. ⌘ Read more

** an approximately programmer-shaped person **
I was recently interviewed by Manu for his People and Blogs series! It was a great honor to be suggested by Piper for that, and I had a blast responding to all of Manu’s questions.

The December Adventure is in full swing. There are so many fun adventure logs this year. I’ve been mostly focusing on building toys with [Decker](https://beyondloom.com/ … ⌘ Read more

Political speech is something I shy away from. But, of course, that is political.

Sometimes there are things that you can’t ignore. There are, perhaps, many such things…right now there is one that I’m particularly close to, close enough that I am made to look because I am in some way directly implicated in it.

I am Jewish. I was raised so, and live so today.

Being raised a Jew I was constantly taught to“never forget.”

There seems to have been a forgetting.

A genocide is being perpetrated against Palestinians. I r … ⌘ Read more

** 📸 Photo **

A dithered photograph of the grand lobby at the union station hotel in St. Louis, Missouri. There is a very large, arched ceiling, decorated with a mixture of deco and Nuevo modern ornimentation and filigrees.

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