All Articles

This week, I built a small embedded program with ChatGPT at the proverbial coder’s keyboard. The only coding I did was to correct small mistakes and to integrate the chunks I asked ChatGPT to generate. I am still experimenting with the various ways I can communicate with ChatGPT, so bear with me as I try … Continue reading “ChatGPT in an Embedded World: Quickly Making A Quote Display”

The technology is out there, available for anyone with an internet connection. Insane. If you have interacted with ChatGPT, it should be immediately clear that this isn’t Alexa, Siri, or ‘OK, Google.’ This is something new that will reshape how humans create. Strap in, embrace it, and avoid the easiest route of existential threat. We … Continue reading “ChatGPT: Positive Spin on a SCARY but POWERFUL Tool”

This week, we explore the asyncio library and calculate how long it would take for a single process to scan the entire Internet’s worth of IPV4 addresses (…only 4,294,967,296 total addresses!). In this article, I briefly walk through the asyncio library and create a real-world example! If you are new to Python or programming in … Continue reading “Asyncio in Python: The Super Power No One Uses”

Have you ever wondered how Python libraries are so fast? Well, it’s because they aren’t written in Python! C and C++ compose the major backbone that make Python so powerful. This week, we will look at how I adopted this idea for the spelling maze generator we built previously! The week before last week’s post … Continue reading “C++ Wrapped in Python: A Daring but Beautiful Duo”

This week, we will create a Linux program wrapper for the ‘traceroute’ program to make tracing a network route easier for a Python user. By the end of this article, I will have demonstrated a few useful techniques in data parsing and object orientation that you might find helpful. The Target: ‘traceroute,’ Linux, and Python … Continue reading “Traceroute in Python: A Powerful Wrapper Guide Exposed”

Has my ego inflated in the last couple of weeks from programming in C++? Maybe, maybe not… All I know is that C++ is leagues faster than Python. Don’t believe me? Well, I am glad you are here! This week, we will be converting a Python program I wrote and documented here to its C++ … Continue reading “C++ > Python EXPOSED: Powerful Language Makes Case with Data”

This week, we are generating feed-forward neural networks which learn through a genetic algorithm. These networks are much easier to understand than their back-propagation counterparts. Please join me on this step-by-step guide for simplistic neural networks as they learn through generations of selection. Neural Networks Neural networks can be a difficult subject to dive into … Continue reading “Neural Networks Exposed: Beautiful Genetic Algorithms in C++”

This week, I am exploring a simple application that simulates tree propagation using SFML and C++. Join me as I build a 2-D forest with a keyboard! This is the first of a series of posts I am releasing about software simulations in C++ using SFML. My work on simulations is an ever-growing exploration and … Continue reading “SFML And C++ Empower The Life Of A Virtual Forest”

This week, I am documenting how I set up an environment for developing a graphical program using SFML in C++. I am just starting out myself, so this solution isn’t guaranteed to be the optimal solution. That being said, I had a heck of a time finding a place that went step by step through … Continue reading “SFML, C++, and Windows: Quick Guide to Awesome Graphics”

Kivy plots for a simulation of populations, moving trends, and financial flows. This week, I wanted to explore a non-zero-sum, agent-based simulation with political platforms and town populations. Given a set of towns with unique political platforms and individuals with political preferences who vote and can move, do we ever see a situation where all … Continue reading “Informative Simulation is More Politics than Money”

Have you ever wondered what it would take to develop a simple web app? Maybe you wanted to create one that would serve requests to merely call a command-line version of an app you made. This is what I wanted to do after I created a Word Maze Generator to help my son study for … Continue reading “Nginx + Gunicorn, Guaranteed Web App in an Afternoon”

Simulation-building is something I seem to return to over and over again. I really enjoy learning something new each time I witness how small behaviors produce emergent behavior. Graphics are an accessible way to conceptualize the complex nature of multi-variable simulations. In this article, I lay the foundation for a project I hope will serve … Continue reading “Kivy, One of the Best and Powerful GUI Creators”

Last week, my son Isaac was crushed by his 3rd-grade spelling test. For an 8-year-old, it can be difficult to study something that might seem opaque in its usefulness. So, with a bit of Python magic, let us engage the children in solving a spelling maze! The idea is to accept the input of a … Continue reading “Spelling made exciting in a labyrinthine maze!”

Recently I got the itch to take something apart and modify it in an externally noticeable way. First I started looking at my sons toys as a source of equipment to modify, one specifically caught my eye. It was a leapfrog globe that was intended to teach kids about different continents, countries and oceans on … Continue reading “Exploring and Modifying the Oxford 3 Rower”

OK so if you haven’t read through the first balanced simulation post, I highly recommend you do, this one is going to be aimed at how we manage to expand the population size and still have a ‘run-able’ solution. That is, something that can possibly finish in our lifetimes :D. To start with I finally … Continue reading “Making a Balanced Simulation #2”

This week has been another very productive one! Let’s dig in and check out the progress! Building As you might recall, I left off last week with the inlays drilled to lay the stepper motors in. On Monday I jumped straight in where I left off by sanding down these inlays. My goal here was … Continue reading “Cable Clock Progress Report #3”

I don’t know what I am doing, I have never made a balanced simulation in my life. This is purely an exploration of the idea. Travis All right, lets get down to it, I am genuinely curious how many variables I can add to a simulation… Coded myself… Using Python, Sqlite, Matplotlib, and have it … Continue reading “Making a Balanced Simulation”

I kept very busy this week and I am excited to share the progress with you all. I mostly focused on the physical clock, so this article should be a little bit more palatable. Design So, going into this week, I was planning to create the first fully functioning prototype. With that, I clearly needed … Continue reading “Cable Clock Progress Report #2”

This week I managed to get a black screen to show up between different scenes so you can no longer see each scene being setup. Nothing else has changed… This post is meant to cap the progress on this game for now, I think it is at a point where the core mechanic is clear … Continue reading “Paper Boy Progress Report Final (For Now)”

Change Log Added procedural pathway generation This allowed the addition of a bunch of new houses Added automatic target placement on front door pathway Added Coroutines to prevent lag spikes in level loading This week I implemented the back end for procedural generation of pathways for houses in the game. The ability to simply place … Continue reading “Paper Boy Progress Report #6”

I would like to preface this by acknowledging the delay of this entry. I’ve been developing this project for the past 4 weeks, but have not had the chance to enter any updates. With that out of the way, let’s catch up to speed. Concept I cannot take credit for the initial Idea behind the … Continue reading “Cable Clock Progress Report #1”

This post is to document the setup for a simple SPI Bus test using a RP2040 Nano Connect as a controller and the Arduino Uno as a peripheral device. The board connections look as follows: I couldn’t find a good example of how to use the RPi4 as a peripheral device, and didn’t want to … Continue reading “Arduino RP2040 Nano Connect SPI Bus”

Preface This week features no direct in-game demo, instead this is the theory behind procedural generation of pathways for each houses driveway and front door paths. I totally understand if the theory is something you skip — but there are some pretty pictures along the way that you can scroll through and check out 🙂 … Continue reading “Paper Boy Progress Report #5”

This is to document the setup instructions for flashing an Arduino RP2040 Connect Nano from a RPi4 using the command line tool ‘picotool’ and the pico-sdk. Not only to publish but for my own reference 😀 As a side note, I am using a RPi4 as a host because I like the Linux interface and … Continue reading “Arduino RP2040 Connect Nano Setup”

This week was busy preparing at work for the holiday break, but I still managed to get some things done on the game. The following are the changes for this week and I am very excited for the future of this game, it is getting to the point now where I almost feel comfortable sharing … Continue reading “Paper Boy Progress Report #4”

This week I would say we had a bit of a regression (Meshes), and a couple big moves forward. Thank you for coming to this progress report, please leave a comment with feedback/encouragement if you have it, and enjoy the update! Change Log Added a main menu Added game modes Added game results display in … Continue reading “Paper Boy Progress Report #3”

This weeks update was awesome! Huge milestone hit, WE GOT THE HEADSET CONNECTED TO THE BIKE! I didn’t have as much time this week to work on the app but getting the headset to connect to the bike was a huge win! Also this week I added an intro to the demo, along with overlaid … Continue reading “Paper Boy Progress Report #2”

This week marks a big change to the project started last weekend, see the previous post for more details on where we left off. Short recap, last week I got a bicycle to move forward across a blank plane. Along with this I created a goal for the user to throw an object into an … Continue reading “Paper Boy Progress Report #1”

This weekend I started a bigger project than what can be encapsulated in a single weekend, so I fully expect to be posting about this for at least the next 2 weekends of work (if holidays allow, if not I will continue work at some point). The mechanics I am going to share from this … Continue reading “First Multi-Weekend Game”

This weekend I knew I needed to produce something of my own, and like the Echelon Bicycle Monitor I wanted it to be a standalone ‘thing’ — meaning that once the weekend was over I wanted to be ‘done’ with it. I quote done because nothing is ever done, well I guess until you say … Continue reading “First Unity Game”

Background This weekend I set out to connect to my new Echelon Connect stationary exercise bike with an ESP8266 or ESP32 and display the stats on a small OLED. This turned out to be surprisingly easy thanks to the open source nature of things these days. Huge thanks to snowzach’s github where I found the … Continue reading “Echelon Bike Monitor”