WikiWho?
I recently came across WikiWho?, a simple daily browser game like Waffle or Wordle.1 The gimmick of this game is that it takes the information panels from famous people鈥檚 Wikipedia articles and blurs out their image and information. Your job is to guess the person using as few hints (unblurs) as possible. You have three guesses total, so use them wisely. Example Game Here is what I was greeted with for November 7鈥檚 puzzle:...
Younger Brothers
My friends Jackson and Monica recently had their second baby. (Congratulations! 馃コ) Obviously, this means their first child has a new younger brother. What a privilege! But how much of a privilege is it? Exactly how many people have younger brothers? I thought this would be fairly easy to look up or estimate, but it turned out to be pretty tricky. A quick Google search didn鈥檛 give me the statistic I wanted, so I had to do some thinking....
Skeletonization
I was recently curious about how to find the endpoint of a line in an image.1 I couldn鈥檛 quite think of a good way to do it. The methods I conjured seemed to be really fragile and kinda hacky. Graph-based algorithms seemed inefficient, and just didn鈥檛 feel right. In my search for a better solution, I came across a Stack Overflow thread where someone mentioned a method for creating single-pixel-thick lines....
News
I like to read the news, but I find myself returning to the same one or two sites over and over again. I don鈥檛 like navigating most news sites because they are full of pictures or videos that are intended to keep your intention. I just like reading headlines and clicking on a few stories that interest me. I decided to aggregate links from various news sources so that I could display them on a text-only page....
How to View a Solar Eclipse
Never miss the opportunity to view an eclipse! Types of Eclipses There are two main types of eclipses here on Earth: lunar eclipses and solar eclipses. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth is aligned between the Sun and the Moon. This alignment causes the Earth to cast a giant red shadow on the surface of the Moon, causing the eclipse. We can see these at night. The Moon turns a deep red color....
My Pineapple NFT
This is a picture of a pineapple I painted for my grandma. I digitized it to make the image you see here. I minted this as an NFT on the Cardano blockchain about two years ago. You can see the NFT on pool.pm so you know I鈥檓 not making this up. I learned a lot about how NFTs work in the process. I was a bit disappointed to learn that the image itself isn鈥檛 stored on the blockchain....
Hackers
I was checking something on my server when I realized that Jesus was trying to hack me from China! I got a laugh out of that. A few moments later, Jesus must have traveled to the Netherlands to try again: There are an insane number of attempts to SSH into my server (like several per minute). There all sorts of usernames that are used. This one just jumped out at me....
Reverse Engineering the RFM69HCW Module
I recently attended the GNU Radio Conference in Tempe, Arizona. The conference revolved around software-defined radios. SDRs are software-configurable radios that can produce arbitrary radio signals. I learned about those radios, what鈥檚 new in the world of SDRs, and lots of software that can be used to interact with them. The conference included a Capture the Flag (CTF) Challenge. The CTF consisted of radio-related puzzles, where the goal was to find small text strings called 鈥渇lags....
Rick Rolls
A list of Rick Rolls. Unexpected Rick Rolls Desmos Graph A Really Good Cat Deadliest self-defense move Artificial Heart Homemade Sod Cutting Rig Cute Little Puppy Doing Cute things How to draw closed eyes (simple tutorial) Just some guys singing a song Coldplay - Ink [Ghost Stories] The truth the government doesn鈥檛 want you to know about shelter in place Ancient Swedish herding song remix Look at the pretty purple. Shrek 5 TRAILER 2022 NEW What happens if you photocopy a photocopier Kinetic Sand ASMR Compilation R2D2鈥檚 secret message Nice Ocean Waves _ I C K Videos of Rick Rolls Oregon 2008 Macy鈥檚 Day Parade
Wikipedia Game
I have been on a bit of a Wikipedia kick recently. I think it鈥檚 so cool that people have created a collaborative encyclopedia that anyone with an internet connection can use. One use of the online encyclopedia is The Wikipedia Game. Each day, two Wikipedia articles are chosen. Your job is to click the blue links to get from one article to the other as quickly and in as few clicks as possible....