VM’s Posts

 

Addressing My Absence

Radio silence
thoughts
Hello again, world! It’s been a little over a year since I wrote a post on my website. I took a much-needed break from writing articles and making things to focus on myself…
2025-10-04
3 min

A comparison between two sets of gem sprites. The bottom set by MattSquare looks more detailed.

Stratagem Devlog, Part 2

It’s not easy being tweened
thoughts
gamedev
Since releasing Stratagem to the public in early September, I’ve been organizing and improving its code, implementing new features, and soliciting feedback from other game…
2024-10-02
8 min
Stratagem v0.1.1. O: Start Game. X: High Scores.

Stratagem Devlog, Part 1

State against the machine
thoughts
gamedev
After five years of being abandoned on my computer, Stratagem is finally ready for public release. I’ve rewritten the original code I made in 2019 from scratch using the…
2024-09-03
7 min

A six-by-six grid of colorful gems encased in a steel square. The player is two-thirds of the way through level 2 with 920 points and two lives.

Stratagem Devlog, Part 0

Dusting the cobwebs off a fantasy console cartridge
thoughts
gamedev
Long ago, in the times before the great disease, a young VM wanted a challenge. “I like to code, I like to draw, and I like to make music,” they thought. “What can I make…
2024-08-14
4 min

The logos of Vim (left) and Neovim (right) modified to spell the initials 'VM'.

Thoughts on Vim, Neovim, and Modal Editing

You can’t spell Vim without ‘VM’
thoughts
tooling
For the past couple of months, I’ve been teaching myself how to use Vim and Neovim to be more productive when using weaker computers that struggle to run integrated…
2024-07-30
5 min
A heatmap of the letter 'W'.

Playing Visual Telephone with Autoencoders

A convoluted way to distort images with convolution
ai
interactive
programming
python
Alvin Lucier’s I am Sitting in a Room is an interesting contemporary sound art piece that I like. As Lucier describes in its introduction, he plays tape-recorded audio of…
2024-06-24
10 min
A blackout poem that reads 'made you look'. The original poem is 'The Two Crabs' by Walter Crane.

Using Regular Expressions to Make Blackout Poetry

I regex your reality and substitute my own
data science
programming
python
Blackout poetry, also known as erasure poetry, is the act of removing characters and words from another existing text source to create an entirely new poem.1 There are lots…
2024-05-11
6 min
Five six-sided dice in different colors reading 'one, six, four, one, two' from left-to-right on a wooden background.

Solving Bruno’s Dice Probability Challenge

This nerd-sniping problem deals 5d6 psychic damage
math
programming
python
Bruno Rubim posted a probability challenge on his website related to a card game he’s making that piqued my interest. Since nobody had posted a solution yet at the time, I…
2024-04-17
14 min
A series of icons spelling the rebus 'Prettier plus Quarto equals relaxed'.

How to Use Prettier to Format Quarto Documents

Prettified plaintext properly prepares posh powerful publications
programming
quarto
tooling
tutorial
I like opinionated code formatters and style guides because they provide consistent standards for how to write code. Running version control on opinionatedly formatted files…
2024-04-11
7 min
A mock fighting game screen showing a four-way versus match-up between math equation rendering methods. From left to right, top to bottom: a jack representing MathJax, a gear representing Codecogs, a math expression representing MathML, and the KaTeX logo.

On Math Equation Rendering and Accessibility Conflicts

This equation has no easy solution
accessibility
thoughts
webdev
I’m a big fan of international standards like SI units, the ISO date format, the C programming language, and floating-point numbers. They provide consistent formatting…
2024-03-24
17 min
Animated GIF of a harmonograph diagram. A continuous line makes oblong and circular spirals while slowly decreasing in size.

Mathematical Drawings with Pendulums

Look at this harmonograph; every time I do, it makes me laugh
animated
math
physics
julia
A dynamical system is a mathematical model that shows how a set of variables evolves over time from their initial conditions according to an internal ruleset. The variables’…
2024-03-03
20 min
Cropped picture of a technician checking the contacts on a desktop computer motherboard in a workshop.

Why Repairing Technology Matters to Me

Let me take things apart and put them back together, dang it
thoughts
In December 2023, my laptop’s keyboard started to malfunction, and I didn’t want to risk breaking it by attempting to fix it myself. So, I brought it to a local computer…
2024-02-18
6 min
A spotlight shines onto a golden hexagonal girih tile grid with florets. The golden girih grid casts a black shadow on the navy blue background.

My Art for Genuary 2024, Part 3

Getting with the (art) program
animated
interactive
javascript
Alright, I’ve passed the halfway mark of Genuary 2024, so it’s all downhill from here! Coming up with so many unique ideas for each prompt back-to-back has been pretty…
2024-01-18
5 min
Many multicolored marbles fall through the canvas. Their descent is slowed down by several plus-shaped spinners.

My Art for Genuary 2024, Part 2

Keeping my art up to code
animated
interactive
javascript
Here’s my second batch of sketches for Genuary 2024. I’m still using the p5.js library for this project.
2024-01-09
5 min
A grid of off-kilter squares resembling Vera Molnár's 'Structure de Quadrilatères'.

My Art for Genuary 2024, Part 1

Inktober for programming nerds
animated
interactive
javascript
Happy new year! Let’s kick it off with some programming art.
2024-01-04
4 min
 

A Literary Analysis of “Lena” from an AI Perspective

I found a neat short story, and you should read it too
ai
thoughts
Have you ever read “Lena” by qntm? It’s a science-fiction short story in the tone of a Wikipedia article that documents the first brain scan, MMAcevedo, from its rise in…
2023-12-18
4 min
 

Giscus Comment Test

Testing, 4 5 6
quarto
test
I’ve decided to use giscus as my commenting system since it’s built into Quarto. If you see a comment box on this website, that means that everything is going according to…
2023-12-10
1 min
A password input box with asterisks is cracked in half, spilling a sea of numbers onto the bottom of the image."

The Mathematics Behind Password Safety

Let’s get cracking
cryptography
math
I recently wrote a gentle intro on password safety (including password management tool recommendations) for the 32-Bit Café’s guide on staying safe online. Since that…
2023-12-08
17 min
WCAG 2.2 Contrast ratio table of Gruvbox dark mode backgrounds and dark mode colors as an image.

Tweaking Color Schemes for Accessibility with Genetic Algorithms

Time to show some true colors
accessibility
ai
julia
programming
If you’re a fan of customizing Linux setups as much as I am, you’ve probably noticed that my website’s color palette is based on Gruvbox. It’s a popular terminal color…
2023-11-20
21 min
'Friendship Ended with Mudasir' meme edited to show: 'Frienship ended with Hugo: Now Quarto is my best friend.'

Migrating to Quarto from Hugo

RIP to the clock boy but I’m different
quarto
thoughts
webdev
If you haven’t visited my website in a while, you’re probably wondering why it looks a little different. The color scheme stayed mostly the same, but now I have dark mode…
2023-11-03
5 min
A 6-by-6 MathDoku Puzzle.

Solving MathDoku with Mixed-Integer Programming

KenKen™ is Hebrew for YesYes
julia
math
programming
MathDoku (also known as KenKen™, KenDoku™, CalcuDoku, and SquareLogic) is a mathematical logic puzzle that I really liked in middle school. Like Sudoku, MathDoku is based on…
2023-10-28
18 min
 

Web Development is Harder than I Thought

I am not immune to the Dunning-Kruger Effect
thoughts
webdev
Despite how much I use the internet in my daily life, this website is pretty much the only experience that I have building any part of it. It’s definitely been a bumpy ride…
2023-10-14
3 min
A tree-like connected graph with blue, orange, green, red, and purple regions. Each colored vertex in each region either points to a similarly colored vertex or itself.

The Middle Squares Method: The First PRNG

And also why you shouldn’t use it
cryptography
interactive
programming
python
Computers are great at many things, but one thing that they cannot do is generate random numbers on their own. However, computers can fake generating random numbers by using…
2023-10-01
8 min
Generation of 1113213211 from 13112221 in the Look-and-Say Sequence.

Programming the Look-and-Say Sequence in Racket

Trust the natural recursion with a recursive sequence
math
programming
racket
Racket is an interesting programming language that I learned in my first year of college that I never get to use in my work. It’s a modern “dialect” of Lisp, one of the…
2023-09-20
10 min
Parked Cars: 3523, p-value: 0.500. 3523 small green squares with side length 1 sit on top of a large gray square with side lengths 100.

Testing RNGs with the Parking Lot Test

Cars are for squares
cryptography
interactive
programming
python
A random number generator (RNG) is a device or process that should produce unpredictable results. We rely on them in applications where randomness is critical like in…
2023-09-08
8 min
 

Hello World!

Testing, 1, 2, 3!
test
If you are reading this with the right theme, my website is working properly. Pardon my dust while I get things set up.
2023-08-19
1 min
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