Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome!

Head's up

I'm in the middle of some site upgrades. Code blocks aren't highlighted and they don't wrap right now. Should have that fixed soon.

Introduction

Hi there!

I'm Alan, and this is my website. It's been around since the 1900s. There's a few thousand pages here. Sadly, you can't get to most of them. I'm futzing around with things. All the various link pages are offline as a result.

I'll have things back up and running soon. In the mean time, here's a few hand picked bits and bobs:

Some Favorites

The Clicky Sound - I found out I have bipolar disorder in 2017 when I had a full blown manic episode that landed me in the psych ward. A bipolar depression hit shortly thereafter. It lasted for years. It took away my ability to write. This is the post where I got it back.
My Grimoire - I love taking notes. So much so that I made my own app. But, it's not just a notes app. It's a Book of Magic.
Becoming (more) Afraid To Post Online - I wrote this back in December. The things I know about tech and how it can be used to hunt down folks classified as undesirables was freaking me out. That unease has grown nothing but stronger ever since.
The Music That Keeps Me Alive - Another mental health post in which I use music to keep myself save when the demon dogs of thought come after me.
The AI Ouroboros - I'm not much of one for predictions, but generative AI eating it's own tail is one I'll throw out there.
How To Grow Your Digital Garden With Subdomains - Subdomains are websites with names like socials.alanwsmith.com, links.alanwsmith.com, and ideas.alanwsmith.com. They're like children of a main site (e.g. alanwsmith.com), but stand on their own. This post is about using them to play around and experiment on the web.

Other Projects

Speaking of subdomains, here's a few projects I built with them:

There's more at links.alanwsmith.com if you're interested.

Neopoligen - The Website Builder

I started making my own website builder a few years ago. Most techies will tell you it's a fool's errand. They'll say things like, "There's tons of great apps out there that use things like Markdown¹ to make site building easy!"

If you really want to see their heads explode, tell them you're making your own Markdown replacement too.

Maybe do it something like this: Why I Built Neopoligen.

Site Updates

Most of Neopoligen's fundamentals are in place. There's a few more to add and I expect I'll be tweaking it forever. That's a big part of the fun.

I want to do even more with the site itself. The basic list of ideas is here: Site TODO List

Works-In-Progress

I like working in public. To that end, here a few drafts I'm working on:

AutoTyper

I make videos showing how to do stuff in code from time to time. I'd often struggle with typos or fumbling when trying to type and talk at the same time. I wrote a little mac app to help with that. It's called AutoTyper. It takes a configuration script of things to type (and hotkeys to press) and uses it to handle the keyboard for you during filming.

This is the demo video showing how it works:

You can grab the app on GitHub if you want to give it a spin.

Minecraft Videos

I did a few videos showing how to use CC:Tweaked (the modern version of Computer Craft) in Minecraft.

Here's one showing how to set up GPS for the robot turtles:

There's a few more in this playlist

Thanks For Stopping By

I hope you enjoyed visiting my little corner of the web. I've got a bunch of plans for experiments and improvements. I'll throw out updated on Mastodon and Bluesky if you want to follow along.

I also stream live coding sessions on occasion. I've been doing it on my Twitch account but I'm switching to my YouTube account. Stop by and say hi.

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Footnotes

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Getting Started With Markdown