Jack's Brain

Himalaya EHLO Sadness

Sat, 26 Sep 2026 22:42:42 -0700

I’ve been using Himalaya to give my agent swarm email comms, which is currently their main method of communication after my quick-and-dirty messageboard convergently evolved until I realized this was ten times more work than just giving them each an email, which also opened up lots of doors for autonomous work that requires an identity.

The email provider I’m using, which is the rinkydink shared host I’ve used since 2010 but that gives me lots of space and has some historical sites and honestly I just can’t be bothered migrating anywhere else even though I’m way overpaying for it, was silently rejecting outbound emails while giving every indication of happily accepting. They went around to other emails on the same server no problem, but never out. My agents were kind enough to bisect and realized that the issue was a client EHLO of 127.0.0.1, which Himalaya email hardcodes (can you don’t?). Any other value, even a bogus one, makes it out; loopback doesn’t. And, sadly, Himalaya hardcodes 127.0.0.1. Which seems odd, given that’s supposed to be an identifying hostname, but I build open source, I get it, some user goes “hey it’s super weird you did this” and you’re like “yeah my bad but could you not be so annoying about it.”

MeshCore Management with RemoteTerm and Seeed XIAO ESP32S3 & SX1262

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:14:58 -0700

MeshCore is a peer-to-peer encrypted mesh radio communications system. It runs on inexpensive hardware and operates in license-free sub-GHz bands worldwide. MeshCore radios (called “companions”) require an interface to send and receive messages. Most commonly, people use one of the available mobile apps, but this requires physical proximity to the radio for Bluetooth or Serial communication.

The existing clients were alright, but weren’t quite doing it for me. So, I built Remote Terminal for MeshCore (RemoteTerm), an open-source application that runs on a server with a connected MeshCore radio. RemoteTerm provides an interface to the local MeshCore mesh, allowing any device on the same local network to send and receive messages via the radio. It’s extremely mobile-friendly, and also enables additional abilities such as:

A Hitchhiker's Guide to MeshCore Cryptography

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 23:18:10 -0800

I’ve been playing around a lot with MeshCore, a peer-to-peer, encrypted, routed radio network run by average citizens using LoRa modulation in unlicensed sub-gig bands (902-927MHz ISM band in the US). It’s very similar to Meshtastic, but a lot less chatty (pull-not-push messaging, with conservative advertisement intervals), and thus a lot more reliable at passing messages (although recent Meshtastic firmwares have introduced routing, which helps a bit). The off-grid and encrypted-by-default nature of these networks appeals to my sensibilities, so I’ve been building a few tools while getting my own repeaters set up around town (Remote Terminal for MeshCore, a server + web frontend for serial-connected radios, and a WebGPU bruteforcer library for semi-public hashtag rooms, most concretely – both experiments in development oriented around guiding LLMs as opposed to hand-writing most of the code).

'My Body Is My Passport; Verify Me': FIDO Auth via Subdermal JavaCard Platform

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 12:03:24 -0800

An Uncomfortable Scenario

You’re in a foreign country, and you’ve been mugged¹, completely — you’ve got the clothes on your back, and nothing more. Maybe you beg a phone call from someone to get in touch with a loved one to wire you some money. You’ve now got enough to buy a basic phone and use wifi to access Dropbox or Google to get at important papers, password manager data files, credit card numbers to set up contactless/mobile pay, etc.

A Writer Deck (Self-contained baby computer)

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 13:44:18 -0700

I love me a typewriter. They’re gorgeous, mechanical works of art. Sadly, they’re loud, and I’m just not as fast on them as a keyboard. So, I made a “Writer Deck,” a subspecies of cyberdeck, the science-fiction-spawned concept of a small, self contained compute device that’s hyper-portable and often kept on one’s person. Writer decks deemphasize general computing and instead focus on distraction-free systems optimized for focused writing and composing. I’ve been writing some more fiction lately, and I’m an easily distractable man (I mean, c’mon, it’s the internet – it’s awesome!). So I made myself one:

Recent Projects

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 17:25:22 -0700

ohai. Been a minute. The brain hasn’t been braining very well lately from a health perspective but we ball.

I’ll do a more full post on it sometime soon, but I’ve been having fun with a Docker-contained VNC honeypot. @Xtrato did something similar but I wanted something that I could blow away easily and that was slightly (as barely as Docker is) more isolated. It’s been a ton of fun watching randos drift through, and it got more fun when I put an nvidia-smi executable that indicates that I have 3xP100s attached to the system hehe. I get about ten connections a day, mostly connect-then-drop, but have seen:

Added a frame

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 17:22:26 -0700

And boy that came out well 😍😍😍

Conway’s Game of Life LED matrix with frame

Is Microsoft Narrator on Windows XP Saying "Pothole"?

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 16:14:21 -0700

TL;DR No.

I swore Narrator on Windows XP was saying “pothole,” as in “pothole start” and “pothole menu end” – maybe even something closer to “pothole-p” with a plosive at the end. I finally got fedup and cracked open an XP VM and ResHacker, and sure enough, it’s saying “popup” with the world’s worst diction.

What I heard:

Reality/Proof:

Conway's Game of Life on a Pixel Matrix

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 16:01:51 -0700

Always wanted to build one of these and now I have!

This is a more frenetic color-demo mode, but my goodness I love it so much. The video doesn’t do the colors justice; they’re so vibrant. Sadly my phone struggles with the refresh rate of the board, but there’s no tearing in person.

Longevity-Optimized Conway's Game of Life Fill Density for Square Wrap-Around Boards

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 15:29:54 -0700

This weekend I set out to build a 64x64 LED matrix version of Conway’s Game of Life. For compute’s sake, the board would be wrap-around i.e. on a torus. I wanted each set of generations to run for as long as possible until stagnancy and reset, so I wrote an analysis script to determine what alive-percentage for a random fill would be optimal to keep the game going as long as possible.

RFC865 QotD/Cookie Server for DHCP Option 8

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 00:38:14 +0000

I scoured the web for an easy-run RFC865 Cookie/QotD server that I could throw into my Docker host and serve a proper DHCP Option 8 on my home network, but none existed so I vibe coded one. Now, my home network can vibe out like it’s 1983.

Open source as always, I wrote a version that spits out a generic 8-ball fortune (Outlook good, My sources say no, etc.) as well as one that does a classic cowsay | fortune.

Borromean Möbius Ouroboros

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Well, turns out this design (an ouroboros twisted to form a Möbius loop, interlocked with two others into Borromean Rings) doesn’t really exist on the internet as far as I can tell. I can find ouroboros as Möbius loop, and I can find ouroboros arranged as Borromean rings, but not all three. For a project I’m doing, I commissioned some!

I didn’t end up using them for what I was planning to, but I am now the rightsholder (as far as I can tell from Fiverr’s ToS? including a commercial add-on where applicable?), so I’m putting them on the web under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 license – feel free to use as long as you credit where you got it (me, although I only claim to be the rightsholder and not the original artist) and don’t use it for commercial purposes. Beyond that, what you do with it is your business.

Fidget Spinner Icosahedron

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Help I’ve fallen down a well [and it’s filled with regular solids].

Couldn’t shake it out of my mind so I made another spinner, this time with an icosahedron. Haven’t printed it yet but my shipment of 100 bearings just got in so it’s time to warm the printer up.

Check it out again on Thingiverse.

Fidget Spinner Dodecahedron

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I was shocked to not find any fidget regular solids floating around the 3D printing/maker spaces, so I made one, open source and parametric using OpenSCAD.

Check it out on Thingiverse.

MileTime.me (and happy new year!)

Sat, 11 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Happy New Year!!

Today I ran the longest distance I ever have in my life (10km). Lately, I’ve been super frustrated by the lack of good pace/mile time/min-per-km charts and calculators floating around, so I made my own. Check out https://miletime.me to see the new app I made to make this fast and easy for me.

Whoops! (apologies to my RSS subscribers)

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Welp, with the faster site came an unexpected change in how my RSS feed renders, resulting in subscribers getting a LOT of emails. My apologies! All should be resolved now.

...and time for a new site!

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 02:47:26 +0000

And in keeping with new things for the upcoming new year, a site redesign! Long overdue to get off wordpress and onto something static and quick that doesn’t take eight to ten business days to load.

All the same posts, 1% of the upkeep, and 500% speed! :D

About Jack Kingsman

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 21:37:34 -0500

Hiking the Accursed Mountains in Valbonë, Albania

Howdy!

I’m Jack Kingsman, an SRE, developer, and serial hobbyist. I live in Seattle with my partner and work at Atlassian as a Senior SRE on the Atlassian Analytics platform.

I really, really love computers. Bringing joy to others using technology is my highest passion, whether with fun side projects like Nobody.live, or with my day job, where I work hard to keep on-call duties light and incident response nimble and educative.

Cyborg Implants

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 21:37:34 -0500

Three of my four current implants.

What?

Extending the body’s senses and communication into the electromagnetic spectrum is awesome. I’ve had implanted in my body:

a subdermal magnet, providing tactile perception of magnetic fields (implanted 2014; removed due to bioisolating coating failure in 2019). Read about and watch my self-implantation here.
an NFC NTAG216 RFID chip, currently used to Rick Roll unsuspecting people who get their phones close to my hand. Read about and watch my self-implantation here.
a T5577 proximity card emulator (HID, Indala, etc.), currently used to badge into elevators and doors at work. Watch my self-implantation on Facebook.
a combination NTAG 216 and power-harvesting LED circuit that lights up when scanned, currently presenting a vCard contact file on scanning. Read about and see pictures of my self-implantation here.
a SmartMX3 P71D321 secure element, capable of NFC communications and onboard compute via JavaCard applets, currently supplying multiple FIDO identities as well as performing onboard cryptography and key storage. Read more about my implantation, performed by a bodymod artist, here.

Why?

Broadly, the human body is safely compatible with a wide range of subdermal compute systems, with more being developed every year. Biohacking, or “grinding” as the more DIY contingent calls it, works to, among other things, extend our bodies’ capabilities and senses using technology. As someone whose life is built around technology, it just feels right that my body align with my passions to be radio-responsive and subject to some light hacking.

Keys

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 21:31:54 -0500

My PGP identity is verifiable at Keybase, where my GitHub profile is verified, and my SSH key can be further confirmed.

SSH

ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAILDDULC1LD04Hss//MwUXumtJE0YiH1IrioRDly/jack Jack Kingsman <jack@jackkingsman.me>

PGP

curl -sSL https://jacksbrain.com/jackkingsman.asc | gpg --import -

Time for new keys!

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 02:47:26 +0000

I’m updating my public SSH key; it’s long overdue to step out of the dark ages and move to ED25519.

My new key:

ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAILDDULC1LD04Hss//MwUXumtJE0YiH1IrioRDly/jack

And yes, I worked very hard for those last five letters.

Below is a PGP signed message attesting to this change, including an identifying comment.

Keys for validation can be found on https://keybase.io/jackkingsman, retrieved via the fingerprint in the footer of any email I’ve sent you from a personal address, or retrieved yourself from the key with fingerprint:

skrimp.lol

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 23:30:25 +0000

I had too much time on my hands after work today and yesterday, so I made this silly site to celebrate my new shromps.

https://skrimp.lol

There’s nothing more to it, except that the shrimp dances faster each time you tap/click it.

skrimp. lol.

SKRIMP

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 02:46:43 +0000

The tank is set up!

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 01:06:32 +0000

And the tetrapods and gabions look great, even if the round jar makes the cube looks like it’s melting haha. Yay shrimp!

Parametric Tetrapod in OpenSCAD

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 05:12:11 +0000

I’m starting a new shrimp tank soon and I want to fill it with hollow tetrapods, commonly used for reenforcing shorelines. Their stable, interlocking shape combined with oblique surfaces for dispersing wave energy is idea. I just think they look cool, and think a carpet of them in a shrimp tank is both very aquatic (I see these all over shorelines I love).

Tetrapods in Latvia. by [Andrzej Otrębski][2], licensed [CC-SA][3].

Finally up and running with Raspberry Pi TinyLibrary

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 02:19:34 +0000

I was pleased with my last post on getting TinyLibrary up and running on an ESP32 (and WOOOO got a PR accepted to the ESP-IDF codebase for the standard ESP32 firmware for DHCP option 114), but really wanted something with some more RF and speed oomph. I worked on an off for a while to get a captive portal + DNS + DHCP working on Ubuntu 24 on a RasPi Zero 2W but kept getting blocked by random issues. I finally decided to abandon my NetworkManager approach (turns out the dnsmasq-base plugin that it uses won’t read my DHCP configs even when they’re in the right place >.>) and finally went with the tried and tested combo of hostapd and full-scale dnsmasq and things went real smooth.

The TinyLibrary

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 06:08:13 +0000

I’ve been on a big ebook kick lately (currently rereading the first scifi I ever consumed as a little kid, Contact by Carl Sagan). The concept of written words that have been a major part of my development (or recreation) being subject to the same resilience, shareability, and indexing as other digital goods delights me, so I’ve spent quite a bit of time and effort to get every book I’ve ever read (and some I haven’t read yet) into a well-tagged digital library that’s coming up on 800 books.

Implant #5: SmartMX3 P71D321 Implant Success

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:41:55 +0000

Last week, I implanted a SmartMX3 P71D321 secure element chip in an ultra-thin, biosafe-polymer-enclosed form factor as provided by the Dangerous Things flexSecure implant in my left arm. This microprocessor + radio provides onboard compute and a 13.56Mhz NFC radio, with the chip accepting 200kB worth of Java Card applets (extremely feature-restrictive/resource-minimal Java). While this technology is not new (Java Card SmartCards have been around since the late 90’s), this body-safe form factor is impressive even when compared with newer implantable NFC chips thanks to Amal Grafstra’s research into biocompatible polymer-encased planar antenna technology.

Implant #4 — Great Success!

Mon, 27 Mar 2023 21:00:57 +0000

This weekend I implanted an xSIID, an implant that is essentially a copy of my first xNT implanted chip, except that this one lights up when you scan it. I am now not just a cyborg, but a disco cyborg 😎

Implant was very smooth; you can see in the mid-implant photo all the topography I charted to keep track of vasculature and tendon boundaries. The sweet spot was VERY tight; I had about +/2mm tolerance on where I needed it to land, but preliminary healing looks like I nailed the placement spot on.

Nobody.live Featured on PCGamer.com

Mon, 21 Mar 2022 07:34:30 +0000

What an awesome review of a side project I’ve been really passionate about. And he couldn’t have described the site better.

Super, super proud of seeing this in print.

Minimalist Z80 Computer

Sat, 04 Sep 2021 04:26:53 +0000

For years, I’ve had an abiding love of machine code, the fundamental binary instructions that the CPU of a computer understands, ever since I took my first embedded systems course at Santa Clara University. Below all the user interfaces and flashiness of modern computers, there is a hunk of silicon which is reading ones and zeroes from memory and performing the fundamentals of computer operation — store a byte in memory, retrieve a byte from memory, add one to the byte, subtract something from the bytes, etc. The fact that such a powerful force multiplier of humanity’s power all came down to a rock we trapped lightning in and forced to do math billions of times a second will forever be amazing to me.

Nobody.live: Watch zero-viewer streams

Mon, 02 Nov 2020 01:52:33 +0000

At any given time on https://twitch.tv, the livestreaming capital of the internet, there are thousands and thousands of streamers playing games, making music, or just hanging out with an audience, talking and relaxing with friends. However, there are also thousands of streamers with nobody watching them – they are, in effect, screaming into the digital void; some are hoping for viewers to watch and like what they see, becoming regular subscribers while others just broadcast out of boredom.

Miles on the Move

Fri, 29 May 2020 05:47:31 +0000

My pet hisser Julian on the prowl, with some dubbed Jurassic Park for atmosphere.

(Ab)using Getters for DevTool Open Detection

Wed, 27 May 2020 18:14:08 +0000

I recently stumbled upon a site I wanted to save a video from, so I went to open devtools and check the Network tab for the video source when suddenly the page redirected me to an error page! After a couple tries it was clear this was detecting devtools being opened and directing me away from the page — how curious (and annoying).

A quick google indicated that there are some hacks to detect sudden screen width changes as indicator of the devtools pane sliding open, but an undocked pane gave the same result. After some hunting via the initiator, this was the code responsible:

Zork!

Wed, 18 Dec 2019 05:02:49 +0000

Zork is one of the very first interactive fiction games and was released in 1977 for the PDP-10. Interactive fiction is a gameplay style now (sadly) mostly lost to the sands of time where on-screen text describes your environment to you and you interact via basic text commands (e.g. go north, take sword, hit troll with sword).

Zork (or Zork I, to differentiate it from the subsequent releases), is a timeless classic with a rich and challenging story. Zork has been open sourced by its creator Infocom, so I set out to learn a bit about it and make some unique ways to interact with it.

How Interesting is Your MFA?

Sat, 11 May 2019 00:24:35 +0000

If you’re like me (and, in this regard, if you’re not then you should be), you use Google Authenticator or a similar application to generate Multiple Factor Authentication tokens — six digit codes that add an extra step of identity verification to sites you log into. These codes rotate every thirty seconds and must match the one the server is expecting (kinda like nuclear launch codes, but to log into Twitter/Google/banking/etc.).

Bye Bye, Magnet

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 06:00:42 +0000

Well, after four and a half wonderful years with my magnet, I bid it farewell.

After a particularly firm snag and a subsequent major loss of sensitivity, I was concerned the magnet was fractured or the coating had failed so I did an emergency removal which went very smoothly and I’m now all healed up.

I’ll miss it dearly; after that long, it became an instinct — just the other day I was doing PC maintenance and confidently reached for a screw with my finger that disappointingly didn’t jump onto it for safekeeping… This will take some getting used to :(

Some Scuba Videos

Sun, 02 Sep 2018 03:19:31 +0000

I’ve been diving quite a bit (just finished my 26th dive today)!

Here are some videos from last weekend, when two buddies and I camped in Monterey and dove (literally) sunup to sundown, and from this weekend when I dove a marine preserve called Point Lobos with another friend of mine.

They’re Watching You (and they see more than you know)

Sun, 02 Sep 2018 02:56:45 +0000

A couple weekends ago, I install PiHole, a software package that provides DNS blackholing for your local network, and I was shocked.

Some background: DNS (domain name server) is essentially the internet’s phone book. When you type google.com, your computer first asks a DNS server (run by your internet service provider, Google, Cloudflare, or any other of hundreds of DNS providers) for the website’s IP address. The IP address is how the infrastructure of the web actually knows how to route your request — if google.com is like saying “Dave Smith’s House”, the IP address 216.58.192.14 that corresponds to it is like knowing “123 Main Street, Greenville, South Carolina.

Uh oh…

Sun, 22 Jul 2018 18:15:25 +0000

…I’m becoming one of those blogs with 6 month intervals between posts.

Life’s been great lately! I’m chugging along at work, taking on more responsibility for IT needs. Outside of work, I’ve jumped feet first into scuba diving! I’ve got my certification and am shooting for 20-25 dives under my belt before I hit Hawaii in September. I’m getting plugged in with some local clubs as well as wildlife teams that do volunteer fish/kelp/urchin/etc. survey dives for reports to the Dept. of Fish and Wildlife.

Still Alive

Sun, 21 Jan 2018 06:45:14 +0000

Hai world.

It’s been a while since I posted; life is changing — updates lie within. I’m really liking my full-time gig doing software dev in SF.

My parents are moving to South Carolina and I’ve just signed the lease on a cute little apartment in Redwood City.

I’m currently struggling to sort through (and dispose of most of) my accumulated junk from the last 22 years of life, including much that was acquired before I realized I have a great distaste for physical objects I don’t use regularly (read: I have a monumental amount of crap to throw away).

Mead Kiwi!

Fri, 24 Nov 2017 05:17:19 +0000

My latest hobby/focus/obsession has been mead, and man, I’ve been having so much fun sinking my teeth into the art and science — already made 3 gallons and just started a 5.5 gallon batch.

To track what’s at what step, what my recipes are, and to do some helpful conversions, I made Mead.Kiwi, a site to track all of my work. On each bottle is a QR code that will take you to the recipe page for your bottle, contain records of mixing/pitching/aging, data from intermediate density readings, etc. I’m pretty happy with it, and seeing as how I haven’t been doing much coding lately, I thought I’d at least put it here.

Doings and Such

Tue, 10 Oct 2017 07:01:28 +0000

TL;DR: I’ve learned things, built things, got employed at a thing, was sad about and thought about things, and am happy about things.

Ohai there. I said I’d post with what I’m up to over my break, so here are things:

I got a job with an awesome data viz company which cares about the people they join on data (heh, get it?) as much as cool code
I’ve been enjoying my last summer vacation with plenty of kalsarikännit before moving to (hopefully) consistent adulthood employment
I’ve been re-discovering and admiring OG hackers of yore and their phone phreaking exploits
I’ve been pondering mortality and how to effectively convert the data about it into a motivating and humbling visual
I celebrated one year with my incredible SO
I’ve begun a homebrew project to make my own batches of one of the world’s oldest libations (yes, Dad, it’s legal)
I built a tracking and recipe management system so I have detailed and sharable records of said beverage (and, if you ask nicely, I might send you a bottle)
I’ve been adjusting to my new MBP as a daily driver (my jumbo PC is mostly a game- and compiler-box now, but I’m appreciating the consistency of Bash full-time instead of my usual ebb/summer-flow of CLI speed)
I’ve been watching the cryptocurrency market frolick aimlessly as my fun-money (shockingly) fails to spontaneously spawn a complete retirement plan
I’ve been mourning for and with friends for their losses in the sudden and nightmarish NorCal wildfires (please donate money, time, or things to people who are helping; mark yourselves as safe so I don’t come bugging you — I’m fine; help those who aren’t)
I’ve been learning Solidity, consulting, and contributing to a project to immortalize important texts on the blockchain (here’s to contributing to a blockchain project that ISN’T A NEW TOKEN OR CURRENCY YAYYYY)
I’ve been serving as Sysadmin-In-Residence for the family business (unsurprisingly, when you teach people to Google well, most of the problems you come home to actually require your attention! Seriously! It’s un-ironically nice to have some puzzles and problems to solve when you come home instead of just rebooting a router and teaching how to use the printer. Fellow geek-children, take note — your parents are, in fact, smart; just show them the tools).
I finally got around to enabling (and slowly instinct-ivizing) vi-style keybindings in Bash (when I can remember to use and practice them, they’re a Godsend… actually, they’re a pain in my behind, but I’m getting faster and better every time I use them… kinda like Vim… hm….)
I’ve been admiring and enjoying life as I transition from an epoch marked by quarters, semesters, and midterms into one marked by new jobs, marriages, and children.

I still have a few weeks to go before day one at the new job (first full time job after a decade in the industry — a weird, exciting, and terrifying prospect), so expect a few more frivolous side projects and (hopefully) some alpha releases from projects I’m helping out with!

Bye bye, Facebook

Sat, 09 Sep 2017 00:10:17 +0000

Today marks the end of two summers of interning with Facebook; I’ll be going away for a week and then the job hunt begins with a mess of interviews.

I’m so proud of my time at FB — the friends I’ve made, personal challenges faced, and skills developed. To tell the truth, I’m not really sure what I’m feeling right now; it’s part excitement, part sadness, and many parts perspective looking forward and back.

Defuse.xyz

Sat, 26 Aug 2017 17:02:24 +0000

Hey y’all. This has been a long and tiring (and sleepless) week, so in my restless hours, I built a web app to help you unplug, breathe deep, and recenter.

Hope you like it.

Head to defuse.xyz –>

Why I Write Silly Things

Sat, 24 Jun 2017 05:40:39 +0000

[trigger warning: pretentious thinkpiece]

Tonight I was speaking with a new friend and the topic of what we do with our free time came up. In the course of describing what I do with my down hours (usually, coding), I realized I had never actually verbalized my reason behind this to anyone but her until then. At first glance, it may seem odd — I code all day; why would I want to do more of it in my free time, and especially dufus projects like what I usually pick?

It’s tiny. It’s dumb. It’s dangerous.

Mon, 15 May 2017 23:03:00 +0000

And no, it’s not my brain.

nope forcibly shuts down your computer down like pulling out the plug. No shut down process, no graceful halt, just a crash and burn.

Because sometimes you just gotta say, ‘nope.’

Implant #3: xEM

Wed, 05 Apr 2017 07:34:55 +0000

Hi all. New implant tonight. I’m zonked so not much fanfare, but it’s an xEM that lets me clone contactless access cards (like cards to get into buildings, gym, etc.).

Check out the video here (don’t need a FB account to watch).

Getting out of class early is dangerous…

Mon, 03 Apr 2017 20:15:06 +0000

…because I make things like this. I have no regrets.

https://jkingsman.github.io/TheProclaimers/

A FOXO4-DRI Breakdown — Senescent Cell Apoptosis

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 21:12:21 +0000

Wait! Don’t run away! This is actually super cool. It’s a long post, but you’ll be super smart by the end ;)

Yesterday, an extremely exciting academic study from the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam described tremendously exciting leaps in anti-aging drugs, often thought to be a holy grail of biological science. These results are so cool I wanted to break them down into layman’s terms for people who aren’t necessarily interested in hardcore microbiology (if you are, the original paper can be found in Cell (paywalled; reduced but public version is here)). By the end, you’ll know enough to perfectly understand the title! I’ve taken some scientific liberties in breaking it down into easily explainable terms, but for the most part, everything here is pretty much accurate, if a bit simplified.

Tech Debt in Research & Academia: 3 Keys for Getting on the Right Track

Thu, 16 Mar 2017 22:17:06 +0000

Tech debt: a concept in programming that reflects the extra development work that arises when code that is easy to implement in the short run is used instead of applying the best overall solution.^source

Research institutions often suffer from the effects of technical debt that slow processing, lead to inflexible procedures and pipelines, and ultimately limit the potential for forward progress in high speed academic environments. This article covers three key ways that researchers can begin to tackle the issue of tech debt.

Personal Favorites from Vault7 (CIA Leak)

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 08:31:14 +0000

As you may or may not have heard, the CIA has recently had a major document trove released about the works of CCI in Langley. There are lots of analyses of the technical aspects (including on the leak homepage).

Politics aside, I’m mainly enjoying seeing the internals of a different developer/company/government culture — some of them are hilarious, some of them are laughably relatable (who doesn’t have notes scrawled somewhere about handling git submodules so they don’t have to hit StackOverflow), and some of them are reminders that software devs gonna software dev, no matter who signs the paycheck!

Replace as You Type 😊

Wed, 25 Jan 2017 15:00:59 +0000

This is a little half hour project I built before bed since I was itching to code something that wasn’t horribly frustrating (thanks, Compilers class…).

This replaces text as you type with user-defined replacements _a la iOS. It’s simple but super nice if you prefer emojis or use text shortcuts (‘shrug’ becomes ¯_(ツ)/¯ on my system).

Github. Chrome Store. Fork me hard.

Gamma frequency screen strobe for Chrome

Sun, 08 Jan 2017 12:03:59 +0000

A groundbreaking new study linking gamma frequency photostrobing to reduction of amyloid plaque load in the brain which can cause Alzheimer’s.

I wrote a Chrome extension that strobes the screen at a custom intensity and frequency to aim to replicate gamma frequency induce amyloid plaque reduction. The extension options page allows for custom change in the flash opacity and frequency. Default is 10% opacity, 40Hz.

Download from the Chrome store or fork me on GitHub.

μHarness: Lightweight (<600 byte) JS testing harness

Thu, 17 Nov 2016 21:30:39 +0000

I finished some homework early so I took ten minutes to spin out a piece of code I actually wrote as part of a class project (COEN164 shout out; thanks to Evan Paul for the praise that spurred me into repo-fying this) into a proper open source repo.

I’ve often been frustrated with super heavy and feature-rich testing harnesses that I have to spend 20 minutes looking at before I can even write a test. **μHarness **aims to solve that with an ulta-low-frills system that serially runs functions and compares their output to an expected value; nothing fancy in the slightest went into the making of this.

Is Jack dead yet?

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 21:24:13 +0000

Short and sweet, but lots of fun, my end of summer project was a digital will dissemination system as well as a cute little life clock for myself. It was a nice way to stretch my legs after the FOSS moratorium I was under while at FB and handy to get something done that’s been on my todo list for a while (now that I’m apparently an adult or something…).

It’s been a while!

Sat, 25 Jun 2016 04:05:34 +0000

After finals at SCU and now on the tail end of a few health issues, I’m happy to say I’m settling into my internship at Facebook! I’m working on the Systems Engineering team which deals with infrastructure deployment and administration from a software side – kernels, OOB work, and the like. It’s been like drinking from a firehose but I love it! I also got to open Mark Zuckerberg’s water bottle for him on account of his broken arm and he showed up in my fanboying status to comment on it – highlight of the internship right there.

Breakbot

Sun, 17 Jan 2016 10:24:04 +0000

After a leisurely day, an idea struck fast and hard – four hours later, Breakbot was born.

Breakbot simplifies fuzzing and pen-testing by putting disruptive strings and naughty unicode just a click away – no more googling for Zalgo or trying to copy a zero-width character. Breakbot is a click-paste solution that puts bad strings on your clipboard quickly and easily. It’s on [GitHub][1] and the Chrome Store (soon, I hope – all the badness (and probably the EICAR string) in it has got the extension stuck in review… no surprise).

Movie Script to Twitter Bot

Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:50:45 +0000

Today’s afternoon project before I start my real work: scriptBot. prep.py will process subtitle files (in SRT format), take in some Twitter credentials and interval data, and then build a file that tweet.py can take in, which will tweet out a random line from the movie on the given interval… it’s set and forget cultural relevancy that really allows you to put out high quality content.

And now I guess I should probably do the real work that pays for my college education.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 21:30:36 +0000

I got tired of typing the emoji shrug by googling it and copying the first result, so I wrote a bookmarklet to inject it into the active input field.

You can also drag this hyperlink to your bookmarks bar, and click it when you’re focused in a textbox you want to inject it into: [¯_(ツ)_/¯][2]

Doesn’t work on facebook comments because they’re actually editable

s and not inputs with a grabbable value but this was a 30 second project so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

And so a new quarter begins…

Sun, 03 Jan 2016 07:25:26 +0000

…and all that is old has been made new again. Back to data structures and improv classes, back to the winter quarter gray, python once more my daily driver, new old favorite albums that haven’t seen the light of day since high school, and the excited anxiousness of a new job on the horizon… I can’t wait for this quarter to start, and somehow I already can’t wait for it to be over. I’ll just be over here coding and rocking out to the classics that feed my soul – like I always do. :)

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 05:52:23 +0000

database migrations.

in which my CPU fan explores its aspirations to become a jet engine.

y gulp

Thu, 31 Dec 2015 12:06:24 +0000

y gulp.

y u do this.

y u mek me hev a sad.

Just got Mockbox broadcast by Swift on Security!

Tue, 29 Dec 2015 01:02:24 +0000

BRB dying.

Updates to OwnWords

Sat, 26 Dec 2015 22:43:21 +0000

AKA stalk your friends on Tumblr.

Something about my implementation on the master branch (in node.js) broke intermittently, so I tore the whole thing down and rewrote it in Python (are you noticing a theme this break?).

I’ve got an in-CLI version that just dumps URLS on the python branch, or a downloader version (which has the README for both python versions) on the python-download branch.

Nothing too huge, but good for yanking down the content of every post that is NOT a reblog/is original content.

Using Facebook TTS for fun and more fun!

Sat, 26 Dec 2015 09:11:50 +0000

I couldn’t sleep tonight, so I built a little toy that interfaces with Facebook’s TTS system for generating speech. The interface connects to both the standard pronunciation system, and the ‘echo’ system, which uses a custom implementation of IPA to generate speech from precoded phonemes. I’ve written more about both types, as well as included download links for generated audio, at the CodePen I wrote. Check it out, if you feel so inclined.

Mockbox.io – ephermal, no sign-up SMTP server simulation

Thu, 24 Dec 2015 07:18:39 +0000

I troubleshoot a lot of systems that are designed to send emails, usually expecting a SMTP server to send from. However, I dislike using my personal email credentials (usually the only ones I have on hand) and setting up a local mail server or a mail server snippet isn’t always practical – so I wrote Mockbox.io.

Mockbox is free, ephemeral, and simple SMTP server simulation – it’s essentially a free, open source alternative to MailTrap.

What I’ve Been Up To

Thu, 10 Dec 2015 22:54:55 +0000

FALL QUARTER IS DONE. Man, that feels good.

I’ve been pretty busy with school stuff but still ~~put off homework~~ find enough time to work on some personal projects. Recently, I’ve been putting most of my work into the SupTracked UI and API, a system for tracking and analyzing my nootropic consumptions. The API is all nice and tidily documented, and I’m nearly done with v1.0 of the UI, which is prototyped with jQuery (I know, I know…) before I lock down the design I want and move over to React or Angular.

whyami

Sat, 10 Oct 2015 02:58:21 +0000

I got inspired by a reddit post, and wrote a philosophical counterpart: whyami. Now you can get the meaning of life according to various philosophies, right on your command line.

Keybase

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 17:37:07 +0000

I’ve just gotten all my identities loaded into Keybase, a fantastic identity clearinghouse. Check it out for my PGP key, GitHub verification (and by extension, my SSH keys at https://github.com/jkingsman.keys), and more.

I am Jack Kingsman on Keybase.io.

SSHaudit

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 20:00:10 +0000

TL;DR: Make sure your GitHub organization is secure by checking that your org’s users have a sufficiently large key bittages and types (including elliptic) using this tool I wrote.

It wasn’t long ago that [Ben Cox’s fantastic blog post][2] revealed the potential threats from weak SSH keys installed on GitHub user profiles (and GitHub now disallows the installation of keys with <1024 bits). While 1024 bits is secure for now, it’s never been the tendency of the software industry to sit on its security laurels. 2048 or even 4096 bit RSA and DSA keys are now commonplace and becoming the norm, and elliptic curve keys are slowly but surely gaining traction as the industry continues to break the bad habit of assuming anything is uncrackable.

New SSH Key

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 02:50:01 +0000

I’m upgrading my SSH RSA key to a higher bittage.

---- BEGIN SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----
Comment: "Jack Kingsman RSA"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---- END SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----

ssh-rsa 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 Jack Kingsman RSA

You can easily replace my old key with the new one by running the following commands as my user (su jkingsman or something to that effect):

sed -i.bu 's/^ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAIBmpnxEFZE.*/ssh-rsa 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 Jack Kingsman RSA/' ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

OpenSSH-RSA-DSA-Parse

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 01:55:43 +0000

I’m proud to announce my very first module released on NPM! This module parses and extracts info from OpenSSH authorized_keys format public keys. It’s simple, minimal, but functional, and plays a key role in an upcoming utility I’ll be releasing the next few days for GitHub Organization security auditing.

Remove GitHub Diff Markers

Mon, 10 Aug 2015 16:53:37 +0000

If you’ve ever needed to copy chunks of code from GitHub but hate having to deal with removing the pluses and minuses in the diff view, I just wrote bookmarklet for you – it removes them with a couple lines of JavaScript.

Check out the gist, or just drag this link into your bookmarks bar: [No Diff Markers][2].

[2]: javascript:(function(){for(var elements=document.getElementsByClassName(“blob-code-inner”),i=0;i<elements.length;i++)(elements[i].parentNode.classList.contains(“blob-code-addition”)||elements[i].parentNode.classList.contains(“blob-code-deletion”))&&(elements[i].innerHTML=elements[i].innerHTML.substring(1));})();

NaughtyBot Alpha

Thu, 06 Aug 2015 08:12:54 +0000

I’ve been working on a little side project for the last couple days: NaughtyBot.

This Chrome extension allows you to quickly and easily browse the contents of robots.txt ‘Disallow’ directives, and check the HTTP status of each path. This can be a fun way to find hidden site functionality, poorly designed security through obscurity, or just plain old stuff people don’t want Google finding.

It’s not ready for Chrome App Store release yet, but you can install it as an unpacked Chrome extension from the tagged release. It’s only just functional, but it’s fun to play with and bug fixes/improvements will be forthcoming in the next few days once I catch up on some sleep and work slows down a bit.

OPSCexit

Wed, 29 Jul 2015 17:27:49 +0000

I ran out of tickets to work on this morning, so I wrote a Chrome extension to address a little pet peeve of mine – the close button on OpsCenter modals and dialogs was a bit tiny for my liking, and it always took a couple attempts to hit it when I’m moving quickly in the UI. Now, OPSCexit allows you to use the escape key to close any modal or dialog.

I’m Not Dead

Fri, 24 Jul 2015 00:50:50 +0000

I know it’s been a while since my last post – work has kept me INSANELY busy. Lots of twisted python and dojo. I do have stuff in the pipeline, though, and hopefully in the next few weeks I’ll have time for finishing touches and release of a couple gulp plugins I’ve been working on :)

My Keys

Tue, 02 Jun 2015 03:47:03 +0000

If you want me in your servers or want your secrets in my mind, you’ll need these. Permalink.

---- BEGIN SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----
Comment: "Jack Kingsman RSA"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---- END SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----


-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v2
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=0LE0
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Client-side Cassandra Driver in Chrome with Browserify

Wed, 27 May 2015 06:53:48 +0000

Introduction

For a project entirely irrelevant to this post, I wanted to get a Cassandra DB driver working on clientside JS. A client side database driver? you ask incredulously. Why? Well, the reasons aren’t terribly important, but I know it’s a bad idea, requires some unlikely firewall configs, etc. but that’s not the point – perhaps I can be of assistance to some future soul who tries to do the same thing for some insane usage case that only a mother could love.

DIY Mentholated Witch Hazel

Wed, 27 May 2015 01:47:23 +0000

Aftershave for the gentleman engineer. I promise this won’t become a beauty blog, but all I could find about making this were some very unspecific forum posts and bad science… and here we are, spreading better information one post at a time… ;D)

I’ve been meaning to get myself a good aftershave for a while, but something scented wasn’t really doing it for me, so I decided to make my own mentholated witch hazel. The base, witch hazel, is an astringent, which closes pores.

Hopalong Visualizer

Thu, 14 May 2015 20:35:45 +0000

This was my project for my first free evening in a number of weeks… I didn’t write the original engine (that honor goes to the great Iacopo Sassarini), but I did add all the control surfaces and kicked up the graphics a bit. Custom attractor equations are the next step!

You can play it in your browser here.

NFC, 20 days later

Mon, 11 May 2015 16:52:54 +0000

Healing has been perfect. Nearly zero migration, and a zero chance of rejection at this point. The scar is fading nicely. It’s so weird to feel the chip under my skin! The scar looks worse than it is since it’s catching the light; it’s all healed over and jut shiny at this point.

Biohacking Interview

Tue, 05 May 2015 16:41:40 +0000

I just found the video that I was featured in about biohacking and transhumanism for Channel 4 in the UK!

Second Prize at BroncoHack

Mon, 04 May 2015 01:55:32 +0000

My team won second prize at SCU’s annual BroncoHack. We build a system for leakers and whistleblowers in developing nations to securely get their message out, and won $1000! Check out our plan overview and source code

Quick Healing Note

Wed, 29 Apr 2015 18:12:34 +0000

The NFC is doing fantastic. It’s about 5mm from the injection site, which is closer than ideal but further than I thought we hit, fairly safe from extrusion. Looking forward to getting my antenna and recover chip in the mail!! (You can see the faint outline of the chip in the pictures proximal to the injection site)

My new PC

Mon, 27 Apr 2015 00:22:33 +0000

I just finished building my new PC, affectionately named Molly. Check out my build gallery!

NFC, Day 2

Fri, 24 Apr 2015 16:24:06 +0000

Healing continues. The site was extremely tender yesterday, and I find myself accidentally using that hand which can put painful pressure on the implant, so I’ve started wearing a sling to stop myself from using that hand. It’s extreme, but I’d rather three days of inconvenience than a rejected implant.

There’s been minimal swelling and redness at the site. There was 5mm or so of radial redness all of yesterday, but that has diffused today. Considering I’ve had triple antibacterial ointment on it since the implantation, and it’s not warm or discharging anything remarkable, I’m inclined to think that the biggest risk of infection has passed (although I’m watching it closely).

NFC, Day 1

Thu, 23 Apr 2015 16:36:19 +0000

Really happy – looks like it’s closing with no infection. Fingers crossed it doesn’t extrude!!

NFC Implant

Thu, 23 Apr 2015 04:19:39 +0000

As a break from midterms, I did my NFC implant today. It was fairly unremarkable, except for a brief scare in the middle where some unclear communication resulted in an accidental dismantling of the plunger while a CM deep into my hand. We were able to fix it, though, and the rest went off without a hitch!

My NFC chip came!!

Thu, 16 Apr 2015 22:44:00 +0000

I’m doing the transponder implantation this weekend! I will soon be a Near-Field enabled human :D

So I had to get a TB test…

Tue, 14 Apr 2015 19:27:43 +0000

…for some volunteer work I’m doing, and I realized that vaccinations and needle sticks get a whole lot easier to deal with after you’ve performed surgery on and sutured yourself.

Bishop in the Store

Fri, 10 Apr 2015 00:51:52 +0000

1368 users :D

Updates

Sat, 04 Apr 2015 19:01:59 +0000

Hi world!

I didn’t get as much time to update my site over break as I thought I would, and this quarter is shaping up to be nuts (formal logic and combinatorics, physics of waves and light for engineers, advanced differential equations, and a community outreach course where I’ll be teaching inner city kids video game design).

The Bishop release went swimmingly. I’ve just passed 1300 users on the Chrome Web Store, and there are apparently a couple hundred more who have ported(ish) the extension to Opera that are pulling directly from the repo. It’s exciting to see the feedback I’ve gotten.

Bishop 1.0.0 Now Available

Sat, 21 Mar 2015 05:02:13 +0000

Bishop is a Chrome extension-based vulnerability scanner that can automate tedious tasks of hunting for trivial vulnerabilities on your websites as you browse. It’s hassle free, easy to set up, and sits quietly in the background until it discovers something worth telling you about.

It’s been available on GitHub for a while now, but I’ve polished up a release on the Chrome Web Store that just got approved. You might be surprised at how vulnerable your sites are!

FreeStep Updates

Sat, 14 Mar 2015 07:40:59 +0000

FreeStep, the free & encrypted chat platform, has just been pushed to v2.0.0. After a slew of issue submissions and user questions to my personal email (XP), I’ve built in a big chunk of updates in my last hour of procrastination before I drown in finals:

If your username is mentioned, you can hear an audio alert, and the message is highlighted in red
Audio alert options are more robust
Custom Title and Byline options allow you to hide components and brand the app as you see fit
http(s), ftp, and magnet link texts are all converted to hyperlinks

If you’re looking for encrypted, open source, and transparent collaborative chat, checkout the lightweight FreeStep!

Week Nine… BLECH.

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 06:02:41 +0000

Hello World! It’s been a while since I’ve posted, I know… The closing weeks of the quarter are like trying to swim in Jello. I’ve got lots of things I want to write about, but no time! As soon as the quarter is over, expect some posts on:

neurochemistry explorations, and some experiments I’ve been running on my dopamine system
tDCS (running current through your brain to make you smarter and happier)
some curious, weird, and frightening results from my genetic analysis that I’ve begun chipping away at (1000% (yes, that’s three zeros) elevated stroke risk, anyone? I’m also genetically wired to be popular (I have this mutation) — who’d have guessed? ;D)
a future near field chip implantation, as well as my long-awaited second magnet implantation!

I’m starting to turn up the heat on some of my biohacking, and have really turned my eyes on hacking my brain — I can’t wait to share some of my results!

v1.0.0-alpha of Bishop

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 09:08:23 +0000

Just tagged v1.0.0-alpha of Bishop (“Marty”) and finalized that; it now supports background queuing if you don’t want to scan as you browse.

Check out the release here.

Sad News and New Projects

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 19:20:49 +0000

Sad Things

BroncoStory has met its end… It looks like Snapchat is blocking access to the API we used to run the service. We don’t know why we specifically; the reverse engineered kit we were using for access itself seems to be fine, but for some reason accessing only the BroncoStory account through it doesn’t seem to work.

At the peak, BroncoStory had over 1400 unique views to its snaps, and plans for monetization were on the horizon… but alas, no more. It was fun while it lasted though!

Big Numbers!

Mon, 09 Feb 2015 02:32:27 +0000

Wow! Users are awesome!

Get Git has surpassed 280 users on the Chrome Web Store, and BroncoStory, a social media venture I’ve been developing on campus, now has over 600 unique viewers on each piece of crowdsourced content. Stay tuned for updates on BroncoStory monetization (because who doesn’t love hundreds of advertising impressions for pennies on the dollar?).

Nothing much substantial to say; just been pleased with how ventures have been moving over the last few weeks! Thank you to all my readers and users who help to get word out and around!

Get Git Updates

Thu, 05 Feb 2015 01:20:46 +0000

So in the 24 hours since I’ve released Get Git, it’s gotten quite a bit of attention on Reddit and a few forums. I wanted to update with two things.

First, Get Git is not illegal (and especially not a felony, as one Redditor suggested). It does nothing other than browse publicly accessible web pages for exposed files. It doesn’t download the files, it doesn’t disrupt the sites (unless you consider a couple HTTP requests with a 404 response disruption, in which case your site is being disrupted by tens to thousands of people a day), and it does nothing illegal. The files it looks for are, if present, 100% publicly accessible. Using this plugin is as illegal as using Google (in fact, Google does what this tool does on a massive scale – check out this Google Dork).

Find Web Acccessible Git Repos with Get Git

Wed, 04 Feb 2015 03:43:07 +0000

**Get Git **is a Chrome extension that I hammered out today, inspired by these slides. Get Git recursively traverses the websites you browse, hunting for misconfigured web accessible Git repos what are web accessible — and of course, once you have access to the .git/ directory, it’s open season on source code, API keys, hard coded passwords, and even internal network structure if they’ve liberally set up remote origins.

There’s actually a lot of sensitive info available in Git repos, and I was interested how many sites I browse are revealing things. Get Git also handles websites with directory listings turned off, so even half baked security won’t hide the repo.

23andMe Toolchain

Sat, 31 Jan 2015 07:14:53 +0000

Some exciting work in the pipeline; working on a handy toolchain for 23andMe genetic data analysis and breakdown — conversion to VCF, SNP effects, annotated mutation and protein defect analysis, the whole shebang. It’s gonna be pretty extensible and easy to use too…

#showerthoughts

Thu, 29 Jan 2015 02:59:09 +0000

In code, simplicity is a minimalism borne of competency in tool use. Elegance is a minimalism borne of insight into the problem. No solution will be truly beautiful until the problem is understood, from all angles and in its entirety.

Convert 23andMe Data to VCF

Thu, 29 Jan 2015 01:35:20 +0000

Just wanted to give some visibility to a utility I discovered and contributed some code to called 23andme2vcf. This is a nifty little perl script that will transcribe 23andMe’s raw SNP codes into the much more industry-standardized VCF format, using the human genome reference.

It’s a really fast utility and helps to set up your SNP data for important into more powerful genetic analysis tools like SnpEff. I made some tweaks to the code to bring it up to date with VCFv4.2, which is the most recent standards revision, so it now works with some more picky software suites (my pull requests were merged just a few minutes ago :D).

Show MyMathLab Score

Tue, 27 Jan 2015 08:22:02 +0000

New Chrome plugin!

I took a break during studying for midterms and decided to try and hammer out a Chrome plugin that would take me less than 20 minutes. I got down the first draft of Show MyMathLab Score in about 15, and spent about 2 hours slamming my head against a proverbial brick wall before understanding why what I was asking of Chrome was impossible (who needs spec documents? I’m a MAN. I’ll write my extension without reading the documentation for that feature. ugh. never again.)

Sequencing my SNP’s with 23andMe

Tue, 20 Jan 2015 23:25:52 +0000

I just received a spit kit from 23andMe, a biotech company that does genomic SNP analysis.

SNPs (pronounced snip; plural snips) are** single nucleotide polymorphisms**, which are sections of the genome that vary from person to person (humans share almost all of their genomic data with each other, as is common in a species). 23andMe detects your allele for these SNPs and reports it to you. They used to provide analysis and health predictions based on current studies of the impact of different SNPs, but were shut down by the FDA for providing medical advice. Now, they provide ancestry data (if I have any cousins who have also sequenced, I’ll be able to communicate with them through 23andMe — even if we’re fifth or sixth cousins.

First Chrome Extension

Sat, 17 Jan 2015 02:05:27 +0000

I’m proud to announce my first Chrome extension — Regex Replace. It’s a simple engine to do regular expression replace on pages. No more cloud-to-butt and s/leopard/leopard extensions cluttering your valuable page load time! This extension rolls any regex replacement you want into a simple but elegant package!

Check it out in the Chrome Web Store! (And, as always, it’s open source — be forkful and multiply.)

Delete Twilio SMS Updates

Thu, 08 Jan 2015 17:44:53 +0000

I had a bit of a lazy morning in bed today, so in response to the surprisingly numerous emails I’ve gotten expressing thanks (or a desire for instructions of use) for the Twilio SMS and media deletion tool I wrote, I decided to tweak things a bit and make it a bit more usable.

Previously, media deletion occurred before SMS deletion, and while the async nature of node didn’t guarantee that everything would happen in the right sequence, the ordering of requests never led to issues until I started using it with larger sequences of texts, and the network bottlenecking threw the rhythm of the script off (obviously no script should have to work with a ‘rhythm’). The script would still run, but it was just messy.

Twilio Frustrations

Wed, 24 Dec 2014 21:31:30 +0000

I’ve been alternately happy and very unhappy with my service from Twilio, a well known company that provides easy SMS and voice capability to applications via its API. You can see a script I wrote to handle a similar but different issue from this post here.

When you send SMS to the service, it delivers it to your receiving application as a POST request (kind of webhook-ish). The POST request includes metadata about the message, the message itself, and, in the case of MMS, an URL where the image is publicly available on Twilio’s servers. This URL is randomized and decently secure, but nonetheless public.

Tumblr Utility — OwnWords

Tue, 16 Dec 2014 01:02:57 +0000

I’m trying to get more and more comfortable with node.js, and I’m finding it really handy to put together quick command line apps I might otherwise be putting way too much cruft into if I would have used PHP.

Today’s utility was one I’ve been meaning to write for a while – it uses the Tumblr API to find tumblog posts that originated from the blog owner (i.e. NOT reblogs). This can be interesting to quickly go through thousands of posts and see content that the person personally wrote themselves.

Updates

Sun, 14 Dec 2014 21:52:35 +0000

Just got my grades back – all my classes passed! (WOO!)

Life’s been pretty busy the last few weeks coming into finals, so now that I’m on break, it’s weird not having a priority list in front of me.

Sometime in the coming weeks, I’ll be implanting my second magnet in my finger. This is particularly exciting because it’s NOT a parylene magnet; it’s a titanium nitride coated N52 from Dangerous Things — made just for biohackers! I’m super excited to set a date with Linda and get that puppy in there.

Twilio SMS Deletion Tool

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 08:40:49 +0000

**TL;DR **twilio-sms-delete is a tool to iteratively delete all SMS and associated media from your Twilio account.

Twilio is a great tool for integrating SIP and SMS into your web applications. It’s got a great, simple interface, and API packages for many of the big languages (Python, PHP, JS, etc.).

When an SMS is sent with media (like a picture or audio; technically an MMS), Twilio makes it available to your application as a publically accessible (but very hard to guess) URL (the actual URL is provided in the JSON of the callback data; no non-text data is given in the callback).

My Super Scary Halloween Costume

Fri, 31 Oct 2014 23:05:02 +0000

Danno’s Book Updates

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 06:28:52 +0000

It’s still a closed alpha, but I took a couple hours’ break from studying tonight to hammer out a few new features, especially features that help take DB in the direction I originally intended it – cold analysis of the crimes and locations, and less of a focus on the people and who they are (although that can be interesting).

I already had Frequency Analysis, which covers a small part of temporal breakdown by day, hour, etc (see the first pic). Tonight, I added Crime Analysis, which focuses on the crimes themselves – what’s most common, what occupations are seen the most, where are arrests happening, etc.

New Magnet Implant

Wed, 22 Oct 2014 00:18:59 +0000

Fun side note: I just was deemed unable to give blood for right now due to my clotting the needle twice. I’m thinking of becoming a new super hero. PLATELET MAN TO THE RESCUE.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about my magnet implant. It’s still chillin’, mostly subcutaneous, but with a little edge between my dermis and epidermis. I’m expecting some kind of trauma to jar it out one of these days, or for it to work itself out on its own (although it’s stayed at the same depth for the last two months, so we’ll see).

Lorb

Fri, 17 Oct 2014 23:54:21 +0000

My latest project:

Laravel

Thu, 16 Oct 2014 02:17:10 +0000

So Taylor Otwell just merged my pull request. I promise this is my last post freaking out about contributing to open source projects. BUT TAYLOR OTWELL.

FreeStep – Free, Encrypted, Open Source node.js Chat

Sat, 04 Oct 2014 10:29:11 +0000

node.js (sic) is a really cool runtime environment that allows for asynchronous, event driven coding. It uses JavaScript and runs on Google’s open source V8 JS engine.

I love the chat service ChatStep, but they advertise privacy and encryption without being willing to put their money where there mouth is and open source the system for full transparency.

I was frustrated with ChatStep’s purported security but unwillingness to open up their backend, so I decided to be the change I wanted to see in the world. I wrote an open source, mobile friendly, elegant chat that can handle image messaging. I tried also to comment my code (perhaps a bit too) liberally, as I wanted to be helpful to others who were starting in the same place I was.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 19:15:38 +0000

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH

My first pull request to the Reddit codebase just got OK’d for merge by the admin. I officially contributed to Reddit production code!

Okay, fanboying done.

OxfordPerl

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 22:16:48 +0000

I was hoping to contribute to some documentation for a project that’s especially near to my heart. One of the biggest issues was inconsistent comma usage, so I wanted to remedy that. To aid me, I dipped my toes into Perl and RegEx to create OxfordPerl, and simple script that uses regular expressions to find sentences that should have an Oxford (AKA serial) comma, but don’t.

The script performs adequately; it rarely misses a spot that should have one, but often is fooled by other comma-delimited parentheticals. For the most part, though, it works well: in 448KB of text, I received two correctly identified issues, and five false positives. Not great, but it does what I need.

DrunkGuard

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 19:54:30 +0000

Wow. Git is so much better than SVN. It just makes more sense. I feel like being raised on SVN has been like training wheels, and now that I’m starting to use Git with GitHub in more complex way, I can actually go places on my metaphorical bicycle.

I like it.

slowly because his PHP packages were bad. He got as far as yanking out all PHP packages, and halfway through removing all his Webtatic repos before he passed out. I can only imagine what waking up to that would have been like.

Github!

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 01:26:14 +0000

I finally have a GitHub profile. I have a few projects I’ll be adding to it over the next little while so I can have real version control going on for personal stuff, as well as a profile to put on my resume. Woo!

Recent Project — DannosBook.com

Fri, 19 Sep 2014 19:23:25 +0000

“Book ’em, Danno.”

–Detective Lieutenant Steve McGarrett, Hawaii Five-O

My most recent project has been working with page scraping and HTML parsing in order to work with our publicly accessible arrest records to parse them into a more view-able format. From conception to completion, this app took about 12 man hours – a new record for me for this type of project.

For privacy reasons, I’ve redacted the info from the screenshots (and for the same privacy reasons, opted to not make this app public beyond a closed alpha). I’m working on tidying the code and getting it up on GitHub (though school is first on my mind right now).

Updates (Day 45 with a magnetic finger!)

Wed, 13 Aug 2014 23:11:05 +0000

Oh goodness – it’s the beginning of the end of this blog… I almost made a post solely to apologize for not posting more often – that’s like the death rattle of a blog. *cringe*

ANYWAY.

What’s been going on in my life (abridged):

Got back from an awesome trip in Texas
Have been hard at work building server provisioning procedures at work (I’ll post some on here when I’m done; they’re great resources for anyone trying to take a box from bare metal to server)
My magnet is still in my finger, with no change from the last post (shocker!). I think it’s hit an equilibrium point in extrusion, and may be in my finger for a while longer.
I’ve got a big 100mL bottle of lidocaine I got from Thailand for $20 (much better deal)
I’ve got 2 more magnets in the mail, this time new and improved from the research done by Amal and Glims over at Biohack.me. They’re titanium nitride coated; much more durable and resistant to fouling than my last ones. Gonna wait for a bit and do another implantation! :D

Things are pretty busy with work at the moment, but it’s just a few weeks until I’m off and relaxing until school!

Durable Through the Weekend

Mon, 28 Jul 2014 16:18:59 +0000

I had an awesome weekend of kneeboarding and tubing at Lake Livingston in Texas, and somehow the magnet stayed in! It was tender at a few points, but it has survived the hardest weekend of the trip, so I’m back to expecting a gradual extrusion rather than being painfully popped out.

I can feel it!

Thu, 24 Jul 2014 19:00:28 +0000

Today I was taken by surprise as I picked up my energized power brick and felt my magnet tingling! I could get a sense of the shape and volume of the space with a noticeable field – super cool!

Unfortunately, the magnet continues to near the surface of my skin… It’s anyone bet how much longer I’ve got it for – a week in Texas of tubing and fun lakeside may work it out early; I’m bringing a surg kit to manage extrusion if it happens while I’m there. Research continues for magnet 2!

Preparing and Thinking

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 05:13:06 +0000

My primary medical contact throughout all this, Linda, has confirmed my fears that the magnet seems to be extruding/rejecting. From Linda:

Looks like your body is working super-efficiently and I might not be surprised if it popped out in the next few days, like in the night when you’re sleeping. This pic looks very much like a bullet I saw buried near the skin (it had migrated down his arm) that extruded the day after I saw it. So hurry and get to Denmark now :) ! next transhuman adventure… ?

Week 4

Mon, 21 Jul 2014 00:34:12 +0000

Just a quick pic after a long 24 hours. My sensitivity is increasing, as is the sharpness of the outline of the magnet edge on my skin – the magnet is definitely being pushed on by my body; hopefully it doesn’t get pushed out.

There’s exciting work in the pipeline with some new coatings, so I’m watching eagerly and considering a part 2 if the results are promising!

I Love Building Queries

Fri, 18 Jul 2014 14:55:36 +0000

At work, we’ve been going hard on building some reports while working with a particularly difficult database that ignores more normal forms than it follows. While my coworkers have found this frustrating, I quite enjoy it. Most of the code for previous reports has been handled entirely in PHP, with database queries getting all the relevant (and irrelevant) data, and looping through massive volumes in PHP (O(n^3+)). In my report, I’ve been working to offload all the processing to the SQL server, which has far more power than our web servers. I love solving the web of joins and sub tables. It’s essentially spacial perception – I visualize the tables and keys as blocks in space with specific connectors (the keys). Interestingly, I’ve never been terribly good at spacial perception – my teachers in pre-kindergarten in New Zealand would make me come to school early and do puzzles, which I despised, partly because it was hard, and partly because it took so long to slow down and think about (if you know me, you’re of course _shocked _that I didn’t enjoy a task that I wasn’t good at and forced me to slow down). The practice paid off though, and while I still have to think hard about 3D nets and folding, my 2D visualizations of SQL databases are a fun challenge.

Putting Together a Portfolio

Wed, 16 Jul 2014 00:43:01 +0000

This next week marks the halfway point of my summer job as a developer. It’s also near the five year anniversary of my employment with this company, and I’m starting to realize how unprepared I am for stepping into the job market in a more full way.

I’ve been formulating a mental todo list of tasks I’d like to do over the next year to try and shape up my employable skills (in addition to keeping up my grades, which is priority number one!).

3.1 Weeks

Wed, 16 Jul 2014 00:10:36 +0000

Things keep looking better and better. There’s definitely a lump where the magnet is, and there’s one edge that’s closer to the surface than I’d like, but the skin is giving way to more top layer epidermis. I’m really happy with how it’s going!

This picture is after a day under a bandaid (I usually moisturize twice a day, and put a bandaid on it in the morning), and it can get a little more raw looking and feeling without protection, but generally speaking this is a great indicator of progress.

Magnet Strength

Sun, 13 Jul 2014 18:40:15 +0000

I’ve been playing with a magnetometer app on my iPhone 5S – it looks like, with my finger against the phone body, I can register ~4 mT (milliteslas), against ~45 µT of background flux. That’s about the strength of a common fridge magnet!

I’d love to get my hands on some more accurate equipment and see what an empirical measurement would be.

Well this is fun…

Sat, 12 Jul 2014 23:25:24 +0000

It tickles!!

Dog tag came!

Sat, 12 Jul 2014 03:00:15 +0000

After a few misfires and incorrect orders (my website is not JacksBrian.com), my final dog tag came! I’ll be wearing this at all times to let emergency medical personnel know about what I’ve got.

2.5 Weeks Again

Thu, 10 Jul 2014 04:17:07 +0000

Seeing a bigger mound of scar tissue forming; definitely been more tender lately. That epidermal tearing continues, which seems weird. I’m still moisturizing twice daily.

2.5 Weeks

Wed, 09 Jul 2014 01:52:03 +0000

It continues to get less tender with pressure. Hoping that the epidermis continues to close and toughen into scar tissue, and not start eroding and rejecting.

I’ve been moisturizing and wearing a bandaid during the day; I noticed some localized ultra tiny blotches on the surface so I’m going to continue moisturizing day and night, but without cover so it can breath and dry out more.

Playing with my Brain

Mon, 07 Jul 2014 18:09:29 +0000

I just got to try an EPOC (made by Emotiv). It’s a 14 lead EEG headset that interfaces with a proprietary software (the model that allows you to access raw EEG data and use the SDK is about $600 more expensive), and allows you to train the system for various things, such as making an object move, rotate, or disappear. There’s also a facial motion system that senses what facial expression you’re making, including eye blinking, and mimics it on screen (it has a 2 axis gyro, so it cheats a little bit, but it’s pretty accurate for the most part).

I love my job.

Mon, 07 Jul 2014 17:22:27 +0000

We all use headphones when we are coding to listen to music. The downside is we can never get each other’s attention. My colleague’s solution? Nerf.

2 Weeks – Fully Healed!

Sun, 06 Jul 2014 19:48:07 +0000

Holy cow this looks good. After 18 hours with the same dressing and moisturizing lotion on it, it looks incredible. I’m going to keep moisturizing zealously for the next couple weeks. It does wonders. The little black dot is my suture hole which doesn’t go all the way to the magnet but is just a deeper hole so the magnet shows through a bit. Eager for it to close up.

Day 12 Supplementary

Sat, 05 Jul 2014 07:19:11 +0000

Moisturizing made an incredible difference – just 12 hours later, some of the raw, healing skin is 100% closed! That did wonders.

Day 12

Fri, 04 Jul 2014 17:27:31 +0000

Happy 4th!

The skin around my site as been getting drier and drier; it’s been brittle, numb, and tender deep below.

At the suggestion of a new friend yesterday, I put some generic Kirkland (paraben free) moisturizer on my finger and wrapped it over night. This morning, the skin was softer, more pliable, and sensation was greatly restored.

I also took a warm shower this morning and the persistent skin flap was help on by just a thread, so I trimmed it off. I was happy to see healthy joined skin below, allaying some fears Linda and I shared about the wound possibly not being closed.

Day 10

Wed, 02 Jul 2014 16:47:39 +0000

Just a quick photo. Been sleeping all day for yesterday and today; I’m on my way out of the cold but it’s still got me feeling pretty cruddy.

I’ve been keeping the wrapping on it to protect it day and night. I’ve removed a flap similar to the one you see from the wound perhaps 3 or 4 times so I’ve taken the hint and stopped removing the dead skin; I’m going to let it fall off on its own. However, the flap looooves to catch on things, hence the protection (cutting off seems to be bad; tearing off would be catastrophic if it opened the wound back up).

Day 8 Supplementary

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 21:54:21 +0000

Healing continues. Not much to see. I’m really hoping the dark spot is the magnet showing through my very fair skin and not an indicator of oxidation (i.e. coating failure). My previous assumptions were that, based on a number of other magnet failure stories, a dark spot would develop after weeks of oxidation. I’m not sure why I failed to unite that data with my observations of the magnet in a nearly saturated saline solution; in that case, less than 24 hours was necessary for the formation of iron oxides.

Day 8

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 15:39:43 +0000

Healing continues well. The finger did very well in brackish water during vigorous activity and use for about two hours yesterday. I had a little bit of dead skin around the very edges of the incision, which I debrided. There is a little more skin this morning as well; I’m just keeping it covered and giving it a few days – I don’t want to end up removing too much. I’ll put up a pic later.

SO MUCH FUN TO PLAY WITH

Sun, 29 Jun 2014 06:02:37 +0000

A quick video of me messing around, with a bonus photo showing scar, placement, and a tiny shadow of the vascular arches in the pulp.

Day 6

Sat, 28 Jun 2014 15:28:44 +0000

Last night I checked in with Linda, as I was in the neighborhood. She said that the wound was healing beyond her expectations and that since the edges were approximated and the primary healing done, I could stop keeping it covered and start letting the skin get used to being out again.

Last night (for my five hours of sleep; go Goat Simulator) was the first time I had my finger uncovered from the tegaderm for longer than ~3 minutes. Even just overnight, I can see a marked hardening, drying out, and yellowing of wound edges that I suspected were dead, confirming my thoughts. There’s no pain, though, and I can use the finger for daily activities that don’t require too much pressure just fine.

Day 5

Fri, 27 Jun 2014 14:45:58 +0000

Well, I’m definitely getting sick… Dry and scratchy throat with wheezy chest congestion. Systemically, though, I feel fine. I’m guessing this is bad luck and stress/lack of sleep from starting work that’s worn down my immune system. No temperature; procedure site remains healthy looking.

The wound is definitely not closing as quickly as I’d like, but the edges are approximated and relatively healthy looking so I’m not massively concerned yet. I changed the tegaderm after my longest duration yet (36 hrs), and things looked decent. I redressed sans triple antibiotics and just kept the tegaderm; with the deep wound closed, I’m less concerned about infection.

Day 4: A Brief Note

Fri, 27 Jun 2014 02:01:17 +0000

I seem to have developed a slight runny nose and cough, precipitated by incessant symptoms of dehydration (chapped lips, dry mouth, heavy thirst) despite increased water intake over the last three days.

I have no temperature and only a slight scratchy throat; I’m not coughing up sputum nor do I have any joint pain, muscle aches, or other problematic indicators.

The wound site continues to heal well and is healthy and as pink as my pale skin usually is; certainly no discharge, necrosis, odor, or any indication of infection. I’m going to chalk my symptoms up to a stress induced bug and keep chugging water – a systemic infection or sepsis doesn’t look possible given the appearing and health of the incision area.

Day 3 Supplementary: ~75 hrs Post-op

Thu, 26 Jun 2014 02:35:19 +0000

I removed my stitches today. Below are a few pictures.

There was a bit of bleeding when the stitches came out (not much), and there were some odd shadows in my skin that I hoped weren’t the magnet showing through. I remain ever paranoid, however unwarranted, that the magnet was nicked when I sutured myself and the parylene is compromised. I don’t think I hit it; the fear is there, though.

Day 3: ~64 hrs Post-op

Wed, 25 Jun 2014 14:07:03 +0000

Healing continues well. Pain has remained nonexistent for the last couple days; I haven’t taken any pain medication since the day of the surgery, and I’ve been just fine. It has been tender to the touch both at the incision and where the magnet is settled under my skin, but only with pressure.

The photos below are from this morning when I changed my dressing. I’m currently using triple antibacterial ointment and a half transpore sheet changed twice daily, wrapping my finger in flexible gauze roll over the transpore during the day just to give it some padding and keep me aware of the site.

Day 2: ~40 hrs Post-op

Tue, 24 Jun 2014 14:15:37 +0000

Healing is going very well. I took off my bandage for a little while last night as things were getting quite moist and waterlogged under the tegaderm.

There was quite a bit of white skin around the wound that was concerning me a tiny bit, but speaking to a medical expert reassured me that it was just scar tissue forming and not skin that I would need to remove manually. In any case, after an hour of exposure to the open air, the white area shrunk significantly, indicating that at least some of it was just water absorption.

Ouch.

Mon, 23 Jun 2014 17:10:04 +0000

Mental note: stay away from harddrive magnets.

Day 1: ~15 hrs Post-op

Mon, 23 Jun 2014 14:18:31 +0000

Although the tegaderm definitely had some life left in it, the tip of the finger wasn’t sealed because the incision had bled a tiny bit and loosened the grip. I took it off to redress it.

I gently washed off the site with an alcohol swab, helping to get some of the dried blood off. The little dots of blood are new, and the pale whiteness of the site of one of my first slices that slipped too close to the epidermis is a little concerning – I’m hopping it’s water logged and not the beginnings of necrosis in that one spot; that could be a trick to deal with.

Successful Surgery

Mon, 23 Jun 2014 00:28:50 +0000

(Phew. Typing with no middle finger will definitely be something to get used to.)

Surgery went EXCELLENTLY today. I performed it at a friend (psuedononymously, Chad) and his family member’s (Linda) house. Linda has had quite a bit of medical training, so was an awesome resource to bounce ideas off of and get advice from leading up to the procedure.

After my failure last time(s), I was determined to make things work this time. I administered the lidocaine and cleaned everything (with additional clorhex swabs from Linda, which was super helpful).

Lessons Learned (and new date set!)

Mon, 16 Jun 2014 23:47:42 +0000

I’m finally home from school for the summer, and I have one precious week before I start back to work in San Francisco. I’ve also come into contact with a good friend’s family member who works as a supervising nurse at a very large facility who has expressed interest in helping me out. Although I’m very confident in my research, it’s hugely comforting to have a medical professional that is willing to be with me, in person, during the procedure to offer advice and help out.

One More Important Note for Lidocaine w/ Epinephrine

Wed, 11 Jun 2014 02:29:22 +0000

Two points I wanted to clarify based on some great feedback here:

My last post is not recommending that lido with epi be used – plain old lidocaine is much more easy to manage and use safely. Rather, lido with epi is not a one way trip to losing your finger, as it often is regarded as in the dogma of biohacking – while it should be treated cautiously, it is not necessarily contraindicated for digital work.
Lidocaine with epinephrine provides its own hemostasis, and its use makes tourniquets unnecessary. Using a tourniquet AND lidocaine with epi, or some other hemostatic method, can indeed lead to ischemia as evidenced by issues other magnet implantees have had — no reason to mess with something that works just fine without epi.

Lidocaine with Epinephrine & Digital Ischemia for Biohackers

Sun, 08 Jun 2014 00:22:38 +0000

Disclaimer: I am not a physician, nor am I responsible for, or qualified to make, advise, or influence, medical decisions based on the content of this post. This post is the musing of an entirely untrained college student.

As I finished up a long day of finals studying, I thought I’d compile and post some information I’ve learned during my research on digital surgery in preparation for both my own surgery and for general interest.

Digital Blocks

Lidocaine is administered in the form of a digital block for a variety of procedures on the fingers. There are a few types of digital blocks, the most effective seeming to be the transthecal block, which involves an injection of anesthesia into the flexor tendon sheath (this can lead to injection site pain, so appears to be less favorable). Another, slightly easier method is a web block, which injects anesthetic into the web space near the MCP joint – others’ and my method of choice for magnet insertion.

Lido + Epi

Digital block methods have been the subject of some controversy regarding lidocaine with epinephrine. Lidocaine is potentiated by epinephrine, both in terms of effective pain dampening properties and in duration. Unfortunately, epinephrine is a vasoconstrictor, and in the case of the digits of the hand, there is a major concern that the epinephrine can cause constriction to the point of digital ischemia, leading to gangrene issues, necrosis, etc… Not a pretty picture.

However, recent studies have refuted this.

On Growth and Learning

Fri, 06 Jun 2014 23:57:34 +0000

It’s really hard to be a 19 year old and be active in the development community.

It’s not because it’s hard to learn – on the contrary, I’ve found more educational opportunities in development than any hobby I’ve had. There are so many developers keen to train a young, green dev in the methodology that they’ve experienced to be the best. However, it’s that eagerness to teach and correct that can make it difficult. As I read through a subreddit on development, I find articles that hail Node.js as the second coming right next to articles that break down every single way that it is the worst possible piece of horror to ever be run.

Finals…

Wed, 04 Jun 2014 03:18:51 +0000

I’ve got finals for the next two weeks, and magnet implant plans are on hold until I’m at home… stay tuned!

Another Arduino Project

Tue, 03 Jun 2014 09:03:03 +0000

One of my previous Arduino projects was an Engineering 1 final project where we had to receive a small foam ball into a box 24″x12″x12″, then launch it into the next box that is immediately next to ours. Our plan began with a spring loaded catapult system that quickly proved to be unwieldy. Due to other finals going on at the time, it was only days before the competition (the result of which, by the way, determined 50% of our class grade) that we scrapped our old plan, and came up with a new one.

Socket Prototypes

Tue, 03 Jun 2014 06:15:57 +0000

I busted out the shapelock and made the first of a number of prototypes for the socket that will be my magnet implant computer interface. the general design I’m planning for is a full finger socket, most likely to the metacarpophalangeal joint. It will have a small amount wiggle room for the tip of my finger bu otherwise be a snug fit. The inductor coil will be embedded in a groove in the plastic, and the magnetometer will fit in a dent in the bottom. I’m considering a fabric sleeve to hide the wires and keep things from getting snagged.

Magnet Implant Gone Wrong

Mon, 02 Jun 2014 05:43:26 +0000

The Carnage

I attempted magnet insertion myself and went at it with a friend all scrubbed up to assist. Unfortunately, my scalpel wasn’t shaped correctly (#10) to make a deep enough pocket without making a massively oversized incision, and the lidocaine was wearing off by the time I tried using the tip of my surgical scissors to open a pocket, which created a triangular shaped opening that didn’t fit the magnet well anyway. I had it big enough for the magnet to fit but it barely peeked through the wound, and there was no way to stitch it so I called it off.

My Equipment

Sun, 01 Jun 2014 12:00:32 +0000

These two are the guts of my interface plans:

Arduino Leonardo

The Arduino Leonardo is an awesome board. It’s quite similar to the Arduino Uno, which I’m quite experienced with, but the biggest difference (and reason I’m getting it) is that it can emulate HID’s in Windows, meaning it can trigger mouse movement/click events, as well as keyboard input. I plan to either directly map it to a mouse, or have different measurements trigger innocuous keystrokes that can be picked up in the background by something like vJoy and mapped to joystick inputs.

What a biohacker’s desk ready for a magnet implant looks like…

Fri, 30 May 2014 22:14:47 +0000

Prepping for magnet implant surgery tonight!!

HID/Arduino Draft #001

Thu, 29 May 2014 15:40:44 +0000

Today I took my first stab at coding some general magnetic detection code that will work with a magnetometer to detect finger presence, finder flexion, and finger extension, all based on magnet proximity to make a magnet HID. I haven’t even received my magnetometer or Leonardo yet (the Uno doesn’t support HID emulation), so I’m sure this code won’t work in practice, but it compiles and I’ll use it as a v. 0.01 for future enhancements. My only two concerns are finding a sweet spot for the finger to rest (perhaps foam above the magnetometer?), and saturation of the Hall effect chip the magnetometer runs on, but I’ll jump off that cliff when I come to it.

Oh dear.

Thu, 29 May 2014 06:16:22 +0000

Well Trucrypt just went nuts. This could be bad.

On the Struggles of Version Control…

Thu, 29 May 2014 04:29:35 +0000

I love you, version control.

I love all the time we spend together – merge conflicts, rebasing repos, accidentally committing vendor folders on my Composer projects…

You really have saved my butt so many times – it truly appreciate you.

But right now just isn’t working for us. I’m off at college! I mean the last time I saw you was during my gap year – and we did see each other every day. But now distance has quelled the fire. I’m working on smaller personal projects to stay sharp, and I’m just looking for something casual. I don’t want to commit on every change! It’s not like I break the codebase that often, anyway…

..and we’re back.

Thu, 29 May 2014 00:38:14 +0000

It’s been a long time since I’ve set up a website I can call entirely my own. I’ve done countless jobs for clients, but since my corporate site (which I haven’t touched in over two years), I haven’t had anything publically facing that had solely my identity on it. I always dread template selection and visual design of blogs for my clients, but now that I have a chance to do it, it’s at once fun and frustrating to get things just the way I like them – perhaps I should stop judging!