Author: james

  • Maximising the fun in Linux

    Or in other words, I ditch NixOS because it’s awkward and weird, and I install Arch because it’s awkward and weird, but in a different way. And here’s my opinion. So I’ve been playing with NixOS for a few days now and while it does have some interesting features, it’s just a bit weird. I…

  • Making Computers Fun Again

    It’s nearly midnight, I’m supposed to be going to sleep but downstairs my Surface Pro 7+ is busy compiling a Linux kernel while installing NixOS. Getting that far required a lot of fussing about and a desk fan. And it’s great fun. I’ve not had this much entertainment from my computers since they looked like…

  • Well crap, my PC died

    Due to the untimely demise of my main PC, and it being the time of year where I have to get my car serviced, there will be a short break before my next video comes out. My PC that I edit video on is actually dead, it doesn’t even attempt to power up. This is…

  • Gamedev the hard way – doing it all myself

    Writing games is hard enough by itself, requiring a lot of different skills. So how can I make this even harder? How about I do literally everything myself, starting with nothing but a blank source file and write all the code by hand. No game engines or libraries. If I need something, I need to…

  • Stealing the Secrets of the NES – Agon Light Tilemaps in C

    Early computers weren’t powerful enough to draw full-screen moving graphics, so they had to use clever tricks. Let’s explore how Nintendo’s techniques for creating tile-based games on the NES can be applied to modern hardware. Using these methods, I built a scrolling tilemap system for the Agon Light using C programming.

  • Programming Bitmap Graphics – Agon Light using C

    In this video I look at how you can program the Agon Light to display bitmap images using C. I go through how to convert a PNG image into an RGB2222 format bitmap image, and then use the C library functions to load that into the Agon Light, and the VDP commands necessary to display…

  • Soldering a Solar Light in the Sun

    I bought a pair of cheapo outdoor solar lights from Amazon. One is on my shed round the back of the house, the other is on the shed at the front of the house. Yes, I have a bit of a shed obsession. After a few days the front one stopped working. I took it…

  • Sonoff Hacking to install Tasmota

    I bought some of those Sonoff BASIC smart switches off Amazon and flashed them with Tasmota. It’s a pretty painless affair, the programming contacts are right there on the board, and the case comes apart with your fingernails. What you’ve got to watch out for are idiot sellers on eBay trying to game the system…

  • I Just Broke WordPress…

    OK that was pretty strange. I wrote a blog post, hit submit and the front page of my WordPress installation just showed the white screen of death. The admin pages were working fine, but if I went into the post I’d just written to edit it, the edit screen crashed. Removing the post has fixed…

  • Programming Windows Screensavers – Agon Light Graphics Programming

    I’m learning how to program the Agon Light, and as a project thought it’d be fun to try and program two of the classic Windows 3.11 screensavers – Mystify and Starfield Simulation. My aim is not to simply program the Agon Light by cloning the Windows 3.11 screensavers, but to learn how to program the…