Linguistics

I maintain a page about the Hmong-Mien family of languages. I also did some artlang stuff for an RPG, which is on my old site.

Programming Games

I like designing and programming games, but I never seem to finish them. The only exceptions are Tunnelhack and an unnamed robot fighting game I made when I was a kid. (Amazingly, as of 2014 this game still actually works; you'll need PyGame.)

My prior, generally failed game projects are described in more detail here on the old version of my personal website, for what it's worth. There's also some obscure documentation of the file formats used by Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds and some libraries I wrote that probably don't work with anything anymore.

A few years back, I substantially reverse-engineered the classic Mac RPG Cythera, produced by the late lamented Mac game publisher and developer Ambrosia Software. The resulting information and Python-based tools can be found here on GitHub, along with contributions from other community members. Also, in accordance with the shareware terms of the original game, I am providing a download in case it disappears. I also have a patch that fixes some of the bugs in the original game; contact me if you are interested.

ID Card Printers

I made some basic (functional, but unrefined) code for printing to a Zebra P430i on a UNIX-like system, which can be found on GitHub. It may well work with similar printers using "EPCL" as the control language. Note that not all Zebra printers, or even all Zebra card printers, use this command language. It's actually documented, though the dozens of fliped, rotated, inverted, and otherwise misprinted cards I made in the course of developing this code speak to the ambiguities of the provided documentation.

LED Signs

I reverse engineered the protocol used by certain scrolling or animated LED signs, SLC16H-IR or M500N-7X80RG2, and possibly related signs with serial ports. See here.

Fiber Laser Engravers

I made some basic software for controlling certain Beijing JCZ boards used in inexpensive, often unbranded, Chinese fiber laser engraving machines with galvo scanners. Read more here. The software is cross platform. It is an early-stage experimental work!

Random Text Amusements

I've written a number of online random-story-generator programs. See here. Fans of Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers may appreciate this program and some of its procedurally-generated output: The Case of the Tasty Sword The Rescue Rangers and the Long Codpiece, The Potent Plunger.

Non-Random Writing

I wrote some stuff quite a while ago.

Note that this stuff is mostly really old, and presented here for completeness.

Odds and Ends

Here is an oddly detailed and technical review of an inexpensive LED bulb, the Viribright Benchmark 8W LED.

When I was a teenager I made a virtual tour of a LEGO block city I built. It's one of the oldest parts of this webpage, and here it is.

This is the old version of my webpage, 2006-2014

Here is the original version, 2003-2006, of my personal webpage. While it's fairly old (early 2000s), it is not my first website of any kind, which was a Pokemon fansite called "Mewtwo's Indigo Plateau" or something like that, assuming I managed to spell "Indigo" and "Plateau" correctly. I do not have a copy of it, nor do I remember what the URL was. In Fall 2018, I found a copy of the site in an old backup: here it is. And no, I did not manage to spell "Plateau" correctly. Actually, given my spelling skills in 1998, I'm surprised I spelled "Mewtwo" correctly.

External Sites

My GitHub Account, DeviantArt