Educational Resources
Kickstart Cheatsheets
A selection of printable, one-page cheatsheets, originally designed
for Kickstart Coding.
These are all 1 page long, and look great when printed. Consider
printing to hang up near your computer as you code or learn a new
programming language!
Includes: A cheat-sheet containing code and key terms in modern
HTML5 & CSS3, including CSS Grid and pseudo-selectors. a
cheatsheet with the most commonly used commands in Bash and Git, more
advanced usage such as using grep, find, piping, redirection, job and
process control, and interacting with the bash history, a cheatsheet
with common tasks in Python, a cheatsheet for JavaScript for Python
Developers, and vice-vsera a cheatsheet for Python for JavaScript
developers, and specific ones on Django and React Redux.
Frameworks
Modulo
Modulo.js is a dependency-free, self-packing Web Component framework
in a single 2000 line file. It's novel modular design and HTML-first
“low-code” approach lets even JavaScript-shy designers
build components. I've been working on Modulo off-and-on for years,
but it's just now getting to the point to show off.
Try it out »
OmniConverter
Note: While functioning for a variety of applications, the
documentation is incomplete, and is in development hiatus.
OmniConverter is a stateless HTTP-based microservice (and
mini-framework) for building conversion graphs for stateless (except
for cache), won-the-fly media file format conversion. Define
converters to form a conversion graph, that can be tested with the
included commandline tool. This causes types to get converted into each
other in a series of steps.
Check it out: omnic.michaelb.org
Scroll Editor
Note: Mostly undocumented, and is in development hiatus.
Scroll Editor was a Markdown based document processing toolkit &
GUI editor. The goal was creating a structure around editing a
collection of markdown files in a .git-based
revision-controlled system. They then could be compiled and outputted
to different exported formats, the initial target being HTML, but
fine-grained PDF and other exports were intended as well.
Scroll Editor was supposed to take "power user" tools of revision
control, and precise markdown-based editing, and wrap them up in a
"Scrivener"-style product aimed at serious writers.
Desktop Software
2019 | Whiteboard
Note: Functional and useful, but in development hiatus and looking
for project adopters to keep the packages up to date.
Whiteboard is slideshow application for teaching
programming . It embeds a code editor, terminal, and web
browser into a slide-show like interface to eliminate
context-switches and dead-space, while enabling more content
content to be set-up ahead of time. It's great for guiding code-heavy
classroom lectures, tutorials, workshops, and
webinars .
2013 | FS Gamer - Graphics Optimizer
Note: Abandoned.
For a full description, read Tech
Drive-In's 2013 explainer, when I first released FS Gamer .
FS Gamer was a desktop utility I developed in Python and GTK that
allowed executing games (or any other intensive app) in a separate "X11
Server", or basically another log-in session, which ran a light-weight
desktop and was optimized for lighter resource usage and higher
performance while playing games. At the time, this provided massive
speed-ups compared to running normally on GNOME or KDE.
Although my utility FSGamer is abandoned, in modern times Valve
Software has developed a much tightly optimized system that does
something similar by running games in separate highly-optimized Wayland
session. The most recent (as of 2023) of this project is Valve's gamescope
here (and a
presentation on it here ).
Audio I also compose music and sound effects for game projects.
2019 | Arbora Soundtrack
2005 | Nexuiz (FX)
I developed some sound effects for the original
Nexuiz, a classic arena-style shooter. Due to ownership disputes, the
original Nexuiz is defunct. Nexuiz's page on Alien Trap ,
where I'm credited as "michaelb", is little more than a memorial.
However, there is a super fun successor project called Xonotic that
I highly recommend. If you want a free, open-source,
community-maintained fast-paced arena-style shooter with loads of maps,
weapons, and game modes, then download
and play Xonotic here .
Design
“Ubiquitous computing that's nowhere to be seen...”
Berkeley Degrowth Institute is a project to
radically re-invent user interfaces and expectations around merging the
principals of 1) attention-respecting tech, and 2) the degrowth
approach to stop climate change.
Read the attention-degrowth
BDI manifesto »
Video Games From time to time I work on video game projects. While none of the following
video games are available on any App Stores any more, a couple of the small
puzzle games I've worked on are available on Itch.io.
