mary.codes

Blog

• I started painting again
  Art

  Apr 1st, 2024

  Why I turn to painting when I need to unwind.

• 100 days of Japanese on Duolingo
  Life

  Mar 22nd, 2024

  The bad, the good, and the alternatives to learning Japanese on Duolingo.

• How I'm organizing my work in 2024
  Programming

  Mar 20th, 2024

  I'm always looking for good ways to organize my work notes. Here's a few new tactics I've been using for work and personal projects.

• Watch the documentary 'Good Night Oppy' if you're feeling science-y
  Life

  Mar 18th, 2024

  I watched this film on a whim, and it re-ignited my love for space exploration.

• Sculpted robo-goldfish, a rainbow office building, and a look inside click farms
  Friday Faves

  Mar 15th, 2024

  Also, digital gardens, rewinding detergent cassettes, and a special 6th thing.

• I made... carnitas tacos with fresh corn tortillas
  Recipes

  Mar 13th, 2024

  When pork roast is half off at the grocery store, make carnitas.

• Finding the Design Engineer within the Full-Stack Developer
  Programming

  Mar 11th, 2024

  I just learned about design engineering, and it sounds like a small part of what I already do.

• Daily practice, spinning guitars, and Eloquent Javascript
  Friday Faves

  Mar 8th, 2024

  Also, what happens when AI is trained on your art and I found some neat public RSS aggregators.

• Displaying the current Git branch in my Linux terminal prompt
  Programming

  Mar 6th, 2024

  A feature I didn't realize I was missing.

• Generating a 3D map with OpenStreetMap and A-Frame
  Programming

  Mar 4th, 2024

  Part 2 of my experiment with OSM data. This time, instead of a canvas, I'm going to render the data in A-Frame to visualize it in 3D.

• Baby elephants, world radio, and abandoned projects
  Friday Faves

  Mar 1st, 2024

  Also, a powerful isolated vocal track and Disney's newest park.

• Are animated GIFs accessible?
  Web Accessibility

  Feb 28th, 2024

  Usually no, but I will make them accessible. No meme is going to tell me "no" and get away with it. Not even the Bugs Bunny one.

• I went to my first developer conference, and I think I did it wrong
  Life

  Feb 26th, 2024

  Preparedness is key, and I was not ready.

• One of my blog posts hit the top of Hacker News
  Life

  Feb 21st, 2024

  Yesterday, someone posted one of my articles to Hacker News and it ended up in the top spot. Here's what happened.

• Translating OpenStreetMap data to HTML5 Canvas with Rust and WebAssembly
  Programming

  Feb 19th, 2024

  Using the Overpass API to read OSM data, parsing the data with Rust, and then drawing the map onto HTML5 canvas.

• JavaScript sets and sorting Git branches
  Friday Faves

  Feb 16th, 2024

  Of course, I also found a couple of art posts.

• The secret to the creamiest grits
  Recipes

  Feb 14th, 2024

  It's baking soda. Saved you a click. But please still click.

• Why can't I make a pull request in GitHub mobile?
  Programming

  Feb 12th, 2024

  The GitHub mobile app lacks a basic functionality that many people need. Why hasn't it been implemented?

• Johnny Costa, puzzle boxes, and AI glasses
  Friday Faves

  Feb 9th, 2024

  Please stop me from preordering $350 AI glasses.

• Fix misbehaving grid children with display: contents CSS
  Programming

  Feb 7th, 2024

  A programmatically added child element can blow up your grids. Fix them with this CSS.

• Kitbashing and 3D printing George Washingtits (NSFW)
  Art

  Feb 5th, 2024

  Putting George Washington's head on a woman's torso for the LOLs. Contains pictures of silly 3D printed NSFW content.

• A month of posting, karakuri, and space exploration
  Friday Faves

  Feb 2nd, 2024

  Some more cool art, too.

• Pendulums and sine waves in P5.js
  Art

  Jan 31st, 2024

  Creating algorithmic art with pendulum simulations and sine waves using P5.js.

• Making a static word of the day site with Google AI Studio and GitHub Actions
  Programming

  Jan 29th, 2024

  An experiment using Google's Gemini Pro AI to generate new Japanese vocabulary words on a daily basis, with an automatic build step using GitHub Actions.

• Disney Imagineer Lanny Smoot, a plea to blog, and tea battles
  Friday Faves

  Jan 26th, 2024

  Also, a roller coaster that jumps the tracks on purpose.

• A capacitive stylus changed how I write
  Writing

  Jan 24th, 2024

  I got a capacitive stylus for drawing but I've been using it to write and take notes instead.

• Enabling Japanese keyboards for Duolingo practice
  Life

  Jan 22nd, 2024

  How I enabled Japanese keyboards on my Android phone, Chromebook, and Pop!_OS computer.

• The week of beautiful art
  Friday Faves

  Jan 19th, 2024

  The universe is funneling amazing art directly to me, and I'm not mad about it.

• Daily protein smoothie recipe
  Recipes

  Jan 17th, 2024

  This is how I'm boosting my protein intake.

• Streaking into the new year
  Life

  Jan 15th, 2024

  As in, tracking a habit in order to improve.

• Pokémon art and website aggregators
  Friday Faves

  Jan 12th, 2024

  Finding cool indie sites and finishing The Curse.

• In defense of "rabbit holes"
  Life

  Jan 10th, 2024

  Connecting totally unrelated threads, or, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the frequency illusion.

• Menu and sun/moon animated icons with CSS
  Programming

  Jan 8th, 2024

  Replacing static icon fonts with CSS animations.

• Constellations, cubes, and 3D printed toilets
  Friday Faves

  Jan 5th, 2024

  The universe is big and I am ignorant.

• Movies I watched in 2023
  Life

  Jan 3rd, 2024

  I made an effort to track all the new and new-to-me movies I watched in 2023.

• New Year's CSS Cleanup
  Programming

  Jan 1st, 2024

  Overhauling my site with cleaner, more performant CSS for the new year.

• Updating blog deployments with Github Actions
  Programming

  Nov 19th, 2023

  Moving from Gatsby Cloud back to GitHub pages, with automatic deployments.

• I made... chocolate croissants
  Recipes

  Mar 21st, 2023

  Chocolate croissants.

• I read three books in two weeks
  Books

  Jan 16th, 2023

  Working on exceeding my book goal for 2023

• Kielbasa and sauerkraut
  Recipes

  Jan 1st, 2023

  Ringing in the new year with kielbasa and sauerkraut.

• Avoid doomscrolling with app pinning on Android
  Life

  Dec 30th, 2022

  Desperately trying to break the social media habit.

• I made... fresh pasta from scratch
  Recipes

  Dec 28th, 2022

  I'm now the owner of a pasta roller.

• Learning how to control an LED light strip with an ESP8266 microcontroller and WLED
  Home Automation

  Dec 20th, 2022

  Making Wi-Fi LED light strips happen without a Raspberry Pi.

• Advent of Code 2022, Day 8 -- Treetop Tree House
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 8th, 2022

  Rust solutions to Advent of Code 2022, day 8.

• Advent of Code 2022, Day 7 -- No Space Left On Device
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 7th, 2022

  Rust solutions to Advent of Code 2022, day 7.

• Advent of Code 2022, Day 6 -- Tuning Trouble
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 6th, 2022

  Rust solutions to Advent of Code 2022, day 6.

• Advent of Code 2022, Day 5 -- Supply Stacks
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 5th, 2022

  Rust solutions to Advent of Code 2022, day 5.

• Advent of Code 2022, Day 4 -- Camp Cleanup
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 4th, 2022

  Rust solutions to Advent of Code 2022, day 4.

• Advent of Code 2022, Day 3 -- Rucksack Reorganization
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 3rd, 2022

  Rust solutions to Advent of Code 2022, day 3.

• Advent of Code 2022, Day 2 -- Rock Paper Scissors
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 2nd, 2022

  Rust solutions to Advent of Code 2022, day 2.

• Advent of Code 2022, Day 1 -- Calorie Counting
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 1st, 2022

  Rust solutions to Advent of Code 2022, day 1.

• How I blog from my phone using Termux
  Programming

  Nov 8th, 2022

  I now have everything set up so I can remote into my blogging machine.

• Daily conversations with Ursula
  Games

  Nov 5th, 2022

  Ursula needs to stop sleeping in the early evenings in Disney Dreamlight Valley.

• Twitter
  Life

  Nov 4th, 2022

  I wonder how long it will take me to receive my Twitter data.

• Easy naan
  Recipes

  Nov 3rd, 2022

  Tasty naan bread perfect as a side for tikka masala or butter chicken.

• Halloween flower tower 2022
  Life

  Oct 30th, 2022

  Building a Halloween flower tower with marigolds and black sweet potato vine.

• Moving my blog from Netlify to Gatsby Cloud
  Programming

  Aug 20th, 2022

  Employing Reactive Site Generation on my site by moving from Netlify to Gatsby Cloud

• Thai Coconut Ramen
  Recipes

  Aug 13th, 2022

  Quick and easy coconut curry ramen noodles.

• Creating a Wordle command line clone in Rust
  Programming

  Apr 15th, 2022

  Hopping on the Wordle craze a little too late, I decided to create a command-line Wordle clone in Rust called NOT THAT WORD GAME.

• Updating drivers again for Ubuntu 21.10
  Programming

  Apr 10th, 2022

  How updating to Ubuntu 21.10 and the Linux 5.13 kernal broke the Realtek 8812au driver for my Wi-Fi dongle and how I fixed it.

• Shape packing with P5.js
  Art

  Jan 12th, 2022

  Generating non-overlapping shapes that fill an area with P5.js.

• 3D printing generative art with P5.js and Blender
  Art

  Jan 7th, 2022

  How I use P5.js, Inkscape, Blender, and Cura to create simple 3D prints of computer-generated art.

• Things I did in 2021
  Life

  Dec 31st, 2021

  Accomplishments, achievements, and random things I did in the past year.

• Book Review: 'The Immortalists' by Chloe Benjamin
  Books

  Dec 29th, 2021

  My review of the novel 'The Immortalists'.

• My first mobile game, six years later
  Programming

  Dec 22nd, 2021

  I resurrected a mobile game that I made in 2015 that helped me get my first programming job.

• JavaScript error handling with try/catch
  Programming

  Dec 2nd, 2021

  How I like to describe a try/catch block.

• Developing on a Chromebook via SSH
  Programming

  Nov 29th, 2021

  How I'm setting up my old ASUS Chromebook to do some development outside in nice weather.

• Quick and dirty React.js and CSS dark mode
  Programming

  Nov 26th, 2021

  The only thing in my life that doesn't have a dark mode is my own website.

• My five-day TV fast
  Life

  Nov 24th, 2021

  I tried to live without TV for five days, and what I learned from it.

• Rust, WebAssembly, and FCKed Editor, a cursed markdown editor
  Programming

  Nov 21st, 2021

  Another intentionally useless website! This time, I'm using Rust to create a markdown parser that returns emojified text.

• Lines of code and word counts with xargs and wc
  Programming

  Nov 14th, 2021

  An easy way to count lines and words within a directory using xargs and wc on Ubuntu.

• Programming in portrait with a monitor stand
  Life

  Nov 9th, 2021

  How buying a monitor stand has made programming fun and efficient again.

• Grogu's Half-Batch Macarons
  Recipes

  Nov 4th, 2021

  A smaller recipe that makes enough macarons for two or three people.

• Updating a Raspberry Pi to Python 3.9
  Programming

  Nov 2nd, 2021

  Steps for updating and compiling newer versions of Python on the Raspbian operating system.

• WCAG Guideline 1.3 - Adaptable
  Web Accessibility

  Jun 13th, 2021

  My notes on WCAG guideline 1.3 - Adaptable.

• WCAG Guideline 1.1 - Text Alternatives
  Web Accessibility

  Jun 12th, 2021

  My notes on WCAG guideline 1.1 - Text Alternatives.

• Optional chaining and nullish coalescing in JavaScript
  Programming

  Jun 8th, 2021

  Using optional chaining and the nullish coalescing operator to clean up JavaScript object references.

• Fishless Tacos with Mango Salsa
  Recipes

  Jun 7th, 2021

  Delicious vegetarian fishless tacos with a homemade mango salsa.

• Useful git commands
  Programming

  Jun 6th, 2021

  Git commands that I use daily, and git commands that I've squirreled away in notes that occasionally come in useful.

• Air conditioning float switches for dumb homeowners
  Life

  Jun 5th, 2021

  How I managed to flood my house because I didn't know what an air conditioning float switch was.

• Domain redirects with Netlify and Gatsby
  Programming

  May 19th, 2021

  Using Netlify's DNS to forward to a new domain name for my Gatsby blog.

• Running Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 3 from an external hard drive
  Home Automation

  Jan 16th, 2021

  A setup guide for booting Raspberry Pi OS from an external hard drive and installing Home Assistant in a Python virtual environment.

• Advent of Code 2020, Day 9 -- Encoding Error
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 9th, 2020

  Python solutions to Advent of Code 2020, day 9.

• Advent of Code 2020, Day 8 -- Handheld Halting
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 8th, 2020

  Python solutions to Advent of Code 2020, day 8.

• Advent of Code 2020, Day 7 -- Handy Haversacks
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 7th, 2020

  Python solutions to Advent of Code 2020, day 7.

• Advent of Code 2020, Day 6 -- Custom Customs
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 6th, 2020

  Python solutions to Advent of Code 2020, day 6.

• Advent of Code 2020, Day 5 -- Binary Boarding
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 5th, 2020

  Python solutions to Advent of Code 2020, day 5.

• Advent of Code 2020, Day 4 -- Passport Processing
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 4th, 2020

  Python solutions to Advent of Code 2020, day 4.

• Advent of Code 2020, Day 3 -- Toboggan Trajectory
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 3rd, 2020

  Python solutions to Advent of Code 2020, day 3.

• Advent of Code 2020, Day 2 -- Password Philosophy
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 2nd, 2020

  Python solutions to Advent of Code 2020, day 2.

• Advent of Code 2020, Day 1 -- Report Repair
  Advent Of Code

  Dec 1st, 2020

  Python solutions to Advent of Code 2020, day 1.

• Quick and dirty fan hacking with a Raspberry Pi and a 433MHz transmitter
  Home Automation

  Nov 19th, 2020

  How I made a quick prototype to control my remote-controlled fan with my phone in less than two hours.

• Mary's Famous Vegetarian Biscuits and Gravy
  Recipes

  Nov 15th, 2020

  I've been making these vegetarian biscuits and gravy for over a year. The recipe is constantly evolving, but always delicious.

• Upcoming project - Hacking fans and beds
  Programming

  Nov 14th, 2020

  Links to support an upcoming Raspberry Pi project.

• Server-side Rendering and API Calls in Rust
  Programming

  Nov 10th, 2020

  Making one of my useless websites in Rust, with server-side rendering and parsing JSON from external APIs.

• Intentionally Useless Websites
  Programming

  Nov 9th, 2020

  Making websites that are intentionally useless for fun and learning.

• Creating a ROT13 Encoder/Decoder in Rust
  Programming

  Nov 1st, 2020

  Dipping my toes into Rust by making a CLI that will encode and decode ROT13 cyphers.

• Easy One-Pot French-Style Scrambled Eggs
  Recipes

  Oct 30th, 2020

  Easy and delicious creamy and buttery scrambled eggs.

• Transitioning From a Blog to a Digital Garden
  Writing

  Oct 29th, 2020

  Reducing writing anxiety by removing dates from posts, curating by category, and allowing unfinished thoughts.

• Spreadsheets for everything
  Life

  Dec 28th, 2019

  How I'm trying to organize everything with spreadsheets.

• Creating a Fitbit watch face
  Programming

  Dec 26th, 2019

  Creating my first Fitbit Versa 2 watch face.

• Lazy Sweet Potato, Squash, and Black Bean Enchiladas
  Recipes

  Dec 24th, 2019

  My lazy version of sweet potato, squash, and black bean enchiladas adapted from the Thug Kitchen cookbook.

• So Much to Update
  Life

  Oct 6th, 2019

  The last few months have been a whirlwind of vacations, Disney, and work.

• Lentil and Mushroom Coconut Curry Risotto
  Recipes

  Jul 23rd, 2019

  A coconut curry rice and veggie dish.

• New Project - Thinkery, a Laravel Self-Hosted Markdown Microblog
  Programming

  May 26th, 2019

  I created my own personal microblogging platform for maryknize.com and learned Laravel along the way.

• Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo Driver Drama
  Programming

  Apr 19th, 2019

  How updating to Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo borked the Realtek 8812au driver for my Wi-Fi dongle and how I fixed it.

• Book Review: 'The Good Neighbor - The Life and Work of Fred Rogers' by Maxwell King
  Books

  Mar 30th, 2019

  I review Fred Roger's biography and compare it to other documentary works.

• Creating a Duolingo Widget in React and PHP
  Programming

  Mar 23rd, 2019

  Attempting to create a widget to display my Duolingo progress with the Duolingo API, React, and some back-end PHP.

• Creating an Animated GIF on the Command Line
  Art

  Mar 5th, 2019

  How to use ImageMagick and FFmpeg to turn a video into an animated GIF.

• Using Exif Data to Annotate Images in GatsbyJS
  Programming

  Mar 3rd, 2019

  Creating image gallery pages using exif data for titles and descriptions after migrating to Gatsby and GraphQL.

• Learning Languages for Fun
  Life

  Oct 14th, 2018

  Continuing with language learning after a multi-year absence.

• Glitch Art with SoX, ImageMagick, and Vim
  Art

  Jul 31st, 2018

  Databending images to create interesting effects using audio, image, and text editing software.

• Custom Domains with GitHub Pages and Namecheap
  Programming

  Jul 22nd, 2018

  Instructions for easily setting up a custom domain on GitHub pages with a Namecheap domain.

• The Allure of the Alternate Reality Game
  Art

  Mar 25th, 2018

  I've suddenly fallen down a rabbit hole of alternate reality games and I can't get out.

• The Bullet Journal
  Writing

  Mar 12th, 2018

  Why daily journaling supercedes blogging.

• Book Review: 'The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business' by Patrick Lencioni
  Books

  Jan 11th, 2018

  My review of the organizational business book 'The Advantage' by Patrick Lencioni

• Lessons Learned From Shipping a Large Project
  Programming

  Jan 9th, 2018

  These are the lessons I've learned from shipping a year-long software project.

• Spotify Mini From The Command Line
  Programming

  Jan 3rd, 2018

  How I made a mini Spotify player happen from the MacOS command line.

• A Static Blog Generator From Scratch
  Programming

  Jan 2nd, 2018

  How I couldn't find the static blog generator I wanted, so I quickly coded my own.