What I'm doing now

Updated June 1, 2026

This is a now page. You can also read what happened then.

Worked

I’m currently splitting time betwen Remote Ham Radio and TRMNL.

At RHR, the transition from FlexRadio to Icom continues at full steam. As of today, 14 stations have been migrated, with 39 to go. It sounds like a lot, but it’s going quickly. Check back next month.

Integration with third-party hardware and software continues to be a pain point. Users want to connect their native applications and physical devices to RHR, but of course we are sandboxed in the browser, which limits our connectivity options. Luckily Web Serial and Web MIDI APIs have come a long way recently (Firefox just added WebSerial this month!), enabling us to integrate whole classes of hardware controllers without any external dependencies.

But then there’s the network - TCP and UDP. Those integration points require the user to run a native application. Currently we accomplish this with Electron, but that’s a heavy hammer, and a pain to keep updated with its frequent revisions. So now I’m building a new helper app to support our system’s next generation, code name “LocalMate”. It’s in Go, using Fyne for its minimal UI. It’s fast, stable, cross-platform, and - most importantly - Claude is really good at writing Go. It communicates with the browser through WebSockets, allowing us to break out of the sandbox. It’s working well, and I’m looking forward to ditching Electron sooner than later.

At TRMNL, I have been working on both the web backend and device firmware. We finally released on-demand screen generation, which means that images are now generated only as requested by the device, instead of on a regular cron task. This has the double benefit of fresher on-device content while also greatly reducing the overall number of screens we have to process on the back-end. A true win-win for once.

Went to Hamvention

We took our yearly pilgrimage to Xenia, Ohio for Dayton Hamvention, the biggest hamfest which draws over 40,000 visitors. It was business as usual - catching up with vendors, scouring the flea market, and eating a corn dog (or two).

I spied a couple of Macs in the flea market - a 128K and 512K in decent condition - but they weren’t tantalizing enough. No, it was the Heathkit SB-102 that followed me home. I’ve always liked the look of these transceivers, and I relish the opportunity to restore it to working condition.

Built vintage Mac stuff

The new TashTalk USB (also available from Joe’s Computer Museum) reignited the vintage computing spark this month. It’s such a great little device that makes it trivial to share a folder from a modern Mac over AppleTalk with just a serial cable. I designed an enclosure, submitted a bug fix, and have been using it daily. The Mac Plus has been promoted back to my desk, and I use it for note-taking throughout the day, confident that my data is safe and backed-up on my MacBook M5.

To that end, I’ve been working on MacDown, a Markdown-aware text editor for System 6 and 7. It gathered a bit of buzz on Mastodon, so I’m looking forward to putting the finishing touches on it this month. It’s based on a build system that I have been putting together with Erik.

Adopted kitties!

We adopted a couple of kittens from a local shelter. Born under a shed, they were only 8 weeks old when we picked them up, and were clearly a bonded pair, so they were a package deal.

Introducing Simon and River.

They have quickly adapted to their new home, locating every nook and cranny which has now been kitty-proofed. Resident kitty-at-heart Daisy largely tolerates them.