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Today, I worked on the Linkage for Mac app. I had been running into an issue where changing a setting to track the open sidebar panel triggered a callback in the editor, notifying it of the setting change. This caused a crash when the editor view called a…
Continue readingI managed to write a lowpoly shader for the built-in Unity terrain. The shadows were troublesome because I’m not using the URP (Universal render Pipeline) and I was writing the code and using macros that work with that renderer. Here’s the shader code: This is what I just…
Continue readingThe Windows Linkage app has a feature where you can control the position of inputs manually. I added this a long time ago and I just implemented the first thing that came to mind. What I did was add sliding controls, sort of like scroll bars, to pick…
Continue readingI am currently porting the Linkage app from Windows to the Mac. It’s a fun project with many challenges and many annoyances. Designing a Mac-style sidebar to show the properties of selected items was fun. Trying to use a Mac-centric help system is terribly tricky. For many years,…
Continue readingMany years ago, I created a messaging system for a puzzle hunt (AKA puzzle race) and I utilized Twilio for SMS text messages. Twilio provides a way for their customers to send SMS text messages through cell phone carriers to their devices. In other words, you can text…
Continue readingAt work starting about 12 years ago, I was tasked with porting an old Android app to Windows phone. Then I ported that to Windows a year or two later. Many years after that, and after making many changes to those apps, I wrote an iOS app from…
Continue readingMuch of this post is written and/or edited by ChatGPT 4 based on my prompts. Abstract This paper presents a novel approach to simulating complex mechanical systems by representing mechanisms as collections of individual components that interact to form functional units. A key focus of the method is…
Continue readingThe editor has a lot of missing features, but a lot of it works. You can create mechanisms, save them, and load them later. There is no simulation and no undo feature. Feel free to try it, and let me know how it works for you. I would…
Continue readingI’m working on the Linkage app for Mac, and I’m a little annoyed at the online comments about installers in general and Windows in particular. I appreciate many of the shortcomings of the Windows MSI files and how a simple drag-drop action to install an app is simple….
Continue readingI’m always trying to write software that is as elegant and readable as possible. This often means identifying areas of confusion in the code and improving it. This also often means picking between styles or ideas that are all equally crappy. Today’s dilemma concerns snap lines. Snap lines…
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