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Projects · Web · AI · Claude · Vibe Coding2026 Rubikon: A Language for Solving the Cube In two days, Mike’s 2003 Rubik’s Cube simulator came back from the ActiveX era, merged with his 2023 Three.js cube, and grew a programming language for describing how to solve it. The strangest part: the first real program was written before the interpreter, and ran unchanged. Projects · Mac · Vibe Coding · AI2026 Where Is My Mac's Heat Coming From? My new Mac Studio gets warm and spins up its fans under heavy loads. I wanted to see where the heat was coming from, so I vibe coded a temperature logger with a local dashboard. Projects · Web · AI · Claude · Vibe Coding2026 Reviving a 2017 Repo Mike asked me to review one of his old GitHub repos, a 2017 TypeScript word-graph library. Two hours and about $7 later, it builds again, has 100 tests, ships a live demo, and no longer silently drops five words from the dictionary. Excel · Microsoft · History · Interviews2026 Excel is XL (40) A talk I gave for Excel’s 40th anniversary about the history behind the first version of Microsoft Excel, along with a BBC Witness History interview about the same story. AI · Agentic AI2026 Mitigating Entropy in Self-Modifying Agentic Architectures Prompt drift, context bloat, and structural safeguards for self-modifying AI agents. Projects · Web · Morse Code · Vibe Coding · AI2026 Vibe Coding a Morse Code News Practice Page I vibe coded a small Morse code practice page that turns current news headlines into CW audio, then linked it up with a couple of older Morse code reference tools for ham radio contacts and visualizing the code. Projects · Web · Vibe Coding · AI2026 Whidbey Island Dashboard We recently bought a vacation home on Whidbey Island — and I turned a spare TV into an ambient dashboard showing tides, weather, and ferry schedules. It’s free to use at whidbey-dashboard.mckoss.com. AI · Illustration2023 The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere An experiment pairing Longfellow’s poem with AI-generated illustrations chosen from its text. Software Engineering · Diversity2023 Expanding the Spectrum: Rethinking Diversity in Tech Hiring How traditional recruiting pipelines can overlook talented people from different backgrounds. AI · Knowledge · Education2023 Resumé for your child’s next tutor. A GPT-4 tutoring experiment showing the breadth of topics a general-purpose AI can discuss. AI · Midjourney · History2023 Men through the Ages (as seen by an AI) Testing whether historical prompts change Midjourney’s idea of an average man. AI · Midjourney · Beauty2023 An AI’s definition of (male) beauty. Experimenting with Midjourney’s visual definitions of male beauty. AI · Generative Art · Midjourney · Beauty2023 An AI’s definition of (female) beauty Exploring the biases in Midjourney’s visual definitions of female beauty. AI · Fiction2023 Narcissus, the Social Media Influencer A ChatGPT retelling of Narcissus as a modern social media influencer. Crypto2021 The Paper Enigma This paper simulator of a German Enigma machine is 100% compatible with the real thing; you can send and receive messages between the Paper Enigma and the WWII-era cryptography machine. Biographical · Vibe Coding · AI · OpenAI · Claude2021 Revamping mckoss.com The history of mckoss.com and its conversion to a statically generated web site. Trump · Politics2021 On January 6th — An Indictment A political indictment of Donald Trump’s actions, originally published after January 6, 2021. History · JavaScript2006 Object Oriented Programming in JavaScript How to define classes, methods, and sub-classes in JavaScript using constructors and the prototype chain, written when AJAX was new and before JavaScript had a class keyword. History · Apple II · Fonts2005 Tiny (3x5) Font I created this very tiny (but legible) bitmap font in 1980 for an Apple II terminal emulator. Now available as a modern web font, with the full text of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to read in it. Projects · Woodworking · Family1998 Platform House In the summer of 1998, I built my son Chris a playhouse on stilts. The story (and pictures) of the project, from a blank sheet of paper to a cold first night sleeping out.