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Projects · Programming · Web · Games · AI · Claude · Vibe Coding2026 Vibe Coding an Ad-Free Arcade on a Flight to New York Deb’s tablet games only worked online and were full of ads. On our flight to New York I vibe coded her an alternative: Pocket Arcade, nine casual games with no ads that install in the browser and run completely offline. Projects · Programming · 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 · Programming · 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 · Programming · 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 · Programming · 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 · Programming · 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. Photography2006 Photo Gallery Photographs I’ve enjoyed using as my desktop background, from frosted maple leaves and raindrops on glass to a Roman amphitheater in Cyprus. Each one downloads at full resolution. Programming · 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. Aviation · History2005 B-17 Flight - 61st Anniversary of D-Day On the 61st anniversary of D-Day, Brian MacDonald and I flew on the B-17G Fuddy Duddy over Seattle: the bombardier’s nose, the waist guns, the Norden bombsight, and stories from a WWII B-17 pilot. Aviation2004 Seaplane Flight For my birthday, Deb and I took our first seaplane flight: a 1952 Beaver from Lake Washington into the Cascades, down through a notch in the mountains to a picnic on the beach at remote Lake Isabel. Travel2004 Japan Trip, April 2004 A journal of our spring-break week in Japan: Tokyo’s electronics shops and subways, the Shinkansen to Kobe, and dinner (and tako-yaki) at the home of Chris’s exchange-student friend Daigo. Art · Family2003 Foundation Drawing In the fall of 2003, Debbie and I took a beginning drawing class: hands and gourds in pencil, then charcoal still lifes, ending with a pair of muddy boots in a black box. Our drawings, and an apple for the teacher. 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. Outdoors1998 Mt. Rainier Climb In July 1998, I climbed to the summit of Mt. Rainier with a guided team: a night crossing of the glaciers, altitude sickness, and 14,400 feet. I lost my camera … and then found it. Education · History · Projects · Programming1996 Logo Programming In 1995 I taught my son’s second grade class to program in Logo. Here are the lessons and worksheets I wrote for them, from turtle basics to music and recursion.