Posts on mckoss.com | Mike Koss

Vibe Coding an Ad-Free Arcade on a Flight to New York

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 04:30:00 -0700

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.

Rubikon: A Language for Solving the Cube

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 01:30:00 -0700

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.

Where Is My Mac's Heat Coming From?

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:30:00 -0700

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.

Reviving a 2017 Repo

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 02:35:00 -0700

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 is XL (40)

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 19:42:00 -0700

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.

Mitigating Entropy in Self-Modifying Agentic Architectures

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:48:26 +0000

Prompt drift, context bloat, and structural safeguards for self-modifying AI agents.

Vibe Coding a Morse Code News Practice Page

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 11:45:00 -0700

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.

Whidbey Island Dashboard

Fri, 01 May 2026 07:00:00 -0700

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.

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 20:06:52 +0000

An experiment pairing Longfellow’s poem with AI-generated illustrations chosen from its text.

Expanding the Spectrum: Rethinking Diversity in Tech Hiring

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 23:38:29 +0000

How traditional recruiting pipelines can overlook talented people from different backgrounds.

Resumé for your child’s next tutor.

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 22:06:35 +0000

A GPT-4 tutoring experiment showing the breadth of topics a general-purpose AI can discuss.

Men through the Ages (as seen by an AI)

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 20:30:12 +0000

Testing whether historical prompts change Midjourney’s idea of an average man.

An AI’s definition of (male) beauty.

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 22:34:52 +0000

Experimenting with Midjourney’s visual definitions of male beauty.

An AI’s definition of (female) beauty

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 21:24:56 +0000

Exploring the biases in Midjourney’s visual definitions of female beauty.

Narcissus, the Social Media Influencer

Mon, 20 Feb 2023 01:28:29 +0000

A ChatGPT retelling of Narcissus as a modern social media influencer.

The Paper Enigma

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 21:29:01 -0700

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.

Revamping mckoss.com

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 20:43:43 -0700

The history of mckoss.com and its conversion to a statically generated web site.

On January 6th — An Indictment

Sat, 16 Jan 2021 23:14:26 +0000

A political indictment of Donald Trump’s actions, originally published after January 6, 2021.

Photo Gallery

Wed, 15 Mar 2006 10:00:00 -0800

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.

Object Oriented Programming in JavaScript

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 10:00:00 -0800

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.

Tiny (3x5) Font

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 10:27:00 -0800

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.

B-17 Flight - 61st Anniversary of D-Day

Mon, 06 Jun 2005 10:00:00 -0700

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.

Seaplane Flight

Tue, 31 Aug 2004 10:00:00 -0700

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.

Japan Trip, April 2004

Tue, 11 May 2004 10:00:00 -0700

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.

Foundation Drawing

Wed, 19 Nov 2003 10:00:00 -0800

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.

Platform House

Mon, 31 Aug 1998 10:00:00 -0700

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.

Mt. Rainier Climb

Thu, 23 Jul 1998 10:00:00 -0700

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.

Logo Programming

Sun, 25 Feb 1996 10:00:00 -0800

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.