Blogs
I See Myself⭐
📅 🏷featuredI look in the mirror and I do not see myself. I put on makeup and I do not see myself. I look at old pictures and I do not see myself. I look at devices I’ve made and I see myself. I lose myself in code and I am myself. I search my files and I find myself. My neural pathways mirror the shape of the runtime environment. My intentions externalized as silicon.
read more...Dressember 2023 - Stop Human Trafficking⭐
📅 🏷featured dressemberDressember is an organization that raises awareness and money to end human trafficking by encouraging people to wear a dress (or tie) every day in December and spread the word. When I started doing Dressember a few years ago, I was afraid of what people would think if I wore a dress, so I opted to wear a tie every day in December instead, and used it as a conversation starter to raise awareness and money to stop human trafficking.
read more...Poems from October 2023
📅i find myself in the cycle again, at a high point but wondering when, it all crashes, ruins, begin again. how can i enjoy what is fleeting, when what is coming will be devasatating why risk trying, scrutinized by eyes prying, just keep lying. caught in a local minimum, feeling stretched thin again, dopamine to the maximum, stuck in my head again mind reduced to sparks and juice, reactive never proactive.
read more...Encoding Text in Boot Laces as Binary Data⭐
📅 🏷featuredTL;DR I found a way to encode text as binary data in boot laces, based on which lace crosses over the other. Read the image below, starting on the bottom left, going up the boot on the left, then back down the boot on the right, and decode it with this tool. What?? Here I am, with a pair of boots on my desk, Ian’s Shoelace Site open in one tab, and ASCII to Binary Converter open in another tab.
read more...How I Created johanv.net: Personal Website with Seamless Livestream⭐
📅 🏷featuredThe Backstory Ever since I moved my site to johanv.xyz, some things have been slightly off. When I texted someone a link, they didn’t get it. When I visited it at work, it was blocked (and so I couldn’t link to it on my “about me” page). It turns out, .xyz domains, due to their low price, are heavily involved in scam texts and such. So, I made a short-term solution: pointing johan.
read more...The Assembly Instruction that Saved Christmas⭐
📅 🏷featuredChristmas Eve, 5pm-ish. The gifts I’m making for my family are still not done. I’m hunched over my laptop, desperately code-golfing to try and shave 20 bytes off my assembly code to fit within the 1kB of program memory on the ATTiny9. How did we get here? About 5 years ago (I had just graduated high school (I’m done with college now)), I started a project that I thought would be fun: buying a 25 cent computer and some LEDs, and creating handheld games for less than a dollar each.
read more...Linux: Remap Right Alt & Ctrl to Home & End (and Caps to Ctrl)
📅I recently got a framework laptop and I have been customizing it, including changing the touchpad swipe gestures and the keyboard layout. I couldn’t find an easy guide on how to re-map the right Alt and Ctrl keys to Home and End, so once I figured it out I decided I’d post it here. I also map Caps Lock to Ctrl, so I have included an optional step here to do that as well.
read more...Sabbath Podcast: Rethink the Cycle of Work and Rest
📅My friend recently recommended a series on the sabbath from the Bridgetown Audio Podcast which I have been listening to for the past few weeks and trying to put into practice. Even so far it has been very helpful in improving my mental and spiritual health, and as a result of this I am able to function better on the other 6 days of the week. (Reduced stress can lengthen your life, so I am getting the time back too.
read more...Raspberry Pi Dual Audio Output (or: Walmart JACK Audio)
📅Background (skip if you want) I use the raspberry pi to connect to my thrift store keyboard with a USB MIDI cable so that I can use better software instruments than the crappy ones built in to the keyboard. I have made 2 songs using this so far: MIDI Cable Is Here & Magically Infinite Dank Inspiration In addition to plugging in some headphones to the Pi and hearing the sound, I also wanted the option to pipe the audio to another device at the same time.
read more...How to send MMS messages on the Pinephone with vgmms
📅Update! While vgmms is not working yet, you can use jmms in the meantime: https://git.sr.ht/~amindfv/jmms Just head to that link and read the instructions for installation. Right now jmms only supports receiving MMS messages (group texts and pictures), not sending. NOTE: this guide is still a work in progress and while installing vgmms works, sending MMS does not work yet. (although you can send SMS through vgmms). open bug report for group messages: #23 open bug report for sending photos: #39
read more...Beginners Guide to Online Data Privacy⭐
📅 🏷featuredWhy? Why should we care about privacy? Most importantly, privacy fosters freedom of thought and speech, which greatly strengthens democracy. It does this by allowing us to hold unpopular opinions without fear of being punished or even killed by those in power, something which has happened many times throughout history and continues today. Being free to express discontent with the current elected officials is necessary to keep their power in check.
read more...How To Win Hackathons and Influence Prizes by Andrew Carnegie⭐
📅 🏷featuredI just got back from Hoya Hacks, a hackathon a Georgetown this past weekend. Someone asked me by email what tips I had to win hackathons (since I have won multiple prizes heh heh :), and I responded: Incorporate some hardware, such as Raspberry Pi or Arduino. Hoya Hacks didn’t have a prize for best hardware, but some do and either way, hardware usually makes your project stand out. I like to bring my own hardware because the MLH hardware lab sometimes doesn’t have a great selection, or they run out.
read more...Identity Reflection (a Poem I Wrote at Bridge DC)
📅This is copied from my journal that I kept during Bridge DC in summer 2019. More info about Bridge DC. I thought I heard my name called in the babbling crowd, but it was just an echo. I thought I saw my face reflected in the shifting mass, but it was just an illusion. I thought I sensed my purpose in the wavering sea, but it was just a manifesto. I took a pause to listen and be still, Away from the voices pulling me every direction but upward.
read more...How to Register for Classes at UMD (as of fall 2019)
📅tl;dr Build a schedule with Courseoff, find ratings on classes and professors on PlanetTerp, and see what requirements you have left on Degree Audit. Talk to your advisor, but also check what they tell you with more experienced people in your major. Once you have decided what classes you will take, make sure you have no registration blocks at Appointment and Registration Status and register for them using Registration Drop/Add. Use a spreadsheet to keep track of your 4-year plan, and make sure it lines up with the PDF your advisor emails you.
read more...Bridge DC (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Neighbor)⭐
📅 🏷featuredtl;dr (short version) Bridge is a 7-week immersive justice program including an internship (I taught tech classes at Year Up). I learned that serving people can also mean using the gifts God gave me, and doesn’t have to be measured in a certain way. I identified some areas where I am self-righteous and became more conscious of what it means to truly love people and not just love part of them.
read more...How I Created johanv.xyz (and subsequently destroyed it)
📅Update 2022-08-05 I have since moved to johanv.net, read about it here. Keep reading if you want, but most of the links in this article are old. The Backstory A few weeks ago, I was bemoaning the fact that my website URL was too long (johan.vandegriff.net), so I went on the search for a shorter (and more trendy ;) domain name. I found johanv.xyz on namesilo for only a few dollars a year.
read more...Terminal Tricks: Have Fun with the Linux Command Line
📅Hello, World! I put together this list of cool Linux terminal commands that can be yours today, for the low price of FREE! Basic Get the weather. curl wttr.in Copy a command output to the clipboard. cat file.txt | xclip -sel clip Serve the current directory on port 8000 as a web server. python -m http.server (The old way was python -m SimpleHTTPServer, which is how it is in the screenshot)
read more...Linux! (or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNUbody cares about saying the full name)⭐
📅 🏷featuredLinux is an operating system, comparable to Windows or MacOS. You can use it to browse the web, run applications, edit files, and all the normal tasks you use computers for. But Linux is fundamentally different from Windows and MacOS in several ways that I find very appealing. This article covers my reasons for using the Linux, and some cool things you can do with it (such as a keyboard shortcut for an airhorn sound).
read more...Third Party's the Charm (if only people would listen to logic):
📅I wrote an essay last semester at UMD about a proposed system for voting that would allow people to vote for a third party without wasting their votes. Voters would indicate their first, second, and third choices for candidates and the system would evaluate the choices so that if a voter’s first choice candidate did not win, the vote would be reassigned to the second choice, and the count would be re-evaluated.
read more...Why I Switched to ProtonMail (and then to Tutanota a year later, but that's neither here nor there)
📅Friends, Romans, Internet Users, lend me your screens. I have known for a while that Google is one of the largest companies with most of us using their services daily. But recently I have realized the extent which they use those services to track you, and some of the negative impacts. One example of this is shown by a tool built by Carnegie Melon called AdFisher, which sends out “hundreds or thousands of automated Web browsers” to build up a profile of interests with ad-targeting networks.
read more...My Story by Johan Vandegriff (told through limericks (as if that wasn't obvious))⭐
📅 🏷featuredHere are some limericks that I wrote for an assignment to tell my story. Johan is one quarter Lebanese, And three quarters white as swiss cheese. He’s spent so long in MoCo, That he’s started to go loco, And he plans to take a trip overseas. In 5th grade he became a Boy Scout, And liked to make fires and camp out. He advanced up in rank, Supportive family to thank, And got Eagle before the time ran out.
read more...Log.e() - Tales from the electron Volts⭐
📅 🏷featured(This is a robotics team meeting log for the electron Volts team’s 2016-2017 season.) Coder's Log.e() An account follows of a myriad of tales recounting the sundry misadventures and swashbuckling excursions as a member of a high (school) society for the construction of automatons and advancement through treacherous tournaments to victory of glory and splendor most dazzling, indeed. My aim is that the narrative shall be as accurate as possible and will serve useful in reference during future events.
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