@morganherlocker.bsky.social
I like the spirit of "choose boring technology" but disagree with the common conclusions (big databases, frameworks). Write directly for the platform and you typically end up with more efficient code and more durable skills, whether that's webdev or scientific computing. There's nothing more boring.
November 8, 2025 at 4:38 AM
I like the spirit of "choose boring technology" but disagree with the common conclusions (big databases, frameworks). Write directly for the platform and you typically end up with more efficient code and more durable skills, whether that's webdev or scientific computing. There's nothing more boring.
Map created before the first antarctic expedition that would have continuous communication back to the US over short wave radio relays. I stumbled on this in the Maritz Map Room of the Seattle Public Library.
November 4, 2025 at 7:48 PM
Map created before the first antarctic expedition that would have continuous communication back to the US over short wave radio relays. I stumbled on this in the Maritz Map Room of the Seattle Public Library.
Reposted
this idea from @lifewinning is so cool, i had not heard of inertial navigation https://placing.technology/i-was-in-a-bad-mood-and-i-wrote-down-my-worst-ideas-for-fixing-geo#bring-back-inertial-navigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etak
October 9, 2025 at 11:06 PM
this idea from @lifewinning is so cool, i had not heard of inertial navigation https://placing.technology/i-was-in-a-bad-mood-and-i-wrote-down-my-worst-ideas-for-fixing-geo#bring-back-inertial-navigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etak
"F3: The Open-Source Data File Format for the Future"
db.cs.cmu.edu/papers/2025/...
A new contender to parquet. The most unusual aspect of the format is that it can embed WASM decoders directly in metadata, aiding portability and future-proofing. WASM is optional - perf looks OK, but size is meh.
db.cs.cmu.edu/papers/2025/...
A new contender to parquet. The most unusual aspect of the format is that it can embed WASM decoders directly in metadata, aiding portability and future-proofing. WASM is optional - perf looks OK, but size is meh.
October 2, 2025 at 5:10 PM
"F3: The Open-Source Data File Format for the Future"
db.cs.cmu.edu/papers/2025/...
A new contender to parquet. The most unusual aspect of the format is that it can embed WASM decoders directly in metadata, aiding portability and future-proofing. WASM is optional - perf looks OK, but size is meh.
db.cs.cmu.edu/papers/2025/...
A new contender to parquet. The most unusual aspect of the format is that it can embed WASM decoders directly in metadata, aiding portability and future-proofing. WASM is optional - perf looks OK, but size is meh.
I've used observable plot for a few projects now, and can basically endorse it with a few caveats. It provides excellent charts out of the box, with minimal configuration, free of chartjunk/widgetjunk common in python viz world. It's surprisingly fast, but could be faster w/ a simpler feature set.
September 8, 2025 at 7:25 AM
I've used observable plot for a few projects now, and can basically endorse it with a few caveats. It provides excellent charts out of the box, with minimal configuration, free of chartjunk/widgetjunk common in python viz world. It's surprisingly fast, but could be faster w/ a simpler feature set.
Reposted
I made a video showing all aircraft within 100 miles of the EC president's aircraft during its flight to Plovdiv. One other aircraft exhibited symptoms of GPS interference at around the same time.
September 4, 2025 at 8:42 PM
I made a video showing all aircraft within 100 miles of the EC president's aircraft during its flight to Plovdiv. One other aircraft exhibited symptoms of GPS interference at around the same time.
"Hello World!" from a new (very WIP) lightweight embedded database focused on online real-time statistics. The standalone executable is currently *9.94KB* compressed.
August 19, 2025 at 11:53 PM
"Hello World!" from a new (very WIP) lightweight embedded database focused on online real-time statistics. The standalone executable is currently *9.94KB* compressed.
Reposted
I was exploring RRDtool, a round robin timeseries database / plotting system, and came across this beauty. It's been around a while, so the gallery has many interesting examples: oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/gall...
August 19, 2025 at 4:21 AM
I was exploring RRDtool, a round robin timeseries database / plotting system, and came across this beauty. It's been around a while, so the gallery has many interesting examples: oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/gall...
Loading a directory on a github repo with a single 140 line file inside:
161 requests
duration: 6.17 s
Contemporaneous speedtest:
down: 917.8 Mbps download
up: 841.5 Mbps upload
ping: 2 ms
161 requests
duration: 6.17 s
Contemporaneous speedtest:
down: 917.8 Mbps download
up: 841.5 Mbps upload
ping: 2 ms
August 6, 2025 at 5:27 AM
Loading a directory on a github repo with a single 140 line file inside:
161 requests
duration: 6.17 s
Contemporaneous speedtest:
down: 917.8 Mbps download
up: 841.5 Mbps upload
ping: 2 ms
161 requests
duration: 6.17 s
Contemporaneous speedtest:
down: 917.8 Mbps download
up: 841.5 Mbps upload
ping: 2 ms
Initial download sizes:
foxnews (21.62 MB)
wapo: (10.96 MB)
reuters: (9.28 MB)
nytimes (9.16 MB)
apnews (6.81 MB)
usatoday (336 KB)
foxnews (21.62 MB)
wapo: (10.96 MB)
reuters: (9.28 MB)
nytimes (9.16 MB)
apnews (6.81 MB)
usatoday (336 KB)
June 2, 2025 at 6:16 AM
Initial download sizes:
foxnews (21.62 MB)
wapo: (10.96 MB)
reuters: (9.28 MB)
nytimes (9.16 MB)
apnews (6.81 MB)
usatoday (336 KB)
foxnews (21.62 MB)
wapo: (10.96 MB)
reuters: (9.28 MB)
nytimes (9.16 MB)
apnews (6.81 MB)
usatoday (336 KB)
The standalone executable GUI/graphics program I'm working on currently weighs 289KiB, with minimal effort to optimize it so far. I love the shareability of web apps (just copy+paste a URL), but maybe there's a tipping point favoring the shareability of tiny exe's at some point on the size spectrum.
May 23, 2025 at 8:31 PM
The standalone executable GUI/graphics program I'm working on currently weighs 289KiB, with minimal effort to optimize it so far. I love the shareability of web apps (just copy+paste a URL), but maybe there's a tipping point favoring the shareability of tiny exe's at some point on the size spectrum.
"Program Files (x86)" vs "Program Files" has major report_final_final2.xlsx energy.
April 29, 2025 at 5:14 PM
"Program Files (x86)" vs "Program Files" has major report_final_final2.xlsx energy.
I'm in the process of setting up a cross-platform cmake setup for a project, and getting Windows working is... interesting. Even the projects trying to be "unix-y" like Cygwin are still heavily GUI driven and full of jank. I guess most devs just accept Visual Studio and heavy GUIs as a necessity?
April 17, 2025 at 10:00 PM
I'm in the process of setting up a cross-platform cmake setup for a project, and getting Windows working is... interesting. Even the projects trying to be "unix-y" like Cygwin are still heavily GUI driven and full of jank. I guess most devs just accept Visual Studio and heavy GUIs as a necessity?
I'm bearish on WASM as a widespread browser runtime because I have heard so many complaints about 5MB JS payloads over the years, where the proposed alternative is a 2GB python stack or something equally bloated. Without cultural shift to data-oriented code, I only see WASM slowing down the web.
March 20, 2025 at 6:55 PM
I'm bearish on WASM as a widespread browser runtime because I have heard so many complaints about 5MB JS payloads over the years, where the proposed alternative is a 2GB python stack or something equally bloated. Without cultural shift to data-oriented code, I only see WASM slowing down the web.
I am releasing globe.c, a simple tool I wrote in C99 for parsing/manipulating the NOAA GLOBE global 1km resolution elevation dataset. Here is a brief writeup on the CLI, along with a demo site for the project.
morganherlocker.com/post/globe.c/
morganherlocker.github.io/globe.c/
morganherlocker.com/post/globe.c/
morganherlocker.github.io/globe.c/
February 27, 2025 at 9:39 PM
I am releasing globe.c, a simple tool I wrote in C99 for parsing/manipulating the NOAA GLOBE global 1km resolution elevation dataset. Here is a brief writeup on the CLI, along with a demo site for the project.
morganherlocker.com/post/globe.c/
morganherlocker.github.io/globe.c/
morganherlocker.com/post/globe.c/
morganherlocker.github.io/globe.c/
I started using Obsidian a few weeks ago for research notes and semi-structured issue tracking. It's so good that I nearly stopped using it out of fear of vendor lock-in, but I found that the storage format is really simple (just .md files). I'm using syncthing to have it work on multiple machines.
January 25, 2025 at 7:16 AM
I started using Obsidian a few weeks ago for research notes and semi-structured issue tracking. It's so good that I nearly stopped using it out of fear of vendor lock-in, but I found that the storage format is really simple (just .md files). I'm using syncthing to have it work on multiple machines.
protobuf is surprisingly awful for it's intended use case (gluing a big monorepo together).
December 12, 2024 at 8:11 PM
protobuf is surprisingly awful for it's intended use case (gluing a big monorepo together).
Reposted
Sliced optimal transport cartogram of some POI in the Foursquare data drop.
November 23, 2024 at 10:27 PM
Sliced optimal transport cartogram of some POI in the Foursquare data drop.
Language breakdown of the 3 largest open source artificial pancreas loop systems in order of release:
1. JavaScript (OpenAPS / oref0 alg)
2. Kotlin (AndroidAPS, derived from oref0)
3. Swift (LoopKit)
1. JavaScript (OpenAPS / oref0 alg)
2. Kotlin (AndroidAPS, derived from oref0)
3. Swift (LoopKit)
November 22, 2024 at 7:42 AM
Language breakdown of the 3 largest open source artificial pancreas loop systems in order of release:
1. JavaScript (OpenAPS / oref0 alg)
2. Kotlin (AndroidAPS, derived from oref0)
3. Swift (LoopKit)
1. JavaScript (OpenAPS / oref0 alg)
2. Kotlin (AndroidAPS, derived from oref0)
3. Swift (LoopKit)
My 1st IDE was Visual Studio '10. It had incredible productivity tools that imho are unmatched to this day. Intellisense, a visual ORM, property editing to rival a modern game engine. It felt like magic, but it also held me back from understanding what I was making. I see parallels in today's LLMs.
November 22, 2024 at 6:00 AM
My 1st IDE was Visual Studio '10. It had incredible productivity tools that imho are unmatched to this day. Intellisense, a visual ORM, property editing to rival a modern game engine. It felt like magic, but it also held me back from understanding what I was making. I see parallels in today's LLMs.
"you should be made constantly aware of the full horror of what you are doing. [...] do always, then inhibit or ignore." (Carmack)
I went all in on this for the last year and it really changed the way I think about many problems, from data analysis to writing web pages.
I went all in on this for the last year and it really changed the way I think about many problems, from data analysis to writing web pages.
November 15, 2024 at 5:58 AM
"you should be made constantly aware of the full horror of what you are doing. [...] do always, then inhibit or ignore." (Carmack)
I went all in on this for the last year and it really changed the way I think about many problems, from data analysis to writing web pages.
I went all in on this for the last year and it really changed the way I think about many problems, from data analysis to writing web pages.
bluesky feels uncannily similar to twitter in 2010. it's encouraging to see that the clock can be turned back on something big w/ good execution + serendipity.
November 14, 2024 at 6:08 AM
bluesky feels uncannily similar to twitter in 2010. it's encouraging to see that the clock can be turned back on something big w/ good execution + serendipity.