Byte High, No Limit

2024: The Year in Review

Next year is the third anniversary of this blog. But this year, after two and a half years of publishing weekly articles, I had to take a break.

The forgotten American 8-bit computer

Some time around 2010, my friend Bruno Florindo made contact with former Timex Computer boss Lout Galie.

Retro spotlight: Teresa Maughan and videogame magazines

In 1983 Teresa Maughan graduated from the University of Reading with a bachelor of science honors degree in Psychology and Zoology.

Not the end

Today is the two and a half year anniversary of this blog.

Review: One Night in Camden

This week at work we launched a combined user documentation, REST and GraphQL API portal for a new product.

Fully autonomous cars are only a decade away

This week I read an article in the national newspaper I subscribe to with the subhead: “carmakers appear to be abandoning the idea of fully self-driving cars.

Leather Jacket

Like many boys before me, as I child I wanted to be a fighter pilot.

Essay: The rise of single-issue politics

This is mainly a tech blog, and I normally steer clear of politics.

My curated list of animated shows (part 2/2)

In the first part of this article, I got as far as “Invader Zim”, which laid the foundations for what came next.

My curated list of animated shows (part 1/2)

I thought a list of animated shows would be a relatively quick article to write.

Retro spotlight: Rebecca G. Bettencourt and bitmap fonts

Rebecca Bettencourt was drawn to computer programming from the age of 10, when she built her first website and started creating Macintosh bitmap fonts using only a resource editing tool.

An introduction to supply chain attacks

On March 28 Andres Freund discovered malicious code in the XZ Utils package that could have compromised the security of around half the servers on the internet.

Retro spotlight: John Grant and Sinclair BASIC

Earlier this month, Zilog announced that it would be discontinuing the Z80 microprocessor after 48 years of production.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Grams

Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is best known as a trilogy in five parts (with a sixth by Eoin Colfer).

Profile: Tom Lehrer

In a monologue preceding one of his songs, Tom Lehrer once said: “I wonder how many people here tonight remember Hubert Humphry, he used to be a senator.

Taking the grand tour

From the mid 1600s until the mid 1800s, the Grand Tour was a trip through Europe (featuring Italy) undertaken by wealthy young men from high society.

Building a replica Hendrix guitar

If you work in IT, it can’t have escaped your notice that there are a lot of musicians around, including enough guitarists to fill a stairway.

Getting started with GraphQL

GraphQL is an API query and manipulation language. Created by Facebook in 2012, it was open-sourced in 2015.

Getting started with Automator

Although I pretty much have this website how I want it now, I’m still tweaking the CSS and adding features.

Retro spotlight: Jeri Ellsworth and the FPGA computer

Jeri Ellsworth turns 50 this year. Her first job was building and racing cars, but in 2002 she kicked off the FPGA computer revolution with the C-One.

The Hipcrime Vocab

I can confidently predict that I will not still be writing this blog the next time February 29 falls on a Thursday.

Retro spotlight: Mark Dean and the IBM PC

You might have read about Dr. Mark E. Dean elsewhere this month.

Retro spotlight: Hedy Lamarr and wireless networks

I first heard the name Hedy Lamarr in Mel Brooks’ film “Blazing Saddles”.

Using an iPad as an external monitor

My five-year-old iPadPro is the most versatile gadget I own. A few peripherals transform it from a device for consuming content into an incredible productivity tool.

Essay: Braver Newer World

Year one of the calendar in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is 1908, the year Henry Ford introduced the Model-T.

Retro spotlight: Avril Harrison and Deluxe Paint

Deluxe Paint was a bitmap graphics editor created by Dan Silva and published for the then-new Amiga 1000 by Electronic Arts in 1985.

Creating a hybrid document management system

This week, I listened to a podcast where the host opened with a sincere apology and the guest made some interesting points about the current social media landscape.

Retro spotlight: Andy Remic and the 8-bits

Andrey John “Andy” Remic was a writer, filmmaker and retro computer enthusiast.

My front pages

It’s been two years since I relaunched my website as a personal portfolio and developer relations blog.

2024: Predictions for the Year Ahead

This is my second go at making predictions for the year ahead.

Why you should try programming in Lua

Let me start by saying that I don’t have anything against Python.

2023: The Year in Review

It’s been nearly two years since I began publishing a weekly article on this blog.

Migrating documentation

Migrating documentation from one software platform to another can be painful.

The analog era is ending

Among other things, I’m a car bore. But I’ll try to keep that part brief.

Managing an online community

Merriam-Webster describes community as a unified body of individuals with common interests.

The art of story

As humans, the two main ways we learn are through play and story.

An introduction to the semantic web

One of my predictions for 2023 was that there would be a lot more talk about Web 3.

Art and Artificial Intelligence

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single technology in possession of sustained media attention, must be in want of government legislation.

Doing secure offline machine translation with macOS

Machine translation has come a long way since researchers figured out that it was better to translate phrases than individual words.

Docs as code doesn’t have to mean Markdown and Git

After almost 15 years as a technical writer for software companies, I’m a convert to the docs as code philosophy.

Which natural languages should you support?

I have long been an advocate for localization (even if I am somewhat behind with translating the older content on this site into French).

Hiring and retaining Generation Z

Economist and former Greece finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has a new book out called “Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism”.

My curated list of children's authors

This week I presented a talk on CMS, CCMS and related solutions at the TCUK23 technical communications conference in England.

A DevRel perspective on the Unitypocalypse

For those of you who don’t work in video games development, Unity is one of the most popular game engines.

Going Digital or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cloud

As far back as I can remember, I’ve been a writer.

The importance of time management

When I became a developer advocate, one of the first and best pieces of advice I was given was to protect my development time.

Writing American when it's not your first English dialect

When I started out as a writer I used to use Oxford English.

Using Freeform for whiteboarding on video calls

As a solutions engineer, I’ve spent a lot of time on video calls with customers brainstorming solutions to unique problems.

Using Lighthouse to validate web accessibility

I’ve long been an advocate of localization, which is why it was important for me to make this site multi-lingual.

Designing an operating system

If you read my recent article on implementing DLLs for the Z80 CPU, you’ll be aware that I’m designing an operating system called SE/OS.

Getting the most out of analytics

Last week, I wrote about the social media platform formerly known as Twitter (TSMPFKAT).

Twitter is the new MySpace

At the end of last year, among my predictions for 2023 was that Twitter would still be around at the end of this year.

Bulk converting Markdown to HTML

Converting Markdown to HTML is easy. Just publish it with a static site generator (SSG).

Who ya gonna call?

IT support staff are the unsung heroes of every organization. According to the Gartner Group, between 20% to 50% of all support calls are for password resets.

Creating Z80 dynamic shared libraries

Anyone who has used the Windows operating system for any length of time has probably encountered the phrase “DLL hell”, even if they haven’t directly experienced it.

Why you should build your data center in Ireland

There has been a lot of talk in the Irish press this month about the fact that the government doesn’t seem to know how many data centers are present in the country (it’s thought to be around 28).

My curated list of French films from the end of the twentieth century

My blog articles on the lists seem to be very popular, so I decided to write another one.

Getting started with Postman

I’ve written about REST APIs before, but up until now I haven’t covered the easiest way to get started interacting with them.

My curated list of obscure macOS apps

This fall, I will have been using Macs for 30 years.

Component single-source multi-channel publishing with Markdown

This week, I finished work on the final beta of the classic BASIC interpreter I’ve been working on for the Chloe 280SE FPGA retro computer project.

Exporting a Confluence page to Word XML

I’ve written previously about exporting release notes from Jira in XML format.

Accessing a remote computer from a mobile device

Since 2018, I’ve been using an iPad Pro as my main personal computer (besides my work laptop).

Getting started with Bitbucket Pipelines

I’m a big fan of GitHub Actions. But if you’re working for an enterprise software company, there’s a fair chance you’re using Atlassian’s Bitbucket Cloud (along with Confluence and Jira).

Managing social media content with Buffer

One of the challenges of writing a weekly DevRel blog is trying to make sure as many people as possible who might be interested in it actually get to see it.

The American Computer Magazine: 1957 to 2023

Print is evolving but, after 66 years, the era of the mass-market printed computer magazine is over.

100 Years of Yankee Stadium

This Tuesday, April 18 marked 100 years since the opening of “The House that Ruth Built” or, as it was more commonly known, Yankee Stadium.

My curated list of television shows

To date, one of the most widely-read articles I’ve written for this blog was a curated list of podcasts.

Using GPS satellite navigation without an internet connection

This week I’m on a 1,500-mile road trip around France, Benelux and Germany in my 10-year-old Toyota 86.

Stop press: Updates to March 2023

Back in my days as a newspaper reporter, the last paper I worked on was one of the last in the country to run a stop press.

My translation workflow

Last week, I wrote about how I added localization to my website.

Adding languages to a Hugo site

I’m a long-term advocate for localization, but this site has been monolingual for over a year now.

Surviving an uncivilized workplace

I’ve been fortunate in life to work for some companies that were genuinely great places to work.

Setting up a free personal website with GitHub, Hugo, Netlify and TinaCMS

My first article of 2022 was on setting up a free personal website with GitHub, Hugo, Netlify and Forestry.

A security alternative to giving online services your personally identifiable information

You’re probably familiar with the social media memes that try to elicit password reminders from you to access your accounts.

Writing a résumé or curriculum vitae

As the tech crunch continues, it’s entirely possible that you’re one of the many people who suddenly find themselves looking for a new job.

Low budget developer portal

Back in 2019, I had to create a developer portal with no budget.

Using the Document Object Model with JavaScript

This week, I had a look at the Document Object Model (DOM) for the first time since graduating from my computer science degree over a decade ago.

Migrating from Markdown to structured authoring

I’m a huge fan of Markdown. It’s great for wikis and writing content for static sites (most of the content on this site is written using it).

Sales for developers

You’re a developer. Have you ever wondered how the software you write gets into the hands of users?

Running Intel binaries in Debian ARM with Rosetta

I’ve mentioned UTM before. It’s a nice wrapper for QEMU that enables you to create ARM virtual machines and emulate non-ARM machines on macOS.

Migrating a Hugo site from Forestry to Tina

I launched the current version of my website a year ago.

2023: Predictions for the Year Ahead

I like to think that I have a fairly good track record of predicting the future, although usually in fairly vague terms.

How to survive a pandemic

If you’re reading this then, at the time of writing, thus far, through a combination of luck and guile, you have survived the pandemic.

2022: The Year in Review

At the beginning of the year, I committed to publishing a weekly article on my DevRel blog.

My curated list of podcasts

The original Apple iPod was announced on October 23, 2001. The final model was discontinued on May 10, 2022.

Adobe at 40: impact and alternatives

Adobe is 40 years old this month. Founders John Warnock and Charles Geschke both previously worked at Xerox PARC, where desktop publishing (DTP) was first developed.

Creating documentation in XML

If your documentation has reached the limits of what’s possible in Markdown, and you’d prefer not to fall back to HTML, it’s time to consider authoring in XML.

How to offend most of your international users all at once

We love icons. They’re a great way to convey information simply, even if many of them are skeuomorphs from a bygone age.

Converting images with ImageMagick

Photoshop is old. Really old. Well, in computer terms anyway. As of writing, it’s currently on version 24.

Using GitHub Actions to automatically unpack a zip archive

I was recently working with some software that could push a zip archive of content to a Git repository.

Getting started in developer relations

It may surprise you that the field of developer relations has been around for nearly 40 years at the time of writing.

Creating a code style guide

I’ve written previously about the importance of a style guide for written content.

Creating taxonomies

The hashtag has become ubiquitous. Chris Messina was inspired by the way chat rooms were identified on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) servers, when he first proposed its use in a 2007 tweet.

Creating documentation in an agile environment

Google for images of agility, and you’ll get dog trials. So let’s go with that analogy.

Getting started with REST APIs

REST (representational state transfer) APIs (application programming interfaces) have been around since the turn of the century, when they were defined by Dr.

An introduction to intellectual property for developers

This week, I’m going to take a brief look at intellectual property as it affects developers.

Setting up a home office for video production

In August 2021, TikTok increased the maximum length of videos on its platform to three minutes.

Revisitng DocBook

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and DocBook are two XML-based authoring frameworks.

Using LanguageTool to improve your writing

As I’ve previously remarked, I missed two things on switching from print journalism to technical writing.

Creating a writing style guide

When I switched from journalism to technical writing, the two things I missed the most were style guides and editors.

Running Xilinx ISE on an M1 Mac

Back in March 2022, I did a write-up of how to run Xilinx Vivado on an M1 Mac to generate cores for the Artix-7 series of FPGAs (as used on the Mega 65).

An introduction to API first

This week’s article is the long-promised expansion of the lightning talk I gave at SUGCON 2022 in Budapest.

Disambiguating Jamstack and MACH

Earlier this year, I gave a lightning talk on API-first. I’ve been planning write an article on it ever since, but first I wanted to lay the groundwork.

Explaining event-driven architectures

Modern software development is all about automation, continuous integration, continuous delivery and software-defined life cycles.

Getting the most out of MasterClass as a developer advocate

First off, the obligatory disclaimer. I was gifted an annual subscription to MasterClass by my employer, and I’m not getting paid to write this.

Managing packages on macOS with Homebrew

If you’re a Linux user, or you read my article on Scoop, you’ll be familiar with package managers.

Updating a 40-year-old computer design

In my last article, I wrote a lot about the development of the firmware for my hobbyist microcomputer project that became the Chloe 280SE.

Reusing code, reverse engineering and collaboration

In this article I’m going to talk about code reuse, reverse engineering and the importance of collaboration.

Essay: Assessing machine sentience

I’ve long been interested in the field known as artificial intelligence (AI).

Charting the evolution of the console and personal computer

The history of the evolution of consoles and computers is a tangled web.

Fostering security awareness

Today’s article is based on a presentation I gave at a security conference in the 2010s.

Playing the greatest 4X game of all time on modern hardware

Having spent my free time over the past couple of weeks binge-watching all 12 seasons of Tony Bourdain’s award-winning CNN series Parts Unknown (because it’s leaving Netflix in June), I haven’t been doing much extracurricular development.

Bulk updating documents with XSLT

XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language for transforming XML documents into other documents.

Managing a ReadMe.io site from a Git repository

ReadMe.io is a popular user docs site. It has a Markdown editor, theme builder and Swagger / OpenAPI file import.

Managing packages on Windows with Scoop

If you have even a passing familiarity with Linux, you’re probably aware of the concept of package management.

Creating release notes from a Jira query

In this article, I’ll describe a solution to simplify the process of creating release notes in MadCap Flare from a Jira query.

Creating diagrams with Mermaid

I’m a convert to writing docs in Markdown. Most of this website is written using it (displayed with Hugo).

Creating API docs for assembly language projects

This week, I’m releasing what I hope will be the penultimate beta of SE Basic IV (an open source classic BASIC interpreter).

Converting JSON string collections to binary assets for non-UTF-8 compliant devices

Last time I wrote about localization with Weblate. This week, I’ll show how the SE Basic IV project takes JSON output from Weblate and converts it into binaries that can be used with 8-bit code pages by the interpreter.

Doing continuous translation with Weblate

This week, I want to give a shout-out to Weblate, a web-based translation tool with Git integration that’s available free to open source projects.

Writing for a global audience

At the end of last week, I attended a conference in Budapest.

Tips for public speaking

In my day job as a developer advocate, and in my volunteer role as community manager for the Chloe 280SE project, I’m sometimes called upon to speak in public.

Choosing a mechanical keyboard switch

One of the things I do is design keyboard layouts and legend designs.

Changing email provider in the age of 2FA

Changing email provider is simple, right? Wrong. After the week I’ve had, I think there’s an argument that you should be able to transfer your email address to another provider, just like you can with a cell number.

Running Xilinx Vivado on an M1 Mac

I’ve written before about running non-Apple Intel binaries on an M1 Mac.

Using GitHub Actions and Hosted Runners

You’ve probably heard of DevOps. You’re probably aware of the term CI/CD (continuous integration and delivery).

Running non-Apple Intel binaries on an M1 Mac

Since late 2018, I’ve been developing on Apple Silicon. You can read about it in an earlier article.

Running ARM Linux on an M1 Mac

Next week, I’m going to look at running non-Apple Intel binaries on M1 Macs.

Creating a developer portal with no budget (part 3/3)

In this three part series, I’ll outline how to create a fully featured dev portal for your Swagger or OpenAPI 3.

Creating a developer portal with no budget (part 2/3)

In this three part series, I’ll outline how to create a fully featured dev portal for your Swagger or OpenAPI 3.

Creating a developer portal with no budget (part 1/3)

In this three part series, I’ll outline how to create a fully featured dev portal for your Swagger or OpenAPI 3.

Using an iPad Pro for development

This is my 2018 iPad Pro. It has replaced the Hackintosh workstation I built that I ended up installing Windows 10 on (story for another day) as my main computer outside work hours.

Setting up a free personal website with Forestry, GitHub, Hugo and Netlify

Back in May 2021 I started a new career as a developer advocate.

Using letter frequency to solve Wordle

As a writer, Wordle (the latest internet gaming sensation) piqued my curiosity.

A tech industry blog

When I started writing this blog in 2022, I didn’t even have a name for it.