Devlog

Spent some time this evening working on my image hosting tool. It’s slowly coming along, but wow do I suck at UI design (the “Edit Photo” screen needs some rebalancing).

February 12, 2024 9:25pm

Leon Mika

Devlog

Screenshots

Working on one of the admin sections of the project I was alluding to yesterday. Here’s a screencast of how it’s looking so far.

The styling and layout is not quite final. I’m focusing more on functionality, and getting layout and whitespace looking good always takes time. But compared to how it looked before I started working on it this morning, I think it’s a good start.

January 26, 2024 3:08pm

Leon Mika

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Devlog

In the end it took significantly more time to write about it then to actually do it, but the dot product approach seems to work.

January 10, 2024 8:49pm

Leon Mika

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Devlog

So I guess today’s beginning with a game of “guess the secret password requirements.” 😒

January 9, 2024 6:55am

Leon Mika

Devlog

Making some progress in learning Elm for building frontends. Started working on a Connections clone, which I’m calling “Clonections”. This is what I’ve got so far:

It’s been fun using Elm to build this. So far I’m liking the language. Of course, now I’ll have to come up with puzzles for this. 😐

December 22, 2023 12:29pm

Leon Mika

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Devlog

Spent a little more time working on my idea for Dynamo-Browse this week. Managed to get it somewhat feature complete this weekend:

I probably should say a few words on what it actually is. The idea is to make it quick and easy to run pre-canned queries based on the currently selected item and table.

Let’s say you’ve got a table with customer information, and another table with subscription information, and they’re linked with some form of customer ID. If you wanted to see the subscriptions of a customer, up until now, you’d have to copy the customer ID to the paste-board, change the currently viewed table, then run a query to select the subscription with that customer ID. It’s not difficult but it’s extremely tedious.

This change is meant to streamline this. Now, in a script function, you can define a “related item” provider which, if matched against the currently displayed table, will be given the currently selected item, and will return a list of queries that will display items related to the current item (depending on whatever definition of “related” will be). This will be presented to the user as a list. When the user chooses the item, the query will run and the results will be displayed.

Here’s an example of the script used for the screencasts:

ext.related_items("business-addresses", func(item) {
    return [
        {"label": "Customer", "query": `city=$city`, "args": {"city": "Austin"}},
        {"label": "Payment", "query": `address^="3"`},
        {"label": "Thing", "table": "inventory", 
            "query": `pk=$pk`, "args": {"pk": "01fca33a-5817-4c27-8a8f-82380584e69c"}},
    ]
})

ext.related_items("inventory", func(item) {
    sk := string(item.attr("sk"))
    return [
        {"label": "SK: " + sk, "table": "business-addresses", 
            "query": `pk^=$sk`, "args": {"sk": sk}},
    ]
})

Notice how the last business-addresses item specifies the “inventory” table, and that the “inventory” provider actually uses an attribute of the item. Here’s a screencast of that working:

This feature has been on the idea board for a while. I was trying to work out how best to handle the pre-canned queries, especially considering that they will likely be different for each item and table. Some ideas I had were adding additional UI elements that the user could use to configure these queries. These would go into the workspace file, a sort of an embedded database which is created for each session. This was pretty crappy, especially when you consider that workspaces usually only last until the user exists. It was only a few weeks ago when I considered using the scripting facilities to implement this (which, honestly, shows how much it remains under-utilised).

Anyway, I’ve only just finished development of it. I’d still like to try it for the various related items I tend to use during my day-to-day. We’ll see how well it works out.

December 3, 2023 8:09pm

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Leon Mika

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Devlog

More work on Mainboard Mayhem today. Had a bit more success getting the Windows build into a releasable state.

First thing was the app icon. That blog post I talked about yesterday worked: I was able to set the icon of the executable. I did make a slight adjustment though. The post suggested using ImageMagick to produce the ICO file, but I wasn’t happy with how they looked. There were a lot of artefacts on the smaller icon sizes.

So I looked around for an alternative, and found this package by Lea Anthony. He’s the maintainer of Wails, a cross-platform toolkit for making browser-based GUI apps in Go, sort of like Electron but without bundling Chrome. In fact, most of the build for Mainboard Mayhem was put together by reading the Wails source code, so I trust he knows what his doing. And sure enough, his package produced a nicely scaled ICO file from a source PNG image. Better yet, it was distributed as a Go package, so I could no need to install and shell-out to run it: I could just integrated it directly into the project’s build tool.

Using rsrc to generate the SYSO file with the icon worked as expected: Go did pick it up and embed it into the executable. I did have some trouble getting the Go compiler to pick up these files at first. In short, they need to be in the same directory as the main package. So if you’re running go build ./cmd/thing, make sure the SYSO files are in ./cmd/thing. Other than that, no real issues here.

One last thing I had to deal with was the console window. Running a Go app in Windows shows the console by default. Perfectly fine for command line tools, but less so for games:

So I had to find a way to hide the console on launch. Since Mainboard Mayhem is using SDL, I’m actually using MinGW to cross-compile the Windows release on an Ubuntu build runner. The documentation for MinGW suggests adding -mwindows as a linker option to hide the console:

# What I was doing before, which didn't work
CGO_ENABLED=1 \
CC="x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc" \
GOOS="windows" \
CGO_LDFLAGS="-mwindows -L…" \
go build -o dist/cclm/mainboard.exe ./cmd/cclm'

This didn’t actually work when I tried it: launching the app kept bringing up the console. Turns out what I should’ve done was follow the advice of many Stack Overflow answers, and set -ldflags "-H=windowsgui" on the Go command:

# This works
CGO_ENABLED=1 \
CC="x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc" \
GOOS="windows" \
CGO_LDFLAGS="-L…" \
go build -ldflags "-H=windowsgui" -o dist/cclm/mainboard.exe ./cmd/cclm'

This works even without the -mwindows switch. Not completely sure why though. I guess MinGW is not actually being used for linking? Or maybe -m only works with C header files? Don’t know. 🤷 But doesn’t matter: the console no longer shows up on launch.

Finally, there was testing it all, and for this I just bit the bullet and set-up a Windows 10 virtual machine in Azure. The rate is something like $0.16 AUD an hour, an easy decision compared to spending time trying to get a VM with Windows 10 running on my machine.

One remaining thing that’s slightly annoying is Windows Defender refusing to launch it after download, doing effectively the same thing as Gatekeeper on MacOS does:

I’m sure there’s a way around it but it’s probably not worth learning about it at this stage. It’s easy enough to dismiss: click “More Info” and the click “Run Anyway”:

But other than that, I think the Windows version of Mainboard Mayhem is ready. I’ve updated the website to include the Windows archive if anyone’s interested.

October 15, 2023 3:52pm

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Leon Mika

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Spent some time today on Mainboard Mayhem, trying to finish the Windows build. I’ve actually got Windows version of the game being built for a while now. I just haven’t published them, mainly because I haven’t got the app icon set-up yet.

But this week, Golang Weekly had a link to a blog post by Mahmud Ridwan on how to do so. It looked pretty straightforward, so I thought I’d give it a try.

And yeah, the instructions themselves were easy enough, and I wish I could say if they worked or not. But in order to test it, I need a Windows machine. And I don’t have one, and I wasn’t about to get one just for this.

So I tried setting up Windows in a VM using UTM. I got this far:

Yeah, this infinite spinner has been staring at me pretty much all day. I got a Windows 10 installer ISO using CrystalFetch, and it seemed to work. But it just doesn’t want to boot up for the first time.

Not actually sure what the problem is. The error message seems to suggest that it’s having trouble connecting to the internet. Might be that? Or maybe the installation didn’t complete properly? Could be anything. 🤷

So no luck getting this tested yet. I’m wondering if it might be easier to forget virtualisation and just launch a Windows instance in the cloud somewhere instead.

October 14, 2023 9:20pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Leon Mika

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Project update for Mainboard Madness. Well, today’s the deadline for getting the thing code complete, and what a surprised, it’s not finished.

To be fair, it’s pretty close. All the levels are more or less done, and the beats of the in-game lore have been added. It all just needs tightening up a little. I spent today working on the end-game phase, which mainly involved coding up the credit sequence, and making sure I include credits for those involved in the original game (and who’s artwork I lifted).

The work remaining is to finish one or two game elements, adding a proper app icon, and finishing off the website. I’m wondering whether to add sound, but I feel bad enough taking the artwork from the original game, I rather not take the sound effects as well. That will mean the game will remain silent for the time being, but I can probably live with that for now.

I think we’re still on track for getting this finished by this time next week. Last dash to the finish line, then I can put this 9 year project to rest for a while.

August 20, 2023 11:00am

Leon Mika

Devlog

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Small project update on my Chips Challenge fan game.

Started working on the final level. I was dreading this a little, thanks to my awful level design skills, but I made a great start to it this morning and it’s actually coming along pretty well. It’s a good opportunity to use all the elements that I didn’t get a chance to use in any of the other puzzles, and it’s also shaping up to be one that has a bit of climax.

I’ve also started working on the website, which is little more than just a landing page. This meant finally coming up with a name. I’ve chosen “Mainboard Mayhem” which is… okay, but it’s one that’s been rattling around in my head for a while, and I really couldn’t use anything close to “Chips Challenge”. I’m already using the tile-set from the original game, I rather not step on any more intellectual property.

Anyway, one more week of development left to go. Still need to setup the app icon, finish all the levels, and maybe add a menu. Then I think we’re code complete.

August 13, 2023 1:36pm

Leon Mika

Devlog

Working on my Chips Challenge “fan game” this morning. Added the notion of “lower thirds,” which will show text at the bottom of the play field. I’m hoping to use it for narrative or way-finding, like here in this hub level:

Also working on puzzle design. There’s about 19 or so “real” puzzles but I’m wondering if it’s worth adding a few tutorial ones for those that have never played the original Chip Challenge before. I’ve done about 5 such puzzles and I think I need to add maybe 3 or 4 more to cover everything I’m hoping to demonstrate. I wish I liked puzzle design more than I like tinkering on the engine.

Of course, the big question is why I’m working on this at all. There is, for lack of a better word, a vision for this, in terms of narrative and structure, but this project has been in development on and off for about 9 years or so, and I’m wondering if it’s time to just stop working on it altogether. I really am starting to get sick of it, in a way. And yet, this project has shown remarkable staying power over that time that I feel like if I don’t actually wrap it up, it’ll just continued to be worked on. It feels like the only way to end this project is to finish it, in one way or another.

So I’ll set myself a dead-line: something releasable in two weeks, and actually released a week after that. After that, no more! I’ll work on something else.

August 5, 2023 1:43pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Leon Mika

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Attempting to design an app icon for a Chips Challenge fan game I’m working on. Going for something that looks like the fireball sprite in the original game with a hint more realism and tinted in the colour blue. For reference, here’s the original fireball sprite:

And here’s my attempt:

I started with Stable Diffusion to get the base image:

Then imported into Acorn to rotate it, colourise it, and distort it to look a bit closer to the original sprite.

Desaturating the original image got rid of the purple centre, then applying the Glowhoo and Hue Adjust effect recolourised it to the blue I was looking for (I’m not sure what the Glowhoo effect does, but it seems to adjust the colour based on the pixel intensity, so it was good enough for what I wanted). Finally, I added a Twirl Distortion effect to achieve the slight warp in the star.

And yeah, it’s not going to win any design awards, but it’s good enough for now.

Oh, and just for kicks, here was my first attempt of producing the sprite using Affinity Designer.

That’s definitely not going to win any design awards. 😂

July 29, 2023 10:28am

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Leon Mika

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Success! Managed to get a Go app built, signed, and notarised all from within a GitHub Action. It even cross-compiles to ARM, which is something considering that it’s using SDL. Here’s the test app being downloaded and launched in a VM (ignore the black window, the interesting part is the title).

July 26, 2023 10:43pm

Leon Mika

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Spent most of the weekend going down various rabbit holes to get a Go application signed and notarised as a MacOS app. I’m trying to do this in a way that would make this easy to automate using GitHub Actions. This means things like no implicit access to the system keychain: I want to make a temporary keychain, add my secret stuff to it, then delete it once signing and notarisation is done.

It also means no XCode GUI either: command line stuff only. Not that I had much hope of using XCode here anyway, since this is a Go application.

But that’s fine, preferable even. I’ve never liked all the manual steps needed to get code signing work with XCode. What are you going to do when you change systems? Would you remember all the steps you took several years ago, when you last setup developer certificates?

So this is why I’m trying to get it working with the terminal. But it’s not easy. Lots of esoteric commands that I need to learn and be made aware of. Just hope it’s not a huge waste of time.

July 23, 2023 9:33am

Leon Mika

Devlog

I’ve been working on Micropub Checkins over the last week. It’s been a bit of a rush trying to get it into a usable state for an upcoming trip. And by “usable”, I mean a form that I can tolerate, and when it comes to projects like this, I can tolerate quite a lot. It can have a really dodgy UI (which this does) and miss some really important features that are annoying to work around; but if it works, and doesn’t loose data, I’ll be fine with it.

The last week was dedicated to making the act of checking in distinct from publishing it. Until now, check-ins were published the minute they were entered, meaning that you cannot check-in somewhere unless you’re comfortable with people knowing where you are the minute you do. Yes, some people like it that way, but not me. And I’m aware that this’ll only be the case if people are following my check-in blog, which I’m doubtful of.

So pressing the floating action button and choosing a check-in type now starts the flow of a new check-in that will get saved in an SQLite database. You can edit the check-in whenever you like, so long as it’s not published. Currently there’s no real way of deleting a check-in unless it’s been published. This is a bit dodgy, but it’s a good example of how tolerant I am with working around these feature gaps for the moment.

Check-ins can be published by tapping the upward facing button on the main screen. Any check-in with a lock is private and will not be published until you toggle the “Ready to publish” switch in the properties. Doing so will not change the date of the check-in: it will still have the date and time that check-in was created.

On the subject of publishing, I had some issues with Dart’s date and time methods. The method on the DateTime class used to produce an ISO-8501 date-stamp don’t include the time-zone if the date and time is not in UTC. This is important as I want the post date and time to be as close to the check-in time as possible, and in the time-zone of the phone. DateTime knows all this, including what the time-zone we’re in. So why didn’t the developers include it in the ISO-8501 date-time string?

This is really strange. Fortunately, ChatGPT stepped in to help out, writing a function which will add the time-zone offset to the ISO-8501 date-time string:

String formatTimeZoneOffset(Duration offset) {
  String sign = offset.isNegative ? '-' : '+';
  int hours = offset.inHours.abs();
  int minutes = (offset.inMinutes.abs() % 60);

  return '$sign${_padZero(hours)}:${_padZero(minutes)}';
}

Honestly, ChatGPT has been so helpful over the past week with this project, I probably should give it a credit if I get this polished enough to release.

May 21, 2023 9:52pm

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Leon Mika

Devlog

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Back working on Micropub Checkin. Re-engineered the home page to now include a list of what would eventually be check-ins — both historical and soon to be published — complete with the check-in type emoji as the icon:

The same list of emoji icons now adorn the check-in type picker as well (except for the airplane one which seems to always be shown as what I can only describe as the “Wingding” representation):

I went around a bit trying to work out how best to use these emojis icons in the leading slot of the ListTile widget. I expored trying to convert them to IconData, but it turns out just using a Text widget with a large font worked well. I wrapped in in a Widget type with a fixed font-size and so far it looks quite good, at least in the emulator:

class EmojiIcon extends StatelessWidget {
  final String emoji;

  const EmojiIcon({super.key, required this.emoji});

  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Text(emoji, style: TextStyle(fontSize: 26.0));
  }
}

Also started working on a Cubit to handle state for the main page. I had a bit of trouble working ont where the soon-to-be database call to get the list of checkins should go in the cubit. After asking ChatGPT, it looks like the initializer is the best place for it:

class CheckinListCubit extends Cubit<CheckinListState> {

  CheckinListCubit(): super(LoadingCheckinListState()) {
    loadCheckinList();
  }

  void loadCheckinList() async {
    var listOfCheckins = await read_database(); 
    emit(FoundCheckinListState(checkins));
  }
}

I’ve got some scaffolding code in place to simulate this, and so far it seems to work.

I need to start working on the database layer and having the ability to edit and delete check-ins before they’re published. I think I’ll tackle that next.

May 13, 2023 12:25pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Leon Mika

Devlog

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