Simo Virokannas

Writings and ramblings

Category: Projects

  • Gitlab-runner, MacOS 12

    If you’ve tried setting up a gitlab-runner on MacOS 12 you may have run into the same problem I did – even when you follow all the manual setup steps, it just won’t start (unless you run it in interactive mode). Note that this probably doesn’t apply to running it using homebrew. It might work…

  • Totally Arcade Controller

    With the A500 Mini finally out, it revealed a screaming void no one seems to be filling: a proper controller. Almost everyone I ever knew to own an Amiga 500 had one or two TAC-2 controllers by SunCom. It was undoubtedly the best game controller ever made, never to be repeated on any platform. This…

  • CARL merchandise now available!

    Go check out the fresh collection of CARL merchandise! There’s awesome stuff, like this cool Espresso cup!  

  • CARL 1.1 is out!

    Check out the new features at the product home page: CARL Also, on the App Store and KVR Audio

  • CARL 1.1 soon out

    The next major release of CARL is soon out. Just a sneak peek: Finally, going back to the roots of chip tune, CARL introduces simultaneous editing in tracker / piano roll style. All changes are immediate and recorded / drawn notes from piano roll are cleverly mapped to a traditional tracker style! Other really cool…

  • Poor man’s photo backup, part I

    A photo library, around 100 000 photos, not really professional but nice-to-have photos. Some of them are blurry, unfocused, or just plain horrible photographs. No time to browse through everything and only keep the really good ones. Aging hard drives and you badly need a backup, but 300 GB is just too expensive to store in…

  • Dashcode, part II

    After using Dashcode for almost a year now, this is the bottom line: “Don’t make any big projects with it.” – A random Dashcode user After a while, when the project gets bigger, you’ll have some 20+ Javascript files, thousands of lines of code, several data sources (which are great, btw), it gets really slow.…

  • Wonderful null character

    I recently programmed a lengthy piece of online software with PHP and JavaScript, utilizing server-side PHP/MySQL queries. But there was a problem that just popped out of nowhere – all but one data entry worked perfectly. This one row, when observed from the SQL server side (with a great tool called Sequel Pro), looked perfectly…