4DCu.be
a blog about programming, gaming, technology, ...
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Claude Design to revamp two projects
Design has always been my bottleneck. I usually have a fairly clear idea of what I want, but turning that into a consistent interface is where I get stuck. For the last redesign of my resume site, back in 2024, I ended up hiring a designer through Fiverr to get...
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Revisiting a 20-Year-Old NDS Project with AI
Almost twenty years ago, during my PhD in bioinformatics, I needed to brush up on C++. Our lab was doing comparative genomics, studying how genomes evolve at the structural level, particularly the effects of whole genome duplications in plant genomes. One of the key tools we used, i-ADHoRe 2.0, had...
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The Royal Game Boy of Ur
Years ago, a documentary on “The Royal Game of Ur”, one of the oldest known board games, nearly 5,000 years old, instantly piqued my interest. When I later heard Dr. Irving Finkel discuss it on a podcast, the fascination came flooding back. But this time, I had an idea: build...
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Python to Rust: Porting My Genetic Art Algorithm
One of the first posts on this blog showed how to implement a genetic algorithm in Python. Revisiting that project, I realized it is an ideal candidate to port to Rust: it is computationally heavy, and touches on performance, parallelism, and data structures. In short, a good excuse to finally...
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Using my Kindle PW3 as a Dashboard for Home Assistant
An old Kindle, once jailbroken and running KUAL, can be repurposed as a dashboard for just about anything. I’ve actually done this before - though right now, I don’t really need those stats anymore. It would be nice, however, to show some real-time data from my Home Assistant setup on...
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Building a Custom Deej Volume Mixer with an RP2040 Pro Micro
Looking for a DIY hardware volume mixer to control individual app volumes effortlessly? Whether you’re a gamer, streamer, or audio enthusiast, manually adjusting software volume sliders can be frustrating. That’s where Deej, an open-source USB volume mixer, comes in. This guide will show you how I’ve built a Deej volume...
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Building a custom GMT watch
With several custom watches under my belt, I felt ready to tackle a more advanced build. This project combines three new elements: building a GMT watch using the NH34 movement, upgrading the crystal, and customizing the date wheel. While these modifications require a few additional tools and introduce some new...