catskull

Thanks for checking it out!

I once heard a story about an old Logitech webcam driver in windows. Once it was installed, it would always scan for the webcam and if it wasn’t detected it would write to an error log. So if you set up the webcam once and then got rid of it without uninstalling the driver it would always dump logs upon logs. Eventually a user had their entire disk space filled and when they dug into it they found a single tens or hundreds of GB log file. Uninstalling the driver fixed it.

I like https://dnscheck.tools/ for this.

Plug for feeeed: https://feeeed.nateparrott.com

It’s my primary hn reader now.

So glad they finally mainlined apk. opkg is so janky.

Microsoft dumped $100 million on this huge marketing campaign with a simple question: “Where do you want to go today?”

I love it. It really captures the seemingly endless new digital world that was emerging in the 90’s and in many ways is still evolving 30 years later.

I love the promo video they made too: https://youtu.be/KNLDLVJZx0o

I love it so much I wrote a blog post inspired by it: https://catskull.net/where-do-you-want-to-go-today.html

Where do you want to go today?

I've written quite a few web components that were more or less standalone. I've looked at lit quite a bit but never fully understood the "why". Could someone share their own personal experience with why they needed lit? What does it offer that can't be done with standard spec web components?

For me, a big draw of web components is that there's no `npm install` needed. I prefer to ship my components as plain JS files that can either be hot linked from a CDN or downloaded and served locally. Call me paranoid but I just don't fully trust node modules to be clean of bloat and spyware and I just don't want to have to regularly deal with updating them. I'd prefer to download a web component's static JS file a single time, read through it, and forget it. Maybe down the line I might revisit the source for the component as part of standard maintenance.

For example, I made a simple like button component[1]. Later, my friend made a cool component for showing a burst of emoji confetti[2]. I decided to optionally pull it in if an attribute was set on the like component. I downloaded his source and hosted from my own domain. However, there was actually a bug in his code that caused the confetti to "rain" if you spammed the like button a few times quickly. He fixed that, but I actually kind of liked it so I just didn't update the source for the confetti component.

[1]: https://catskull.net/likes [2]: https://github.com/samwarnick/confetti-drop

Whenever I have an Apple platform issue, I simply write up a detailed complaint and then send it via iMessage to one of my friends. I know that it's all supposedly e2ee but I swear it's a lot more constructive than firing it into Apple's feedback black hole. So far, it's worked pretty well.

On macOS (26.2), if you have a game controller that has been connected over bluetooth but is not currently connected, if you go into the bluetooth device list in System Settings then click the circled "i" icon, it opens an information modal. This modal incorrectly lists the device type (my controller right now says it's AirPods 4). It also has a button for "Game Controller Settings...". If you click this button, it opens Find My. If the controller is connected, it opens the "Game Controllers" pane where you can adjust the settings. I'm not sure if this is just my specific controller (Nintendo Switch N64 Controller), but it seems like a pretty obvious bug. And while you're at it, why don't you just go ahead and roll back the entire System Preferences app UI to what it used to be?

When I was an intern for some reason they issued me a voip phone for my desk. One day I got bored and figured out I could telnet into it. Nothing interesting but it was still a fun moment for me!

I hope this isn't in bad taste, but I applied for the editor-in-chief position at Cloudflare back in August when they had it open. I'm still very interested in the role. If anyone at cf is reading this, my email is bro @ website in bio.

Sounds like the solution in the US is to keep an AirTag and a gun in your suitcase so the police will be bothered to track it down.

I thrifted a shirt once that said it stood for "Peppy Cheerleaders Move Crowds into Anarchy". Wish I still had it!

μJPEG

I was able to request a photo dump as a non-EU customer using this link.

Thanks! I’ve been looking at options for this and didn’t realize Apple had an official method. Just submitted a request, we’ll see how it goes.

Very nicely done! Great blog as well, I’ve subbed to your RSS.

For something a bit more “substantive” (or perhaps earnest) but still reminiscent of the same aesthetic this evokes, I recommend spending a few minutes poking around big gulp supreme: https://biggulpsupreme.neocities.org/

There is a great VB emulator for the 3DS called RedViper. It works well with the 3D display and is probably the best way to experience what a read Virtual Boy could have looked like. If you have a 3DS laying around I recommend giving Wario Land a whirl!

Cloudflare has their own image optimization and caching service, would be a good alternative: https://developers.cloudflare.com/images/transform-images/

I wrote a basic plugin for Jekyll to automatically prefix my images with this. Pretty much just set it and forget it: https://github.com/catskull/catskull.github.io/blob/master/_...

Am I missing something or is this way harder to do in Wordpress?

What the crap is going on with this. Is Google just blindly making stuff up these days? Why would it show some preview text that doesn’t exist on the page.

lol I'm smart apparently. It's not the "galaxy" shader, it's the "starfield" shader! I should double check before commenting I guess.

https://github.com/0xhckr/ghostty-shaders/blob/main/starfiel...

I'm not sure what "galaxy" looks like but it might not have worked or shown nothing.

I have ghostty set up with this “starfield” shader: https://github.com/0xhckr/ghostty-shaders/blob/main/starfiel...

I also have it set up to do adaptive theme, so in light mode the galaxy is mostly just a little noise on the black text but in dark mode it’s like I’m piloting a space ship. Highly recommend.

I also documented a few other shaders on my blog here: https://catskull.net/fun-with-ghostty-shaders.html

Edit: I use the "starfield" shader, not the "galaxy" shader. Doh!

I love MacSourcePorts.com! If you're keen, I sat down with Tom a few months ago and we talked about the site and his passion for this stuff. Super interesting fella and a heck of a nice guy! https://catskull.net/podcast#episode-14-tom-macsourceports-m...

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I did some testing with the 3 main AV1 encoders with gifs (avif). They’re pretty good. But not as good as jpeg xl but currently basically only Safari supports it.

See my blog: https://catskull.net/libaom-vs-svtav1-vs-rav1e-2025.html

For most “normie” use cases, I’d recommend cloudflares image transforms which are available on free tier. I actually wrote a small Jekyll plugin for my site to auto prefix images with their transform. Idk why but shipping optimized images is just one of those things that tickles me!

https://developers.cloudflare.com/images/transform-images/

I made a little chat room with cloudflare “durable objects” and then wired an “AI worker” to respond to your messages with various personas. No invite or login required! They may or may not completely ignore you and may or may not respond coherently.

https://catskull.net/chat

FWIW I’m 34 :)

Was the decision to not support reader mode deliberate or accidental?

Air Gradient has and will far outlive any of your VC backed competitors. Your devices are not e waste. I think we’re totally valuing the wrong things.

I love the title but reader mode is completely broken. I have vision impairment and cannot read the default grey on grey text.

Mirror with functional reader mode: https://yazzy.fly.dev/https://blog.douwe.com/2025/07/were-al...