This is the web site of Joe Johnston [ resume ], a software architect and team leader in the Greater Boston area with over two decades of industry experience developing web applications for the Cloud, Intranet, and Desktop using many Open Source tools.
This site embraces indieweb. Take back control of your content.
ChatGPT can read atari2600 ROMs. I uploaded Adventure, told it that I think there is bug
in 3rd variant of the game where items get put into inaccessible places, and the LLM
confirmed the bug!
This variant distributes items by using the table the statically placed items in
various location in variant 2. It takes that table and simply shuffles the locations
assigned to those items. So one set of locations have a fixed place where item will
occur. It's just that items get distributed differently to those location when you
reset a variant three game. Super-slick hack!
There is no validation logic, however, that prevents the gold key from starting
in the gold castle. Wump, wump. Start again.
Anyway, I don't think Warren Robinett is accepting patches.
I have a love for the awkward teenage years of the Internet (circa 1995 - 2005). I wanted to recreate an echo of that time for those who missed it. That was the period before "content" and "monetization" were words that ordinary users cared about. People made stuff of the web that they hoped people might like or find useful or did it just because they could.
In that spirit, I have built a BBS door-like game called ProspectBoy 3000:
It takes place centuries after our world has been forgotten. You are one of many prospectors who have gathered around a strange object called the Magic Mountain. It's not a natural mountain, but an enormous structure that contains mysterious artifacts that can be made useful by your cunning skills. Sell your wares to agents of the five factions vying to rule. Your actions help shape the world. Hurry! The mountain disappears every 30 days only to reappear miles away for the whole process to start again.
The game is free to play and open source. This isn't a revenue play. It isn't a resume builder. It's a labor of love. I hope you enjoy it.
I'm beginning to use auto dictation across all of my various compute platforms because of all the AI I do now. Even now I'm using dictation software to write this message. I guess I'm preparing for a life as a head in a jar.
The venerable unix terminal multiplexer, tmux, has become invaluable to me on my recent vacation due to the crazy instability of my campsite's WiFi. I am using an iPad with an ssh client. On a more capable machine, vscode would just do the right thing most of the time.
It's nice to stand on a bedrock of solid, proven tools in this crazy world.
It appears that jmac https://fogknife.com/2026-06-19-the-rapture-of-the-programming-languages.html) and I appear to be linked at the blogging hip again. He's insightful post about how LLMs might give Perl an eerie but productive half life matches my own thinking. Although I still earn my keep generating Perl code, it is easier than ever to work in other languages or have LLMs generate missing library code things I need to get it.
What is even more interesting is jmac and I are working on our *Perl blogging software* in 2026.
This year, I have started engaging with Large Language Models to assist me in software development tasks. The products I have used include Claude Code, OpenCode, ChatGPT, Cody, CoPilot, SourceGraph, and a variety of self-hosted smaller LLMs like Gwen and Llama using Ollama and LlamaCpp. This catalog of funny names is not meant to impress you, but to say that I have had several months long emersion into the world of predictive text technology.
You might notice that I have yet to use the word "intelligence" to describe any of this yet.
Since this is a Taskboy "note," I will shift into more easily consumed bullet-points.
What's good about using LLMs for development:
* great at tracing through code stacks for errors
* great at explicating short amounts of code
* good at summarizing small to medium size codebases
* OK at creating tests with code coverage
* good at creating similar code to what it already sees
* OK at creating modern-looking web pages
* good at bouncing design ideas off of
* OK at finding problems with written implementation plans
What's difficult about using LLMs for development:
* Terrible at software engineering
* Looses intentional focus easily
* Cannot make abstractions on its own
* Makes subtly wrong coding choices
* Create medium to large software designs
What this means for developers is that AI is not coming for your job. LLMs do not learn, but you can. LLMs desperately need human guidance to complete non-trivial tasks. There continues to be a bright future for human software engineering.
Like most bloviators, I believe the a crash in the LLM service provider market is immanent. Running local LLMs is nearly feasible with Mac Mini 4 now (and for some tasks, this configuration is a ready feasible). As far as having a "Jarvis" bot manage your life for you, I personally am several years away from considering such a foolish step.
Some of these tracks are totally worth your listen. Some...are mostly for me.
The world is on fire. But, candidly, it always has been. The Earth is a dense
ball of hot rock and metal and we live on the thinest of film covering it. Try
not to take it all too seriously. The change-up is just around the corner.
Thanks to AI, I finally made a clean break from Jason McIntosh's excellent Plerd blogging software,
which I still recommend. However, I wanted to do more and more customization of the code and things
were getting unwieldy.
Will 2023 be the second coming of blogs? It is possible. So much of corporate social media has turned out as badly as critics foretold. If you read this feed, you already know how I feel about it.
âI am from Perl townâ is the great way Jason McIntosh expresses the cultural legacy of using Perl for many years. And it is a great legacy! Perl is still my primary language after 25 years of professional programming.
Yes, I use other languages too (most notably javascript). What keeps Perl fresh to me is Moo. It feels like the best framework to construct object oriented apps in of any language I have yet used. In ten years, I am sure other languages will discover and co-opt it â and they should!
But I hear Jason clearly when he suggests he will never invest the time to learn another language as deeply as he has for Perl. I am in exactly the same position. I hesitate to use the word never, since I have picked up quite a bit of javascript.
Generally, I describe my technical skillset in terms of the platforms I deliver solutions for, which in my case is web applications. Those applications might power a mobile app, but the backend is still emitting HTTP messages.
Hemingway knew English, but mostly it was his application of same that he is remembered for.
Is it me or are many podcasts and youtubers now trying to get their followers to sign up for newsletters? Seems like a hard way to placate advertisers. Next up: the fourth revile of Zines.
Earth humans need to lean-in to small and micro modular nuclear reactors. They all walk-away safe and most feature fuel that is its own long term storage solution.
Biden has a GenX problem. Many feel like his policies have hurt them.
Biden needs to make the case that the opposite is true.
This will be a gas and groceries election.
I want Ukraine to regain its stolen lands and independence.
However, I am heartbroken for the Russian troops being killed by the
cruelty and malfeasance of their leaders. Most of these troops are
conscripts and many just want to go home.
This is a sick, sad world in which the political games of a few
destroy the lives of a younger generation and the future.
My spidey sense was tingling after one video of Haidt. Your comments confirmed my suspicions. Everything you said 10 years ago still tracks, but even better.
Of all the scandals you will read about today, the US govt abusing social media to promote its agenda ranks in my concern only just above Finlandâs hot PM.
For those people who are thinking about buying an RPG tile from taskboy games, now is the time. All titles that are not PWYW will be getting a 9% hike soon.
It literally never occurred to me that the previous president would
even try to keep campaign promises, so I was surprised that someone
tracked this at all:
Condoms and vasectomies are still legal, so I guess the conservative SCOTUS intends to put the burden of birth control entirely on men? Interesting choice.
Todayâs Inflation is mostly caused by supply chain issues (and typically wildly market speculation), both of which are bigger deals than those paltry stimulus checks.
People telling you direct aid to needy people hurt your 401k are shilling for plutocrats.
YouTuber @steve_shives has been reviewing Star Trek: Picard and having
seen the last episode, I just wanted to say, as one human to another,
I'm sorry we did this to you, Steve. You didn't deserve this.
If you read this propublica project on the 400 richest USians and are not enraged, could I borrow a couple million from you? I left my fortune in my other tuxedo.
Had an intense fight getting Behringer Crave to accept the clock
from my Arturia Keystep, which was sequencing a Pure Data patch on my
Raspberry Pi, but by Shub-Niggurath, I got something recorded:
Please like, subscribe, comment, share, join my channel, check out my patreon, follow me on instagram, friend me on myspace, friend me on livejournal, get the RSS feed for my friendster page, IM me on AOLâ¦
If youâre outraged by a news punditâs latest tirade over a brand either putting on or taking off go-go boots from a cartoon spokesman, you need a break from the news for a few weeks. Your priorities are broken.
Using the airpod noise cancellation feature for the first time and I am freaked out. I had a short bout of partial deafness before, so this is a little triggering.
Of late, I have noticed that The Atlantic has co-opted the fearmongering of Fox News, but clothed it for liberals, fanning concerns about civil war in the US.
Referring to a COVID-19 vaccination as a âjabâ may be clever writing, but you are not likely to assuage the fears the unvaccinated. Please grow up.
The last time I expected to get information from TV news was in the few weeks following 9/11. However, TV news had stop providing that commodity by then and I have never expected anything factual from those talking heads since.
Ripping the bandaid off is hard, but leaving Afghanistan now is the right move. It would have been a better move 11 years ago. The best move would have been not to invade at all.
Now, letâs practice some national building at home for a while.
I literally have a spreadsheet open next to cookie clicker that computes the cost per cookie based on buying the next cookie generator. Iâm a value investor.
I also have a row that computes the wait time to a target cookie amount based on my current production rate.
âMy ambition will be looking for situations in which to do my part. Not necessarily to grab the world by the throat and scream my name into its face.â
