Blog Posts
New Windows Game: Green Tea Reversi
Command-line reversi that supports all rules and any combination of human and AI players
Continuing my releases of command-line board games, I’ve released an initial version of Green Tea Reversi. Green Tea Reversi is a command-line reversi program for Windows (or any platform that runs .NET 8) that supports human and AI players.
- Keith Ott
- News
- January 23, 2024
- 1 Minutes
New Windows Game: Soda Chess
Command-line chess that supports all rules and any combination of human and AI players
I’ve released the initial version of Soda Chess. Soda Chess is a command-line chess program for Windows (and any platform that runs .NET) that supports all rules and any combination of human and AI players.
- Keith Ott
- News
- October 31, 2023
- 1 Minutes
New Web App: External Battery Backup
Store retro video game passwords and high scores in this web app
I’ve released my latest web app, External Battery Backup. It allows you to save passwords and high scores for retro video games.
- Keith Ott
- News
- September 19, 2023
- 1 Minutes
Space Invaders: A Super Nintendo Game Hidden in a Game Boy Cartridge!
The hidden Super Nintendo game you didn't even know you had!
I’ve recently been building up my physical Game Boy library, and I was surprised to learn that the Game Boy game Space Invaders includes a full Super Nintendo game hidden inside that can be unlocked with the Super Game Boy! But how does this work?!
- Keith Ott
- Video Games
- July 28, 2023
- 8 Minutes
Testing Stable Diffusion
Generate images of whatever you can dream up with stable diffusion
I decided to investigate Stable Diffusion. Stable Diffusion is an AI model that takes text input and turns it into an image. You’ve probably seen it in the news; John Oliver even had an episode about it.
It turns out it’s incredibly easy to install on a Windows PC with this installer: https://stable-diffusion-ui.github.io/ Just run the installer and it’ll download all the dependencies, the model, and launch a web UI for you to work with.
- Keith Ott
- Reviews
- December 2, 2022
- 6 Minutes
New Game in Progress: Tic-Tac-Toe
Play Tic Tac Toe against a human or the computer in this early release game
It’s been a bit since I updated this blog, so I figured I’d post about my new in-progress project, Tic Tac Toe.
- Keith Ott
- News
- August 30, 2020
- 1 Minutes
New Web App: Simple Stock Ticker
Check stock prices with this React web app
Simple Stock Ticker is a React-based web app that calls a .NET Core Web API, which ultimately pulls data from an open API. It allows you to see the latest price of a stock and some basic information about a company. Download the source code or view the demo here.- Keith Ott
- News
- May 24, 2020
- 1 Minutes
I Tried Google Stadia
Is this the future of gaming?
Google Stadia is offering a two month free trial of their Pro service, so I decided to give it a spin. For what’s sold as a hardcode gaming platform, in reality it’s a half baked solution in search of a problem.
- Keith Ott
- Reviews
- April 12, 2020
- 3 Minutes
How to Move a Window that's Off your Windows Desktop
A cool trick to move a window back to your desktop
Microsoft Windows has had a weird bug for years; sometimes, when you remote into a computer or unplug a monitor, one of your windows will get hidden off the screen and you’ll be unable to resize or move it. Here’s a simple trick I’ve been using for years to get those hidden windows back onto my desktop.
- Keith Ott
- Tutorials
- March 17, 2020
- 2 Minutes
New Game: High Low for the Commodore 64
High Low ported to the Commodore 64
I’ve been reading Ready Player One lately, and it inspired me to dust off some old Commodore 64 programming knowledge. I decided to port High Low to the Commodore 64.
- Keith Ott
- News
- December 28, 2019
- 1 Minutes
Xbox One Error Messages SUCK! Let's Fix Them!
An exercise in improving a specific Xbox One error message
Recently I went to play a game on my Xbox One, and I was greeted with a rather unfriendly error message. The problem was that the game I was trying to play was part of Microsoft’s Games with Gold program, and my Xbox Live Gold subscription had expired. However, if I didn’t know about the stipulations of the free games available with the Games with Gold program, I would have been thoroughly confused. The archaic error message I received did almost nothing to help me.
Let’s look at everything that’s wrong with this error message, and then let’s redesign it to solve these problems!
- Keith Ott
- Software Engineering
- July 13, 2019
- 7 Minutes
NPM Considered Harmless
Package managers have their issues, but you can - and should - use them
Throughout my career, I’ve run into a handful of people that have the opinion that we shouldn’t rely on a package manager, such as NPM or NuGet. The arguments fall into three main categories: concerns over security, concerns over the long-term availability of package manager services, and concerns over it being easier to manage dependencies yourself.
If you have any of these opinions, let me be the first to tell you it’s okay to rely on package managers such as NPM or NuGet. And there’s a variety of reasons why.
- Keith Ott
- Package Managers
- May 26, 2019
- 6 Minutes