https://neil.fraser.name/ Log of Neil Fraser's thoughts and activities. http://backend.userland.com/rss 86400 https://neil.fraser.name/news/2025/12/31/ Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 +0000 .cursor {width: 30%} These days nearly all computers feature the familiar 'Inverted-T' pattern of cursor keys. It's so simple and ubiquitous that we forget that it took a long time to settle on this... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2025/02/25/ Tue, 25 Feb 2025 12:00:00 +0000 This is the new lamp at the entrance to my workshop. This lamp has been seven years in the making. It started with Lego's amazing Saturn V model. Sierra and I assembled it back in 2017, with a little... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2025/02/13/ Thu, 13 Feb 2025 12:00:00 +0000 Programming teachers are constantly pushing students to write comments. And then they are inevitably irritated when the students write comments like this: for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++) { // Count from... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2024/12/30/ Mon, 30 Dec 2024 12:00:00 +0000 Poisson distributions appear when events occur randomly, with a uniform probability over time, without a connection to each other. An example is meteors hitting the Earth. They may average four per... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2024/12/19/ Thu, 19 Dec 2024 12:00:00 +0000 Recently I needed to ship a robot glockenspiel from the Zurich office to myself at the Boston office for a conference, then back again. When I joined the company eighteen years ago, it would be a... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2024/12/13/ Fri, 13 Dec 2024 12:00:00 +0000 The cheap woodworking lathe I had in California only ran on 120v, so we couldn't bring it with us to Switzerland. Time to buy a new cheap lathe -- but this time for metalworking. The one I chose cost... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2024/12/04/ Wed, 04 Dec 2024 12:00:00 +0000 Switzerland has an awful lot of trains. From the world's longest rail tunnel,[?] to the world's longest passenger train,[?] trains are everywhere. It's almost as bad as the infestation on the Island... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2024/11/27/ Wed, 27 Nov 2024 12:00:00 +0000 The La Salle Causeway lift bridge was a 100 year old bridge in Kingston, Ontario. When I was 11 or 12 I spent many hours at the bridge, drawing it, hanging out with the bridgemaster, and learning how... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2024/11/20/ Wed, 20 Nov 2024 12:00:00 +0000 Every year I create a video of Beverly's day. Previous days were recorded at approximately 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, 5 years, 6 years, and 7 years. We traveled to Mexico to watch the total... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2024/11/13/ Wed, 13 Nov 2024 12:00:00 +0000 At this year's Blockly Developer's Summit I gave a talk on some of the browser bugs I've had to deal with. Browsers are by-and-large pretty stable these days, but things can get interesting when they... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2024/11/06/ Wed, 06 Nov 2024 12:00:00 +0000 Recent events have made it abundantly clear that the United States is not a good place to raise a young girl. To that end, I started researching alternatives, compiling a detailed speadsheet of... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2023/08/31/ Thu, 31 Aug 2023 12:00:00 +0000 Enjoy this glockenspiel which may be programmed by anyone on the Internet. I've been working this project on and off over the past three years. The hardware and the software are all open source. To... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2023/07/24/ Mon, 24 Jul 2023 12:00:00 +0000 I picked up a great pair of TELEMAX 5 binoculars at a neighbourhood garage sale for about $20. The image quality is really impressive. The only problem is that there aren't any caps to protect the... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2023/06/16/ Fri, 16 Jun 2023 12:00:00 +0000 We have a number of plugs that stick out of the wall inconveniently. One of them is a power cord plugged into a socket behind the kitchen sink. Ideally I'd replace them with a 90° plug.... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2023/05/14/ Sun, 14 May 2023 12:00:00 +0000 Every year I create a video of Beverly's day. Previous days were recorded at approximately 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, 5 years, and 6 years. We recorded a nice hike from Felsenegg to Uetliberg. https://neil.fraser.name/news/2023/05/02/ Tue, 02 May 2023 12:00:00 +0000 While exploring our rather disorganized collection of family photos I found eight boxes of old slides. To make them accessible they needed to be transferred into digital photos. My setup uses two... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2023/03/12/ Sun, 12 Mar 2023 12:00:00 +0000 This blog has routinely featured wood working, metal working, and laser cutting, yet for some reason 3D printing has been absent. It's not deliberate. I 3D print a lot of things, but they tend to be... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2023/02/17/ Fri, 17 Feb 2023 12:00:00 +0000 #newsContent blockquote { border-left: 5px solid #888; padding-left: 10px; margin-left: 20px; } There is a roll of tape. The tape is 100 meters long when unrolled. When rolled up, the outer diameter... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2023/02/10/ Fri, 10 Feb 2023 12:00:00 +0000 We used to store kitchen knives using magnets under the counter top. This worked great most of the time, but occasionally when removing one it would hook its neighbour, resulting in a cascading... https://neil.fraser.name/news/2023/01/22/ Sun, 22 Jan 2023 12:00:00 +0000 Need to convert a power supply from 120 volts to 240 volts, or the other way around? Here's a surprisingly simple procedure. While I was mapping the circuitry, I ran across this oddity. Right at the...