https://matthewc.dev/ Recent content on Matthew C Dev Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Sat, 28 Mar 2026 15:58:18 -0500 https://matthewc.dev/projects/_honeydew/ Sat, 28 Mar 2026 15:58:18 -0500 https://matthewc.dev/projects/_honeydew/ I spent way too much of my life avoiding having to make decisions and priorities. My wife and I have a goal to “do one thing on the house every day”. This usually means fixing baseboard, painting, adjusting cabinet doors, installing new cabinets. It ranges from small to big tasks and looking at the spreadsheet is very overwhelming. So work tends to happen in spurts. At the same time, cleaning and meal planning are two areas where I need to invest the mental effort to keep track of it and plan it out, but just haven’t made a focused effort. https://matthewc.dev/musings/baby-names/ Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:00:00 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/musings/baby-names/ Finding the flattest baby names https://matthewc.dev/musings/advent-code-2025/ Fri, 02 Jan 2026 11:00:55 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/musings/advent-code-2025/ Like many coders, I participated in Advent of Code 2025. However, this year I want to make it challenging. Learning Rust or Elixir are both tempting options, but why not go for something a bit more out there? I want to solve every problem with the GPU not the CPU. Which means a compute shader. I chose to use Swift and Metal as my shader language. Mostly because I was using a Mac and partly because I’ve been meaning to improve my Swift skills as well. https://matthewc.dev/musings/bidets/ Mon, 17 Apr 2023 22:38:40 -0500 https://matthewc.dev/musings/bidets/ If you’ve been unlucky to converse with someone who has recently bought a bidet, they’ve probably told you how it changed their lives like some sort of newfound religion. As someone who converted to Bidetism recently, I’m here to tell you four reasons why you shouldn’t. Have you ever looked at your toilet and thought it could remind you more of a nursing home? With a bidet, you can. Strap an enormous white plastic throne to your diminutive toilet. https://matthewc.dev/blender/covfefe/ Wed, 05 Apr 2023 09:40:27 -0500 https://matthewc.dev/blender/covfefe/ No matter where you go, there’s a place in the back of the back alley open at 0am. They sell piping hot covfefe. Made fresh every doomsday. https://matthewc.dev/musings/living-without-playing-jazz/ Sat, 18 Mar 2023 09:08:46 -0500 https://matthewc.dev/musings/living-without-playing-jazz/ This is a gross oversimplification, but there are roughly two types of music players: classical and jazz. Classical knows what’s coming next. They play as a well-oiled machine that is in tune and sync. They can start and stop on a dime as directed. Jazz flows, bouncing to new places and riffing off the previous stanza. Sometimes beautiful and sometimes verging on horrid, jazz keeps time but not beat. Classical practices specific pieces and jazz practices generally. https://matthewc.dev/musings/unit-tests/ Sat, 21 Jan 2023 21:20:19 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/musings/unit-tests/ While I won’t go so far as to diagnose myself with ADD without consulting a doctor, those who know me know I can be distracted quite easily. So recently, I decided to do something a little different with a personal project I started a few weeks ago (link to come). I wrote unit tests. That may seem rather uninspired, but I’ve always poo-pood the idea of test-driven development (TDD), as it seems wild to me to write a test for something that you don’t know what it needs to do yet. https://matthewc.dev/projects/movie-history-tour/ Sat, 10 Dec 2022 23:51:50 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/projects/movie-history-tour/ I find the 20’s to the 50’s a very fascinating time in American history. Perhaps because it is so very different from the life we have today, but still feels relatively closer. Maybe even more so because the 20’s and 30’s were so radically different from just 50 years prior. So in pursuit of learning more about the history of the cinema and to understand more about what life was like by watching what they watched, I’m going to watch the top grossing/most popular movie from each year. https://matthewc.dev/musings/adult-pacifier/ Fri, 02 Dec 2022 11:00:55 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/musings/adult-pacifier/ Surveys by Common Sense Media and the Consumer Mobility Report both state a large majority Americans sleep next to their phone or with their phone in hand. According to a 2019 Statista survey , 44% of participants reported feeling some anxiety when separated from their phone (not the same thing as the smartphone itself causing anxiety ). This isn’t a public decrying of how we are hopelessly addicted to our phones. https://matthewc.dev/musings/ode-to-parsec/ Sat, 05 Nov 2022 15:16:05 -0500 https://matthewc.dev/musings/ode-to-parsec/ I have lots of laptops and one desktop. While jumping around the country, it’s annoying to have to setup a dev environment on every machine. There are solutions out there like docker, github codespaces, or renting a VM from one of the dozens of cloud providers. But I already have a great desktop with everything I want already setup. I work on tons of different projects (most don’t see enough work to warrant a writeup) and it’s annoying to have to provision the different environment. https://matthewc.dev/projects/vegan-ice-cream/ Sat, 06 Aug 2022 12:21:35 -0500 https://matthewc.dev/projects/vegan-ice-cream/ Since I hate sites that make you read a whole story to get the recipes, out of the five different ice creams, here were the two highest ranking ones. I’d recommend reading more about these recipes Silk Ice Cream 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1/4 tsp xantham gum 2 tbsp light corn syrup 1 1/3 cups + 1 tbsp of Silk Heavy Whipping Cream Alternative 1 cup - 1 tbsp of Oat Milk (you can substitute other milks, but do your math to recalculate the fat, see notes below) Combine sugar and xantham gum Put corn syrup in medium pot and stir in oat milk. https://matthewc.dev/musings/selective-rich/ Fri, 17 Jun 2022 14:03:18 -0500 https://matthewc.dev/musings/selective-rich/ I have a friend who claims food delivery is too expensive and would just go and pick it up themselves. To me, if I’m hot and tired from working on some house thing, I love just hitting a button and hopping in the shower knowing some kind soul will deliver food to my door by the time I’m out. Ethical concerns about food delivery companies aside (I try to tip well), it’s something I value more than my friend does. https://matthewc.dev/projects/blanket-ladder/ Sun, 17 Apr 2022 20:42:09 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/projects/blanket-ladder/ A custom ladder that stores blankets for our family room https://matthewc.dev/musings/paper-todos/ Sun, 10 Apr 2022 14:19:56 -0500 https://matthewc.dev/musings/paper-todos/ I love a todo list. It captures my goals and desires in a semi-succinct and concrete way. There are hundreds if not thousands of todo apps and methods. But to me personally, one stands out above all the others. A simple 3x5 notecard. This is a how-to or a help article. This is a love letter. A love letter to paper. The simple idea of writing down your list of things to do on a physical surface with your own hand is something I love. https://matthewc.dev/blender/burger-boy/ Sun, 06 Mar 2022 09:39:00 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/blender/burger-boy/ I came across this little GIF of someone carving a little burger boy on imgur . As far as I can’t, the poster of this GIF isn’t the original carver. Doing a quick google doesn’t show any burger boys that are similar to this. Hopefully I’m not stealing some beloved character. It’s just a thing I thought was cool. Reference: First Attempt The lighting is way too much and I need to add some texture onto the patty. https://matthewc.dev/musings/plugin-hybrid-future/ Wed, 23 Feb 2022 09:08:56 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/musings/plugin-hybrid-future/ You might have heard the future of cars are electric. Here’s a shortlist from mashable that includes all the car manufacturers going electric only. Bentley - 2030 Jaguar - 2030 GM - 2035 Volvo - 2030 Ford - 2026 (EU only) Volkswagen - 2026 Toyota - 2040 Mercedes - 2035 This list means they are pledging to no longer produce cars that have combustion engines. Many other auto manufacturers are pledging to sell mostly electric vehicles and sell a small number traditional gas cars. https://matthewc.dev/musings/great-british-effect/ Sun, 20 Feb 2022 20:42:09 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/musings/great-british-effect/ You might remember the craze that was Great British Bakeoff in its heyday. There was discussion around the water cooler at work about each episode, parodies at SNL, and several spinoff series. While I personally feel that the hype has died down somewhat over the years as it’s been going for over 10 years. While watching the most recent season, I noticed something interesting. There were three finalists and they were all incredible bakers in their own right. https://matthewc.dev/projects/passwordless-auth/ Fri, 18 Feb 2022 20:56:33 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/projects/passwordless-auth/ I hate passwords. Not as a user as password management is basically solved with most modern browsers and password managers. What I hate is having to deal with them as a developer. Hashing, storing, authentication, etc. I did a small project recently using my socket.io synced vuex state and needed a system where users could easily login. I will put a huge disclaimer on this that this is just what I did for my personal project where security isn’t critical. https://matthewc.dev/projects/vuex-sync-p1/ Thu, 25 Nov 2021 20:56:33 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/projects/vuex-sync-p1/ This is the tale of how I wrote a state syncing framework based on vuex and rollback netcode . It took a few years and isn’t intended to be a “copy and paste” type of thing. I’ll be including code fragments and I’ll eventually post a cleaned up repo with only the relevant pieces. Who knows, if there’s enough interest, maybe I’ll even post a NPM package. TL;DR This is a long article. https://matthewc.dev/musings/my-first-post/ Mon, 08 Nov 2021 20:38:57 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/musings/my-first-post/ Welcome to my blog I’m hoping to start posting project logs here. The focus here will be: Programming/Web dev Woodworking Game development Occasionally embedded/firmware type stuff Blender Maybe even baking? It’s hard to say exactly what will be here. I’ve brought over the medium articles I’ve written. I’ve included a link to the things I’ve written on Hackaday, but I don’t think I’ll bring the actual content over here. https://matthewc.dev/blender/penguins/ Tue, 12 Jan 2021 16:14:04 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/blender/penguins/ This is an early attempt at blender from 2021. It started with a drawing that I loved. I’ve poked around Google Images but so far I haven’t found the original artist. I quickly modeled a few things, trying to create a more 3d look rather than sticking with the more stylized look. I’m not sure if this was ultimately the right choice. The moon was a little tricky to get right and I haven’t nailed the look of low light. https://matthewc.dev/musings/nintendo-64/ Mon, 07 Sep 2020 10:24:36 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/musings/nintendo-64/ Editor’s Note: This was originally published on medium It stands as a unique and marvelous console even by today’s standards. Both from an technical as well as cultural standpoint, it was simply stupendous. This article showcases the history of the Nintendo 64 as well as explores it from a technical standpoint. If you’re like me, you likely have fond memories of this console. If you’re interested in the technical bits, skip ahead to the architecture. https://matthewc.dev/musings/no-roads-for-old-men/ Sat, 18 Jul 2020 09:20:49 -0600 https://matthewc.dev/musings/no-roads-for-old-men/ Editors Note: Originally posted on medium by me At least, the way things are going here in the USA. Our roads, as we currently handle them, are unsustainable. As city and states are financially stretched in different and difficult ways, the incredible cost of road maintenance and construction is getting harder and harder for policy makers and government workers to manage. At the rate we are going there will be significantly fewer roads, more traffic, higher taxes, and more pot holes than either you or I could imagine in our worse nightmares.