I’m a Developer Educator with cloud communications platform Twilio for its wireless and Internet of Things division. Previously, I spent six years as the Senior Tech Writer and a Project Manager at IoT platform-as-a-service company Electric Imp.

Before that, I was a technology journalist, 13 out of 25 years spent in senior roles on the website The Register. At other times I contributed to a wide array of publications and news organisations, including The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, the BBC and CNN.

This site is dedicated to assorted programming projects I’ve worked on over recent years.

Looking for my blog posts? You’ll find them at Smittytone Messes with Micros.

Curious about the logo fonts? Then read about them here.

Oh, and this site looks great in macOS/iOS Dark Mode, by the way.

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macOS Applications, Tools and Libraries

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  ASCII

  Latest Release: 1.4.0 09 December 2020
  Icon design tool for 8x8 matrix LED-based electronics projects.

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  Build API Access

  Latest Release: 3.3.0 06 February 2019
  An Objective-C class wrapper for Electric Imp’s impCentral™ API.

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  Fighting Fantasy Game Manager

  Latest Release: 3.0.15 07 February 2018
  A Fighting Fantasy character generator and game manager written in Swift.

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  imageprep

  Latest Release: 6.2.1 13 January 2021
  A command line tool for batch-processing — crop, scale, pad, reformat — image files.

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  MNU

  Latest Release: 1.5.0 01 February 2021
  A menu bar utility that provides easy access to macOS features and scripts you use every day.

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  pdfmaker

  Latest Release: 2.3.0 21 December 2020
  A command line tool that combines multiple JPEG images into a single PDF file, or extracts images from PDF files.

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  PreviewMarkdown

  Latest Release: 1.2.0 04 February 2021
  An app that provides QuickLook support for Markdown files under macOS Catalina and above.

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  Squinter

  Latest Release: 2.4.136 18 November 2020
  A development tool to manage application code and library files for projects based on the Electric Imp IoT Platform.

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  The Valley

  Latest Release: 1.0.9 24 November 2020
  A macOS port of a 1982 real-time RPG in true Commodore PET style.

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  utitool

  Latest Release: 1.0.2 08 February 2021
  A macOS command line tool to reveal files’ Uniform Type Identifiers (UTIs).

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iOS Applications

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  Cløck

  Latest Release: 2.1.122 05 December 2019
  An iOS application to manage digital clocks based on the Electric Imp Platform.

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  Controller

  Latest Release: 1.2.0 06 December 2019
  iOS management app and watchOS control apps for electronics projects.

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  Fontismo

  Latest Release: 1.1.2 21 February 2021
  An iOS app that lets you install high-quality open-licence fonts.

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Raspberry Pi Pico Applications

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  Hunt the Wumpus

  Latest Release: 1.0.2 31 March 2021    New  
  Explore a mysterious and dangerous cave to locate a fiendish monster.

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  Phantom Slayer

  Latest Release: 1.0.2 06 April 2021    New  
  Retro fast 3D maze shooting action coded in C.

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Python Applications and Libraries

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  FeatherClock

  Latest Release: 1.1.0 03 December 2020
  A compact clock project written in MicroPython

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  Hex

  Latest Release: 1.2.0 31 December 2020
  A utility for converting binary files to hex strings.

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  HT16K33 Python

  Latest Release: 3.0.2 23 November 2020
  A driver library for a range of Holtek HT16K33-based displays.

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  Ski

  Latest Release: 2.0.2 07 January 2021
  Some Python silliness: 8-bit retro ‘arcade’ action via ncurses...

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  Spasm

  Latest Release: 1.2.0 29 May 2019
  An assembler/disassembler for the Motorola 6809 8-bit microprocessor.

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  SSD1306

  Latest Release: 1.0.0 11 March 2020
  A driver library for Solomon SSD1306-based displays.

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  Unicoder

  Latest Release: 1.0.0 12 December 2019
  A utility for converting Unicode UTF-8 character codes to hex strings

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  XBeeParser

  Latest Release: 1.0.4 09 January 2019
  Decode data packets sent to or received by Zigbee-compatible Digi XBee modules.

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Shell Scripts

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  scripts

  Latest Release: various
  Miscellaneous Z and Bash scripts for a variety of Mac and Raspberry Pi tasks.

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Electric Imp Source Code Repos

Apps

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  MatrixClock

  Latest Release: 2.2.10 21 May 2020
  A retro matrix LED clock.

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  Cløck

  Latest Release: 2.2.0 21 May 2020
  A compact digital clock design.

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  Weather

  Latest Release: 3.12.1 21 February 2020
  A weather forecast readout using an 8x8 LED matrix.

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  HomeWeather

  Latest Release: 2.7.7 21 February 2020
  Wall-mounted weather forecast, outdoor temperature and time readout, and rain gauge.

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  ThermalForecastWorld

  Latest Release: 1.10.1 16 July 2020
  A NeoPixel forecast temperature display.

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  EnvTailTempLog

  Latest Release: 1.5.6 21 May 2020
  A basic environment data sensor.

Libraries

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  Location

  Latest Version: 1.5.4 01 March 2019
  A Squirrel class for Google’s geolocation API.

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  HT16K33Matrix

  Latest Version: 3.0.0 06 February 2020
  A driver for the Adafruit 8x8 LED Matrix I2C Backpack.

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  HT16K33Bargraph

  Latest Version: 2.0.0 01 March 2019
  A driver for the Adafruit Bi-Color (Red/Green) 24-Bar Bargraph.

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  HT16K33Segment

  Latest Version: 2.0.1 07 February 2020
  A driver for the Adafruit 0.56in 7-segment LED I2C Backpack.

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  HT16K33SegmentBig

  Latest Version: 2.0.0 22 March 2019
  A driver for the Adafruit 1.2in 7-segment LED I2C Backpack.

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  Generic Squirrel Code

  Latest Version: various 27 October 2019
  Assorted cross-project utilities.

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