Archives

All the articles I've archived.

2025

8
August 1
July 5
June 2

2024

6
September 1
July 1
April 3
March 1

  • Lunetta 1

    Michael Earls

    How to make a Lunetta circuit for playing a square wave from discrete components

2023

5
December 4
November 1

  • Speech in C

    Michael Earls

    Converting a BASIC program to make speech with the SP0256-AL2 speech chip on a retro computer.

2022

5
June 1

  • New acquisition - MPC One

    Michael Earls

    In my 40+ years of making music with electronic devices, I find the MPC to be the best workflow, so far. The MPC introduced me to a quick way to lay down my ideas and get the sound I'm looking for without being distracted by email, instant messages, and notifications on my computer.

May 1

  • Four day weekend without the Internet

    Michael Earls

    It was just like I remember it back in the days before the Internet. If you wanted to make the computer do something, you just had to figure it out. You got to your destination by trying new things and repeating with small permutations over and over until you get the desired result.

April 2

  • The main reason I decided not to get a Prusa Mini

    Michael Earls

    So when I looked over at it taking up some of my table space, I considered what I could do to replace it with something smaller. I immediately thought of the Prusa Mini.

  • Why I got rid of most of my synth hardware

    Michael Earls

    I recently made some silly purchases. I am an amateur musician. I have a rudimentary home studio consisting of a few MIDI controllers, a Native Instruments Maschine Mk2, and a Korg Wavestate. I also use computers to write my music. I kept seeing videos ('not sponsored' (but provided

February 1

  • Getting Started with Retro Computers - Writing Code for the SC131

    Michael Earls

    About a year ago, I built a SC131 Pocket Sized Computer designed and developed by Stephen C Cousins on Tindie. I soldered the kit and got it up and running, but left it alone for a long time. I bought it because I'm interested in learning how computers

2021

10
December 5

  • Creating Music and Animation in VR

    Michael Earls

    I've spent the past few weeks learning how to create animation and music using only my Virtual Reality headset. I've been using Quill and Virtuoso (paired with my DAW) extensively. My first animation was the result of me trying to keep up with Goro Fujita'

  • Play your Favorite Daw from Within Virtual Reality

    Michael Earls

    In this post, I briefly discuss interfacing a VR headset with the Reason Studios Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).

  • My first taste of Virtual Reality

    Michael Earls

    I recently made a childhood dream come true and bought myself a Virtual Reality headset. I have been following the technology since the very beginning.

  • Sculpting in Virtual Reality

    Michael Earls

    I have spent the last few days holed up in a virtual reality drawing and animation studio called Quill. I've been learning the environment and tools and I have been very impressed. I've been able to create some fun and creative artwork already in only a few days' worth of practice.

  • My Obsession with Feedback Continues

    Michael Earls

    I have been working diligently at building my own synthesizer using an FPGA. I will be using a breadboard-mounted Cmod A7: Artix-7 FPGA Module.

November 1

  • Managing Infinite Concepts with Finite Constraints

    Michael Earls

    There are infinite concepts, but when one applies finite constraints to those concepts, one can accomplish miracles. This is the foundation of life as I perceive it. The constraints of words challenge us to think about the world a specific way in order to communicate what we are thinking and

October 1

  • New Music Experiment - Now with Video

    Michael Earls

    I began exploring the use of a video synthesizer. I found out about Cathodemer from an online source. I have been using it to create visuals for some of my music and posting it on YouTube. For my recordings using this tool, I used the output of the Soma laboratory&

August 1
July 2

2018

17
July 2

  • GitHub is not necessarily the best judge of developer skill

    Michael Earls

    I recently read where someone said that GitHub was the place to go to determine a developer's skill level. I have to say that I totally disagree with this statement. It might be true for some developers, but not me. I write a lot of code every day. Some days

  • Being bored has never felt so good

    Michael Earls

    Ater two 55+ hour work weeks and a 17 hour day (we didn't leave the office until 1 AM and I worked through lunch that day), I've been a bit lazy. In fact, I haven't felt like doint anything at all. No electronics, no coding, no anything. We did play

June 1

  • Easy and inexpensive bases for paper and cardboard RPG miniatures

    Michael Earls

    I print my own miniatures for use with Pathfinder. I buy the PDF version of the Pathfinder pawns and print out the pages that I need to use, cutting and gluing the pieces as necessary. However, I was having trouble finding decent bases for them. The bases that are for

May 2

  • The Adventure Begins

    Michael Earls

    We just had our second gathering to play Pathfinder (Pathfinder is based on the D&D 3.5 Edition Rules). We started playing the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path last weekend. I'm the gamemaster (Dungeon Master) and I've had a blast. It takes a lot of preparation

  • How to add Prism Syntax Highlighting to your Ghost blog

    Michael Earls

    This post show you how to add Prism syntax highlighting (code formatting) to your Ghost.org blog.

April 4

  • .NET Beyond the Demos - Part 3 - The DTOs

    Michael Earls

    To make passing data between the various parts of our application easy, we need a way to encapsulate that data in such a way that it can easily be transported across the network and consumed by various clients.

  • .NET Beyond the Demos - Part 2 - The Architecture

    Michael Earls

    In order for me to communicate this particular story, I first need to outline the overall architecture. At the highest structural level, the architecture is really quite simple. Let's start there and work our way down.

  • .NET Beyond the Demos - Part 1

    Michael Earls

    I like code demos. They're good for getting you familiar with how a specific technology works. However, many times, it's hard to get a feel for how different technologies work together to create a larger ecosystem in the enterprise environment.

  • Solo: A Star Wars Story actually looks good

    Michael Earls

    I just watched the latest trailer for Solo: A Star Wars Story . I have never been a Han Solo fan, but I'm really excited about a new Star Wars movie since Rogue One and The Last Jedi were so good. It will be cool to see how Han was forged

March 2

  • Staring at a blank canvas

    Michael Earls

    I recently bought painting supplies. The whole works; Brushes, Canvases, Paints. I even bought a new easel. I managed to paint one painting using the intuitive painting technique. However, I keep finding myself staring at a blank canvas, not knowing what to put on it. I have no idea what

  • I have officially turned to the dark side

    Michael Earls

    Slowly turning to the dark side, I just purchased my first Apple watch.

February 2

  • Hi, my name is Michael, and I'm addicted to Facebook

    Michael Earls

    I don't remember life before Facebook, and that bothers me. We recently went on a week long vacation, and while we were there, I never once checked my Facebook. Sure, it kept bugging me with updates to my phone (which then buzzed my smartwatch), so it was a constant annoyance

  • The New (and arguably improved) Tangerine Dream

    Michael Earls

    I've been a Tangerine Dream fan since 1990. Since that time, when someone asked me who my favorite band was, I instantly answered 'Tangerine Dream'. I was usually met with blank stares because no one had ever heard of them. I then proudly proclaimed that 'They're the

January 4

2017

22
December 2
November 7

  • Driving the Max 7219 7-Segment Display Module from ASP.NET Core on the Raspberry Pi

    Michael Earls

    This post will outline the steps I took to connect a Max 7219 7-Segment Module to the Raspberry Pi and a .NET Core 2.0 WebApi

  • Is the feedback loop the key to a learning computer?

    Michael Earls

    When I was in my early 20's, I setup my Korg Poly-Six synthesizer so that the audio output fed into a Radio Shack (Realistic) Reverb Machine with the output of that going back into the synthesizer input (a modification that someone had added to the synthesizer before I bought it)

  • Running a .NET Core 2.0 WebApi app on the Raspberry Pi (Raspbian)

    Michael Earls

    I wanted to create a web api app that answered calls on my Raspberry Pi. The first step I learned was how to install and configure .NET core 2.0 on the Raspberry Pi. Note - .NET Core only runs on the Raspberry Pi 2 or 3. It will not

  • The Hand-MIDI Interface Project - Adafruit Feather 32u4 with Magnetometer

    Michael Earls

    A few months ago, I had an idea to create a new musical instrument that mounted on a glove. I used a cycling glove that I had from that time that I bought the Trek bike and rode it twice (long story). I bought the following parts from Adafruit : Stainless

  • Armchair Engineering - Ignorance is bliss

    Michael Earls

    I'm totally into my FPGA. Embedded Micro is supposed to be announcing a new FPGA based on the new Artix 7 FPGA chip that will allow me to run the new Vivado design suite from Xilinx. I'm currently using the very outdated ISE tool (it's like using Microsoft Front Page

  • C# Introduction to Expression Trees

    Jeff Tyler

    Recently I was in a situation where I needed to write my own expression trees to be consumed by Entity Framework. I thought that it would be a good opportunity to pass what I learned along. Along the way I came up with three realizations that helped me understand what

  • Emulating a Lunetta circuit with an FPGA is a flawed idea

    Michael Earls

    That time I tried to emulate discreet CMOS components using an FPGA and one line of Verilog.

August 1

  • Welcome our newest author on cerkit.com - Jeff Tyler

    Michael Earls

    We have a new author on the Cerebral Kitchen - Jeff Tyler. Jeff is a professional software developer and will be contributing to the site with more of the same topics you're already used to. Jeff's first two articles have been posted: Creating a calendar control with Aurelia part 1

May 2

  • Pong on the Mojo Revisited

    Michael Earls

    In my previous post , I briefly discussed the implementation of a pseudo-pong game on my Mojo FPGA developer board. I was able to implement the VHDL version that I linked to later in the post and it works much better. The biggest challenge I had with it was converting the

  • Creating PONG on the Mojo FPGA

    Michael Earls

    I recently found an old VGA monitor on the side of the road and it inspired me to see if I could get my Mojo FPGA board to output a VGA signal. I took the monitor apart and wired its VGA cable directly to my Mojo. I read up on

April 5

  • Out of body experiences and death. Are they related?

    Michael Earls

    When we lived in Arizona, we used to go on adventures in our car at night (when it cooled off). We would drive out of the city and turn down small roads that led into the deeper desert. It was an amazing way to explore. We saw wild beasts and

  • Moon Phase Calculator for the Pebble Watch (C Source)

    Michael Earls

    This blog entry contains a moon phase calculation in C as well as a link to a Pebble smartwatch program.

  • Custom Fritzing part for Mojo v3

    Michael Earls

    Creating a custom part for Fritzing was quite a challenge. This is a brief description of what I learned making a part for the Mojo FPGA.

  • Using Notepad++ as the default editor for Xilinx ISE

    Michael Earls

    I was having difficulties working with the built in text editor for the ISE FPGA tool from Xilinx. I was missing some of the things I've come to depend on in the editors that I use every day (Visual Studio, VSCode, Notepad++, etc.) I noticed in the preferences that I

  • Reversible Binary Counter on the Mojo FPGA

    Michael Earls

    In this post, I briefly describe how I implemented a reversible binary counter. First, the hard way. Then, the easy way (inversion!)

March 3
February 1

  • One input, two different results

    Michael Earls

    As if to give life to itself, two separate careers started as simple 'choose your own adventure' game development on two early 1980's home computers.

January 1

2016

3
December 3