Hacker News: spmcl

New comment by spmcl in "Ask HN: Share your personal website"

spmcl — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 20:58:59 +0000

seanmcloughl.in

Currently just hosts my blog. I mainly like how my name fully fits in the URL.

New comment by spmcl in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)"

spmcl — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 23:29:13 +0000

I recently got a pen plotter. I've been working on making my own implementations of algorithms to convert images to vector graphics for plotting. Things like cross-hatching to fill in dark areas, or spirals or flow fields, etc. I also found out about vpype[1] recently which does some cool things in this area.

[1] https://github.com/abey79/vpype

Vpype: A CLI for Plotter Art

spmcl — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 20:25:25 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/abey79/vpype

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44390949

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Spade Hardware Description Language

spmcl — Mon, 12 May 2025 12:19:50 +0000

Article URL: https://spade-lang.org/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43962138

Points: 118

# Comments: 61

New comment by spmcl in "Teaching LLMs how to solid model"

spmcl — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 19:34:23 +0000

I did this a few months ago to make a Christmas ornament. There are some rough edges with the process, but for hobby 3D printing, current LLMs with OpenSCAD is a game-changer. I hadn't touched my 3D printer for years until this project.

https://seanmcloughl.in/3d-modeling-with-llms-as-a-cad-luddi...

New comment by spmcl in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2025)"

spmcl — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 14:26:22 +0000

Several different tracks, having a hard time focusing on one.

- A little free library, but for e-books. Having a bit of trouble with this one because I think that the move to e-books inherently removes much of the magic of a little free library of physical books. Plus there's the whole "letting users upload things is hard" thing.

- E-ink picture frame. It's been done before and it's mainly just a use for an old rpi laying around.

- Looking to start a tech meetup in my small locale. It's hard to meet tech people in my area, let alone people who are willing to present.

- TUIs to aid me in my day job. Claude makes whipping up proofs of concept super easy and quick, so this one is the most fun to me right now.

New comment by spmcl in "Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life"

spmcl — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:28:37 +0000

I use Johnny.Decimal in my Obsidian vault, but its purpose is less about being able to find things in the future and more like "this is a simple well-trodden system so you may as well use it for some semblance of organization of your folder hierarchy." But I only label the folders. I don't label files with numerical values – folders are just dumping grounds for a certain type of notes. Like I have a folder for journal entries, unique notes, blog posts, book notes, recipes, and individual side-projects. A few tags (most auto-generated in templates) help me search past notes if I need to, but that's a very infrequent need.

My point is that switching just the folder hierarchy to Johnny.Decimal was very easy and I don't have to think about how I organize my work ever. Contrast that with some of the other PKM organization schemes you'll find (such as using Johnny.Decimal in its entirety), and you'll see that they both take a ton of time to set up and a ton of effort to maintain. Those are massive wastes of time. There are far more meaningful things you could be doing outside of marginal gains to productivity, if you can even call PKM optimization a "marginal gain."

New comment by spmcl in "Siddhartha"

spmcl — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:22:44 +0000

I'm very grateful that this was assigned reading in high school, since it was a sort of gateway book for reading more about Buddhism. It's short. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.

New comment by spmcl in "Why blog if nobody reads it?"

spmcl — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 18:49:44 +0000

Writing helps me think. Posting a thought in public forces me to commit to an idea and clean up how I communicate it. I learn more about the subject and myself along the way.

Henrik Karlsson has a good series of posts on this subject: https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/writing-to-think

I journal daily about a topic I pull off a backlog of ideas. After the end of my allotted journaling time, if I think “there are more threads here to uncover,” I spend more time on it. If I feel confident, I clean it up into a blog post.

Obligatory link to my own blog: https://www.seanmcloughl.in

3D modeling with LLMs as a CAD luddite

spmcl — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 18:10:52 +0000

Article URL: https://seanmcloughl.in/3d-modeling-with-llms-as-a-cad-luddite/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42576966

Points: 4

# Comments: 0