Chandler Swift
About
I’m a lifelong hacker (the good kind!). My parents have a story they like to tell at my expense: At just a few years old, I was interested enough in my Dad’s laptop brought home from work one evening to somehow manage to change the operating system language into German. Of course, I vehemently deny everything. The interest in computers has stayed, though I like to think I require a bit less supervision now, and I like to tinker with hardware and software everything in between. Things I like include C and Go and Linux and Assembly and MIDI and abusing hardware and…! Things I don’t like include: CSS. I run this software on this OS on this hardware. Ask me about my latest project!
As a musician I’m wrapping up a stint as the organist/pianist/accompanist at Pilgrim Congregational Church in Duluth, MN, and another as an accompanist for the Lake Superior Youth Chorus. When I’m in Duluth, I often play for Jazz at Blush on Monday nights (and if you play an instrument, please come join us!). I especially enjoy playing in small ensembles and with other people as much as I can.
In my free time, I try to remain active with my Boy Scout troop (of which I am an Eagle Scout), especially on outdoor activities. I enjoy reading science fiction, though I don’t have as much time for it as I might like. I appreciate XKCD comics, especially about technology.
Blog
Apr 2022 Ages of Minnesota Wild Players
Tonight the Minnesota Wild won their game against the Nashville Predators, in a nailbiting finish—we (specifically Dmitry Kulikov, age 31) scored our final goal to end 5-4 with 1.3 seconds left of overtime.
It’s always amazing to me as I get older that a large component of professional sports players are younger than I am. (Though hockey players are somewhat older than I’d imagined: Both goalies are in their mid to late thirties, and the median player is still a few years older than I am.)
Apr 2022 2021 Taxes: Open Source Edition
Happy Tax Day! The tax industry (by which I primarily mean its largest player, Intuit) sucks.1 As a whole, the industry is an excellent example of rent-seeking behavior, and not one I wish to encourage with my patronage. So I tried out a few options when filing my 2021 taxes, and found out a few interesting things along the way2.
Apr 2022 The Holy (Midwestern) Trinity: Culvers, Kwik Trip, and Menards
If you live in the Upper Midwest, you know what I mean: There’s no place like Culvers. And Kwik Trip. And Menards. (All Wisconsin-based, for that lovely hometown charm.) But the worst part of visiting all three is the period of time between stepping out of one and arriving at another. Where is the best location we can minimize this pain?
Mar 2022 Lessons learned from implementing the BitTorrent protocol
Last week, Jeff and I had some questions about some specifics about how the BitTorrent protocol works. Over the course of a conversation, I realized that, despite years of using torrents to download Linux ISOs1, I had at best a surface-level understanding of the protocol. That’s a shame, because peer to peer file sharing involves some really neat tech! One of the best ways to understand how something works is to build it, so I wrote a toy BitTorrent client that implements the bare minimum necessary to download a file.
Feb 2022 How not to send an email asking for personal information
May-July 2017: Equifax is hacked. September 7, 2017: Equifax discloses the breach. July 24?, 2019: I make a claim against the settlement fund, since my information was involved in the breach. January 27, 2022: I receive an email from the Equifax Breach Settlement Administrator telling me how I can claim the credit monitoring I selected. January 30, 2022: I spend several hours trying unsuccessfully to decide if the email is legitimate or not.
