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

Aug 2021 Retrieving Kwik Trip Gas Prices

Kwik Trip (a popular gas station in the MN-WI-IA area, if you’re not from the Midwest) has an API to display their fuel prices, among other things. Here’s a short Python program to retrieve pricing of nearby stores.

May 2021 Setting up an ODROID-HC4 as a NAS

I bought a new NAS, a Hardkernel ODROID-HC4! It’s a real upgrade. Before: 6C/12T Xeon processor; After: 4C/4T ARM processor. Before: 12GB ECC RAM, After: 4GB RAM. Before: 6 HDD slots/SATA ports; After: 2. But most importantly:

Apr 2021 Data mining my Spotify history

I have a few songs I listen to very frequently. Enough that I wonder, “Does the amount I stream this song have a noticeable effect on the song’s popularity?” It turns out, yes, there are at least a handful of songs for which that is the case.

Apr 2021 Notes on Building AsteroidOS

Building AsteroidOS isn’t terribly difficult, and reasonably well documented, but there are a handful of gotchas I ran into during the process.

Mar 2021 Keeping Tabs on my Tabs – a quick Python hack

I’m a bit of a tab hoarder. Firefox, thankfully, is pretty good about not using excessive resources for infrequently-accessed tabs, but when my Tab Counter extension told me I’d topped 300 tabs, I figured it was time to start a more serious diet plan. And what’s a diet without a scale? Here’s a script that I use to keep track of how many tabs I have open at a time, so I can measure my progress in the fight against my hoarding instincts.

Jan 2021 Van Conversion Electronics

In which I help my brother to add an electrical system to his van conversion project, including lighting, battery control, automatic charging and disconnect from the vehicle battery, and a 120V inverter.