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
Feb 2021 A random accompaniment on EVENTIDE
How good can we make a random accompaniment sound? I was playing with EVENTIDE, William Henry Monk’s tune written for Abide with Me, and was pondering this. I was trying to play randomly on the piano from octaves and notes in the scale, but suspected my “randomess” of playing wasn’t particularly good. But what does have good randomness? Python! (If you don’t want to read the code, just check out the results at the bottom.)
Jan 2021 Exploring paths for Sudoku variants with Python
One of my college friends has an interest in Sudoku variants. Generally, that manifests in the two of us solving puzzles curated by Cracking the Cryptic, but occasionally it ends up with me trying to solve a puzzle he’s created. A while back, he and I were chatting about one of his ideas for the basis of a puzzle. It’s based around a snake in the grid (for an example of another puzzle using a snake, check out this puzzle by CtC). His puzzle requires that its snake alternates successive even digits and odd digits, is unambiguous, and visits at least one cell in every box (as well as, of course, being a valid sudoku puzzle!).
Dec 2020 PinePhone software from the ground up, part 2
A few weeks ago, I compiled and installed a Linux kernel and a bit of other software to run on the PinePhone. Today, let’s look at some next steps.
