Josh Gerdes

Arduino Quadruped Robot

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 14:00:00 +0000

Over the past couple years it has been on my bucket list to build a robot. I built a few little Otto robots for my kids to assemble and tool around with in the past. They were fun but had pretty limited mobility.

What I was interested in was something that could move. So, over the years, I have started (and not finished) an array of robot designs. From spider-like hexapods and quadrupeds to even dabbling with strandbeests. Almost always the problem was power. If you want a super articulate robot, you need a lot of servos. And servos LOVE sucking up power.

Cribbage Scoring Pegboard

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 16:00:00 +0000

My wife and I were upstairs one night and wanted to play a game of Cribbage. We were both too lazy to go downstairs to get the pegboard to keep score, so being the nerd that I am, I popped open the app store and downloaded a cribbage scoring app.

We played and throughout the game I was continuely frustrated with the app and the UX interface it had for scoring. So after the game (where I lost per usual) I did more app searching and testing. All the free apps I could find had similar crappy user experiences. So I thought screw this, I’m just going to make an app myself.

Arduino powered LED Matrix

Mon, 04 May 2020 16:00:00 +0000

I have had this project sitting half complete on my desk for quite quite a few months. With the latest COVID-19 sheltering in fun we’ve been having, I finally found time to complete it. And I’m pretty happy with the results.

The project is an Arduino powered 16x16 LED Matrix using the FastLED library to drive a WS2812B LED array. This could be used to display a variety of fun light displays. I am currently using it to display a variety of classic arcade sprites.

Inktober 2019

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 10:00:00 +0000

This year I finally decided to have another go at kick-starting my drawing by participating in the yearly October drawing event called Inktober. It was originally created by a favorite artist of mine named Jake Parker to promote improving skills and developing positive drawing habits.

I have tried (and failed) many times over the years to try and get back into drawing. So having not really drawn anytihng since school, I was really happy with how this month turned out. And I am proud that I was able to finish with a drawing per day. Only time will tell if this exercise helped create a lasting habit. But I am hopeful!

How to deploy a Hugo project to GitHub Pages with GitHub Actions

Thu, 19 Sep 2019 11:15:00 +0000

Over the years I have tried many static site generators to help manage my personal site and other projects.

Recently, I decided I wanted to find a setup that utilized github pages and did not rely on any local tooling for building or deploying my site.

I really liked how easy it was to use Hugo and once I found this great little project GitHub Actions for Hugo I knew I had a solution.

Jekyll-Uno - a minimal, responsive theme for Jekyll

Sat, 09 Jan 2016 23:28:00 +0000

I decied to convert my site over to Jekyll from Ghost and host it with Github Pages. This allows all my content to live in static files and be built automatically by GitHub. My hope is that with this simplification (and automation) I might actually post a little more this year.

During the conversion process I decided that I liked the theme I was currently using with Ghost but found it was not available for Jekyll yet. So I decided to port the theme over and share.

Host a static Ghost blog on GitHub using Buster

Thu, 12 Mar 2015 19:30:00 +0000

I have really enjoyed the simplicity of the Ghost blogging system and wanted to use it for my personal site. But I also enjoyed the ease of hosting with GitHub Pages so I needed to find a way to generate a static version of a Ghost blog. Luckily someone already had a handy little tool for the job called Buster.

Installing Buster

Details on Buster can be found here. Basically, you need to install wget and git with brew (if they are not already installed on your system) then install Buster with pip. Just run the following commands:

River Raid Classic

Tue, 03 Mar 2015 14:50:00 +0000

Last fall I had some free time and decided to try my hand at game development again. I have been working in the mobile space for the past couple of years so I thought I’d leverage a language that was already in my daily rountine. So I went with JavaScript. I liked the idea of having the flexibility of running the game from a web browser and being able to run it natively with the help of a wrapper. I also was interested in seeing how one of these JavaScript gaming frameworks held up. So, after a little research, I decided to go with Phaser for the framework and CocoonJs for the native wrapper.

Pebble Watchapp: Premier League Scores

Tue, 03 Feb 2015 16:00:00 +0000

I got a new Pebble watch for Christmas this year and I, of course, wanted to be able to keep up-to-date on the latest Premier League scores with this new gadget. But unfortunately there were not any good app options to make that happen. So, being the good developer that I am, I decided to just make an app myself.

So here’s the details:

This is a pebble.js watchapp for displaying today’s English Premier League scores. Get up to the minute scores on the soccer/football matches happening today.

How to add your profile photo to a page in Ghost

Mon, 02 Feb 2015 04:00:00 +0000

I thought with the new year I should spruce up my online presence. So I decided a new site was in order. I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve seen with Ghost so I decided to have a go with it. It’s been smooth sailing so far and I’ve come across a few tricks that I thought I should share one.

If you’re interested in adding you profile photo to a page and/or template just do the following: