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callumprentice

1,882 karma · joined July 25, 2012

British bloke and US citizen, in the Los Angeles South Bay via San Francisco, Singapore, Barcelona, Zurich, London and Hong Kong ● Second Life developer at Linden Lab during the day since 2004 ● Enthusiastic WebGL/WebXR hacker in the evenings ● Founder of Industrial Might and Logic Combat Robots ● Eager traveller ● Crossfit and indoor rowing aficionado ● Insanely happy husband and father
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callumprentice··on iPhone Duo
Agreed. I am excited to see what changes appear. I did enjoy the "One more thing" + smirk bit too.
callumprentice··on Tim Curry has died
Hahaha! Can you imagine..
callumprentice··on Tim Curry has died
I was a fan since university when someone down the corridor would have The Rocky Horror Picture Show playing all the time...

Imagine my delight at seeing him on a packed London Tube one morning on my way to work. He asked to get by and I said something like "Just a jump to the left, and then a step to the right?" waiting for him to burst into song with the whole carriage joining in..

He just scowled and pushed past - still made my day though :)

callumprentice··on WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do
That's great. Thank you for the feedback - I ordered one just now.
callumprentice··on WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do
Nod - that's what I was thinking. I expect it's often the connectors that deteriorate so perhaps moving them around while plugged in would tell me. Seems like a useful tool to have around.
callumprentice··on WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do
Would this tell me if a cable is close to the end of it's life? I like to travel light and I've had cables (mostly phone/pad power) go out on trips after working as expected when I packed.
callumprentice··on Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
Excellent article but I am always torn when I read inspirational articles like this - it makes perfect sense to me and I love the idea of simple, non-nonsense sites that work well, load quickly and don't rely on the latest browsers to function.

Then I start to wonder if that's just because I'm not smart enough to understand React or whatever the fancy technology of the day is.

Feels like I have a hard understanding threshold that cannot be breached - give me a simple editor like Sublime and ask me to make a web page - even with JavaScript - and it's my happy place. Give me VSCode or Zed, Claude/Copilot/ChatGPT plugins everywhere, React tutorials and my brain goes to mush.

callumprentice··on Guy builds AI driven hardware hacker arm from duct tape, old cam and CNC machine
I figured this was some kind of home-grown prosthetic arm whose wearer could, using AI, draw any artwork online, speak ASL, perform minor surgery on themselves and so much more so long as their supply of tokens lasted.

Perhaps a smidge disappointed when I had a look and discovered it wasn't that :)

callumprentice··on Show HN: 41 years sea surface temperature anomalies
I made something like this (in the VERY broadest sense) 10 years ago - inspired me to revisit and update both visuals and data (a lot has changed in that time).

https://callumprentice.github.io/apps/global_temperature_cha...

and

https://callumprentice.github.io/apps/climate_temperature_ch...

callumprentice··on Show HN: Travel Hacking Toolkit – Points search and trip planning with AI
As someone who do the whole mileage actual thing for many years (millions of Chase and Amex points) but also a family and a full time job - IE 3 seats vs 1 and can’t leave for a trip at the drop of a hat - I’m always astonished by how worthless my miles seem to be.

I’m not convinced it’s all one big scam but a teensie bit hopeful your solution can help. Looking forward to trying. Thank you.

callumprentice··on Aliens.gov ~ domain registered 17MAR2026
Understood. This was in Manhattan Beach which is expensive for everything but still, that delta is incredible.

Actually, I noticed one near there yesterday on PCH (forget which station) was $6.89999 for the good stuff.

callumprentice··on Aliens.gov ~ domain registered 17MAR2026
$6.84999 at the Shell station near my gym this morning.
callumprentice··on Aliens.gov ~ domain registered 17MAR2026
SoCal gas is at least $6.85 a gallon.
callumprentice··on The Met releases high-def 3D scans of 140 famous art objects
Trivial to see the raw GLB files in a Viewer that gives you a bit more control.

https://github.khronos.org/glTF-Sample-Viewer-Release/?model...

callumprentice··on Show HN: Fuzzy Studio – Apply live effects to videos/camera
Also beautifully done. Love it!
callumprentice··on Show HN: Fuzzy Studio – Apply live effects to videos/camera
FWIW, I was able to select a Logitech USB webcam on my Mac mini running Sequoia.
callumprentice··on Show HN: Fuzzy Studio – Apply live effects to videos/camera
So much fun and beautifully implemented.

I wish there was a way to use the output/preview as a virtual camera in Meet, Zoom etc. I could drive my colleagues potty with some of these :)

callumprentice··on Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?
Thank goodness. My Gmail address is my first name so I typically get many hundreds of spam’s a day which are almost all caught. Dozens in my inbox today so I figured something was up. Glad it’s not that the spam pedlars have suddenly gotten clever.
callumprentice··on Ask HN: Share your personal website
I've long admired your work online both for its writing quality and incredible insight.

Thank you for sharing all these years.

callumprentice··on The Jeff Dean Facts
Agreed! I felt the same way but sitting here with my morning coffee chuckling away. A good start to the day.
callumprentice··on Shipmap.org
https://callumprentice.github.io/apps/flight_stream/index.ht...

Something similar but for flights and in 3D.

12 years old now - might be fun to see what new data is out there - real time perhaps - and have another go

callumprentice··on Show HN: Prism.Tools – Free and privacy-focused developer utilities
Phenomenal collection but like the parent of this message, I have many similar sites bookmarked but without a good bookmark manager (Chrome), it's hard to add meta data like "I really like this page's JSON formatter" etc.

I might have a go at a making meta-utility site when you enter names, descriptions, tags etc. of a utility and it lists relevant sites.

To the parent's point about a good DOT COM, I have one that might be perfect since I seem incapable of finishing the project I purchased it for decades ago.

callumprentice··on I switched from VSCode to Zed
Fascinating. Can you share your non-private Zed config? I still have mine from before the switch - I'd like to compare.
callumprentice··on I switched from VSCode to Zed
I'll try that - thank you.
callumprentice··on I switched from VSCode to Zed
I tried Zed for a few months but just couldn't get the JavaScript/Python syntax checking and Prettier type reformatting to work reliably. I would poke at it for a few hours, get it working and then mysteriously, a few days later, it'd stop working again.

I switched to VSCode now and whilst that piece of it seems to be much more reliable, I think overall I prefer the "feel" of Zed.

I've bookmarked the article to see if that helps me figure out how to make the settings stick.

callumprentice··on One Number I Trust: Plain-Text Accounting for a Multi-Currency Household
I agree with an earlier post that asserted "net worth = assets - liabilities" but I'd like to do better at understanding what that really means.

Some are easy like the size of your bank balance. Others are much harder.

For example, one asset we have is our home and there are many websites out there that tell you how much it's worth but they each vary an awful lot and change dramatically - so much so sometimes that any savings you've made in the same period are eclipsed.

Similarly, the 401k I've been building up for years seems like a decent amount but trying to calculate what it's worth after taxes and therefore how much you'll have to spend each month seems unknowable.

I think the same is true of investment accounts. If we seeded one with $500 and it's now worth $250, it's easy to think your net worth has risen by $250 but it really hasn't when taxes, fees and who knows what else is taken into account.

callumprentice··on Buteyko Method
What a lovely story and a great connection to a post. Thanks for sharing.
callumprentice··on Show HN: ISS in Real Time – 25 Years Aboard the International Space Station
Wow - that's incredible. I can't wait to take a look. Thanks for the pointer.
callumprentice··on Show HN: ISS in Real Time – 25 Years Aboard the International Space Station
https://callumprentice.github.io/apps/iss_photo_explorer/ind...

My daughter and I made this 10 years ago for the NASA Space Apps Challenge and I notified a whole bunch of folk at NASA but never heard anything back. Laughably amateurish compared to this magnificent work but it was fun to make.

We actually started work on the next version - a tool that lets you mark begin/end photo frames from those incredible fly-bys and save them off as video but it's maybe not worth it now.

callumprentice··on Apple's Cubify Anything: Scaling Indoor 3D Object Detection
I keep meaning to get back to my suite of equirectangular image functions - viewers, editors, authoring etc. and this reminded me to resurrect the Viewer.

https://equinaut.surge.sh/?eqr=https://raw.githubusercontent...

Not quite right I think because the source image issn't 2x1 aspect ratio.

They can look really nice: both in the real world - https://equinaut.surge.sh/?eqr=https://upload.wikimedia.org/...

or

the virtual world: https://equinaut.surge.sh/?eqr=https://live.staticflickr.com...

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