Introducing Ubuild

I recently added a new project to GitHub: Ubuild

This project addresses something I've wanted for a long time: a way to unify the build process for various software projects. It shouldn't matter if the project is a C++ native application or a web app, there should be a simple interface that takes the guess-work out of the build process. Ubuild provides this unified interface.

A user can review the build options by running the …

more ...

Debugging Godot With Visual Studio Code

I’ve been playing around with Godot a bit recently, a promising 2D/3D game engine that is completely open source. What most impressed me is that the entire engine is distributed as a 50MB binary. Compared to the 1GB+ installation size for Unity, this is pretty amazing.

Here are some quick instructions for debugging the Godot engine itself (i.e. rather than a game created in Godot) using VS Code:

  1. Make sure you have …

more ...

Installing HospitalRun On Arch Linux

Date Tags software

I recently installed HospitalRun on Arch Linux using the official instructions available here. Everything went well except for step 5 involving script/bootstrap which required the following changes:

  1. Add the --ignore-scripts option to the end of the line npm install -g phantomjs-prebuilt.
  2. Add the --allow-root option to the end of the line bower install.

Now run the script with sudo script/bootstrap and all should be good!

more ...

Changelog Structure

I recently changed my preferred structure for changelog files. Examples of the old structure are shown in the Qprompt changelog while the new structure is shown in the PopPage changelog.

The new structure is based on suggestions from Keep A Changelog. Liking the clarity and brevity of this style, I updated the changelog section in the Unified Style Guide to incorporate their suggestions.

While I don't plan to update old changelogs, new changelogs will definitely …

more ...

PopPage Demo

PopPage is a small side project I started a few years but haven't really updated much until recently. PopPage was originally a simple static HTML generator; at the time I just needed a utility to apply content to Jinja2 templates. However, recent updates have effectively made it a cookiecutter clone with a few neat features. Unlike cookiecutter, PopPage information is supplied from YAML files rather than JSON files. As of PopPage 0.3.1, there …

more ...


DevLog - Qprompt

Qprompt is a simple CLI library for Python that I have slowly working on for about two years now. It provides basic typed prompts and menus in a CLI environment along with some additional convenience functions. Recently, I added a feature that allows prompt inputs to be automatically entered via stdin; I have found this feature to be enormously helpful. Let's look at an example use case.

Use Case - QuickWin Build Menu

QuickWin is another …

more ...

Question Drilldown - Kalman Filter

The Topic

For this drilldown, we will take a very high-level look at a technique used in robotics, control systems, and any other applications involving sensors: the Kalman Filter.

NOTE: No math will be covered in this article. There are plenty of great resources for learning the math behind the Kalman Filter. Think of this article as a primer.

The Q&A

What is a Kalman Filter (KF)?

The KF is an algorithm used to …

more ...

Hi, I am Jeff Rimko!
A computer engineer and software developer in the greater Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area.