Fed Up with GUI Toolkits, Dev Builds Own Barium Library

2025-04-09

A seasoned developer, weary of the constant updates and compatibility issues plaguing modern GUI toolkits, decided to forge his own path by building a custom GUI library called Barium. The article chronicles his years of wrestling with various frameworks (GTK, Qt, Tk, etc.), and explains his rationale for choosing Common Lisp and the X Window System as the foundation. Barium is lightweight, efficient, directly calls Xlib and Cairo, supports OpenGL, and offers a clean Lisp API. While still experimental, it represents a powerful statement about the developer's desire for long-term stability and control over their development environment.

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Development GUI Development

De-smarting a Marshall Uxbridge: A Hacker's Audiophile Journey

2025-01-11

The author found two discarded Marshall Uxbridge smart speakers and, tired of their 'smart' features, decided to transform them into a high-fidelity stereo system. He disassembled the speakers, removed the original smart modules, and designed and built a new analog circuit featuring active filters and linear power amplifiers. The result is a stunning audio system with precise stereo imaging and a wide frequency range. This project is a testament to the author's skills and passion for high-quality audio.

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