Category: Software Engineering

  • Profiling LMC Assembly Code

    Profiling LMC Assembly Code

    What is Profiling? Profiling is measuring the performance of code, whether it is a small function or an entire application. You can determine how quickly the code will execute various requests and tune them to meet your needs. Cycle Counts The Little Man Computer is easy to do math on, it is 1:1 — one…

  • Little Man Computer – Execution

    Little Man Computer – Execution

    So far, we’ve learned about the Little Man Computer architecture and how to write a simple program and assemble it into machine code. You likely already know how the code is executed due to the high quality comments I’ve included in that blog. Regardless, I built a simulator and spent quite a bit of time…

  • Little Man Computer — Assembly Code

    Little Man Computer — Assembly Code

    Cover photo isn’t related, but it’s almost as interesting as my post. Machine Code vs. Assembly Code You’ll often hear these two terms used interchangeably, but they are not the same. People will often state that machine code is the actual “0’s” and “1’s” a machine executes, and that’s pretty close to being correct. People…

  • Little Man Computer – Architecture

    Little Man Computer – Architecture

    Around a year ago, I built and threw a Little Man Computer (“LMC”) simulator, assembler, and a really crappy disassembler and put them up on GitHub. There’s another version in C++ up there as well, but it isn’t as fully built out or stable. “Computer Science” in my high school days consisted of keyboarding and…

  • Alarm System Part 5: How to Hack a Home Security System

    Alarm System Part 5: How to Hack a Home Security System

    This Blog is part of a Series! Check out the rest if you haven’t already: You read that title. Not “What parts did I order and what struggles did I have” No. “How to hack”, which means we’re damned successful at it, But not so fast. Last I reported, the alarm on a board was…

  • Alarm System Part 4: The Keypad

    Alarm System Part 4: The Keypad

    This Blog is part of a Series! Check out the rest if you haven’t already: At this point, I’ve dumped the EEPROM off the panel, and discovered that there can be some data stored in the PIC Microcontroller on the panel as well. The datasheet for that is >300 pages, so I’m not planning on…

  • Alarm System Part 3: Security System – Dumping the EEPROM

    Alarm System Part 3: Security System – Dumping the EEPROM

    If you’re coming here looking for the dump, I can’t share it. I don’t know what the laws are on this and it feels pretty DMCA-ish. Sorry. This Blog is part of a Series! Check out the rest if you haven’t already: So, the EEPROM programmer arrived today. For that, I’m excited. And nothing warms…

  • Alarm System Part 2: Security System Teardown

    Alarm System Part 2: Security System Teardown

    This Blog is part of a Series! Check out the rest if you haven’t already: First things first, it was time to tear out the EEPROM since the reader is coming soon. What You’ll Need Finding PIN 1 This part is important — you can’t take a game cartridge and jam it in backwards because…

  • Alarm System Part 1: The old security system

    Alarm System Part 1: The old security system

    This Blog is part of a Series! Check out the rest if you haven’t already: I’ve recently built my own home security panel. For the code, STLs, and a rambling blog about it, look over here. What does a technology hoarder do with the old system components you probably didn’t ask? I took the existing…

  • Home Security & I’m Back

    Home Security & I’m Back

    This Blog is part of a Series! Check out the rest if you haven’t already: I’ve blogged for years on this domain, and every few years I get sick of WordPress or the server I’m hosting on, delete it, and don’t look back. This time is no different. By 2026 or so, this post should…

  • Function: Identify Image

    This is from a very old post of mine, posted for archival purposes. Ever decide you had to hide an image file and you decide to change the extension to something like “.exe”, or perhaps, you used something like Signal messenger and downloaded an image but it didn’t have a valid extension? Back in 2013,…

  • SEO for Derps

    SEO for Derps

    This is a very old post of mine from 2011. It’s a shitpost, a troll, a joke. tbh I’m surprised I’ve been doing this for so long now. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the technique of making your site more readable for search engines, and increasing your rankings. This is the second article I’ve wrote,…