Blog Archive 2026 Feb 21 2026 From missing parentheses to memory corruption: how one typo crashed Ruby and uncovered two core bugs Posted by Mike Bourgeous in debugging, ruby, valgrind Feb 15 2026 Can Ruby do audio? Yes, yes it can. This video proves it. Posted by Mike Bourgeous in dsp, ruby, sound 2024 Nov 26 2024 Debugging live apps – SIGQUIT for the win Posted by Mike Bourgeous in observability, ruby, software-engineering Sep 08 2024 Observability and instrumentation from a systems perspective Posted by Mike Bourgeous in distributed systems, instrumentation, logging, monitoring, observability, software engineering 2021 Oct 04 2021 Learn more about the Fast Fourier Transform, animated in 3D Posted by Mike Bourgeous in dsp, fft, graphics, sound Jun 09 2021 Voronoi diagrams and natural neighbor interpolation explained in video (with transcript) Posted by Mike Bourgeous in geometry, graphics, ruby Apr 18 2021 Animated graphics with Ruby and Voronoi partitions Posted by Mike Bourgeous in geometry, graphics, ruby Mar 10 2021 Why can't we use Ruby for sound? Posted by Mike Bourgeous in ruby, sound Mar 09 2021 Opening knc: the Depth Camera Controller UI Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic, ruby 2020 Apr 22 2020 Releasing knd: the backend Kinect interface Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, homeautomation, kinect, linux, nitrogen-logic 2018 Aug 26 2018 Open sourcing nlutils: Nitrogen Logic's C utility library Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, homeautomation, linux, nitrogen-logic, valgrind Aug 26 2018 Nitrogen Logic is going open source! Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, homeautomation, java, linux, nitrogen-logic, ruby 2017 Jan 26 2017 cliserver_rust: Learning Rust by reimplementing cliserver with Tokio Posted by Mike Bourgeous Jan 05 2017 Ruby Gems for home automation: nlhue and xap_ruby Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, hue, nitrogen-logic, ruby 2016 Dec 14 2016 MSSQL MERGE/UPSERT with Ruby and the Sequel gem Posted by Mike Bourgeous in mssql, ruby, sql Dec 13 2016 Interfacing Legacy Oracle PL/SQL and Modern Ruby Code Posted by Mike Bourgeous in oracle, plsql, ruby, sql Nov 22 2016 Hashformer: Transform data in Ruby Posted by Mike Bourgeous in ruby Nov 16 2016 Data validation in Ruby with ClassyHash Posted by Mike Bourgeous in ruby Nov 09 2016 Resurrecting a dinosaur: the iBIZ KeySync keyboard for Pocket PC Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, hardware Oct 28 2016 New Blog Theme Posted by Mike Bourgeous in css, html 2014 Jun 10 2014 RailsConf 2014 Lightning Talk Slides - Failures of Distributed Systems Posted by Mike Bourgeous in distributed systems, rails, ruby Mar 28 2014 Important bug fix in Depth Camera Controller firmware build 62 Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic Mar 18 2014 New Depth Camera Controller Firmware: Build 61 Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic 2013 Dec 13 2013 New Depth Camera Controller Firmware: Build 52 Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic Jun 18 2013 New Video: Kinect and Hue, Together at Last Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, hue, kinect, video May 25 2013 New beta firmware: Depth Camera Controller build 45 for Hue Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect Apr 29 2013 How I migrated from Posterous to Octopress while keeping page rank Posted by Mike Bourgeous in ruby Apr 23 2013 This week only: Depth Camera Controller price reduced Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic Apr 17 2013 Beta firmware with Hue support for Depth Camera Controller Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect Apr 04 2013 Hue Support WIP Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, hue, kinect, nitrogen-logic Mar 16 2013 Depth Camera Controller Firmware Update: Build 35 Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic Mar 13 2013 New App: Nitrogen Logic PC Remote Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic Jan 11 2013 Coming soon: Depth Camera Controller retail micro-launch, Philips Hue support Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, hue, kinect, nitrogen-logic, startup Jan 02 2013 Looking Forward to a New Year Posted by Mike Bourgeous 2012 Nov 19 2012 Philips Hue support? Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, hue Oct 25 2012 Depth Camera Controller firmware build 23 — brightness sensing, event log Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic Oct 12 2012 Optimizing Message Parsing in the Depth Controller Web UI Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, homeautomation, kinect Oct 05 2012 Solving libfreenect hangs in the Depth Controller - gdb saves the day Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, debugging, homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic, valgrind Oct 02 2012 The ideal ARM platform Posted by Mike Bourgeous in hardware Sep 18 2012 A vision for the future - From Kinect hack to bootstrapped startup Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect Aug 16 2012 Color camera support, ambient light detection added to Depth Camera Controller Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic Aug 06 2012 Curiosity's View of Mars in Pseudocolor 3D Posted by Mike Bourgeous Aug 01 2012 Documentation for Nitrogen Logic products Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, nitrogen-logic, startup Jul 21 2012 New Firmware for Nitrogen Logic Automation and Depth Controllers Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic Jul 12 2012 Ruby xAP Parser Speed Improved by 28x Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, ruby Jul 03 2012 Solving slowdowns in the Depth Controller web interface Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, ruby Apr 27 2012 Ruby xAP library: xap_ruby Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, nitrogen-logic, ruby Apr 02 2012 HOWTO Video: Turn the Automation Controller into a Serial Port Server Posted by Mike Bourgeous in hardware, homeautomation, nitrogen-logic, video Feb 18 2012 New Automation Controller Firmware Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, nitrogen-logic Feb 09 2012 New Depth Camera Controller Firmware - xAP Support Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic Jan 19 2012 One Customer's System Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic, video Jan 17 2012 On SOPA, PIPA, and Internet Censorship Posted by Mike Bourgeous Jan 06 2012 What would make your automation system rock? Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, nitrogen-logic 2011 Dec 27 2011 WebGL, new features added to Kinect-powered home automation controller Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic, video Dec 26 2011 New video coming soon -- Controller unboxing, Kinect+WebGL demo Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic Nov 17 2011 How much power does a burned out CFL use? Posted by Mike Bourgeous in hardware, homeautomation Oct 30 2011 Halloween PIC Posted by Mike Bourgeous in hardware, pic, video Sep 20 2011 Depth Controller Product Page Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic Jul 05 2011 Contact form Posted by Mike Bourgeous Jun 12 2011 Programmatic process control in C: popen3() Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, linux May 15 2011 Gesture-like Light Control with Kinect Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, video Apr 21 2011 Kinect Home Automation goes HTML5 Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, html, kinect, nitrogen-logic, video Apr 10 2011 Sneak peek Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect Mar 17 2011 Kinect home automation - Questions and Answers Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, linux, video Mar 08 2011 Home automation and lighting control with Kinect Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, linux, nitrogen-logic, video Feb 09 2011 Updates to kinradar Kinect ASCII art radar hack Posted by Mike Bourgeous in kinect, video Jan 13 2011 ASCII art Kinect hacks Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, kinect, video Jan 13 2011 cliserver: An Example Libevent-based Socket Server Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c Jan 12 2011 Useful tools for the SheevaPlug Posted by Mike Bourgeous in linux, sheevaplug 2010 Dec 02 2010 How to Convert a SheevaPlug from JFFS2 to UBI/UBIFS via USB (and upgrade U-Boot in the process) Posted by Mike Bourgeous in linux, sheevaplug Oct 27 2010 Flashing the SheevaPlug Kernel from a USB Drive with U-Boot Posted by Mike Bourgeous in linux, sheevaplug Jun 06 2010 dmx485 - A DMX-512 Interface Library Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, homeautomation, linux May 13 2010 Quote Book Posted by Mike Bourgeous Apr 25 2010 Compiz stuttering gone Posted by Mike Bourgeous in compiz, linux Mar 19 2010 How not to handle feature requests Posted by Mike Bourgeous in customerservice, ooo, openoffice Mar 15 2010 Lessons Learned: YCombinator Summer 2010 Rejection Posted by Mike Bourgeous in cofounder, startup, ycombinator Mar 11 2010 More Mac Posted by Mike Bourgeous in apple, macosx Mar 10 2010 My First Mac: First Impressions Posted by Mike Bourgeous in apple, macosx Mar 03 2010 RSS Readers for Linux Posted by Mike Bourgeous
Feb 21 2026 From missing parentheses to memory corruption: how one typo crashed Ruby and uncovered two core bugs Posted by Mike Bourgeous in debugging, ruby, valgrind
Feb 15 2026 Can Ruby do audio? Yes, yes it can. This video proves it. Posted by Mike Bourgeous in dsp, ruby, sound
Nov 26 2024 Debugging live apps – SIGQUIT for the win Posted by Mike Bourgeous in observability, ruby, software-engineering
Sep 08 2024 Observability and instrumentation from a systems perspective Posted by Mike Bourgeous in distributed systems, instrumentation, logging, monitoring, observability, software engineering
Oct 04 2021 Learn more about the Fast Fourier Transform, animated in 3D Posted by Mike Bourgeous in dsp, fft, graphics, sound
Jun 09 2021 Voronoi diagrams and natural neighbor interpolation explained in video (with transcript) Posted by Mike Bourgeous in geometry, graphics, ruby
Apr 18 2021 Animated graphics with Ruby and Voronoi partitions Posted by Mike Bourgeous in geometry, graphics, ruby
Mar 09 2021 Opening knc: the Depth Camera Controller UI Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic, ruby
Apr 22 2020 Releasing knd: the backend Kinect interface Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, homeautomation, kinect, linux, nitrogen-logic
Aug 26 2018 Open sourcing nlutils: Nitrogen Logic's C utility library Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, homeautomation, linux, nitrogen-logic, valgrind
Aug 26 2018 Nitrogen Logic is going open source! Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, homeautomation, java, linux, nitrogen-logic, ruby
Jan 26 2017 cliserver_rust: Learning Rust by reimplementing cliserver with Tokio Posted by Mike Bourgeous
Jan 05 2017 Ruby Gems for home automation: nlhue and xap_ruby Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, hue, nitrogen-logic, ruby
Dec 14 2016 MSSQL MERGE/UPSERT with Ruby and the Sequel gem Posted by Mike Bourgeous in mssql, ruby, sql
Dec 13 2016 Interfacing Legacy Oracle PL/SQL and Modern Ruby Code Posted by Mike Bourgeous in oracle, plsql, ruby, sql
Nov 09 2016 Resurrecting a dinosaur: the iBIZ KeySync keyboard for Pocket PC Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, hardware
Jun 10 2014 RailsConf 2014 Lightning Talk Slides - Failures of Distributed Systems Posted by Mike Bourgeous in distributed systems, rails, ruby
Mar 28 2014 Important bug fix in Depth Camera Controller firmware build 62 Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic
Mar 18 2014 New Depth Camera Controller Firmware: Build 61 Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic
Dec 13 2013 New Depth Camera Controller Firmware: Build 52 Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic
Jun 18 2013 New Video: Kinect and Hue, Together at Last Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, hue, kinect, video
May 25 2013 New beta firmware: Depth Camera Controller build 45 for Hue Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect
Apr 29 2013 How I migrated from Posterous to Octopress while keeping page rank Posted by Mike Bourgeous in ruby
Apr 23 2013 This week only: Depth Camera Controller price reduced Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic
Apr 17 2013 Beta firmware with Hue support for Depth Camera Controller Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect
Mar 16 2013 Depth Camera Controller Firmware Update: Build 35 Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic
Mar 13 2013 New App: Nitrogen Logic PC Remote Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic
Jan 11 2013 Coming soon: Depth Camera Controller retail micro-launch, Philips Hue support Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, hue, kinect, nitrogen-logic, startup
Oct 25 2012 Depth Camera Controller firmware build 23 — brightness sensing, event log Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic
Oct 12 2012 Optimizing Message Parsing in the Depth Controller Web UI Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, homeautomation, kinect
Oct 05 2012 Solving libfreenect hangs in the Depth Controller - gdb saves the day Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, debugging, homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic, valgrind
Sep 18 2012 A vision for the future - From Kinect hack to bootstrapped startup Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect
Aug 16 2012 Color camera support, ambient light detection added to Depth Camera Controller Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic
Aug 01 2012 Documentation for Nitrogen Logic products Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, nitrogen-logic, startup
Jul 21 2012 New Firmware for Nitrogen Logic Automation and Depth Controllers Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic
Jul 03 2012 Solving slowdowns in the Depth Controller web interface Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, ruby
Apr 27 2012 Ruby xAP library: xap_ruby Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, nitrogen-logic, ruby
Apr 02 2012 HOWTO Video: Turn the Automation Controller into a Serial Port Server Posted by Mike Bourgeous in hardware, homeautomation, nitrogen-logic, video
Feb 18 2012 New Automation Controller Firmware Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, nitrogen-logic
Feb 09 2012 New Depth Camera Controller Firmware - xAP Support Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic
Jan 19 2012 One Customer's System Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic, video
Jan 06 2012 What would make your automation system rock? Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, nitrogen-logic
Dec 27 2011 WebGL, new features added to Kinect-powered home automation controller Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic, video
Dec 26 2011 New video coming soon -- Controller unboxing, Kinect+WebGL demo Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic
Nov 17 2011 How much power does a burned out CFL use? Posted by Mike Bourgeous in hardware, homeautomation
Sep 20 2011 Depth Controller Product Page Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, nitrogen-logic
May 15 2011 Gesture-like Light Control with Kinect Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, video
Apr 21 2011 Kinect Home Automation goes HTML5 Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, html, kinect, nitrogen-logic, video
Mar 17 2011 Kinect home automation - Questions and Answers Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, linux, video
Mar 08 2011 Home automation and lighting control with Kinect Posted by Mike Bourgeous in homeautomation, kinect, linux, nitrogen-logic, video
Feb 09 2011 Updates to kinradar Kinect ASCII art radar hack Posted by Mike Bourgeous in kinect, video
Dec 02 2010 How to Convert a SheevaPlug from JFFS2 to UBI/UBIFS via USB (and upgrade U-Boot in the process) Posted by Mike Bourgeous in linux, sheevaplug
Oct 27 2010 Flashing the SheevaPlug Kernel from a USB Drive with U-Boot Posted by Mike Bourgeous in linux, sheevaplug
Jun 06 2010 dmx485 - A DMX-512 Interface Library Posted by Mike Bourgeous in c, homeautomation, linux
Mar 19 2010 How not to handle feature requests Posted by Mike Bourgeous in customerservice, ooo, openoffice
Mar 15 2010 Lessons Learned: YCombinator Summer 2010 Rejection Posted by Mike Bourgeous in cofounder, startup, ycombinator
