Hackers' Pub

Syntax	Description	Examples
`"` keyword `"`	Finds the string within quotes, including spaces. Case-insensitive. (Escape quotes inside with `\"`)	`"Hackers' Pub"`
`from:` handle	Finds content written by the specified user.	`from:hongminhee` `from:hongminhee@hollo.social`
`lang:` ISO 639-1	Finds content written in the specified language.	`lang:en`
`#` tag	Finds content with the specified tag. Case-insensitive.	`#HackersPub`
condition condition	Finds content that satisfies both conditions on either side of the space (logical AND).	`"Hackers' Pub" lang:en`
condition `OR` condition	Finds content that satisfies at least one of the conditions on either side of the OR operator (logical OR).	`#HackersPub OR "Hackers' Pub" lang:en`
`(` condition `)`	Combines the operators within the parentheses first.	`(#HackersPub OR "Hackers' Pub" OR "Hackers Pub") lang:en`

gloriouscow @gloriouscow@oldbytes.space

12/28/2025, 2:35:19 AM

Public

I come to atone for past sins.

Some of you may have seen my previous work encoding photos onto floppy disks such that they appear in disk visualization software.

Regrettably, I used AI to generate the cat photo. It was a lazy decision, especially considering that I have thousands of cat photos. I had some requirements for dynamic range, focus, and a blank background to get a good result, and I took the easy way out rather than spend a few minutes in photoshop.

It's been bothering me for a while, so I've finally redone all the examples on my GitHub with a photo of my actual, real live, non-AI cat, Harry.

#retrocomputing

An example of a photograph of a scruffy, orange doofus cat encoded onto a floppy disk in such a manner that it appears visible in disk visualization tools that display averages of flux transition density.

Two such examples are shown side-by-side, the left a blue-shaded image from the disk tool HxC, on the right a grayscale version from the Mac disk utility Applesauce.

The cat has a very serious blep going on.

gloriouscow @gloriouscow@oldbytes.space

12/28/2025, 2:39:32 AM

Public

#retrocomputing

I've also finally released my pbm2track utility, which you can use to do silly things like encode pixel art in track timing diagrams.

Check it out here:

https://github.com/dbalsom/fluxfox/tree/main/crates/pbm2track

A prebuilt windows binary is in releases.

an image of the disk utility HxC in stream view, which would normally show three horizontal bands representing the the three flux transition times typical of MFM encoding.

Instead we see three cats. Cats??? How did cats get there?

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