Thirty Years of This Website: From a USF Server to Today
I have had this website, in one form or another, since the mid-1990s — back when the World Wide Web was still in its infancy. It began not as a “website” at ...
I’m Sumit — a programmer, traveller, and photographer in Tampa, Florida. I like taking things apart to see how they work, riding my bike on weekend mornings, and wandering the world camera-in-hand — 24 countries so far. I’ve been writing it all down here since 1995, back when the web itself was the new thing.
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DIY Level 2 EV Charger Build
Building a Level 2 electric-vehicle charger at home for a fraction of the cost of a commercial unit.
How I Tamed My Swimming Pool
Automating pool chemistry and equipment so the water stays balanced without the daily guesswork.
Home Automation Philosophy
Hard-won principles for a home-automation setup that's reliable, private, and pleasant to live with.
Coat Hanger Antenna
A $10 DIY HDTV antenna made from coat hangers that pulls in every channel at full strength.
Travelogue: Alaska 1999
Twelve days of hostels, campgrounds and trails across Anchorage, Seward, Fairbanks and Denali.
How to build a scalable, caching, resizing image server
A from-scratch design for an image server that resizes and caches on the fly and scales cleanly.
Evolution of the Home Server
Two decades of running a home Linux server, from full tower PCs to a silent low-power NUC.
Thirty Years of This Website: From a USF Server to Today
A trip through the Wayback Machine: from a 1990s university server to today, via every redesign.
Time Machine
This site has been online for thirty years — some of the oldest parts still run. The full story is in Thirty Years of This Website.
Visit my oldest surviving website
Europa (1997–2000), served from a Linux box in my apartment — black background, table layout, animated GIFs — revived and running exactly as it was.
Run my 1996 Java applet
StereoPanel, written for Java 1.0 — running live in your browser, no plugins required, thanks to CheerpJ.
Photography
View all photos →
Latest Writing
The most recent of 81 posts, going back to 1995.
IP Mutton: a clean, ad-free IP checker
Why I built a fast, private, ad-free IP page with a clean JSON API.
блог на русском языке
Всем привет и добро пожаловать в мой блог на русском языке. Я пишу это для практики. Я начал изучать русский язык год назад. Люди часто спрашивают меня - поч...
DIY Level 2 EV Charger Build
How I built my own EV charger using off-the-shelf components.
How I Tamed My Swimming Pool
One of the joys of living is Florida is having a swimming pool in the backyard. All that sunshine, warm weather is perfect for water activities. Or so I thou...
Home Automation Philosophy
In order to build a reliable and long-lasting system, I try to follow these rules:
My Pool Control Panel
This blog post describes my PLC-based pool controller panel. It is a complete replacement of the existing electrical panel. I built this as a learning-exp...
Using PLC for Home Automation
This post is not meant to teach you what a PLC is. If you are unfamiliar with it, I suggest you make a quick read of the following before returning to th...