https://michaelpercival.dev/ Recent content on Michael Percival's Home Page Hugo en Wed, 24 Sep 2025 11:39:43 +0100 https://michaelpercival.dev/thoughts/whoops-site-revamp-time/ Wed, 24 Sep 2025 11:39:43 +0100 https://michaelpercival.dev/thoughts/whoops-site-revamp-time/ Whoops! An expired debit card of mine caused the domain michaelpercival.xyz not to auto renew, and there’s a hefty premium if I want it back. In retrospect I hadn’t paid attention to this site in a while; I barely stay on top of the SSL certs. Henceforth, michaelpercival.dev will be the primary domain (email m@michaelpercival.dev). I also still have michaelpercival.com as a backup, which redirects to the same site. I’ll be doing some small site revamping to help keep more more on top of things going forward, and will be moving away from namecheap to a domain registrar that doesn’t engage in these kinds of shenanigans. https://michaelpercival.dev/thoughts/dyalog-scan/ Wed, 22 Feb 2023 19:57:02 +0000 https://michaelpercival.dev/thoughts/dyalog-scan/ I saw this recent tweet by Conor Hoekstra, which has some artistic code comparisons. The problem he gives is to write a function that can tell whether there are at least 3 consecutive odd numbers in a given array. He broadly compares three algorithmic solutions across a few different languages: The image highlights a few questions that I’d like to touch upon, namely: what’s up with BQN partitioning? is APL’s scan really broken? https://michaelpercival.dev/thoughts/getting-back-on-the-go/ Mon, 05 Sep 2022 20:45:16 +0100 https://michaelpercival.dev/thoughts/getting-back-on-the-go/ Creativity, in the sense of producing new ‘works’ (music, poetry, blog posts etc…) takes a certain conscious appreciation that doesn’t come around too often for me outside of computer programming. To get around this, I’ve been forcing myself to write a stream of consciousness every morning, pen to paper for a solid twenty-five minutes to flex this under-developed muscle. Anything that’s on my mind, be it dreams (literally and figuratively), goals, insecurities, etc… to help draw out my intention for the day. https://michaelpercival.dev/thoughts/managing-custom-web-fonts/ Sat, 20 Aug 2022 09:30:50 +0100 https://michaelpercival.dev/thoughts/managing-custom-web-fonts/ The font you are looking at is called BQN386, a derivative of the font APL385 patched with custom glyphs for the wonderfully esoteric programming language BQN. Just look at these saucy darlings: 1 2 3 +-×÷⋆√⌊⌈∧∨¬|=≠≤<>≥≡≢⊣⊢⥊∾≍⋈↑↓↕⌽⍉/⍋⍒⊏⊑⊐⊒∊⍷⊔ `˜˘¨⁼⌜´˝˙ ∘⊸⟜○⌾⎉⚇⍟⊘◶⎊ π‿∞‿@↩←⇐→,⋄ 𝕨𝕩𝔽𝔾𝕎𝕏𝕗𝕘𝕊𝕤ℝ𝕣⦃⦄⟨⟩ Specifying custom fonts for a website is fairly straight forward, but it’s easy to make mistakes and can be difficult to debug. If you are in such a situation, I’d recommend using the Font Squirrel Webfont Generator to help cut through the nonsense. https://michaelpercival.dev/library/ Sun, 07 Aug 2022 11:48:24 +0100 https://michaelpercival.dev/library/ Coming soon. https://michaelpercival.dev/hardware/ Sun, 07 Aug 2022 11:48:19 +0100 https://michaelpercival.dev/hardware/ Hardware: Dell XPS 13 (main) OS: Manjaro IBM Thinkpad T60 OS: Parabola Librebooted! this is the only machine I own that rms would approve of. Lenovo Thinkpad W540 OS: Arch, though I plan on replacing it with OpenBSD at some point. https://michaelpercival.dev/software/ Sun, 07 Aug 2022 11:48:13 +0100 https://michaelpercival.dev/software/ Coming soon. https://michaelpercival.dev/pgp/ Sun, 07 Aug 2022 00:15:31 +0100 https://michaelpercival.dev/pgp/ pub ed25519 2026-05-15 [SC] [expires: 2029-05-14] D0F9CD2BBAA729039DF5D24B96B98D635E98D2F2 uid [ultimate] Michael Percival <m@michaelpercival.dev> sub cv25519 2026-05-15 [E] [expires: 2029-05-14] -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- mDMEagc7fhYJKwYBBAHaRw8BAQdAIWSlgv5K165UxOeth61HbSEDD5YbS/yE4snC uGW3oLe0KE1pY2hhZWwgUGVyY2l2YWwgPG1AbWljaGFlbHBlcmNpdmFsLmRldj6I lgQTFgoAPhYhBND5zSu6pykDnfXSS5a5jWNemNLyBQJqBzt+AhsDBQkFo5qABQsJ CAcCBhUKCQgLAgQWAgMBAh4BAheAAAoJEJa5jWNemNLyNucBAKg1O6ALhvDe6RqG tIGXXdyjhBnZrVyUvIXV7UhMIOzYAP9kPX/QsoCd5BVHFF1H4h6aWvBq1h+ZVTSO oq2KpK0BBLg4BGoHO34SCisGAQQBl1UBBQEBB0CwaZoK7YxTY7eAIPf4lIO+G33h Y4rH+/h1TcYn+3jQJAMBCAeIfgQYFgoAJhYhBND5zSu6pykDnfXSS5a5jWNemNLy BQJqBzt+AhsMBQkFo5qAAAoJEJa5jWNemNLyotoBAJslAenUYprPxYn5lVAsfFv6 Jf2Vm7o8LEi8z7cnzFs5AP4+VDnOuSfa15Wu4wdiz+piXPwzbj2BOeo2bc4tCokM Dw== =UHbf -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- alternatively, you can download the key here. https://michaelpercival.dev/thoughts/penrose-tilings-part-1/ Sat, 06 Aug 2022 14:03:39 +0100 https://michaelpercival.dev/thoughts/penrose-tilings-part-1/ I recently read an article that Roger Penrose won a nobel prize for his theoretical work on Black Holes, which I’m sure is well deserved. Another creation of Roger Penrose, ‘Penrose tilings’ are also very interesting, being his solution for tiling an infinite plane aperiodically with only two tiles. Penrose tilings have an Escheresque quality to them (Escher and Penrose famously were both inspired by one-another during their respective careers) which I find fascinating. https://michaelpercival.dev/wallpapers/ Sat, 06 Aug 2022 12:38:37 +0100 https://michaelpercival.dev/wallpapers/ Here is my current desktop wallpaper gallery. My personal guidelines for choosing wallpapers are: Nothing remotely pornographic Pictures of flowers/ nature are a solid go-to If I have two similar pictures with similar palettes I’ll cut one (eventually), though green tends to be an exception Video game/ anime papers should be subtle Nothing overly ‘moody’ or depressing Text should not be the focus, no quotes Avoid non-stylised people/ characters if they are the focus (except cute animals) I tend to get my wallpapers from /wg/.