Karl Bartel's Website

I'm a Software developer in Berlin, Germany. I like free software, open data and keeping things simple.

Contact me via email[1] or find me on GitHub[2], Mastodon[3], Twitter[4], LinkedIn[5]. Subscribe to the Atom feed[6] to get all new posts on this site.

1: mailto:karl@karl.berlin

2: https://github.com/karlb

3: https://fosstodon.org/@karlb

4: https://twitter.com/karlb

5: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/karl-bartel/a/a3a/6b7

6: atom.xml

Blog Posts

2024-08-29 - Easily Entering Umlauts With a US Keyboard Layout

2023-09-17 - Consistent Handling of Git Repositories With Different Default Branches

2022-07-30 - Simple Testing with `git diff`

2022-06-14 - `make` as a Static Site Generator

2022-04-03 - When Is Complexity OK?

2021-05-01 - Formatting Numbers of Unknown Order of Magnitude

2021-01-31 - Adding Gemini Support With Just a Few Lines of Code

2021-01-06 - Tcl as a Shell Scripting Replacement

2020-08-30 - My Simple Custom Blog Software

2020-05-06 - Hacking on "smu", a Minimal Markdown Parser

2020-04-28 - Suckless Software on My Desktop

2020-04-19 - Exercises in Simplicity

Projects

Active Projects

• WikDict.com[1]: Free bilingual dictionaries based on Wiktionary.org
• blog.sh[2]: The minimalistic blog engine running this site
• smu[3]: Sane, minimal markdown-like markup (fork)
• dotfiles[4]: Basic configuration I use across computers
• sqlean python package[5]: Install SQLite extensions from PyPI

1: http://www.wikdict.com

2: https://github.com/karlb/karl.berlin

3: https://github.com/karlb/smu

4: https://github.com/karlb/dotfiles

5: https://github.com/karlb/sqlite-sqlean

Old Projects

• Land Rush[6]: Multi-player auction game
• Nuclear Chess[7]: Chess variant with AI, playable in the browser
• Do Again List[8]: A self sorting list of things you want to do somewhat regularly
• Lots of games[9], some cross-platform games and some games for the obsolete Sharp Zaurus and Agenda VR3 mobile devices.
• SFont[10], a very simple font library supporting fancy bitmap fonts (with colors and alpha channel) and basic kerning. Has been successfully used in dozens of projects by other people.

6: http://landrush.karl.berlin/

7: http://karlb.github.io/nuclearchess/

8: https://github.com/karlb/doagain

9: http://www.linux-games.com/

10: http://www.linux-games.com/sfont

Experiments

• Litespread[11]: Adding a basic spreadsheet UI to SQLite, also nice for handling CSVs
• iprefer.to[12]: Rating site that uses comparisons instead of star ratings
• TrackMyOwe.com[13]: Track and settle owes online
• TransDict[14], a translation dictionary based on Wiktionary

11: http://www.litespread.com

12: https://www.iprefer.to

13: https://github.com/karlb/zerosum

14: http://jsfiddle.net/karlb/PxfrJ/

Reachable via Gemini Protocol

• gmi.karl.berlin[15]: This site
• gmi.WikDict.com[16]: Free bilingual dictionaries based on Wiktionary.org

15: gemini://gmi.karl.berlin

16: gemini://gmi.wikdict.com