Author: Jos Visser. Co-authors: Codex and ChatGPT 5.4.

I am an engineer, writer, and keeper of a very old corner of the web.

I have kept some version of this site online for decades. This page is my cleaner front door to the things I still think are worth keeping: software projects, essays, study notes, travel writing, and the archive itself.

What this is

This is a curated homepage for an existing archive. I have left the older pages intact; this landing page simply makes the good parts easier to find.

What you can expect

You can expect UNIX-era pragmatism, side projects that kept going, essays with opinions, and documents that survived multiple generations of tooling.

Start here

If you only open a few things, I suggest starting with OpenComal, Wednesday Wisdom, and the public library.

Selected work

Projects and technical pages

Software

OpenComal

My portable implementation of the Comal programming language, with documentation, articles, screenshots, and a browser playground.

Open the playground

Networking

proxytunnel

Software I wrote for tunnelling SSH sessions through HTTPS proxies, plus the original notes and release material.

Read the article

Security

sslsmurf

A proxy I built for inspecting HTTPS traffic in clear text by terminating SSL locally, documented in detail on its original project page.

View project page

Systems

HP-UX random

My Linux-compatible /dev/random device module for HP-UX 11.00, complete with article, downloads, and caveats.

Read the article

Infrastructure

Cluster cron

My adaptation of Vixie cron for HA failover clusters, with package-specific cron state that follows the service.

Read the README

Applications

Interactive tools I wrote for the browser

Single-page app

Chordcraft Console

A browser-based piano and chord exploration tool I wrote as a single-page web application, with an interactive keyboard and harmony controls.

Open the application

Fake utility

RamDoubler

A deliberately funny fake application that pretends to double your memory, presented as a retro browser-based system utility.

Open the application

Writing

Current writing

Featured publication

Wednesday Wisdom

This is where I publish ongoing essays and observations on Substack. If you want my most current writing, start here.

Read Wednesday Wisdom

Library

The longer archive of essays, papers, and notes

The public library is where I keep the longer-lived material: technical essays, Dutch-language columns, Dr. Unix pieces, scanned documents, and dynamically rendered Markdown versions of text articles.

Photos

Image galleries and visual experiments

Gallery

A2

The Boston skyline, shown through both source photographs and a small set of visual treatments such as mosaic, stripes, tiles, and pixelation.

Open the gallery

Experiment

A3

A photo experiment in which I tried to turn our office into a huge camera, documented as a gallery of setup shots, results, and supporting images.

Open the gallery

Portrait

Merel

A stylized picture of my daughter, preserved as a text-mode visual experiment rather than a conventional photo page.

Open the portrait

Resume

Professional background and current profile

I keep my current resume as a maintained Google document rather than a static page on the site. If you want the concise professional version of this corner of the web, start there.

Contact

Direct links, no forms, no friction