June 2024 Work Log (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Here's everything I worked on during the month of June, exclusively for patrons.

Nexus Tools

This month I released an update for Nexus Tools, my cross-platform installer and manager for ADB, Fastboot, and other Android SDK Platform Tools. The big change is that Nexus Tools now runs natively on ARM Mac, instead of the x86 version being emulated. There's not really a benefit to running natively, since Nexus Tools isn't a resource-demanding application by any stretch of the imagination, but now it doesn't need the Rosetta compatibility layer installed if the user didn't do that already.

This update also fixes some bugs on Windows. It now uses the Windows Registry to check if the Universal ADB driver package is installed, instead of the wmic utility that has been deprecated for years. ARM Windows detection is now working properly, which is being used to skip the drivers installation on ARM Windows laptops (because they are incompatible). That detection was surprisingly difficult to get working, because Windows provides fake CPU information for emulated apps, but checking the BuildArch value in the registry did the trick.

Nexus Tools still isn't running natively on ARM Windows, because GitHub won't let me compile that in the cloud just yet, but it works fine in the x86 emulation layer on ARM Windows. Google doesn't even offer the Platform Tools for ARM Windows anyway, so those are running in emulation as well.

ImageShare

I also released an update for ImageShare, my image uploader web app for the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Wii U, and other devices with legacy and low-end web browsers. ImageShare v24.06 primarily just includes a patch developed by spaghefoo that improves 3DS game title detection, especially for games in non-NA regions.

Link Cleaner

Link Cleaner got a new feature this past month: automatic copy to clipboard! After you enable it in settings, and if you have a compatible web browser, cleaned links will be automatically copied to your clipboard (saving you a click). This is still not fully working, because different browsers treat clipboard access differently, but when it works it's pretty great.

I also fixed a minor bug that caused Google Play Store links to break when being cleaned, because Link Cleaner was stripping out the required "id" URL parameter.

Tech Tales

The Tech Tales podcast is now officially three years old! I wrote a blog post about the show's third year, including some of the behind-the-scenes production workflow changes (some of which I've already talked about here) and some general stats.

Other work

This month I finished an overhaul of my personal site, built using the Eleventy static site generator and GitHub Actions. I wrote a blog post explaining how it's built, and it's open-source, so anyone can build a similar site.

I also merged a pull request for the ai.robots.txt project, which compiles a list of web scapers for AI projects for sites to opt out (at least in theory). I'm using that list now for The Spacebar, and I submitted some additional documentation and more visible RSS subscribe links.