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Spring

· 6 min

Spring feb to may: building my own operating system what happened my own operating system boots and takes commands trading app grew from 58 to 100 assets legal case app became a real Mac and iPhone app projects cut from thirty to ten projects left 10 next finish school plans keep building stay steady 2026-05-29 work commits by project talli 86 dotfiles 30 notate 21 nulljosh.github.io 21 blockframe 12 commits per day, 99 days commits 170 projects touched 5 2026-02-20 to 2026-05-29

February

I started building my own computer operating system from scratch. It now has a clock, a keyboard, text on the screen and a tiny command prompt, and it starts up inside a virtual computer. My stock-trading app grew from 58 things you can trade to 100, and it can now send orders to real brokers. I built Dose, a tracker for medicines and supplements, in one sitting. One 18-hour day went to a bug that had blocked logins for a week; a single missing setting was the cause.

The old dream came back, the one I have had since I was five. I am always chasing a faceless person down a hallway, and when I catch them they turn around and it is me. Then they chase me. I have no explanation after twenty years, so I just write it down. Building something big is the best way I know to stop thinking about myself.

April

I spent April building tools for the apps I already had. Epiphany, my markets and world map app, got live flights and wildfires and a chat panel. Spark and Tally now run on Mac and watch too. Arthur, a small AI I built from scratch, got small enough to run inside a web page. I also cut my projects from thirty-odd down to ten.

I made Quest, a to-do app where the characters in my Times Square city game do my real chores for points. My dad’s garage door shop got a proper dashboard with jobs, low-stock alerts and a PIN login. I also kept growing Life, the notes document I keep for Amanda.

May

May was mostly Brief, my legal case tool. It went from a rough web page to a real Mac and iPhone app in a week, and it now handles three cases. Tally got a new look and a way to translate its text. Charters, Echo (phone speech-to-text), Beep (a transit helper) and Grapher (a calculator) all went out. Midmonth I merged four projects into one, gave every web app the same cream and red look, and moved Epiphany off a data service that was shutting down.

Away from the screen

I have gone to the gym three or four times a week since December and I am still in therapy. Pre-Calc test prep is always in the background. A two-hour call with Alex turned into our worst argument ever, about whether hitting kids builds character. I also decided on school: computer science, not paralegal.