Chris Spackman: site news

Solar Expats v1.28.0: AI rivals with a temperament

Sun, 01 Nov 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Solar Expats v1.28.0: AI rivals now roll their own temperament each game, so they play to type but open differently, and they fight harder in a duel. The Factions Guide has the details.

Solar Expats v1.27.0: a science victory

Sun, 01 Nov 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Solar Expats v1.27.0 adds a third way to win: study worlds for science data, then launch a Lens telescope to the Sun's gravitational focus, if your rivals don't stop it first.

New in Educator Resources: the Unit Circle Explorer.

Sat, 31 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000

New in Educator Resources: the Unit Circle Explorer. Drag a point around the circle to see the special angles and their exact values, reference angles, how the sine and cosine waves are drawn, and what a radian is, then try the practice questions. In English or Spanish, like the Geometry Explorer.

New releases of the fluxDockApps

Fri, 30 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000

New releases of the fluxDockApps: Visit the index page, or get them all in one suite tarball.

New: Read-Along Stories

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000

New in Educator Resources: Read-Along Stories, story pages with a recording where each word lights up as it is read, karaoke style. First up, Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death.

A review of the whole Cryptography section before go-live.

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000

A review of the whole Cryptography section before go-live. The Zimmermann Telegram page now decodes the real telegram group by group and shows how the code was broken; the CODEX Decryptor gets a real Vigenère stripper, a crib attack that solves names as a system, and a worked example; the Vigenère and transposition breakers, the Kasiski demo and a dozen history details are corrected.

fimgdupes 0.2.0, dvd2mkv 0.4.0 and polaroid-montage.py

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000

On the software page: fimgdupes 0.2.0 (two-stage matching, checksums, exact and query modes), dvd2mkv 0.4.0 (chapter-split mode) and a new polaroid-montage.py.

NeoFlux, fimgdupes, dvdmap and dvd2mkv on the software page

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000

The software page gains NeoFlux, a Fluxbox-style window manager, plus fimgdupes, dvdmap and dvd2mkv, and two scripts. The fluxDockApps are at their October releases: a new fluxVolume and new versions of every other app.

The NeoCities site has moved here

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Everything from my NeoCities site now lives here, because school districts block the NeoCities domain. The teacher tools are under Classroom & Reading Tools in Educator Resources, and there are new Cryptography, Technology, and Games sections. The NeoCities pages stay up for a while, then redirect here.