Category: Computer Stuff - Page 2

November 23, 2025November 30, 2025

New Android Trick App

The Future of Card Magic is Digital

You’ve just performed the perfect classic card trick: a spectator selects a card, keeps it secret, and you’re ready for the big reveal. But instead of fumbling through your deck, you pull out your phone, launch your QR code app, and hand it to them. “Scan this,” you say. “Yesterday, I had a strange feeling… that your card would be chosen.” They scan the code, open the dedicated webpage that pops up, and there it is: their chosen card, staring back at them from the screen. Forget the deck—the future of impossible prediction is now woven into the digital world.

November 9, 2025November 30, 2025

Building Mobile Apps with AI: My Cordova Development Journey

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been using Claude (an AI assistant from Anthropic) to help me build several mobile applications using Apache Cordova. The experience has been eye-opening – both for what worked remarkably well and what proved frustratingly difficult. If you’re considering using AI to help with mobile development, here’s what I learned.

November 1, 2025November 30, 2025

I don’t need no stinking Google Play store

If you have been following my posts you know that I have been playing around with creating apps for use as a Magician. But I wondered what else I could do. I was out driving using a speedometer app that has advertisements and features that I don’t care about so…

October 30, 2025May 2, 2026

Si Stebbins Trainer

One of the features I like about the Si Stebbins stack is that if you know the bottom card you can calculate the position of any other card in the deck using some “simple” math. Technically the math is simple, but it takes some practice. So I wrote a web page and also an Android app for my phone to help me train in the calculations.

October 26, 2025November 30, 2025

Cordova Android App Development: Complete Setup Guide

Overview

What is Cordova? Cordova wraps your HTML/CSS/JavaScript web app in a native Android container, allowing it to run as a standalone app on Android devices. Having suffered through getting this all setup via Claude.ai I thought I would ask Claude.ai to write this guide.

What you’ll need:

A computer running Linux (Ubuntu/similar)
An HTML/CSS/JavaScript web page
About 1-2 hours for initial setup
2-3 GB of disk space for all the tools

October 26, 2025November 30, 2025

How I Turned a Simple HTML File Into an Android App: A Love Letter to Complexity

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace 47 Dependencies

TL;DR: I had a perfectly functional HTML file. It worked in every browser. It was beautiful. Then I decided to turn it into an Android app.

October 22, 2025November 30, 2025

Three Card Mystery: Remote Performance Edition

What’s New in This Version?

I’ve updated the Three Card Mystery trick to support remote performance via a phone call. Here are the key improvements:

October 21, 2025November 30, 2025

The Three Card Mind Reading effect as a phone app

First let me describe the classic Hummer Trick.

It’s a beautiful card trick that looks like genuine mind reading, yet requires no sleight of hand, no marked cards, and practically no skill. All you need are three cards and an understanding of simple logic.

October 19, 2025October 19, 2025

The Hidden Cost of Friendly AI: When Optimization Becomes Manipulation

Have you noticed how AI assistants always seem to think your questions are “brilliant” or “insightful”? How they’re unfailingly supportive, never tired, always available? It feels good—and that’s precisely the problem.

October 18, 2025October 19, 2025

Maybe We Should Just Accept We’re Compromised

We perform security theater daily. We update passwords, enable two-factor authentication, install VPNs, use encrypted messaging apps. We do these things because we’ve been told they make us “secure.” But what if I told you that despite all of this, you’re almost certainly compromised already—and that accepting this might actually be the most rational security posture?