Software
OpenComal
My portable implementation of the Comal programming language, with documentation, articles, screenshots, and a browser playground.
Open the playgroundAuthor: Jos Visser. Co-authors: Codex and ChatGPT 5.4.
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.
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.
You can expect UNIX-era pragmatism, side projects that kept going, essays with opinions, and documents that survived multiple generations of tooling.
If you only open a few things, I suggest starting with OpenComal, Wednesday Wisdom, and the public library.
Selected work
Software
My portable implementation of the Comal programming language, with documentation, articles, screenshots, and a browser playground.
Open the playgroundNetworking
Software I wrote for tunnelling SSH sessions through HTTPS proxies, plus the original notes and release material.
Read the articleSecurity
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 pageSystems
My Linux-compatible /dev/random device module for HP-UX 11.00, complete with article, downloads, and caveats.
Utilities
A rebuilt unzip binary I made for HP-UX so it could handle extraction jobs producing files larger than 2 GB.
Download the archiveInfrastructure
My adaptation of Vixie cron for HA failover clusters, with package-specific cron state that follows the service.
Read the READMEAuthentication
My LDAP-enabled extension of WU-FTPD for authenticating users against directory services instead of local password files.
Read the READMEApplications
Single-page app
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 applicationFake utility
A deliberately funny fake application that pretends to double your memory, presented as a retro browser-based system utility.
Open the applicationWriting
Featured publication
This is where I publish ongoing essays and observations on Substack. If you want my most current writing, start here.
Library
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
Gallery
The Boston skyline, shown through both source photographs and a small set of visual treatments such as mosaic, stripes, tiles, and pixelation.
Open the galleryExperiment
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 galleryPortrait
A stylized picture of my daughter, preserved as a text-mode visual experiment rather than a conventional photo page.
Open the portraitResume
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