AI on Charlie Howlett

Automating Backing Tracks

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When rehearsing, alone or with others, I sometimes like to play along to backing tracks with a few of the original instrument parts removed. My hybrid drumming rig works well for this, but preparing the backing tracks can be a pain. Typically, I’d download an MP3 of the song, manually upload it to a stem-separation service, then re-export it in the TM-2’s expected format: stereo 44.1 kHz PCM WAV. This works, but preparing a couple of songs for a rehearsal can take quite a bit of time.

Mobile Dev Setup

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve always felt quite restless once I start working on a project. If I’m sitting in a park, on a train, or away from my desk with an idea in my head, I often want to make a quick change or keep a thread of work moving. But without my laptop I’ve always had to settle for doing something else. Still, I have always been curious about what options were available so years ago I looked into Termux, an app that provides a terminal on your phone. I wanted to try coding on the go, but writing productive code from such a small screen and keyboard felt impractical. However, when AI agents came along the idea started to seem much more realistic so I decide to try again.

Hugo Teletext

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year, I decided to revamp my personal site’s style and introduce a blog. I chose the static site generator Hugo because it keeps post content, written in raw Markdown, cleanly separated from site styling. Which should help reduce maintenance time and make cross-posting easier.

I originally planned to use a third-party Hugo theme, but after stumbling across the Teletext font at galax.xyz, I was inspired to design my own reusable teletext-inspired theme.

Go-playing Bot

Fri, 17 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The Go bot interface, including the board and move history

Monte Carlo Go Bot

One of the earliest substantial software projects I built was a Go-playing bot for my Extended Project Qualification in sixth form. I had initially planned to build a chess bot, but once I realised how well simple brute-force algorithms could perform in chess, I decided to take on a more challenging problem. I turned my attention to Go because, at the time, it was one of the few classical board games in which human players still regularly beat machines.