Hi there --

Over the course of my career both as a professional engineer and as a hobbyist, hacker and tinkerer, I've been fortunate enough to mostly get to work on things that both interest me, and contribute a little bit to the world in some way, shape, or form. I've worked on liberating handheld computers (non-cellular, as part of handhelds.org; and cellular, as part of unrEVOked); on chat clients (naim); on USB drivers (HoRNDIS and pyusbip); on smartwatches (as part of Rebble); on laptop embedded controllers (the x2100); on 3D printers (X1Plus and X1Plus Expander); and probably more things that I can't remember to put in here. And, while I do, I try to write and teach about them if I can; I've given talks on cellular radios, PCB design, NAND flash, and Fourier transforms in the last handful of years.

I used to be pretty averse to the idea of taking sponsorship: I always felt weird about people paying me to do things if I wasn't sure I was going to keep doing them, and I also felt weird about taking money from people to convince me to do them. Recently, some X1Plus users all banded together and told me that if I happened to build a feature for my own purposes, that they'd be happy to kick me a few bucks if I productized it, and could I please set up a sponsorship profile?

If nothing else, 25 years of therapy has taught me that when people want to express gratitude and appreciation for me and my work, damn it, Joshua, I ought better accept it and let people show me that. So here it is: a GitHub Sponsors page.

Here's how I plan to treat this:

• If you give me a one-time chunk of change, I will read that as you saying "Joshua, I appreciate something you have done in the past and it has made my life better! Thanks for this.", and I will smile and appreciate your thinking of me.
• If you give me a recurring chunk of change, I will probably not change what I plan to do in the future as a result. I will continue to follow my whimsy, and the results of that might be that I may or may not ever make something interesting again. So, accordingly, I will read your recurring chunk of change as you saying "Joshua, I don't expect anything in particular in return, but you seem to have done enough fun things that I appreciate, so I suspect that if I tell you I appreciate it, that you might stumble on something fun for someone else in the future too", and I will smile and appreciate your trust in me.

So totally don't feel like you have to sponsor me, even if I have done something in the past that you liked. The money is definitely just going to go to my "weird shit" (or "beer for while thinking about weird shit") fund, and not anything useful! But if you feel compelled to express either of the above forms of appreciation toward me by clicking a button on this page -- well, at long last, I've learned how to be grateful for that kind of thing, and you bet I will be grateful for your sponsorship, too.

All the best,
joshua