Elixir-loving software engineer based in Tokyo, Japan. Experienced in embedded systems and web development, focusing on creating meaningful solutions from scratch. Zola 2026-04-28T00:00:00+00:00 https://kenokabe.com/blog/atom.xml 2026-04-28T00:00:00+00:00 2026-04-28T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://kenokabe.com/blog/20260428-kickstarter-budget-notebook/ <p>How much will I owe Kickstarter this month? For a long time, I had no idea.</p> <p>I back a lot of campaigns on Kickstarter. Enough that the platform calls me a <a rel="external" href="https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/kenokabe">superbacker</a>, which is what they call you when your backing count crosses some threshold (though I’m not exactly sure what that threshold is). Sometimes a dozen or so of my pledges are still active, in a handful of foreign currencies, due on irregular dates spread across the next few months.</p> <p>What I always wanted was a single number. Across all those active pledges, in JPY (my home currency), after my bank's foreign-transaction fee — what am I going to owe over the next few months? Useful for budgeting. Useful for deciding whether to back a thing.</p> <p>But the number doesn't exist anywhere. Kickstarter doesn't aggregate. (Probably good for Kickstarter creators; clearly inconvenient for backers.) Notion templates assume one currency. Budget SaaS assume monthly recurring charges. Nothing I tried knew what to do with one-off pledges that hit the card months later in mixed currencies plus an FTF.</p> <p>So I built a <a rel="external" href="https://livebook.dev/">Livebook</a> notebook that does the math. (Livebook is a free desktop app for interactive Elixir notebooks — you don't need to know Elixir to use one.)</p> <h2 id="how-it-works">How it works</h2> <p>Everything runs entirely locally — no login, no financial data uploaded anywhere. A small bookmarklet (included) reads the Kickstarter backings page into JSON. We paste the JSON into the notebook, pick a home currency, and it shows us:</p> <ul> <li>A live, reactive table grouped by deadline month</li> <li>Per-pledge currency conversion into whatever home currency we chose</li> <li>A foreign-transaction-fee adjustment, tweakable in real time (3% by default)</li> <li>Per-month totals and a grand total across everything active</li> <li>Checkboxes to toggle individual pledges on and off, so we can play out different combinations while we're deciding what to back next</li> </ul> <p><a rel="external" href="https://codeberg.org/kenokabe/livebooks/src/branch/main/kickstarter_budget.livemd"><strong>The notebook lives here on Codeberg →</strong></a></p> <h2 id="why-a-livebook-not-an-app">Why a Livebook, not an app?</h2> <p>I picked a notebook over the alternatives because each alternative demanded something. A web app wants a server, users, eventually a privacy policy. A CLI wants someone to know it exists. Even a desktop app wants packaging and updates. A notebook just sits there as a <code>.livemd</code> file. You open it, you run it, you fork it if you want to tweak the defaults. There's nothing for me to maintain on anyone else's behalf.</p> <p>And it keeps me honest about scope. An app would slowly grow features. A notebook is what it is: this is what it does, this is the code that does it, that's all. No v2.</p> <p>Most Livebook content I run across is data analysis or ML demos, which makes sense — it's what Livebook was built for. But it works just as well as a way to ship small personal tools. The notebook <em>is</em> the documentation; someone who wants to use the thing reads how it works in the same place they run it. I think more people should try this shape for the everyday stuff the big apps don't bother with.</p> <h2 id="try-it">Try it</h2> <p>If you also back Kickstarter campaigns, give it a spin. I'm on <a rel="external" href="https://mastodon.social/@kenokabe">Mastodon</a> — happy to chat or hear about edge cases the notebook doesn't yet handle. There's also an <a href="/blog/atom.xml">RSS feed</a> if you'd like to know when more posts go up.</p> 2026-04-20T00:00:00+00:00 2026-04-20T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://kenokabe.com/blog/20260420-hello-world/ <p>It felt right to start this the way every program does.</p> <p>I've been away from programming for a while — long enough to forget half my Vim commands and most of what I once knew about Phoenix. Putting both back is the quiet work of these recent weeks, and I figured I might as well write it down as I go.</p> <p>So this is a notebook, not a magazine. Expect short posts — some tiny, some a little longer — about Elixir, embedded things from earlier in my career, the occasional machine-learning detour, and the small tools that make a developer's day smoother. Nothing here is meant as a definitive guide; think of it as working out loud.</p> <p>If you'd like to follow along, the <a href="/blog/atom.xml">RSS feed</a> is the most reliable way, and you can also find me on <a rel="external" href="https://mastodon.social/@kenokabe">Mastodon</a>. Corrections are welcome — I learn fastest when someone tells me I'm wrong.</p> <p>More soon.</p>