Mr. Gris
mrgris.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2012
Mr. Gris publishes personal projects such as map tools, a Minesweeper solver bot and a navigation app, plus travel writing and essays.
What HN saysHN commenters link his map projects Oilslick and Mercator Extreme, his Minesweeper bot, his Birdseye carputer project and his Labrador road trip report.
15HN people shared it
8linked it in comments
11stories submitted
507story points
1 year agolast shared
2012people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Mercator: Extreme6 people · 240 points · first shared 2014 · 46 comments on HN
- 2Oilslick – an elevation map showing fine detail in terrain4 people · 255 points · first shared 2014 · 91 comments on HN
- 3Survivorship in the Digital Age: ensuring access to your data after you die4 people · 6 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 4Minesweepr2 people · first shared 2017
- 5Player2 people · first shared 2012
- 6Fucking Tides, How Do They Work?1 people · 5 points · first shared 2013 · 3 comments on HN
- 7A Plea for Password Usability1 people · 1 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 8Colorbars slow.gif1 people · first shared 2022
- 9Labrador1 people · first shared 2023
- 102016 12 06 538 problems but a swing state aint one1 people · first shared 2018
- 11Landfall1 people · first shared 2025
- 12Ntsc cc.mp41 people · first shared 2022
- 13Summits1 people · first shared 2022
- 14Labrador 21 people · first shared 2022
- 15Thanks.mp41 people · first shared 2022
What HN people wrote when they linked it
iggldiggl · 2023-09-21
Reminds me of that trip report of a road trip through Canada I stumbled across a while ago (start here if you have some time to spare for some reading: https://mrgris.com/travel/blog/labrador/), which also included a visit to Estcourt (https://mrgris.com/travel/blog/labrador/3/), which has one of those slightly unusual border situations with most of the village in Canada and only a couple of houses in the US (and then nothing but miles and miles of forest until the rest of Maine – so the border post only serves the logging traffic and those few houses).
The US border guards at that occasion where highly suspicious and questioned them for three quarters of an hour, whereas the Canadian official was indeed quite lovely and commented about his US colleagues that "ah yes, they have a… different frame of mind."
mrgriscom · 2022-07-29
A walk down memory lane for sure... I loved my Eee PC 901 and still have it. I used it to build a 'carputer' / navigation system before I had a smartphone. http://mrgris.com/projects/birdseye/
I remember becoming disillusioned that the netbook branding pivoted to "cheap" rather than "compact". The 9" series was quickly abandoned, with much more expensive 10" models becoming standard. An "almost laptop"-sized laptop for "almost laptop" prices wasn't really compelling. The 901 was adorably small and only cost $400 iirc.
OscarCunningham · 2025-09-04
The bot at https://mrgris.com/projects/minesweepr/ does these calculations, and has a winrate of 37.8% on expert. I don't know what a more naive bot would achieve.
HPsquared · 2025-01-22
It looks especially cool if you switch the overlay to "Google Satellite". You can see the different scale levels a bit better.
https://mrgris.com/projects/merc-extreme/#[email protected],-4.25017
EDIT: you can also click the "folded map icon" button and you see the coordinates transformed back into normal ones and shown on a map with X and Y corresponding to radius and azimuth from the centre. Extremely cool!
evah · 2023-08-17
It's very distinctive on an elevation map.
https://mrgris.com/projects/oilslick/
I remember thinking there's no way that's not a crater.
teraflop · 2021-02-24
Here you go: https://mrgris.com/projects/merc-extreme/#a473b325@
cookingrobot · 2018-05-01
I like this idea, and they're not in the paper. (The paper shows a globe rotated so the paths are straight, but not a flat mercator projected map).
It should be possible to make one with this tool: http://mrgris.com/projects/merc-extreme/
Hussell · 2017-03-05
There's a minesweeper solver which works out all the probabilities of uncertain squares. http://mrgris.com/projects/minesweepr/demo/player/
The creator wrote an explanation here: http://mrgris.com/projects/minesweepr/