See also: Ordered Tomato · Solder Station Arrives
The hardest parts of this journey have always been the non-technical ones. The name of the project, for example: that's when I begin spinning. Tomato is nothing special btw. I just couldn't keep calling it 32b cpu, 40b cpu, and other horribly generic names. I don't like (or dislike) tomatoes, nor do I have any special connection to it.
The website interface is the same unbounded problem. Should I give it a custom feel like a product page of renowned top companies, or a generic React package with flying colors (no pun intended) like I only had 100 tokens for my starving agent?
| The fork | What it looks like | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Product page | Stripe / Apple polish, 2026 | Tomato is not a product. It is a machine you can probe. |
| React | Flying colors, hungry-agent special | No connection to the chips, or the decade they come from. |
| Broadsheet | 90s newsprint + 3D KiCad | This one. Tomato's actual time, with a door back to now. |
Luckily, I've gotten extremely better at such unbounded graphs. So for the website interface, I asked what this really is. Tomato is a 32b computer made with chips in a PCB form, dissimilar from modern tool chains, but rather that of the 70s, 80s, 90s!
So, let's take a step back, to the earlier times, the 90s, when Tomato truly lives. Over there, whatever social media you're reading this article on now doesn't exist, but newspapers did!
Let's put Tomato in a newspaper feel to remind of its truest time, but let's add 3D renders and models to connect us back to our own modernity. The front is a broadsheet: nameplate, deck, classifieds for the eight lots. The copper of render of the ALU which took sweat and time and sleep to build casually sits in the plate like a photograph.
Ashtown Valley, the Bay Perimeter
For the finer details, it is a setting in Ghana, but Silicon Valley is obviously out (can't afford to go to court again and have law students study my case for exams; iykyk). Let's call it something else: Ashtown Valley, on the Bay Perimeter. Silicon has the valley and the area. We got the valley, and the perimeter.
A look on the bottom left corner of the board will reveal two logos and a map. Penn Engineering because I am a Quaker! The Achimota School logo: so frequently, I get dms of "how inspiring my journey is to students." Admittedly, my non-chalance and imposter syndrome always disagrees, but if seeing that logo connects them from their public schools to bigger dreams like an engineering degree at an ivy league, it's my pleasure.
Ghana flag. We were so close to winning the world cup last year, but jokes aside, it's a reminder of my love for my 69 year old house!
So not to break the lucidity, I want GitHub to also be rendered first-hand in the vintage feel — the tree, set in the same type, so you never have to leave the paper to see the forge. And if you want to leave, you can always return to modernity!
I love the freedom to create. Maybe unbounded problems aren't the bad guys like how the DRC/ERC boys frame it lol