Personal Thoughts Featured

What Happens Now? (or: Kindness is an Energy)

Yesterday was hard on a lot of folks. I don't care which side of the political spectrum you're on; be extra kind to each other today. Be extra kind to yourself. Spoil yourself...

Gaming

(un)Happy Mar10 Day

By now, we've all heard the news. Yuzu is dead. Nintendo SLAPPed them around the courtroom and got exactly what they wanted. Their vicious teams of rabid attack lawyers did what vicious attack lawyers do.

Art & Design

Medicine Wheel Heart Emoji

I'm on a ton of Discord servers, a fair number of which I share with Indigenous people from many parts of the world...And yet, I've not seen a heart emoji which employs the Medicine Wheel, so I thought I'd throw one together in Illustrator.

Technology

Must-Have macOS Power User Tools

Someone's always gonna have an alternative to the tools you build, and sometimes, they're just gonna be flat-out better than the originals.

Personal Thoughts Featured

Time For a Change

I know it's gauche to announce your departure from social media platforms, but in the wake of Elon driving Twitter towards obsolescence, and with Meta attempting to cash in on the opportunity to monopolize the space via the introduction of Threads, I've decided now is the

Technology Featured

Some Quick Advice For Safe Online Shopping

Some friends of mine recently asked me for some advice after they realized they may have made some unsafe purchases. I figured I would post a few tips for those of us who can feel intimidated or anxious whenever we hear about the latest data breach.

Personal Thoughts Featured

Tomorrow's Not Promised

I recently got some bad news regarding a former colleague of mine. I'd recently reconnected with them, and with many mutual colleagues after many years spent apart. We don't always mean to lose touch with folks, sometimes it just happens.

Personal Thoughts

Kevin Smith on Mental Health

I'm not someone who really has "personal heroes", it's not a concept I'm very comfortable with. And I don't typically write about celebrities. However, I do have folks I identify with, and Kevin Smith is among that number. In fact, for a lot of reasons, he kind of tops the list for me.

Personal Thoughts Featured

Don't Read This (alternate title: "A Low-Effort AI Shitpost")

ChatGPT this, ChatGPT that, yadda yadda. I'm gonna be trendy and have ChatGPT write a blog post for me. Why? Because I'm feeling snarky, I wanna be culturally relevant, and maybe help my SEO. Whatever. There are a million dumb reasons, but mainly this is just a stupid shitpost.

Personal Thoughts Featured

The REAL Reason We (or at least I) Prefer To Work From Home

My brother was on Twitter earlier today talking about remote work, and employers' hilariously blinkered attempts to get folks working in offices again. Now, I have a lot to say on this, so I figured it best to divide this whole thing up into logical parts.

Japanese Nostalgia (or, How Ranma 1/2 is the Only Thing Keeping Me Sane Right Now)

A big part of what’s been helping me get through the “Corona-Crazies” lately is nostalgia. As a retro video game collector, nostalgia is something which is ever-present in my life. Some people would see this as a negative thing, that we shouldn’t dwell on the past. But in

Technology Featured

The Advice We're All Neglecting To Give After a Data Breach

I've seen fellow cybersecurity and tech industry folks giving the usual good advice: Change your passwords, check Have I Been Pwned, use a password manager, and enable MFA. But here's the thing about that last bit: What if you had MFA enabled BEFORE the breach?

Technology Featured

I'm Officially Hashicorp Certified. Here's How I Passed the HCTA Exam.

I decided now was as good a time as any to study up, and get myself certified as a Hashicorp Terraform Associate. What follows then, is an account of my experience studying for and taking the HCTA exam.

So I Bought a Steam Deck...

Yep. It happened. I reserved one the day it was announced, and on Monday, I finally had it in my hands. It's been a few days now, so I figured now is as good a time as any to post my initial impressions. (As a general note here:

Music

Why The World Still Needs Physical Media: A Counterintuitive Rant on The State of Music Streaming Services

I love music. I love a LOT of different styles, genres, etc. of music. Once in a while, an album or song I like suddenly disappears from services like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, YouTube Music, et al. and it never fails to drive me crazy...

Personal Thoughts Featured

Canada is not Great (But It COULD BE)

It's July 1st. Canada Day. On any other year (pandemic aside), we'd be out with fireworks and beer, reaffirming that Canada is Great, and proclaiming our love for our home and native land. Except...except that statement really isn't true is it?

Art & Design Featured

Reproducing Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures" Album Cover in Adobe Illustrator

I'm designing a new tattoo for myself based on the cover art from one of my all-time favourite albums: Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures". I couldn't find a decent vector of the artwork, so I decided to recreate it in Illustrator.

Personal Thoughts

Retro Replay Canada/Live: Why I Stopped Streaming and What Happens Next

For me, YouTube and Twitch started off as kind of a lark. I didn't think it would go anywhere, but when it did, I took it way too seriously, to the detriment of my own mental health. Don't do what I did. Don't burn out. Pace yourself. Plan to spend the money necessary to make this stuff a reality.

Technology

Stratiform: Provisioning DigitalOcean Droplets using Ansible

I tend to use DigitalOcean for a lot of my personal tech projects. And though their console is super-handy, there are certain post-provisioning steps I typically perform on new Droplets.

Gaming

What I'm Playing: DAYS GONE (PS4)

If you have ever found yourself asking what might happen if The Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy had a baby, Days Gone is exactly that.

Technology

My Ideal Linux/Unix Console Setup

I figured I'd do a quick listicle of all my favourite command-line utilities, for no other reason than to simply document it and share with people who might be looking for a way to spruce up their console.

Technology

Joplin: My New Favourite Note-Taking App

I've gone through a few notetaking apps in my time, And as per my Ten Tech Commandments, I like things that have Markdown support. So recently I set about finding a note taking app that fit my needs. Eventually, I settled on Joplin. An open source app by a developer named Laurent Cozic.

Technology Featured

Ten Technology Commandments

I feel like there are certain unalienable rules I follow with regards to technology, both as a developer and engineer, and as a consumer and user. So I decided I might as well compile a list of "commandments" based on some of my pet peeves.