Recent content on Andrew Zah
I started learning emacs the other day, and I
happened to stumble upon this
 reference card ,
designed by Stephen Gildea: 
 
	 
		 
			 
			 
		 
	 
 
 
 It’s beautiful (and GPLv3)! 
 So naturally I wanted to make my own. My initial concern was that if I updated
my Neovim config,…
A Short Story 
 It’s a balmy evening in 2026, in between spring and summer. I want to watch the
film There Will Be Blood (2007) with my wife, so I sit down in my apartment in
Seoul, South Korea, and open the apple tv app on my
 lg stanByMe 1 . 
 I’d already
 looked it up online 
and confirmed that it had Korean subtitles. I did find it odd that the…
I’ve been playing around with Godot 4.4/4.5 for a
while now, but using the integrated editor is quite frustrating compared to a
real code editor or IDE. There are some vim plugins out there, but I wanted a
more lightweight solution. So I looked into configuring Neovim and it ended up
being simpler than I expected. 
 Nvim 
 I build my nvim using nix with
 nvf . I…

	 
		 
			 
			 
		 
	 
 
 
 I was exploring around in Yodobashi Camera, as one does, and the Realforce
keyboards section caught my eye. This one in particular stood out, with its
unusual (to me) layout. 
 Initial Thoughts 
 I’m a big fan of topre switches . If you’re not
familiar…

	 
		 
			 
			 
		 
	 
 
 
 I’ve used the
 Logitech MX Vertical 
ergonomic mouse for a few years now. I still enjoy it, but I’ve been
experiencing a bit of discomfort after long periods of use, so I’ve been looking
at other options. I really can’t use standard mice because…

	 
		 
			 
			 
		 
	 
 
 
 Initial Impressions 
 The Dareu EK87 looks and feels great so far. It had RGB lighting on by default,
but that was easy to disable. I’m currently using it in wired mode, but it does
support connecting over wifi and bluetooth. It comes with PBT…
Recently I started learning how to make games, and I decided to follow
MonoGame’s
 phenomenal guide to making 2D games ,
on linux, as my daily driver is a thinkpad running NixOS. 
 After I set up .NET 8/9 and neovim / Visual Studio Code, it was smooth sailing
until
 Chapter 24: Shaders .
Currently, building shaders with the
 MGCB (MonoGame Content Builder)…
If you’re in Japan and are a fan of street fighter, I highly commend checking
out an arcade and setting up a Nesica card. On top of being a nice memento, it
comes with some quality of life features. 
 
 Note 
 
 If you use a controller, don’t worry! Modern Street Fighter 6 cabinets have
USB-A ports, letting you use your own… that is, if you brought…
I find my laptop’s keyboard to be adequate, but I rarely enjoy using it for
longer periods. While I was in Tokyo, I figured I’d check out a keyboard store
for fun, and I saw this keyboard amongst a whole bunch of DIY kits. 
 Initial Thoughts 
 I’ve owned the original HHKB (2?) in the past, so I’m familiar with its topre
keyswitches and alternate key…
I’ve slowly been migrating my ansible-based homelab provisioning setup to NixOS. 
 I was worried at first since I wasn’t sure how well it’d support docker and
docker-compose, but it’s been almost* flawless so far. 
 The magic lies in
 virtualisation.oci-containers.containers . 
 Setup 
 The first thing we need to do is enable an oci backend, either…
Listed roughly in order of importance. Let me know if I missed any important
ones! 
 If you live in Korea (and have a Korean bank account and phone plan), then see
my companion post,
 Useful Apps for Residents of South Korea . 
 Essential 
 Papago | 파파고 
 The picture to translation feature might be the most critical one here! To me
the English <-> Korean…
These are apps that I’ve found useful for learning Korean while living in Korea,
in no particular order. Many of these will apply to various languages, not just Korean.
Please let me know if I missed any good ones! 
 Also, note that there is no “one best app”. Learning a language requires
using multiple different resources. 
 Essential 
 Youtube | 유튜브…
This post is the first in an experimental series of tracking the progress I make
in my journey to Korean learning. 
 My goal is reaching a high degree of fluency: being able to speak at length on
many topics, in a sophisticated manner. I have no need to take the TOPIK exam so
none of my learning has concerned that. 
 I don’t really know what my “level” is, but I’m…
Once you have a Korean visa, getting a Resident Card is fairly straightforward. 
 The Resident Card (RC) was previously known as the Alien Registration Card
(ARC). Amusingly the Korean text hasn’t changed, it still says 외국인, meaning
“foreigner”. 
 Why: The Benefits 
 The reason I applied for the F-1-D visa in the first place was the ability to
get a resident…
I generally travel with earbuds in order to cut down on luggage size, but on
some days I find it quite hard to get work done and shut out the distractions. 
 I was looking around on Coupang (a
Korean shopping app), and found these
 Philips TAH5708 headphones . 
 These stats got me interested: 
 
 60 hours of usage, or 45 with noise reduction enabled. 
 charging via…
In December of 2023, the South Korean government a new F-1-D visa, called the
 Digital Nomad / Workcation 
visa (hereafter referred to as the Workcation visa). 
 I’ve lived in Korea before and I love Seoul, so I jumped at the chance to get a
more long-term visa. This is my perspective of the application process as a
non-Korean U.S. citizen. Please consult your consulate’s…
I recently acquired a
 Garmin Fenix 6X ,
currently Garmin’s flagship model. While I did research beforehand, I forgot that my phone
was in Korean, and thus the notifications would be in Korean… Silly me. 
 
	 
		 
			 
			 
		 
	 
 
 
 The 6 series is not cheap, starting at $600, with the 6X…
In January of this year, I set out for semi-permanent traveling with only two*
backpacks: A Goruck GR1 26L, and a Goruck GR2 40L. Prior to setting out I had
done a -lot- of research, and made a
 detailed spreadsheet 
(down to the gram) of what I’d be taking. It’s not too bad I think, although the
gorucks are more weighty than I’d like. 
 * Including a daily bag. See EDC…

 The single biggest change that Anki brings about is that it means memory is no
longer a haphazard event, to be left to chance. Rather, it guarantees I will
remember something, with minimal effort. That is, Anki makes memory a choice. 
 Michael A. Nielsen, Augmenting Long-term Memory 

 I love Anki , the spaced repetition flash cards app.
I’ve been using it in my…
There are some common mistakes people make when getting into flash cards and
spaced repetition for the first time. Considering that Anki is generally used
for years, correcting bad habits ends up paying large dividends. 
 For those unaware, Anki is a free and open source
app that implements
 Active Recall 
with Spaced Repetition . If
you’re new to Anki, the very first…
Here is a compiled list of Korean words related to food, cooking, eating out,
going out, and nutrition, all on one page. 
 If you spot a mistake or wish to add to this, please
 email Andrew or
submit a PR. 
 General 
 Positions / People Terms 
 
	 
			 
					 Word 
					 Meaning 
			…

 Note 
 
 This article’s Caddy v1 code has been updated to Caddy v2. 
 
 Something I’ve been doing recently is starting to self-host as much as I can. I
don’t like relying on businesses, since they can change their services on a
whim. I host an IRC network bouncer , a
 rss feed reader , and so on. But why not
a git frontend? 
 It also doesn’t make…