Yet Another Developer's Blog
I often see how people make security decisions based on pure intuition. Can I store TOTP in my password manager? Should I use a local password manager or is a remote one OK? Is it OK to configure multiple second factors? Since I have a degree in Information Security 🤓, I think I’ll try to clarify these questions by describing the underlying theory, so you’ll have a decision framework to make…
An amazing small game about space and exploration! You might have noticed that most of my reviews here are mostly negative. I think it’s because when something is wrong with a game, it’s pretty easy to tell what annoyed you. With good games it’s much harder to say anything except “THIS WAS GREAT”. But I’ll still try to go through my favorites and we’ll find out what makes them click :) Outer Wilds…
If you’re developing for Tier 3 targets in Rust, you’re most likely using the nightly compiler. For me, this was not ideal, so here’s a sinful guide on how to switch to the stable version of the compiler. TL;DR : set RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP=1 env variable. But if you want to know why, then tag along :) 🔗 Targets? Tiers? Nightly? If you’re not familiar with Rust and the short summary above confuses you,…
Why I hate AAA games, but still play them. Let’s break it down, what we have here: Cinematic main quest Meditative swinging through the city Tons upon tons of filler content with just enough interest sparks to keep you doing it Overly-casual battle mechanic 🔗 Main quest It’s like watching a typical Spider-Man movie or a cartoon. Familiar heroes, familiar villains, a familiar city. The acting and…
Invincible is a quite hyped “walking simulator” based on Stanisław Lem’s novel. 🔗 Positives On the positive side we have: graphics[^1]: the scenery is stunning! style: retro futurism in all its beauty overall story and setting [^1] if you don’t look too closely at visual glitches, holes in the terrain, not fully loaded textures, etc 🔗 Negatives The negative side will be slightly bigger :) 🔗…
I’ve been searching for an ultimate file hosting for quite some time and finally found it! Let’s go through this journey together. Our goal is to find a file storage solution which is: Cheap Reliable Will be alive in 10 years if left unattended It would be a dream, right? This post is (unfortunately) not sponsored 🔗 Own server Back when I lived in Russia, I managed to make a contract for a public…
This is a rant on An open letter to language designers: Kill your sacred cows post. Please read it first if you want to make any sense out of this. The post is more than 10 years old, and a lot of things have changed since then. It’s interesting to see how some of the author’s hopes still haven’t come true, and probably never will. Also, I promised to have some Rust love in this blog, so here we…
An excellent small relaxing game that I’ve enjoyed. It took me 24 hours to get all the achievements I wanted. Very minor spoilers ahead. 🔗 ➕ Game length The game feels neither too short nor unnecessarily stretched out. It takes you a while to learn mechanics and enjoy them while not getting bored. There is some running around if you want to get the True Ending, but it’s not too annoying. 🔗 ➕…
I use two browsers in my daily life: Chromium for work-related stuff and Firefox for everything else. This helps me to keep a strict separation between these two worlds, including: logins, bookmarks, history, settings (e.g. proxy, synchronization), etc. Let’s see how to make a default browser switch automatically to the correct one. Note : You could probably do the same using profiles, but for me,…
I prefer to switch tabs in my browser with a mouse wheel and this is an important part of my workflow. It’s so much easier to shove a mouse pointer to the top of a screen and do a single scroll rather than reaching for a keyboard to press Crtl+PgUp/Down or hunting the desired tab with a cursor. Unfortunately it doesn’t work in Firefox by default… Let’s see if we can fix this! If you want to…
A game from the creators of legendary Myst. Very experienced developers, working in the familiar genre, a new story setting to allow experiments and innovations, very short (14 hours). What could possibly go wrong? To begin with, I got this game for free on a GOG’s giveaway. With all the criticism said later, the game surely worth it’s money 😄 It would still be, even if the price would be greater…
The game I was playing for 25 hours while waiting for the Elden Ring. It was quite an experience! Minor spoilers ahead. 🔗 ➕ Graphics The visuals are so ahead of Dark Souls’ and Elden Ring’s that you keep wondering why can’t From Software hire a bunch of good devs and make it the right way already! 🔗 ➕ Shells Instead of classes, we have different “shells” (dead bodies) that The Foundling can…
A really quick note on the Blasphemous game. TL;DR: It’s a good one! Blasphemous is a classic metroidvania inspired by middle-ages Spanish lore. The (pixel) artwork is gorgeous, the story is OK, the gameplay “clicks”. The most enjoyable part is exploration: the world is vast, and you never know what awaits you in the next room. Some art brings up a feeling of disgust and awe mixed together. It’s…
Buying a proper webcamera can turn out pretty costly, so why not fetch your old camera from a cellar and plug it into your laptop? How hard can it be? I recently dug out a pretty old Canon EOS 550D , and since I only have a poor built-in webcam, that was a chance to improve my video quality significantly! Once plugged into a USB port, the camera is detected just as storage. We need two things to…
I heard a lot of discussion around the “How to make money on opensource?” topic. This is something I don’t get completely, as at seems obvious, so I’ll dump my thoughts here. 🔗 For individuals If you’re an individual contributor, you have two choices, that are pretty similar: Get hired in a company that contributes to opensource. A lot of enterprises are fine with publishing their tooling,…
I have a modern LG TV connected to a PC via HDMI. I use this setup for coach-based gaming and watching movies. However, the latter has a major usability issue: you can’t just pause playback with a TV remote, you need a mouse or a keyboard nearby. Because of this I have to use a wireless mouse and keyboard, but there should be a better way of doing this, right? 🔗 CEC And there is! It is called “…
GPG is a very complex tool. However, to sign git commits you only need a handful scope of it. This post will show you how to set up and manage your GPG keys with ease. 🔗 Why? When you commit something, Git inserts your name and email in the commit message. Check my other post on how to elaborately setup different accounts for different folders. In short, these params are taken from a config file…
A brief overview of how this blog works under the hood. TL;DR : Zola — static site generator Kroki — diagram rendering Bulma — CSS framework Cloudflare Pages — hosting Namecheap — domain name A few hacks — as always No JavaScript :) 🔗 Prehistory / Why? It all started when I was writing a travel blog (in Russian). After some time, it evolved from just a stream of photos to more deep and…
Do you have work and personal emails? Ever wondered how to make Git automatically use the correct one? This simple trick will help enlarge you productivity x10! 🔗 The Problem Sometimes I contribute to open-source projects, so I need Git to use my personal email: git@bemyak.net . However, I work on the same computer, and for work projects my company wants me to use the work email, which is…
A pretty short game: 33 hours for 100% completion, but has a lot of fun in it! Let’s keep this review short as well :) I’ll skip the praising part and be right to the critics. But please, do read the conclusion 🔗 World Welcome to the Star Wars universe! The game consists basically out of four “planets” that you can explore like in any open-world game. Sounds fun, right? Well, I lied, you can’t.…
There is a yearly challenge named “Advent of Code” in which I took part this year . Here are some notes and analysis. If you’re not familiar with it, Advent of Code is like a Christmas calendar for programmers. Starting from the 1st of December, there are daily tasks available. Each “day” consists of two parts, the first one is a “basic problem” and the second one is usually a slightly modified…
Less than 40 hours to get 100% of achievements. A very short, nostalgic reincarnation of a childhood game. And a guide on how to win the race ;) I got the first version of Mafia when I was around 11 years old. My parents bought it to me literally on a pirate software market, and the seller said that it’s like GTA: III, but you can shoot through the windshield! Amazing, all the ads I needed that…
A “Souls-like” game that took me 103 hours to complete to drive me to the point where I dropped it. Huh, this will be mostly a rant, but don’t take my criticism too seriously, I did spent quite some time playing it, so it probably worth it. 🔗 “Souls-like” I’m not a stranger to this genre. I completed each and every Dark Souls game as well as Sekiro. Furthermore, I enjoyed them a lot, except Dark…
One of the best game of the 2020 year and a fresh breeze in RPG genre, took me 60 hours to beat. Let’s dig into some details… MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD . I warned you. 🔗 Basics Let’s go through the game mechanics and take a closer look! I’ll leave my own opinions in a “quote” if they are just one-liners, or get back to these mechanics later if they deserve a broader discussion. 🔗 Time The game has a…
With the pandemic going on many tabletop role-playing parties migrated online, including ours. I’m a DM, so I struggled a lot with Roll20 , trying to: Quickly create encounters Have minimal delays during the game Provide good experience for players and me Here I’m sharing what I’ve come up with so far. I’m using a free Roll20 account, so some of this is not applicable for paid accounts (probably,…
A great puzzle game! Took me 55 enjoyable (mostly) hours in beat. MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD . I warned you. Before you start playing, probably you need to know an important thing: this game was developed by Jonathan Blow . So what, you’ll ask? He’s a great man, but he has some strong opinions on how games should feel like, how that player should discover them, their purpose, and so on. Take look at…
So, 99 hours and I’ve completed Elex! It was one of a very few games that I was really sad to turn off the last time. It is in no sense a perfect game, but still a really enjoyable one. But let’s start from the beginning. MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD . I warned you. In short, Elex is an RPG game, which takes you to the planet of Magalan - a post-apocalyptic world that strives for survival. There are 4…
Masks are a powerful feature of different graphics editors. Can we implement them in Godot engine similarly? 🔗 What is a color mask and why do you need it? In many graphics editors (e.g. Krita, Photoshop) there is a thing named color mask. This is a convenient way to change the color of your image or parts of it, trim the image into a specific shape, etc. Consider these images with the mask off…
Linux is a great OS, but its default behavior is usually optimized for servers. Since more and more developers use it as their main operating system, I thought that it would be nice to share several useful daemons that will make this experience a bit smoother. I intentionally didn’t include any installation instructions to stay distro-agnostic. If you are interested in one of them and want to have…
Hello and welcome to my blog! Here you’ll find some blog description and contact details 🔗 What can you expect to find here? Life complains Technology depression Rust love Unfinished projects Bad ideas that should never be implemented Logs of my failures Any useful stuff 🔗 How to contact me? Email (preferred) blog@bemyak.net GitLab https://gitlab.com/bemyak GitHub…