Digital media is nerfed
It could be so much more powerful, if everyone were willing to put less effort into it.
gbl08ma.com on gbl08ma's personal website
Recent content in gbl08ma.com on gbl08ma's personal website
Latest posts
Steam Slot Machine
How to introduce consumers to gambling before they even get to launch Counter-Strike on the thing.
Hello site migration, my old friend
Paying homage to a tradition, this time, with a more radical change.
On illegal software
Where I open my mouth, but not to verify I’m an adult. A rant about the intersection of software, regulation and identity.
UpCloud's viral marketing travels in time
Where I find that I’ve been a long-time nonpaying customer of Bluesky’s favorite, allegedly-affordable, cloud provider, while you get to be fed relevant portions of my life story.
GTA VI will be a disappointing masterpiece
Nothing can ever please everybody, and the highest-budget entertainment product so far won’t be an exception. How can an excellent game disappoint?
On paid public beta testing
Increasingly stale thoughts on software product quality, prompted by the redemption arc of the most awaited and most disappointing game release of 2020.
I remade the GTA VI trailer in Watch Dogs
Director’s commentary on high-effort shitposting that paid off.
Musings about Watch Dogs
A retrospective review of one of the only Ubisoft-developed games I truly enjoyed, despite its numerous flaws.
The Appeal To Celebrity Fallacy
Separating the art, the artist, the opinion, and your contributions. By the way, I have a community on Discord now.
TIME for a WTF MySQL moment
Documenting the reasons why I tend to prefer Postgres - even when it’s my friends getting bitten.
Music albums I like
I, too, have the right to roleplay as a music reviewer.
twenty twenty
time travel terrifyingly trialed: twenty days take twenty months, twenty ticks teared twenty years
The limitations of hiding limitations: a striped case study
Artificial Intelligence is biased, and we’re biased into thinking it is less limited than it is.
Developing for Android is like being a (demonetized) YouTuber
Many are aware that some YouTubers are unhappy with how YouTube operates. But are you aware that Android app developers go through similar struggles with Google Play? Let me try and explain everything that’s wrong with Android in a single 20 minutes read.
I really like Discord. It’s a monster, it scares me
…and it’s also the next Steam. [2026 editor’s note: it clearly wasn’t, but it isn’t any less of a monster today]
Internet forums in 2018: are they really dying?
Analysis of the current state, and speculation about the future, of a few forums I’m familiar with.
Thoughts about internet forums in 2018: a series of posts
An attempt at starting a series that, as per usual for this publication, will likely go nowhere. [2026 editor’s note: it basically didn’t]
A brief mention to my popular project, UnderLX
It doesn’t count as self-promotion if it’s on your personal website, right?
Sparkling Gambol One™
We’re adding another dimension to shitposting.
Advice on Casio Prizm development
Please, let me close this chapter. Pretty pleeeease!
The current state of Clouttery, and what I’ve been up to
Thoughts and prayers for a personal project I lost interest in, yet somehow is still online and mostly functional.
Redesigning the Clouttery database
Where I rediscovered the wonders of relational databases.
The stack powering tny.im: goodbye redundancy! The end of an era
Did you know distributed systems are harder to design and run than centralized ones?
500 days later: Windows 10, revisited
Where I continue to pretend Microsoft ever cared about user experience and consistent design. [2026 editor’s note: the real fix was already in the footnotes, just switch to Linux and use KDE]
WoSign is shit, and so is StartCom
Transport Layer Expletive
HTTPS on this blog
Safe reads.
My programming experience
The most long-winded and least structured CV you’ve ever seen.
Windows 10 is pretty good
Diminishing the value of my earlier opinion piece by going for a “both-sides” approach.
Windows 10 is unfinished
Paying customers better get used to crowdsourced beta testing.
Utilities v1.5 progress – March update
A Zneak-peek into upcoming Casio Prizm software.
A use for NT on ARM, after all
A underutilized architecture target makes for a great marketing stunt.
PicoC comes to the Prizm and other upcoming Utilities features
With great power comes great… potential for bricking.
How Android’s “won’t fix” problem is the result of poor standardization
That phone is so last year! Buy a new one, will you? It’ll be the same as your old one, and yet annoyingly unique.
Distributed systems and mersit, a Tiny Server Redundancy Manager
Do you know what we need to tame an unreliable distributed system? Another flaky, peer-to-peer distributed system.
Recovering from prolonged outage
It turns out that there is a minimum cost to acceptable reliability and durability.
90/90/0.001
Thoughts about an extreme case of the Pareto principle.
Server status updates
OK, I give up on freeloading. I’m sure everything will be fine now. [2026 editor’s note: not everything was fine. I’d only find true reliability years later, with DigitalOcean and, later, Hetzner…]
Utilities v1.3 is out
The latest updateZ to my Casio Prizm software.
Regarding dead Prizms
Apparently these are made of fragile glazz.
Utilities version 1.2 is out; Casio retweets
Did I get a social media/PR guy fired?
Data caps and app updates
Stating what’s obvious to every technologically literate person.
The situation of the Casio Prizm
Did you know that the best product doesn’t always win its market?
OpenDNS on Linux Mint
Discovering disappointing defaults well after committing to using a distro is a rite of passage for Linux users, isn’t it?
Nokia OS history, fragmentation and other stuff
A retrospective of Nokia’s many OS development endeavours.
Hardware-software compatibility on handhelds
If only there was a unified and extensible interface that could help with this…
Crowdfunding
If I tried to crowdfund the renewal of my domain names or server hosting, I wonder how well that would work…
YOURLS really is awesome
High praise for extensible open source software… and my own extensions, I suppose.
Utilities Beta 9 is out!
Featuring the most complex upgrade procedure ever seen on graphical calculator software.
Prizm
Casio sure is glad these weren’t the Znowden Leaks. Or Leakz.