My personal blog about life, gaming, tech, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
I don't regret attending a coding boot camp in 2021, it seemed like the best decision at the time. Customer service and retail had devastated my mental health, I needed a change, and all the numbers seemed to add up on paper. But, in 2026, with LLMs basically killing entry level software engineering jobs, I would say a coding boot camp is a horrible choice, and I genuinely feel horrible for anyone…
I was a Nintendo-only gamer up until 2010 when I bought my first non-Nintendo console, the PlayStation 3. Since then, I basically always had both a PlayStation and Nintendo device in my home, and I was pretty happy with that arrangement. But, with the rising costs of hardware, that future doesn't seem so attractive anymore. Sony's seeming determination to wreck the PlayStation brand over the last…
It's been a few months since I launched my first iPhone app – a local-first music player called Groove – and it's been an interesting journey. I thought it would be fun to reflect on some of the challenges and successes I've faced building the app, and my journey to continually improve it. In this post, which I plan to be the first in a series, I wanted to talk a bit about gapless playback, the…
If you go to my profile on Mastodon , you'll see one of my hashtags: #ActuallyOCD, but I don't think that's something I've ever really elaborated on. I also feel like it's generally pretty misunderstood by a lot of people. I myself had a pretty surface-level and, perhaps, stereotypical view of OCD, to the point where I didn't really consider it a possibility for myself, and it made me scared to…
For several months now, I've been running an old M1 Mac Mini (weird to think of that as old) as a music server. It's mainly served as source for me to bring music into Groove , the iOS music app I've been building, but I've wanted to do more with it – namely, use it as a source of music for my stereo. So, a little over a month ago, I moved the Mac Mini into my living room and connected it to my…
As part of OpenAI’s latest effort to push their agentic coding tool, Codex, I was able to snag a free month of access to the latest models. So, I thought it would be an interesting opportunity to experiment, actually do a deep dive on coding agents, and gain a better understanding of their capabilities and limitations. Firstly, I want to address the fact that I’ve been very vocal in my disdain for…
For the last 2 years, I’ve kept a gaming journal in an actual, physical notebook to record my thoughts and feelings on the games I’ve finished. Journaling is something I’ve struggled to keep up with but have wanted to do for many years. I’ve gone through some fits and starts with it, but I’ve never been able to keep up with it consistently. So, it’s been nice to have something in that realm that I…
Almost 2 years ago, I made the switch from Nova to Zed for writing code. I’d been mostly happy with it during that time, but it never felt like a truly polished piece of software, despite being a pretty smooth experience in terms of its text-editing capabilities. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been giving Nova another try. I’ve been able to get the LSPs for TypeScript, Svelte, and Astro working for…
After freeing my music library , I knew the one thing I would miss from Apple Music was the discovery aspect. It was very easy to just open the music app and browse suggestions for new music to check out, or releases from artists I enjoy that maybe I haven’t heard yet. I’ve been using Doppler on my Mac and iPhone to manage and listen to my library, and while poking around the settings I discovered…
I've been a loyal Apple Music subscriber pretty much since it launched 10 years ago, and I've really got used to having almost any song I could imagine wanting right in my pocket. I liked the promise of carrying my existing music library into the world of music streaming, and having everything sync seamlessly between devices. I was very frustrated with how buggy and unreliable syncing music to iOS…
We're already a couple days into 2026, but due to family obligations, as well as getting far too absorbed into Ghost of Yōtei – mostly the latter, if I'm honest – I'm only getting around to doing this post now. 2025 was a stressful year. On a personal level, I lost my job and have been scrambling to find one for over 6 months now. More importantly though, it's just felt like the world has been…
2025 has been a tough year Due to losing my job back in June, I haven’t spent nearly as much money on gaming as I have in past years. As such, I spent most of 2025 replaying old favorites, or finally finishing games that have been sitting in my backlog for ages. So, my top 3 list this year is going to be very skewed towards early 2025, as the only post-June release I’ve even got to play was Hades…
An updated version of this post from 2024, inspired by this post from Chris Coyier (which was in turn inpsired by this post ). I changed up some of the categories to avoid any entries with "none" or "N/A". ✉️ Mail Client: Mail.app 📮 Mail Server: Fastmail 📓 Notes: Bear , Tot ✅ To Do: Reminders 🎨 Photo Editing: Affinity 📆 Calendar: Calendar.app ☁️ Cloud Storage: iCloud 📰 RSS: Reeder 📇…
While I enjoy developing Mac apps, I find Xcode to be exceptionally clunky, especially when compared to the tools I use for web development. I thought it would be nice to be able to write and compile a fully-functional Mac application using any text editor, and without having to open Xcode. So, I decided to try migrating my app, AutoDock , to this Xcode-free build process, and actually release it…
The other day, I read a report from Eurogamer about fans of the online shooter game Fortnite getting up-in-arms about alleged AI images in the game. Specifically an image of a character with nine toes - 5 on one foot, 4 on the other. After reading the article, and looking at the image, I was convinced the criticism was valid. Earlier today however, I read an article on IGN that raised some doubts…
While I enjoy developing Mac apps, I find Xcode to be exceptionally clunky, especially when compared to the tools I use for web development. I thought it would be nice to be able to write and compile a fully-functional Mac application using any text editor, and without having to open Xcode. So, I decided to try migrating my app, AutoDock , to this Xcode-free build process, and actually release it…
The big news in the tech and gaming worlds this past week is Valve announcing their new Steam Machine . While I don't have any immediate desire for it, I am fascinated by it as a gamer and tech enthusiast, and I'm very curious to see where it goes. There is a non-zero chance I pick one up at some point in teh future, depending on how things shake out – with both the Steam Machine as a product, and…
Recently, I found myself wishing for a device with all the modern conveniences of a smartphone, but without all the baggage that comes along with those conveniences. A device to keep in touch with people, keep organized with notes and reminders, listen to music and podcasts, and access a handful of useful online services. Turns out, I already have one! Over the last several weeks, I've been slowly…
For the last 8 or 9 months, I've been experimenting on and off with Linux. Specifically Fedora (via Asahi Linux) for those who are curious. I installed it on an M1 MacBook Air, which I keep around as an emergency backup, and I've been mostly pleased with how well it's been running. Most of the time I've spent with this Linux environment has just been tinkering, installing apps, and getting things…
I’m a bit of a tech nerd, so it’s no surprise that I love my gadgets. While it is fun to talk about my computer setup, or how I use my smartphone, it’s not something I particularly enjoy writing about, unless I feel like I have something interesting to share, or I’m doing my yearly “Default Apps” update. But, inspired in part by my intentional analog time , I thought it might be fun to take a look…
It seems like the common convention for naming component files in React and other JavaScript frameworks is to use PascalCase rather than kebab-case . This was the way I was taught, and this is the way it's been in every shared project I've contributed to. I sort of just took for granted that it was just done that way. Recently though, while tinkering with my own little side-projects, I've started…
I've recently been experimenting with what I'm calling "Intentional Analog Time", where I take some time every day to do something without a screen, or any type of digital interruptions. Since getting laid off back in June, it feels like I've been spending more time in the digital realm, with my only reprieve being socializing, or doing stuff like cooking and cleaning. Without the structure of a…
Creating forms in a React app is something that used to often frustrate me. It was something I would dread doing, because if you wanted to something more complicated than a basic login form, it would quickly become a mess trying to manage state – because, of course, why would we use anything except controlled inputs? There are libraries like Formik and TanStack Form which proclaim to take a lot of…
It's been a while since I originally built this website, which started life as a little project to learn the, at the time, brand new web framework Astro. My skills in web development have improved greatly in that time, as has the functionality of the Astro framework. Therefore, I thought it would be a fun project to make some improvements to the site, both visually and in how the codebase is…
Sometimes it feels like I got into tech at the exact wrong time. The state of the industry in 2021 seemed like exact break I needed after years working in customer service. But the combination of post-lockdown market corrections and the explosion of LLMs kind of put a damper on all that, and so I felt like I had to just make do with the job I had. For those who don't follow me on Mastodon or…
I’ve been using the Zen Browser for a little over a month now. I was introduced to it via a co-worker during a screen share, and I pretty much instantly fell in love. It’s got its share of issues, but it’s served as an excellent replacement for Arc, which is now (for abundantly stupid reasons) a dead product. Between Arc and Zen, I was using Vivaldi. I found the UI extremely clunky and frankly…
My latest board gaming obsession is quite an unlikely one for me. I’m not particularly fond of the viking aesthetic in general, and, while I don’t dislike engine-builder games, they’re not generally the type of game I’d go out of my way to play. But a little game called Knarr struck a chord with me. Someone in my gaming group introduced me, and I enjoyed it so much I ended up picking up my own…
Recently, the backlight on my TV crapped out. If I'm honest, it's a miracle a budget TV from the early 2010's lasted this long. Though I'd thought about replacing it over the last few years, my stubborn refusal to purchase a smart TV kept me from taking the leap. That stubbornness, along with the fact that spending a few hundred dollars on consumer electronics seems a tad irresponsible at the…
One of the things I've been working on recently in therapy is having a healthier outlook on personal progress. For a lot of my life, for as long as I've thought consciously about my progress as a human being, I've looked at progress as a line graph—the bottom is zero, and the top is whatever the end goal is. Forward progress towards the goal is represented by the plot on the graph heading upwards,…
It’s crazy that the Nintendo Switch has been around for 8 years now. While I didn’t get the Switch until about a year after it released, I think it just might be the console that I’ve played regularly for the longest amount of time (just barely edging out the Nintendo 3DS), and as such will always have a special place in my heart. Even with the Switch 2 on the horizon, I’m not sure I’m ready to…
Ever since I started using Mastodon, I've become a lot more interested in reducing the presence of algorithmic content in my digital life. I've never been particularly thrilled with algorithmic feeds of content. I was among the people who was quite furious when Instagram ditched the chronological timeline, and then started inserting content from accounts I didn't even follow. Somewhere along the…
For my very first Blog Question Challenge, I've been tagged by Kyle to answer questions about music. This is going to be a bit of a challenge, but here we go... What Are 5 Of Your Favorite Albums? There are so many albums I'd consider favorites, narrowing them down to just 5 seems like an impossible task. Here's the 5 I've whittled my list down to, with the disclaimer that I don't necessarily like…
I'm a MacBook Air user who often uses a larger external display, and I have a, perhaps, idiosyncratic desire to have the dock always visible on the larger display at my desk, but prefer it hidden when using the smaller, built-in one. While it's not all that inconvenient to manually swap the dock with a quick opt + cmd + D , I thought it would be cool to automate the process based on display size.…
An updated version of this post from 2023, inspired by this post from Chris Coyier (which was in turn inpsired by this post ). I changed up some of the categories to avoid any entries with "none" or "N/A". ✉️ Mail Client: Mail.app 📮 Mail Server: Proton 📓 Notes: Bear , Tot ✅ To Do: Reminders 📷 Photo Shooting: iPhone 14 🎨 Photo Editing: Affinity Photo 📆 Calendar: Fantastical , synced with…
Back in December 2022, I wrote about my top 3 games of that year in what I hoped would be a yearly tradition. For 2023, Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur’s Gate 3 blew me away that I couldn’t fathom selecting a third game that stood up to them. This year however, I’m returning to the originally envisioned format for my top 3 games of 2024. One of my regrets from the 2022 post was that I didn’t go…
Recently, I’ve been pondering generative AI and its effects. Not on jobs, the economy, or even the damage it’s done to our ability to trust information we see online (whether it’s something generated by a malicious actor looking to mislead, or a simple “hallucination” causing an innocent mistake). No, I’ve been pondering its effects on human creativity, and our capacity to learn and grow as…
My big purchase from the iPhone event a couple weeks ago was the AirPods 4 With Active Noise Cancellation[^1]. I've only had them a few days at this point, and writing product reviews isn't my strong suite, so I've collected up some notes on my experience with the new AirPods' audio modes: Noise Cancellation I've never owned a set of headphones with noise cancellation so I don't really have…
This week, the Triple Click podcast posted to their main feed a bonus episode from a couple years ago about the hosts' top 5 formative games. It got me thinking about some of my most formative video game experiences, and what shaped me into the gamer I am today. Like the postcast, I've picked 5 games I consider to be important to me personally. They're in no particular order, and they're not all…
It's been a while, longer than usual, since I've posted something here. I often have a hard time finishing stuff if I don't have some kind of external pressure (like, say, my job depends on it), and it seems like it's been worse over the last several months. If you were to take a look into my WIP folder for this blog, you'll see about a dozen or so posts in various states of unfinished. The next…
Recently, my HomePod Mini broke. It will no longer even power on at all. I think I may have damaged the NON-REMOVABLE cable, perhaps while moving furniture (I'm not entirely sure when it broke, but I'll get into that), and my options are send it in to Apple for repair or buy a new one. I have zero motivation to do either. I've owned my fair share of Apple products over the years, and while most of…
For the past several days I've been using the Zed editor at work, and on my personal web projects. It started out as just curiosity, but I wasn't immediately sold. I even went so far as to toot that I'd be going back to Nova as my daily driver. But then something weird happened. The next day, I signed into my day job, opened up Nova, and then worked for maybe an hour before Zed started calling to…
I have a confession to make; I am terrible at video games! Yes, I've played them regularly for almost 30 years but I still manage to really suck at them. Some genres I'm ok with, such as platformers and turn-based RPGs, but I feel like I just don't have the coordination to pull off shooters and other action games. I'm not sure if I've just got worse at video games with age, I'm 34 now, or if my…
The command line is something I've tinkered with for years. Ever since I discovered Terminal.app in the Utilities folder on my PowerBook G4 back in the day, I've been curious about the kinds of things I could do with it. For most of that time, I've really only used it to change hidden settings, and run tools like 'diskutil', but since entering the world of software development the terminal has…
One of the first steps I took on my post-boot camp webdev journey was to learn TypeScript. It wasn't something that was covered–though I wish it had been, I'll get into why in a second–but it was something we were encouraged to study on our own. I immediately got frustrated, and determined that there was no point. Why would I need to go through the trouble of assigning types to my variables when…
2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the Macintosh. You've probably heard this a million times already this year, I'm pretty late to the party for writing a Macintosh retrospective, but I wanted to write this post anyway because of how important the Mac is to me. I might not be where I am today, especially not career-wise, if it weren't for the Macintosh. That may seem like hyperbole, but it's…
Backing up your data is probably the most important thing you can do with it. This is something I learned the hard way, a little over 10 years ago now, when I lost almost everything on a failed hard drive. Photos, school projects, personal projects, a bunch of terrible stories I wrote (to be fair, that last one wasn't a huge loss). It was then I decided to get serious about backing up, and…
Inspired by this post from Chris Coyier (which was in turn inpsired by this post ). I changed up some of the categories to avoid any entries with "none" or "N/A". ✉️ Mail Client: Mail.app 📮 Mail Server: Hover 📓 Notes: Bear , Tot ✅ To Do: Reminders 📷 Photo Shooting: iPhone 14 🎨 Photo Editing: Affinity Photo 📆 Calendar: Calendar , Dato , synced with Google Calendar ☁️ Cloud Storage: iCloud 📰…
With the upcoming iOS 17.2 update, we’ll finally get our hands on the new Journal app Apple announced at WWDC earlier this year. I decided to be brave and install the public beta so I could take a look and get some first impressions. As someone with mental health struggles, I appreciate the recent efforts Apple has put into making these kinds of features available, so I was really excited to take…
2023 has been insane for games. We've seen such an influx of quality titles that it's been hard to even keep track, or even dedicate the time to the ones I have been able to keep track of. One of the two games that has really captured my attention – the other being Tears of the Kingdom – is Baldur's Gate 3. I’ve typically have had a difficult time getting invested in deep, Western-made RPGs, with…
A few weeks ago I relaunched my work-in-progress iOS app, QuestLogger, as an open-source Mac app . That’s quite a shift, but I felt it was best for the project itself, and my interest in carrying it on. Without getting too into the technical details, it required a bit of work to pull off. The app was originally written specifically for the iPhone, and used a bit of custom nonsense that would’t…