# xl (blogs) — RSS Amplifier Recent posts from the 8 feeds in the RSS Amplifier directory that cover xl. Page: Feed: --- ## [Airport counter chat](https://gabz.blog/posts/airport-counter-chat) _2026-08-14 · GABZ/ML_ This week I had a field to visit somewhere in the Salinas, CA area. For work, of course. This time, them Brassicas. So, the best way, I think, to go... ## [Dummy](https://www.3hive.com/2026/08/13/dummy-2/) _2026-08-13 · todd · 3hive_ L.A.’s Dummy just announced their new album “do you love the color of the sky?”, their third album and first with Polyvinyl, and shared their lead single “Full Spectrum Dominance,” a heavy, danceable track taking direct aim at AI with “…you wanna reap the seeds we sow gonna be no lawn left to mow…” “do … Continue reading "Dummy" ## [Breakroom Chat Corner](https://gabz.blog/posts/breakroom-chat-corner) _2026-07-30 · GABZ/ML_ For the majority of the summer, I have been working from home. Either because I have the girls staying at home and not going to grandmacamp, or because I know... ## [A game I have been playing: Ghost of Yōtei](https://gabz.blog/posts/a-game-i-have-been-playing-ghost-of-yotei) _2026-07-28 · GABZ/ML_ Hello there, and welcome to another blog post about a game I have been playing! And if you’ve read the title, you’ve guessed it: I am writing about Ghost of... ## [What do you want to be when you grow up?](https://gabz.blog/posts/what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up) _2026-07-25 · GABZ/ML_ Never have I ever attended a graduation-ish ceremony right in the middle of the summer. Right, today, July twenty-fifth of the year of our lord twenty twenty-six, we attended our... ## [No hot water fo’ you!](https://gabz.blog/posts/no-hot-water-fo-you) _2026-07-10 · GABZ/ML_ This was supposed to be a toot but then.. Yesterday, all of a sudden, no more hot water for us; I mean, not a big deal in the middle of... ## [A game I started playing.](https://gabz.blog/posts/a-game-i-started-playing) _2026-07-08 · GABZ/ML_ After posting about my recent memories with the 3DS XL and Fire Emblem Fates and reading Joel’s post, I decided to check out Fire Emblem Awakening on the Nintendo 3DS... ## [A Killswitch](https://gabz.blog/posts/a-killswitch) _2026-07-03 · GABZ/ML_ When I first got my Nintendo Switch 2, the first thing I noticed I wasn’t much of a fan of was the ergonomics—holding it and trying to play with it... ## [A New Nintendo 3DS XL](https://gabz.blog/posts/a-new-nintendo-3ds-xl) _2026-07-03 · GABZ/ML_ Joel wrote for his blog, among many other interesting things; you should all read it. “🕹️ I am now the proud owner of a red New Nintendo 3DS XL—Why did Nintendo... ## [No more discs!](https://gabz.blog/posts/no-more-discs) _2026-07-02 · GABZ/ML_ Sony is going to stop making physical discs for PlayStation starting in 2028, according to PlayStation.Blog. “This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends... ## [Ultra-Quiet Business Mini (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/MsT3TOznyVOv) _2026-07-02 · **Sponsored**_ Compact business mini, ultra-quiet for focused work. ## [writing for yourself](https://gabz.blog/posts/writing-for-yourself) _2026-06-25 · GABZ/ML_ Sometimes we need a reminder… “When I blog, it’s because I want to rant, or share some thoughts, or talk about something that means a lot to me. I don’t... ## [The voices in my head](https://gabz.blog/posts/the-voices-in-my-head) _2026-06-24 · GABZ/ML_ Me: I need to get back in shape The voices: You are doing it wrong! You are not doing enough! Do it like the people on Instagram. Remember, they are... ## [JPEG XL lands in Firefox](https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2026/firefox-jpegxl/) _2026-06-17 · Toni Sagrista Selles · Langur Monkey - Toni Sagristà Sellés_ Yesterday, Firefox 152 was released. In the release notes , under the Firefox Labs section, it states: The Firefox Labs section of the release notes of Firefox 152. If you see JPEG-XL works! , it means your browser is JPEG-XL capable. If you see JPG :( , it means your browser does not support it. Firefox now offers experimental support for the new JPEG XL image format, which generally provides… ## [Doomscrolling for a Game](https://gabz.blog/posts/doomscrolling-for-a-game) _2026-06-16 · GABZ/ML_ When I got into the emulation and retro-emulation handhelds hobby, one thing I did not anticipate was that one day, rather than doomscrolling on my phone, I would be doomscrolling... ## [Stuff and chattels #11](https://gabz.blog/posts/stuff-and-chattels-11) _2026-06-15 · GABZ/ML_ 🎬 Watching:Assassination Classroom. Marley and I started watching this anime TV show. The premise is weird. An alien-like creature claims he will destroy Earth within a year, but he offers... ## [Play it out loud!](https://gabz.blog/posts/play-it-out-loud) _2026-06-14 · GABZ/ML_ When it comes to music and specific songs, there are some that, in my mind, are supposed to be played out loud. There is something about them that’d be the... ## [Something I liked: Geese](https://gabz.blog/posts/something-i-liked-geese) _2026-06-10 · GABZ/ML_ These days, I have become very lazy when it comes to discovering music. I am becoming this old man set in his ways and rejecting new (to me) things. Or... ## [Not today](https://gabz.blog/posts/not-today) _2026-06-10 · GABZ/ML_ Today’s workout was somewhat mediocre, to me. Not because it wasn’t challenging enough, on the contrary. Today’s workout was one of those that looked easy on paper until I got... ## [What’s in my NOW? #2](https://gabz.blog/posts/whats-in-my-now-2) _2026-06-06 · GABZ/ML_ Hello! It has been a minute since I have done one of these, inspired, of course, by the ongoing “What’s in my NOW?” substac thingy. “Each week one interesting person... ## [I saw this video making the rounds in...](https://gabz.blog/posts/2026-06-01-i-saw-this-video) _2026-06-01 · GABZ/ML_ I saw this video making the rounds in the fediverse today; it made me cry a bit. \[YouTube embed\] Happy Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈 ## [Refer a Friend, Earn Rewards (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/afx0Wxl7hz76) _2026-06-01 · **Sponsored**_ Earn rewards when a friend signs up for the Graphite Business Card ## [Stuff and chattels #10](https://gabz.blog/posts/stuff-and-chattels-10) _2026-05-31 · GABZ/ML_ 🎬 Watching:Devil May Cry: Season 2. I have been a big fan of the entire DMC franchise since the first game, and I will take any format from it. Video... ## [Stuff and chattels #9](https://gabz.blog/posts/stuff-and-chattels-9) _2026-05-26 · GABZ/ML_ Well, hello! It has been almost two years since I did one of these. Also, this one is a spur-of-the-moment, so I apologize in advance for the low quality. 🎬 Things... ## [G.A.S.](https://gabz.blog/posts/gas) _2026-05-19 · GABZ/ML_ Ever since I got my first “legit” camera, G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) has been a thing. I think whether you like to admit it or not, it gets us all.... ## [Iconic moments in gaming](https://gabz.blog/posts/iconic-moments-in-gaming) _2026-05-12 · GABZ/ML_ This post is inspired by this video. So, yes, this is another list post like :) Not in any particular order, just as they come to mind. Metal Gear Solid... ## [Local agentic workflows are getting crazy good](https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2026/local-llm-qwen3.6/) _2026-05-12 · Toni Sagrista Selles · Langur Monkey - Toni Sagristà Sellés_ Building on the previous post about how good current open TTS models are , this post focuses on local LLM s, and their explosion in quality in the recent years months. I have been using OpenRouter with, for the most part, DeepSeek v4 Flash . It is a very capable model, dirt-cheap (seems to be heavily subsidized, at $0.14/M tokens input and $0.28/M tokens output), and it works very well when it is… ## [Mar the builder](https://gabz.blog/posts/2026-05-03-mar-the-builder) _2026-05-04 · GABZ/ML_ Mar the builder ## [Last night, Annie, Marley, and I played Scott...](https://gabz.blog/posts/2026-05-03-last-night-annie-marley) _2026-05-03 · GABZ/ML_ Last night, Annie, Marley, and I played Scott Pilgrim vs. The World™: The Game on the Nintendo Switch, and it was a lot of fun. ## [Local TTS is getting very capable and accessible](https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2026/qwensay/) _2026-04-29 · Toni Sagrista Selles · Langur Monkey - Toni Sagristà Sellés_ Around 2007 I spent half a year in the University of Aberdeen working on my final year project involving NLP . The project consisted of a series of modules to build an graphical adventure-type game controlled by language input in the form of text. It also featured speech output generated by an early TTS system. To achieve this, we managed to partner with a group at La Salle University that were… ## [About Me: Video Games](https://gabz.blog/posts/about-me-video-games) _2026-04-26 · GABZ/ML_ Oh! Hello! Nice meeting you - ish! In this blog post, I want to take you into my head, like every other post, I guess. Isn’t that what these things... ## [Fine-tuning Qwen3.5 for Gaia Sky](https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2026/fine-tuning-qwen3.5-gaiasky/) _2026-04-01 · Toni Sagristà Sellés · Langur Monkey - Toni Sagristà Sellés_ A little over a year ago I set up a local pipeline to use different LLM s to respond to Gaia Sky questions using RAG . In that post, I built a dynamic scrapper that parsed the Gaia Sky website and documentation and ingested the content it into a vector database. Then, I built a minimal terminal chatbot interface that received the user prompt, queried the database for semantically similar data, and… ## [Home of the Agentic Pull Request (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/E5HN3fQE0lwB) _2026-03-31 · **Sponsored**_ CLI-first, TUI-ready toolkits and a moshscript installer — join the waitlist ## [7Artisans EF-FX adapter review](https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2026/7artisans-ef-fx/) _2026-03-10 · Toni Sagrista Selles · Langur Monkey - Toni Sagristà Sellés_ A while back I reviewed the Viltrox EF-FX1 adapter , my first attempt at bridging my old Canon EF and EF-S lenses over to my Fujifilm X-S10. The abridged version of that experience: it was frustrating. Firmware roulette, random errors, camera freezes requiring battery pulls, and auto focus performance that varied wildly between versions. I kept it because it was just good enough, but it never… ## [GGUF quantization guide](https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2026/quantization/) _2026-03-04 · Toni Sagristà Sellés · Langur Monkey - Toni Sagristà Sellés_ I like running my own LLMs locally. Open models are becoming more and more powerful, with exciting releases like the latest Qwen 3.5 family scoring highly in benchmarks even in their smaller variants. This makes managing and running your own models more viable, as it becomes increasingly easy to repurpose old hardware for local inference with progressively better results. For local users and… ## [Heavenly](https://www.3hive.com/2026/02/27/heavenly/) _2026-02-27 · todd · 3hive_ Heavenly made music together from 1989 until 1996, when Mathew Fletcher tragically passed away. It’s been 30 years since new Heavenly tunes have graced our shared existence, but they are back with their first album of original music in 30 years! That’s right, Amelia Fletcher, Rob Pursey, Cathy Rogers, and Peter Momtchiloff are back with … Continue reading "Heavenly" ## [LM Studio on systemd linger](https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2026/lmster-service/) _2026-02-27 · Toni Sagristà Sellés · Langur Monkey - Toni Sagristà Sellés_ The release of LM Studio 0.4.5 has introduced a much needed feature in this local LLM suite that has it much more attractive with respect to other similar projects. LM Link allows you to connect multiple LM Studio instances across your network to share models and perform inference seamlessly. By sheer chance, I was just playing around with setting up an LM Studio server in an old laptop that I… ## [Olympic Deth](https://www.3hive.com/2026/02/06/olympic-deth/) _2026-02-06 · Hans Magleby · 3hive_ I’m going to begin by addressing some biases that I have coming into this review: Now, with all of that said, let me tell you why Olympic Deth’s newest record Peace Album is not only one of my most anticipated local releases this year but one that I’m sure will stand among the best of … Continue reading "Olympic Deth" ## [Yet another architectural update for Play Kid](https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2026/playkid-update-again/) _2026-01-28 · Toni Sagrista Selles · Langur Monkey - Toni Sagristà Sellés_ I finished my previous post on Play Kid, only two days ago, with the following words: Next, I’ll probably think about adding Game Boy Color support, but not before taking some time off from this project. Yeah, this was a lie. I have previously written about Play Kid, my Game Boy emulator. Here , I introduced it and talked about the base implementation and the quirks of the Game Boy CPU, PPU,… ## [Game Boy emulator tech stack update](https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2026/playkid-update/) _2026-01-26 · Toni Sagrista Selles · Langur Monkey - Toni Sagristà Sellés_ Notice This post is about Play Kid version 0.2.0 , which uses pixels to create and manage the pixel frame buffer. Since then, versions 0.3.0 and 0.4.0 have been released, which dropped pixels in favor of rendering directly to a texture. See this write-up for more information. In my previous post , I shared the journey of building Play Kid , my Game Boy emulator. At the time, I was using SDL2 to… ## [Play Kid](https://tonisagrista.com/projects/playkid/) _2026-01-20 · Langur Monkey - Toni Sagristà Sellés_ Play Kid is yet another Game Boy emulator, written in Rust. But hey, it is MY Game Boy emulator, and I’m proud of it. I wrote some words about its development here . Find all posts about Play Kid here . Play Kid running different games with different color palettes. Here are the main features of Play Kid: All CPU instructions implemented. Full memory map implemented. Modes: ROM, MBC1, MBC2,… ## [Implementing a Game Boy emulator](https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2026/playkid/) _2026-01-20 · Toni Sagristà Sellés · Langur Monkey - Toni Sagristà Sellés_ Notice This post is about Play Kid version 0.1.0 , which works with SDL2. Since then, version 0.2.0 has been released. This new version uses Rust native crates like winit , egui , rodio , and pixels . See this write-up for more information on the new version. When I was a kid my parents got me and my brothers a brand new Game Boy. I used to play it a lot, and I was mesmerized and amazed at how… ## [Candy kisses](https://www.3hive.com/2026/01/05/candy-kisses/) _2026-01-05 · todd · 3hive_ “Ahhhh, jangle pop. The balm for the soul.” That’s the first thought I had during the first 30 seconds of Candy kisses’ debut EP, Truth we avoided. There is not a lot of information available about the band, except the EP has been released on Indonesian label forfun.cookies. I suspect the band members are from … Continue reading "Candy kisses" ## [Corbin](https://www.3hive.com/2026/01/02/corbin/) _2026-01-02 · Hans Magleby · 3hive_ Known initially as Spooky Black, now Corbin, Corbin Smidzik has been making bleak, desolate lo-fi hip-hop that accumulated a cult following that’s only been growing since his break-out release Leaving in 2014. Now earlier this year Corbin released his latest record Crisis Kid and in my opinion – it’s debatedly his best yet. The record … Continue reading "Corbin" ## [Wednesday](https://www.3hive.com/2025/12/17/wednesday/) _2025-12-17 · Hans Magleby · 3hive_ Wednesday was originally formed as a solo project of lead singer Karly Hartzman, blending shoegaze inspired fuzzy guitars and country-twanged vocals that touched on the struggles and traumas of small-town Southern living. This year the now five-piece released what I firmly believe to be the groups best work with their latest record Bleeds. Bleeds opens … Continue reading "Wednesday" ## [Google \*unkills\* JPEG XL?](https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2025/google-unkills-jpegxl/) _2025-11-28 · Toni Sagrista Selles · Langur Monkey - Toni Sagristà Sellés_ I’ve written about JPEG XL in the past. First, I noted Google’s move to kill the format in Chromium in favor of the homegrown and inferior AVIF. 1 2 Then, I had a deeper look at the format, and visually compared JPEG XL with AVIF on a handful of images. The latter post started with a quick support test: “If you are browsing this page around 2023, chances are that your browser… ## [DE LA SOUL](https://www.3hive.com/2025/11/21/de-la-soul/) _2025-11-21 · Jason · 3hive_ Cabin In The Sky – A fitting love letter to Dave (Trugoy the Dove)De La Soul releasing their first album in nine years would be newsworthy by itself, but Cabin In The Sky arrives under an even heavier weight: it is their first project since the tragic 2023 loss of founding member David Jolicoeur, AKA … Continue reading "DE LA SOUL" ## [Shallowater](https://www.3hive.com/2025/11/12/shallowater/) _2025-11-12 · Hans Magleby · 3hive_ It’s not often that I listen to a shoegaze record, save it to my library, and then proceed to stream it again and again; offering whatever additional focus I can muster into subsequent listens trying to glean as much as I possibly can. I’d even go so far to say that this may have never … Continue reading "Shallowater" ## [Introducing oavif](https://giannirosato.com/blog/post/oavif/) _2025-10-12 · Gianni Rosato · Gianni Rosato_ oavif is a new approach to target quality encoding in image compression, designed around smarter convergence strategies and quicker scoring to be as fast as possible. Why? Target quality encoding is one of the highest impact use cases for image compression. A target quality encoder framework aims to produce an image encoded at a particular quality set by the user according to some metric or visual… ## [The Cords](https://www.3hive.com/2025/09/30/the-cords/) _2025-09-30 · todd · 3hive_ Scottish two-piece sister band The Cords have taken over my world with their debut self-titled album, and I’m here to convince you to let them take over your world too. Proudly wearing their hearts and influences (C86) on their sleeves, Grace and Eva have not only honored those bands that came before, but they have … Continue reading "The Cords" ## [Nourished By Time](https://www.3hive.com/2025/08/25/nourished-by-time/) _2025-08-25 · Rex Blair · 3hive_ From “Once or Twice, I prayed to Jesus…” to “…she said she knows what Jesus knows, idiot in the park”, Nourished By Time (AKA Marcus Elliot Brown) naturally evokes existential questions in a nonchalant manner. The beauty of Marcus’ lyrics are further highlighted by his unique approach to instrumentation. On The Passionate Ones, his newest … Continue reading "Nourished By Time" ## [The Multimedia Renaissance](https://giannirosato.com/blog/post/the-multimedia-renaissance/) _2025-08-18 · Gianni Rosato · Gianni Rosato_ The best open source video and image compression algorithms have improved significantly over the past year, and developer tools have miraculously kept up with this rapid pace. There has never been a better time for video. Purpose When you work on anything, I think it is worth thinking about why you are working on it aside from whether or not it provides some instant gratification. Thinking about… ## [Motion trails in Gaia Sky](https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2025/motion-trails/) _2025-06-14 · Toni Sagrista Selles · Langur Monkey - Toni Sagristà Sellés_ Astronomical scenes, especially those rendered interactively, often feature supraluminal camera motion over immense distances. Sometimes, these motions are rendered by applying trail effects to light-emitting objects to enhance the faster-than-light velocity sensation. Gaia Sky will get an implementation of motion trails in the next version (3.6.9). Motion trails are a visual effect that stretches…