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The thoughts, opinions, happenings, and just plain ramblings of a seemingly boring person.

Geekery

Tweets for 2016

Categories Geekery, Internet, Life

Twitter 2016

These are my tweets for 2016 (sans replies and retweets). All the URLs are still Twitter's 't.co' ones, as the Twitter API doesn't spit out the original URL text.

… Read more →

Star Wars: Rogue One (spoilers!)

Categories Geekery, Movies

It's another year, and another Star Wars movie in this post-Lucas Disney era. I have to admit, when it was announced I was quite apprehensive about these 'standalone' movies. This year it is Rogue One, the story of how the Rebellion managed to get their hands on the Death Star plans.

Like last year's Force Awakens review, I don't think I can properly put my thoughts down without containing spoilers, so you have been warned: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Let's start with the good. I liked the overall story, and I loved how it explained how the rebels got the … Read more →

Graphics Update & Battlefield 1

Categories Gaming, Geekery, Technology

XFX RX480 GTRI've had a pretty crappy few months with my health. I think it's a safe bet that if I don't blog in over a month, something is probably up.

Anywho, my main gaming desktop, Executor, recently hit its three year-old mark, and despite a few hiccups, it has held up really well up to this 'best before' date of tech reliability. However, one thing that has aged is the graphics card, which was brought over from the previous computer.

So it made sense to look at updating the graphics card; it's been struggling to keep up with recent … Read more →

Console Home Streaming is Great Too

Categories Gaming, Geekery, Technology

PS4 Remote PlayI've blogged a bit on how great Steam Home Streaming is to be able to play PC games remotely in the living room. Today I experienced the reverse, and it's equally as convenient!

Although it's been available on XBox for a while, and for a few months on the PS4, I've previously never had the need to play a console somewhere else other than its usual spot in the living room. That is, until Anastacia needed the TV today and I was in the middle of a level of Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Setting up and getting … Read more →

PC Build History

Categories Geekery, Technology

As the three-year mark is starting to roll around on my current home PC, Executor, I am trying to resist the urge at looking at parts for a new computer. Having another +1 to take care of compared to before definitely helps ;).

To have a look back through history, like the mobile phone history page I put together at the start of this year, I have collated a page detailing the history of all the PC builds that I have done. This includes specs, any upgrades, and links to the relevant build blog post.

Without doubt, Executor has … Read more →

Steam Home Streaming Now Supports 5.1 Audio

Categories Gaming, Geekery, Technology

I'm not sure when it was enabled in the stable Steam client, but it looks like 5.1 sound is now enabled for Steam Home Streaming on Windows hosts and clients. I said last year that this was a big missing feature for the platform, so I'm glad they actually did it.

It wasn't a smooth process to get it working, though. Although everything looked like it was configured correctly, whenever I tried the streaming there was no sound. I eventually found this forum post which said that the old DirectX9 runtimes ("DirectX End-User Runtimes (June 2010)") are need on the … Read more →

Open-Sourcing My .bashrc File on GitHub

Categories Geekery, Technology, Work

gitprompt_Lucas_bullettrain_tags I've posted some pretty nerdy things on this blog over the years, but this would have to be one of the nerdiest things I've ever posted.

I use a Linux operating system on my work laptop (Fedora, to be precise). We're now fairly entrenched in a git workflow for the documentation we write: asciidoc(tor)-based source, and GitLab CE or GitHub as the hosted VCS.

For the non-uber-tech-savvy: because of the git workflow (amongst other things), I spend a lot of time running commands in a bash shell (or command prompt). One of the files that controls … Read more →

Similar Look, New Theme

Categories Geekery, Internet

After a slow start to the year, I've done a lot of posting in the past month. So I also thought it might be time to tweak the look of the site.

Although the look remains similar., I've just enabled a new theme. The older theme was a bit bloated and wasn't being maintained by its creator any more, but I think that I got good use out of it since I switched my blog to WordPress just over 4 years ago.

I wanted a more lightweight theme that was still easy to customise, and I think I found … Read more →

Now Secure! Enabling Let’s Encrypt HTTPS

Categories Geekery, Internet

LucasCosti.com SecuredWell, that was easy. It just took me about five minutes to get this website going with a free SSL/TLS certificate using Let's Encrypt as the certificate authority. LucasCosti.com now has a padlock! 😀

Side note:  here's a nice post explaining the confusing terminology of SSL vs. TLS, and I like Google's approach of sticking to HTTPS, where possible.

My host (Zuver, a VentraIP subsidiary) made the process of generating a Let's Encrypt certificate ridiculously easy. It was pretty much just logging into their admin portal and clicking a button for the domain.

The only things that … Read more →

Modding Rey’s Speeder

Categories Geekery, Lego

Rey's Lego SpeederA while back I got the Rey's Speeder Lego set, and although it's good to have the main character of The Force Awakens in Lego form, it always bugged me that the side of the speeder where the cargo net is in the movie, was just some stuff stuck on using 1x1 clips.

So I decided to do my first serious Lego mod! I noted down the parts I thought I'd need, and then went to BrickLink and ordered them. They arrived in the mail today, and I went to work modding.

I'm quite happy with the result. In … Read more →