Blog

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

Tweets for 2022

Tweets for 2022

These are my tweets for 2022 (sans replies and retweets).

With all of the Elon Musk Twitter craziness over the past few months, who know if this might be the last time I do this! (FYI: you can also find me on Mastodon here: https://hachyderm.io/@lucascosti)

All the URLs are still Twitter's 't.co' ones, as the Twitter API doesn't spit out the original URL text.

  • PC vs console gaming ๐Ÿงต https://t.co/G0KDWHbHFa "When I manage to salvage an hour to relax and play video games, *that* is what I want to do. And it's really opened my eyes to why so
Read more โ†’

Tweets for 2021

These are my tweets for 2021 (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 โ†’

Tweets for 2020

These are my tweets for 2020 (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 โ†’

Converting my Flash Intros to HTML5

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia (RIP ๐Ÿ˜ข) Flash) was once a staple of the web, but for various reasons (security issues, unnecessary software, etc.), it has almost been completely banished from the internet, with HTML5 animations now largely filling the gap.

Adobe is stopping maintenance of Flash at the end of this year, and this is definitely a good thing.

This site used a fair bit of Flash in the Web 1.0 days. The initial version even used Flash for the navigation buttons! ๐Ÿ˜ฑ However, the biggest (and most fun) use of Flash was when I made 'intro' animations for my … Read more โ†’

Why I Have Always Hosted My Own Blog

I started this blog in 2004. Since that time, there have been a lot of changes in writing and publishing your own online content.

To give a bit of perspective, back in January 2004, WordPress had only (by a matter of days) hit 1.0, and still wasn't really a thing yet. Back then, it was really only Blogger (newly acquired by Google), or older services like LiveJournal that allowed you to have a blog. To give even more perspective, even MySpace wasn't really a thing yet.

So, in the 16 years that I have maintained this blog, I have … Read more โ†’

Tweets for 2019

These are my tweets for 2019 (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.

  • This Tuesday will be the first time in a long time that I've been able to say this! Very excited and nervous! ๐Ÿ˜€ https://t.co/ooIGvJ5jlS Jan 06, 2019
  • YISSSSSS!! https://t.co/sHT8hXVrfB Jan 09, 2019
  • Absolutely loving @GetInsomnia for basic API testing and documentation! Such a great tool! Jan 16, 2019
  • Somebody said that the new #Slack logo looks like a swastika, and now I can't unsee it! (especially so, as I'm in tโ€ฆ
Read more โ†’

Getting on the NBN

Since having my transplant, I've been doing a lot of things around the house that I've put off for a while: cleaning out my wardrobe, comms cabinets, rewiring smoke alarm connections, to name a few.

Around the same time that I went into hospital, the NBN was made ready for connections in our area. I've posted on the NBN a few times over the years, but after originally expecting a FTTP (i.e. fibre) connection to be ready sometime around 2015, the Coalition government was elected in 2013, and it took until now to get a HFC connection (i.e. … Read more โ†’

Making Split Pane Mode More Usable in the New Gmail Interface

tl;dr version: I made a userscript that forces the new Gmail interface to show the email list as the expanded 3-line-per-thread display. You can find the userscript on my GitHub gist.

Although I don't use it for my personal Gmail account, I have long used the 'Split Pane' visual mode (with a vertical split) for my work Gmail. I find it easier to go through a lot of email by having the list of email threads on the left, and the currently selected email thread showing on the right.

However, with the recent Gmail interface changes that landed around … Read more โ†’

Tweets for 2018

Tweets for 2018

These are my tweets for 2018 (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 โ†’

Online Backups, Part 2: Duplicati + B2 = Win

Continuing on in my now-decade-old series of posts in how I manage my backups, things have changed once again. My last post in 2014 described how I started backing up to an online cloud service with Crashplan.

Unfortunately, about this time last year, Crashplan announced that it was exiting the home backup market. They offered to honour existing users' subscriptions and provide a steep discount on their 'Small Business' plans for a period of time, and that is what I have been using for the past year.

With the price increase imminent, there is also some long-term buginess … Read more โ†’