Blog

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

Rants

Working on a MacBook Pro

Categories Geekery, Rants, Technology, Work

Regular readers could be forgiven for thinking that I have an anti-Apple bias. Although I'm definitely not a fan of the company, I'd like to think that I am mostly objective when it comes to my views.

I've been pretty consistent in my position that I would never buy an Apple computer for my own personal use. The price-to-value return for my own circumstances isn't justifiable. I like the flexibility and customisation of Windows/Linux PCs, not to mention things that are practically impossible on a Mac, such as high-end gaming.

The one area where I use what I'm given (although, … Read more →

Solo: A Star Wars Review (spoilers!)

Categories Movies, Rants

Solo posterApparently, some people actually read my Star Wars reviews, and I've been a bit slack writing this one up.

If you asked me what stories I'd like to see in the Star Wars spin-off movies, I'd have to say a Solo origin story wouldn't have been very high on my list. Combined with the reported production problems that resulted in the original directors canned in the middle of the shoot, I didn't have very high hopes for this movie.

My overall impression after seeing Solo: meh. It wasn't a bad movie by any stretch, but nothing really struck me … Read more →

Google Is Shutting Down Their URL Shortener, so I Created a Custom One

Categories Internet, Rants, Technology

I've used the goo.gl URL shortener for a while to create short links for all manner of things, but especially for sharing links to this blog on the social medias. So, it was to my surprise when I went to create one yesterday for my most recent post, that I saw the announcement that they are terminating their service, in favour of their Firebase product.

All I need is a quick way to create short URLs, and for the life of me I couldn't even figure out how to create one as they suggest using a 'dynamic link' … Read more →

The Best and Worst of 2017

Categories Gaming, Lego, Movies, Rants

Best and worst time! This is my personal review of 2017's media that I was exposed to, and the ones that I liked the most and the least.

GotG2 & LoganMovies

This year was quite a tough one to pick. There wasn't really anything that good that I can think of as being the stand-out, and by the same token, I can't remember anything that I saw that was really that bad. Nevertheless:

Best Movie: Two-way tie between Logan and Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

Guardians 2 gave me more of what I loved about the first: space, sci-fi, 80s, humour, … Read more →

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (spoilers!)

Categories Geekery, Movies, Rants

Star Wars: The Last JediIt's that time of year, again! No, I'm not talking about my usual 'Best and Worst', 'Tweets for 20xx', or 'Year in Review' posts. I'm talking about the annual Star Wars movie in this new era of Disney Star Wars. Being the second 'trilogy' movie, and the successor to my well-received The Force Awakens, I did have reasonable expectations for this movie.

As usual, be warned that there are SPOILERS AHEAD!

I don't totally share the critical acclaim this movie is getting. It's a good movie, not a great one. I was pretty frustrated after my first viewing, … Read more →

Mario Odyssey: Unpopular Opinion

Categories Gaming, Rants

Super Mario OdysseyI've just finished playing through Super Mario Odyssey, and I have had a bunch of fun with it.  However, I have a seemingly unpopular opinion: although Odyssey is fantastic, and it really is, I don't think it quite lives up to the standard of its predecessor, Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Let me start by saying that Odyssey is a great game. If you have a Switch, this game is a must buy. If you don't have a Switch, this game should make you seriously consider getting one. The game is deserving of its widespread critical acclaim, and I … Read more →

MusicBee: Finally Opting Out of iTunes

Categories Geekery, Rants, Technology

MusicBee LogoIt feels like I've been complaining for almost a decade about the bloated mess that is iTunes. Despite all those complaints, I've never really been bothered to move on to anything else.

About 5 years ago, I had a brief flirt with other stuff like DoubleTwist, but wasn't that impressed and quickly ended up back on iTunes. This wasn't really because of iTunes being any superior itself, but more-so the ubiquity of support from third-party devices and services in interfacing with an iTunes library.

I hear you ask: "Wait a minute, you still own and manage your own music … Read more →

The Best and Worst of 2016

Categories Gaming, Movies, Rants

Geez, it's already that time of year again! My personal review of 2016's media that I was exposed to, and the ones that I liked the most, and the ones that I liked the least. As a result of having a small child, and also being unwell for a lot of this year, I haven't really seen/played as much as I would have liked. There are still a lot of movies that I want to see (including most of the December releases), so take this list with a grain of salt.

Movies

This year I saw a lot of very … Read more →

Monitor Colour Problems Over HDMI

Categories Rants, Technology

colortestAlthough I've studied and worked in technology for over 15 years, every now and then an issue comes up which totally baffles me. Yesterday was one of those times.

The new monitor that I bought back in January started stuffing up a few weeks ago (weird lines, tint shifts), and I took it in for repair. Since then I've been using a borrowed monitor from work, and yesterday I got the repaired monitor back up and running again.

Ever since I got the new monitor back in January, the colours weren't quite right. They were generally dull, and I had … Read more →

Vale NoSquint

Categories Internet, Rants

I wrote about four years ago that one of the main reasons I still use Firefox as my default browser is because of the fantastic NoSquint extension, which allowed me to persistently set a larger text size for readability.

It was with great sadness (and distress!) that I discovered today that NoSquint is no longer being maintained, and that it has stopped working as of Firefox v47.

Before I go on to alternatives, I have to publicly thank Jason Tackaberry for 10 years of fantastic support for this extension. That NoSquint has worked flawlessly over 10 years of browser … Read more →