Blog

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

Technology

Console Purchasing Wars: Xbox Series X

Categories Gaming, Geekery, Rants, Technology

Last week, I finally got an Xbox Series X! I say 'finally' because despite working for a Microsoft company (I even have a Microsoft employee ID and email address), I have no special access (or pricing) to any Microsoft hardware.

Like everyone else desperately trying to find one, I've had to watch Twitter stock alert accounts, ring around tonnes of stores, and do everything else to try and secure a console ahead of scalpers. Even though the scalping price on eBay isn't too exorbitant—roughly about 25-30% above the retail price—I've refused out of principle to take that easy way … Read more →

Using a Cheap(ish) Android Tablet as a Digital Photo Frame

Categories Life, Technology

Like any regular family, we've taken a fair bit (probably too many) of digital photos over the years, especially since the kids came along.

I've dutifully put them all in organised folders on our home NAS, and of course, made sure that it is all backed up.

However, when do we actually look at our photos? Hardly ever, unless some special occasion prompts us to have a look back in time.

So, I thought I'd look into getting a digital photo frame that we could put in our living room and would randomly display photos directly from our … Read more →

New Mobile: Google Pixel 5

Categories Geekery, Technology

The two-and-a-bit year cadence of getting new phones continues! My previous phone, the HTC U11+, has performed admirably over the past two years, and for the most part, still is. It's been a great phone, especially for the multi-day hospital stays I've had over the past few years.

However, as seems to be the pattern with my phones, at the two-year mark little things start to creep in. With the U11+, its screen would sometimes show weird hues after touching it, and also leave horizontal lines that would take a few seconds to disappear. Very distracting.

Although I've been … Read more →

Migrating to VS Code

Categories Technology, Work
Friendship ended with Atom, now VS Code is my best friend

I should probably add a disclaimer to start this post. At the time of writing this post, I work for GitHub (and by extension, Microsoft (who own GitHub)). As a GitHub employee, I have no more insight into Atom's or VS Code's development or roadmaps than any other member of the public. Both Atom and VS Code are developed as open source communities on GitHub. All opinions in this post (and more generally on this blog) are always my own.

For the better part of the last 5+ years, I have used Atom as my editor of choice … Read more →

Ori & Remote Play Sequels

Categories Gaming, Geekery, Technology
Ori and the Will if the Wisps

Ori and the Blind Forest is one of my favourite games of the past five years. I've played through it multiple times, and even purchased it a second time (as the Definitive Edition) not just to get more content, but to also give an extra bit of money to the devs (I had bought the original game with a heavy Steam discount).

I have always played the game using Steam's "Remote Play" feature (previously called "Steam Home Streaming"). The game runs on my Windows gaming PC in our study, but I play the game on my living room TV … Read more →

NUC Replacement: Nvidia Shield TV Pro

Categories Geekery, Technology
Nvidia Shield TV Pro

We've been using an Intel Celeron NUC for the past four years. It has served as a Plex client, a (buggy) Steam Home Streaming (now called Steam 'Remote Play') client, and occasional console emulator machine.

It did an admirable job over that time, but it was time for an upgrade. Windows Updates became an annoying – and on the Celeron – a time-consuming distraction. Steam Remote Play was buggy on it, and Plex had announced the intention to deprecate their desktop clients (I was using OpenPHT, which has also been mostly abandoned). Plus, the hardware wasn't keeping up … Read more →

New Keyboard: Logitech MX Keys

Categories Technology

Logitech MX Keys

In the time since my last post on getting a keyboard, I'm now on my second one since then. 😆

The Corsair Strafe that I was using since 2015 started stuffing up at the start of last year, with flickering lighting and key double-presses. It is quite disappointing for these Cherry switches to only last ~4 years.

At the time, I still wanted mechanical switches, and nothing came close to the silence of the Cherry MX Silent Reds. So I got a ten-keyless keyboard which I liked the layout of: the Fnatic miniSTREAK.

I really loved the smaller … Read more →

Why I Have Always Hosted My Own Blog

Categories Geekery, Internet, Rants, Technology

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 →

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 →

Migrating to Zsh

Categories Geekery, Technology, Work

A few years back, I posted on open-sourcing my .bashrc file on GitHub. Up until very recently, I'd been using the same configuration (with some additions and updates) ever since.

Now that I work on a MacBook Pro (btw, I've been meaning to write a blog post on that), and Apple recently announced that they will be changing the default shell in the next version of MacOS from bash to zsh, I decided to make the change myself.

I've always been tempted by the increased friendliness that Zsh has to offer. However, I couldn't really justify … Read more →