Blog
The Internet Is Crumbling
#techIt is an interesting time to be online. Twitter went from bad to worse. Reddit kneecapped itself. It seems now that the period of free money is over, tech companies are finding out that operating at a loss to amass users and putting off any sort of monetization plan as long as possible isn’t as great a business model as was once thought. So far it appears to only work in a monopolistic scenario, like with Google and perhaps Meta.
I've Been Consumed by Honkai Star Rail
Normally gacha games aren’t my thing, but I downloaded Honkai Star Rail on a whim and now it’s consumed so much of my time. I know basically nothing about the lore, but regardless I’m really enjoying the story and characters. The combat system is really fun and I like getting to try different characters. It’s so weird because I’ve tried to get into more “traditional” turn-based RPGs to no success but this game just scratches an itch in my brain.
Learning About Computers is Fun
Recently, I was working on a toy Linux shell to learn about the fork and exec system calls, and I got curious about how the popular shells like bash implement shell scripting languages, which led me down a rabbithole of lexers, parsers, and formal language definitions. It led me to Robert Nystrom’s Crafting Interpreters, a book that guides you through writing an interpreter for a toy language called Lox. Nystrom’s code is in Java, but I wanted to do it in C, which has been a bit of a headache.
Some Site Updates
For the past year, this website has been generated using some Go code I wrote, which was fun while it lasted, but it got to the point where every time I wanted to add something I would have to hand-code the new feature, which resulted in my website never getting updated. So moving forward, I’ve gone back to using Hugo as a static site generator. It’s been a great experience so far, converting my old stylesheets into a Hugo theme has been quite easy.
I Bought a Thinkpad
#techSpecifically, I got a ThinkPad T450s from 2015 for about $40. It didn’t come with storage, a power adapter, or the external battery, which cost me about an extra $100 to order. The internal battery is there but I can’t really test it until my power adapter comes in (I forgot to order it at the same time as the laptop whoops). There are also some keycaps missing. I can’t test if the switches are good yet but hopefully it turns out to be an easy fix.
I'm bad at taking breaks
I’ve spent the majority of my holiday break working on my PC and software instead of relaxing. Here is a quick recap of what I’ve been up to. First is powerlinx, the static site generator that runs this site. I rewrote major parts of the program and finally gave it a cli. I’m gearing up to add some cool features, like tags and categories on posts. This website now generates Atom feeds for all directories in the site contents.
I uninstalled TikTok, again
I can’t seem to find a healthy way to use TikTok, so I just shouldn’t use it at all. I first installed it during the height of the pandemic in 2020 and have since uninstalled and reinstalled it at least 4 or 5 times. While there is a huge load of shit on the platform, there are also cool and interesting creators on there, lots of funny jokes, shitposts, and memes, and even videos where I legitmately learned something!
Rest in peace, Kazuki Takahashi
Yesterday’s news about Yu-Gi-Oh! author Kazuki Takahashi really hit me hard. Yu-Gi-Oh! was a huge part of my childhood and introduced me both to card games and mange/anime. I would be a very different person without his influence. Thank you for everything, Takahashi-sensei. May you rest in peace.
Self-Hosted Jellyfin
#techI’ve been out of commission and stuck in bed for the past few weeks, and this weekend was the first time I could sit in at all in a few weeks, so I wanted to do a small project. There has been some chatter about self-hosting cloud services in the Yesterweb forum, and I decided I wanted to give it a shot. My home hardware situation is a little lacking, but I do have a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB with an external hard disk attached, which is sufficient for a few services.
End of the iPod
This week, Apple announced it was ceasing production on the iPod touch, officially making the iPod a gadget of a bygone era. My first iPod was a 3rd gen iPod touch, but I also owned a few Nanos. That iPod touch was my introduction to the mobile web and app space, while smartphones were still a novelty, before they were a necessity. Everyone I knew had novelty apps like the beer glass and the zippo lighter.