Blog on yequari.com

Some Books I've Read This Year

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 10:23:06 -0700

One of my goals for this year was to read 10 books start to finish. I haven’t really read for recreation since I was a child, so I felt 10 was a high enough number to have to work towards but still low enough to be attainable. So far, I have finished 7 books, so I thought I’d write out some brief thoughts on them.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

The first two entries to the Wayfarers series. Dubbed “cozy” science fiction, these books were a lot of fun to read. Exploring the world that Chambers has built is so interesting and fun, I look forward to finishing out the series.

A Month of the Gundam Card Game

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 10:25:51 -0700

Recently, I’ve been completely absorbed by the newly released Gundam Card Game. After doing a few booster set and starter deck release events, I went to my first local constructed tournament for the game last week and had a blast. My expectation was that many players would be playing late game control decks based on results from other tournaments, so I tried to take advantage of this with a Green/Blue Zeon aggro deck. My first two rounds, against Green/White Wing Gundam Zero decks, proved me correct as I was able to finish the game quickly, before their decks could fully ramp up. My last round was against my friend who I had been testing decks with since the cards first got revealed, which was cool since we both knew our matchup well. He was running a Red/White Triple Ship Alliance deck, which seems to have a favorable matchup into aggro, which wasn’t helped by some unlucky draws. My friend ended up taking the game and my final record was 2-1. For next week’s tournament, I have a few adjustments to make to see if I can get the 3-0. I’m expecting others to also be making adjustments to better handle aggro matchups. The process of refining a deck over time and adjusting to your local metagame is just such a fun experience and it makes me really glad to be playing a TCG again!

Pink Floyd at Pompeii

Sat, 03 May 2025 21:27:34 -0700

Pink Floyd at Pompeii is a live concert film, originally released in 1972, where the band plays in the amphitheater in the ruins of Pompeii. Last weekend I had the excellent of experience of seeing a showing of the 2025 IMAX Remaster. The remastered footage looked great, and the remastered audio was mind-blowing. The original recording was not of particularly great quality, but the mastering work done by Steven Wilson was truly impressive, making the recording sound as if it were originally meant to be an album release, which sounded especially good on the movie theater’s sound system.

I'm Doing Grad School

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 20:23:35 -0700

The other day, I received my acceptance letter for an online Computer Science Masters program. There is some administrative minutiae to complete before I can register for classes, but it’s really happening! It will be difficult to balance my schoolwork while also working full time, but I’m excited to learn all I can! I’m hoping to pivot my career into systems programming, I can’t be doing CRUD web apps forever. 😔 I’d love to be able to do kernel or compiler development full time.

Life After League of Legends

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 20:23:23 -0700

I have played exactly two games of League of Legends in the past 35 days. Since I started playing the game back in 2013, I’ve consistently played matches almost daily. I’ve had breaks of a week or two, usually to dive into some other game that was flavor of the month, but for the past 12 years, League of Legends was a constant part of my life. About a month ago, I was playing a game, doing really poorly, and realized I’m not actually enjoying it. I wondered if I would be having fun if were winning that match. I realized I would not. So after that game, I just stopped. Something about the game just no longer scratches that itch in my brain. It’s a very odd feeling to just suddenly not like something that was a major part of your life for so long.

Blog Question Challenge

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:24:01 -0700

fLaMEd fury recently tagged me in his Blog Question Challenge post that has been circulating around the indieweb over the past month. I finally got into a headspace to write for my website a bit, so here are my answers!

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I have a lot of thoughts which are, in my unbiased opinion, pretty great and other people’s lives will improve by reading them. Seriously, though, I mostly wanted to practice writing and expressing my thoughts, which also ends up serving as an archive of my opinions and thoughts as time goes on, for better or for worse.

Motion Sickness and Video Games

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 21:19:34 -0700

Madeline Miller recently wrote about motion sickness triggered by video games, potential causes, and potential fixes. I feel seen. As a child, I distinctly remember playing Shadow the Hedgehog of all things when I first discoved games could make me nauseous. I am able to build up a tolerance to games if I play daily, which is how I dumped many hours into Minecraft as a teenager and Cyberpunk 2077 more recently, but it wears off fast, and intentionally making myself sick every day for a few weeks is quite unpleasant. For that reason, I mostly stick to games that are 2D and/or are primarily played with a top-down view. Baldur’s Gate 3 was a godsend for this. It’s interesting because not all 3D games affect me. Almost all first-person games become unplayable after 15 minutes, but third-person games are hit-or-miss. I was able to play through Persona 4 Golden just fine. Final Fantasy 7 Remake wrecks me. This inconsistency makes the potential fixes that Madeline brings up interesting to me. I have never considered how FPS and field of view could affect my motion sickness. I am curious to experiment and see if I can make more games playable, because it’s kind of an isolating experience at times. I love video games, as do all of my friends, but I am limited to only a small subset of the games that they play. They recently got really into Marvel Rivals, and I could only play a game or two at a time with them before I have to go lay down for the rest of the night. I have only ever met one other person that is also affected by this, so coming across this post showed me that there are dozens of us. Dozens!

Fixing Up iPods

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 18:26:41 -0700

A couple of weeks ago my brain suddenly got an itch. I was at the office listening to music on my old Sansa Clip+ player when it’s battery died halfway through the day again. Disappointed, I put it and my headphones away and continued my day in silence. But my brain would not be silent. This was a problem and it needed to be solved now (or at least as soon as the postal service allows). I started researching many different models of modern mp3 players (I guess we call them DAPs now?) and didn’t quite like what I found, until I eventually landed on fixing up an old iPod, partially due to “My iPod is better than my phone” by Veronica Explains, which showed me that this was even possible.

Here We Are Again

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 17:59:53 -0700

The results of last night’s election are disappointing, angering, and horrifying. But they are not shocking. I’ve seen lots of talk about how stupid and racist and sexist the general American populace is to be able to vote the way the did. I don’t think that is accurate. Of course, there is no doubt which candidate the racists and sexists voted for. However, in a society where we all feel forced to choose the lesser of two evils, I can’t be surprised that many felt differently than me as to which candidate that actually was. The federal government has failed working people over and over for decades and continues to do so to this day. In this situation, when one party tells you everything is going great, actually, but the other tells you you are right to be upset and presents a simple solution, no matter how ill-informed or hateful it is, this is the natural result. The Democratic party will not learn this lesson, though, just like they didn’t in 2016. We must take care of each other now, because no one will do it for us, especially not another establishment politician with a D next to their name.

On LibreWolf

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 22:11:03 -0700

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been using LibreWolf as my daily driver browser. It’s been about two weeks since then, and I had some thoughts.

I originally tried to compile LibreWolf myself, which is how I found out 16GB of RAM is not enough to compile a web browser. I found this interesting since I was able to compile Floorp just fine a while back. Have browsers really gotten so complex over the past decade to require that much memory just to compile? Anyway, I just ended up installing the binary from the AUR and got up and running.

No More Firefox

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 13:03:43 -0700

Mozilla is seemingly allergic to making good decisions, as shown by two recent (anti-)features it has brought to Firefox. First, is an AccuWeather widget on the new tab screen, enabled by default. On the surface, this seems mundane, but in order for this to work, Firefox is sending your “approximate” location to AccuWeather servers periodically in the background, even if you disable the widget. This is the browser that tries to market itself as the go-to browser for privacy control.

Intentional Computing

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 21:48:07 -0700

I’ve been using Arch Linux (btw) since the beginning of this year. It is a barebones distro, meaning you have to install every package you are going to use yourself. While not the most fun exercise in the world, it made me think about what software I need to make my computer usable. Beyond the necessary stuff like wi-fi drivers, I was forced to choose what I wanted my computing experience to be like. Rather than being given a default desktop environment and a suite of software I could opt-out of if I cared to, I instead had to deliberately opt-in to the desktop experience, text editor, and web browser.

Thinking About Databases

Wed, 08 May 2024 21:31:35 -0700

Let’s say you’re running a web service where users can add other users as friends. How do you store each user’s friends list in the database? The simplest solution would be to use one large table called “friends” with each row being an entry on one user’s friends list. How well does that perform if you scale up to millions of users? Are indexes applicable to speed things up here? Is there a better way to represent this data in the database?

Customizing Vim

Tue, 07 May 2024 16:22:42 -0700

I’ve been using vim (specifically neovim) for over a year, I really enjoy how customizable it is, though up until today, I’ve only customized it through plugins made by other people. Today I wrote two Lua functions to streamline my workflow. I’m not very familiar with Lua but it was quite easy to pick up.

First is a function to split my window so it would have two side by side, and a smaller one at the bottom, which gets turned into a terminal.

Building a Website is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Mon, 06 May 2024 16:58:43 -0700

When I first created my website just over two years ago, I spent a lot of time fretting over what exactly to put on it. The common answer of “anything you want!” wasn’t helpful because I didn’t actually know what I wanted.

Spending time browsing others’ personal sites and chatting with their webmasters gave me inspiration for new pages to build and new topics to blog about. After two years, I am learning what I want to put on my website. I enjoy blogging and sharing the things that I know and the things that I like. As a result, I’ve published more blog posts, created my links page, my /now page, and just yesterday, published a bunch of notes I’ve taken as I learn more about computers and web development. Coming soon will be a page to share music I’ve discovered recently.

Busy Weekend

Sun, 05 May 2024 19:17:55 -0700

Though I didn’t have any big plans this weekend, I kept myself busy around the house. I mailed some packages, did the grocery shopping, prepared some meals for the week, rearranged my kitchen, cleared out some expired food, and cleaned up my desk. It feels very good to be this productive.

X-Men 97

Sat, 04 May 2024 18:54:13 -0700

I’ve been keeping up with X-Men 97 weekly, it’s such a good show. I love that it has a pretty serious plot but also keeps some of that Saturday morning cartoon charm. The weekly release schedule is so nice, I love spending the week leading up to the next episode hypothesizing with my partner about what will happen next. It’s also gotten me into the X-Men more in general, I’ve been watching the original 90s cartoon in between episodes, and I think I’ll pick up some comics as well!

Doing New Things Is Scary

Fri, 03 May 2024 17:40:04 -0700

I’ve been looking at gigs on Upwork to try and bring in some extra cash and bolster my experience. Some of these jobs seem braindead easy but I’m still so afraid to apply for them. Logically, I know that if something goes wrong nothing bad really happens, but the fact that something could go wrong terrifies me. I guess I just don’t want to disappoint people. My browser currently has a half-filled out proposal for a job. It would take me a couple hours to complete. I just need to submit it.

Clearing My Game Backlog

Thu, 02 May 2024 07:54:51 -0700

I love video games. Or, at least, I think I do. I don’t finish very many of them. I either play them for a few hours and forget to come back or I hyperfocus and get like 75% through the story but lose interest before getting to the end. This summer, I’d like to make progress on my backlog of unplayed games. I’ll start with Baldur’s Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. These both fall into the 75% category and I last played them recently enough that I won’t be completely lost with what’s going on in the story. After that I’ll dig into some indie games, stuff like Hades, Hyper Light Drifter, Hotline Miami 1 + 2, because they are shorter to complete and do a lot of interesting things. Then I get back into AAA games and beat one beginning to end, just to prove to myself that I can. I’m thinking one of Persona 5 Royal, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima or Final Fantasy VII Remake. A challenge I face with this goal is that a lot of first-person and third-person games trigger my motion sickness, so I can only really play for an hour at a time until a build up a tolerance to them (which I lose if I don’t play for a few days). Usually I stick to top-down games like strategy and simulation games to get around this, but I really want to play these games, so I will try my best to persevere.

Intermittent Fasting

Wed, 01 May 2024 07:23:19 -0700

I’ve started doing intermittent fasting to help achieve my fitness goals. It’s only been a week so far but I’m liking how it’s making me be more intentional about my eating habits. My eating hours are from 11am to 7pm, so I basically get two full meals and some snacks. I thought the hard part would be waiting until 11am to eat, but it’s actually pretty easy (probably all the coffee helping there), then when I do eat breakfast I can put more thought into it than when I’m half awake. What is actually hard is not being able to eat after 7pm. I eat dinner around 6 but by 9:30 or so I’m starting to get hungry again. Maybe the solution to this is just going to bed earlier. I imagine it will get easier as my body gets used to the new schedule and I figure out exactly how much I need to eat in those 8 hours.

Happy (Belated) JS Naked Day

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 17:12:11 -0700

JS Naked Day happened this week, and as usual, I’m fashionably late. I decided to permanently remove a significant portion of the JavaScript from my site as it was affecting load times. There wasn’t a whole lot of JavaScript to begin with, which made this pretty easy to implement. What I did have was the following:

I just removed this as I just wasn’t finding it amusing anymore. Maybe it will return later, who knows? Certainly not me.

Dedicated Instant Messaging was Better

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 18:00:35 -0700

fLaMEd’s post about instant messaging programs got me thinking about my own IM journey. I’m too young to really have experienced the peak AIM and MSN days, but I did use MSN/Windows Live Messenger in the late 00s to keep up with some online friends I had met through various forums. Eventually, I moved to Skype as that is what all my IRL friends were on at the time. I was also on Curse Voice for the brief time it existed, mostly for voice calls during League of Legends matches. As Skype started dying out, I moved over to Discord in 2016, which made me a pretty early adopter.

Music Discovery Is Weird

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 23:01:49 -0700

As a teenager, the music I listened to was music my dad shared with me, music my friends would play when we would hang out, or music from video games and movies I liked. I remember spending time on Pandora creating stations based off my favorites in hopes I could find something similar I liked. I would discover a few songs this way but otherwise didn’t have much luck. As a result, I find I just listen to the same stuff over and over again, but there is so much music out there, I want to find more! But how?

Recreating the Windows Live Messenger Avatar in CSS

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 23:36:20 -0700

This past week I’ve been working on a big redesign of my site. I’m trying to recreate the vibe of MSN / Windows Live Messenger around 2008-2011. Today, I spent most of the day recreating the avatar frame from WL Messenger in CSS.

At first, I was trying really hard to recreate the kind of squircle shape from the login screen. It turns out this is quite difficult in CSS, and the only way I could possibly have done it is through creating an SVG path that I could use to clip the HTML element, but then I would lose access to the border and box-shadow properties. So instead I opted to just make a rounded square, using the first-radius value to round the corners with an ellipse shape rather than a circle. After all, we’re going for the vibe, not a 1:1 recreation. After hours of tinkering with just the shape, I added the gradient background, as well as a <span> on top of everything to add the “glossy” effect. You can see the code on CodePen.

February Updates

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 17:18:05 -0700

Man, my one blog post per week goal sure fell apart quickly. To avoid going too long without a post, I figure I’ll give a quick update on what I’ve been working on. Over at the 32-Bit Cafe, we announced we are expanding into a Discourse forum! I’ve been spending a lot of time setting it up and working alongside the rest of the mod team to get it ready before the February 15th launch. This weekend, I was able to find some time to work on projects, though. I built a PC for my partner, which they have been enjoying! It was a much needed upgrade over their old system, which was a frankensteined build made out of the core of my first PC build from 2015. I also spent some time working through Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment. I’m working on the first homework assignment, which is a simple program that copies a file. It’s been a fun challenge and I’m learning a lot. On the fitness side of things, I haven’t made much progress yet. I actually took the week off from the gym because of a combination of sleep issues and hurting my back, but I’m feeling a lot better now and will be back at it tomorrow! While the first month of 2024 hasn’t gone quite to plan, I’ve been keeping busy anyway.

Weekend SSD Adventures

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 16:51:30 -0700

Last weekend I was really getting the semi-annual itch to play Minecraft. When I loaded it up, I realized it would be a good idea to do a backup of my world, because I hadn’t done it in a while. I’ve poured a lot of hours into it with my partner and we would be devastated to lose it. So I wrote up a quick rsync command to send it over to my network storage (a strong term for an Raspberry Pi 4 with a USB hard disk attached). I/O error. Huh that’s weird. After some intense googling, I found out my SSD has reported 535 blocks unable to be reallocated. In other words, much of my SSD was becoming unreadable, and it was running out of good blocks to move my data to.

Reflecting on 2023

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 15:29:00 -0700

2023 was truly one of the years of all time. In this post, I will look back at some of the cool things I did in 2023 and set some goals to achieve in 2024.

Anti-cheat Software Sucks

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 16:04:19 -0700

This week, Riot Games announced they are bringing their Vanguard anti-cheat software to League of Legends. Previously introduced with the release of Valorant, Vanguard is a pretty typical kernel-level anti-cheat software, which is to say, a security nightmare. It runs at the highest level of permissions possible on your system.

A lot of people seem concerned that, because Riot is owned by Tencent, Vanguard serves as a backdoor for the Chinese government. Honestly that seems ridiculous. Not that it necessarily can’t be used for nefarious purposes by the Chinese government, but Chinese spying has a much lower possible material impact on U.S. players than American spying. In the video, Riot said that Vanguard “does not collect or process any personal information differently from our current Anti-Cheat software,” which I guess is something, but that can change at any moment. The bigger concern, in my view, is if Riot suffers from a security breach (again) and hackers are able to deploy malicious code through Vanguard. Truthfully, I’m not totally sure how feasible it is for that to happen, but it is certainly possible, which is worrying enough.

Re: The Art of Hyperlinking

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 20:45:42 -0700

I recently read fLaMEd’s post discussing the shortcomings of linking techniques frequently used on the smallweb, such as link pages, webrings, button walls, etc. Many websites on the smallweb employ these techniques in order to connect to other stops in the smallweb space. I don’t think they are inherently bad, of course, but the context matters a lot. I want to know why the webmaster has chosen to put these links on their website, even if the explanation is as brief as “these people are my friends and their websites are cool.”

Why Are We Still Using 88x31 Buttons?

Fri, 20 Oct 2023 17:55:51 -0700

Web 1.0 revival is pretty popular these days in the smallweb circles, but one aspect of it should have remained in the grave: the 88x31 button.

Cyberpunk 2077 Is Good, Actually

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 09:18:13 -0700

The last time I played Cyberpunk 2077 was shortly after release in late 2020 on the PS4 version, which was a rough experience, to say the least. I had been excited for the game since the announcement almost ten years ago now, so the disappointment was quite painful. As a result, I left the game alone for the past 2.5 years, even though I heard the patches fixed a lot of issues. I just couldn’t convince myself to try again.

Major Site Updates

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 16:39:39 -0700

I did a complete overhaul of the layout of my site. When I launched my website a year and a half ago, I designed it while under the influence of web 1.0 nostalgia. With this redesign, my goal is to better use the amount of screen space PCs have these days, while also making it easier for the content to be responsive on mobile.

The links page has been revamped as well. As much as I enjoyed hiding the link descriptions until hovered, it makes for a poor experience both on mobile and for screen readers. Recent discussion about web accessibility of the smallweb in the 32-Bit cafe Discord server prompted me to rethink how I wanted to present the content of my website, especially on a page as important as my outgoing links page.

The Internet Is Crumbling

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 01:56:02 -0700

It 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. Everyone else hasn’t really hit that critical mass. The only thing of value these companies have is the data they host, which is now being siphoned for free by AI products, then repackaged and regurgitated to the consumer. To defend against this, both Reddit and Twitter have removed free access to their API and are charging exorbitant prices to restore access. The result is shittier platforms for the user, who create the entirety of the platform’s value in the first place.

I've Been Consumed by Honkai Star Rail

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 00:57:08 -0700

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

Sat, 20 May 2023 01:01:11 -0700

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. I’m really rusty in C compared to my college days, but improving my C skills and learning about programming languages has been quite an enjoyable experience, regardless. It’s neat to see real applications for some of the topics covered in automata class.

Some Site Updates

Wed, 17 May 2023 15:36:03 -0700

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. My custom-built site generator is a project I’d like to revisit in the future, but for now ease of use takes priority.

I Bought a Thinkpad

Wed, 22 Mar 2023 18:09:19 -0700

Specifically, 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. When I removed the back panel, I found that the plastic towards the front that the screws go into was broken, as if someone had just ripped the thing open with the screws still in there. One screw’s plastic is completely gone, but the other two are there, loosely hanging around, which is annoying, but some super glue should fix that right up. Assuming the laptop works once all my parts come in, I can’t be too mad over a $140 laptop.

I'm bad at taking breaks

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 14:43:03 -0700

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

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 16:23:00 -0700

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! However, short-form video scares me as a social media format because of how addicting it is. TikTok’s algorithm in particular is so good at showing you what you want to see that you can’t help but scroll. It got to the point where I was reaching for my phone and scrolling TikTok every time I had a free minute. On my worst days, this would sometimes last hours. Just scrolling. Filling up my brain with content of dubious quality and intentions. TikTok is also experiencing a rise in Internet discourse and outrage culture on the platform. Due to the short virality cycle of content on TikTok, it seems to be speedrunning the same discourse Tumblr did a decade ago. It’s exhausting. I’m tired of all interaction online being subject “discourse”. I’m tired of hot takes. I’m tired of hearing the unwanted opinion of every random online.

Rest in peace, Kazuki Takahashi

Sat, 09 Jul 2022 00:43:19 -0700

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

Sun, 22 May 2022 23:24:06 -0700

I’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. I decided to start with Jellyfin because I have been starting to manage my own music library locally again, to supplement my usage of Spotify. Jellyfin was attractive because it solves a long-time gripe I’ve had with Spotify: management of local media files is absolute shit.

End of the iPod

Fri, 13 May 2022 23:19:33 -0700

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. It was also before mobile games were basically only freemium-only, with a lot of high quality games for only $0.99. It’s strange how different the internet and mobile tech was only 10 years ago, it certainly didn’t turn out how I expected.

Missing the Recent Past

Sun, 01 May 2022 14:27:55 -0700

This year will mark two years since I graduated college. Despite graduation feeling like the resolution following the climax of the movie with the bad guy defeated and the cast living happily ever after, time continued to move forward.

While in college, I studied Japanese to fulfill my degree’s language requirements. In my Japanese 101 class I met a few classmates who were as weirded out as I was by the general clownery that some of the other students engaged in, and we started studying together. Over the next two semesters, we met up to study (by which I mean not doing that) almost every day and became quite close.

A Post About Nothing

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 22:18:26 -0700

My favorite thing to do is nothing. Just sitting idle, observing the environment (or more likely, my apartment wall). It’s fun. I just get to think. Like David Puddy on a 16 hour flight. The world requires constant attention these days, so don’t forget to take a break.

Elon Musk's Twitter

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 00:00:08 -0700

So that’s it. Twitter reached a deal with Elon Musk. There’s not much to say that hasn’t already been said. I want to believe Musk will make improvements, but I think whatever improvements he makes will please the wrong crowd of people. Twitter has a monopoly on the type of platform it provides, which puts him in a unique position of power, especially with all the fuss US lawmakers have been making about free speech on Twitter and elsewhere online.

Welcome

Sun, 24 Apr 2022 23:08:00 -0700

Welcome to my new site! This project was born out of stumbling upon the Yesterweb community and my need to split off my “““professional””” real-name website from my personal, hobby-oriented one. It is still very much under construction (probably perpetually) but I wanted to get something online.

This website is built in Go and exists as a single binary on my webserver, inspired by Jes Olson’s post my website is one binary. I thought it was a super cool idea so I implemented a version myself. The code will also soon power my real-name site!