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XCOM2 has its Moments of Fun

XCOM and Civilization: They’re Okay I recently picked up the XCOM 2 Collection for the Nintendo Switch. I was lucky to catch it on sale at a discount of 85%. I just completed a playthrough of the base game. The collection also includes the expansion “War of the Chosen”, but I didn’t want to dive into too much content at [...]

Posted at May 14, 2023 | read more

Netflix's 1899 is Fascinating

Netflix’s “1899” comes from the same creators as “Dark”. I’d watched “Dark” a few years ago; watching the first two seasons in 2019, and then its final third season some time later. It’s very much a case of “if you like one, you’ll like the other”.
With “1899”, I definitely enjoyed it enough to binge my way through it. [...]

Posted at May 9, 2023 | read more

I Played Star Wars Republic Commando on the Nintendo Switch

I had played “Star Wars: Republic Commando” years ago on the PC. It’s a first person shooter game, and its setting is very cool: Star Wars, but from a grittier perspective of the soldiers fighting in the Clone Wars, rather than the more operatic stories of Jedi space-wizarding their way around the galaxy. Although it did release on the PC, [...]

Posted at May 6, 2023 | read more

Capsword is a Neat Keyboard Feature

QMK is a framework for customising how your keyboard functions. One of its relatively new features is “Caps Word”. Roughly, it’s “like caps lock, but only for one word”. This is quite useful for programmers, since writing program code often involves writing stuff like const THE_CONST = "some value";. – So, it’s as if shift is pressed for any letter [...]

Posted at May 4, 2023 | read more

Review of Apple Pencil for Note Taking

I recently purchased the Apple Pencil. There is a more recent “2nd Generation” Apple Pencil, but the iPad I have is old enough that it doesn’t support that “2nd Generation”. Overall, it’s been a useful thing to have, I like using it, but it’s also probably not worth the cost. I have found it useful. Before having an Apple Pencil, [...]

Posted at March 5, 2023 | read more

Disco Elysium

One Beautiful Moment from the Game I’d only really call something a “spoiler” if it ruins enjoyment from watching the story. e.g. The classic show “Columbo” is re-watchable, and we always know that Columbo will bumble around and annoy the villian in all sorts of homely ways, and ask “just one more thing”.. but it ruins the suspense if you [...]

Posted at January 19, 2023 | read more

Post Factorio Playthrough Ramble

Okay, so maybe Factorio is “hyper-engaging”. After playing through the game a bit on the Nintendo Switch, I decided that I’d go back and play the game in order to complete a few more of the game’s achievements. So I went to load my savegame from when I’d completed a game on peaceful, only to discover that this savegame was [...]

Posted at December 27, 2022 | read more

Factorio on the Switch Still Scratches the Itch

Factorio is a game which is widely regarded as addictingly fun to play. The ostensible goal of the game is to assemble & launch a rocket ship. The start of the game is reasonably familiar: you control a character, mine some ores from resource deposits, and then use these resources to assemble tools or whatever item you need. (e.g. you’ll [...]

Posted at December 11, 2022 | read more

The CapsLock Key was not the Problem

It’s fashionable among developers to give a tip about the CapsLock key: you can switch out its functionality, replacing it with the Escape key. When I did this, in order to then type out something like SEQUENCE_OF_UPPERCASE_WORDS, I’d hold down the shift key using my left pinky finger, and type out the letters as necessary.
– And if you [...]

Posted at October 28, 2022 | read more

The just Command Runner is an Neat Tool

I came across the tool just. It’s a tool for running commands/scripts. My initial impression was “that’s it?”. I might describe it slightly differently, compared to other common workflows: It’s common to see make used with a bunch of .PHONY: targets. The point of a make is to describe how some target is built. But since people will often want [...]

Posted at October 17, 2022 | read more