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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Using NixOS Specialisations to Try Out Different Desktop Environments
Recently, Tweag’s blog featured a post on NixOS specialisations. It allows for having an additional boot entry in grub which loads a slightly different configuration. – This makes it very convenient to try slightly different NixOS configurations. As the blogpost above shows, this can be used for different desktop environments. I ran into some problems with conflicting attributes, and wasn’t [...]
Git Worktrees a Neat Command for Working with Multiple Versions of a Repo
git-worktree has apparently been in git for some time, but I’ve only recently learned of it. It lets you conveniently check out multiple versions of a repository at once. Which may sound only marginally useful; but I find the benefit to be better than it sounds. (e.g. Without the worktree command, perhaps the easiest way to imitate it would be [...]
Signal Boost drduh's Yubikey Guide
https://github.com/drduh/YubiKey-Guide I recently set up my Yubikeys so that I could use the key to hold the private keys I use with git. I spent a bunch of time reading through various guides discussing how to set up a master key with an offline backup, and how to put this on a GPG smartcard. Drduh’s guide above is the best [...]
Travel Setup Using a Fancy Keyboard with a Laptop
One of the downsides to using a fancy keyboard is that it’s difficult to use when out and about with a laptop. This is arguably mitigated by that laptops themselves have a keyboard. I like my small, fancy keyboard much more than the laptop keyboard, though. (My thumbs get access to 2-3 keys each on my fancy keyboard, etc.). Here’s [...]
A Visual Explanation of GPG Subkeys
As with anyone who’s been using git for long enough, I’m familiar enough with SSH keys (Even to the point where I don’t really need to follow the GitHub docs for generating a new key). My developer journey hasn’t led me to build the same intuition for GPG keys. So, when I see fancy wiki pages and guids, such as [...]
EPA in Emacs is a Neat UX on top of GPG
GPG is notorious for having an archane interface which is easy to misuse. As a developer, the most I’ve used it for has been to sign git commits. Emacs supports a workflow which uses GPG to automatically decrypt the file when reading it, and automatically encrypt the file when saving it. With the Doom Emacs distribution of Emacs, if the [...]
Tool Recommendation: Helix Editor
The Helix editor is a fancy new text editor which looks to be a compelling competitor to vim for modern developer environments. Currently, my preferred editing environment is Emacs, making use of the Doom Emacs distribution. Before that, I was using vim (and its cousin, neovim). And I still use neovim for editing files from the command line. But, I’d [...]