This is an update post for the Mini PC build promised earlier in this post

I have had some question on “why” so I thought I would give some of the motivation for the Mini ITX form factor and it really boils to this:

Motivations

1. I have always wanted to build a smaller form factor PC.
2. I have never needed to use all the ports on my previous gaming PC builds.
3. More lightweight and portable. It fits on my desk better.
4. The price/performance was right (at least for the mobo/cpu)

Sourcing Parts (Shopping)

I ordered almost all the parts for this build off of Amazon. There are not any good PC part retailers around my area and most of the things that I bought had some kind of sale - which doesn’t really amount to much savings these days.

A few days ago, in an kind of curious mood, I decided it would be a good time to give Emacs (and key-binds) another try for no reason in particular. I already use the readline key-binds in the shell, so I’m almost like half-way there or something, right?

Previous Attempt Using Vanilla Emacs

I had tried using vanilla Emacs before and the defaults were just bad enough to keep me away.

Hello, it is me again. Here today talking about getting repos off of GitHub and taking them elsewhere.

Any one of the great alternatives that exist out there like {GitLab, Gitea, Gogs, Bitbucket}.

In my particular case - I am messing around with self-hosting a Gitea instance, so that will be the focus here.

Setup

First thing, we will need to get access to the GitHub cli tool gh.

• Install it
• Authorize with gh auth login

and you are off to the races.

It has been some time since posting and that is mostly because I have fallen out of the habit of writing (again), but I have been 10000% addicted to Balatro which is the only habit you realllly need to cope with the current state of the world. (Let me know if you need any tips to get to gold stake)

I am excited to say – as of this post :D – that this is no longer the case.

Hello, I am back again sharing a mostly useless, but very pretty and awesome CLI program called cbonsai

Repo is here: https://gitlab.com/jallbrit/cbonsai

It can be installed (on Mac) using

brew install cbonsai

This is the result:

You can also use it in screensaver mode cbonsai -S where you can see the trees being continuously generated live.

Really cool and oddly satisfying.

It is well known that programmers enjoy trees, but this takes it to a whole other level.

I feel like it is time to make a new post here and write a little bit.

There have been lots of life changes recently so maybe I will write more later.

I have some things planned for the rest of this year, hopefully lots will come to fruition.

I have recently bought a Valve Index Kit and have been enjoying VR - playing through Half-Life Alyx currently. I have to admit it is bringing me back into gaming.

Today marks a special milestone for me - my one-year anniversary as a Data Center Technician at Google! As I reflect on the past year, I am filled with immense gratitude for the incredible journey it’s been.

This experience has been far more than just a job; it’s been a chance to learn, grow, and contribute to something truly meaningful.

Sure, it is not all kittens and rainbows. There are many things that could use improvement, more in fact than I can give thoughtful feedback on - but I do my best. That’s why we have team(s) though and as I learn more about how Google works, I am also filled with a sense of community and comradery with the people that I work with everyday.

Setting Up Traefik Reverse Proxy

Traefik is a reverse proxy program often used with docker to route web requests to different services on the backend.

It also has some really handy features like automatic HTTPS certs and a configuration syntax based on labels that makes it relatively easy to add to existing docker-compose files or even Docker Swarm and Kubernetes.

Be sure to look at the docs to get a better overview.

Self-Hosting a Minecraft server

This is going to be quick rundown on running Minecraft as a docker container.

Prequisite

• A computer with docker and docker-compose installed

The minecraft docker image we are using is itzj/minecraft-server

The compose file

Paste the following into a docker-compose.yml

version: "3"

services:
  minecraft-server:
    image: itzg/minecraft-server
    container_name: my-mc-server
    ports:
      - 25565:25565
    environment:
      EULA: "TRUE"
    tty: true
    stdin_open: true
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./minecraft_data:/data

After you have that file - run docker-compose up -d to run the services in this compose file.

Keyboards, keyboards, keyboards

I love keyboards. As a hobby, as a peripheral and as a history and culture, these things are all really cool to me. There is just something magic about having an input device with so many buttons, configurations and arrangements. So many different typing experiences and ways to customize as well.

I have been wanting to get back into linear switches, as I have almost exclusively used tactile for the last couple years and have been really wanting to get switches that are both lighter quieter.