This weekend, I have been entrenched in the Arc Raiders “Server Slam” playtest.

After sinking some hours in Arc Raiders this weekend with some friends, I can see the why this genre of game (extraction shooter) are so good / addictive.

Here’s some initial thoughts:

Gameplay

The looting mechanics, shooting, upgrading and crafting are really satisfying. The guns are really unique and feel balanced. If you have to use the “free loadout” due to not having any materials to craft or buy a weapon - it does not feel like a huge deal. Each decision to stay or continue looting feels like it should – a gamble to get more loot vs returning safely to the elevator with what’s in your backpack.

Nobara Linux is a Fedora based Linux distribution by Glorious Eggroll.

This summary from the website is pretty good

The Nobara Project, to put it simply, is a modified version of Fedora Linux with user-friendly fixes added to it.

What fixes specifically?

This project aims to fix most of those issues and offer a better gaming, streaming, and content creation experience out of the box. More importantly, we want to be more point and click friendly, and avoid the basic user from having to open the terminal. It’s not that the terminal and/or terminal usage are a bad thing by any means, power users are more than welcome to continue with using the terminal, but for new users, point and click ease of use is usually expected.

Read More…

I remember when I initially tried Neovim a few years ago, I was mostly focused on rewriting my existing Vim configuration from Vimscript to Lua.

I ended up splitting parts of my config up into separate folders and lua files.

I separated my user configurations from plugin configuration like this:

~/.config/nvim/lua/
├── config
│   ├── keymaps.lua
│   ├── lazy.lua
│   ├── local.lua
│   ├── platform_specific.lua
│   └── settings.lua
└── plugin-config
    ├── cmp.lua
    ├── colorscheme.lua
    ├── fzf.lua
    ├── gitsigns.lua
    ├── init.lua
    ├── lsp.lua
    ├── nvim-treesitter.lua
    ├── oil.lua
    └── vim-fugitive.lua

3 directories, 14 files

• The files in config/ are required from my init.lua
• plugin-config/init.lua is required from my init.lua
• The files in plugin-config/ are required from plugin-config/init.lua

Overall, this is a much cleaner way than a single file that is 100 or possibly 1000s of lines long. It also ensures each plugin has its own configuration file, which I really prefer.

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.