I made some portraits of Scarlett. I used the same setup as when I did Sam and Stella’s November portraits, except with the octobox on the left this time.
Author Archives: Eric Mesa
How Desktop Environment Tweaking Helps Me Be More Productive
A few months ago, someone asked about whether the rices*/modifications/tweaks people displayed on reddit.com/r/unixporn (where people show off their desktops, not human pornography) were actually useful. Someone commented they’d like to see a post on how someone uses their mods. So I decided to write this up. *I know the term ricing could be considered […]
One tiny hitch with the Fedora 33 upgrade
It messed with DNS resolution for my local network, at least temporarily. I couldn’t resolve any websites that needed to hit our local DNS server. I did some Googling and saw that the resolver tech was changed from Fedora 32 to Fedora 33. I change a setting for my NIC and then changed it back […]
Upgrading Supermario to Fedora 33
While new versions of Fedora have been pretty darned stable for a few years now, I usually wait a while after a release to upgrade. This year waiting ended up turning into just leaving it alone. But with February half-way done, we’re actually starting to get kind of close to the Fedora 34 release date. […]
Vivaldi Part 4, Brave Part 2, Qutebrowser Part 1
This post continues a series on exploring new browsers: Are Web Browsers getting exciting again? Vivaldi Part 1 Vivaldi Part 2 Vivaldi Part 3 Brave on Windows Part 1 Vivaldi vs Brave on Windows Brave didn’t last very long for me on Windows. I just don’t do enough on there to make use of their […]
Five Iron Frenzy – Until This Shakes Apart
Over its long tenure as a band, Five Iron Frenzy has had some really silly songs. Songs like “Arnold, Willis, and Mr. Drummond”, “Oh, Canada”, “Blue Comb ‘78”, “The Untimely Death of Brad”, “Where is Micah?”, and many others. But they’ve also always been a really political band. On their first album, Upbeats and Beatdowns, […]
Programming in the first two weeks of 2021
It’s been a pretty busy 2 weeks. I’ve basically either been finishing up end of year blog posts or programming. Let’s jump in! Extra Life Donation Tracker I have the 5.3 release of my Extra Life Donation Tracker. I had a few minor refactoring goals for that release, but also a few user-facing enhancements. I […]
Software I used for Programming in 2020
I last wrote about the software I’m using while programming back in March. I think at the time I was thinking of writing quarterly updates, but my preferences didn’t change with that much regularity. I decided to make it one of my annual posts instead. So here is the software I used in 2020 to […]
2020 Video Games and 2020 Game of the Year
Because the pandemic left me at home for a couple months, this year I played about double the amount of games from my previous record. You can watch the video below or read the text below that to find out what I thought of the games I played this year and which game I named […]
My Programming Projects and Progress in 2020
Back in 2019, when I did my programming retrospective I made a few predictions. How did those go? Work on my Extra Life Donation Tracker? Yup! See below! Write more C++ thanks to Arduino? Not so much. C# thanks to Unity? Yes, but not in the way I thought. I only did minor work on […]
The Right Programming Language can make a big difference
Recently I came across this video where a programmer solves the same problem in 6 different programming languages: What’s incredibly beautiful are the Haskell and APL solutions. Whereas every other language requires multiple lines, Haskell solves the problem in just one line. And APL is just a few symbols. Here’s the same guy solving a […]
2020 in Books
This year continued last year’s trend of Sequels, Sanderson, and Science Fiction Magazines. Every series I mentioned last year was a series I continued reading this year – The Expanse, The Asylum Tales, Red Rising, The Dresden Files, The Mogoliad, Wild Cards, and the Illumination Paradox. (The only exception was Red Rising – I’m done […]
2020 in Music (Last.FM and Spotify listening trends)
Thanks to COVID I missed out on the concert where I was going to see Paul and Storm and Jonathan Coulton. Compared to last year, I also barely bought any music. This year I switched from using Ampache to listen to my music at work, to using Funkwhale. The more responsive interface has led to […]
Review: Twinmaker
Twinmaker by Sean Williams My rating: 4 of 5 stars When I started out with this book, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it. It seemed to lean a bit heavily on the young adult plot with the love triangle aspect and the whole wanting to be Internet famous subplot. But it […]
Review: Firefight
Firefight by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 4 of 5 stars I enjoyed this entry to the trilogy more than the first book. I think it might have to do with the fact that most of the world-building took place already. Or maybe it’s because it’s essentially just focused on one mission, giving that mission more […]