Blogs are portals to the past
Thursday, August 21, 2025 • 3 min read
classicweb@indieweb.social posted a screenshot of Kottke.org from all the way back in 2001 and it led me down a delightful little rabbit hole of old blog posts this morning.
Notes
More on KYC-walling the internet
Tuesday, August 19, 2025 • 2 min read
I understand the issue of wanting to protect kids online. When I was a kid, I saw a lot of gnarly shit I never should’ve seen on the internet. Most of my generation and every one after it probably has. There were also a lot of other terrible things I witnessed and experienced at a young age, and most of it had nothing to do with the internet.
I vibe coded a bookmarklet to hide your own traffic on Umami
Sunday, August 17, 2025 • 1 min read
I’ve been using Umami for a lightweight, self-hosted analytics solution on my blog. There’s a built in way to hide your own traffic by IP address, but I use Private Relay on my phone, and a VPN sometimes on my laptop, so I wanted to find a way to hide my own visits to my blog that’ll work across device/browser/network. If you’re on desktop, per the official documentation, you can run this command from the JavaScript console:
Finally picked up Tears of the Kingdom
Friday, August 15, 2025 • 1 min read
I feel like they could’ve changed Link’s outfit and marketed this as MacGyver: Escape from the Sky Islands. I feel like a tweaker, running through the countryside, duct taping things together to find a way across rivers and down ziplines. Not loving it so far; it feels like pre-Industrial Revolution Fortnite mixed with the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater level editor. But I paid $70 for this game so I have to finish it, dammit.
More on my love hate relationship with bread
Sunday, August 10, 2025 • 3 min read
I’ve never been on a diet in my entire life — until now. Unless you count when I was a junkie, living on dope and gas station food, but that wasn’t quite as intentional.
Foundation of society (anxiety)
Sunday, August 10, 2025 • 1 min read
For someone who works in an old school, face to face sales job, and as someone who blogs daily, I’m pretty shy. I started working with the public because I thought it would help with social anxiety. And it has in a lot of ways. Getting a bunch of reps in can make you good at pretty much anything. It gets easier, but the critic in my head never leaves. He just gets easier to ignore.
Why I stopped copy-pasting myself online
Friday, August 8, 2025 • 3 min read
Thinking out loud about POSSE vs different platforms for different things.
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound mini review
Tuesday, August 5, 2025 • 2 min read
I’ve been having a lot of fun with Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound since it launched about a week ago. For $25, this is a killer Metroidvania adjacent game. Super fluid and responsive controls. One thing that added to the difficulty on older games in the series was that classic, infuriatingly calculated movement. Every step and every swing of your sword had to be completely intentional or you’d get put in your place before you even have time to blink.
The web is my favorite OS
Friday, August 1, 2025 • 4 min read
I like progressive web apps. They feel like this alternate reality between how smartphones evolved, and how they could’ve evolved. Looking at you, Firefox Phone (RIP).
Can you hear me now?
Monday, July 28, 2025 • 2 min read
We had a gnarly thunderstorm roll through Columbus yesterday and, I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure lightning struck one of the 5G towers behind where I work.
Liquid Glass reminds me so much of the HTC Sense UI from the old days of Android. Another way it just feels so nostalgic.
Update: I guess it reminds me a little bit of the older versions of iOS too 😅 didn’t dawn on me because I only used Android back then.
It’s like the full on UI version of when Microsoft upgraded the Windows XP Bliss wallpaper to 4k.
The sketchy world of psychoactive hemp products
Tuesday, July 15, 2025 • 4 min read
I just read an article on The Guardian about how the author traded their alcohol habit for THC seltzers.
My keto rebellion against 'COVID weight'
Monday, July 14, 2025 • 2 min read
I’ve gained about 70lbs since the start of COVID. Clearly it’s just a little healthy weight gain due to being locked inside for a couple weeks five years ago, right?
Digg.com closed beta rolled out today! The TestFlight and Android alpha came out a few weeks back, it’s nice to have a full on web version now, too.
From the announcement post:
While today’s launch means access for Groundbreakers, in the coming weeks, each of you will be receiving invites to bring new users onto Digg. We’ve made the decision for an invite-based rollout to ensure that the community’s growth is intentional and gives you the ability to curate who gets let into the door at this stage of the product lifecycle.
Awesome that Groundbreakers get some invites to send out. I’ll make a post when I get mine, if anyone want’s one let me know!
You’ll all be doing it tomorrow
Wednesday, July 2, 2025 • 4 min read
I used to watch a lot of Rick and Morty. One of my all-time favorite episodes is the one where a bunch of parasitic aliens get loose from Rick’s lab and he has to quarantine the house so they can’t escape and wreak havoc on the rest of the world.
It would’ve been a shitshow for humanity, because the aliens could shape-shift and insert false memories of themselves into your mind, so you’d never suspect a thing.
One of the most memorable of all these zany characters was Sleepy Gary.
Some notes on piracy
Thursday, June 26, 2025 • 3 min read
I liked this video. He talks about how Gen Z grew up in a world where no one actually owns anything. From a Kindle library to music, movies/TV shows and even video games, we don’t really own our media anymore. I have exactly four physical games for my Switch and I think two or three for the PS 4. The rest, adding up to a sickening amount of money, are all digital copies that I’m not guaranteed access to forever.
ROM hacks I'm playing this week
Tuesday, June 24, 2025 • 3 min read
Remember when the internet was still new, and you could spend hours digging through random websites, stumbling on weird little corners full of esoteric info you couldn’t find anywhere else?
Lately, that’s what RomHacking.net has felt like for me. There are tons of mods and hacks that breathe new life into classic console games we’ve all played a million times. I’ve been on an absolute rampage—patching ROMs and loading them onto my Anbernic SP clone nonstop these past few weeks. Here are a few standouts I’ve been hooked on lately.
Really good interview with Kevin Rose on the Digg revamp and making the web more human. Honestly I feel some social web vibes here… Like it’s not really indie I guess but anything to humanize the web is a win for me.
Most of us are here because we’re sick of what social media has turned into over the last couple of decades. A lot of us only ended up on Reddit because Digg went away.
With AI slop taking over more of the web every day, it’s good to know some of the big names in tech are working to preserve a little bit of that old school community vibe from back in the day.
Skip some of the upgrades
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 • 3 min read
If you read this blog, you know I’m going through an obsession with retro gaming right now. If you’re on the indie web, you’re probably a fan of old tech like RSS. There are plenty of algorithm-driven, much newer, much more high tech alternatives, but RSS is so simple and yet powerful.
Pico 8 demakes you can play in your browser
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 • 2 min read
I’m still on my Pico 8 kick. It kills me how many hilarious demakes there are for this little fantasy console. You can play all of these right in your browser – you even get touchscreen controls if you’re on a phone or tablet but certain ones like Linecraft and Pico Zombie Garden aren’t really playable without a mouse.
Arachnophobia warning: pink toe tarantula smacks a couple of crickets
Monday, June 9, 2025 • 1 min read
This is a video of my pink toe tarantula, Alucard, going after two crickets. At first I thought he came in too hot and just missed both of them, gave up and went back to his web to sulk. Then I came back a few minutes later and one of the crickets made its way to the ceiling of the enclosure and started twisting and contorting for a while until he ended up all sprawled out and paralyzed.
The secret to actually enjoying Castlevania III
Saturday, June 7, 2025 • 4 min read
Once I finished Blasphemous 2 on the Switch, it was clear that I was smack in the middle of a brand new addiction. An addiction with no real side effects, aside from blind rage when things seem impossible. And the only withdrawal symptoms are intense cravings when I’m busy with meaningless, repetitive every day tasks like holding down a job.
New handheld console, why I love emulators
Friday, June 6, 2025 • 4 min read
Ever since I picked up my R36S handheld a few months ago, I’ve been obsessed with these Chinese emulator consoles. They’re tiny Linux computers that can run anything from the Atari 2600 up to Nintendo DS and even ports of more modern PC games like Stardew Valley.
PICO-8 - The tiny fantasy console that runs on .PNGs
Monday, May 19, 2025 • 3 min read
Retro games are my jam. Anything with at least 8 bits, a sword, and a dungeon to escape can usually keep me occupied for hours days. Lately, I’ve been going through a Metroidvania kick on the Switch, but yesterday I started playing with my R36S handheld for the first time in a few weeks when I discovered something I never saw coming…
Blogging for the future
Friday, May 16, 2025 • 1 min read
I was surfing different streaming apps last night when I realized Peacock has the entire backlog of Saturday Night Live available to watch. My favorites were always the 90’s stuff, so I started with one that Tom Hanks hosted back in 1992, just a few weeks after the Rodney King riots. George H-Dubya was still president but Ross Perot and Bill Clinton were campaigning hard right before the elections that November.
I'm a n00b
Tuesday, May 13, 2025 • 2 min read
As someone who is obsessed with super punishing Metroidvanias, I have an embarrassing confession to make.
Digg.com Groundbreakers!
Thursday, April 10, 2025 • 2 min read
Finally just got invited to the new Digg.com “Groundbreakers” group!
I was so stoked when Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht did the reunion show for Diggnation last year. That was wild enough for me; I never thought I’d see the day. They joked about buying back Digg.com and making it an actual social network again but I never thought anything would come of it.
Have you tried Quiche?
Saturday, April 5, 2025 • 3 min read
I haven’t had a whole lot of luck finding browsers I like on iPhone. It feels like every single third party browser is just a custom built version of Safari with a new skin and a few new features duct taped on.
That stripper thinks you're a real catch...
Thursday, April 3, 2025 • 1 min read
The thing that kills me about middle and lower middle class MAGA people is that it’s literally no different than thinking they’re the one guy who the stripper really fell head over heels for while they were throwing handfuls of $5’s at her.
My latest Metroidvania obsession
Tuesday, April 1, 2025 • 1 min read
I really need to start paying attention to the devs behind the games I play. I started Sea of Stars, from Sabotage Studio, a while back and it’s one of the best classic style RPGs I’ve ever played. Then I got kinda sidetracked and found a new obsession with Metroidvanias like Blasphemous and Aggelos for a while. I kept thinking man, Sea of Stars has such great artwork and mechanics, I wish these guys would make a Metroidvania.