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title: 30/04/2016
date: 2016-04-30
---
#### DD/MM/YYYY -- a monthly check-in
A lot has happened this month. From NodeMC v5 and v6 to
a new website redesign to a plethora of new project ideas, May is going
to be a much busier month, so I think I should check-in.
NodeMC, one of my most beloved projects thus far, has been going far
better than I could have ever imagined, with more than 30 unique cloners
in the past 30 days and about 300 unique visitors, those have far
outpaced my other projects. And to top it, off, 13 lovely stars. Version
1.5.0 (aka v5) [recently launched with plugin
support](https://nodemc.space/blog/3), and has been a monumental release for me in terms of
what it has taught me and what the contributors and I have achieved. A
big hats-off to [md678685](https://twitter.com/md678685) for helping with the plugin system and other fixes
within in the release. NodeMC v6, however, is going to be even bigger.
[Jared Allard](https://jaredallard.me/) of nexe fame (among other projects) has taken
interest in the project and has rewritten the bulk of it using ES6
standards, which both md678685 and I have been learning, and has
recently decided to rewrite the stock dashboard using the React
framework. I could not be happier working with him on v6.
On a smaller note, [my personal website](http://gabrielsimmer.com)
has had a bit of a facelift. I decided to do so after months of using a
free HTML5 template that really did not offer a whole lot of room to
customize. My new site allows me to add pretty much an unlimited number
of projects and other information as I see fit. It's built using my
favorite CSS framework [Skeleton](http://getskeleton.com/),
which I will forever see as superior to Bootstrap, despite not being
updated in more than a year (I may have some free time to fork it), and
using a nice font called [Elusive Icons](http://elusiveicons.com/) for
the small icons. I'm throwing the source up on GitHub as I type this
post ([it's up!](https://github.com/gmemstr/GabrielSimmer.com)).
I have a lot of projects in my head. Too many to count or even write
down. It's going to be a crazy few months as some of my more long-term
projects (some of them mine, others I'm just working on) are realized
and launched. I really don't want to say much, but I know that several
online communities, namely the Minecraft and GitHub communities, will be
very excited when I am able to talk more freely on what I have coming
up.
_*Okay, maybe I'll tease one thing -- I recently bought the YourCI.space domain, which I am not just partking!*_
Just a quick heads up as well, everyone should go check out [Software Engineering Daily](http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/). I am going to be on the show later next month, but I recommend you subscribe to that wonderful podcast regardless. I will be sure to link the specific episode when it comes out over on [my Twitter](https://twitter.com/gmemstr)
> "If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like
> sunbeams and you will always look lovely." -- Roald Dahl

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title: A bit about batch
date: 2016-01-21
---
#### Or: why there is no NodeMC installer
Can we just agree on something -- Batch scripting is
terrible and should go die in a fiery pit where all the other Windows
software goes? I don't think I can name any useful features of batch
scripting besides text-based (and frankly pointless) DOS-like games. It
sucks.
I recently tried to port the NodeMC install script from Linux (bash) to
Windows (batch), and while it seemed possible, the simple tasks of
downloading a file, unzipping it, and moving some others around, it
proved to be utterly impossible.
_A quick note before I proceed -- Yes, I realize something like a custom built installer in a more traditional language would have been possible, however I wanted to see what I could do without it. Also I'm lazy._
First and foremost, there is no native way to download files properly.
Most Linux distros ship with cURL or wget (or are installed fairly early
on), which are both great options for downloading and saving files from
the internet. On Windows, it is suggested
[BITS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_Intelligent_Transfer_Service) could do the job. However, on execution, it simply
*does not work*. I got complaints from Windows about how it didn't want
to do the thing. *Fine*. Let's move on to the other infuriating thing.
Stock Windows has the ability to unzip files just file. So why the hell
can I not call that from batch? There is no reason I shouldn't be able
to. But alas, it cannot be done, [at least not
easily](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21704041/creating-batch-script-to-unzip-a-file-without-additional-zip-tools) \*grumble grumble\*
In conclusion: Batch is useless. It should be eradicated and replaced
with something useful. Because as of now it has very little if any
redeeming qualities that make me want to use it.

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title: A Post A Day...
date: 2015-10-28
---
#### Keeps the psychiatrist away.
I'm trying to keep up with my streak of a post every day on Medium,
mostly because I've found it really fun to write. I think Wednesdays
will become a sort of 'weekly check-in', going over what I have done and
what there is yet to do.
So, what have I accomplished this week?
- Created a link shortner.
- Made the staff page for Creator Studios.
- Started updating [my homepage](http://gabrielsimmer.com)
- Fixed an issue with Moat-JS (pushing out soon).
- Removed mc.gabrielsimmer.com and all the deprecated projects.
- Moved to Atom for development.
And what do I hope to accomplish?
- Fix my link shortner.
- Work on the video submission page for Creator Studios.
- Whatever else needs doing.
- Complete my week-long streak of Medium posts.
It's hard to list what I want to accomplish because things just come up
that I have no control over. But nonetheless, I will report back next
Wednesday.
Happy coding!

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title: AJAX Is Cool
date: 2015-11-07
---
#### Loading content has never been smoother
I started web development (proper web development anyways) using pretty much only PHP and HTML -- I didn't touch JavaScript at all, and CSS was usually handled by Bootstrap. I always thought I was doing it wrong, but I usually concluded the same thing every time.
> "JavaScript is too complex. I'll stick with PHP."
Only recently have I been getting into JavaScript, and surprisingly have
been enjoying it. I've been using mainly AJAX and jQuery for GET/POST
requests for loading and displaying content, which I do realize is *just
barely* scratching the surface of what it can do, but it's super useful
because I can do things such as displaying a loading animation while it
fetches the data or provide nearly on-the-fly updating of a page's
content (I am working on updating ServMineUp to incorporate AJAX for
this reason). I'm absolutely loving my time with it, and I hope I'll be
able to post more little snippets of code like I did for
[HoverZoom.js](/posts/hoverzoom-js). Meanwhile, I encourage everyone to try their hand at AJAX & JavaScript. It's powerful and amazing.
#### Useful Resources
[jQuery API](http://api.jquery.com/)
[JavaScript on Codecademy](https://www.codecademy.com/learn/javascript)
[JavaScript docs on MDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript)

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title: An API A Day
date: 2016-07-11
---
#### Keeps... other productivity away?
[Update: GitHub org is available here with more info & rules.](https://github.com/apiaday)
I've been in a bit of a slump lately, NodeMC hasn't
been as inspiring and development has been a bit slow, other projects
are on hold as I wait for third parties, so I haven't really been
working on much development wise.
#### So I can up with a challenge: **An API A Day**.
The premise is simple -- Every day, I pick a new API to build an
application with from [this list](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/3wrswc/what_are_some_fun_apis_to_play_with/) (from reddit). From the time I start I have the rest
of the day to build a fully-functional prototype, bugs allowed but core
functionality must be there. And it can't just be a "display all the
data" type app, it has to be interactive in some form.
An example of this is [Artdio](http://gmem.pw/artdio), which was the inspiration for this challenge. I
built the page in about 3 hours using SoundCloud's JavaScript API
wrapper, just as a little "how does this work" sort of challenge.
So how is this going to be organised?
I'm going to create a GitHub organization that will house the different
challenges as separate repositories. To contribute, all you'll need to
do is fork the specific day / API, copy your project into it's own
folder (named YOURPROJECTNAME-YOURUSERNAME), then create a pull request
to the main repository. I don't know the specific order I personally
will be going through these APIs, so chances are I will bulk-create
repositories so you can jump around at your own pace, or you can request
a specific repository be created.
If you have any questions or need something cleared up, feel free to
[tweet at me :)](https://twitter.com/gmem_)

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title: Building a Large-Scale Server Monitor
date: 2017-01-24
---
#### Some insight into the development of [Platypus](https://github.com/ggservers/platypus)
If you've been around for a while, you may be aware I
work at [GGServers](https://ggservers.com) as a developer primarily focused on exploring new
areas of technology and computing. My most recent project has been
Platypus, a replacement to our very old status page
([here](https://status.ggservers.com/), yes we know it's down). Essentially, I had three
goals I needed to fulfil.
1. [Able to check whether a panel (what we refer to our servers as, for
they host the Multicraft panel) within our large network is offline.
This is by far the easiest part of the project, however
implementation and accuracy was a problem.]
2. [Be able to fetch server usage statistics from a custom script which
can be displayed on a webpage so we can accurately monitor which
servers are under or over utilised.]
3. [Build a Slack bot to post updates of downed panels into our panel
reporting channel.]
#### Some Rationale
![The plain-Jane HTML frontend, stats are static until scripts are deployed!](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/600/1*dn3zU7rRapONwU0XoV1Ylw.png)
*Why did you choose Python? Why not Node.js or even PHP (like our
current status page)?* Well, I wanted to learn Python, because it's a
language I never fully appreciated until I built tfbots.trade (which is
broken, I know, I haven't gotten around to fixing it). At that point, I
sort of fell in love with the language, the wonderful syntax and PEP8
formatting. Regardless of whether I loved it or not, it is also a hugely
important language in the world of development, so it's worth learning.
*Why do you use JSON for all the data?* I like JSON. It's easy to work
with, with solid standards and is very human readable.
#### Tackling Panel Scanning
[Full video](https://youtu.be/xAXT1mOFccM)
Right so the most logical way to see if a panel is down is to make a
request and see if it responds. So that's what I did. However there were
a few gotchas along the way.
First, sometimes our panels aren't actually **down**, but just take a
little bit to respond because of various things like CPU load, RAM
usage, etc., so I needed to determine a timeout value so that scanning
doesn't take too long (CloudFlare adds some latency between a client and
the actual "can't reach server" message). Originally, I had this set to
one second, thinking that even though my own internet isn't fast enough,
the VPS I deployed it to should have a fast enough network to reach
them. This turned out to not be true -- I eventually settled on 5
seconds, which is ample time for most panels to respond.
Originally I believed that just fetching the first page of the panel (in
our case, the login for Multicraft), would be effective enough.
Unfortunately what I did not consider is all the legwork the panel
itself has to do to render out that view (Multicraft is largely
PHP-based). But fortunately, the request doesn't really care about the
result it gets back (*yet*). So to make it easier, I told the script to
get whatever is in the /platy/ route. This of course makes it easier for
deployment of the stat scripts, but I'll get to those in a bit.
Caching the results of this scan is taken care of by my useful JSON
caching Python module, which I haven't forked off because I don't feel
it's very fleshed out. That said, I've used it in two of my handful of
Python projects (tfbots and Platypus) and it has come in very handy
([here's a gist of it](https://gist.github.com/gmemstr/78d7525b1397c35b7db6cfa858f766c0)). It handles writing and reading cache data with no
outside modules aside from those shipped with Python.
#### Stat Scripts
An integral part of a status page within a Minecraft hosting company is
being able to see the usage stats from our panels. I wrote two scripts
to help with this, one in Python and one in PHP, which both return the
same data. It wasn't completely necessary to write two versions, but I
was not sure which one would be favoured for deployment, and I figured
PHP was a safe bet because already we have PHP installed on our panels.
The Python script was a backup, or if others wanted to use Platypus but
without the kerfuffle of PHP.
The script(s) monitor three important usage statistics; CPU, RAM and
disk space. It returns this info as a JSON array, with no extra frills.
The Python script implements a minimal HTTP server to handle requests as
well, and only relies on the psutil module for getting stats.
![Script returns some basic info](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*Zm2es9y_7pmNlh7D675eNQ.png)
#### Perry the Platypus
Aka the Slack bot, which we have affectionately nicknamed. This was the
most simple part of the project to implement thanks to the
straightforward library Slack has for Python. Every hour, he/she/it
(gender undecided, let's not force gender roles people! /s) posts to our
panel report channel with a list of the downed panels. This is the part
most subject to change as well, because after a while it feel a lot like
a very annoying poke in the face every hour.
#### →Going Forward →
I am to continue to work on Platypus for a while; I am currently
implementing multiprocessing so that when it scans for downed panels,
the web server can still respond. I am having some funky issues with
that though, namely the fact Flask seems to be blocking the execution of
functions once it is started. I'm sure there's a fix, I just haven't
found it yet. I also want to make the frontend more functional -- I am
definitely implementing refreshing stats with as little JavaScript as
possible, and maybe making it slightly more compact and readable. As for
the backend, I feel like it's pretty much where it needs to be, although
it could be a touch faster.
Refactoring the code is also on my to do list, but that is for much,
much farther down the line.
I also need an adorable logo for the project.
![From slate.com](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*15v5v1q_81L1rTGV.jpg)

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title: DIY API Documentation
date: 2016-02-24
---
#### How difficult can writing my own API doc pages be?
I needed a good documentation solution for
[NodeMC](https://nodemc.space)'s
RESTful API. But alas, I could find no solutions that really met my
particular need. Most API documentation services I could find were
either aimed more towards web APIs, like Facebook's or the various API's
from Microsoft, very, very slow, or just far too expensive for what I
wanted to do (I'm looking at you,
[readme.io](http://readme.io)). So,
as I usually do, I decided to tackle this issue myself.
![The current docs!](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*-ojv-n3P9P3Tn_49VO0Iug.png)
I knew I wanted to use Markdown for writing the docs, so the first step
was to find a Markdown-to-HTML converter that I could easily automate
for a smoother workflow. After a bit of research, I came along
[Pandoc](http://pandoc.org/), a
converter that does pretty much everything I need, including adding in
CSS resources to the exported file. Excellent. There is also quite a few
integrations for several Markdown (or text) editors, but none for vsCode
so I didn't need to worry about those, choosing instead to use the \*nix
watch command to run my 'makefile' every second to build to HTML.
The next decision I had to make was what to use for CSS. I was very
tempted to use Bootstrap, which I have always used for pretty much all
of my projects that I needed a grid system for. However, instead, I
decided on the much more lightweight
[Skeleton](http://getskeleton.com/)
framework, which does pretty much everything I need to in a much smaller
package. Admittedly it's not as feature-packed as Bootstrap, but it does
the job for something that is designed to be mostly text for developers
who want to get around quickly. Plus, it's not too bad looking.
So the final piece of the puzzle was "how can I present the information
attractively?", which took a little bit more time to figure out. I
wanted to do something like what most traditional companies will do,
with a sidebar table of contents, headers, etc. The easiest way to do
this was a bit of custom HTML and a handy bit of Pandoc parameters, and
off to the races.
Now at this point you're probably wondering why I'm not just using
Jekyll, and the answer to that is... well, I just didn't. Honestly I
wanted to try to roll my own Jekyll-esque tool, which while slightly
less efficient still gets the job done.
So where can you see these docs in action? Well, you can view the
finished result over at
[docs.nodemc.space](http://docs.nodemc.space), and the source code for the docs (where you can make
suggestions as pull requests) is available on [my
GitHub](https://github.com/gmemstr/NodeMC-Docs), which I hope can be used by other people to build
their own cool docs.

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title: Enjoying my time with Node.js
date: 2015-12-19
---
#### Alternatively, I found a project to properly learn it
A bit of background -- I've been using primarily PHP for any backend
that I've needed to do, which while works most certainly doesn't seem
quite right. I have nothing against PHP, however it feels a bit dirty,
almost like I'm cheating when using it. I didn't know any other way,
though, so I stuck with it.
Well I recently found a project I could use to learn Node.js -- a
Minecraft server control panel -- and I've actually been enjoying it,
much more than I have PHP. Here's a demo of my project:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/c0IGKEmHyOM?feature=oembed
It's all served (very quickly) by a Node.js backend, that wraps around
the Minecraft server and uses multiple POST and GET routes for various
functions, such as saving files. The best part about it is how fast it
is (obviously), but the second greatest thing is the efficiency. For
example, in PHP, for me to implement some new thing, I'd most likely
need to create a new file, fill in my variables and methods, and point
my JavaScript (or AJAX) towards it. And I have no real good way of
debugging it. However with Node.js, it's three lines of code (no
seriously) to implement a new route with Express that will perform a
function. Not only that, but it's *so easy to debug.* Because of how
it's run, instead of just producing a 500 error page, it can actually
log the error before shutting off the program, which is so much more
useful then then old 'cat /var/log/apache2/error.log'.
My advice to anyone looking to get into web development is *learn
Node.js.* Not only is it a new web technology that is only increasing in
size, but it's powerful, open with about a billion extensions, and can
help you learn more JavaScript, a big part of dynamic content on HTML5
websites.

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title: Hello, world! (Again)
date: 2021-07-04
---
Welcome back to the blog! Sort of.
After much thought, I've decided to move my blog off of Medium and back to a place I can fully control. It wasn't really a difficult decision; Medium as a platform has changed a fair amount since I began using it, just as I have. Rather than nuking the entirety of my previous posts, I exported and cleaned them up for archival (although I did seriously consider just starting fresh).
There are some things I should address about these posts. First, they are a product of their time. I don't say that to excuse racism (there is none in these old posts), but rather both my writing style and view of the world. These older posts span from 2015 to 2018, when I was between the ages of 15 and 18 (at the time of this post, I'm 21). I've done my best to clean up the posts after the Medium export, but content left as-is where possible. While I maintain an archive of the original export, I've decided against commiting the raw files and any drafts that my account contained (mostly because they're in very rough states and are mostly for personal nostalgia/reflection).
I will not be editing these older posts. However, posts from this one onwards are fair game!
On the technical side, this site is using [Hugo](https://gohugo.io) to generate static files. It seemed like the simplest option. Commits run through a CircleCI pipeline (I work there, and am most familiar with the platform, hence no GitHub Actions) and get pushed to a branch that GitHub Pages serves up. There are simpler approaches, but the important thing is that the content is in plaintext, rather than a platform's database, and can be moved to wherever is needed.
I'm unsure how regular posts will be to this blog, but there may be the odd post here and there - follow me on Twitter to be notified, or the [generated RSS feed](https://blog.gabrielsimmer.com/index.xml) - [@gmem_](twitter.com/gmem_).

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---
title: HoverZoom.js
date: 2015-11-05
---
#### A quick script
I'm working on a new, super secret project, and as such I'm going to
post bits and pieces of code that are generic enough but could be
useful.
This particular one will zoom in when you hover over an image, and only
requires jQuery to work. Enjoy!
```javascript
/*
HoverZoom.js by Gabriel Simmer
Provides zoom-in on hover over element,
requires jQuery :)
Obviously you can change "img" to whatever
you'd like, e.g ".image" or "#image"
*/
var imgHeight=720;
var imgWidth=1280; // Naturally you should replace these with your own values
$( document ).on({
mouseenter:function() {
$("img").animate({
"height": imgHeight,
"width": imgWidth
});
},
mouseleave:function(){
$("img").animate({
"height": "100%",
"width": "100%"
})
}}, "img");
```
Of course, be sure to include the following at the bottom of your *body*
element:
```html
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.3/jquery.min.js></script>
<! -- HoverZoom JS -->
<script src="js/hoverzoom.js"></script>
```

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title: I discovered a /r/programmingcirclejerk of NodeMC...
date: 2016-03-02
---
#### Haters do exist, but hey, publicity right?!
So recently I was looking at the graphs for NodeMC's
traffic on GitHub and realized... there was a thread from
/r/programmingcirclejerk (which I won't link for obvious reasons) that
was directing a bit of traffic (actually quite a bit) to the GitHub
repository. So out of idle curiosity of just having woken up, I decided
*"Why not?"* and opened up the thread. I was greeted with what on the
surface seemed like hatred towards me and my product but upon further
investigation I found it seemed more general mockery towards a few of my
decisions or wording -- or just Node.js in general. So let's analyze
and reply to some comments!
![Top comment](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*lK1kKdzGiKVu0pyf0PYGGQ.png)
So this is obviously attacking my wording in the README... I claim that
because NodeMC is written in Node.js, it is fast. And I admit, maybe
Node.js in general is not that fast. *However* -- NodeMC has actually
proven to be quite speedy in tests, so I stand by my statement, perhaps
with some tweaked wording...
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*z7IAUMH05TmOiJPrb1Y_Rg.png)
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*xWqHee4G3FlMGeZnZaN57Q.png)
This is most likely touching on (or slapping) my little confusion about
\*nix permissions. The EPIPE error was due to the fact Java couldn't
access the Minecraft server jarfiles, and was throwing an error that
Node.js just had no f\*kng clue what to do with it. I did manage to fix
it.
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*Hcwl8cD1kWwns5lqgpoebg.png)
Unfortunately, I do have to agree with this commenter, Node.js isn't
exactly the most reliable thing, and **most definitely** not the easiest
to debug \*grumble EPIPE grumble\*. Now that said, it's not as
unreliable as Windows 10 \*badum tish\*.
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*QGsJMCN-p0QagVKINTKjvg.png)
And the final comment. I do want to learn Ruby at some point. But I did
laugh when I saw this lovely comment.
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*rIupWDN17_YNRPbrcHt5aA.png)
And of course, my comment, to finish off the pile of steaming comments.
I love you all\~

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title: I'm Using Notepad++
date: 2015-10-27
---
#### Again
UPDATE! I've started using Atom (thanks to Oliver Dunk for reminding me
about it), enjoy it a ton with the remote-edit package. I'll have a
follow-up post with more thoughts :P
Maybe I'm just crazy. Or maybe there are some things I just really need
my development area to do. Because of my job as CTO of a YouTube
Network, I need to do a lot of work on the website, which means I need
real-time access to it. I have a locally hosted server using XAMPP, but
it's not enough -- for example, when I have subdirectories, or
a .htaccess rule, I have to do this
```
<link href="/projectname/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet">
```
which is obviously incorrect when deploying it to a real server.
Maybe I should explain a bit more -- for the past few months, I've been
sticking with Visual Studio Code, Microsoft's entry into the text-editor-that-also-has-syntax-highlighting-and-other-IDE-stuff area
(or as I sometimes call it, simple IDEs). It's not bad, but for things
like plugin support, it simply isn't there.
So why Notepad++? A piece of software that looks like it's from the 80s?
Well, for one, NppFTP. A small plugin that allows me to edit and upload
file in basically real-time on a server. I've been using it for about 20
minutes and it's already *super* useful. Second, oodles of
customization. I'm just getting back into it, but I already like it (the
top bar is still ugly though).
![Seriously what do half these
buttons do](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*ANZjRhNHF9e6Hd3uzAl-dg.png)
As soon as vsCode adds FTP support, I'll probably immediately switch
back to it. I love the aesthetic, and the autocomplete is *decent*. But
for the time being, I'm sticking with Notepad++.

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title: Improving Old Sites
date: 2015-10-30
---
#### The magical 15%
Because of the nature of my schooling (mostly online), I'm provided with
a lot of very old, often dead, links. But, when a link does work, I'm
often greeted with a hideous site.
![I realize this is probably a joke site at this point.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*HI07Jtm7z-mTzkvXF6tnnA.png)
(This wasn't for a school thing by the way).
How do you improve such a thing! Well, first is my magical "padding by
percent". Open up the "Inspect Element" tool and let's get to work.
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*8BS7lmnoQYZzR6k5OTU-hg.png)
I tend to go for a padding of about 15%. It's usually a pretty
comfortable place to be. But... that background... and that font...
let's tweak that. Just a bit.
![Much better!](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*y1K8LfbiKS2ZDYpQk7ak6Q.png)
A few simple steps goes a long way to improve the ability to use and
read a site.
![The entirety of my tweaks.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*emPdafUnQibWZI4RSXmEvQ.png)
Obviously, this is a lot of work for just one little site. But hopefully
soon I'll be able to get my own custom Chrome plugin working for this,
because it's one of my biggest issues with using the web.
And for my next post, I'll talk about the benefits of learning how to
use a .htaccess file!

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---
title: It's Wrong to Compare Tech Companies
date: 2015-10-23
---
Alright, everyone calm down, it's not always true but read on to see my
reasoning.
Recently I was talking to my friend and fellow web developer [Sam
Bunting](http://sambunting.biz/). We set on to the topic of Google being evil after me asking why he chose a Windows Phone over something like an Android phone or an iPhone. His reasoning was simply that
> Because in all honesty, I like Microsoft and dislike Google, The
> phones for a fairly powerful spec is quite cheap compared to things
> like iPhones, I really like flat design and personalisation of my
> stuff (Which I can do really easily on Windows Phones) and it is fast,
> not just out of the box, but *\[after a lot of use\]* it appears to
> have not lost any performance at all.
He pointed out that he feels google is an 'evil company', and that they get everything they -- and what they don't get they bully out of
existence. We went on to compare Google vs. Microsoft (a friendly
sparring match if you will) and I left with the conclusion that we
really should not be comparing those two companies -- just like how we shouldn't compare apple to oranges.
Tech companies try to innovate (at least, most of them). They find new
ways to do things and earn some revenue off that. They do things the way
they want to. The way they see is the 'right way'. It's not really fair
to compare Android to Windows Phone because they're aiming for two
different things. Android is going for customizability and aiming for
all markets, whereas Windows Phone seems to be aiming more for the
low-to-medium end business-oriented smartphones for people who want to
get stuff done and don't care about changing their launcher or flashing
custom ROMs. It's like that for iOS too. iOS is more focused on Apple's
closed garden, and people who invest in their (rather pricey compared to
the competition) technology want to be enclosed in Apple's walled garden
of safety, where maybe the ability to change their icons isn't there but
the safety and speed (although with iOS 9 that's debatable) are present.
Obviously, some companies could be easy to compare, like Intel and AMD,
or Nvidia and AMD, but that's because they're in the same sort of
business -- they make processors and graphics cards for PCs, among
other endeavours. But for the most part I don't think it's fair to
compare Microsoft vs. Google vs. Apple. They're all going their own
directions.

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title: Let's clear up some things about GGServer
date: 2017-03-15
---
#### We get a lot of hate directed to us because we aren't as transparent. Let's fix that.
I've been a developer at GGServers for about a year
now. In that time I've gotten a good sense of how things work behind the
scenes at the budget Minecraft server host. I've (this is going to sound
canned but it's genuine) dedicated myself to improving the state of the
technology running everything. I've had to put up with hate and abuse
from unhappy customers, some justified others not so much. One thing
that some people have pointed out is how opaque commununications from us
can be -- hell, in the four years we've had our Twitter we've tweeted
less than 1,000 times (250 tweets/year on average).
Let's make something clear -- We are still a very small company. Like,
*really* small. We have five dedicated support staff, answering tickets
of various technical depth. These people unfortunately are not
"full-time". They don't come in to an office 9am-5pm, answer your
tickets and go home. They're spread out. When we say 24/7 support, we
don't mean your ticket will be taken care of immediately, we mean that
our support system doesn't go down. We -- I -- Get it, you want your
question answered right away, and properly. We've gotten a lot better at
replying to things quickly, and typically manage to get the entire
ticket queue handled every week or so.
Let's talk about server downtime. It sucks. You can't access your
servers, can't pull your files to move to another host. Currently, we
have on person in our limited staff who has access to our hosting
provider, and he is busy very often. Our previous systems administrator
just sort of went AWOL, leaving us a bit stuck in terms of responding to
server downtime. I was just recently granted the title of sysadmin, and
am still waiting on our provider to grant me access to our hardware. And
to be clear this does not mean I get a keycard to datacenters where I
can walk to a rack of servers, pull ours out and tinker. It means I have
as-close-to-hardware-as-possible remote access, where I can troubleshoot
servers as if I was using a monitor plugged into it, but I never
physically touch the bare metal. *But* it does mean I can get servers up
and running properly. Once our provider allows me access. Hopefully that
clears that up a bit.
We try to limit our interactions outside of tickets for two reasons.
One, we can log everything that is filed in our system. Two, and most
importantly, we're not quite sure what we can and cannot say. There's a
fine line between being transparent and divulging company secrets. I
feel comfortable saying what I am because I don't feel anyone could gain
a competitive advantage knowing these facts. I would love to get access
to the Twitter account and start using it to our advantage but it's
going to take a while.
Anyways, if you guys have any more questions or comments, keep it civil
and I will do my best to answer.

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title: Let's talk about the Windows Taskbar
date: 2015-11-21
---
#### Or a small rant about why I hate the Windows (10) UI
Windows (insert version here) doesn't look good. I believe this is a very well established fact. OSX? That is a good interface. GNOME 3? It's okay. XFCE? Pretty sharp. So why can't Microsoft learn from them?
First off, Microsoft is stubborn. I've learned this very recently. They
haven't changed much of their UI design over the years, haven't really
rethought it. It's annoying, to say the least. Sure, they moved to
making sharper edges (pun intended). And sure, they trying their tiled
displays. But it's all garbage, compared to something like OSX's
fantastic UI.
![Image credit to extremetech.com](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*p2uneWh0xlKU5P2l6PFGog.jpeg)
As you can see, OSX is *clean*. It's *soft.* It doesn't clutter up the
taskbar the way Windows does, it doesn't have massive top bars on
applications. The UI isn't fragmented between Metro (or Modern,
whatever) and the programs of old. It's all cohesive.
Your obvious response to this may be something along the lines of *"Well
Windows is open! We can change it!"*. But the thing is, *I don't want to
change the OSX interface.* I freely admit, I am a bit of a sucker for
design, and Apple usually takes the cake with their interfaces (despite
being crap for customization, looking at you iOS).
My biggest problem is the Windows taskbar. I know, it's not something
some people usually harp on, but I'm going to do it. First of all, it's
too big. Notice how on OSX (I will use OSX as an example here) the bar
is not only a lot shorter, *it grows only as needed.* Second, the
Windows 10 taskbar just feels like it *wants* to be cluttered up,
because there's so much space, whereas on OSX, it's short and simple.
Nicely laid out and organized.
Let's take a look at my desktop for a second.
![Clean. And no taskbar. Huh.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*137X7RWX2eFqEZazGQg-yg.png)
It flows. It works. It's simple. Everything I need is in that little
rainmeter dock (more info on my entire desktop [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/desktops/comments/3tha11/had_some_inspiration_minimal_once_again/)), the clock is out of the way, and I can focus on work. The Windows taskbar is hidden at the top, made the smallest size possible, so that it stays out of the way (and at the top to mimic my favorite desktop environment XFCE). I don't want it taking up the real estate on my screen, and when a notification comes in (which is fairly often), I don't want to see it blinking in the taskbar. *I know I've
received a message, and I will check it when I want.*
To summarize, Microsoft has to learn about good design. They need to
pull a 1080. I kind of liked their flatter, sharper interface, but now I
like my minimal, no frills or gimmicks setup.
At some point all this will be nullified because I'll be on Xubuntu or
some other XFCE distro, but for now these are my feelings.

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title: LTX 2017
date: 2017-07-30
---
#### The first Linus Tech Tips tech conival
![Don't tell Min](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*yivY7HBqRftSIW7enKYSuA.jpeg)
Anticipation was high as we approached the Langley
Convention Center by bus, as my girlfriend and I eagerly awaited meeting
one of our role models Linus Sebastian, and the crew of personalities
that helped script, film, edit and perfect the seven videos a week Linus
Media Group create, not including their secondary channels.
![LTX map, which ended up not being quite accurate](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/600/1*m6cIdWVGNL20toPCzXRRKQ.jpeg)
We were off to a good start -- all of our transit was on time, we
spotted one of their newer hires on the bus there, and everyone was very
friendly (I made the mistake of thinking that the event started at 10AM,
it actually began at 11). I had a slight nagging in the back of my head
however. The day before, the Linus Tech Tips account had tweeted out the
map of the floor, and revealed the fact it was going to take place in an
ice hockey rink (sans ice, unfortunately). That itself is not a bad
thing -- hockey rinks are decently sized for such an event. However
upon having our tickets scanned and claiming our ticket tier swag, we
entered into the absolutely packed arena. And when I say packed, I mean
*very* packed -- Becky and I had a hard time getting from one end to
another.
The two primary causes that I could see include the fact that there were
a ridiculous number of people there for the area, and the positioning of
booths. The main attractions were positioned right by the door, which
included the virtual reality booth, Razer, and 16K gaming. The floor
also included a case toss (unfortunately not very well shielded), some
carnival-esque inflatable games, some hardware maker booths, some other
miscellaneous booths, and the main stage (we'll get to the stage in a
minute). In fairness, the booths were all pretty spot on for the kind of
audience Linus attracts, and the choices were very well done. The case
toss had a major issue, however -- it was cordoned off with just ropes,
with metal railings at the end to prevent too much destruction. Many
cases ended up outside the area when thrown, whether slipping underneath
the ropes or going over the top. Paranoia was high on my part on the
topic of getting hit.
![From the stage looking toward the entrance](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*7cnfR-74sBi0u_rwd2sswA.jpeg)
The highlight of the event was meeting Linus himself, face to face.
Throughout the event whenever his feet touched the floor a circle of
fans would appear around him, and if he moved you'd better watch out the
for line of people behind him. However he handled it very well, and so
did the cluster of fans -- nobody was pushy or overly aggressive, and
he took his time with each person. We asked if he could sign both my
girlfriend\'s laptop with the dbrand dragon skin (which he liked so much
on the laptop he wanted to have it) and a hat, which he happily did. We
also nabbed a selfie, which was awesome of him.
![Linus, Becky and I](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*O6Yfba9oeZwIb5T6KjSdxQ.jpeg)
Unfortunately because of the seemingly lack of volunteers, most of the
LMG (Linus Media Group) employees were running the marquee booths. This
meant that they had less time to roam the show floor and meet fans, and
while I appreciate the enthusiasm they had for their specific booth, it
would have been nice to be able to say hi to more of them. I managed to
meet Colton, Linus, Luke and Yvonne, and those meetings were somewhat
spontaneous. The other members of the team were usually busy, either
filming or helping run booths (or in the case of the sales team, making
sure reveals went as they should have).
In a lighter note, the stage shows were great. There were some audio
issues, and they did acknowledge them. The energy level was great, and
the performances were great, with the unboxing of the Razer toasters,
AMD Vega graphics card and a whole computer powered by AMD Threadripper
and Vega. It was a bit unfortunate there was no barrier at the edge of
the stage, which resulted in a lot of crowding as people tried to get
closer for the best view (this was probably advantageous when Linus
dropped a 4K Razer Blade laptop though). The raffle was a bit lackluster
on our end as we didn't win anything, but the winners who did came away
with an absolutely amazing set of prizes, ranging from headphones to a
Titan Xp.
By the end of the day, we were both exhausted. We had a bit of a bad
taste in our mouths as our expectations had been higher, or at the very
least different. I wouldn't say disappointed -- that isn't the right
word. It was a mix of eagerness for the next year and longing to work at
LMG and help plan (or just work). We're both glad we went to the first
one, so we could get a taste of what the next year could be like and
also so we could say we were there.
![(Bad) Panorama of the floor](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2560/1*QnlNePBTV9XT8q9Rh_6b2w.jpeg)

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---
title: Making a link shortner
date: 2015-10-26
---
My first thought when I got the following message
> Also, do you know how to make a URL shortner?
was *yes, probably, all things considered*. The last two days I'm been
working on it, and it's turned out semi-well. There's a bug or two that
needs fixing, but I figured I could post a short tutorial on how to do a
simple one.
Right, I'm assuming a few things:
- [You have a web server]{#6644}
- [You have a short domain/subdomain]{#0b99}
- [You have MySQL & PhpMyAdmin]{#f238}
- [You know how to use PHP]{#91de}
With that out of the way, let's set up our MySQL database. You'll need a
table called **links**, in which it should have the columns laid out
like so:
```yaml
links:
- actual [text]
- short [text] (no other special values are required)
```
Now, in our file named shorten.php (which you should download
[here](https://ghostbin.com/paste/xk7gh), we need to edit a few things, first, make sure you change the PDO to connect to your database. Also, change
```php
$b = generate_random_letters(5);
```
to be any length you'd like. Lastly, make sure
```php
value="url.com
```
is the domain or subdomain of your site.
Great! Now that we can create short links, we need to interpret them. In
long.php ([link](https://ghostbin.com/paste/yzbdj)), change the first
```php
header('Location: url.com');
```
to redirect to your main website. This will redirect users to the main
website if there is no short link.
Fantastic, you're all done! As a bonus though, you can use a .htaccess
file to tidy up your URL.
```
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/?$ long.php?short=$1 [NC,L]
```
So instead of *http://url.com/long.php?short=efkea*, it will be
[*http://url.com/efkea*](http://url.com/efkea).
That's all for today :)
#### Files index:
[shorten.php -- GhostBin](https://ghostbin.com/paste/xk7gh)
[long.php -- GhostBin](https://ghostbin.com/paste/yzbdj)
[.htaccess -- GhostBin](https://ghostbin.com/paste/vznww)

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title: Moat Mobile
date: 2015-11-11
---
## Or "The evolution of my web skills"
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*mJn71fHwI6K3pfZlY5MN8Q.png)
Moat, for the uninitiated (so, most of you), is my original project to
learn how to use APIs. The API I chose was for [Voat.co](http://voat.co), a reddit competit- sorry, news aggregator that looks an awful lot like another
website.
It started off pretty rough -- in fact, you can go preview it [here (dead link)](http://gabrielsimmer.com/moat/)
![Using pretty much just pure PHP](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*0kycKbtMpPuQPSduytG2gg.png)
It... worked, but the UI wasn't really where I wanted it. I was also
using the Voat alpha API, which was really slow. I looked ahead, and
started working on a version that utilized JavaScript and AJAX, so I
could display some sort of loading animation. I also used Bootstrap for
it, so that I could scale it better on mobile.
![Looks nicer. But functions about the same.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*r8Z-FLErTE4ldh9F8EZ-_g.png)
The logical next step was to upgrade the interface, since so far it has
been terrible. Again, I wanted to use Bootstrap, and I wanted to make it
as mobile friendly as possible. And what's the best way of doing that?
By using a [material design bootstrap
theme](http://fezvrasta.github.io/bootstrap-material-design/). I also used [Material Floating Buttons](http://nobitagit.github.io/material-floating-button/)to give it navigation that made sense. I also made JavaScript do all the formatting work, using the .get() function in jQuery, and using my own server as an API middleman because of AJAX's lack of trust when getting info from other sites (for understandable reasons, but [here is how you can bypass it](https://ghostbin.com/paste/kf3pf)). And here is the final product.
![Not too bad.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*dPZW7uPaJRClAs-SRhtbPg.png)
The FAB requires a bit of tweaking, and I have a bit of functionality to
add, but this is the product so far. I doubt I'll touch the styling for
quite a while, unless it's to make the UI more material design like.
You can fork the project on the [GitHub
page](https://github.com/gmemstr/moat-mobile) if you so please, and be sure to read the FAQ if you want to know what you can help out with.

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title: Moving Away From Google
date: 2017-11-23
---
#### I'm starting to move outside the comfort bubble
If you've kept up with me on Twitter, you'll know what
a huge fan of Google I am -- I have a Google Pixel XL (1st generation),
a Google Wifi mesh network, a Google Home, and rely on Google services
for a huge amount of work I do, including Google Drive/Docs, Gmail,
Maps, Keep, and up until yesterday, Play Music.
But I'm starting to get tired of Google's products for a very simple and
maybe even petty reason. *Their design is the least consistent thing
ever.* I get it, Google is a huge company with tons of teams working on
different things, but I find it hard to keep using their services when
the interface for products is just straight up terrible compared to
competition. Recently I switched away from using Google Play Music in
favour of Spotify, which I had previously been using, and like the
interface a lot more, as it's very consistent and not the garish orange
of GPM. Despite being material design, the interface feels clunky and
ugly compared to the refinement of Spotify, most likely in part due to
work on the iOS app. Plus, it has a pretty great desktop app (albeit an
Electron app, but I digress). All of the Drive apps (Docs, Sheets,
Slides, etc) have a very clean and well designed look, but switching to
the web version of Gmail is jarring, and the mobile app is simplistic at
best -- it get's the job done at the very least. Not to mention I've
found refreshing very slow compared to my own mail server I run for [Git
Galaxy](https://gitgalaxy.com), which
feels odd because logically Gmail should be faster, if not on par,
considering Google's massive architecture. Hangouts is a beautifully
designed experience, but it's become a very obvious second class citizen
of Google's arsenal, thanks in part to Duo and Allo (we'll get to second
class citizens in Google's world in a minute). It also does not support
Firefox at all, even the latest beta version 58 (which is my daily
driver), which requires me to keep Google Chrome installed -- clever
move.
Let's switch gears away from UI/UX experience and talk about apps that
Google seems to have forgotten or lost interest in. While I am aware
some of these apps may have an active development team, they don't seem
to be priority for Google as a whole, and this can lead to frustrations,
such as the example above -- Hangouts does not support Firefox, even
the beta 58 I currently run. I recognize Firefox Quantum just recently
launched, but they had betas and nightlies available leading up to the
release, so I don't believe there is any excuse for Hangout to not work
outside of Chrome (I have not tested Edge). Also on topic of messaging
apps from Google, they also offer Duo and Allo, two apps that
essentially split the functionality of Hangouts in two. While some of
the Android community was very vocal about this, and a large number of
Hangouts users worried they were going to have to move, these feelings
seem to have pettered out, although it does still seem possible for
Google to pull the plug and force everyone over to their new offerings.
The feeling of being second rate extends to Gmail as well, at least to a
certain extent. Google is in no rush no to shut down their email
service, as it's very valuable for keeping consumers locked in to their
ecosysem and also provides them with a metric ton of data that they can
sift through and utilize for advertising, [although recently they've
claimed they will no longer do this](http://www.wired.co.uk/article/google-reading-personal-emails-privacy). That said, we don't neccesarily know if Google is
still reading our emails and doing something else with the data. Which
leads nicely into the next topic.
Security and privacy is something Google values greately, but it seems
it's moreso to gain the trust of the consumer than to keep their own
noses out of your data. Let's face it, Google is an advertising company,
and little else. Everything they do is to expose people to more
advertisements and maximize engagement to attract more advertisers.
Their reach is incredible, especially considering AdSense and Analytics.
With these two platforms in their arsenal, they have an almost infinite
reach across the internet, living and collecting data on millions of
websites that implement these services. The recent "Adpocalypse" on
YouTube seems to be a case of runaway algorithms attempting to optimize
YouTube for advertisers, or at least that's what most theorize. And
frankly, it's not neccesarily a bad thing, but consumers need to
recognize that Google is watching, and doesn't neccesarily have the end
user in mind when it comes to accomplishing their goals.
So in summary -- Why am I slowly moving away from Google?
Their apps are inconsistant, which is to be expected in such a huge
company with so many teams working on different things. Projects that
aren't the forefront of Google's priorities suffer heavily, especially
in an age where "the web" is accelerating very quickly and design is
being refined constantly. Also, Google is an advertising company, at
their core. It's how they earn the majority of their revenue, and
despite ad blockers, it will continue to be. This isn't a problem on
it's own, and I actually used to embrace the feeling of contributing so
much data to Google, but the honeymoon period has worn off now, and I
feel like I should cut back -- after all, millions of other people are
contributing just as much data, so Google won't notice if they suddenly
loose one. I run Firefox Nightly on my phone instead of Chrome, and am
actively looking for alternatives to many of their other services,
notably Gmail and Google Docs.
> Google does a bit of everything okay, but sometimes it's better to pay
> a bit for a much more specific service that does one thing incredibly
> well.
The final nail in the coffin for Google Play Music, if you were
wondering, was the fact that YouTube Red is not available in Canada yet,
which infuriates me and requires the use of a VPN. This coupled with the
fact Google Play Music has a fairly limited catalogue compared to
Spotify makes it difficult to recommend. If you can get YouTube Red with
it, however, the price is worth it.

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title: My 2017 Project
date: 2016-12-22
---
#### This one... this one will be fun
As some of you may know, or not know, I am a developer
at heart, writing and playing with code to my hearts content. However
there are some other areas of technology I really, *really* want to play
with. These last few months I've been toying with the idea of building
my own homelab, teaching myself the basics of enterprise and small-scale
networks (and then breaking them, of course). I've also wanted to look
into server farms and whatnot, but that seems a bit too much considering
my budget and space, among other things.
#### The Plan
First, I want to start with a really solid second hand network switch.
The primary function of this is to allow me to extend my ethernet
capabilities -- right now I'm essentially limited to one physical
ethernet jack and have to rely on WiFi for everything else. This will
allow me to have a permanent home for my Pi, laptop station, and
whatever else I add to the network. Plus I think network switches look
really cool.
Next, once I can afford it, I want to either build or buy a good
rackmount NAS, along with an actual rack to mount it on (and add the
switch to said rack). Ideally I'd want to have around 8TB of storage to
play with initially, a few 2TB drives most likely with unRaid. I'd want
a rack mount case that can support a fair few drives so later down the
line I can add more and larger disks. Specs wise, I have no clue what a
NAS would need, but I would assume nothing too high-end. If all else
fails, I'd end up buying a second hand one off eBay and going from
there. This will then connect to the switch -- whether I allow it to
communicate with the outside world I can't say for sure yet (this is
after all a rambly brainstorm kind of blog post). This NAS would be a
"hot" server, one that is frequently read from, modified, written to,
and so forth.
The second NAS box would be a highly-redundant backup system, limited to
just the internal network and comprised of many tried-and-tested drives.
This server would be upgraded and read from far less than the "hot" NAS,
but needs to make up for lack of read speed in sheer bytes of data it
can hold and keep intact even in cases like drive failure. This box
would most likely be bought second hand, depending on the situation.
Capacity I do not have concretely in my head, however I want to aim for
about 30TB of raw storage (5x6TB drives, 10x3TB drives if the server is
big enough).
The final system, the pièce de résistance if you will, is a high-end
dedicated computation-heavy server. In my head (and heart) this would be
equipped with two Intel Xeon cores, one or two GPUs (one gaming, one
dedicated to crunching numbers like a Quadro), and a couple SSDs to keep
it happy in terms of storage. This box would be the server that handles
media encoding, 3D rendering (most likely renting it out later), serving
up websites, and whatever the heck else I can get the power-hungry thing
to do. Overkill, most likely, and probably end up selling some computing
space in the form of VPSs and whatnot, but it would be a damn cool thing
to have around (my power bill would never be happy).
Anywho, time to get cracking.

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---
title: My Career
date: 2015-10-23
---
This is less of a resumé and more of a look back at some of the projects
I've been involved in, most of which failed -- and *usually* not
because of me.
I believe my first ever attempt to make a name for myself was as part of
the long-defunct "NK Team".
> [I was involved pretty early on](https://twitter.com/TheNkTeam/status/201040884190543872)
I joined on because of my "skills" (aka I knew how to do
HTML -- barely) to develop the website. I also became their PR person,
handling the Twitter account. It went okay, honestly. We were building a
prison Minecraft server and actually had a fairly nice sized community
built up. It fell apart when I left after realizing where things were
headed, and that Andrew, the leader, was a complete and utter *dick*.
> [Last ever tweet from the account](https://twitter.com/TheNkTeam/status/217286027591688194)
I believe my second team I joined was Team Herobrine, a modding team my
cousin was already a part of.
> [Tweet](https://twitter.com/TeamHerobrine/status/249592769541193728)
It was attempting to bring an Aether-level mod that featured
"Herobrine's Realm". And looking back, it was doomed from the start. The
lead was a kid probably around 11 (I honestly don't remember) who, while
he did create an actual working mod that I tested myself, I am convinced
he just took some sample code and threw it together. It really went
nowhere, and eventually fell apart when the lead developer stopped
showing up on Skype. Honestly, it was a cool project that did have
potential.
I don't quite remember what order some of these projects/groups come in,
but this was around the time Team Herobrine was dying off. My friends
and I from high school decided we wanted to make our own Minecraft
server, named Tactical Kingdom.
> [](https://twitter.com/TKingdoms/status/298607656774561792)
It actually got pretty far in -- we were pretty much ready to launch,
but then our host disappeared in a puff of smoke, taking with it our
hard work and money. I still haven't learned to do frequent backups of
anything though. (You can go check out the crappy website courtesy of
the WayBack Machine [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20130512015002/http://tacticalkingdoms.clanteam.com/)
I pause here to reflect and try to recall what else I did. I honestly
can't remember. I did some solo projects, mostly bad maps nobody should
play.
Later on, more recently, I applied to be a map builder for the infamous
SwampMC server, where I met some wonderful people, on of which I now
hold very close to my heart.
(Sadly, I can't find the first Tweet from when I joined.)
It was a cool community with some awesome people. But sometimes awesome
people don't work well together, especially when people overlap in
power. Power struggles caused the server, and the spinoff HydroMC (or
HydroGamesMC depending who you ask) to disappear, the group of friends
once dedicated to it now completely disintegrated. There is a bright
side to it though. While working on it, I became the developer, and
developed my coding ability, which has landed me as CTO of Creator
Studios.
> [Tweet](https://twitter.com/CreatorStudios_/status/656958850176786432)
Which is utterly fantastic. I do enjoy developing things on my own, but
I do like having guidelines and rules to follow from time to time too.
There's probably other projects I was involved with that I have
forgotten. If any come to mind, I'll probably do a follow up post about
them. And to any wondering about Total Block SMP, that's something I
will be discussing later.

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---
title: NodeMC Developer Log Number Something
date: 2016-02-10
---
#### A more developery post
NodeMC has changed a lot from what I envisioned in the
beginning. When I first began development, nearly three months ago now
(and about 52 git commits), I had envisioned a single product,
everything packaged into one executable and probably wouldn't be used by
anyone but me and one or two of my friends. However, I quickly found
myself leaning towards something very... different.
It started when I started looking for ways to package NodeMC. My plan
was to develop a full dashboard then open the source up and provide a
few binaries. I had a silly idea it would be a quick project. I started
in December, my first git commit dated the 17th (although I think I
started on the 16th). I thought about it as a complete thing, dashboard
and whatnot all packed into one executable. The first thing that moved
my direction to the one I'm going in now was the fact that I could not
figure out how to package other files into my executable made with
[EncloseJS](http://enclosejs.com/). I
made the decision to instead allow people to make their own dashboards
and apps around the application.
![Three months of git commits on NodeMC](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*v3jOiqGff74xqOOa6UQslg.png)
When looking for investors, it came down to the Minecraft hosts I'd used
before and knew they used the old Multicraft dashboard. I have nothing
against Multicraft -- I think it's a pretty good dashboard, and the
recent UI refresh makes it look much better. However I knew for a fact
several hosts didn't upgrade, so I asked them first. I wanted to sell
NodeMC to a host and develop it for them exclusively. My first target
was ImChimp, whose owner [Alex](https://twitter.com/AlexHH25)
has given me support in the past (and helped run the infamous
server-that-shall-not-be-named). Unfortunately, he wasn't interested,
and who can blame him, because at the time I had a very rudimentary
demo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25ZVtFHwiCE
I did a bit more work and eventually was able to show off a much more
refined version to James from [GGServers](https://ggservers.net).
He was interested, and invested some money into the project to pay for a
VPS to use for testing and hosting the [nodemc.space](https://nodemc.space)
website, and a domain that was on sale (and would lead to my decision
for major release names). I can confidently say that without his
investment NodeMC would have probably been left as abandonware on
GitHub.
Also thanks to James, I was given a list of things that are essential
for Minecraft server dashboards, especially if you want to have
multi-server hosts using it. This included custom jar files, file
manipulation, logins with authentication, and more. Taking this list, I
worked hard to implement the features I needed. Below is the playlist
for all my dev logs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-K8A6zQam0
It's been an interesting few months. I've learned many things about
developing things in Node.js, from methods to the limits of the
JavaScript language.
Since the beginning of this month, I've been making a huge effort to
make MultiNodeMC work, building it out with logins, setup pages, server
management, and everything else a server host admin needs. A very
interested aspect that I've never given much thought is login and
authentication, storing passwords, and keeping it all *secure*. A huge
shoutout to [Oliver](https://www.oliverdunk.com/) for giving pointers on how to cut down on security
vulnerabilities. He encouraged me to implement the API key feature for
NodeMC to prevent unauthorized access of files.
Recently, and what made me rethink my methods of distributing the
binaries, was my EncloseJS license key recently ran out. I have been
looking at [nexe](https://github.com/jaredallard/nexe) as an alternative, which while it works (and seems to
be slightly better at binary compression) isn't great because when I
deployed it onto the VPS, it produced an error saying that glibc wasn't
the correct version. This made me pause and wonder what on Earth I'm
getting into. To clarify, with EncloseJS, you literally just need to
send out the binary (and any files not packed into it), not worrying too
much about dependencies because there are pretty much... none. That
said, I believe nexe may be the way forward for me, and I'll be working
on compiling it for all the distributions that I need to.
A question I've been asked quite a bit is **will you open-source this**?
The answer is... no, not yet. I'll be opening up CORE (the basic
application) around the time version 1.4.0 of NodeMC is released. I have
no plans on open-sourcing MultiNodeMC at this time, however if I ever
abandon the project I promise to release the full sourcecode to the
public.

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---
title: (Part 1) The Android Twitter Client Showdown
date: 2016-12-06
---
#### Falcon Pro, Talon, Flamingo and Fenix go head to head
I've been using Twitter for a long time now. I first
signed up in October of the year 2010, four years after the initial
launch. I've used is fairy regularly, with a total of 14,800+ tweets and
have met a fairly wide range of people on the platform. I don't claim to
be an expert, or even well know on the platform (276 followers is hardly
"famous"). But, over the years, I have garnered much experience with
different Twitter clients, starting with the web client as it was back
in 2010, then moving to the official Twitter app on my old 1st
generation iPad (no, not pro or anything... 1st gen iPad). Somehow I
stumbled onto Tweetbot, which became my defacto (and still is, if I used
iOS) Twitter client for iOS.
But back to the point. Over the next few weeks, or indeed months because
I have a busy few coming up, I will be taking a few Android Twitter
clients for a spin: [Talon](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.klinker.android.twitter_l), [Flamingo](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston.twitter), [Falcon Pro 3](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jv.materialfalcon&hl=en), and [Fenix](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.mvilla.android.fenix). All three of these apps offer fast, customizable
experiences for Twitter, perhaps not with features on par with the
official Twitter app, but you can blame the fact Twitter is locking down
their API big time
\[[Forbes](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ianmorris/2014/08/20/twitter-is-destroying-itself/#77a6716971b7),
[ITWorld](http://www.itworld.com/article/2712336/unified-communications/the-death-of-the-twitter-api-or-a-new-beginning-.html)\].
My methodology is pretty straightforward. During the month of December,
I will use each one for one week, testing and prodding each one to
unlock the depths. Then, once all (four) have gone through the gauntlet,
I will then allow myself the freedom of choice -- whichever one I find
myself using the most will be the "winner".
#### Initial Impressions
All four of these support multiple accounts, however with Falcon Pro
there is a small caveat, which is for each account you want to add you
are required to purchase a new "account slot", which is about \$2. The
initial purchase to add one account is on par with the rest of the apps,
about \$5, Talon coming in at \$3.99, Fenix at \$6.49, and Flamingo
coming in at \$2.79, the cheapest and also the newest of the four (all
prices USD). Each one features material design, interestingly enough in
a variety of styles. Each app has it's own customization, each with it's
own advantages. Flamingo feels the most tweakable, letting you set your
own colours for basically everything. Falcon Pro is by far the least
customizable, however that is not necessarily a bad thing depending on
your use case and how much you enjoy fiddling with settings.
Album of each Twitter client's interface
> "All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the
> better." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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---
title: (Part 2) ATCS --- Flamingo {#part-2-atcs-flamingo .p-name}
date: 2016-12-08
---
Flamingo is a relatively new Twitter client, created by
Sam Runston. It goes for \$2.79USD on the Google Play store, and
frankly, is a solid Twitter client. Battery performance is fine, and
performance is great.
#### Customizability
It is a fantastic app for Twitter, and it one of the more customizable
clients if you like that sort of thing. You can tweak all the individual
colours, or pick from a pre-made theme. You can change the fonts, how
and where the pages are and look, and a whole lot more (actually while
writing this review I found a way to turn off the giant navbar at the
top, so bonus points!) through the settings. It might seem a bit
overwhelming, and for the most part I left it with the default theme
with some small tweaks.
For you night mode lovers, there is a beautiful implementation here. You
can tweak the highlight colour to your liking and also the background,
between dark, black, and "midnight blue". Of course, you can also set a
timeframe for when you want this mode enabled -- one slightly annoying
thing is you can't have it enabled all the time, however the theming
options available should compensate for that fact.
#### Syncing
Retrieving tweets from Twitter's servers was always very snappy and
fast, and I noticed to real performance hit in terms of battery or CPU
usage when having tweet streaming on. I definitely recommend you turn it
on -- I did not test it with background syncing enabled, and didn't
really see any need to turn it on during my week with the app. There is
Tweet Marker support, which comes in handy if you use clients, and I did
leave it enabled (as I usually do).
There is a built-in proxy server setting, which is nice if you want to
browse only Twitter using a proxy server. There are also several other
options for turning off all retweets or replies, disabling auto refresh
on startup and tweeting, and even has a setting for TeslaUnread so you
can pick if you'd like to see unread notifications or tweets in your
timeline (I assume you'll need to enable background sync for this to
work properly.
#### Notifications
Notifications, as with any third party Twitter app I've tried, were slow
to come in but seemed to be much more quick when the app was recently
launched. I don't know if this is a Twitter API restriction or just an
Android oddity, but I'm willing to guess it has to do with Twitter's
rate limiting. Regardless, plenty of options here. You can enable
notifications for individual accounts, as well as which notifications to
show for each account (mentions, DMs, new followers, etc). There are
also options to enable notifications only from verified accounts, if you
interact with those enough, and allowing you to see which account
received the notification, which as a multi-account user I left on.
#### Other notes
I love Flamingo so much -- the number of options it gives you to make
your setup truly unique is astounding. Individual themes per account,
*alternate app icons*, composition notifications, there is so much you
can do with this app. I have some minor issues, like it confusing my
accounts timelines, direct messages, or notifications, but overall it is
a solid app that I highly recommend to those who want to get the
absolute most out of their Twitter client.
[Get Flamingo on the Google Play
Store -- \$2.79](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston.twitter&hl=en)

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---
title: Porting Websites to Jekyll
date: 2016-01-07
---
#### Why on Earth use SSI...
Jekyll, to the uninitiated, is a static site generator for websites. Instead of using PHP include statements or SSI, it generates all the pages into plain-jane HTML. It uses a fairly straightforward file structure, making most projects very clean and nice to work with. I've personally used it for the [NodeMC](http://nodemc.space) website and the new [floorchan.org](https://floorchan.org) site, and have absolutely loved it. So how can you convert your website to use Jekyll?
I'll be using Strata from HTML5Up.net ([link](http://html5up.net/strata))
to build a very simple and quick static page blog. This shouldn't take
long. (I'm also assuming you have Jekyll installed, if not here's a
[quick start guide](https://jekyllrb.com/docs/quickstart/).
First, extract the files from the zip. We'll need to create a few files
for Jekyll to work. We need the following:
```
_includes/
_layouts/
_config.yml
```
Inside the \_config.yml file, we'll need a few things just to make sure
Jekyll understands us, and maybe for future use. A simple setup would
look like this:
```yaml
name: Strata
description: A template ported to Jekyll
```
Let's now focus on the \_layouts/ directory. In here is where your
templates will go for dictating how a page will look. You'll need to
take your header and any static components you want to share across all
pages and place them in here, like navbars, footers, etc. Where you want
the content to go, you add {{content}}, which will pull the content from
the file and place it there on the generated page. It is recommended you
name this 'default.html' for easier referencing to it. Now you can go
into your index.html in the root of your project and put in your
content. You need to declare a title (more on this in a second) and a
layout to use. Enclose the lines between three dashes. Here's an
example.
```markdown
---
title: Strata
layout: default
---
lorem ipsum
```
And voila! You have ported your website over to Jekyll. You can run
'jekyll serve' to run a server on port :4000 to preview your website,
and 'jekyll build' to build the website to a static format to a \_site/
directory.
:::
![It works!](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*WHbyFDZGHl_6eYlJc436Uw.png)
There is of course quite a bit more you can do with Jekyll, like
creating blogs and such, but maybe I'll cover that later -- or maybe
not at all, because it seems pretty well documented online.
The advantage of using Jekyll should be fairly obvious -- because it
generates HTML pages, it requires less processing overhead than PHP or
SSI. It also means that there are no entry points for SQL injections or
any of those nasty things. And one of the biggest advantages in my mind
is the layout system, so you can quickly change something across all
pages.
\~gabriel

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---
title: Python / Flask Logins
date: 2017-02-22
---
#### This was fun! \*twitch\*
Bloody hell, where do I start...So I recently got back
from a two week vacation down to LA (Disneyland) and then further south
to Mexico. During those two weeks I did little to no coding, which
greatly relaxed me and allowed me to think about what my goals with my
many projects were.
And then I got home. And decided that the best thing to do (besides
getting a violent cold) was to start work on a login system for
Platypus. You know, so that admins can edit servers and whatnot. Oh boy
are we in for some fun.
#### Initial Approach
At first I wanted to use Flask-Login, because that seemed like the
logical way of doing things. It integrated with Flask, which is
fantastic because I use that framework for literally everything (sorry
Django, not feeling you yet). It (seemed) to provide an easy way to
handle restricting views to logged in users. And thus I set out.
The first thing I noticed was that, like Flask, Flask-Login assumes
nothing about your stack or how you should implement things. It requires
you to write your own class for users and implement methods for
retrieving users and passwords from a database, and also validating
users login details. And then it hit me. Flask-Login is for *session*
management, not *user* management. Back to the drawing board, slightly
red faced when I realised what I was doing wrong.
#### IYWIDP, DIY
**I**f **y**ou **w**ant **i**t **d**one **p**roperly, **d**o **i**t
**y**ourself. And so I did. I grabbed bcrypt's Python implementation and
started writing my own system that relies on old school cookies as
authentication. There were some false starts, but I eventually rigged
together something that works, albeit with duct tape. What happens is
thus. First, user requests /admin, which is obviously not a route we
want unrestricted. So Flask grabs a cookie the browser provides and
checks it against the current session token internally. If the two don't
match or the cookie is blank, you're redirected to a login screen. The
login form POSTS the data to the login route, which compares the passed
password the the encrypted, salted and hashed password stored (as most
logins do). Then, the function returns a unique key (actually a bcrypt
salt) that acts as the session token. Cookie is set, user is sent to
admin page. Brilliant!
Obviously there are some drawbacks that are not entirely intentional.
For one, only one user can be auth'd at a time. This isn't a
particularly troublesome problem in my deployment, however it's
definitely not ideal. Also the session key is a bcrypt salt
stringified -- this looks a bit funky but was a quick hacky way to
generate a pseudo-random key. It's never used for anything beyond
authenticating the browser.
*Hopefully it's secure enough.*
Now anyone who wants to have a crack at breaking the login, go right
ahead, I won't stop you. Hell, I encourage it, and file issues as you
see fit.
[Platypus on GitHub](https://github.com/ggservers/platypus)

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---
title: Samsung Could Take Over The Digital Assistant Market
date: 2017-08-06
---
#### Bixby on phones is just the beginning.
The world was shaken when Samsung decided to roll out
their own digital assistant on their flagship Galaxy S8 phones. As in,
it was shaken by the collective groan that the tech community let loose
upon learning that it would even have it's own, dedicated button. But
there's something else I believe it lurking beneath the surface.
Samsung is an enormous company, making everything from phones to vacuum
cleaners to dishwashers. Notable missing, however, is any indication of
a competitor to Amazon Echo, Google Home or Apple's newly announced
HomePod. Granted -- Bixby is fairly new, and is still learning. However
given the wide range of products Samsung offers, the conclusion that is
easy to draw is that they are planning on putting Bixby into their own
home appliances, for a *truly* "smart" home.
Bixby itself is a fairly standard first generation virtual assistant. It
can answer questions and control phone functions fairly well (including
installing apps and changing system settings), but when put head to head
with Google Assistant or Siri it falls a bit flat (you can check out
MKBHDs comparison video [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkpAro4zIwU)). The interface is very Samsung, not unattractive but
not my personal taste. I especially like the Google Now-like interface
(which it actually replaces on the S8), and believe it looks better if
not as good as Google Now itself (Pixel XL owner here). However the
interaction with the assistant itself definitely needs some work before
I would consider it on par with it's competitors.
Already, many of their appliances are going "smart". They tout their
smart fridges as being "Family Hubs" (trademarked, obviously), and run
the Tizen operating system, an IoT operating system by the Linux
Foundation. This means that they're already building off an open source
project (which they already have a lot of experience with, launching
phones running Tizen OS in India), and gives them a very, very good
opportunity to implement Bixby. In everything. Smart ovens -- exist.
Smart dishwashers -- why not. Would you like a smart vacuum cleaner?
Consider it done. And they could all be running Bixby when Samsung
decides it's smart enough.
Now -- the argument that Google, Amazon or Apple could take over your
home with their products is there, however the problem with that is that
they do not make every day appliances. Google has made some moves with
Nest, and all three have assistant pods/bluetooth speakers, but it would
take years for them to catch up to Samsung in terms of brand recognition
in the appliances market. Not everyone needs a Google Home, but most
people need a fridge, and that might happen to come with Tizen and
Bixby. The average person may not have an Amazon Echo, but they'll
probably have an oven, dishwasher, laundry machine... Perhaps not all,
but at least one. And Samsung is well established.
So look forward to finally having a completely mic'd up home, courtesy
of Samsung, listening, learning, adapting and assisting you every day.
Whether or not it explodes (in popularity) we will see.

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---
title: Saving the Link Shortner (Quick Post)
date: 2015-10-30
---
#### Aka a very silly mistake
You may remember the link shortner I wrote about in a past blog post.
Well, I fixed an issue where it couldn't decide if a link was http://,
https://, or just blank. Here's what I did.
Basically, had my strpos() in the wrong order. You need the haystack
*first*, not second. That was an issue. Here's the correct code:
```php
if(strpos($link[0][ 'actual '], 'http://') == false || strpos($link[0]['actual'], 'https://') == false){
header( 'Location: '.$link[0]['actual']);
}
```
And then, of course, the little else statement in case it doesn't match:
```php
}else{
header('Location: http://'.$link[0]['actual']);
}
```
I do love PHP.

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---
title: State of the Union
date: 2017-10-26
---
#### Where are the projects at?
I have a lot of projects on my plate right now. While
also a full-time student, I am also working on expanding my portfolio
and knowledge for the real world, which means a lot of projects.
My current project I'm focusing on is the podcast hosting app written in
Go, named [**Pogo**](https://pogoapp.net). It's a straightforward CMS for managing podcast
episodes, and automatically generates an RSS feed. It is more than
stable in the current release, and I'd personally feel confident using
it in production (your mileage may vary). Pogo currently features
multiple user support, a flat directory structure for storing episodes
alongside their respective shownotes, *mostly* correct RSS (few bugs to
iron out, but all readers I have tested manage it fine), and a rich
admin interface built out in Vue.js, which includes custom CSS and
episode management.
I am currently working on the user management aspect of Pogo,
implementing a much more sane method of storing and modifying user
accounts, and looking into permissions for restricting certain
functions. Previously, users were stored in a JSON file, became
notoriously difficult to manage in Golang (not impossible however).
Thus, I have moved to the much more portable SQLite3 -- I do have plans
to explore the possibility of picking SQLite3 or MySQL (or MariaDB
etc.), however I plan to focus most of my efforts on ensuring SQLite3
compatibility. With this will come an admin interface for adding and
managing users, which in the current release requires you to manually
add them into the JSON file (and manually generate a bcrypt hash...).
Once the users branch has been merged into the master branch, work will
be done to rework the frontend to use Vue.js instead of plain
JavaScript. I've also been really happy with the current traffic and
outside contributions thanks to my efforts to promote it "organically"
and Hacktoberfest, from which some contributors have found the project.
Another project I've been looking at again is
[**Platypus**](https://getplatypus.io). The simple real time server usage monitor I wrote
back at GGServers has been lying dormant for a long time, and I can't
remember where I left off. It was ready to be deployed, but was not the
focus of the company at the time and I ended up moving it back to my
personal Github. I'm still very proud of the achievement of writing such
a platform in Python, but I want to start rewriting it in Go. The
reasons are twofold; one, I have become very familiar with Go in the
past few months, and believe it could offer much better performance when
it comes to scaling the application. It's never really been tested at
the large scale it should have been, and I'm still a bit leery of the
aspect. I do want to reach out to some larger companies to see if they'd
be interesting in giving me a hand with this. Regardless, a rewrite in
Go + Vue.js is definitely on my mind, and improving the AOR interface so
anyone can write their own version in whatever they already have on
their server.
And I continue to work on articles for [**Git Galaxy**](https://gitgalaxy.com),
writing about whatever comes to mind when it comes to open source
software. I'm currently working on a Hacktoberfest experience roundup,
and researching another opinion piece along the lines of the [Opening
Schools to the
Students](https://gitgalaxy.com/opening-schools-to-the-students/). Analytic numbers are looking solid, and I am more
than happy with how it's turning out.
That is the state of my projects.

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---
title: The Importance of Income
date: 2015-11-02
---
#### It's scary how much a small number can mean
I'm preparing myself to start launching a long-term project that I have
been working on for the past few months. It's something I'm going to be
doing on the side and I don't hope to earn much of a living off
it -- for one simple reason. Per month, if the service takes off, I'd
have to pay around $108.88USD.
I don't really know how that compares to other startups. But considering
it's a (so far) one man operation and I'm not expecting to make a living
off it, I think it's rather cheap compared to something like
[Twitter](http://www.amazon.ca/Hatching-Twitter-Story-Friendship-Betrayal/dp/1591847087). Also, about $99 of that wouldn't need to be accounted for (pun unintended) until I hit around 500 users, which would mean at least the first couple of months would only cost me \$9.88, out of pocket. The \$99, by the way, would be for the 'Startup' level of [UserApp.io](https://www.userapp.io/), which I am using for user accounts and payments -- I could ditch it in favor of my own user system (and in fact at some point I plan to), but for now I don't want to focus on that, and therefore must pay the price when I hit the user cap.
So how can I make the project self-sufficient? Well, donations will be a
big part of it. There will be two ranks -- a $5 and a $15 -- that will hopefully be able to manage the upkeep cost. These will also be
monthly subscriptions, which means if as little as 20 users (out of the
500 cap) bought the $5 rank, that would be $100 I wouldn't have to
worry about. A minimum of 8 people buying the $15 rank would make the
entire project entirely self-funded, at $120 a month of income.
Now this is making a lot of assumptions, such as if the project will
actually take off, or if 20 people in 500 donate, but I think it's a
decent assumption that it will work.
Another important factor is investors, but I can cover that another
time.

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---
title: The TVDB Google App Script
date: 2016-12-06
---
#### Let's learn something new!
My girlfriend Becky and I enjoy watching TV shows
together. So much so, in fact, that we've started putting together a
spreadsheet of the shows the need to binge watch together. So just for
the hell of it, I threw together a rather basic (and messy) Google App
Script that lives in the spreadsheet, which pulls information from [The
TVDB](https://thetvdb.com/) regarding
how many episodes there are and how long it would take to binge watch
all the shows (roughly).
Some things I learned while working in the Google App Script IDE. First,
tabs are only two spaces, instead of the usual four I work with in
Python. Which messed me up slightly when I first started, but I go much
more used to it. Second, it's just JavaScript, really. I expected some
sort of stripped down programming language but it's really just a
slightly tweaked JS environment, with some functions that allow you to
interact with Google Docs/Sheets/Forms etc. And finally, I learned just
how useful Google App Scripts can be -- I never really used them, and
believed them to be a waste of time to learn. Alas, I was wrong, my
elitist thinking getting the better of me.
So let's talk about the actual script. You can find the whole thing in
the Gist below, a slightly tidied up and revised version. You'll need an
API key from The TVDB, and I highly recommend you check out [their API
docs](https://api.thetvdb.com/swagger) so you know exactly what sort of info and routes
we're using.
Essentially, what happens in this. First, we search (using
`searchTvdb(show, network)`) for the specific show, using the network to
filter out results in case there are multiple shows with the same name.
Next, we take the showId it returns and query TVDB for the info
corresponding to the show -- we're most interested in the average
runtime from this query. We also ask TVDB for the summary of the
episodes, which returns the number of seasons, episodes aired, and so
on. We aggregate all this data into one clump of data and then throw it
into the spreadsheet.
It's very inefficient, I realize that. There are plenty of things I
could probably improve performance wise, however it works fine. I expect
the more shows in the spreadsheet the longer it will take (about 12
seconds with a 14 item list), but I'll refine a bit in the future.
![How the spreadsheet looks](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/600/1*a6NU2Lv_H2gHrffRT2pfEw.png)
> "If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then
> there'd be peace." -- [**John
> Lennon**](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19968.John_Lennon) **(Probably)**

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---
title: Things Twitter Should Do Better
date: 2016-01-14
---
#### Just some notes...
Twitter is going downhill (in my opinion). Since Jack
Dorsey became CEO (again), there have been some... *interesting*
additions. The number one, most useless thing they wasted their time on
is **Twitter Moments**. Moments is basically a summary of media the
people who follow have tweeted. I'd like to see some stats on how many
people use it, and how many of those people clicked it either by
accident or out of idle curiosity. I don't think it's something Twitter
should have spent time developing -- perhaps their time would have been
better spent improving their existing things, like making the Twitter
mobile app more consistent or streamlining Twitter for Web -- or hell,
even making TweetDeck nicer to use.
The official Twitter app for Android (not sure about iOS) is a mess. The
most prominent issue I have is the fact that the top navigation bar will
change what icons it has where, either when I switch between accounts or
just restart the app. Their bottom nav is terrible too -- it will cycle
between a clunky floating action button, a bar with a faux-text input
and camera icon, and a three-section bar consisting of a new tweet,
camera, and gallery icons. What is this? Why on Earth do we need three
different nav styles -- that it *cycles between?!* I want to know both
how and why this decision was made, if it can count as a decision.
I think the worst part of this whole Twitter app debacle is that they
have people at Twitter who know how to do Twitter apps. The creator of
[Falcon Pro](http://getfalcon.pro/)
works at Twitter, and I consider his app an absolutely amazing Twitter
experience. So how why is the experience so terrible? And why are they
focusing on new things like an edit button (rumored), 10,000 character
tweets (again, rumored), and **bloody Twitter Moments**.
#### So, Mr. Jack Dorsey, how could you make Twitter decent again?
First, take a step back. Remember what you envisioned Twitter being. No,
not a text-only messaging system, that's a terrible idea, and remember
how much debt Twitter was in after that. No, rather, take a step back
and simplify. Cut out the 'features' you think are fantastic. Make it a
140-character microblogging platform. Cut out anything that you can see
any reason to have. Open up your API more and let devs work on what they
want to. Why? Because people want and have freedom of choice. If they
don't want to use the official Twitter app, fine. Let them use an
unofficial one, an unofficial one that has actual access to something
resembling an API, not extremely basic functions. And fix your own
official apps, so people are actually tempted to use them. Keep the
140-character limit, because it's a gimmick that worked. Return Likes to
Favorites, because you're not Facebook, as much as you want to work
there. Maybe fix up Tweetdeck so it's a little nicer to use, modernize
the UI and make it flow. Promote the Falcon Pro author to a position
where he can make some UI/UX suggestions and actually get heard.
And above all, *please don't kill the blue bird.*

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---
title: Watching a Cryptocurrency Grow
date: 2018-01-22
---
#### GRLC is the only coin you'll ever need
Last weekend, a new cryptocurrency launched: Garlicoin, a fork of
Litecoin based around garlic bread. It may seem silly at first, but keep
in mind that sometimes "silly" coins can have a huge impact, like the
time [Dogecoin sponsored a NASCAR
racer](https://www.nascar.com/en_us/news-media/blogs/Off-Track/posts/doge-reddit-josh-wise-talladega-superspeedway-aarons-499.html). Regardless of what you may believe, it's always
worth keeping an eye on meme coins (not memecoin, which is an actual
coin).
Currently, it's Monday, the day after the release, and already the
Garlicoin community is thriving, both on the incredibly active Discord
and the /r/garlicoin subreddit. There is also /r/garlicmarket, which
will be the focus of much of this post. Regardless, this is very much a
community driven coin, with a number of mining pools already available
([see here](http://pools.garlicoin.fun/)) and about 297063 coins available so far. The market
cap is at 69 million, so it should be interesting to see how that plays
out. It's also been pretty interesting to see the newcomers to the
cryptocurrency space asking questions and figuring things out, like why
having a pool with more than 51% of the total hashing power [is a bad
thing](https://learncryptography.com/cryptocurrency/51-attack).
#### So how valuable is Garlicoin right now? Should I be investing into it?
First, it's actually doing pretty well in terms of value. The
/r/garlicmarket subreddit seems to have established that 1GRLC (1
garlicoin) is about equivalent to a whole 1USD. This will likely
fluctuate over time, but considering how quickly they can be mined and
the current circulating supply it's pretty impressive. It's been pretty
impressive to watch new trade offers be posted offering 1USD for 1GRLC.
You can even [buy lockpicks with it if you want](https://www.reddit.com/r/GarlicMarket/comments/7s8bkw/shop_lock_picks_and_security_tools_usa_global/), on the same exchange rate.
As for whether or not you should invest now, I would say absolutely.
With the way things are currently going, 1USD being roughly 1GRLC, it
may be better to mine for them rather than trade or buy outright and
watch the price closely, because with cryptocurrency you never really
know what's going to happen.
If you want to get started, head over to the [official website,](http://garlicoin.io/) where
you can find wallets and links to getting mining.
My GRLC (vanity) address if you're interested:
GMeMMdtqRTUF7V9FmsdtuFcej69DnyKhnY

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---
title: Where NodeMC is headed.
date: 2016-06-02
---
#### aka the "SE Daily Follow-up Post"
I talked about where I wanted to take NodeMC on the
Software Engineering Daily podcast last month. I also discussed a few
things about the future of Minecraft, it becoming less of a game and
more of a tool, and how NodeMC will help fulfil a need for quick and
easy-to-deploy Minecraft servers.
Before we get into the future, let's talk about what's happening for
NodeMC v6 (6.0.0). First and foremost, we've rewritten pretty much every
aspect of NodeMC using the ES6 specifications, transforming the
monolithic single-file-of-code into an agile and easy to scale platform
of microservices. Not only does it mean I have to learn ES6, it also
means it's much easier to add new features and API routes. We're adding
an auto-updater (which you will be able to turn on or off hopefully),
switching to using semver for versioning, and overhauling the plugin
system with permissions and a better API to interface with the core.
We're also changing several of the routes to make more sense. Every
route that has been implemented in version 5.0.0 or below is labelled
'/v1/'. New routes introduced in v6.0.0 are '/v2/'. Routes that
interface with the server are directed to '/server/', and so forth. Each
of these routes are generated with Express and some fancy magic (Jared
goes into it a bit more
[here](https://medium.com/@jaredallard/why-i-moved-from-monolithic-backends-to-microservices-d9955b9464b2#.bexdzdpzw)) so that we can keep all the code clean.
So, back to the main topic of this post.
#### Where is NodeMC going?
The direction NodeMC is headed is being a software-as-a-service. I want
to accommodate for the rapid change in direction of Minecraft, it
becoming less of a game and more of a platform for creative works. We've
seen it used as more than just a game before, with things like [the UN
using Minecraft to re-develop neighbourhoods](http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/22/5641044/minecraft-block-by-block-united-nations-project) or it being [used for
teaching](http://education.minecraft.net/minecraftedu/), and it makes me feel we're heading more in the
direction of this sandbox game becoming a tool for both creative,
educational and professional work.
NodeMC as a SaaS basically means this: Companies who want to quickly
deploy and manage Minecraft servers will be able to quickly spin up
Minecraft servers either through a user interface or their own UI. A
typical example of this may be something like so.
Company A wants to design a new housing complex really quickly to show
to some clients, and they feel Minecraft is the best way of doing that.
They would visit the NodeMC website and hit the "New Server" button,
picking the flat world preset with one or two plugins like WorldEdit.
Once the designers are done their job, they run a command to zip the
world file, save the zip to the cloud, and shut off the server. Company
A can then spin up "viewing servers" that allow clients to log in and
explore the project freely. Everything is stored in the cloud, and if
Company A wants they can download the zip file or run the world through
a processor first to export it to a 3D design program.
> TL;DR: Starts server for building at click of a button \> Builds
> mockup \> Saves world to the cloud \> Viewing server deployed for
> clients automatically.
Obviously this is not a small task, and required a *ton* more work on
NodeMC. Right now v6 is focused on the ES6 rewrite, dashboard written in
React, and the plugin system. I'm already drawing up v7 plans, which are
going to help drive NodeMC in the direction I want to take it. And who
knows, maybe this will go other unexpected directions.

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---
title: Why New Social Media Fails
date: 2017-06-16
---
#### (for now)
We all know and love social media. In this day and age,
it's almost impossible to avoid it. As social creatures we crave the
satisfaction of being connected to so many people at once. But we also
hate the platforms that are available -- Facebook is data hungry,
Twitter has some bizarre developer policies and is rife with bots,
reddit is a hive mind... the list goes on. So why can't we just make a
new social platform that solves all these issues?
The sad truth is that incentivizing people to move to another platform
is really difficult. We can observe this with something like Google
Allo, which surged with popularity when it was announced but has
apparently completely stalled in downloads (via [Android Police](http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/11/29/google-allo-hit-5-million-downloads-in-5-days-two-months-later-its-momentum-seems-utterly-stalled/)). A handful of people I talk to on a regular basis
have it installed, but we also end up communicating a lot on Twitter,
which defeats the purpose (I also have a sneaking suspicion I might be
the only person they have on Allo)
> [](https://twitter.com/gmem_/status/870790497727422464)
> [](https://twitter.com/jaredallard/status/870790618238210048)
Unfortunately Facebook is no different. Despite my best efforts, for a
lot of people including my bosses, it has pretty much completely
replaced SMS. Facebook Messenger is the only messaging platform they
use, and who can blame them -- it's a solid messaging app. And I say
this with a hint of sarcasm
([reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nexus6P/comments/4jpcvt/absolutely_ridiculous_facebook_messenger_battery/), although I've seen some reports [suggesting they fixed it](http://mashable.com/2017/01/11/facebook-messenger-battery-drain/#jfK9Pvnv9iqP) recently).
And other social networks... have fared no better. The two biggest names
out there, Facebook and Twitter, dominate. Startups have attempted to
build better platforms -- I remember signing up for the beta of
[App.net](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net), which ended up shutting because the company simply
ran out of money, due both to low adoption rates and low conversion of
free customers to paying. Niche platforms have risen like
[Mastodon](https://mastodon.social/about), which have potential but the adoption rate will be
low and very niche.
Now there is a bright side to all this. There will always be a place for
startup social platforms -- Remember, we all thought MySpace couldn't
fail (and when was the last time you thought of *MySpace*?). There will
be a time when Twitter doesn't manage to keep up with the times, or
people wise up and ditch Facebook completely. I don't want to discourage
people from exploring the potential of their twist on the idea, who
knows what could happen.

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{{ define "main" }}
<main>
<article>
<header>
<h1>{{.Title}}</h1>
</header>
<!-- "{{.Content}}" pulls from the markdown content of the corresponding _index.md -->
{{.Content}}
</article>
<ul>
<!-- Ranges through content/posts/*.md -->
{{ range .Pages }}
<li>
<a href="{{.Permalink}}">{{.Date.Format "2006-01-02"}} | {{.Title}}</a>
</li>
{{ end }}
</ul>
</main>
{{ end }}

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{{ define "header" }}{{ partial "page-header.html" . }}{{ end }}
{{ define "main" }}
<article class="center cf pv5 measure-wide-l">
<h1>
This is not the page you were looking for
</h1>
</article>
{{ end }}

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="{{ $.Site.LanguageCode | default "en" }}">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1">
<title>{{ block "title" . }}{{ with .Params.Title }}{{ . }} | {{ end }}{{ .Site.Title }}{{ end }}</title>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,minimum-scale=1">
<meta name="description" content="{{ with .Description }}{{ . }}{{ else }}{{if .IsPage}}{{ .Summary }}{{ else }}{{ with .Site.Params.description }}{{ . }}{{ end }}{{ end }}{{ end }}">
{{ hugo.Generator }}
{{/* NOTE: For Production make sure you add `HUGO_ENV="production"` before your build command */}}
{{ if eq (getenv "HUGO_ENV") "production" | or (eq .Site.Params.env "production") }}
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX, FOLLOW">
{{ else }}
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
{{ end }}
{{ if .OutputFormats.Get "RSS" }}
{{ with .OutputFormats.Get "RSS" }}
<link href="{{ .RelPermalink }}" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="{{ $.Site.Title }}" />
<link href="{{ .RelPermalink }}" rel="feed" type="application/rss+xml" title="{{ $.Site.Title }}" />
{{ end }}
{{ end }}
<link rel="icon" href="data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22 viewBox=%220 0 100 100%22><text y=%22.9em%22 font-size=%2290%22>🏳️‍🌈</text></svg>">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/styles.css">
</head>
<body class="ma0 {{ $.Param "body_classes" | default "avenir bg-near-white"}}{{ with getenv "HUGO_ENV" }} {{ . }}{{ end }}">
<main>
{{ block "main" . }}{{ end }}
</main>
</body>
</html>

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{{ define "main" }}
<article class="pa3 pa4-ns nested-copy-line-height nested-img">
<section class="cf ph3 ph5-l pv3 pv4-l f4 tc-l center measure-wide lh-copy mid-gray">
{{- .Content -}}
</section>
<section class="flex-ns flex-wrap justify-around mt5">
{{ range .Paginator.Pages }}
<div class="relative w-100 w-30-l mb4 bg-white">
{{- partial "summary.html" . -}}
</div>
{{ end }}
</section>
{{- template "_internal/pagination.html" . -}}
</article>
{{ end }}

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{{ define "main" }}
<div class="container">
<div class="row">
<div class="twelve columns">
<h1>{{ default .Site.Title }}</h1>
</div>
</div>
<div class="row">
<div class="eight columns">
<h2>{{- .Title -}}</h2>
{{ with .Params.author }}
<p>
By <strong>
{{ if reflect.IsSlice . }}
{{ delimit . ", " | markdownify }}
{{else}}
{{ . | markdownify }}
{{ end }}
</strong>
</p>
{{ end }}
<time {{ printf `datetime="%s"` (.Date.Format "2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00") | safeHTMLAttr }}>
{{- .Date.Format "January 2, 2006" -}}
</time>
{{- .Content -}}
</div>
</div>
{{ end }}

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{{ define "main" }}
<article class="cf pa3 pa4-m pa4-l">
<div class="measure-wide-l center f4 lh-copy nested-copy-line-height nested-links nested-img mid-gray">
<p>{{i18n "taxonomyPageList" .}}</p>
</div>
</article>
<div class="mw8 center">
<section class="flex-ns flex-wrap justify-around mt5">
{{ range .Pages }}
<div class="relative w-100 mb4 bg-white">
{{ partial "summary.html" . }}
</div>
{{ end }}
</section>
</div>
{{ end }}

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{{ define "main" }}
{{ $data := .Data }}
<article class="cf pa3 pa4-m pa4-l">
<div class="measure-wide-l center f4 lh-copy nested-copy-line-height nested-links nested-img mid-gray">
{{ .Content }}
</div>
</article>
<div class="mw8 center">
<section class="ph4">
{{ range $key, $value := .Data.Terms }}
<h2 class="f1">
<a href="{{ "/" | relLangURL }}{{ $.Data.Plural | urlize }}/{{ $key | urlize }}" class="link blue hover-black">
{{ $.Data.Singular | humanize }}: {{ $key }}
</a>
</h2>
{{ range $value.Pages }}
{{ partial "summary.html" . }}
{{ end }}
{{ end }}
</section>
</div>
{{ end }}

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{{ define "main" }}
<div class="container">
<div class="row">
<div class="twelve columns">
<h1>{{ .Title | default .Site.Title }}</h1>
</div>
</div>
<div class="row">
<div class="eight columns">
{{- .Content -}}
{{ range .Paginator.Pages }}
<h2><a href="{{ .Permalink }}">{{ .Title }}</a></h2>
<div class="nested-links f5 lh-copy nested-copy-line-height">
{{ .Summary }}
</div>
{{ end }}
<div class="pagination">
{{- template "_internal/pagination.html" . -}}
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
{{ end }}

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{{ define "header" }}{{ partial "page-header.html" . }}{{ end }}
{{ define "main" }}
<div class="flex-l mt2 mw8 center">
<article class="center cf pv5 ph3 ph4-ns mw7">
<header>
<p class="f6 b helvetica tracked">
{{ humanize .Section | upper }}
</p>
<h1 class="f1">
{{ .Title }}
</h1>
</header>
<div class="nested-copy-line-height lh-copy f4 nested-links nested-img mid-gray">
{{ .Content }}
</div>
</article>
</div>
{{ end }}

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{{ define "main" }}
{{/*
This template is the same as the default and is here to demonstrate that if you have a content directory called "post" you can create a layouts directory, just for that section.
*/}}
<article class="pa3 pa4-ns nested-copy-line-height nested-img">
<section class="cf ph3 ph5-l pv3 pv4-l f4 tc-l center measure-wide lh-copy mid-gray">
{{ .Content }}
</section>
<aside class="flex-ns flex-wrap justify-around mt5">
{{ range .Paginator.Pages }}
<div class="relative w-100 w-30-l mb4 bg-white">
{{/*
Note we can use `.Render` here for items just in this section, instead of a partial to pull in items for the list page. https://gohugo.io/functions/render/
*/}}
{{ .Render "summary" }}
</div>
{{ end }}
</aside>
{{ template "_internal/pagination.html" . }}
</article>
{{ end }}

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<article class="bb b--black-10">
<a class="db pv4 ph3 ph0-l no-underline dark-gray dim" href="{{ .Permalink }}">
<div class="flex flex-column flex-row-ns">
{{ $featured_image := partial "func/GetFeaturedImage.html" . }}
{{ if $featured_image }}
<div class="pr3-ns mb4 mb0-ns w-100 w-40-ns">
<img src="{{ $featured_image }}" class="db" alt="image from {{ .Title }}">
</div>
{{ end }}
<div class="w-100{{ if $featured_image }} w-60-ns pl3-ns{{ end }}">
<h1 class="f3 fw1 athelas mt0 lh-title">{{ .Title }}</h1>
<div class="f6 f5-l lh-copy nested-copy-line-height">
{{ .Summary }}
</div>
{{/* TODO: add author
<p class="f6 lh-copy mv0">By {{ .Author }}</p> */}}
</div>
</div>
</a>
</article>

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<div class="mb3 pa4 mid-gray overflow-hidden">
{{ if .Date }}
<div class="f6">
{{ .Date.Format "January 2, 2006" }}
</div>
{{ end }}
<h1 class="f3 near-black">
<a href="{{ .Permalink }}" class="link black dim">
{{ .Title }}
</a>
</h1>
<div class="nested-links f5 lh-copy nested-copy-line-height">
{{ .Summary }}
</div>
</div>

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User-agent: *
# robotstxt.org - if ENV production variable is false robots will be disallowed.
{{ if eq (getenv "HUGO_ENV") "production" | or (eq .Site.Params.env "production") }}
Allow: /
Sitemap: {{.Site.BaseURL}}/sitemap.xml
{{ else }}
Disallow: /
{{ end }}

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/*
* Based on Skeleton V2.0.4
*
*
* Skeleton
* Copyright 2014, Dave Gamache
* www.getskeleton.com
* Free to use under the MIT license.
* http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
* 12/29/2014
*/
/**
* Language highlight colours. Should be or match the language/technology's
* branding guidelines.
*/
:root {
--background-colour: #fff;
--text-colour: #222;
--php: rgb(136, 146, 191);
--javascript: #83CD29;
--go: #00ADD8;
--flutter: #02569B;
--clojure: #62B132;
--rust: #DEA584;
--python: #4584B6;
}
.pill {
border: 1px solid var(--text-colour);
font-size: 55%;
padding: 0 10px;
vertical-align: middle;
border-radius: 5px;
font-weight: bold;
background-color: var(--text-colour);
color: var(--background-colour);
}
.php {
background-color: var(--php);
border-color: var(--php);
color: var(--background-colour);
}
.javascript {
background-color: var(--javascript);
border-color: var(--javascript);
color: var(--background-colour);
}
.go {
background-color: var(--go);
border-color: var(--go);
color: var(--background-colour);
}
.flutter {
background-color: var(--flutter);
border-color: var(--flutter);
color: var(--background-colour);
}
.clojure {
background-color: var(--clojure);
border-color: var(--clojure);
color: var(--background-colour);
}
.rust {
background-color: var(--rust);
border-color: var(--rust);
color: var(--background-colour);
}
.python {
background-color: var(--python);
border-color: var(--python);
color: var(--background-colour);
}
.pagination {
width: 50%;
margin: 0 auto;
}
.pagination > ul {
list-style: none;
display: flex;
justify-content: space-between;
}
/* Base Styles
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– */
/* NOTE
html is set to 62.5% so that all the REM measurements throughout Skeleton
are based on 10px sizing. So basically 1.5rem = 15px :) */
* {
box-sizing: border-box;
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;
-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
-moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale;
font-kerning: auto;
}
html {
font-size: 62.5%;
-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;
}
body {
font-size: 1.6em; /* currently ems cause chrome bug misinterpreting rems on body element */
line-height: 1.6;
font-weight: 400;
font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif;
color: var(--text-colour);
background-color: var(--background-colour);
margin: 20px 0;
}
@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
:root {
--background-colour: #202225;
--text-colour: #dcddde;
--flutter: #0175C2;
--python: #FFDE57;
}
.pill {
border: 1px solid var(--text-colour);
background-color: var(--background-colour);
color: var(--text-colour);
}
.php {
background-color: var(--background-colour);
border-color: var(--php);
color: var(--php);
}
.javascript {
background-color: var(--background-colour);
border-color: var(--javascript);
color: var(--javascript);
}
.go {
background-color: var(--background-colour);
border-color: var(--go);
color: var(--go);
}
.flutter {
background-color: var(--background-colour);
border-color: var(--go);
color: var(--go);
}
.clojure {
background-color: var(--background-colour);
border-color: var(--clojure);
color: var(--clojure);
}
.rust {
background-color: var(--background-colour);
border-color: var(--rust);
color: var(--rust);
}
.python {
background-color: var(--background-colour);
border-color: var(--python);
color: var(--python);
}
}
/* Grid
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– */
.container {
position: relative;
width: 100%;
max-width: 960px;
margin: 0 auto;
padding: 0 20px;
box-sizing: border-box; }
.column,
.columns {
width: 100%;
float: left;
box-sizing: border-box; }
/* For devices larger than 400px */
@media (min-width: 400px) {
.container {
width: 85%;
padding: 0;
}
}
/* For devices larger than 550px */
@media (min-width: 550px) {
.container {
width: 80%;
}
.column,
.columns {
margin-left: 4%;
}
.column:first-child,
.columns:first-child {
margin-left: 0;
}
.one.column,
.one.columns { width: 4.66666666667%; }
.two.columns { width: 13.3333333333%; }
.three.columns { width: 22%; }
.four.columns { width: 30.6666666667%; }
.five.columns { width: 39.3333333333%; }
.six.columns { width: 48%; }
.seven.columns { width: 56.6666666667%; }
.eight.columns { width: 65.3333333333%; }
.nine.columns { width: 74.0%; }
.ten.columns { width: 82.6666666667%; }
.eleven.columns { width: 91.3333333333%; }
.twelve.columns { width: 100%; margin-left: 0; }
.one-third.column { width: 30.6666666667%; }
.two-thirds.column { width: 65.3333333333%; }
.one-half.column { width: 48%; }
}
/* Typography
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– */
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
margin-top: 0;
margin-bottom: 2rem;
font-weight: 300; }
h1 { font-size: 4.0rem; line-height: 1.2; font-weight: 500; }
h2 { font-size: 3.6rem; line-height: 1.25; }
h3 { font-size: 3.0rem; line-height: 1.3; font-weight: 500; }
h4 { font-size: 2.4rem; line-height: 1.35; }
h5 { font-size: 1.8rem; line-height: 1.5; }
h6 { font-size: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.6; }
.project h4, .experiment h4 {
margin-bottom: 0.05rem;
}
/* Larger than phablet */
@media (min-width: 550px) {
h1 { font-size: 5.0rem; }
h2 { font-size: 4.2rem; }
h3 { font-size: 3.6rem; }
h4 { font-size: 3.0rem; }
h5 { font-size: 2.4rem; }
h6 { font-size: 1.5rem; }
}
p {
margin-top: 0;
}
/* Links
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– */
a {
color: #1EAEDB;
}
a:hover {
color: #0FA0CE;
}
/* Buttons
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– */
.button,
button,
input[type="submit"],
input[type="reset"],
input[type="button"] {
display: inline-block;
height: 38px;
padding: 0 30px;
color: #555;
text-align: center;
font-size: 11px;
font-weight: 600;
line-height: 38px;
text-transform: uppercase;
text-decoration: none;
white-space: nowrap;
background-color: transparent;
border-radius: 4px;
border: 1px solid #bbb;
cursor: pointer;
box-sizing: border-box; }
.button:hover,
button:hover,
input[type="submit"]:hover,
input[type="reset"]:hover,
input[type="button"]:hover,
.button:focus,
button:focus,
input[type="submit"]:focus,
input[type="reset"]:focus,
input[type="button"]:focus {
color: #333;
border-color: #888;
outline: 0; }
.button.button-primary,
button.button-primary,
input[type="submit"].button-primary,
input[type="reset"].button-primary,
input[type="button"].button-primary {
color: #FFF;
background-color: #33C3F0;
border-color: #33C3F0; }
.button.button-primary:hover,
button.button-primary:hover,
input[type="submit"].button-primary:hover,
input[type="reset"].button-primary:hover,
input[type="button"].button-primary:hover,
.button.button-primary:focus,
button.button-primary:focus,
input[type="submit"].button-primary:focus,
input[type="reset"].button-primary:focus,
input[type="button"].button-primary:focus {
color: #FFF;
background-color: #1EAEDB;
border-color: #1EAEDB; }
/* Spacing
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– */
button,
.button {
margin-bottom: 1rem; }
input,
textarea,
select,
fieldset {
margin-bottom: 1.5rem; }
pre,
blockquote,
dl,
figure,
table,
p,
ul,
ol,
form {
margin-bottom: 2.5rem; }
/* Utilities
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– */
.u-full-width {
width: 100%;
box-sizing: border-box; }
.u-max-full-width {
max-width: 100%;
box-sizing: border-box; }
.u-pull-right {
float: right; }
.u-pull-left {
float: left; }
/* Misc
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– */
hr {
margin-top: 3rem;
margin-bottom: 3.5rem;
border-width: 0;
border-top: 1px solid var(--text-colour);
}
/* Clearing
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– */
/* Self Clearing Goodness */
.container:after,
.row:after,
.u-cf {
content: "";
display: table;
clear: both;
}

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# Roughly forked from https://themes.gohugo.io/themes/gohugo-theme-ananke/ used
# for reference.
name = "blog.gabrielsimmer.com Theme"
description = "Theme for blog.gabrielsimmer.com"
homepage = "https://blog.gabrielsimmer.com"