Affinity just announced their version 3 of their graphics suites. It’s a crazy technical achievement marred by the false promise of “democratizing creative tools”. This feels straight out of the enshittification playbook. I was rooting for them years ago after Adobe went subs only. Sad to see this direction. They gave away their core product for free. Professionals just lost their leverage. This is no longer a business relationship where someone exchanges money for the service....
One Percent a Day
Focusing on the 1% improvement per day for a long time instead of some herculean effort in some small intense burst generally yields bigger and better results in the long run. I don’t know why it took so long. I think I’ve always knew it intellectually. But in the past couple of years I think I’ve finally begun to internalized it. I read Atomic Habits a while back and it put into words that same sentiment....
Taking It Back, Part 1
I’ve been on a bit of a “get back in control of my data” streak. I’ve been experimenting with different services and software to help enable that. Some stick and some don’t quite hit the mark. One that’s had staying power for me has been Kagi. I’ve had it over a year now (August of last year) and I haven’t looked back to google search since. The few times I’ve been found myself on google search it really felt like a step backwards....
Creative Diet
Ran into this post earlier today with a choice quote from an old movie I enjoyed: “In order to make delicious food, you must eat delicious food. The quality of ingredients is important, but one must develop a palate capable of discerning good and bad. Without good taste, you can’t make good food." - Jiro Ono in Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011) The sentiment shared in Prasatt’s post I agree with....
What's Happening
I’ve finally got the creative itch again, and I want to try one more time. What I’m going for is my most ambitious project yet. And I suppose the most liberating notion to me is failure is totally an option, but sitting on the sideline is not.
Adventures in Japan
Some photos I took from my Japan trip last summer
I'm Still Writing
I keep telling myself these past couple of years that I would write more. And then the blog would sit idle for the rest of the year. Turns out I have been writing more. Just not on this blog. I’ve been writing in my own Obsidian vault for years. Are any of those musing worth sharing? Maybe. But I think the fact that the only audience is me compells me to write more frequently....
Onward to Another Year
Last year was quite the year for me personally, professionally, and creatively. There was just a lot of change. One them that stuck throughout was just “re-thinking how I do things”. I was pretty comfy in my tools, gear, and workflows and had become curious about other methods. It quickly turned into a rabbit hole 😆. Workflows I spent several months last year kind of re-thinking workflows. This ranged from how I work and the tools I use to get that work done to the architecture of code I write to improve iteration time....
Melted Rust
TL;DR: So I’m not entirely sure if my CPU is completely hosed at this point and I’ll have to be getting a new one soon, but I was running into some insane errors while compiling rust recently. Turns out my CPU can’t compile rust reliably when thermal throttled. I’ve been on this PC build for a little over a year now. The CPU is an Intel i9-13900K. It’s also a custom build....
Godot, Powershell, and GdExt
New Year, more Godot! I’m finally taking the time to make my windows environment as comfy as I can make it. My day job has me working on macOS/linux so I’m familiar with just running stuff with simple shell scripts, maybe a makefile, and I’m off to the races. With Godot I’m developing primarily on Windows, in Neovim, and using the Rust GDExtension. Trying to stay in the flow of coding and iterating starts to become important so today I decided to spend some time setting up some scripts to help with that flow....