Three years ago, I made a list of every mechanical keyboard I’ve ever owned. I thought I had settled into the keyboards I would use for the foreseeable future. A year ago, a friend of mine gave me a modern Model M keyboard as a housewarming gift. I also started looking into split ergonomic keyboards, and built a Slice MK from a kit. Being my first ortholinear keyboard, I wasn’t prepared for needing to relearn how to type. Eventually I went back to a staggered layout for my personal workstation while continuing to use the Slice MK for work. Below is an update to my previous post, with comments and criticisms of keyboards I’ve used over the past three years.
In my last post, I discussed archiving the collection of Louder with Crowder Mug Club episodes after he switched networks. During the past year, Steven Crowder has faced many controversies, both with his show and his personal life. His conflict with The Daily Wire, the leaked videos of an argument with his wife, the departure of Dave Landau, and his move from BlazeTV to Rumble, have all led to reactions and speculation.
I currently still watch and support Louder with Crowder with a subscription to Mug Club. Over the past few years, I have found the show both entertaining and an excellent lens for information in an increasingly politically divisive media hellscape. We are living in a culture that seeks to erase anyone who doesn’t spout the ideology of progressivism. It’s a culture that will not supply grace and forgiveness to those who admit they are imperfect, but will justify insane beliefs of those from the progressive clan. Do Crowder’s antics and actions impede on his integrity? If so, what light should that cast (if any) on the work and dedication of the dozens of people that have made Louder with Crowder into one of the largest conservative morning shows currently on the Internet?
Recently, the show Louder with Crowder moved from BlazeTV to Rumble/Locals. Their previous library of episodes does not appeared to have moved with them, preserved only on BlazeTV’s website in an archive section. People like to believe things put on the Internet stick around forever. If you were on-line during the early years, you’ve probably realized how much of the old Internet has disappeared. I never asked for a BlazeTV membership when I joined Mug Club, so I figured this would be a good time to archive the show. Using a little bit of web development knowledge and Python, I created a snapshot of a show that changed the landscape of conservative political satire and comedy in the late 2010s.
Over the winter and into the spring, I played several turn based and action/platform games. On the Switch, I finished Fire Emblem Engage, the third game I’ve beat in the Fire Emblem franchise. I also completed 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, a story rich kaiju versus robot anime adventure. On the PC, I played Hi-Fi Rush, an interesting mix of beat-em-up combat combined with musical beat matching in a retro futuristic world. I finished up the season with Ratchet and Clank: Rifts Apart, a cute and fun kids game that really shows off the power of the PS5 console.
Over the winter months, I played mostly PC games and a single console title. On the PlayStation 5, I played Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut. It’s a smooth and beautiful sword fighting title. Bringing things down in intensity, I also played and reviewed Airborne Kingdom, a cute casual simulation and resource management game. I finished up NieR:Automata, a role playing robot title I had started a while back, yet put down for a while. Finally, I’m finishing this season’s reviews with A Plague Tale: Requiem, a captivating yet dark saga following the adventures of a young girl protecting her brother.
A few months ago, when looking for fun 3D printing projects, I discovered the Raspberry Pi Server Mark III. The prices for Raspberry Pis has skyrocketed, despite the fact that nearly half a million units are produced every month. Luckily, I had several Pis lying around from my previous research into environmental sensor networks. I decided to print the 18 slot version of the Mark III rack, so I’d have plenty of room to expand. As I was printing all the parts, I dug through my hardware and found 5 Raspberry Pis from various generations. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to add Pis to my home lab and experiment with cluster management and distributed tasks.
Last year Kayne West (also known as Ye) made headlines for several interviews where he directly blames a single ethnic group for issues he’s had with the entertainment industry. Blaming any group of people based on a characteristic they literally have no control over, has been historically been condemned as immoral. Kanye’s views shouldn’t really come as a surprise in a world that is returning to segregation as some type of penance for past wrongs. However, there is a deeper evil to this story that people are dismissing because of Kanye’s absurdity. Kanye’s story is about the dangers of Hollywood, the power of propaganda, and the way people are used for their cult of personality to propel a narrative. But worst of all, his story is being used to fuel the Orwellian idea that words are violence. His story will likely be twisted as a tale of right-wing radicalization that fuels domestic terrorism.
This fall, I powered up my PlayStation 5, after not touching it for a while. I finally finished up Sackboy: A Big Adventure, the second game I’ve played in the Little Big Planet Franchise. Afterwards, I immediately jumped straight into God of War Ragnarök, an absolutely stunning sequel to the 2018 God of War for the PlayStation 4. This month’s reviews are from a seasons of sequels on a current generation console.
A few months ago, I wanted to add in a 10G Ethernet card to my primary development box. Since it’s an ITX build, I only had one PCI-E slot that was occupied with an old AMD RX 550 video card. Even though the Ryzen 2700X processor it held was more than powerful enough for my needs, I switched it out with a Ryzen 5700G so I could free up the PCI-E slot for 10G networking. Unfortunately, X11 started crashing recently with the integrated graphics. Sway/Wayland seems to run stable. I currently use Sway on my personal laptop, so I attempted to take the plunge again and see if I could switch to it on my primary machine. I jumped in with an open mind, and found replacements for many of the i3/X11 tools that do not work with Sway/Wayland. The following is a summary of what worked, what didn’t quite work and what’s still broken. The version of Sway I’m using is 1.7 on Gentoo.
Journey, Far Changing Tides, Stray and Fire Emblem Three Kingdoms
It’s been a couple of months since I’ve published game reviews. I wasn’t sure if I was going to continue writing them, as part of me wanted to just enjoy games rather than detailing my journey through them. Still, I haven’t finished many titles since my last review, and I might as well recommend some titles that I enjoyed over this year. Fire Emblem: Three Houses is the second Fire Emblem game I’ve played, the first being Awakening on the 3DS. It’s the only Switch game I’m reviewing. Far: Changing Tides and Stray are two great short titles, filled with puzzles, amazing artwork and story. Finally, I was inspired to play Journey, one of the early walking simulators, after hearing part of the soundtrack preformed by a local college ensemble.
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