I’m Hans/Adam and like messing around with retro-tech/video games, old Thinkpads, synthesizers, and other way cool stuff.
I like to write about projects I’m working on, write guides/tutorials for things that were hard to find for me on the internet (for the greater good), talking about ideas/links that I find cool, game/movie journaling, or just writing about stuff I’m collecting.
I recently switched from TrueNAS Core to TrueNAS Scale after reading about ix-System’s stance on FreeBSD development. As much as I love FreeBSD, I really just wanted a turnkey solution for my NAS needs at home and honestly I was getting a little sick of keeping custom jails for different applications I need. Their ‘plugin’ system was beginning to become stale/unmaintained and more reliant on community repos, which in most cases I WOULD LOVE but I evenetually was just making them custom through jails and ehhhh I don’t have time to keep up with that. ...
Project Log Diasassembly/PicoBoot Honestly this wasn’t too bad. I mostly followed this guide, but honestly once I skipped through it enough, I could probably do this by memory now. The GameCube is a bit of an engineering marvel in its simplicity. After the security screws are out from the outside the rest is pretty easy peasy. We also found a tiny spider exoskeleton living underneat the drive assembly! I honestly left it all in there because that’s just a fun little story with it, and it wasn’t harming anything/was clearly stuck to the heat shield. ...
This is the best modern boomer shooter hands down. It’s incredibly satisfying from the low-fi design, sound design, level design, really everything you could want in a “heres all the pieces, now get to the ending” kind of game like this. tldr Ratings: First Time Playing Yes Play Time 17hrs Difficulty Hard/Expert 100% Completion No (didnt get all ore pieces) Fun 8 / 10 Satisfying Combat 9 / 10 Jank 2 / 10 Mechanics If I had any comparison, I’d say this game is most like Quake 2 in design, both from the verticality/environment puzzles and its weapon design. You get the weapon staples like shotguns, better-than-normal shotguns, plasma rifles, railguns, etc and every enemy has a weapon or strategy to take it out quickly. Once you understand this flow and how to fast-switch weapons on the fly, it gets INCREDIBLY satisfying with the feedback you get thrown back to you. ...
[Doomworld link] GZDoom Pistol Start UV (Ultra Violence with 99% Kills) Saves allowed, but frowned upon A fun one map WAD with the idea of impossible places. Very MC Escher inspired. Essentially a LOT of trickery with silent teleporters to loop you around impossible spaces and create infinite hallways. Combat-wise I thought it was very balanced, except for the last fight with the Cyberdemon in the maze/hall of mirrors, I think that was too much. Espeically considering he could just appear in front of you without any warning at all. ...
[Doomworld link] GZDoom Pistol Start UVMAX (Ultra Violence with All Kills and Secrets) Saves allowed, but frowned upon tldr; 27 Maps that mimic the mapping style of original Doom levels, its very only okay compared to more modern WADs to me Map reviews E1M1 0 Deaths. Spent most of the time trying to find secrets. For E1M1 there’s a bit too many linedef door open secrets but I eventually found my way without trouble. ...
[Doomworld link] GZDoom Pistol Start UVMAX (Ultra Violence with All Kills and Secrets) Saves allowed, but frowned upon tldr; 32 Map Megawad where they take modern map design philosophies and mix it with old school assets and simple geometry design. Every map is short and easy digestible and it’s fantastic. Map reviews MAP01-03 0 Deaths. Pretty easy so far, and by easy I mean I completed them without much hassle. I’ll say that the secrets can definitely carry the level in your favour, which is what they should be. Finding a random soulsphere or Rocket Launcher that can help you deal with a bunch of Hell Knights later is definitely great secret design. ...
Okay I’ll just say it straight up out in front, this is as good as any modern 3D platformer like Hat in Time or Yooka Laylee. Hell Pie going right for the Conker approach and doing in your face adult humor combined with a really unique aesthetic and movement mechanics make this a hard recommend from me. tldr Ratings: First Time Playing Yup Play Time 14hrs Difficulty N/A 100% Completion Yes, aside from costumes Fun 9 / 10 Crude Humor 10 / 10 Jank 3 / 10 Hell Pie is a collectathon platformer that is not unlike something like Banjo-Kazooie, Super Mario 64, Yooka Laylee, Hat in Time, etc, but what it most compares to is Conker’s Bad Fur Day. I don’t want to give away too much of the characters/jokes because that is half the fun, but I’ll give you the jist of what makes the game great. ...
This game (like Toree 3D) is all about going for that low poly exploring platforming aesthetic, and it does it really well! Super Kiwi obviously goes more towards the N64 side, and I think it hits it really well! tldr Ratings: First Time Playing Yup Play Time 45mins Difficulty N/A 100% Completion No Fun 6 / 10 Bird Fun 8 / 10 Jank 3 / 10 Where Toree 3D was more about getting to the end of the level, Super Kiwi 64 is more about a non-linear open ended approach. You are slapped into a level and can do any of the ‘objectives’ in any order you want, similar to something like Super Mario 64 or Banjo Kazooie. The controls are very simple, you can jump, glide, attack, and stick your nose into walls and climb things infinitely (similar to the woodpecker ability in Super Mario Odyssey). ...
This game is all about low poly platforming, and that’s literally it, well sort of. It’s very short, clocking in an under an hour, but it’s also $2 or under, so what do I expect. tldr Ratings: First Time Playing Yup Play Time 40mins Difficulty N/A 100% Completion No Fun 7 / 10 Cute dudes 10 / 10 Jank 4 / 10 It’s a really simple game, you can jump and double jump across 9 levels. The game is HEAVILY based around the PS1/N64 low poly aesthetic, more towards early PS1 games. It reminded me most of Croc or Spyro most of the time. For what in reality is an itch.io game, it’s way better than it has any right to be and definitely can hold it’s own. ...
A quick guide/howtos to get SSL through Let’s Encrypt/certbot up and running and how to config for different HTTP servers. Create Cert bundle certbot certonly --webroot -w {your root path} -d {your www domain} -d {your non-www domain} Attach to HTTP servers Nginx Add to SSL base config into site config (taken from github) listen 443 ssl; ssl_session_cache shared:le_nginx_SSL:10m; ssl_session_timeout 1440m; ssl_session_tickets off; ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3; ssl_prefer_server_ciphers off; ssl_ciphers "ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384"; Add your generated certs from certbot: ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/{your domain}/fullchain.pem; ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/{your domain}/privkey.pem; Lighttpd Combine the pub and priv key into a pem file, : cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/{your domain}/cert.pem /etc/letsencrypt/live/{your domain}/privkey.pem > /etc/letsencrypt/live/{your domain}/web.pem Then attach the chain/pem file like ssl.pemfile = "/etc/letsencrypt/live/{your domain}/web.pem" # Combined Certificate ssl.ca-file = "/etc/letsencrypt/live/{your domain}/chain.pem" # Root CA