Notes

  • 2026-08-03-Selling-the-8bitdo-64-Controller

    Little bit gutted as I’m selling the 8BitDo 64 controller I just bought because it doesn’t support xinput! All my other controllers are xinput.

    I like being able to grab a controller and have Retroarch or whatever just auto configure for it. Can’t remember which, but one of the N64 recomps I have didn’t even detect the controller! Here’s hoping the Brawler 64 Pro from Retro Fighters solves this.


    03 August 2026 [Permalink]
  • 2026-07-31-Decision-Made---Back-to-Mastodon

    I’ve been thinking about the social side of my site for a while. I don’t think I want the headache of webmentions again. It’s a cool technology, but it’s a fragile technology. Instead I’ve decided to go with a Mastodon account and syndicate the occasional post for discussion (if anyone actually wants to discuss anything is a different story altogether!)

    Anyway, the syndicated url is placed at the top of the post.

    Anyway, people can always email me!


    31 July 2026 [Permalink]
  • 2026-07-29-Bothering-With-Webmentions-Again

    It has been a long while since I really looked at the backend of the site. I had a decent setup a few years ago using webmentions and had built Hugo templates for posts to include whether it was a note, reply, like etc. Unfortunately I didn’t have the motivation to keep this all working, so I transferred the site to its new host and never got round to the webmention stuff.

    Not sure if I want to revisit it again, but I guess I could clean up things like formatting of the notes page on mobile etc. We shall see.


    29 July 2026 [Permalink]
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  • 2025-12-26-Gran-Turismo-4-Spec-II

    Bit of a note for my future self if I ever do a version update of the AMAZING Gran Turismo 4 Spec II.

    First, don’t bother upgrading - it probably won’t work. Maybe for other people, but I convert PS2 *.iso’s to *.chd files. Converting that back to patch doesn’t like it.

    Just go with a full patch. Look for the Gran Turismo 4 Online Public Beta (US) - [SCUS-97436] image on a place like archive.org.

    Then remember that xdelta is installed in macos via homebrew and called with xdelta3, as that’s the latest version.

    $ xdelta3 -d -s [source file.iso] [GT4 patch.xdelta] [output file.iso]
    $ chdman createcd -i [output file.iso] -o [Gran Turismo 4 Spec II.chd]
    

    26 December 2025 [Permalink]
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  • 2025-02-25-When-Did-Hugo-Get-Complex

    A quick thought…I’ve been reworking a website from Wordpress to Hugo. The last time I started a Hugo site from scratch was probably this blog. It was great being able to work everything out and add theme edits where I wanted just be reading the locally downloaded code. When did this get replaced by endless modules and submodules? How am I supposed to make the edits I want?

    It’s mad confusing and really demands the use of Github. What happened to making the web simple? I’m hardly a tech neophyte, but if I have to learn entire new ways of working just to keep using a tool…maybe that’s a design issue. I shouldn’t have to be a programmer just to get a static site working. It’s only supposed to be a template machine!

    /rant.


    25 February 2025 [Permalink]
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  • 2024-11-12-Deluge-Docker-and-Mergerfs

    I am updating a whole load of my self hosted software, including a spiffy new reverse proxy. Part of this has been replacing my torrent client with Deluge. However…The linuxserver docker image just would not download anything. It’s always either permissions or DNS, right?…well this was permissions, but not in the regular way.

    Turns out my MergerFS mount really did not like a certain setting (cache.files=off), so I changed it to cache.files=partial and it worked! Links here and here very helpful in working this out.


    12 November 2024 [Permalink]
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  • 2024-08-16-Omg,-a-Mastodon-Thread-as-a-Comment-Section

    I had initially integrated webmentions into this site and had my own mastodon instance. I let both languish and the mastodon instance broke. However, seeing what people like Carl Schwan and Graham Macphee have achieved in integrating Mastodon as a comments section is mindblowing on a static site.

    I wanted this kind of thing with Brid.gy, but it never really worked out so well.

    Surely this has got to be the next project…


    16 August 2024 [Permalink]
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  • 2024-08-15-I-Have-Time-to-Work-on-My-Site-Again

    Now I have joined the unemployed (technically I’m retired…) I have some time to revisit my site again. I forgot how much I enjoyed messing with templating to make things work how I wanted.

    I want to get posting again and update some of the guides I have written - mainly for myself, but also for the people who have also been looking at it (which I only know about from the spanky new install of Plausible I just finished).


    15 August 2024 [Permalink]
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  • Migrating from Proxmox 6 to 7 was surprisingly simple, I just followed the guide here and there were no issues at all.

    Recreating my reverse proxy container wasn’t too bad either, although it had me wondering if I should learn something a bit newer than Apache.

    Hopefully Webmentions still work, I’ll send one to my yearly targets page to see!


    24 July 2022 [Permalink]
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  • 2022-07-02-atom-is-dead

    Gutted that Atom text editor is being archived on December 15th! I’ve tried VSCodium and..it’s not the same. Atom is so simple and clean! This whole site was written in Atom.

    I’ll have to try some other text editors. Sublime looks great…but $99USD for a text editor? Are you nuts??

    Maybe someone will fork it. I really hope someone will fork it!


    02 July 2022 [Permalink]
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