As mentioned in part 1 of The Samsung Dex Pad posts – I’m looking into cloud gaming with the Dex Pad as well. It’s so far provided a pretty good solution for working via RDP solutions, with a few (so far) trivial issues. This part covers a little more in-depth overview of the issues I’m currently facing with the Dex Pad…

Mouse Capture Issues

My weapon app of choice when it comes to streaming my desktop is Parsec – it’s worked amazingly well for 1080p 60fps cloud streaming from my Notebook so far, but unfortunately, while Parsec works great, and keeps my mouse nicely within the confines of the specified 1080p resolution; I have mouse tracking issues in FPS games, unfortunately. It’s somewhat annoying and upsetting that gaming doesn’t work correctly, however some Google-fu has shown me that it’s most likely a Samsung Dex issue, and really – there’s no telling when it’ll be fixed.

To see if things were just a Parsec issue, I also ended up downloading the Moonlight Gamestream app which is based on a FOSS version of NVIDIA’s Shield streaming tech (I luckily, run a GeForce 1080Ti video card).

To test my FPS gaming purposes – I decided to pick a game of Rust, which really, is quite asking for punishment, haha!

Turn around…

In Parsec, things did not go well ™. I couldn’t turn a full 360 degrees, and had to find myself lifting my mouse off the pad to do the tiny-mouse-pad-shuffle on my giant deskmat just to turn around a little bit.

Every now and then I get a little bit nervous…

Things were worryingly bad audio wise too, with sound crackling, and some blurring of texturing every now and then, so I suspect I was having WiFi bandwidth issues. I’ll need to test a fix (probably in a Part 3) of a USB hub and usb-to-Ethernet adapter.

Turn around…

Things were even worse trying to turn in Moonlight – I completely lost Mouse Capture abilities – although my mouse buttons for left/right-click were working. Keyboard input was fine, however.

Every now and then I get a little bit terrified…

And then my first PvP moment came. Almost instantly my attacked realized I couldn’t turn around, and to add to insult, he started taunting me over voice chat in-game. And here’s the other problem, I had no mic support. This is more a combination of the Dex and Parsec/Moonlight’s support for the devices.

Some fiddling required!

There’s a lot of work that’s needed in Samsung Dex (Pad). For example, not every sort of keyboard shortcut is pulled across to the Dex, sure the common ones are (ctrl + c, ctrl + v); but input gets entangled when I typed too fast for the Dex (I type about 130wpm) and why is shift + spacebar a shortcut for what language I’m using on my keyboard?? A quick Google search shows I’m not alone in being annoyed at this, and I’ve ended up having to download a separate app to just tweak and deal with Dex’s shortcomings.

It’s annoying, and the product is a work in progress I suppose – from a developer’s standpoint, I doubt there’s any reasonable way for the Samsung engineers to spend time working out the configurations that every user ever will need out of the Dex. But you’d think Korea’s largest company would have some resources for internationalization and basic research. It just wasn’t enough.

Here’s two apps that saved my Dex experience, and to top it off, I had to pay moneyfor one of them, which made me even more upset.

• Dex MAX – this app lets me repackage the APKs of other Apps as needed to fit full screen
• Desktop Hub (Dex Hub) – I had to pay $3.99 to unlock the ‘Pro’ version of this app, which helped me reconfigure a bunch of Dex built-in keyboard shortcuts, volume/screen usability tweaks and more

On top of all the shenanigans above, I’ve now also needed to enable developer mode which really, is a hugely unnecessary (albeit probably inevitable in terms of the lifetime of my ownership of the Note 8 and an Android phone) step. While I have no doubt that at some point in the future I would have enabled this mode and stuck my hand up the Note 8’s proverbial skirt, it annoys me that I have to do this for a first party accessory, just to get some applications to behave properly, and enable greater usability in app window management!

So, what does work?

Remote desktop works – be it through either Parsec (preferred) or via Microsoft’s RDP App inside Dex MAX for fullscreen compatibility. So there is that at least; it means I can do my work, designs, and projects as needed.

Natively, there’s Microsoft Office which all works completely fine on the Dex, it’s optimised for Dex in fact and I didn’t have any problems using it – being a near identical experience to the real desktop applications. Mad props to Microsoft for putting so much effort into their Office suite!

Plex also kind of works. I have to use the browser based version to watch my media, and it’s got some odd re-sizing issues (full screen mode goes black after about 10 seconds). Netflix actually works very well once developer mode and ‘True Window’ mode from Desktop Hub is enabled. The subtitles even seem clearer than the native apps on iOS and Playstation!

In the end…

Will I be using the Dex Pad? Yes. To keep it short and sweet, the Dex Pad lets me do a lot, with a thin client, without the extra hassle of a laptop. The ‘extra computing power’ of a laptop is moot for the situation I want to use it in (explicitly, as a thin client to do computing from my bedroom should I need it). I can enjoy most of my media, and all the productivity I might need with it.

Samsung is going to have to go more than halfway across the bridge to entice devs to start making products that work with it. Once the ball gets rolling though, look out Apple and Microsoft!

Gaming does work, but not entirely well. But there are some games which do, and gamepad gaming still works a treat so I’m not completely without. Admittedly, this is being used as a Cloud Gaming terminal, which I must stress the Dex was not intended for. In fact, even if it were intended for gaming as it mentions in passing, cloud based gaming would’ve been the last thing on their minds.

Again though, it’s an adventure and hassle in configuration that shows an incomplete experience with incredible potential. The Dex is the closest desktop replacement I’ve gotten for a non-PC/laptop device. And I so eagerly want to love it and use it that I’m even doing so now, and will be going ahead with using it for a lot of my evening computing.

But I cannot stress how impossible it would be, without already owning a beast of a PC, strenuous setup with the Cloud Citizen project, and a lot of compromises on my behalf to accept how things work. I am using the Dex far beyond the scope of Enterprise applications (essentially office productivity suite level applications). Studio applications work to some extent, I can see orthographic based 3D-applications working well here; using Unreal Engine Editor, Unity 3D, ZBrush, and Google Sketchup gave me quite a few headaches with mouse movement syncing working only partially.

I cannot recommend this product to anyone else. But I respect what Samsung’s trying to achieve here, and I personally will remain interested (and a user) in the Dex product lineup as we continue on into the future. There’s a lot of promise here, and Samsung could well have a golden ticket to a much much larger install base instantly, with the possibilities the Dex provides.

It just needs that extra support from the app developers, and more of Samsung’s own resources thrown at it too. It’s a great platform, but Samsung is going to have to go more than halfway across the bridge to entice devs to start making products that work with it. Once the ball gets rolling though, look out Apple and Microsoft!

So, this afternoon, I picked up the Samsung Dex Pad. Some of you will recall my earlier blog post bemoaning whether or not I can survive on just a tablet, and whilst I actually have a Citrix M1 Mouse for the iPad on its way, I also decided to pick up the Dex Pad, as a potential thin client replacement for my bedroom.

This little doohickey is the next revision of the Dex Station which was released with the Samsung Galaxy/Note 8 series. This version, released with the Galaxy 9 series – requires any 8 series devices to have Android Oreo as a base release for the OS for backwards compatibility.

It supports up to 2K resolution, has a built in cooling fan, and uses a platform based docking form factor, instead of a puck-shaped vertical factor. It makes a lot of sense actually, as it lets the phone be used as a trackpad or keyboard as required, should no extra input devices be available. It’s a very clever idea, one that I’m sure would be welcome to a lot of semi-mobile workstation users.

I’m actually writing this post at around about midnight, and it’s quite late, having just received the device to take a look at, the initial overall impression of the device, having spent about 10 minutes with it.

First off, this is what the browser looks like, running on a 1080p screen:

It’s perfectly usable, and I have no issues writing posts (in fact, this very post is being written via the Dex) for my blog, or doing basically productivity work. Where the big test comes in, will be on remote streaming for desktop, and gaming.

Dex MAX – an invaluable tool

So, to my horror, a lot of the apps on Dex don’t support full screen resolution – including Microsoft RDP. To fix this, I actually had to download this 3rd party companion application, Dex MAX – it’s a life saver. I probably would have returned the Dex Pad if this app did not exist.

It tries to force the apps to run full screen, and if it doesn’t work – you can enter expert mode and modify the manifests in the APKs to force a full screen mode! If that doesn’t work, then the devs will need to add native full screen support in a new version of the app.

Remote Desktop (Microsoft RDP Client)

As one of the primary reasons for an enterprise environment etc, I know a lot of organisations out there use Citrix, VMWare, etc. but you’d think that getting basic Dex support with Microsoft would be a key step. Especially considering how prolific the operating system is…

However, no, it doesn’t work without being modded by Dex MAX. Here’s a screenshot of it working in Dex MAX:

Now, it works perfectly fine as an RDP client, meaning about 90% of what I do is sorted. Productivity wise, I can scrape by as well as needed!

So all in all, it’s a pretty stable experience. It’s not the ultimate replacement, but for everything non-entertainment wise or just general browsing, it’s fine. It’s usable, and I probably will use it.

In part 2 – I’ll update my findings on gaming, which works (with many many caveats).

Before we begin, I should point out that I’m writing this article because I love Factorio, the game. This isn’t a review, more an article documenting my impression of the game.

I’m a huge fan of base building and management sim games. They occupy a lot of my ever-constricting gaming time, especially games like Rust, Conan Exiles, Minecraft, and such. The problem is while I enjoy a peppering of PvP for some spicy gameplay moments, I’m always enthralled with the tech trees of these games, building them up, and finding the ‘best way’ to do things to survive and thrive in these sometimes harsh games.

24 hours of gameplay time in the space of 3 days, this game has its crane claws sunk deep into me… I see conveyer belts when I close my eyes!

Enter stage – Factorio. I’ve actually seen a number of people on my Steam Friends list enjoy this game for many many hours, and yet I never thought to take a look, until Dan (the “Wee Scotsman”) from my Final Fantasy XIV Guild pointed it out to me.

The game starts with a top-down view, of your little engineeer, and a simple premise. Build a factory to produce enough technology, and components to launch a space shuttle to get you off the planet; while surviving waves of hostile aliens. This game is complex despite its overarching goal.

Factorio’s gamplay, is deep. The technology tree is huge, it’s nuanced in how each step affects gameplay, and there’s so much to discover, research and learn that it can extend the lifetime of a single play-through exponentially. For example, Inserters (Cranes which move things from point A to point B) are customisable, they have their own set timings, different models have different movement speeds and create different “rhythms” of items on conveyor belts. A true master of automation could get the timing right between their orchestra of inserters to create a symphony of whirring and dancing to move items at the perfect speed for their production facilities, and maximise that item output.

For a game that does away with the AAA graphics, and ‘polish’ of those titles, it’s incredibly functional and the game’s mechanics, design and artistic direction don’t hold back with letting you control the flow of information you receive.

Factorio also supports the operation of a headless dedicated server, a huge bonus in my book, and in fact, I operate a private server for myself and close friends to connect to and play with. It’s been the most fun I’ve had with a building based game since… well, ever.

You can get Factorio on Steam and despite the $30 USD price tag, it’s well worth the price of admission. I can’t recommend this game enough to anyone who prefers technical, puzzle-like games, with a casual element of PvE.

This is mostly a personal note on how to setup a workflow with my Web Development (PHP/MySQL & Docker based) projects. Usually, with pretty much any project, the workflow goes as follows:

Figure: My workflow prior to this article

To host my own repositories of codes per project, I actually use GOGS which is short for Go Git Service – it’s written of course, in google Go, and is essentially a self-hosted Github clone. It’s by one of the devs from the Gitlab team, and it’s far more lightweight and easier to use in a personal scope, than Gitlab (Gitlab is still wonderful, but I think it’s better suited to teams of 2 or more people).

Git hooks are amazing!

The above workflow diagram though, is missing one really critical stage – getting the code to production – a.k.a. deployment. Typically on any deployment, after the above workflow, I’d either remote in, or set up a cron job to pull from master. There’s some problems with this method of doing things:

1. I’m doing a git pull which is based on merges, and can really cause some shit if there’s a conflict (there shouldn’t be, but just in case)
2. I’m remoting into the server each time I have to pull for some commits, this takes up time. I’m a serial commit/push-as-save person
3. It’s completely against the ethos of a developer. If I’m doing something repeatedly, I should find a way to automate it!

So, enter stage – Git hooks. Git hooks are amazing! They’re actually natively supported by Git (powered by Git) and I only really just started learning about using them. I vaguely recall encountering them earlier in my growth as a dev, but I must’ve shelved it at some point and given up trying to learn hooks (probably around the same time I cracked it at Drone CI, and Jenkins CI/CD).

Anyway, the overall concept of using a Git Hook is that I reach the final stage of the workflow I drew at the start of this article Git push to remote repository – the idea is that the Git repo then registers this push in something called a post-receive hook. It then performs some functions and essentialy plonks a pull of the latest code of my repo, into the production environment.

At first, I started off with something super simple, from my jtiong.com (this website!) repository as an example:

#!/bin/sh
ssh [email protected] 'cd /var/www/jtiong.com && git fetch && git reset --hard origin/master'

Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to work. I kept getting remote: Gogs internal error messages, and figured out it was something to do with my SSH keys not working in the authorized_keys and known_hosts files of the docker container to server shell and vice versa. After a lot of Google-fu and tinkering around, I eventually came up with the following which worked (note, it’s been edited to be a generic solution).

#!/bin/bash
ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no [email protected] -p 22 -i /home/git/.ssh/id_rsa 'cd /project/folder/path && git fetch && git reset --hard origin/master'

It’s not entirely necessary, but I used the -p and -i options to specify both the SSH port and identity file used with the SSH connection (just for greater control, you should be able to remove them, your results may vary). The key section of the above command that I want to highlight is the -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no option that I’ve set. This got rid of any Host Key issues between the docker container and the host server for me. So if you’re encountering issues with your Host Key Verification or similar, this might fix your problems!

With the git command now, I used git fetch && git reset --hard origin/master instead of just doing a git pull. Why? Because git pull uses merge methods and can result in some conflicts with code, and issues that are just messy and a bad experience to untangle. Using git reset, moves the code’s pointer to a different commit without merging anything. It just overwrites it, making it slightly safer for deployment!

But of course… Why do things in just a simple way? This particular hook configuration is great for something like my personal site where I don’t mind if I’m pushing breaking bugs to production (within reason). However, when I’m doing work for clients, I need to be a little bit more careful – and I use a more typical production, staging, development branching method with my Gitflow.

Here’s what I use now:

And wonderfully – this lets me have separate branches, as required and updates the appropriate (sub)domain as needed! The wonder of Git Hooks has now streamlined how I develop projects, and deploy them in a much more pain-free manner! And so I dramatically take another step in my journey and growth as a developer haha 😛

Project Cloud Citizen has been a resounding success; it’s literally waiting now on two time-sensitive issues:

• I pass probation at work so I might have more leeway in the machine I keep in the office to use for this project;
• I decide to either use a laptop, or become almost entirely iPad based

I’ve got a generation 1 iPad Pro 9.7-inch, Wi-fi only, 32GB tablet. It was purposely bought a few years ago as a bare minimum use device for purely media consumption, but thanks to Project Cloud Citizen — it’s wonderful, it lets me do just about everything with it short of solid code development (Using docker etc) although that is already solved in the project through the really good RDP client that Microsoft makes for iPad users.

“…it’s purely from a gaming perspective that I’m holding back…”

The iPad solves and makes comfortable, an idea of having a clean, sleek slate that acts as a window into my digital world (hah, a window to Windows basically) and lets me roam around pretty much anywhere with sufficient download speeds, and minimal upload speeds – while enjoying the power of hardware that is usually not within reach in those locations.

In fact, it’s purely from a gaming perspective that I’m holding back from not even needing my laptop as I can do everything either via RDP, or directly here on the iPad itself (I’m in fact, writing this blog post on the iPad right now!). So, that leads me to think about the following options:

1. Do I research exhaustively and figure out a way to remote game with my iPad (this will most likely involve money)
2. Do I just make do? 70% of the time I’m gaming, will be at home, with the remaining 30% being remote on travel/visits/etc.
3. Probation ending, means I’ll be able to implement a small Mini-ITX machine at the office, thus once again, freeing my laptop as a client

Option 1

Option 1, is of course, the hard way. And what would this experiment be, without trying to figure out things the hard way? There’s a variety of ways to cope with the use of the iPad as a thin client; including jailbreaking my iPad to allow it to function with a mouse, through to actually buying an iOS compatible (with specific apps) mouse. While it’s not awesome that I have to spend money for a solution, it is acceptable, as I’m paying for something that’s a bit outside the box (for most Aussie PC users), so to speak. A quick bit of Google-fu tells me that I’ll need something called the Citrix X1 Mouse, and the Jump Desktop application totalling something like, $120.00 in expenditure.

The Risks

I won’t actually be able to see how the X1 mouse feels, so the risk is that it is completely terrible for gaming, although the Jump Desktop videos briefly demonstrates some gaming with the X1 mouse (on games I’ve never seen before). So, that’s pretty much the biggest risk, I’ll be spending money on a mouse I don’t want to use, and once I have it, I might lose it because it’s wireless.

The Negatives

It’s an iPad. The main comparison I’ll be doing is against my laptop as a client.

The screen isn’t going to be very big, the keyboard isn’t as nice as a full-size mechanical keyboard, and there aren’t as many keys/options/shortcuts I can hammer around. It’s not as powerful as my laptop, in a pinch.

Local storage does become an issue as well – the laptop has 500GB built-in, whereas my iPad comes with 32GB built-in. The workaround is thankfully available in the form of lightning-connector USB memory sticks; however this still remains a negative as I’d have to carry around a whole bunch of them to meet my storage needs.

Finally also, I’m dependent on the existence of Wi-fi or a 4G tethered connection. There’s no real workaround for this aside from making sure I get a Cellular data-capable iPad when I upgrade in the future.

The Benefits

In terms of mobility, ease of use, the iPad is king. Even with carrying an extra mouse it’s still king. My laptop provides awesome functionality, and even more power; but as a thin client it does almost exactly the same stuff as the iPad. The iPad lets me use the pencil, keyboard and mouse to do all sorts of stuff, whilst all being completely silent, and functional, even as a spare camera in a hurry.

I can flip it open, or turn it on and it’ll wake instantly and I can get straight to using stuff. If I ever wanted to draw or plan a diagram, there’s an app for that (at this stage in the iOS evolution, I think that phrase is pretty much biblical now) – my Apple Pencil is hands down the best stylus I have ever used; if I need to do something more meaty than email, web and media, I can remote into my Cloud system and do it. I’ve got significant bandwidth on my 4G phone with tethering, so I’m not concerned about data limits right now.

My iPad is in a gorgeous real leather case that cost me a very pretty penny, it’s a joy to handle, carry around and appreciate. It’s smaller and quieter than my laptop too. It still has a headphone jack for my headsets, and it has a fairly comfortable keyboard/screen protector for it (an authentic Apple Smart Keyboard – admittedly in its 9.7-inch flavour which is no longer available).

The iPad is silent in operation. I can’t stress how amazing this is for me, either. My current laptop, while it’s a slim, sleek powerhouse – sounds like a jet engine ready for takeoff when anything starts to write to the SSD in it.

Option 2

The problem with Option 2 isn’t such a big one. More and more of my time in entertaining myself on my gear is passive entertainment (music, movies, TV, etc.) as opposed to interactive entertainment (games). However, it does defeat the purpose of Project Cloud Citizen. Ideally, the intent was to do everything via a thin client (in this case an iPad Pro) in the cloud.

In fact, it’s already the option I’m currently using per se.

The Risks

None really, I don’t have an extra mouse to lose, and I can still do everything I was going to do as a remote cloud user short of gaming.

The Negatives

I can’t game. I can’t show friends games, and I can’t enjoy the full power of mobile computing through the cloud on this device using just a touch interface. The touch interface is a nightmare to use on Windows RDP; buttons are still fiddly, and doing full productivity in something like Visual Studio Code, then alt-tabbing to do something in Photoshop just won’t work. While possible, it requires re-learning everything and there’s a lack of precision that a mouse pointer offers.

It affects workflow and productivity on top of the lack of gaming abilities. To me, this single handedly makes Option 2 unviable.

The Benefits

No extra equipment needed, as I can already do this now.

Option 3

Finally there’s the ‘long play’ option. This involves a few serious steps however. Once probation is over I have the room and space to deploy a mini-ITX PC at my desk. There’s some risks and negatives involved that would make me consider Option 3 as a ‘next evolution’ kind of step to the whole project.

The Risks

This is absolutely the most expensive solution to the project. It involves buying essentially a whole new PC. Hardware compatibility, configuration, etc. All the usual caveat emptor situations apply with building a new PC.

Moving to a full blown PC also means there’s issues with configuration for headless gaming.

The Negatives

Again, the price. The hardware configuration. A lot of the drawbacks of the other options no longer exist as the power of a full desktop experience comes into play.

My laptop acting as a client might work well, pending fan sounds, portability (it’s not that portable) and battery power too. My laptop itself is already quite powerful, but it weighs more than an iPad.

It has a horrible thermal solution that makes it sound like a vacuum cleaner, and packing away the laptop heats up the bag as well immediately after use; not to mention the actual temperature of the laptop when in use.

There’s a lot that I dislike about my laptop, which is why it hardly gets the usage it deserves – it’s nowhere near the sleek experience I had with the Apple MacBook Air. And in a strong sense, it’s further justification for me to use the laptop as a hub for Project Cloud Citizen, and then migrate to a PC as the next step when the laptop starts to give out.

Parting Thoughts

All told, Option 1 seems to be the way to go, with a mix of Option 3 as a ‘next stage’. Midway through writing this post (on the iPad I might add) – I realise that a Project Roadmap might be the most interesting thing to do for the outcome of this project.

So perhaps that’s what I’ll do – while Option 1 requires forking out money, it also avoids the risks of Jailbreaking my device, but also means I have applicaiton and hardware support continued for my iPad. It means my Laptop still gets some utilisation, and a purpose to it, rather than the costs of expensive hardware not being hosted within my own home.

Once I’m more comfortable in doing everything I possibly can on the iPad while away from home, I’ll migrate to a full blown desktop PC experience.

So, it seems like a bit of a knee jerk reaction to all the current Facebook data security woes and Senate questioning Mark Zuckerberg’s going through, but over the last 12 months or so, I’ve been looking at what really impacts me and my immediate social circle with Facebook.

With the wrapping up of a lot of my community management stuff, I think I can safely say that Facebook no longer yields any positive value for me in my life; friends and family usually talk to me through Discord, or SMS me directly – and all the interest groups such as cosplay, gaming, and pop culture – no longer really share anything of value to me.

I don’t get my news from Facebook, nor do I get my general information from there either. So it behooves me to ask, why bother using Facebook? My soapbox ranting, and musings can either be channeled through Twitter for short mid-shower style thoughts, and I have this blog for anything longer form.

And so, as an experiment, I might consider uninstalling Facebook and Messenger from my phone, and deactivate my Facebook accounts (not delete). If I manage to go a month without really missing these applications, then I suppose it might be a good chance to get rid of them.

I’m a big fan of Trello. I love it a lot, it’s free, it’s simple, it’s intuitive. And recently, I’ve been looking into ways I can manage projects from a higher level view instead of a per project kanban-style in-depth view.

I’ve decided to see if Trello might actually be able to help with that.

Why do this?

Initially the value of doing this might seem frivolous; but it gives me a chance to see at any given time, the ‘active’ projects I have on my plate at any given time. Using a traffic light system, I’ll know the status of any various projects as well!

Instead of trying to keep a mental checklist of everything I’m up to, this Trello board should help me keep track of things that need to be done for a variety of different topics. Therein, I think, lies the value in doing this experiment. If successful, it’ll improve my time deficiencies, and issue tracking capabilities on a personal level.

Methodology

I’ll be using this Trello board (it’s also the Projects link on my main menu up the top of the site) to organise my Projects into different categories. Things will be sorted as:

• Each category forms a list
• Each project in that category is a card
• Tasks/To-Do in each project is in a checklist
• Comments are used to provide updates on the project
• Projects can be labelled based on the status of project:
  • Green = Project is considered released (it may have upgrades and extra tasks to do)
  • Yellow = Project is in active development
  • Orange = Project is in conceptual/planning stages
  • Red = Project halted/unstarted

Here’s a screenshot of a few projects in how I’ve organised things right now

Hopefully, by doing things this way, I will be able to keep a rolling project log through the Comments section of each of those project cards.

Expected Benefits

Greater focus on completing and achieving project outcomes; and less time spent procrastinating on what needs to be done amongst the many projects in my mind.

In conclusion (random musings)…

Prior to the start of this year, (we’re only 4 months in…) I really spent a lot of time looking at various tools and just using them at face value, never really looking into how I could best use them, nor did I feel the need to really de-clutter my life. However, the turning point I believe, was picking up the habit of Bullet Journalling, and the start of my new career opening some doors for me on how to declutter the most messy part of my life (aside from my career itself)) – my tech/gadgets and gaming habits.

I’ve since looked at the tools I have available to me, and really decided to try out using them to their better (if not greatest) effect so that I can hopefully be a bit more minimalist with my life, less wasteful and more efficient.

Recently, it dawned on me that it’s only been 3 months into 2018, where I started a shiny new career at a shiny new company; and in those 12 weeks, approximately half of that time has been spent:

• launching a brand new software platform where the original complement of developers have completely up and left, without any documentation being left behind
• done deep code exploration and software archaeology trying to solve bugs and improve this platform which has been launched
• design and reimplement new processes for the (brand new) software dev team
• get situated with everything in the new company

It’s been completely pedal-to-the-metal non-stop and I absolutely love it. However, in such a short time I certainly feel like I’ve been here for a year at least already coding away on everything.

All during this, I’ve endured some online drama with my favourite MMO, and the guild I started with a partner, who’s since gone separate ways – and I’ve been caught up trying to keep it rolling, while also keeping up with some of the latest games and what I’ve been doing in all my other personal projects.

It’s a super interesting challenge to realise that whilst I’ve started prioritising my career and work more so than my gaming adventures and attempts at starting a gaming business (I’ve wrapped up things with eLeague.gg and Multiplayer United is on the back-burner for now), things are overwhelming for anything outside of my day-to-day job.

It feels like a natural progression now that Project: Cloud Citizen is well underway (see my prior blog posts) that I should look into how I manage the rest of my digital adventures. Namely, what I do in Gaming.

To be honest, I have a tendency to lose my place of where I was up to in Games that I play – and I lose interest the more ‘lost’ I feel with games. Probably just old age catching up with me 😛

Nevertheless, to solve that issue, I’ve created The Gaming Adventures Trello Board a kind of to-do list of things to achieve in a variety of games.

The hope is that I get the most of out my gaming – and actually achieve something in the games. There’s zero pressure on any of the outcomes in that Trello board, it’s more a tool to help me remember whatever I was last doing in gaming.

We’ll see over the coming weeks whether or not keeping such a list helps as a valid timeline of what I’m doing in gaming or not.

So, I’ve started dabbling in games development with a few game ideas I’ve got bouncing around in my head. And whilst I wanted to make wonderful, amazing, visual feasts of games – I also wanted to start a bit slower and ease myself into what is essentially the most difficult discipline of software engineering around.

Cue, LÖVE – an engine dedicated to 2D games (there are 3D libraries available for it). It uses LUA, and pretty much encourages diving straight into the code and learning how to make a game, as opposed to learning the tools and figuring out how to use a suite of (albeit amazingly powerful) tools.

I worked on some basic tutorials last night, and I’m enjoying learning both LUA and the engine right away. It’s quite logical from what I can tell so far and I found a few tutorials especially helpful in understanding what’s going on:

• this tutorial about Tilemaps by Kikito helped me understand how to use spritesheets, and make use of them effectively
• your first game in 200 lines by OSMStudios showed really, how quickly games could be thrown together (perhaps good for future GameJam participation?)
• basic platformer tutorial from OSMStudios also shows different kinds of movement and techniques

I’ll probably start blogging a little bit about my upcoming game idea and my adventures in tinkering around with the LOVE 2D engine. So stay tuned!

Remote Desktop more than covers my use of productivity on JT-NXS, my laptop system that’s based at the office. So far, I’ve been fortunate in the last 10 days or so since moving towards ‘Cloud Citizen’ status, that I’ve been at my desktop, JT-DXS and not needed to use JT-NXS as much for productivity.

The experiment so far has been a wonderful success, especially when it comes to Media Consumption – it’s been awesome being able to access a personal collection of media that some close friends and family are also able to access.

Gaming has been great, for anything that’s not on a pressured level (ie. competitive play like Overwatch, or CS:GO – even then, they’re fine, but I just feel more comfortable not leaning on the internet connection so much to remain competitive with other human players). Co-op games are a revelation with it, Parsec.tv have really outdone themselves in their compression algorithms and gaming performance over the net.

I think, if when I pass probation at my workplace, I’ll commit to buying a mini-ITX system to accommodate a spare GTX 1070 graphics card I have, and allow for a bit more storage space too (dual 4TB drives + 3TB existing storage)

I’ve got plans at least, to rearrange my equipment at home; to minimise waste, and reduce the soaring temperatures in my bedroom, too. Even in the dead of winter it’s still a warm toasty room that can get quite uncomfortably stuffy as well.

Anyway, 10 days in and I’ve started rolling out some productivity tools onto JT-NXS in anticipation of using the system for more work-related and project-related situations.

I’ve got:

• Git, with Git Bash as my terminal
• Adobe Creative Cloud
• Visual Studio Code
• Office365

For the most part, I actually already use Google Docs/Spreadsheets almost obsessively to manage my documentation, and I’ve got my own personal BookStack that I use as a personal Wiki and Knowledge Repository.

All in all, I’m slowly training myself to wean off my attachment to my desktop, and to be able to start working from anywhere on a laptop (an old Microsoft Surface Pro 1 – although I plan to use JT-NXS in 3 months time) or tablet (iPad Pro).