For some bizarre reason; WordPress has decided to start hyphenating my posts. I don’t recall it ever doing this originally when I used to use WordPress all those years ago, but it’s ridiculous now. It’s not really a great way to present readable content (at all!)

Luckily it’s also much easier nowadays than having to hack apart the style.css in the theme files editor in the Settings section.

Now, I can just customize stuff > add additional custom CSS and paste in…

.entry-content,
.entry-summary,
.widget-area .widget,
.comment {
	-webkit-hyphens: none;
	-moz-hyphens: none;
	hyphens: none;
	word-wrap: normal;
}

et voila!

It’s been an entire year since mum passed, that I didn’t update this blog. I kind of let things fall by the way-side, and to be honest – looking back with some hindsight, the last 3 years had been the toughest of my life. It had been utter chaos looking after my mum with failing health, juggling duties at work and a personal life that had been imploding (an ex who had issues and we just toxically made each other way worse for it).

So I’ve relaunched this blog onto https://jtiong.blog

This is a personal blog to just float some ideas out there. It’s more to keep track of things that interest me. I should’ve started this at the start of the year, but things got away from me. So the promise as I start this, is that I update it at least once a day.

We’ll see how that goes, heh.

I think, it’s quite safe to say that 2020, has been an insane year.

I didn’t do my usual post at the end of 2019; and I didn’t do much for the start of this year either with my blog. There’s a lot of reasons for it; but on both a personal level, and indeed a global level – I think 2020 is a year that my generation will remember for quite a while.

It’s a year in which, the global markets stopped, then through sheer force of will, continued on. The age of the internet and remote services & tools were forced into a level of maturity that up until now, were only something the novel few could dip their toes such waters. Indeed, my own blog post (this post you’re reading now) is all about figuring out being able to work from anywhere, at any time.

2020 brought with it, COVID-19; which brought with it – significant health risks, and significant situations to my life that honestly, I never thought I’d see.

2020 was actually going to be a rough year for me anyway, as I moved towards focusing on caring for my elderly mother. I’d moved back home, and have been deciding what to start discarding in an almost Marie Kondo-esque fugue state. My home has always been filled to the brim with old knick knacks and gadgets, not to the excess you see on Marie Kondo’s show, but still – quite impressively full of old tech, clothes, and furniture.

There’s a lot to keep track of, and I’m in the process of decluttering my life. To do this, I’ve turned to a really interesting application that my friend and colleague, Matt, has pointed me to — Notion (https://notion.so). It’s kind of an all-in-one workspace style data collection application, kind of like Evernote.

It works across iOS, PC, Linux – it’s a web based application that’s very responsive. It provides a great way to take notes and keep organised, especially in the current hellscape of things in life right now.

Previously one of the projects I mentioned in my last blog post was Project Stronghold – where I build basically something akin to a games room/home office. I quite enjoy retrogaming – and a good deal of modern gaming (on consoles or PC, or in VR) as well.

I just thought I’d post here to present an inspiring picture of how I’d like to attach most of the controllers in this situation:

Obviously, the cabinetry in my own home is not like this – with different shelving and configurations to consider. But I’d like some form of storing these controllers in the room I intend to utilise, for the next few years.

It’s a new year – and really, time to move on from my previous lifestyle of just working and hardcore gaming.

I’m looking into removing the errant Cat5E cabling around my house, both for safety reasons (I have an elderly resident who can’t always avoid the cables and might trip up) and just general home pleasantness. I’m also left with a lot of computer hardware that – thanks to Project Cloud Citizen, I’m no longer in need of, such as massive servers in my house…

To that end – recently, I bought myself a Christmas present — a Google Wifi home mesh setup; and implemented it around the house. It’s my hope that I can transition the household to a wireless fix, instead of having everyone on a cabled solution.

2018 was a year that was very focused on improving my workflow on-the-go and out on my day-to-day work commitments. I ended the year by turning to Linux as my main operating system on my laptop; and I must admit – yes, the change in operating system has been disruptive – it’s actually had far less disruptive impact than first thought. I’m able to do the vast majority of my work with Linux, using a system that is much better suited to coding, Docker environment development, and overall lets me just get elbows deep into productivity.

2019 – is going to be a year of improving my ‘home base’. I find that due to the nature of my work over the last 12 months; I find the need for always-ready access to my code a necessity. However, I occasionally need to do a couple extra things which my laptop-centric workflow doesn’t allow as yet:

1. I need to engage in creative work; Photoshop, etc.
2. I need to unwind with a bit of fun, too! (going to the gym is more a physical release thing)

So after the events and results of Project Cloud Citizen – and the revival of my laptop as my core workhorse; I’m declaring 3 projects for 2019 on a personal level!

• Project Stronghold – designing the perfect space(s) at home for Rest, Play, and Creativity!
• Project Fortify – building up my health, and shoring up against future complications
• Project Foundation – My laptop proved its worth this weekend with both Windows and Ubuntu – tweaks to improve this 🙂

2019 will be about good ol’ hard work, growth, and improvement. We’ll see what the year brings!

After my trip to Taiwan, I noticed that I personally started to up the usage time my laptop got. In a sense, I missed the full blown functionality of a PC; which was limited on the iPad.

The iPad is fantastic, as an extra TV screen, or a digital scribblepad. But that’s it; I haven’t the heart to use it for more. I could use it for more in a pinch, but I’d rather not. I bought my laptop at a weird time in my life; a lot of things were uncertain, and to top it off, I bought it with a broken ‘Up’ arrow key. It’s irked me using it ever since. The key still works fine and the keycap kind of still stays on. But it’s broken, and I’ll always be wary of it when I’m using this laptop.

Regardless, this little machine has grown on me. And continues to grow on me. The Gigabyte Aero 14 isn’t a bad device; it’s quite fantastic for my personal needs, and with it becoming my main work device; Ubuntu 18.04 needs to be installed on it.

And that’s why I’m here today, blogging.

So far, it’s been a pretty good experience – Ubuntu managed to install smoothly; and the only gripe is the need to reboot my laptop anytime I do a switch between my GeForce graphics card and my Intel graphics processor. The battery life is more than double when I’m using the Intel GPU, but in order to use two external screens, I need to use my Geforce GPU. It’s a small compromise though, given how quickly Ubuntu can reboot on the laptop.

There’s something beautiful about being able to carry a single device where all my work is focused; and with the power of the cloud™ I’m able to comfortably back up my stuff, too!

Ubuntu 18.04 and going into 2019 – I may well become a full blown Linux user.

Let’s start the post off with a musical number. Shawn James wrote this song some years ago, and it’s actually grown on me since I saw the Reveal Trailer for The Last of Us Part 2. It’s a really heavy song – and recently my taste in music has taken a darker, more sombre tone. Not to mention The Last of Us remains one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time for me. It’s right there beside that first ‘room’ of The Legend of Zelda on the NES, that opening sequence of MegaMan X, the three corridors of Quake, that first castle fly-by in Super Mario 64…

So, with the completion of the Cloud Citizen project; I’ve got an idea that I think I’ll start blogging about – hopefully keeping a public blog of it will hold me a little more accountable to myself; about continual self-improvement. There are three core pillars (of which there are innumerable sub-categories) which I view myself wanting to continually improve:

• Health
• Home
• Work

So, over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be looking into making a few regular posts that’ll follow along those topics. My next project that I’ll be blogging about is Project EDC which acts as something of a compliment to the results of Cloud Citizen.

So recently, I replaced my mum’s iPhone 5S with the iPhone 6 Plus I owned prior to my Samsung Galaxy Note 8. She was thrilled to have a larger screen, and a faster phone. Now, all I need is a way to port her mobile number across to an Optus SIM so I can data pool with her just in case she needs to head to out.

I out of curiosity, decided to try using the iPhone 5S as my main every day driver phone.

What I’ve always hated about the recent smartphone craze, is the need for larger screens, and bigger footprints for more power. I don’t suffer a long commute (I’m blessed with a carpark space in the middle of Sydney CBD, and I drive for my commute into the city), and it’s rare for me to be far enough away from a PC, tablet, or laptop that would require me to use my phone as the primary device.

I noted quietly the uses I have for my phone:

• Calls
• Messages (including SMS, and digital web-based messaging)
• Maps
• Occasionally reading
• Music listening
• Making a wifi hotspot

And that’s about it. I don’t exactly use my phone for media consumption, gaming or any kind of productivity really. So, my phone needs are quite a lot lower than your average smartphone enthusiast.

The downsides so far:

• The phone carked it this morning and I had to reboot it to get it working properly, it’s only my second day using this phone so I wonder if it’s the phone with a hardware issue?
• The phone’s antenna isn’t as powerful as the Note 8’s – I still get amazing coverage, but there is a noticeable reception bar difference sometimes.

The pros so far:

• Siri works really well for me. It lets me make calls while I’m driving, and that’s about it. The simplicity just works well for me.
• I can operate the phone very comfortably with one hand
• It’s one of the last iPhone SKUs with a headphone jack

At the moment, the iPhone 5S is meeting all my needs. In fact, I may end up selling the Note 8 if I reach the end of a few weeks and don’t find myself wanting the Note 8 anymore as a phone. 😮

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.