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  • in News
  • 5 min read

New Website (January 2024)

I've been contemplating this move for a while and as is my want I've procrastinated... alot... but the time is finally here.

It's time to bid farewell to a trusty stead and all the baggage it carries with it and welcome in a new era of content creation.

  • in Musings
  • 7 min read

Advent of Code 2023

I was planning on writing more about this because I spent a bit more time on it this year, but for reasons I won't go into right now I've just not had the energy or inclination to do more, but there are a few comments I think I'd like to make about it and my thoughts on the focus of the puzzles.

  • in Musings
  • 14 min read

Thoughts from a Github Workflow Virgin!

Clickbaity? Maybe, but it's true... I was, until this morning at least, a virgin in terms of Github workflows. Now I'm not and it's been both a simultaneously enjoyable and somewhat infuriating experience popping my workflow cherry, so I figured I'd share my thoughts.

  • in Musings
  • 9 min read

Touch Portal Plug-in Development - My Thoughts

Part of my streaming setup is a program called StreamHelper (SH). This is a Delphi application that does a bunch of stuff including playing music and running scripts for automation. The original interface between Touch Portal (TP) and SH was a unidirectional HTTP request based system. The net result was limited capabilities and a need to refer to the source code to keep looking up the request paths and for things like requesting a song, a need to lookup request params and then the information to put in them by searching through the music lists.

I was aware from the moment I started using Touch Portal that they had a plug-in API but for some reason I put off making one and I kept putting it off until a couple of days ago. This post is a bit of a retrospective on my efforts and a few comments about the API and how I think it could be improved.

  • in News
  • 1 min read

RenameWindow Released

This is a little utility for renaming windows. The purpose is primarily to provide known titles to allow programs such as OBS to find the window reliably. A couple of examples of where this can be used are Notion and Discord.

Both applications have dynamic window titles which means even if you select the 'Match title, otherwise find window of same executable' match priority OBS may struggle to find it.

  • in Musings
  • 3 min read

AI Helpers - Useful Tool or Security Risk?

The ads for Grammarly are slowly but surely gnawing away at my soul with their frequency... I've seen numerous people mention some fancy 'AI plugin' for VS Code that helps you with your coding and now Speechify, which helps you by reading your documents and emails using AI so you can get more done.

Great, some useful applications of technology that can clearly help you out. But in my mind, these apps and similar raise nothing but security concerns.

  • in Musings
  • 10 min read

Let's Talk About StreamElements

First up, I'd like to be clear... I moved from StreamLabs to StreamElements because I felt it offered a better overall product offering. This is not a complaint about the portion of their product that most people will use (i.e. the overlays, the store, merch etc.) but I do have a big gripe about the API, specifically the lack of good, clear supporting documentation.