chrisa – asty.org

Small phones are almost completely dead, and this is a shame

Posted on July 25, 2024July 25, 2024 by chrisa

I was pleased to find out the Moto Razr (2024) was available, and I’ve since purchased it for a review. But only because I want to use it 90% of the time folded in. I hate big phones!

And yes, I’ve been in tech long enough that anything over 5.5″ feels too big. Need I remind everyone that the iPhone line came with a 4.7″ screen for 6 years (iPhone 6 – 9 and SE) and we all got along just fine with it. Why on earth do we now all want a minimum 6.5″ screen on something we have to try and hold comfortably in one hand?!

A Moto Razr 2024 sitting on a MagSafe dock, displaying a web page while folded.

Samsung still produces something approaching hold-able with their Galaxy S line, and …

Games I almost completely love: SpellRogue (on sale to boot)

Posted on June 3, 2024June 1, 2024 by chrisa

A new series

I’ve actually been trying to write this review for some time. I originally wanted to contrast it with Balatro, which is one of those games which seems to have taken over the indie and deckbuilder communities, and seems to be loved by virtually anyone, myself included. But I think that’s a bit pointless, especially at this point. After all, SpellRogue hews closer to Slay The Spire after all, so let’s talk about it from that perspective.

To be clear up front (aka tl;dr): I like this game quite a bit. I’ll discuss what I think are minor flaws or drawbacks with it, but in general it’s very good and worth a try.

The good news about…

A new version of CMatrix? On my blog?

Posted on May 7, 2024May 7, 2024 by chrisa

It’s more likely than you think.

So as I said, I would push more updates. Since I have been re-homing my skills, I decided to tear apart the old CMatrix code and remove a lot of crufty stuff, including the need for all the ancillary fonts / utilities to see the symbols and the rather ugly default of standard Roman/English alphabet characters. I also added a pre-calculation option (-p) to see if it can improve performance on older or lower-end systems.

In order to accomplish this streamlining, this version does require ncursesw, AKA ncurses with wide-character support, in order to work. Given how long this has been around, I hope it won’t be too onerous of a requirement.

NB: This …

OK, I’ll update more frequently…

Posted on May 3, 2024May 3, 2024 by chrisa

I’ve been a bit of a perfectionist with my posts, to the effect of not ever posting anything it seems. I’ll do a bit better here and may post a few post fragments occasionally. I’ll just post to Mastodon/Twitter the larger ones. This is a blog after all!

Interesting reading I did recently: Installing Nix in a Qubes AppVM. Qubes and Nix together, it’s like chocolate and peanut butter – so perfect!

For those that haven’t given Nix a try, you don’t have to run the actual distribution (NixOS), it actually runs on almost every Linux distribution and each user can have their own setup. It’s quite incredible. Here is some intro documentation on Nix to whet your palate. …

Internet Money Wallet Review: So Far So Good As a Wallet For Pulsechain Tokens and Swaps 👍

Posted on February 15, 2024February 15, 2024 by chrisa

Pros:

Good support for Pulsechain tokens, and displaying prices in-wallet
Supports swaps in-wallet and uses multiple DEXes to shop for the best deal
Allows passive income of PLS token fees from swaps by holding T.I.M.E token in-wallet
Supports both Chrome and mobile devices

Cons:

Much less well known compared to MetaMask
Despite 2 external code audits, some default OpSec choices I don’t like (e.g. default unlimited spend limit)
Slower to load balances, often requires a manual refresh to get up-to-date balances
No Firefox extension

If you are a user on PulseChain (or want to be), you have probably struggled with finding a good wallet for self-custody. Obviously the best wallet for any significant amount of coin is a hardware wallet …

Hello again

Posted on February 9, 2024February 9, 2024 by chrisa

Hello. Just a quick note that I’m going to try and push out some reviews/articles this weekend/next week.

Unfortunately I finally was bitten by the COVID bug as of Saturday, so it’s been a slow recovery. Even today 6 days later I still don’t feel the best.

Personal updates: no longer with Google. Made it almost 13 years. Trying to focus on the positive and how good things were for so long, and not how bad the end was. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you are a former colleague. …