2021 Update

Where Have I Been?

This past year and a half has been tough for everyone. The global pandemic has hit us all, both financially and emotionally, and this year has been a challenging one for me too. With summer just around the corner and the lockdown restriction easing — I wanted to make this quick post to answer a couple questions I’ve had from those of you who follow me.

Personal Life

The beginning of the year started out great, and I had a clear path to which tasks I was going to be working on. Then, out of nowhere, I went through an unexpected and disappointing personal issue, which I won’t go into detail about here. Suffice it to say, my life got flipped upside down for a while, which affected me mentally and emotionally. Therefore, I chose to take some time away for myself, to focus on what’s important. Thankfully, I’m glad to say that I’m slowly getting back on track and taking care of myself, my health, my goals and my work.

DIY

I haven’t been online doing much technical stuff during the month of May as I’ve spent the last few weeks decorating my home. I’ve been busy painting, giving every wall in my home a new lick of paint, and fixing all the things that needed fixing. With the weather getting warmer, I’ve spent a lot of time in the garden, pulling weeds, mowing the grass, watering plants and tending to my strawberries!

Linux

On the Linux side of things, in June, I’ve been tinkering with a few projects I’ve been meaning to do for a while.

Education

I’ve recently started taking courses on Udemy, learning more about the Linux shell, Bash scripting, Python programming, using Pycharm and VSCodium. There are a lot of great courses to take on Udemy, covering many of the topics I’ve found interesting. It’s a great way to experience how professionals in business use Linux, and how even as a Linux veteran, there is always new stuff to learn.

Single GPU Passthrough

I successfully managed to pass my single NVIDIA GPU through to a KVM, after following joeknock90’s guide. A friend of mine is building a nice new shiny AMD Ryzen Linux rig with NVIDIA graphics, so this will be a fun project for both of us to do. This will allow him to game on the Windows virtual machine and use Linux for everything else. I may also detail the process for others to follow in an upcoming web guide.

Emacs

Given that the last six months have been mentally draining, I thought why not choose my struggles, rather than have the Universe throw them at me! So, I finally decided that it’s time I learn “Emacs”. Specifically, “DOOM Emacs”.

It’s hard to explain just what Emacs is! Most people think it’s just another text editor — but it’s far more complex than that. I’d almost say that Emacs is anything you want it to be, given enough time and experience in writing “Emacs Lisp” (a dialect of the Lisp programming language) which Emacs uses. The hotkey count alone in Emacs is mind-boggling! I’m using DOOM Emacs right this moment, to write this page, and the learning experience has been fun so far, so I’m planning on sticking with it.

Website

I hope to finish the “Awesome Window Manager: Part 4” guide over the next few days. Apologies to those of you waiting for that page, I hope to have it up and ready soon.

Second Life

Many of my Second Life projects are feature-complete, since many of the updates to things like AVpack, and EZ-Note and my aquatic products were completed in 2020. Therefore, any updates to those items will be done when new features are requested for those items.

Regarding “Hot Reels Fishing” — I’ve lost contact with one of my friends who was working on the project with me over the years. Therefore, I’ve forked the project to my GitLab, and plan on adapting the code into an AVpack module. However, the complexity of this project will require a total rewrite, and may take a lot of time to complete.

With all that out of the way, I hope you have an enjoyable summer. 👍