15 february 2026
pickin' up old skills 2026-02-15
ah! the refreshing feeling of getting back into an old, lapsed hobby and/or skill.
recently, i've taken to dabbling in one of my old passions. a long time ago, before i decided
on game development as my career, i was thinking about going into cybersecurity. i had a knack
for burrowing into filesystems and finding gaps in protections early on in my dalliances with computers.
for example, i remember clearly a time when i was enjoying some shareware creative software on a cd from the
front cover of Computer Buyer magazine, and i realised that the 30-day lockout was entirely part of the software,
since i didn't have an internet connection on the PC i was using at the time - so it obviously had no way of
phoning home to a server or anything. so i did what any enterprising young 10 year old would do and messed with the
date/time settings on the PC to use the software whenever i wanted. later, i found that it stored the install date
in a registry key, so i set it years in the future and found to my delight the software displayed a negative "days left"
counter in the About window.
that was the first taste of what would become a hobby of setting up little puzzles for myself and cracking them,
especially once i started learning some programming skills. eventually this progressed to experimenting with networking
and particularly once i got into using Linux for the first time in high school, using my laptop to break into my aging desktop PC through various means.
my first ever paid job was a couple months at a (2-hour-away) local it management and cybersecurity company, writing perl scripts on some crusty laptop running Slackware to locate
lost emails that some rogue spam filter had obliterated accidentally. figuring out how to get the spam filter to not reject them
a second time by messing with the email post IDs on the backend felt very natural at that point! but, i found myself craving creativity, and had already set my sights
on game development at this point.
so, fast-forward to now; reminiscing about those days after playing a little bit of hackmud (and feeling a little underwhelmed by it once i got through the initial tutorials),
i started messing with VMs! turns out, there are entire sites full of vulnerable-by-design toy VMs you can spin up and break into. they're kind of like virtual escape rooms, except
you're not really escaping the room so much as intruding into it. intrusion rooms!
it's a lot of fun. some people really make an effort to build plausible real-world looking VMs, with little user accounts with their own stories and internal communications (e.g, a
sysadmin berating another user for having a bad password, only to be backing up ssh keys in an unsecured storage location). it's really, really cute, and i love that kind of
narrative design meeting practical security teaching. i've even thought myself about building some crackable VMs with maybe a larger story focus. could be fun to do, and sorta
blend my interest in narrative game design with the cybersecurity stuff!
it's also an interesting thing to do to remind myself of the various vulnerabilities computers and servers can have, and how important it is to follow best-practice guides when
it comes to server hosting and things like that - especially important NOT to start fiddling with settings unless you really know the full ramifications of what they can do!
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02 february 2026
~~ pressing on!~~ 02/02/2026
i just got back from visiting my family for a belated xmas gathering! we like to do this every year, where we celebrate at the end of january;
travel is less difficult and busy, festive foods aren't taking up all the air in the room on store shelves, and it's something warm and cosy
for what is otherwise a most bleak and dull month.
it was a great opportunity to relax and recuperate after a hectic time with work. lots to do, and not a lot of time to do it all in, but
i am very satisfied with what i was able to do thus far.
now that we're in the shortest month, i'm excited to press on and push forward, knowing that spring isn't so very far away..!
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13 january 2026
~clicky pen and sneaky windows~ 13-01-2026
i got a pen to go with my little notebook!! i eventually settled on the Kaweco Sport Classic Ballpoint. it is, as its name suggests, a ball-point pen (compatible with D1 refills, which i can get in local shops) but it's chunky and short.
it's very satisfying to click, and it fits right in my pocket with my notebook. i'm very happy with it, and it's been a real joy to use so far!
it has kind of gotten me interested in the world of ink pens too though... but i must resist the temptation of yet another hobby! i already do film photography!!!
in other news today, i typically daily-drive linux. but i sometimes have to use windows 10 for my freelance work. well, today, it did something real sneaky - it stomped over my boot order in my bios somehow!! unbelievable.
i have, of course, fixed it. i'll punish it later by randomly renaming some files in system32 or something.
that's all from me for now. hope all y'all in (and out) of town are having a good day today!
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03 january 2026
~pocketbook is a go!~ 2026-01-03
i got the little pocketbook i wanted! it's small and flexible and quite thin, so it
slips easily into my back pocket. now i can jot down things wherever i am and not forget.
for example, today i've noted that i enjoyed a nice hotdog and fries at a local restaurant.
it had a lovely bit of charring on it, like a barbequeued dog, with mustard and cheese
and fried onion bits! i also had a habanero ketchup for dippin' the fries which was really
nice. rich and sweet and spicy!
i also want to get a smaller pen for my pocketbook though. i've been looking around, and
i think i want a sturdy aluminium mini-pen; something that will be small enough to tuck into
my pocket, but strong enough that it won't crack and leak ink if i fall or sit down weird on it.
some searching online has shown me there are a great many very expensive pens that satisfy this!
but i think i will try and get something a little cheaper from a stationary shop nearby instead.
have a good one, folks!
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02 january 2026
~the scrunge~ 2026-02-01
i've gotten a cold!! i had the flu at the beginning of december, so i'm
already a bit fed up of my mucous membranes doing things, but hey.
the flu was absolutely horrible this year, so this is very very mild by comparison!
other than that, i'm still enjoying the freshness of the new year. like putting on
fresh bedsheets, or a new flavour of mouthwash! it's familiar but full of the promise of the new.
i'll be back at work on the 5th, so i'm making the most of the last few days of my time off and chillin.
it's going to be a busy january (and likely february too) for me work-wise, but i think i'll be ready for the challenge.
as i work both freelance and in a worker co-operative, there's a decent chunk of my time dedicated to managing my workload too.
i think i need to make sure i pace it out better this year than i did last year; it was a bit feast-or-famine, with me working
quite hard in some months and having little to do in others.
i did initially think that cadence would help me work on my own projects more (and it certainly did to some extent), but i think
i was working hard enough that i wanted to spend the downtime totally relaxing instead.
so, if i can, depending on clients and leads and whatnot, i'm hoping to work a little less per week but for more weeks at a time
when i do land contracts! i think that's sensible.
we'll see, though!
in the meantime, i'm gonna have a little snack and watch some videos.
all the best, y'all!
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01 january 2026
~happy new one!~ 2026-01-01
it's a whole new year!! and you know what else? it was snowing this afternoon where i am!
the first snow of the year, on the first day of the year...
somehow, that feels important in a good way!
this year, i'm going to try and be a little more physically fit than last year. i got really
into tennis last summer, because there are some free-to-book tennis courts a very short
distance from my house - and it felt great to get a little fitter!
as soon as the colder weather moved in though, i ended up slugmode and i'm a little tired of
struggling back up the hill from the shops with my groceries again.
to stay fit in the cold, i'm using a stationary exercise bike! nothing fancy, no trackers or apps or whatnot,
just me, my legs, and a big heavy flywheel. time to get the melon blood pumpin'!
other than that, i have a good feeling about the upcoming year. i think there will be a lot of interesting
changes for the better in the world. i don't have a particularly strong reason for feeling this way, but i do!
there's just something in the snowy, snowy air!
have yourselves a lovely new year, everyone!
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30 december 2025
~hello, town!~
2025-12-30
i've just finished setting up my feels blog here in tilde.town, so it's time for my first post!
already i've been feeling very welcome here, with some lovely little guestbook messages between myself and a couple of others (hello, ~fruit and ~tromboneboi9!).
i'm pretty terrible at routinely blogging, but the feels system is nice and compact and easy to use, so i hope i can just hop on and record my impressions for the day.
ideally, i'd like to avoid my usual cycle, which goes something like:
- i must blog/journal/diarize each and every day with a rigid structure
- i'm doing it! i'm making it happen! (3 days in)
- oh no i missed a day or didn't fill in one of my many little structural fields. i have Failed to make a diary.
- update it once every eight months or let it wither entirely
i'm gonna break the cycle by just sporadically doing things when i feel like i have something i was thinking about. it doesn't have to be profound either!
to this end, in the new year i'm going to carry a little pocketbook and pen to record my thoughts and impressions if anything strikes me. it'll be fun!
i find the immediacy of pen and paper still far less frictionful than whipping out my phone and i don't like the idea of yapping out loud to record voice notes or things like that either.
so, with the tiny pocketbook, i should be able to at least have plenty fuel for little posts.
thought of the day:
apples are the fruit that benefit the most in my life from refridgeration, i think. leave an apple out in a fruitbowl for a week and it gets wrinkly and dry, but a whole month in a fridge and it's still juicy and crisp like the day it was picked.
that's apples for you.
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