In which I finally start delivering on the promised painting guides...
I have been sat on a fully constructed Battle of Pelennor Fields box for just about a year after purchasing it as a Christmas present to myself at the tail end of 2021. Having signed up to a few "slay the grey" style challenges in the New Year I thought it was time to start with a nice easy paint job.
In which I modify an old family recipe to be vegan friendly...
After successfully turning my hand to vegan Christmas cake I thought it was high time I adapted my old Christmas pudding recipe to be vegan too.
In which I discuss getting the dominant colour from an image quickly...
I have recently made a Discord bot that searches for online versions of board games to help people find games to play remotely. This link will add it to your server.
Discord embeds have a colour bar down the side that can be manually set. I thought it would be cool to have this display the 'average' (i.e. dominant) colour of the board game box and decided to investigate the best way to do it.
In which I plan my holiday tasks…
So it may just be because it is 2020 or perhaps I'm just a bit lazy but I’ve found that I often start holiday breaks with a list of things I’d like to do and by the end of the trip* I’ve not achieved most of them. Whether it’s odd jobs or relaxing activities I wanted to get through I just accidental sit around and don’t do them. This holiday season I decided I needed a to do list and though I’d try out the new Todoist Boards feature.
*Or, let’s be real this year: sitting on the sofa at home.
Remote interviews are a fact of life for every podcaster, and in today’s era of social distancing, more so than ever. Since you rarely get the chance at an interview do-over, nailing down your remote recording workflow is essential. We’ll show you how to prepare for and record a remote interview, so you get it right the first time — with some additional tips along the way to make sure all your bases are covered.
In which I discuss getting the dominant colour from an image quickly...
I have recently made a Discord bot that searches for online versions of board games to help people find games to play remotely. This link will add it to your server.
Discord embeds have a colour bar down the side that can be manually set. I thought it would be cool to have this display the 'average' (i.e. dominant) colour of the board game box and decided to investigate the best way to do it.
In which I plan my holiday tasks…
So it may just be because it is 2020 or perhaps I'm just a bit lazy but I’ve found that I often start holiday breaks with a list of things I’d like to do and by the end of the trip* I’ve not achieved most of them. Whether it’s odd jobs or relaxing activities I wanted to get through I just accidental sit around and don’t do them. This holiday season I decided I needed a to do list and though I’d try out the new Todoist Boards feature.
*Or, let’s be real this year: sitting on the sofa at home.
Remote interviews are a fact of life for every podcaster, and in today’s era of social distancing, more so than ever. Since you rarely get the chance at an interview do-over, nailing down your remote recording workflow is essential. We’ll show you how to prepare for and record a remote interview, so you get it right the first time — with some additional tips along the way to make sure all your bases are covered.
In which I need to slightly circumvent the normal installation…
For work purposes I’m currently dual booting into Linux. There will be a post about the reasons why at some point soon. Fedora 32 is excellent but I have found some occasional issues where software I need to install doesn’t quite work out of the box. MATLAB was one such program so here’s how to get it working.
In which I discuss mapping a whole new worrrld ♪♫♬...
Generally I like to start a campaign with the world still in my head and get a feel for it before setting locations in stone. There comes a time, however, when your players need to leave their starting locations and you have to stop being wishy-washy about how long travel takes. That is when a map is called for. This is a guide on how to generate the kind of map I like using Photoshop and some select tools.
In which I set my goals for the year, a little late
Fans of Cortex (a podcast from CGP Grey and Myke Hurley) will be aware of the concept of yearly themes. This year they were talking about the concept of the Year of Me where you take stock and refocus on things that matter to you. Since this is my first year doing such a theme I feel that I will take this in its purest form: I'm approaching 30 so is my life headed in the direction I want?
In which I post a reference, mostly for myself, on how to update my chosen media server...
I'm not going to cover how to install Plex on FreeNAS as it is very easy using the plugins system explained in the docs.[1]
Upgrading, however, is a different issue. While the plugin does get updates that will preserve your data they are often quite behind the release schedule of the Plex team. Also I have had issues with some of my Plex plugins (like Trakt.tv) after using this upgrade method. In the past I have tried a hodgepodge of different methods to acheive it but now the most reliable method is using the PMS Updater script.[2]
In which I get some download tracking for my podcasts...
If you listen to podcasts you won't be surprised to hear adverts for Squarespace's hosting platform. It's also what this website and my associated podcasts run on.[1][2][3] The inbuilt analytics are pretty decent but when it comes to RSS feeds for podcasts they suffer from all the limitations that tracking RSS has.[4]
Podtrac is a service that aims to fix this.[5] Unfortunately it used to be a massive faff to get it working with Squarespace.[6] Fortunately following the latest update to the platform it is now really easy.
In which I review the year that was...
It's been a pretty exciting year for me. I've started two podcasts, changed jobs and started reviewing food and drink for Luxury London. Less travel in my new job means that I've been able to spend more of my spare time on my side projects. All in all that's lead to:
And I'm hoping there will be many more in 2018.
In which I find out what I do all the time...again...
N.B.: I've written this post a bit later than intended. I now have a new job as a developer and will post about that after about 6 months.
Following on from my last post I delve deeper into the types of work I was doing in my previous job and my side projects.
As of today all comments on all of my websites* will no longer use Disqus. I will be using the built in Squarespace system. For reason why see: https://notes.ayushsharma.in/2017/09/im-killing-disqus-comments-on-my-blog-heres-why
Tom Out!
In which I discuss my podcasting setup and how I expect it to change…
I've recently started podcasting. I have two podcasts:
It's been a fun learning curve so I'm going to try and distil what I've learned into this post and also create a snapshot of my current setup.
In which I find out what I do all the time...
Since we have just passed the midpoint of the year and I have had a Toggl account for just over 6 months I thought it was time I tried to analyse how I spend my time at work. In this post I'm going to be looking at overall working hours and travel.
I have 20 weeks of full data (though I was on holiday for one week)...
In which I walk you through changing the language settings on all the things!
In an attempt to improve my German I wanted to switch the default language of websites and software I use. Also a friend had just switrched their Facebook over for the same reason and I wanted to give that a whirl. Here's how to do that for some common websites/programs.
In which I receive my keyboard...
In my previous post I discussed designing my shiny new keyboard. Now that it has arrived it's time to review my first month with it.
In which I order a mechanical keyboard...
I've started noticing a bit of back pain recently and couldn't put my finger on the cause until I received an email talking about proper posture. I duly sorted out my desk so my work laptop is on a pile of books at the correct height. Then I realised I could not use the keyboard effectively any-more :/
The answer was obvious - order a new keyboard!
I've had a lot of headaches recently with WordPress failing on my blog and was already in the process of moving everything into one place on SquareSpace. With the recent complete failure of my WordPress theme (and several back-end issues) I have decided to initiate the transfer immediately.
As the WordPress import is not perfect some posts will have issues I will be manually fixing in the next few weeks. If there is an issue a quick comment using the new Disqus system will bring it to my attention. Thank you for your patience!
Tom Out!
In which I run through setting up a Python environment on Windows...
I'm going to preface this post by saying I'm not breaking any new ground here. As is often the case, though, a beginner wanting to set-up an environment to do this will have to go to multiple websites to collect this info so I'm going to distil it into one post.
I am going to talk about Python 2.7 as currently it has the most support for libraries. This method should work equally well for Python 3 but I have not tested this.
In which I review the new Inbox by Gmail...
Currently Inbox is invite only. You can apply for an invite at www.google.com/inbox or get a friend to invite you.
