All blog posts

· The games of 2022

I had a really great year in 2022. I also played fewer games in 2022 than maybe any year previous. I don’t necessarily want to think about what that might mean, thank you very much.

· Packaging Android NDK APKs without Gradle

I struggled recently to work out how to build an APK out of a native Android app without using Gradle.

· Reverse-engineering Daylio backups

I use an app called Daylio as a diary and a mood tracker. It’s really good! I recommend it. 

I also use an app called Habit to track things I want to do every day, like “stay off social media” or “work on a project”.

· The games of 2021

I’m genuinely impressed that 2021 managed to be a generally worse year than 2020, for a variety of fun reasons. It had some high highs but also some very low lows. It was a year in which I mostly quit social media (a positive change!), which means I was out of The Games Discourse for the last third. Do I miss it? Like hell.

· The games I played in 2020

2020 has been hot garbage. It has had very few redeeming factors and I am not appreciative of it at all. 

Some great games, though.

· COVID-19 app incompatibility points at a larger issue in tech

After six months and £11m of public money wasted, England and Wales finally have a functional contact tracing app for COVID-19. You can download it now - as long as your phone is new enough. Why this limitation?

· Notarizing Java applications on macOS

Notarization is required as of macOS 10.15 (Catalina), and it’s a bit of a minefield - doubly so for a Java application, or anything built outside Xcode.

· The best days of my life

I finally got around to picking up Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC. This was a very big step for me. Let me explain.

· Speed Up Catalina With This One Weird Tip!

The newest version of macOS (well, that’s out) has caused a lot of issues for a lot of people, game developers especially. I’ll write about my notarization woes in a separate post, but this should help address quite a specific issue.

· one-fifty: Virginia (2016)

Virginia is one of the best films I’ve played this year.