https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/ Recent content in Blog on Victoria's Website Hugo -- gohugo.io en-CA Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/telepipe-now-available/ Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/telepipe-now-available/ Telepipe, my grpahical command-line shell for Linux, is now available on Flathub. If you run Linux and use command-line software, I suggest installing Telepipe so it’s ready for when you need it. This release comes after two months of full-time work on the app. As part of the work, I wrote several posts on this blog detailing why I wanted to write it and as well as the decisions I made during its development: https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/telepipe-week-7/ Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/telepipe-week-7/ Those who follow me on Mastodon know that I have continued to work on Telepipe, my in-development command-line shell for Linux. For better indexing—and for those who have missed my more timely updates—this is a summary of the major changes that have been made since my last status report. First, as usual: bugfixes and small tweaks. I discovered just a few days ago an odd bug in Telepipe’s clipboard redirection; If a command exited too quickly after pasting the clipboard into that command’s output, the command entry would remain unresponsive after exiting, rendering the tab useless. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/telepipe-week-5/ Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/telepipe-week-5/ Two weeks ago, I introduced Telepipe to the world. This application exists to facilitate new ways to interact with command-line software by forgoing the terminal that I believe has plagued the command-line for too long. Development has continued since then, and so today I’d like to share some of what has changed, and what has been added. Quality of Life Least notably, some of Telepipe’s icons have changed and its layout has been slightly tweaked for ease of use. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/telepipe/ Fri, 16 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/telepipe/ Previously on this blog, I explained why the terminal falls short on delivering a good experience in using the command-line. In it, I stated that I think a better alternative is possible. What I neglected to mention is that I’ve been building one such alternative, and it is shaping up quite nicely. Telepipe allows you to run command-line programs with an ease not found anywhere else. The command entry is editable using the mouse, text can be highlighted and dragged-and-dropped to build new command-lines from existing output. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/terminal-emulator-evolutionarily-terminal/ Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/terminal-emulator-evolutionarily-terminal/ A massive subset of software developers, programmers, IT professionals, and computer enthusiasts swear by the terminal. Its popularity has even seemed to grow over time. I myself have not been immune to its siren song, having spent many years using a workflow designed primarily around using the terminal. Development of software targeting the terminal is as popular as ever, because many users simply swear by it. Still, I think that the rich ecosystem of new terminal software is a symptom. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/middle-click-paste/ Sun, 11 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/middle-click-paste/ A strange longstanding Linux-ism is that clicking a mouse’s middle button will usually paste some text at the focused text cursor. Unlike the expected behaviour of a copy-paste clipboard, it’ll specifically paste the last string of text with was selected instead of explicitly copied. To many longtime Linux users, this behaviour is expected. To newer users, this behaviour tends to be seen as weird and unintuitive. Other computer systems generally have other defaults for a middle click: on Windows, it’s generally used to engage automatic scroll—requiring far fewer repetitive motions than a scroll wheel or page up/down keys. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/betting-against-ai/ Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/betting-against-ai/ “Embark on the train or be left behind,” say the AI boosters. “It’s the future of software development,” say the vibe coders. “Just one more prompt,” says the gambler. I’ve previously written about how I loathe the use of AI for communication, and about how embarrassing I find the whole situation to be. I am a fan of neither the technology nor the zeitgeist. I think it’s doomed and I have not seen compelling evidence to the contrary. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/my-2025/ Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/my-2025/ It is a tradition on this blog. The big number goes up, and I reflect on what happened the past year. Arbitrary though it is, I do find it useful and fun to reflect on the year after the fact. I tend to jump between many projects and attempted projects, along with writing whatever I want on this site. As my current project tends to attract most of my focus, it’s easy for me to forget that which I’ve completed. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/home-alone-6-review/ Sat, 13 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/home-alone-6-review/ Home Alone is a holiday classic. It is at once a film about how creativity can overcome serious threats, but also about the importance of caring for those around you even if they’re annoying and stupid, and it’s also about how harmful it can be to judge strangers based on unreliable information. These are good messages for a Christmas movie to communicate to its audience, delivered by a film that is very fun and satisfying to watch. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/math-doesnt-add-up/ Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/math-doesnt-add-up/ I’ve been playing Metal Gear Solid recently. As is to be expected, it is quite an enjoyable tactical espionage action adventure. The sealth gameplay is a little basic, but it’s compelling enough that a lack of mechanical nuance doesn’t bother me. The action is a little simpler compared to other Metal Gear games, but that is to be expected when working with a 2D handheld. If you’re confused, it’s because I’m not playing 1997’s Metal Gear Solid on PlayStation. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/mario-kart-world-problems/ Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/mario-kart-world-problems/ Like many Nintendo superfans, I played a lot of Mario Kart World when it launched alongside the Nintendo Switch 2 game system. Like many of this game’s players, I stopped playing online after some time. Unlike most fans, I have a very different reason for having done so. Software development is difficult. Game development is even more so. As a software developer, you are usually building a tool to solve certain problems that users might have. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/timeless-emerald/ Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/timeless-emerald/ If you don’t care for preamble, the patch can be found here. Pokémon Emerald is a timeless classic. It boasts a deep endgame that can keep players engaged for a very long time, but it has a problem. To be more specific, there’s a problem that has kept me from playing the game how I wanted. Analogue Pocket is currently my favourite way to play 2D retro games. Unlike other similar devices, Analogue Pocket uses FPGA to recreate retro consoles and handhelds with perfect accuracy when playing on cartridge. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/mock-ai/ Tue, 04 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/mock-ai/ Mocking is a practice common in software testing where you create fake (“mock”) versions of real services and libraries for the purpose of testing certain portions of one’s codebase. Generally, you would mock services which you can’t easily run a testing instance of. Naturally, to mock AI services in unit tests is a quite difficult task. How do you reliably simulate a web service that only returns wrong answers? Thankfully, that’s not what this post is about. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/skip-daylight-savings-with-this-one-trick/ Sun, 02 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/skip-daylight-savings-with-this-one-trick/ I am writing this on Sunday, the 2nd of November 2025. As of today, Daylight Savings Time has ended in most of Canada. Clocks have rolled back, and most people woke up this morning an hour later relative to their previous waking time—except for me. In March of this year, I decided to skip Daylight Savings. As I can’t avoid the time change on my Internet-connected devices, this meant moving all of my alarms and regularly scheduled tasks back by an hour to compensate for the clocks moving forward. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/how-to-play-forever/ Thu, 09 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/how-to-play-forever/ Replayability is a common metric when it comes to measuring a video game’s value, usually in terms of monetary value. This makes some degree of sense: playing video games as a hobby can be quite expensive. Players generally want to maximise their enjoyment as cheaply as possible. Game designers want to avoid having their game traded in to the game store—as they earn nothing from the sale of used games—and are thus also incentivized to make their products last. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/stop-wrapping-text/ Sat, 04 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/stop-wrapping-text/ Since before computers existed, text has been the primary medium through which computer users have communicated. It’s been in use far longer than anyone has been alive, and its lengthy history has allowed it to become battle tested. There is, however, one problem with the way we use text that I would like to discuss today. Take a look at this: A paragraph of lorem ipsum inside GNOME Text Editor. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/howto-complete-lua-gnome-app/ Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/howto-complete-lua-gnome-app/ Lua is my favourite programming language, and GNOME is my favourite Linux desktop. For me, using Lua to write apps for GNOME is the natural course of action—in fact, this course of action has led me to become the maintainer of LuaGObject, which is built specifically to allow Lua code to interface with the core libraries for building GNOME apps. This article is intended to be a comprehensive guide to writing your first GNOME app in Lua using LuaGObject. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/in-the-shadows/ Wed, 20 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/in-the-shadows/ The World Wide Web has changed. It is a reactionary mindset that gives rise to the belief that change must necessarily be a bad thing, or that we must “return” to a certain ideal past. There was once a time where finding interesting places on this web would require surfing it, which is a laborious process. At the end of a web surfing journey, one would expect to find something substantive, because why go through all that effort to find something good if you couldn’t properly sink your teeth into it? https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/luagobject-0.10.0/ Mon, 28 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/luagobject-0.10.0/ In brief: version 0.10.0 of LuaGObject has been released. It’s also on LuaRocks. This release will likely contain bugs! Please report them! As previously discussed, LuaGObject is forked from an older project named LGI. Since its last release in 2017, development of LGI has gradually slowed down. Per discussions within its repository, another LGI release is highly improbable—the person with the keys has not been heard of in 5 years, and those with lesser levels of access have lost interest in contributing. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/automation-games-software-engineering/ Thu, 17 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/automation-games-software-engineering/ A former boss of mine was a big fan of Minecraft and Factorio. In a company Minecraft session, I watched him use various game mechanics to set up a quick auto-smelting system that would allow all of the players to quickly smelt items by placing them in a single chest. He spent the entire online session simply building machines out of the game’s distinct blocks, each to serve a practical purpose. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/lgi-fork/ Wed, 09 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/lgi-fork/ Forking a free software project is often an ill-advised action. Forking a project just because you disagree with changes that are being made to it is a great way to give yourself an untenable work load as you try to hunt down patches to fix bugs in your aging and less-maintained fork. That isn’t the situation I find myself in. Lua is my favourite programming language, GNOME is my preferred desktop environment in Linux, and there is only one way to write GNOME apps using Lua: LGI. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/pride/ Tue, 03 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/pride/ This article discusses recent exterminatory rhetoric and its very real consequences on human lives. Discretion is advised. As of a few days ago, Pride Month has started in the US. While my local Pride celebrations won’t be until July, this current Pride month is quite loud and I would rather join the chorus if I’m to write something about it. I am a transsexual1 woman. I began my gender transition over a decade ago, socially presenting myself as a woman since May 2014. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/parchment-may-status-update/ Mon, 26 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/parchment-may-status-update/ It has been over 5 months since I’ve written about Parchment, my in-progress plain text editor intended for general use as well as programming. I’ve made some progress on it since, and I’d like to share some of what’s changed. App Layout Parchment’s current layout. Parchment’s previous layout as shown in December 2024. The layout of Parchment’s top bar has been updated. All buttons are now simple icons, and the open button is no longer given a bright colour. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/gamer-woes/ Sun, 18 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/gamer-woes/ This post is a reaction to ideas presented in a recent article on Game Developer, and one of the posts it was spawned from. Unlike other forms of entertainment media, the video game business is in a particular place. There was once a time where it dominated over cinema, television, music, and sports—and still had faster growth than all of them! Today, the situation is different. Not dire, just different. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/less-features-more-productivity/ Fri, 16 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/less-features-more-productivity/ Someone posted again. Scrolling through my morning’s Mastodon timeline, I once again saw an assertion that the current version of GNOME was inferior to earlier versions. The stated reason was that current GNOME has fewer features. The exact wording was that it had thus “regressed” because of its design choices. Now, what I’m about to say doesn’t just apply to desktop environments on non-mainstream operating systems, but software as a whole. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/em-dashes-and-you/ Thu, 15 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/em-dashes-and-you/ Writing has a long history. Typesetting, the practice of carefully arranging characters on a written document, is considerably newer than writing yet by now also has a long history. Where letters are what generally signify the sounds that are made when speaking words, marks are used to dictate pacing and sentence structure. I may not vocalize a comma when I speak, but I certainly speak one nonetheless. One radically simple yet very important mark is the dash, of which contemporary writers generally are familiar with three varieties. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/failing-fast-at-subscriptions/ Tue, 13 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/failing-fast-at-subscriptions/ When getting things done, or just doing things, failing fast is a great strategy for preventing unnecessary work. If something is going wrong, beating a hasty retreat can be the difference between living to fight another day and burning yourself out so badly that you can’t continue. Thinking back at my recent financials, I realize that I’ve applied this same principle to the a very particular place: recurring monthly subscriptions. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/a-modest-proposal-for-ai-enthusiasts/ Fri, 25 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/a-modest-proposal-for-ai-enthusiasts/ Hello. This article is mainly aimed toward readers who use AI. Specifically, I mean those products of machine learning which are being hyped as “Artificial Intelligence” within the current zeitgeist. This includes diffusion models and others which are labelled “generative AI” (or GenAI) as well as large language models (LLMs) which are frequently bundled into chatbots or called “AI assistants”. My request is as follows: Do not subject me to these models. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/the-reward-is-not-the-reward/ Tue, 25 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/the-reward-is-not-the-reward/ Role-playing games have a common gameplay loop. The player-controlled character embarks on an adventure, maybe in a cave or fortress filled with baddies, overcomes obstacles, fights a tough boss enemy, and then acquires some treasure. The treasure can be a new weapon for the player character to wield, some macguffin needed to complete some other quest, or plain simple money. Let’s take the example further. After enough time, the player character accrues enough experience points to level up. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/zelda-bad-ui/ Mon, 10 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/zelda-bad-ui/ I’ve been playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its sequel Tears of the Kingdom lately. Both are excellent games (if perhaps an acquired taste in some ways) but there’s a common criticism to the latter which I think is emblematic of an attitude common in computer power users—one where they demand a solution to a perceived problem without considering how the proposed solution might make things worse. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/protesting-daylight-savings/ Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/protesting-daylight-savings/ Due to popular misconceptions of what the word “daylight savings” means, allow me to explain my understanding. In the pre-industrial era, town clocks would be adjusted so that the clock would strike noon at solar noon, meaning the high point of the sun in the day was also the high point of the clock in daytime. The reason for this practice stems from how humans sleep—normally, our bodies start to fall asleep after the sun sets, and wake up shortly after it rises. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/new-domain/ Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/new-domain/ Hello. Just an update for anyone who might have read the site prior to today, January 28th 2025. This site has moved to a new domain, vtrlx.ca. Old links should redirect to the new domain. This is a change I’ve wanted to make for some time. In my experience, it should be much less confusing, as on multiple occasions folks have mistyped the old domain name thinking it was just my surname. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/character-limits-are-great/ Sat, 18 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/character-limits-are-great/ I’m an avid user of Mastodon, a microblogging social network designed to resist centralized control. It’s design is similar to Twitter—before its takeover—emphasizing short posts of a less serious nature. The design of most social media apps creates an emphasis on current content—posts and shares which are recent—to the detriment of older content. Even without an algorithm, checking the feed of any Mastodon instance will mainly focus on current posts. This is mainly due to a lack of index pages like what you’d see on blogs, where you’d see a listing of all posts which have ever been made. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/customization/ Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/customization/ A common complaint I see others make about software, particularly for applications and systems that have existed for a long time, is lacking customization or configuration options. The act of removing options from software is believed by some to be anti-user, or an act of dumbing down an app to appeal to those who are “less sophisticated”. Commentators will deride how modern developers have “lost the ability” to make apps themeable, compared to the “good old days” when every last aspect of an application could be customized. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/work-fast-make-problems/ Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/work-fast-make-problems/ I’m currently developing a text editor, dogfooding1 it as I go by writing computer code and blog posts2. I found that other programs on my computer would sometimes make changes to the files I had open in Parchment—usually because I’d reverted some changes through Git3—but because the version that was open in Parchment was older, when I would eventually save my work, the changes made by Git would not be present in the version saved by Parchment. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/blog-tech-poison/ Wed, 08 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/blog-tech-poison/ There are no good technology options for running your own blog. Should you choose plain HTML, you’d need to duplicate a lot of information in order to get indices working correctly. Double the duplication if you want to have an RSS feed. Let’s not forget to mention if the site has any common visuals present in all pages—that’d all need to be copy-pasted by hand. Mercy upon you if you decide to change anything in the site’s aesthetic. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/when-infestation-strikes/ Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/when-infestation-strikes/ We begin with a metaphor. Let’s say, hypothetically, you found a bug in your residence. An insect. A creepy crawly critter that skitters about. It shouldn’t be there, or anywhere else in your home for that matter. The word “shouldn’t” is important here, because it can have multiple meanings. It could mean that the bug does not belong in your quarters, but it could further mean that you believed you’d employed effective measures to prevent their infiltration. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/my-2024/ Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/my-2024/ When I initially went to write this post, I was of the assumption that I wouldn’t have much to write about; I though I had not done much this year. It was not until I took another look at this blog to realize how mistaken I was. I posted twice as many entries to this blog in 2024 than I have in previous years. Where at this point in 2023 I had only recently begun to pick up programming again, I’ve now spent an entire year truly mastering the subtle aspects of Lua. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/one-year-of-failing-fast/ Fri, 27 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/one-year-of-failing-fast/ Late last year, I signalled my intent to take a different approach to creative work. I’ll post more concrete details in my new year summary post, but what I wanted to highlight here is the power of prototyping. To prototype an idea means to build a simple working version of an idea. As suggested by the “proto” prefix, it is meant to be a forerunner to something else. You’re supposed to build your prototype quickly, without much regard for durability, because its entire purpose is to test out if an idea can even work, or if an idea actually solves problems as intended, or if a given problem is even worth solving. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/parchment/ Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/parchment/ This article follows a previous article on this site. To be sparse means to be thinly scattered. In the context of software, sparseness would describe the sense than an app doesn’t have much going on. There is a minimal amount of information to show, and a minimal amount of interactivity. To be spartan means to significantly restrict oneself, be it by forgoing nourishment or by prioritizing unpleasant tasks. For software, to be spartan might mean that the designers of an app intentionally omitted features which are seen as a necessity in other similar applications. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/ufo-game-over/ Wed, 13 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/ufo-game-over/ UFO 50 is a collection of 50 retro-style video game from Derek Yu’s1 Mossmouth, and I have been completely engrossed in it since I bought it. I have a lot of thoughts about the games in this collection, but for today’s post I wanted to discuss one particular overarching theme present in nearly every game in the collection. When discussing retro video games, a common theme is that they are “brutally” or “punishingly” difficult. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/programmers-falsehoods-programmers/ Sun, 29 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/programmers-falsehoods-programmers/ This list is not exhaustive. You can help by expanding it. Programmers will always be able to use keyboard shortcuts. Programmers will rarely use a pointing device. Programmers using a pointing device will always be using a mouse, or a device which functions identically to a mouse. Programmers will always be willing to install thousands of dependencies. Programmers will always be able to install thousands of dependencies. Programmers will always have at least 64GB of RAM. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/tally-counter-app/ Fri, 27 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/tally-counter-app/ I’ve been working on an app for the past few weeks, and I’m happy to report that it’s ready for a full reveal. Tally is a tally counter application for GNOME on Linux. It can hold an arbitrary number of tally counters in its list. Each counter can be given a name, marked with a colour, and ordered however the user sees fit. To help the user manage their counters, the app also has features for filtering the list either by name or by colour. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/digital-superpowers/ Mon, 09 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/digital-superpowers/ (previously, I discussed the difficulty in finding the right metaphors for apps) A good tool empowers its user to easily accomplish feats that are otherwise difficult or tedious. A great tool can be thought of as giving its user new superpowers, enabling what would previously have been thought of as impossible. Software applications can each be thought as tools for accomplishing digital tasks, and some could be thought to give their users new digital superpowers. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/design-metaphors/ Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/design-metaphors/ Designers of user interfaces make frequent use of metaphors to guide their designs. This isn’t simply a means to easily come up ideas for how to arrange the interactive parts of a computer program, however. The primary reason to use metaphors is for the benefit of end users of a software application. The design of a program is heavily influential on the behaviour of a user. Features which are highly exposed and easy to see will be used more often than those which are hidden away, and the selection of accessible features will guide the user in a specific direction. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/peak-gaming-harvest-moon/ Tue, 03 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/peak-gaming-harvest-moon/ I rented many video sgames as a child in the early 2000s. Most of my most beloved experiences on my N64 were had on rentals. When renting, I’d have the opportunity to try titles sight unseen without needing to commit to one, stuck with it until the next time my single-digit-aged self would be given a new one. Eventually, curiosity lead me to a game for which I was woefully unprepared to play, Harvest Moon 64. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/programming-deserves-better-than-monospace/ Fri, 30 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/programming-deserves-better-than-monospace/ There are many aspects about the ways I use programming tools which are simply not the norm among programmers. The norm I wanted to talk about today is the use of monospace fonts for code, where I instead use proportional fonts. It is well understood that proportional text is easier to read than monospace text. That’s why just about every piece of text that you will read is proportional. Proportional text, as a technological feat, is more difficult than monospace. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/howto-lua-gnome-app/ Fri, 09 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/howto-lua-gnome-app/ This Tutorial is Outdated! This article has been superceded by a new version. Compared to the new guide, this one is lacking in many respects. This page is preserved only to prevent link rot. If an internet search has sent you here, read the new one instead! Lua is my favourite programming language, and GNOME is my favourite desktop application shell. Though using Lua to write GNOME apps is the natural course of action for me, GNOME doesn’t explicitly support it and provides little guidance on how to accomplish this goal. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/too-quiet/ Mon, 15 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/too-quiet/ I check my YouTube subscriptions. It’s largely the same regular cadre of creators, themselves a small subset of those I actually follow. I verify my subscriptions list to see if somehow some channels have stopped existing, but the count remains at a steady 100 or so. I check out a few quiet channels I still love, and notice that those that have gone quiet have largely done so within the past two years. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/cheveret/ Thu, 04 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/cheveret/ A cheveret desk is a small writing desk with a handful of small drawers. It includes a basket, possibly for scraps or to hold letters one intends to send out. The usage of the few features it has are up to the user. Lastly, the writing surface is tiny, preventing the users from overwhelming themselves with information from different stacks of paper surrounding them. If image uploads to Wikipedia are to be believed, this is a cheveret desk. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/new-toaster-no-pain/ Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/new-toaster-no-pain/ I’ve previously written a quite unpleasant post about some recurring pain I’d been dealing with that had made it excruciatingly difficult to use a computer for any productive amount of time. I am happy to, today, report a small update: I am definitively recovering. I can now use a game controller for a few hours per day, over a consecutive week of light to heavy play time. This is something I’d been unable to consistently do for some time, beginning with thumb joint pain that set in during my initial time with Pokémon Scarlet, worsening with Tears of the Kingdom and Pikmin 4. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/the-pain/ Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/the-pain/ This article has been obsoleted by further developments. Three months since my last post on this site. My my, where does the time go? I’ve stopped development on Witch as I believe the exercise to not be worth the trouble. Interacting with the program environment that contains the text editor you’re working from poses many challenges in complexity. It is also somewhat limiting, because one is required to use the bundled editor in order to interact with the wider environment. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/witch-demo/ Thu, 08 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/witch-demo/ For the past few weeks, I’ve been hard at work on Witch, a program that combines a text editor and a programming REPL, a desire I’ve written about before. The goal is to make a GUI program that replaces a text editor, my terminal emulator, the Lua command-line interpreter, and a testing environment for Lua code I’m writing. It seems like a lofty goal, but that’s only really true if you don’t see how all these things are related. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/programmers-should-program/ Tue, 30 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/programmers-should-program/ As computer professionals, programmers need to use a lot of software. For some programmers this can mean using many different kinds of software systems. For others, it may mean using one particular program (or suite of programs) very extensively. Given that the core act of programming involves writing and modifying code, it is no surprise that programmers spend much of their time inside text editors1 — including to the point where some superusers will say that they “live inside” their editors, doing all of their work there. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/terminal-obsession/ Tue, 02 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/terminal-obsession/ Most programmers do at least some of their work inside of a command-line terminal. There are some programs that are simply easier to make function in a command-line interface. One example of this would be programming. The read/eval/print loops found in most scripted programming languages are a type of interface that only really works on a command line because it is a kind of program that is operated specifically by issuing commands line by line. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/my-2023/ Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2024/my-2023/ 2023 is over. I probably won’t miss it, even if it was a good year for me. Let’s go over some things that happened to me. I Lost My Job This kind of thing happens. Oh well. What differentiated this year from other times I lost my job was that I did not immediately seek out new employment. I was in a position where I could take some time to really think about what I wanted rather than just rush into the next hectic adventure. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2023/blank-canvasses-and-rock-portraits/ Tue, 26 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2023/blank-canvasses-and-rock-portraits/ Let’s say, hypothetically, you wanted to paint landscapes, Bob Ross style.1 You buy the materials, learn some techniques, make a space for yourself to work your art, and you get started. Green meadows, grey, rocky hills in the distance, blue skies and deeper blue lakes, trees… and the result is ugly.2 Okay, that’s fair. That’s to be expected. You’re just a beginner. So, you spend some time studying shading techniques, to add some texture to your creation. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2023/when-it-all-fell-apart/ Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2023/when-it-all-fell-apart/ ⚠️ This is an approximately 45 minute read. Chapter 1 For a moment, I gaze into the sink as the water runs. The water from the faucet falls, crashes into the bottom of a ceramic bowl, and accumulates. As it builds up, the water swirls around the center, where it drains into… elsewhere. Not here. “Stay with me,” echo some words in this place. Out of sight. Replaced by more water from the faucet. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2023/i-got-gnomed/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2023/i-got-gnomed/ This article was originally titled “I got GNOMEd.” Including this one, it contains four significant digressions. I have already spoken at length on this blog on the subject of terminals, command-line programs, minimalist computing, whatever. I’m a longtime user of the Vim text editor. The kind who’s use of Vim gets so deep that that editor’s very idiosyncratic keybinds begin bleeding out into the larger whole of the operating system. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2022/joy-of-replaying-games/ Mon, 24 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2022/joy-of-replaying-games/ I play video games a lot. Most of my free time is spent playing some kind of video game. This is just how I spend the time. But of note is my choice in which games I choose to play. I tend to stick mostly to games I’ve played before, but not always with those games I’ve previously finished. I’ve been spending a lot of time revisiting games that I tried when I was younger but had bounced off of at the time. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2022/how-to-talk-to-engineers/ Fri, 21 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2022/how-to-talk-to-engineers/ This post is inspired by a similar guide I wrote at my workplace on how to coordinate with the software engineering team. Most advice will apply to all software engineers, but some will only apply either to older software engineers, or anachronisms such as myself. Introduction Let’s imagine you work at a company that employs software engineers. Whether you yourself are a software engineer doesn’t matter. What matters is that some of your colleagues are software engineers. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2022/review-pokemon-sapphire/ Tue, 04 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2022/review-pokemon-sapphire/ My most played game of 2021 is an RPG originally released in 2002. I started my adventure early in the year, and within 20 or so hours of gameplay (spanning a few weeks), I had finished the main story of the game. My current playtime in Pokémon Sapphire is approaching 150 hours. That figure does not even measure time spent resetting — loading up the game at a specific spot and performing a specific task that carried a randomized outcome — which doesn’t get tallied against the save’s total playtime. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2021/ed/ Tue, 28 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2021/ed/ I’m writing this post using a text editor from 1969. It’s called ed(1) (pronounced “Ee Dee”, not that I do). This program is in some ways literally prehistoric. It’s twice my age! As you’d expect, it is difficult to use. I am unable to see the exact contents of the file I’m editing. In order to actually read back what I’ve written, I need to issue a specific command to the editor. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2021/bleepy-kabloopie/ Tue, 21 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2021/bleepy-kabloopie/ I made a chiptune cover album of the music from Banjo-Kazooie! Watch on Youtube Why? I like the game’s soundtrack and thought it would work well when adapted to the limits of the Nintendo Entertainment System. How? Old game music from the 80s was sometimes done using a sort of programming language called a “music macro language” (MML). Musicians would compose the tunes, and programmers would transcribe the tunes into MML, which then gets compiled down to code that plays the music with the correct timing when run. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2020/low-level-rabbit-hole/ Sat, 07 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2020/low-level-rabbit-hole/ This is the draft transcript of a talk I gave for Google Developer Group Sudbury’s DevFest 2020. Intro Hello, my name is Victoria Lacroix and I am a computer programmer located in Sudbury, ON. My current job makes use of software development in various capacities, from embedded firmware development in C all the way up to writing web applications in Javascript using React. Like it or not, I do it all. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2020/just-phone-me/ Wed, 30 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2020/just-phone-me/ Update (2022-01-22) I’ve written a spiritual follow-up that goes into much greater detail and contradicts some of the advice present here. How to Talk to Software Engineers Among my friends, I have made it no secret that I have been thriving professionally in my current pandemic lockdown situation. At the time of writing this post, I have self-managed two brand-new software projects with changing scope, and have delivered both on-time with solid functionality. https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2020/smogon-sucks/ Tue, 09 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2020/smogon-sucks/ This post is about a nerdy, unimportant subject: high-level competitive play of the Pokémon video games. Parts of this article will be easier to understand if you have basic, non-competitive knowledge of how the Pokémon games' battle mechanics work. If you’re looking for something serious, move on. After an unfortunate file deletion, I’ve finally finished Pokémon Sword again. Like in most games in its series, the act of “finishing” the game’s main story is mostly just a prelude to playing modes that use a more competitive set of game rules.