Turn-based mode is coming to Pillars Of Eternity!

Wow, this news landed just as I was browsing Steam trying to figure out what to play over my Christmas/NY PTO this year.

Just for context, I played 50h+ of Pillars of Eternity only to abandon it due to the real-time combat mechanics. After getting a great reception for turn-based mode in Deadfire (which I still haven't played), Obsidian are adding it here. Super impressive for a game that is over 10 years old.

I loved my limited playtime with PoE and can't wait to dive into this!

Publii-shing made easier

It's taken some time and effort, but I've finally finished migrating all my sites to Publii.

Yes, another massive shift.

I've maintained a namesake dotcom since graduating from college (circa 2010) and deciding that digital design would be my career. Textpattern was the first CMS I dabbled with and it served me faithfully for several years, chugging along on the shared hosting I used to use back then.

One of the earliest versions of my namesake dotcom, powered by Textpattern

A few years later, I started maintaining this journal and experimented with several (mostly PHP-based) blogging tools — Concrete, Grav, Expression Engine, Textpattern, Anchor and others — to maintain it.

All the while, I avoided WordPress like the plague because of how rigid it was with handling anything other than basic blogs. But that opinion changed with the announcement of WordPress 5 and I moved this blog back to WordPress around 2018.

It was good while it lasted, but as my side-projects got more and more ambitious I realized I needed more than a blogging tool... I needed a true CMS.

That's when I discovered Craft, and immediately fell in love with how flexible it was. It allowed me to create all sorts of web projects and allowed for a very clean backend experience just because of how robust its content model was. And the very decent plugin library made it worth the effort to shift all of my digital properties over. Besides this, I also started running my own Lightsail VPS, for which I got very good with Debian and running Terminal. I also toyed with Statamic, which was very much like Craft but flat-file.

Ultimately, keeping Lightsail updated and running smoothly began taking too much of my time. Updating PHP was another chore. Both Craft and Statamic were a pain to work with because of their finicky file permissions and dependence on Composer. I realized I was spending more time maintaining those tools than I was actually building and publishing with them.

The final straw was signing into Lightsail earlier this year and seeing that all my sites had been infected with some sort of PHP malware. There was no sure way to clean everything and all my research indicated the only way out was to nuke the server.

So here we are... Further research led me down the path of static sites. But rather than going with Hugo or Jekyll or Astro (which the cool kids use — I'm too old), I chose Publii because it was free and open-source; and had a decent GUI and a native Mac app.

It's nowhere as flexible as Craft or Statamic, but I:

Can manage all my sites from a single place
No longer worry about malware or updating PHP
Have also shifted to static hosting on Amazon S3, which dropped my costs by a huge margin!
Can build something, preview it on local and publish to S3 all with two clicks; which is insanely cool

There's a steady stream of updates being made to Publii, so I guess I'm going to stick with this setup for the foreseeable future.

Now Playing

Alien: Earth

I was so giddy with excitement when Noah Hawley was announced as showrunner for Alien: Earth, that I decided to watch each episode as it came out every Tuesday, rather than waiting to binge-watch the entire thing (as I mostly do).

IMHO, the show has its moments. The introduction from the pilot episode actually peaked my interest the most:

In the future, the race for immortality will come in 3 guises:
Cybernetically enhanced humans: cyborgs.
Artificially intelligent beings: synths.
And synthetic beings downloaded with human consciousness: hybrids.

I love that large parts of the show featured this tension between Kirsh, Morrow and "Lost Boys". Episode 5 "In Space, No One..." was the standout episode for me; followed by episode 6 "The Fly".

Of all the creatures on display, the ominous sheep was the supervillain for me.

Ultimately, the show ran out of steam and the season finale was a big disappointment. For me, the concept of Wendy being able to communicate and control the xenomorph was too much to swallow.

Anyway, the finale seems to do just enough to set up an interesting season 2. The show currently has a 7.3 rating on IMDB, so let's see how things play out.

Get married.
Have children.
Build a legacy.
Pass down your values.
Pursue the eternal.
Seek true joy. Charlie Kirk

Such a sad day today — the world has lost a great defender of the Truth.

Chelsea lift the Club World Cup

As a fan, I must say I did not see this coming! After PSG humiliated Inter at the Champions League final few weeks ago, I really thought they would steamroll Chelsea here.

That second Palmer goal was insane. No matter how many times I watch it even in slow-mo, I can't comprehend how much was going through his mind as he faked the pass to Joao Pedro, dummied the shot and then fired it into the same corner he hit the first goal into.

Surreal stuff.

Can't believe they're all growing up so fast.

We spent our Holy Triduum this year at Xavier Retreat House, Baga and came back so refreshed that we plan to make this a yearly ritual.

Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting. Psalm 100:4–5

Copenhagen!

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of travelling to Copenhagen; and it turned out to be one of those life-changing, perspective-altering experiences that I don't ever want to forget.

After collaborating over Zoom for many years, it was so surreal meeting Andrius, Mark, Veli, Zainab, Silke, Karsten, Norbert, Jesper, Jesse and other Brandwatch folks in person. We talked about product design, went bowling, ate some delicious local food and had a great time swapping stories over the week that I was there. I even got to experience the rain on a late Tuesday evening.

Copenhagen is such a vibe! Turns out May was the right time to visit. Every café you go to is perfect — the lighting is just right, there's always great music playing, the food is on point and the people are so polite and friendly.

I got so many great photos from this trip that it inspired me to create a Glass account, which I hope to keep actively posting to. I also used all my video footage to create the video above, as a keepsake of all the amazing things I experienced here — consider it my love letter to this amazing city!

Here are some of the other highlights of the trip.

My DonkeyBike "Godelieve" that I rented for the week

Visiting the Muji store was a dream come true!

All I ended up buying were some notebooks. Sigh.

Going crazy in the largest Lego store in Copenhagen

Walking along the gorgeous Nyhavn waterfront

My favorite shot of the entire trip, taken from Tivoli

Such a beautiful city! I hope to come back here sometime soon.

The World Cup is back!

Typing this out just before Croatia kick off against Brazil in the quarterfinals of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

There’ve been so many upsets already at this edition of the tournament but the final 8 look very solid. Here are my quick thoughts on each and who I see could go on to win this.

Morocco had a really tough group and got a great draw against Croatia, stunned Belgium and beat Spain on penalties to be here. Portugal are in fine form however, and seem to be capable with or without Ronaldo.

France should have no problem against England — Mbappe, Griezmann, Dembele, Giroud, Lloris and others are too much for any team to handle.

Croatia have the knack of grinding out results and have one of the more experienced sides in the tournament. Brazil are always favourites, but this Brazil squad don’t look like they can go all the way.

Finally, my beloved Netherlands! They had an easy group and smooth sailing so far but Argentina will be the first real test. But you can’t underestimate Louis van Gaal’s tactics — he probably has a plan for Messi. Plus, Cody Gakpo is in great form! They may beat Argentina but I don’t see them going further than that.

I predict a Brazil vs France final with France eventually winning it.

Till then, it’s time to bring out those Oranje jerseys.

The Conversion of Shia LaBeouf

I took a break from my blogging hiatus just to share this amazing conversation between Bishop Robert Barron and actor Shia LaBeouf.

LaBeouf is infamous as one of Hollywood’s bad boys — as he shares so openly at the point in the time he was approached by Abel Ferrara to play Padre Pio:

When I walked into this, my life was on fire. I was walking out of hell. It wasn’t like I willingly came in here on a white horse singing showtunes. I came in here on fire. My life was a complete mess. I had hurt a lot of people. I felt deep shame, deep guilt; I didn’t like to go outside much. I had a yearning to not be here anymore… My mother wanted nothing to do with me. The news that had come out was that I had been abusive to women, I was shooting dogs, that I had been willingly giving women STDs… It’s disgusting. It’s depraved.

On why Buddhism never appealed to him:

If I’m in a boat, and the boat is sinking and I don’t know how to swim; Buddhism is a book that tells you “Read this and learn how to swim better!” … And at that time in my life, I didn’t want to swim anymore. I had a gun at the table. I was outta here… Shame like I had never experienced before — the kind of shame that you forget how to breathe… You don’t know where to go.

His outlook toward Catholicism as someone new to the faith is so inspiring, especially after he transitioned from just an actor researching for a role to a sinner who has a genuine conversion to the faith.

I highly recommend you check out the entire conversation — it’s gold!