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Loading from tape

After some time off-line due to a disk failure, the CPCWiki Forum is back online. There is a thread to “show off your Amstrads”, so I used the excuse to do some gaming with the kids and my 464. I was also talking to my younger son about cassettes the other day, how long the games took to load, and how we had “compilation” cassettes with several games on them. So we decided to load the games from tape! Vanity shot: loading The Return of Traxtor One of my kids suggested that we should start loading one of my games, and that was The Return of Traxtor . The game was pubished some years ago by Matr

Personal Log · EN

Creepy crawlies

That’s how Konstantin Ryabitsev titles his post creepy crawlies , where he explains the scale of the problem of the “AI crawlers” in the kernel.org git repositories website. I have discussed it here a few times: the problem of the LLM crawlers , how I simplified how I self host git repos , and my attempts trying to deal with these crawlers . I haven’t reached a solution and the crawlers are still there –less so, as the blocking and some of the Javascript tricks did work –, although I haven’t tried more drastic solutions like Anubis . My problem is not at the same scale as what the people at ke

Personal Log · EN

Detecting LLMs

I am not good at detecting when a piece of text has been produced by a large language model (LLM from now on). Very often I read a post shared on a link aggregator, to later check the comments and learn that it is slop . It is true that there are some stylistic clues that can mean a text was generated (or there was some LLM assistance, at least), but I assume you have to be used to read LLM output to actual spot the more subtle cues. I was reading today in Chris’ Entropic Thoughts: Claude comment detection , and his summary of “clues” is interesting: If we jam all features at once into the mod

Personal Log · EN

Loading from tape again

A couple of days ago we decided to repeat the experience of loading games from tape , but this time with my ZX Spectrum+. It is evidently a different system. Which is a funny thing to say because when I had my ZX Spectrum +2A almost 40 years ago I didn’t really know there were different systems , I just had a “computer”. In this case, the biggest change is that the ZX Spectrum+ doesn’t come with a built-in tape drive, so I had to find one I bought a few years ago and I had misplaced somewhere. Technically speaking you don’t need a tape drive, because you can plug the audio output from your pho

Personal Log · EN

The effects of walking

Before I started working from home, I was lucky enough to commute to the office by foot. That was 35 minutes in each direction, which is not a lot, but it isn’t bad. I used to listen to music and lots of podcasts, and that time off gave me a nice buffer to disconnect from work before getting home. Enter the pandemic and the shift to working from home. While I love it because it allows me to spend more time with my kids and helps me juggle responsibilities at home, my walking was reduced to just the weekends. Being a software engineer by vocation, this shift significantly reduced my exercise ti

Personal Log · EN

Using emacs

There has always been that rivalry between these two editors. In fact, the closing question in my first successful job interview in the UK was: Do you use vi or emacs ? The interviewer was a long time emacs user, but it wasn’t a problem that I used vim. In the really old times, when I was a DOS user, because that is what we had, I didn’t care much. I used DOS’ edit, or whatever was the editor of the IDE I used at the time. But I spent a lot of time writing documents for high school using WordStar , and this was useful because when I started university and I had to write code in Linux, there wa

Personal Log · EN

Into the Breach

As I have mentioned here a few times, I don’t play a lot of games these days. The last game I completed was Skyrim. I didn’t write a post about that, but at least I mentioned here I was playing it . Actually, can you really complete Skyrim? So, let me clarify: I completed the main quest and some side quests, and after a bit over 63 hours playing the game, I’m ready to move on. Since then I’ve tried Divinity: Original Sin , me alone and in co-op with one of my sons, but it didn’t stick. The game looks nice, the mechanics are OK, and there’s some story; but I didn’t connect. Then I bought Into t

Personal Log · EN

Outpost released!

I have released Outpost for the ZX Spectrum 48k! I started working on this game in April 2021 or, at least, that was my first commit in the repo. It is likely that I started bootstrapping and working on some ideas a bit before that. And it is 2026, so what happened? When I made Brick Rick: Graveyard Shift for the ZX Spectrum 128k I wrote my own library from scratch, and all the sprite routines required a lot of learning. And learning sometimes requires writing stuff that you end not using. When I finished that project I had a lot of code that I didn’t need for a 128k game. Those unused sprite

Personal Log · EN

Create a sitemap with Remix.run

How to create a sitemap in Remix.run? Learn how to create a dynamic sitemap.xml for your Remix app.

Simon Depelchin - Blog · EN

Replace ESLint & Prettier with Biome.js

How to install & setup Biome.js in a Remix.run project. Remove ESLint & Prettier from your project.

Simon Depelchin - Blog · EN

How to upgrade Volta

Every time it's time to upgrade Volta, I always forget how to do it. So I decided to write a blog post about it. This way, I can always come back to it and remember how to do it.

Simon Depelchin - Blog · EN

Translate your Remix.run app with Lingui

Lingui is an alternative to i18next for internationalization in Javascript project. It offers a different approach to i18n and is now available for Remix.run projects with Vite.

Simon Depelchin - Blog · EN

Blurhash with Laravel Spatie Media Library

How to generate Blurhash for your media using Laravel & Spatie Media Library.

Simon Depelchin - Blog · EN

Installing FFmpeg on Laravel Cloud

A step-by-step guide to installing and setting up FFmpeg on serverless Laravel Cloud.

Simon Depelchin - Blog · EN

Use git commit in your Typescript app

How to use the git commit as your app version in your app.

Simon Depelchin - Blog · EN

Laravel without frontend

How to setup Laravel without frontend scaffolding and use it as a backend API.

Simon Depelchin - Blog · EN

Self-hosting Mastodon on AWS using Nomad

With Twitter being a mess at the moment, I decided to try out Mastodon as an alternative. Mastodon is a federated social media platform, built on top of a protocol called ActivityPub. It can be self-hosted, letting you own your data, and I wanted to do so using Nomad as a cluster orchestrator. This post shows how I did it, and will hopefully inspire you to give Mastodon a try if you haven’t already! You can find me on the Fediverse at @lopcode@mastodon.social 🐘.

lopcode.com · EN

It’s Time to Ditch Twitter/X

Prior to the platform’s buyout, I had a Twitter/X account since 2008 (nearly from the start!). Almost two years since Elon Musk bought it, it’s been long enough to make a judgement on the platform’s new direction. This post details why I feel it’s time to move on to bluer skies, and shares some practical tips on how to do so.

lopcode.com · EN

Staying Organised With a Spicy Brain

Keeping on top of things at work, and in my personal life, is a challenge. I’m neurodivergent, and struggle to form habits, even for things that others might find natural or easy. In this post, I share the framework that I use to stay organised, and offer some tips and tricks for getting things done.

lopcode.com · EN

Announcing vips-ffm - libvips Bindings for Java / JVM Systems

This is short post announcing a new Java / JVM image-manipulation-related library I've shipped to Maven Central - vips-ffm.

lopcode.com · EN

Releasing vips-ffm v1.0 - libvips Bindings for Java / JVM Systems

I'm very happy to announce that, after lots of testing and improvement, vips-ffm is now version 1.0!

lopcode.com · EN

Switching from Spotify to Apple Music

I recently switched from Spotify to Apple Music. Here's why, how I did it, and how I feel about both platforms after a month.

lopcode.com · EN

Rebuilding my personal cluster with k3s, Cilium, and BunnyCDN

I host my own website and personal projects (like bunnies.io), because it’s fun, and I like being in control of what I’m running. I recently rebuilt it - here's why, and how.

lopcode.com · EN

One year in Sweden 🇸🇪

One year ago, my partner and I packed up our lives and moved from the UK to Sweden. Here's a summary, and some photos of our move.

lopcode.com · EN