Suddenly realizing how much cheaper it is to use something like OpenRouter vs a subscription to Claude or ChatGPT. I added $20 to my account over a month ago and so far I’m down to $17.60. Reminds me of PikaPods in that sense; you can just throw $20 at it and not have to worry about topping up for a few months. Works really well with the Apollo app from Liquid AI, too. They have some decent local models and I can switch between that and OpenRouter on the fly. Bonus points to Apollo for collecting zero data 🤙
Notes
Switching to consumer mode
Sunday, October 19, 2025 • 3 min read
I’ve been blogging (almost) daily for the last year and a half or so. Mostly, it’s been a collage of links with some long form posts here and there. I read a lot of websites and I like to curate a collection of things that made me think a little bit.
Now playing: Ender Lilies
Thursday, October 16, 2025 • 1 min read
I’m back from my Metroidvania hiatus and my latest obsession is the first Ender Lilies game.
All my favorite things are temporary
Friday, September 26, 2025 • 2 min read
I’ve done a lot of “cancelled X, back to Y” posts, like it’s this massive shift in my life. It’s not. I switch between different services that all do the same thing pretty regularly.
I picked a dumb time to go on a diet...
Monday, September 22, 2025 • 1 min read
I mean I don’t think it’s ever super easy to completely re-wire how you eat, but I didn’t expect it to affect my mood so much. Paired with how increasingly terrible the news is every day, this sucks!
Reddit, Digg, and the Threadiverse
Sunday, September 21, 2025 • 5 min read
Digg.com was my favorite website for the longest time. Back in the day, it’s where I got most of my news — especially tech news. It was the original front page of the internet. I watched Diggnation religiously every week — beer in hand, Ethernet cable firmly clicked-in to my soft-modded original Xbox, and beamed directly into my fuzzy CRT TV via RCA cables.
I'm finally a cartoon
Friday, September 19, 2025 • 2 min read
You know one of the many things I hated about NFTs? The hype behind them, however short-lived, convinced a lot of people that the only way to purchase art was through digital Monopoly money. Or at least, that it was The Future™.
Firefox Liquid Glass update (yikes)
Monday, September 15, 2025 • 1 min read
Thanks for choosing Firefox! Here’s what’s new:
Shake to Summarize: get instant page summaries with a shake or tap (progressive rollout)
Ul improvements: a cleaner, smoother experience with layout improvements and bug fixes
Generational labels are like astrology
Sunday, September 14, 2025 • 1 min read
Both are equally ridiculous.
about:pronouns
Saturday, September 13, 2025 • 4 min read
I’ve always identified as he/they.
I wouldn’t consider myself non-binary, aside from mostly picking outfits that are gender neutral. I like Chuck Taylors and cardigans, but that’s about as wild as I get.
Post deleted
Friday, September 12, 2025 • 3 min read
I spent all morning typing up a massive post about how divided we’ve become as a nation. Why guns are bad. How things will probably get worse before they get better. By the time I was done with the first draft, I hit CTRL + A and then promptly smashed the backspace key.
So I made a Mastodon account
Thursday, September 11, 2025 • 3 min read
I migrated my Micro.blog fediverse account over there, too. Partially because I wanted a little more control over how my blog shows up on the fediverse, but mostly because I finally got my invite to Surf (from Flipboard) and I was curious about unifying all my feeds in the same place.
RIP Nova Launcher
Monday, September 8, 2025 • 2 min read
Welp, Nova Launcher is officially dead. It was sold to an analytics company called Branch a few years ago, and now the sole developer, Kevin Barry, has left the company.
Let the kids be cool
Tuesday, September 2, 2025 • 1 min read
I’ve come to the shocking realization that I am not, as fate would have it, cool anymore.
On consolidating social media accounts
Saturday, August 30, 2025 • 2 min read
A couple weeks ago I wrote about how I’d rather have different accounts for different things, instead of copy-pasting myself online. I’ve been pondering that a little more today. I was considering getting rid of a couple social media accounts to make Micro.blog my single home online, but then I remembered that post. I just redesigned my entire blog a couple days ago. I switched to a new theme and dropped my goofy old domain name for something more simple and memorable.
grubz.net is now gary.onl
Thursday, August 28, 2025 • 1 min read
Alright I went for it! Moved to gary.onl from grubz.net. Micro.blog’s redirect feature works really well! Still have a lot of CSS to code over the next few days; I switched to the new Mythos theme because it’s super clean and has some great accessibility features. Figured the end of August was a great time for some spring cleaning. I think Gary Online is more simple and less wacky than gru:Bz, and I’m a sucker for simple designs that just get out of the way.
I hate Metroidvanias
Tuesday, August 26, 2025 • 2 min read
If you’ve read any of my posts on gaming, you’d probably gather that Metroidvanias are, by far, my favorite genre.
RFK Jr. wants to ban the drugs that saved my life
Saturday, August 23, 2025 • 6 min read
I hate to overshare, but this is going to get a little personal. Mental health is something I struggled with for a long time before I finally got it under control, so it’s a very personal subject for me.
Blogs are portals to the past
Thursday, August 21, 2025 • 3 min read
classicweb@indieweb.social posted a screenshot of Kottke.org from all the way back in 2001 and it led me down a delightful little rabbit hole of old blog posts this morning.
More on KYC-walling the internet
Tuesday, August 19, 2025 • 2 min read
I understand the issue of wanting to protect kids online. When I was a kid, I saw a lot of gnarly shit I never should’ve seen on the internet. Most of my generation and every one after it probably has. There were also a lot of other terrible things I witnessed and experienced at a young age, and most of it had nothing to do with the internet.
I vibe coded a bookmarklet to hide your own traffic on Umami
Sunday, August 17, 2025 • 1 min read
I’ve been using Umami for a lightweight, self-hosted analytics solution on my blog. There’s a built in way to hide your own traffic by IP address, but I use Private Relay on my phone, and a VPN sometimes on my laptop, so I wanted to find a way to hide my own visits to my blog that’ll work across device/browser/network. If you’re on desktop, per the official documentation, you can run this command from the JavaScript console:
Finally picked up Tears of the Kingdom
Friday, August 15, 2025 • 1 min read
I feel like they could’ve changed Link’s outfit and marketed this as MacGyver: Escape from the Sky Islands. I feel like a tweaker, running through the countryside, duct taping things together to find a way across rivers and down ziplines. Not loving it so far; it feels like pre-Industrial Revolution Fortnite mixed with the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater level editor. But I paid $70 for this game so I have to finish it, dammit.
More on my love hate relationship with bread
Sunday, August 10, 2025 • 3 min read
I’ve never been on a diet in my entire life — until now. Unless you count when I was a junkie, living on dope and gas station food, but that wasn’t quite as intentional.
Foundation of society (anxiety)
Sunday, August 10, 2025 • 1 min read
For someone who works in an old school, face to face sales job, and as someone who blogs daily, I’m pretty shy. I started working with the public because I thought it would help with social anxiety. And it has in a lot of ways. Getting a bunch of reps in can make you good at pretty much anything. It gets easier, but the critic in my head never leaves. He just gets easier to ignore.
Why I stopped copy-pasting myself online
Friday, August 8, 2025 • 3 min read
Thinking out loud about POSSE vs different platforms for different things.
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound mini review
Tuesday, August 5, 2025 • 2 min read
I’ve been having a lot of fun with Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound since it launched about a week ago. For $25, this is a killer Metroidvania adjacent game. Super fluid and responsive controls. One thing that added to the difficulty on older games in the series was that classic, infuriatingly calculated movement. Every step and every swing of your sword had to be completely intentional or you’d get put in your place before you even have time to blink.
The web is my favorite OS
Friday, August 1, 2025 • 4 min read
I like progressive web apps. They feel like this alternate reality between how smartphones evolved, and how they could’ve evolved. Looking at you, Firefox Phone (RIP).
Can you hear me now?
Monday, July 28, 2025 • 2 min read
We had a gnarly thunderstorm roll through Columbus yesterday and, I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure lightning struck one of the 5G towers behind where I work.
Liquid Glass reminds me so much of the HTC Sense UI from the old days of Android. Another way it just feels so nostalgic.
Update: I guess it reminds me a little bit of the older versions of iOS too 😅 didn’t dawn on me because I only used Android back then.
It’s like the full on UI version of when Microsoft upgraded the Windows XP Bliss wallpaper to 4k.
The sketchy world of psychoactive hemp products
Tuesday, July 15, 2025 • 4 min read
I just read an article on The Guardian about how the author traded their alcohol habit for THC seltzers.