My Steam Deck arrived on Friday. This thing is proper good and has exceeded my expectations. Been playing some Doom, Boltgun, and Diablo, as well as a few survivor titles.

Photo of my new Steam Deck.

games steam steamdeck

Ordered myself an OLED Steam Deck to replace my desktop Linux machine. Late to the party, as usual, but we're changing offices/bedrooms at home to make way for the grandchild and so I'm downsizing my gaming rig.

games steam steamdeck

Got myself a cheap original Apple Magic Trackpad from Vinted. It works nicely with my Fedora/GNOME systems, apart from when I connect my Bluetooth earbuds to the same system, at which point it becomes laggy and unusable. I'll have to try and debug this at some point, but not today.

apple bluetooth fedora gnome

Using ChatGPT to render images of our living room with different paint colours on the walls, before we go to the store to actually buy the paint. I think this is an acceptable use case for ChatGPT. I like sage.

ChatGPT render of our living room.

ai chatgpt

Typing this on a £60 Xiaomi Redmi A3 device that I purchased from Argos. It’s not going to replace my current phone (iPhone 11) but I was interested to see how a cheap Android device performs and what it provides for the money. Long story short, it’s actually a usable device, which is a pleasant surprise. £60 to play around with Android, before deciding to drop iOS and purchase a premium device is an acceptable cost to me. Also, £60!

android apple google ios

One of my least favourite tasks is wrestling with HTML email templates. I recently spent some time working on what I thought was a nice and attractive email template. It worked really well with the email clients and devices I tested it on, then it got delivered to Classic Outlook on Windows 10/11 and BOOM! Everything fell apart. Apparently, Classic Outlook is going to be around until 2029. I think I'll just stick to using plain text email templates until then.

email html

Daily driver (Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 3) upgraded to Fedora 42. No issues to speak of. I love that I can do a release upgrade and then just get on with my day. Perfect.

fedora linux

Upgraded my secondary machine to Fedora 42. The upgrade was quick and error free. Will do my daily driver next, after I run a few backup routines.

Screenshot showing Fedora 42 details in GNOME Settings About dialog

fedora linux

Fedora 42 is due for release tomorrow and I’m tempted to upgrade, but 41 is currently rock solid for me, so I’ll probably wait a while before upgrading. Or maybe not.

fedora linux

Over the last couple of years, my monitor count has gone from 3 to 2 to 1. I used to enjoy having lots of applications spread across multiple screens in front of me, now enjoy just having the application on screen that I'm actively using. I'm not entirely sure why this happened, maybe it's because I'm getting older, or maybe it's due to the improved performance of touchpad gestures in GNOME, or a combination of both. Whatever the reason, I'm currently enjoying using a single monitor.

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Just finished reading Deathworlder - An Astra Militarum Novel by Victoria Hayward. It was a good read and I particularly enjoyed how the Tyranids were portrayed - it never occurred to me that they would be vocally silent, which is quite terrifying.

Deathworlder cover art.

books reading warhammer40k

Philip Newborough and a donkey enjoying a beer.

About

My name is and I’m a full stack web developer living and working in Lincoln, England. This website (philipnewborough.co.uk) serves as my personal homepage. When I’m not working with tech, I love to ride bicycles with my wife and friends.

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