Blogs Posts by Nick McHardy
Welcome to my blog, where I cover tech, games and whatever else that’s interesting in the universe like vinyl, fusion jazz and side projects.
This website is inspired by the web of the late 90s - no, not just the style of the site - but also harking back to a time when people would set up websites (probably on Geocities or similar) and write about anything that interested them. Most of the websites looked terrible (my first few sites were no exception) but it was so liberating having your own site. So here’s my modern-day version of that late 90s vibe.
Not sure where to start? Here are some blogs to get you started:
There’s also a 🍊 Garden Diary to check out. It’s sometimes updated as the seasons change.
Latest Posts
📅 Posted 2026-01-15
(6 minute read)
While I’ve never signed up to a paid subscription of Spotify (or similar streaming music service), I’ve missed having ready-access to my music collection for a long time now.
Growing up, I had a lot of music playing out through a classic setup of a bunch of MP3s and Winamp on my PC. You know, the software that really whipped the llama’s arse.
It was an unbeatable combination at the time for a high school / uni student, in a world where streaming services didn’t exist and storage wasn’t cheap. 128kbit MP3 didn’t sound “CD Quality” but it had to do. The cloud wasn’t really a thing and accessing music from your PC at home wasn’t really practical on a dialup modem.
Read more...
📅 Posted 2026-01-08
(7 minute read)
Recently, I’ve been really getting into disc golf. Also known as Frisbee golf. Also known as frolf.
I’ve never been into sportsball. PE (Phyiscal Education) was such a struggle at school for me and I was always strangely sick exactly on the day of the athletics and swimming carnivals. Non-swimmer was never an option growing up in Australia but that’s a longer story.
I’m still active as I love walking and riding a bike, but I’ve never been big on playing team sports nor watching sport on TV.
Read more...
📅 Posted 2026-01-01
(3 minute read)
I’ve never been one for ’new year’s resolutions’. But suddenly, I feel inspired.
This blog has largely been ignored for a long time. I’ve been focusing on other non-blog things and outside of keeping the lights on and things patched in my CMS, it’s been zero features delivered for a few years now.
The feature image for this blog is of a house we inspected in 2025 which we rather liked a lot. However, it was very much in need of lots of TLC as you can see from the giant cracks in the walls. But totally worth saving as it had fantatic Federation style features to restore and make good again in the very charming suburb of Summer Hill 2130. And those hand-painted patterned walls - wow. Reminded me of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and I have to say, they were equally striking and calming at the same time.
Read more...
📅 Posted 2023-03-28
(1 minute read)
So I picked up a few old PC components - mostly Socket A era circa 2001 - and whilst I battle with various buggy motherboards from the era (probably due to bad capacitors which plauged everything at that time it seems), I’ve been thinking about the various video cards I’ve had over the years.
Mostly were for games, although there were other applications too (and long before ML with a GPU was a thing).
Read more...
📅 Posted 2023-02-05
(6 minute read)
I’m having a bit of a nostalgia moment. So warning, rose-tinted glasses may be in use today.
Despite there being a lovely high quality version of Neon Genesis: Evangelion with a fresh (and I’m told, more accurate) dub available on Netflix, I’m going old school.
My usual readers won’t be surprised at this, for I am a fan/collector/tragic of the MiniDisc, amongst many other ye olde world tech charms like retro gaming consoles.
Read more...
Older Posts →