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:

Learning About Leadership Episode 1 (May ‘20)
The Humble Minidisc (Aug ‘18)
Why the Sega Dreamcast is the Best Console of All Time (Aug ‘18)
Common Website Vulnerability Scans Found in Logs (Apr ‘18)
On Being an Engineering Manager (Feb ‘19)

There’s also a 🍊 Garden Diary to check out. It’s sometimes updated as the seasons change.

Latest Posts

LAN Party: a retrospective

📅 Posted 2019-03-03 (15 minute read)

Back in the day, I used to attend a fair amount of LAN parties. Dragging my PC and giant CRT monitor along to random houses to play games all night sure was fun so I’m going to look back at what all the fuss was about. What’s a LAN party, anyway? (I’ll save the hassle and just call them “LANs” from now on) For those who aren’t familiar, haven’t been or haven’t heard about ’em, I’d say there’s a basic formula although no two LANs will be the same.

On being an Engineering Manager

📅 Posted 2019-02-15 (11 minute read)

I’ve been acting in the role of Engineering Manager for 6 months now, so it’s a good time to review how things are going. Some of the points below could be obvious to some and not everything will work in all situations, but I hope I can accurately describe my perspective. A little bit of background for you, first, to set the scene. The organisation I work for had endured several restructures over the past few years, but the most recent one was probably the most impactful for me.

The resurgence of radio (for me)

📅 Posted 2019-02-09 (8 minute read)

This is a story about the resurgence of radio in my life, at a time when everyone else has probably moved on. Yes I’m talking about good ol’ fashioned radio. Generally FM broadcast, sometimes DAB+, sometimes a bit of streaming, but regardless: it’s back in my life. For 7 years I presented a fusion jazz radio show on community radio, which was heaps of fun. Maybe I’m late to the party, but it also made me realise how cool the radio format is even today: there is quite a lot of choice when it comes to music and there’s plenty of eclectic radio shows to listen to, especially when you’re struggling to find inspiration yourself.

Mobile vs Desktop: State of my corner of the Internet

📅 Posted 2019-02-01 (2 minute read)

I’ve noticed a general trend towards more mobile users, but I think it would be good to quantify this. After all, developing websites purely on desktop is definitely easier but probably misguided. The following mini-analysis is based on my corner of the Internet: not amazingly high traffic sites, but sites which are important to me none-the-less. The source for my numbers is Google Analytics. The Comparisons Here’s 4 very different websites compared.

Using Amazon Polly to automatically generate podcasts

📅 Posted 2019-01-23 (7 minute read)

The tl;dr Using AWS Polly to read my articles and generate audio “podcasts” results in an average listening experience. It works and it’s easy, but I wouldn’t want to use it as my primary way to generate articles. Want to hear why? Read on… (Those wishing to sample the results without reading the gory details can scroll to the end) The concept of Generating Podcasts using Amazon Polly Rather than having to painstakingly record and edit all of my articles with a proper mic, what if I use something like Amazon’s Polly on AWS to do the heavy lifting for me?

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