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

So I'm a 'Creator Innovator', what does that mean when working with ideas?

📅 Posted 2021-08-25 (8 minute read)

So I haven’t posted about leadership training for a while now, so it’s probably a good time to get back into sharing my thoughts and experiences. For context, the leadership team in my job meets as a group, approximately every month or so, for half a day, to improve how we work together.

Today, I’d like to drill into the topic of “ideas” as they relate to some personality profiling we also did. Yes, yes, models that put you in a box and give you a generated PDF of traits and failings are never perfect, but the one we did was very interesting as it looks more at what you ‘prefer’ as opposed to what you are capable of.

My site on a text-based browser

📅 Posted 2021-08-13 (1 minute read)

Super quick post today, could probably be a tweet, but eh!

Here’s what this site looks like on a text-based browser, in this case, Lynx:

Not bad I reckon. I can imagine a lot of modern sites look pretty trash in CLI mode. But I guess this site is hardly trying to be “modern” from it’s design, I mean, chiselled buttons that look like buttons? That would never be allowed in a modern site!

Turning a classic CRT into a Smart TV

📅 Posted 2021-06-21 (6 minute read)

This is less of a guide, more of an ‘oh, it can work’ experiment. So it’s only partly serious and mostly fun. So buckle up!

I apologise in advance for the camera work - CRTs displaying interlaced content are hard work!

My original idea was to set up a connection from my PC to the TV to play old games and I did investigate going down the SDI route, however strangely my Sony PVM doesn’t play nicely with the SDI module in place. For a long time, changing to an input without external sync but with external sync enabled would send the poor TV into a ‘panic’ mode (which would display a sad orange coloured light on the tally light). This wouldn’t be so bad except it would happen every time you turned off a console without either first disabling the external sync OR changing to another input… Anyways. All “fixed” now with the SDI module removed from the Sony PVM-14M4A.

My favourite YouTube channels right now

📅 Posted 2021-04-06 (8 minute read)

I was chatting at a recent family gathering about some of the great content on YouTube - to the point where I’ve practically given up on regular “TV” (streaming or broadcast) and go seeking for other interesting content from outside of the ‘regular’ media fold.

This is nothing new of course, but I figured it would be good to share some of my picks including why I turn to these creators. Some have millions of followers and others only have a few thousand. But they’re all doing such a great job that I could almost legitimise “YouTuber” as a career choice. It’s what the Cool Kids™ are doing these days, so I’m told.

On Robert Miles

📅 Posted 2021-03-04 (10 minute read)

Today’s post is a deep-dive into the late Robert Miles, a driving force in the formation of dream house and someone whose music I’ve spent far too much time listening to over the years! This blog is part-tribute and part-analysis. The best kind of blog. Plug in some headphones.

Firstly, some fast facts:

His original name was Roberto Concina and he was born in Switzerland.
He was born on 3 November 1969 and died on 9 May 2017 at the age of 47.
He is known for his work as a record producer, composer, musician and DJ but also at one stage he ran a ‘musically’ experimental pirate radio station in Italy.

I’m going to go through his back catalogue of albums, key facts, my take and my fledgling collection. We’ll start this journey from his first and most successful album, Dreamland.

← Newer Posts Older Posts →