Videos

A new preview from GitHub promises to extend your codebase with custom, interactive blocks. Build rich documentation, enhance your workflows, and bring your repository to life.

A classic tool for interactive fiction writers everywhere, Inform 7 has something of a learning curve. I finally take a look and see what i can create.

I love my Stream Deck(s), but there are a a few functions I need that I don't have access too. In this learning livestream I weigh up the options for filling in those gaps, from the official SDK to BetterTouchTool.

I relive my childhood by playing through some of the classic Lone Wolf game books, starting with book 1, "Flight from the dark" by Joe Dever. © Joe Dever 1984, and thanks to Project Aon

AI meet writer… Should we be afraid, or inspired? Well, Sudowrite hope to be the AI writing assistant you look forward to using, not fear. I take a look… And write some nonsense.

Not a new project, but a rebranding, Decap used to be Netlify CMS and is back. I take a look at what has changed and try to add it to my new Astro website.

Known for their Intellij IDE line of developer tools, JetBrains are now working on a series of plugins to make the work of technical writer's easier. Writerside brings features to author, preview, build, test, and publish your technical documentation right inside IntelliJ. Grazie and Grazie professional brings natural language powered writing assistance including suggestions, translations, style checking, and much more. Both are in early access and rapid development and I take a look to see what they offer and if they are enough to convince me to move away from my VSCode-based toolchain.

I start the video by looking at Motif and MarkDoc, but they didn't really work, so I moved on to Mintlify that combines Markdown with React components as a SaaS alternative to MDX and its ecosystem. Is it worth the money?

DiffusionBee and Amazing AI are two macOS apps for playing with Stable Diffusion offline and hardware optimised. I take a look and compare the two applications to see what random artwork I can generate.

I start the video by looking at Motif and MarkDoc, but they didn't really work, so I moved on to Mintlify that combines Markdown with React components as a SaaS alternative to MDX and its ecosystem. Is it worth the money?

I relive my childhood by playing through some of the classic Lone Wolf game books, starting with book 1, "Flight from the dark" by Joe Dever. © Joe Dever 1984, and thanks to Project Aon

An open source research project exploring the role of machine learning as a tool in the creative process. It uses Tensor flow under the hood to generate beats and melodies with MIDI tracks. Colour me intrigued!

I interviewed some folks from the Pulumi team a while back and in amongst the other infrastructure as code tools, they offer something different. I finally take a look!

In this second episode of "in bots we trust", Killian and Chris look at Chat-GPT, sudowrite, and a modern generation of AI-based writing tools as well as what came before with tools such as Grammarly and grammar assistants. We look at what we can create and what lies beneath for us humans to enjoy, endure, or use appropriately.

In this first alpha (and boy are there some technical issues, sorry!) of "in bots we trust", Killian and Chris look at Crayon, Dall-e, mid journey, stable diffusion, and more to see what they can create and what lies beneath for us humans to enjoy, endure, or use appropriately.

Join me every week as I make music or work on some other creative project. This week I try and make some space on my hard drive by trying VCV Rack, Max 8, and IK Multimedia plugins. TLDR; I end up not deleting anything :(

In my explorations of Jamstack over the years I somehow forgot about cloudcannon, who have existed long before that was even a term. I take a long overdue look at what they have to offer and see if their promise of a developer-workflow optimised Jamstack CMS holds true.

New alternative web browsers for macOS The past year or so has resulted in a flurry of new browsers to consider alongside the dominant contenders from big tech companies. I take a look at DuckDuckGo, SigmaOS, Arc, Orion, and Ladybird. For each browser it look at what rendering engine they use, the features they offer, and consider if I would switch to using it.

During research for a recent interactive fiction piece I discovered ScummVM for a way to play some classic text-based adventure games. Join me as I travel back in time to see how to setup ScummVM and play some Monkey Island!

Retool isn't new but I have been meaning to see what someone can build with it for a while, so it's time to take a look! It promises to help you connect data sources, Frontends, and application logic with a few clicks. Too good to be true?

Looking for beta readers for my first fiction novel “The Dead Among Us” is a post-post-apocalyptic love story that shows emotion and understanding can conquer history, resentment, and generational divides to create a truly new world. I have been working on this novel for just over two years and now after several drafts I am ready for public feedback. If you are interested, then fill in this Google form: https://forms.gle/1Ev9ZM6PLUV2u2Wx6 I won’t accept everyone, but will be very pleased to hear from everyone who is interested. If you just want to know about updates, subscribe to my newsletter: https://chinchillasqueaks.substack.com Image created with Midjourney.

Want to mix coding and writing to create wondrous works of fiction? In this video I look at the past of interactive fiction including: Choose your own adventure, fighting fantasy, and lone wolf. I look at text-based computer games and infocom. I then look at the new wave of platforms and works such as: Twine, Inky, Articy, Bandersnatch, Depression Quest, and many more! Enjoy! And share your works with me. All included media copyright their respective owners. And thank you to archive.org for the digitised books. Test version -https://medium.com/geekculture/the-past-present-and-future-of-interactive-fiction-51f4f589274

Docker desktop has been an essential part of many developers' toolbox for years, but recent changes in its pricing model has prompted some to look for alternatives. In this video I take a look at the following: VMWare Fusion Parallels Desktop Podman and Podman desktop Colima Rancher Desktop Note that I was also rearranging my studio while I was making this video, so… things… move around a bit, sorry!

Recent versions of macOS introduced powerful new features for virtualizing macOS and Linux in a hypervisor. Inspired by a blog post from the Eclectic light company I thought it was time to see what new options are available for running virtual machines on macOS. In this video I look at: Virtualbox, Parallels, UTM, Viable, Liviable, UTM, QEMU, VirtualOS, and VMWare Fusion.

SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces with a custom Unix-like core. It is in active development, built from scratch, and has a vibrant and active community. In this video I take a look getting it to run on my MacBookPro and also look at the Serenity browser project, Ladybird.

This was my third invitation to attend IT Arena in Lviv, Ukraine. But this was the first time, and indeed a first for me overall, that the conference happened during a war and in what was effectively a warzone. In this video i recount the experience and add my daily diaries at the end (26:00) You can read the accompanying blog post for full context here - https://hackernoon.com/it-arena-2022-ukrainian-tech-braves-the-war

As part of a sponsorship for my podcast I spent two weeks with Magic Mind, that claims to be the world’s first productivity shot. How did its ingredients of Matcha, Nootropics, Adaptogens, Honey, and other goodies help me relax, get focus, and energy over 14 days? In this video diary I recount my experiences and dig into what the ingredients in the shot claim to do. If you're interested in trying Magic Mind yourself I have discount codes… The next 10 days, you can get 40% off your subscription at: https://www.magicmind.co/chinchilla A 20% discount code of any single purchase: CHINCHILLA20

I got to go to one of the biggest events I've been to since 2019 and cover all that's new in video, audio, and the broadcast industry in general. Here's who I spoke to, my own interviews, plus sessions with the officehours.global crew. - Robotica, AI sign language: 0:47 - EditShare, Cloud editing and collaboration: 07:10 - Avid, Audio and video editing tools: 15:13 - Varnish, Content delivery: 23:12 - Suitest, TV app test automation:28:46 - Sony, FR7 Cinema Line Full-frame PTZ camera: 41:42 - Disguise, VR and XR for video: 44:44 - Grass Valley, Agile Media Processing Platform: 48:41

Bun promises to replace and improve upon a plethora of JavaScript and TypeScript tools you currently use, offering bundle, transpile, install and run features all-in-one. On top of all that, it claims to be faster than other options. Is it? In this learning livestream I see what I can find out and if the hype is right.

BetterTouchTool is a classic feature packed app that allows you to customize various input devices on your Mac. In this livestream I figure out how it might be useful to, and especially how I can replace the weighty Stream Deck application with BetterTouchTool's new beta feature.

Tabletop simulator is a classic tool for playing digital versions of boardgames. It's also a great way to prototype game ideas without constantly creating physical prototypes. So in this learning Livestream I learn how to create a version of a game I am currently co-designing.

A few small updates from me and what I have planned for my video output going forward.

VirtualBuddy can virtualize macOS 12 and later on Apple Silicon, with the goal of offering features that are useful to developers who need to test their apps on multiple versions of macOS, especially betas. The project is in early stages, but I found with minimal configuration it helps you get a virtual machine up and running quickly and efficiently.

A code editor built by the community, for the community, written entirely and unapologetically for macOS. Features include syntax highlighting, code completion, project find and replace, snippets, terminal, task running, debugging, git integration, code review, extensions, and more. Sounds good to me! Let's see how it compares to others in a competitive landscape.

Will my musical past help me win a battle of the bands… Against myself? I compose a song, and maybe even sing it… Live! This game by Dustin Winter was featured in the latest Level 1 anthology part of Free RPG day.

Veryfront is a tool that empowers developers and teams to quickly build and deploy web apps right in the browser. With integration options aplenty, is this a low code option you've been waiting for? It's early stages for the product, but some interesting ideas and features, that with more development could be a useful collaborative development platform for UI-based projects.

Napptive promises to make it easier to create cloud environments, deploy, and manage cloud-native apps without worrying about Kubernetes. Is it really that easy?

Fig adds IDE-style autocomplete to your existing terminal and other tools. Complete with plugins and an active ecosystem, is is what your terminal has been waiting for?

Create a codespace to start developing in a secure, configurable, and dedicated development environment that works how and where you want it to. Or does it? I take a look and see if I am ready to move my work to the cloud.

A new terminal application that promises lots of new useful features, is cross platform, and isn't based on Electron? I'm intrigued! Will I switch from iTerm? Let's see!

Archbee joins the plethora of tools promising to help you build cohesive, well integrated, and varied developer documentation. It includes markdown, API references, commenting, mermaid support, and much more. Too good to be true or just what you're looking for? I take a look in this livestream.

A game about discovering the past with a sibling. And skeletons. Yes.

I've used DuckDuckGo as a search engine for a while, but the company also has mobile browsers I've been experimenting with, and now announced a browser for macOS in beta that isn't just another Chromium browser. In this livestream, I take a look and see why I might use it instead of Safari.

In this livestream I see what’s involved in switching a small hobby coding project from hosting with Heroku to Vercel.

Front Matter is a CMS that runs within Visual Studio Code. It gives you the power and control of a full-blown CMS while also providing you the flexibility and speed of the static site generator of your choice. Wow!? I take a look…

I looked at using Grazie for technical copy, tried creative writing with GitHub Copilot, and people asked me to try the same with Grazie… So here we go, another live writing session with an AI assistant! What will we concoct together?

As a long-term technical writer I find creating games with structured text works for my brain. How does Inky and its various plugins allow me to create games? How does it compare to other tools I've looked at such as Twine and Expeditios? I take a look!

I'm currently looking at alternatives to Adobe Premiere and I thought why not try the open source kdenlive and see how it compares to a plethora of proprietary, expensive editors.

The Homebrewery is a tool for making authentic looking D&D content using Markdown, merging two of my favourite things… Too good to be true? Let's see!

Yes… I know I pronounce the name wrong 🤦‍♂️ And yes… I know I am using the wrong plugin until about 12 minutes in, but I think it still works 🤞 😅. Grazie provides intelligent grammar checks, completion, and writing assistance for natural language text in IntelliJ-based IDEs. It checks text in code comments, commit messages, and text files, such as Markdown, XML, AsciiDoc, and so on. Will it convince me to switch from my customised setup in Visual Studio Code? Join me and see!