Posts on gbl08ma's personal website

Hello site migration, my old friend

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Paying homage to a tradition, this time, with a more radical change.

On illegal software

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Where I open my mouth, but not to verify I’m an adult. A rant about the intersection of software, regulation and identity.

UpCloud's viral marketing travels in time

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Where I find that I’ve been a long-time nonpaying customer of Bluesky’s favorite, allegedly-affordable, cloud provider, while you get to be fed relevant portions of my life story.

GTA VI will be a disappointing masterpiece

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Nothing can ever please everybody, and the highest-budget entertainment product so far won’t be an exception. How can an excellent game disappoint?

On paid public beta testing

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Increasingly stale thoughts on software product quality, prompted by the redemption arc of the most awaited and most disappointing game release of 2020.

I remade the GTA VI trailer in Watch Dogs

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Director’s commentary on high-effort shitposting that paid off.

Musings about Watch Dogs

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A retrospective review of one of the only Ubisoft-developed games I truly enjoyed, despite its numerous flaws.

The Appeal To Celebrity Fallacy

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Separating the art, the artist, the opinion, and your contributions. By the way, I have a community on Discord now.

TIME for a WTF MySQL moment

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Documenting the reasons why I tend to prefer Postgres - even when it’s my friends getting bitten.

Music albums I like

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I, too, have the right to roleplay as a music reviewer.

twenty twenty

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

time travel terrifyingly trialed: twenty days take twenty months, twenty ticks teared twenty years

The limitations of hiding limitations: a striped case study

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Artificial Intelligence is biased, and we’re biased into thinking it is less limited than it is.

Developing for Android is like being a (demonetized) YouTuber

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Many are aware that some YouTubers are unhappy with how YouTube operates. But are you aware that Android app developers go through similar struggles with Google Play? Let me try and explain everything that’s wrong with Android in a single 20 minutes read.

I really like Discord. It’s a monster, it scares me

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

…and it’s also the next Steam. [2026 editor’s note: it clearly wasn’t, but it isn’t any less of a monster today]

Internet forums in 2018: are they really dying?

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Analysis of the current state, and speculation about the future, of a few forums I’m familiar with.

Thoughts about internet forums in 2018: a series of posts

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

An attempt at starting a series that, as per usual for this publication, will likely go nowhere. [2026 editor’s note: it basically didn’t]

A brief mention to my popular project, UnderLX

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

It doesn’t count as self-promotion if it’s on your personal website, right?

Sparkling Gambol One™

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’re adding another dimension to shitposting.

Advice on Casio Prizm development

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Please, let me close this chapter. Pretty pleeeease!

The current state of Clouttery, and what I’ve been up to

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sat, 02 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Thoughts and prayers for a personal project I lost interest in, yet somehow is still online and mostly functional.

Redesigning the Clouttery database

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sun, 19 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Where I rediscovered the wonders of relational databases.

The stack powering tny.im: goodbye redundancy! The end of an era

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Did you know distributed systems are harder to design and run than centralized ones?

500 days later: Windows 10, revisited

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Where I continue to pretend Microsoft ever cared about user experience and consistent design. [2026 editor’s note: the real fix was already in the footnotes, just switch to Linux and use KDE]

WoSign is shit, and so is StartCom

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Transport Layer Expletive

HTTPS on this blog

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Safe reads.

My programming experience

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The most long-winded and least structured CV you’ve ever seen.

Windows 10 is pretty good

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Diminishing the value of my earlier opinion piece by going for a “both-sides” approach.

Windows 10 is unfinished

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Paying customers better get used to crowdsourced beta testing.

Utilities v1.5 progress – March update

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A Zneak-peek into upcoming Casio Prizm software.

A use for NT on ARM, after all

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A underutilized architecture target makes for a great marketing stunt.

PicoC comes to the Prizm and other upcoming Utilities features

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sat, 31 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

With great power comes great… potential for bricking.

How Android’s “won’t fix” problem is the result of poor standardization

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

That phone is so last year! Buy a new one, will you? It’ll be the same as your old one, and yet annoyingly unique.

Distributed systems and mersit, a Tiny Server Redundancy Manager

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Do you know what we need to tame an unreliable distributed system? Another flaky, peer-to-peer distributed system.

Recovering from prolonged outage

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

It turns out that there is a minimum cost to acceptable reliability and durability.

90/90/0.001

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Tue, 06 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Thoughts about an extreme case of the Pareto principle.

Server status updates

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sat, 12 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

OK, I give up on freeloading. I’m sure everything will be fine now. [2026 editor’s note: not everything was fine. I’d only find true reliability years later, with DigitalOcean and, later, Hetzner…]

Utilities v1.3 is out

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The latest updateZ to my Casio Prizm software.

Regarding dead Prizms

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sat, 11 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Apparently these are made of fragile glazz.

Utilities version 1.2 is out; Casio retweets

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 23:03:09 +0000

Did I get a social media/PR guy fired?

Data caps and app updates

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Stating what’s obvious to every technologically literate person.

The situation of the Casio Prizm

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Did you know that the best product doesn’t always win its market?

OpenDNS on Linux Mint

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Discovering disappointing defaults well after committing to using a distro is a rite of passage for Linux users, isn’t it?

Nokia OS history, fragmentation and other stuff

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A retrospective of Nokia’s many OS development endeavours.

Hardware-software compatibility on handhelds

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 22:27:44 +0000

If only there was a unified and extensible interface that could help with this…

Crowdfunding

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

If I tried to crowdfund the renewal of my domain names or server hosting, I wonder how well that would work…

YOURLS really is awesome

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

High praise for extensible open source software… and my own extensions, I suppose.

Utilities Beta 9 is out!

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sun, 21 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Featuring the most complex upgrade procedure ever seen on graphical calculator software.

Prizm

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sat, 22 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Casio sure is glad these weren’t the Znowden Leaks. Or Leakz.

Alternative IM/VoIP solution?

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

[2026 editor’s note: WhatsApp would add E2EE in 2016, but by that point, they had already been acquired by Facebook. The average Joe sure did switch to it, though. And that’s the story of how we got Chat Control…]

Slitaz servers down

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I know as much as you do, judging by these visitor analytics.

Server changes

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

If you see something, say something.

Updates on lots of things

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Internet connections can be difficult to come by; fortunately, compilers don’t run in the cloud.

Server reloaded

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Featuring proof of the value of backups.

Theme changed

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I felt the previous theme was a bit too white-ish so I changed to another one. I hope you like it.

“Hidden” 256MB storage on the Flytouch 3 P041

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’m sure nothing will go wrong with using this undocumented FAT partition… of this undocumented cheap Android tablet…

Rugatu: Q&A for Bitcoins

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

My most profitable blog post ever. [2026 editor’s note: to the question of whether I sold, I’ll leave you to ponder what’s the most likely answer.]

Presenting tny.im

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Hopefully, this time it will stick around. [2026 editor’s note: it would only shut down in January 2025, when the overhead of dealing with service abuse became unbearable]

l.f.nu is down

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Apologies (again), a promise, and a tease.

Status update

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 30 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

It’s a late announcement of a tightly coupled feature in disguise.

I don’t appreciate the “Like” button

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Musings about the semantics of “liking” things. [2026 editor’s note: and we barely knew what things people would do for likes…]

This website is back!

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

After some late-night Wordpress reinstalling.

4.l.to is back, but now as l.f.nu

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

From one weird home to another. [2026 editor’s note: and that wouldn’t be the final destination of this URL shortener…]

4.l.to is down

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The harsh reality of depending on someone else’s domains.

SliTaz is not dead

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

All volunteer-run projects deserve some quiet time, after all.

ReactOS 0.3.14 has been released

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

It turns out they’re still going somewhere.

I’m not dead…

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

[2026 editor’s note: the use of the verb “warn” in this post is a good showcase of the differences between English and idiomatic Portuguese…]

My cheap Android tablet is fixed!

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

microSD cards posing as internal NAND flash can be a boon for DIY repairs.

A closer look at OpenID, and the problems in its implementations

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Why bother supporting a standardized authentication method, to only allow the use of specific authentication providers?

Merry Christmas!

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Ho, ho, and ouch, my tablet broke.

Forcibly changed servers; data loss!

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Somehow, drama ensues.

The Raspberry Pi: What it is and why it will make a difference

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Delicious hardware. [2026 editor’s note: as we all know today, I was right. In fact, it ended up being more impactful than I’d expected…]

I'm alive!

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, this thing is on.

My first Slashdot submission was… accepted!

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

[2026 editor’s note: apparently I exchanged DMs with Liz Upton and I didn’t remember?!?]

My email addresses

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Pick-and-choose.

Now running with nginx!

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A bleeding edge reverse proxy, for a boring old site. [2026 editor’s note: it’s using Caddy now. And no more Wordpress.]

Strange times… again!

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

May you live in, etc.

I have been upgraded to .com!

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

An early birthday gift.

ReactOS: will they ever get somewhere?

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I can’t believe this open source, volunteer-run project doesn’t reach its goals as quickly as I’d like!

Website address changed, cya cz.cc!

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Moving my posts to a not-as-shady home.

Accepting Bitcoin donations

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

e-begging for nerds.

Google banning free domain services – AKA a guide to free domain services and Google

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I’m sure it’s reasonable to ask for extreme granularity when banning malicious URLs! [2026 editor’s note: says someone who would later operate a URL shortener for over a decade, throughout which they banned hundreds of domains from the service]

2007′s internet communities seen by xkcd

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Looking back on what changed in just four years.

GrooveMobile, a Grooveshark client for Windows Mobile that I like

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Modern-ish software for aging operating systems running on obsolete hardware. [2026 editor’s note: to connect to a music streaming service that’s now defunct, I think?]

Chrome Web Store

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Where I realize that ‘apps’ are more fashionable than ‘websites.’

Distinguish between Linux and Windows users and fanbois

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Sorting… people… into… bags? [2026 editor’s note: if you guessed I was 14 when I wrote this post, you’d be right.]

Now running with WordPress 3.2

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Technology stack update resulting in the tragic loss of IE6 support.

New Virtual Private Server

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

[2026 editor’s note: I’d never have learned Linux if I didn’t have to reconfigure my servers every other month during my teenage years!]

Websites asking for full name, web security experts say don’t

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I sure hope this airtight separation of Internet identities and real-life identities will continue forever! [2026 editor’s note: it didn’t. Now please confirm your age to continue. Also, remember old old Twitter? Remember the predecessor to Google+?!]

Google marked this site as malware – Chapter 2

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Where I continue to act surprised that the entirety of someone else’s top-level domain is treated the same when it comes to web security.

Ubuntu updates are killing me

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The cries of someone yet to discover Arch.

Apache, nginx or other web server?

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Reverse-proxying my frustrations with compatibility.

Produce, produce, produce!

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Proof that before “the YouTube algorithm” we had “Search Engine Optimization,” but the sentiment was the same.

Right-click blocking

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Ranting about an extremely annoying UX pattern. [2026 editor’s note: that annoys me just as much today as back then.]

First spam post

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

What an achievement. You’ll never see someone as happy for receiving spam.

Google marked this site as malware!

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 20 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

[2026 editor’s note: in retrospective, it must have been the quality of my writing.]

I hate MS Windows

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Frustrations with choices made by others. [2026 editor’s note: consider that Windows 11 hadn’t even come out! But yeah, Vista on underpowered hardware wasn’t necessarily better.]

Ubuntu 11.04 – But is it Ubuntu or MacOSX?

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Where I confuse Unity, the desktop environment, with Ubiquity, the Ubuntu installer.

Homebrew on MY Wii

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Someone is delighted by newfound freedom.

The categories of free web hosting – revised edition

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Non-paying customers really can be the worst… but it says something if your business is specifically catering to those.

The two categories of free web hosting

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Apparently, this world is binary? Surely this post won’t need an even more unhinged correction.

Homebrew on the Wii

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Look who did a software update they shouldn’t have, and is now jealous of other people’s freedom.

Hi!

gabriel@tny.im (gbl08ma) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Who let this guy in?! [2026 editor’s note: particularly given his particular English proficiency! And he’s only 14?!?! Nowadays, in Portugal, you can’t go on social networks without parental consent at that age! Maybe the old posts on this website are why.]