John's Tech Logs

Discover insights on the latest tech, life hacks, and personal reviews

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Building my First Mini ITX PC

Building a PC I never completely built a PC by myself. I knew building your own was cheaper than buying prebuilts. In 2020, I wanted to move away from using an external GPU dock for my laptop to a desktop. I had a lot of fun picking out the parts for my new system. When it came to building it, people always said it was like building legos and I loved legos. However, I am not the best when it comes to hardware or cable management. I had a friend come over and help me build my desktop. Unfortunately, he took over most of the process and I felt like I missed out. The build was a success and it’s lasted me five years. Now that I have a solid income, I think it’s time for an upgrade.
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Kodak Ektar H35 - The Best Beginners Film Camera

The Best Beginner’s Film Camera You’ve probably seen those vintage and grainy looking photos on social media. You can replicate that with any old filter but it doesn’t feel authentic since it was digitally crafted. Film is simply thin strips that store images after being exposed to light. I was chasing the authenticity. My first experience with film cameras was using a disposable kodak camera. It was fun using a point and shoot and anticipating how it would come out after I went to get it developed. I feel that film photos really shine when people are just being themselves and having fun. Of course the disposable had no use once the roll was out. Then I came across the Kodak Ektar 35. This was a reusable film camera from Kodak. This meant I could get the same point and shoot feeling, keep the camera, and reuse it by refilling the rolls. I loved the way the body looked with its vintage aesthetic. I’ve received compliments about it in public.
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Self Hosting Discord Bots and Other Apps with Coolify

Why Self-Host? A lot of people tend to stray away from self-hosting and look for convenient deployment solutions with automated processes, Git integration, a simple user interface, etc. However, they can sometimes get hit with a surprise serverless bill from their cloud provider running over 4 digits. Self-Hosting allows you to have full control over your apps and services. It teaches you how to run things privately, setting up things like nginx, systemd services, networking and more. It is also cost efficient since you only have to pay for the server cost. While, I enjoy not worrying about huge bills from cloud providers, I still miss having the convenience these hosting platforms provided. With some investigation, I came across Coolify.
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The Tools I Used to Maintain a 3.9 Computer Science GPA with a Double Minor and Extracurriculars

The Stats Texas Christian University Alumnus Bachelor of Science in Computer Science Double Minor in Mathematics and Astronomy Honors Laurette - Departmental Honors in Astronomy Summa Cum Laude 3.9 Undergrad GPA Extracurriculars Omega Delta Phi Fraternity Spring ‘22 - Spring ‘24 International Christian Fellowship President Fall ‘23 - Spring ‘24 International Student Association Secretary Fall ‘23 - Spring ‘24 Student Support Services Comp Sci Tutor Spring ‘23 - Spring ‘24 Student Support Services Ambassador Spring ‘24 Student Engagement and Identity Mentor Fall ‘23 - Spring ‘24 Amazing Vietnam 2024 Play Actor Spring ‘24 Honors Student all four years
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I created an AI Bot of my Fallen Best Friend. Have I gone mad?

A Fallen Friend My fellow best friend Steve Le passed away on October 16, 2024. I don’t want to go into details of his passing but he was my best friend, someone I knew for 10 years. We met playing Xbox during the 2012-2013 era. We mostly played games online and called for hours because I moved away to another state. We always supported each other’s goals and understood each other at a deep level. We made great memories going skydiving, shooting, playing videogames, and hanging out with our crew. His passing was so sudden and tragic. I desired to honor his memory in any way I knew how. Thus I created the Steve AI Discord Bot.
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How to Automate Hostinger Deployments with Git Subtree and Webhooks

Hostinger Automation with Git Hostinger is a great and cheap hosting platform for static websites. I currently use the web hosting plan to host several websites. To deploy my website changes, I export my static content (html, css, js) into a zip and unzip it in the file manager’s public_html folder. This is a little cumbersome so I looked for a way to automate this. Fortunately this can be done easily. Hostinger has an official tutorial for deploying git repos here. However, this step alone won’t work on my web apps built with frameworks such as React, Next, and Hugo. I need another automation step.
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A Review of the Backfire G2 Black Electric Skateboard

Electric Skating as a Beginner Skater I have never properly skated on a normal skateboard. My body won’t let me attempt dangerous things where I am not in complete control. That’s where the electric board controller comes in. With this controller, I’ll be able to know the exact speed I am moving at and more importantly, stop when I have to. The only thing I would have to worry about is balance and turning. On the contrary, most skaters would just recommend getting a normal board so you can build confidence, but it wasn’t entirely my goal to be a real skater. I did my research and found an entry level electric board that wasn’t too pricey and didn’t have all the fancy features. I opted for the Backfire G2 Black since it was on sale and looked sleek while being aimed at beginners.
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Tech Bro with a GF??

A Tech bro with a girlfriend?? That’s impossible. However, at one point in time, I would like to say I broke this standard by having a girlfriend for 2 years! Now as a nerdy tech bro, I am often consumed with learning new tech stacks and building personal projects. How can a tech bro even maintain their life while keeping their girlfriend happy? Well let me tell you all about that!

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