The Wii is very moddable. I've modded my Wii in the past just for playing modded versions of Super Smash Brother Melee (mainly training packs, like flashing a red light when I miss an L-cancel).
I'm a fan of ambient and instrumental hip hop for programming.
My personal favorites are pretty much anything by Nujabes (including the soundtracks for Samurai Champloo), Fat Jon, and DJ Okawari.
I also like some classic albums in the genre like Donuts by J Dilla, Dr. No's Oxperiment by Oh No, and Endtroducing by DJ Shadow.
I will sometimes go through essential charts I find to dive into new genres, and other times I'll pick a random artist and go through their entire discography start to finish.
I highly recommend doing that with Talk Talk, their transition from 80s pop to experimental is phenomenal.
Another way to frame trade deficit (sometimes) is using the phrase "investment surplus".
Many top economies have trade deficits. China is a unique example that goes against that, although I believe China is trying to have their population spend more rather than save.
I haven't gone through something similar, but I think something that helped me out the 2nd time I looked for a job was how valued work experience is.
As a new grad, personal projects are useful because it adds to the pile of things for an employer to look at (along with internships). After that though, personal projects matter less and less compared to real world experience.
(There are exceptions to this though. Personal projects matter less because you don't face real world problems with them. If you have a personal project that gets users, that is definitely something worth talking about).
I recommend just applying to smaller, lesser-known companies just to get some experience. My 1st job was at a small financial tech company that no one ever heard of, and they hired in a lower-cost, non-competitive area. We used a very old tech stack, and had custom everything - that didn't stop me from getting hired at other places.
You should check out: universities, banks, insurance companies, and marketing firms. Applying to companies that are tech companies is pretty rough right now, but you can find non-tech companies that are hiring.
(There's no such thing as a "non-tech" company, but I really just mean companies that don't advertise themselves as tech).
You could also do something like use Indeed, pick a smaller town, and then minimize the miles.
Oh wow this looks really awesome! I'll have to check it out.
I unfortunately primarily use Firefox, but still this is great. I've manually tried to keep track of bookmarks via org, but of course I'll always forget to update it.
In each day heading I'll have either a short note (like saying what meeting happened), or a link to a separate org file.
I keep an org file for each JIRA ticket I'm working on, so I'll link it out there. The presence of a link indicates that I've worked on that ticket that day.
Then in each individual ticket file I'll just keep top level day headings with notes of what I've done on the ticket, as well as other headings.
For example, an org file for a ticket would look something like:
* PR 1
#+BEGIN_SRC markdown
I like to pre-write up my PRs in a doc block in markdown in org mode just to use my keybindings. I copy-paste when I create a PR.
#+END
* Monday 01/01/26
- Started work on this today, figuring out where in the codebase to touch
- Straightforward, got a PR out
When I need to find something, I use something like consult-org-heading or consult-outline or consult-line.
I've been using Org Mode for organizing my life in plain text for the past 10 years now.
Beorg on iOS [0] makes it great. I've also started using things like org-ql [1] and org-super-agenda [2] to make me even more productive.
I also have a daily log org file I use at work. It helps me keep track of what I need to do and what I've done. It makes yearly reviews easier as well!
When I start working on a ticket I actually start writing up a PR early on.
As I figure out my manual testing, I'll write out the steps that I took in my PR.
I've found that writing it out as I go does two things: 1) It makes it easier to have a detailed PR and 2) it acts as a form of rubber-ducking. As I'm updating my PR I'll realize steps I've missed in my testing.
Something that also helped out with my manual testing skill was working in a place that had ZERO automated testing. Every PR required a detailed testing plan that you did and that your reviewer could re-create.
I still use Last.fm! I've had it since 2008. It's really cool seeing how my music taste has changed, and seeing what I've come back to over and over again.
When I used to be much more active in online music communities I would post a 9x9 of my most listened to albums of the past week and discuss them.
I'm a huge fan of Majuular, these videos are amazing. I like that he dives deeply into the history behind each game as well - like the company, Richard Garriott (Lord British), etc.
His other videos on other games are great as well!
The scam was that this service is actually free provided by AOL. The grandparents shouldn't have ever been charged, they just ended up finding scammers that actually knew how to fix the issue.
My current is a used M1 MBP Pro with 16GB of ram.
I thought this was all I was ever going to need, but wanting to run really nice models locally has me thinking about upgrading.
Although, part of me wants to see how far I could get with my trusty laptop.