I feel incredibly bored with tech at the moment. AI is not inspiring any better. Companies have been allergic to innovative risks for years, and hardware has plateaued significantly with the chip hoarding for Big AI. Everything feels so boring, homogenised, draining (looking at you, social media), and enshittified overall. There is no sense of creativity anymore!
On the bright side, indie companies and AI already see the problem.
Big tech won’t be sorting themselves out, so I will have to find my love for tech elsewhere.
The last time tech genuinely WOW-ed me was 4 years ago with the Steam Deck. It’s an exciting, innovative portable computer that can run triple-A games—in your own hands! You have the freedom and autonomy to treat it as your own computer. Including as a mini desktop. Valve also supported the development of Linux, improving user experience and increasing OS usage share. I am happy to see open-source tech gaining popularity. More users means more investment and better software.
Valve is not perfect when it comes to their hardware, but at least they are trying to do something new.
I have been exploring more of my Steam Deck’s desktop mode and Arch Linux (SteamOS). Definitely a learning curve. I’ve managed to mod Dragon Age: Origins purely from the deck. My solution, previously, was to process mods with my Windows laptop, then override the Steam Deck game files. That simple path help cut down many steps. Thank you Valve for supporting Linux. It’s about time.
I briefly explored the internet’s love for the Lenovo Thinkpad, which will be a future project. I wonder which Linux distro would suit me. I’m thinking of Mint. I won’t dare touch Arch yet.
For fun whimsy tech, I enjoy taking care of my tamagotchi; Mato, the prickly red penguin. I wake up, feed, and play with him every morning. I always have my Tama on the packing list whenever I travel. It’s nice to hold a cute piece of digital nostalgia wherever I go. I do panic if I forget to feed him.
I loved to modify keyboards during university. The freedom of tinkering was extremely joyful. I researched every component on the keyboard; which switches to install, how to receive my preferred acoustics, the switch lube, the casing, and everything else. Then to see it work properly was exhilarating. I love building things. There is no need to build another keyboard yet, but I have an idea in what it will be next!
I haven’t coded in a long time. Being graded on coding projects I didn’t care about was a major turn-off. It ultimately destroyed my sense of inspiration. I now have the desire to build random projects again. As I’m a very practical person, usability is a priority. Perhaps a helpful calculator tool for my crochet? It’s full of mathematical pattern recognition, after all.
More techies are De-Googling their lives. After hearing what they plan to do to Android and AI (blatant, systematic IP theft, too), the growing privacy concerns were the final straw for me. I moved onto Brave a long time ago; it has made the internet less noisy. More enjoyable. I’m now more mindful about service privacy, what the tech infrastructure is, sustainability practices, and where the servers are located. I always check.
I think a long-term project for me would be building a home lab someday. I’ve always valued tech and data ownership.
I’ve been enjoying PewDiePie’s tech content, where he creates useful tools. He’s having so much fun building stuff. I want that feeling again.
Please do give me ideas! I will be writing a separate post about my site.
Love,
