The Now Page

Of course I have to steal this excellent idea that I heard from David Sparks (MacSparky), which he stole from Derek Sivers. It's great for sharing what I'm doing with my life that can be viewed outside of a blog post.

I just got married!

I proposed to Natalie on our fourth anniversary and she said yes! We got married on October 18th and it went perfectly.

The October weather didn't want to cooperate, so it was a bit warmer than we'd have liked, but otherwise, it was an amazing day. We wrote our own vows and Natalie's were just beautiful while mine felt flat by comparison. Though, I've been told mine were good too.

I had a lot of fun setting up the tech for the wedding. We used Apple Invites for the digital invitations, recorded plenty of spatial video with my iPhone, and even did karaoke using Apple Music Sing. Even when I'm away getting married, Apple seems to find ways to creep in.

Minecraft with the missus

I've loved Minecraft for the better part of the past decade, but I've really been getting into it lately. I don't play to beat the Ender Dragon, no, instead I play on survival mode but build like I'm in creative. I enjoy the challenge of gathering materials to build what I want while needing to fight of the mobs.

I joined a server with my brother-in-law (sister's husband) and his kids a few months ago. After spending some time there, Natalie got interested and joined too. It was her first time playing Minecraft, but she's now addicted and we play together when time allows.

Sure, I have a gaming backlog going back 20 years, but I will never grow tired of the Lego-meets-survival-dungeon that's Minecraft. If you've never played, it's never to late to check it out.

Revisiting Kingdom Hearts

A podcast from Mischa Stanton and Mayanna Berrin started a few weeks ago about Kingdom Hearts, and needless to say, it's right up my alley. Kingdom Hearts is one of my favorite game series of all time (competing with Final Fantasy VII) and this podcast helped reinvigorate some of my hype for the series.

As we await Kingdom Hearts IV, I've started replaying the original series from the start thanks to every game being easily available on PS4. I do wish they were enhanced for PS5, which is where I'm playing, but their load times aren't long anyway, so it's been a bearable revisit so far.

Maybe I'll write about Kingdom Hearts here one day, but for now, I'll enjoy just playing through Sora's crazy story of his fight against darkness and emo kids in hoods with his buddies Donald Duck and Goofy.

We've finally made it to Kingdom Hearts 3 in our cutscene viewing. It never ceases to amaze me seeing that big graphical jump from the 3Ds to PS4. HD Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are wild.

I'm playing through Kingdom Hearts 2 on Critical difficulty, and I forgot how punishing the beginning of the game is since you can't grind at all. Excited to get to the meat of the game where the battle system is just chaos.

Testing a 3D printer

It shouldn't be a surprise that I have always been interested in owning a 3D printer. All of the little things I see people make that float around the web just seem right up my alley, especially when it comes to modding tech.

Well, I finally got ahold of one for a work review. It's been quite interesting to play with, but beyond trinkets and toys, I'm not running into a lot of utilities to build. I did make a stand for my Analogue Pocket that I like.

The trickiest part is searching for new projects. I expect the 3D printer will mostly be great for gifts and small gadgets. I'll have to find some creators to follow and see what might pop up.

The 3D printer is very cool, but it really is one of those things that you'll have to build an entire hobby around or never get much use from it.

Buy me a coffee?

I've resisted using any kind of monetization for my blog so far, but one year it, it's clear I want to do more with it. However, it's just too time consuming and cost prohibitive to invest in.

So, I'm turning to my readers. If you guys like the weekly news summaries and want more content centered around my thoughts with tech, video games, and life, then I'lol need a little help. If I can make this blog at least break even, it would mean being more motivated to put more into it.

Don't worry, I'm not leaving AppleInsider, but I do want a place that's just my own where others can enjoy this side of things from my perspective. Social media isn't what it used to be, and I honestly believe more people should just have websites where they share, create, and be themselves. And no, not all need to be monetized either.

I just think that too much of social media is fake or fleeting. At least with HilliTech, it's just me and it's here to stay. No feed to scroll through, no ads to interrupt, just my tech commentary, photos, and whatever else.

If you want to contribute today, I can't promise anything other than my gratitude for now. But if I get enough to pay for the blog (Ghost, Hover, etc) then I can at least say that I'll put more time in.

What I'd like most is for this to become something closer to Daring Fireball in somewhat regularity. Short link posts, longer commentary posts, and my weekly summaries. We'll see if I can get there.

Thanks for visiting my Now Page. I'll keep this up to date with new projects and life updates. And yes, I'll be sharing tech-related stuff here as well, especially once I get the new iPhone.