blog.cul-de-sac.ca

Asus Flow X13 (2021) Cooling Mod

Asus Flow X13 (2021) Cooling Mod

The Asus Flow X13 is a very interesting laptop. Launched in 2021, it packs a lot of performance into a 13-inch form-factor. With very thin bezels around its monitor, it actually comes very close matching a 14-inch ThinkPad in terms of the size of its screen, too! However, the 2021

STAR is old-hat. RATS could be the new cool.

STAR is old-hat. RATS could be the new cool.

The "STAR Method" for responding to some common, widely used classes of interview questions has likely been touted for a few decades now. In practically every kind of career foundations training I've been through, the coach/mentor would invariable propose to learn and execute this ancient formula for telling a

Project: Revolutionizing E-commerce Platform Deployment with CI/CD and Automation

Project: Revolutionizing E-commerce Platform Deployment with CI/CD and Automation

About a decade ago, sometime in 2013-2014, I led a revolution in one team's regularly scheduled software release events. Specific: In my role as a Senior Developer at Quebecor, I took charge of introducing Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) practices along with automation tools to streamline the deployment

👑 London Taste Test

👑 London Taste Test

For the winter vacation this year, we selected London and Egypt as our adventure. Our experience for the flight to London was quite nice. We had lounge access at the airport and extra leg room on the plane. In London, we stayed at "The Hub" on Dacre street, in a

Fall Season Falls Sightseeing

Fall Season Falls Sightseeing

October. The prime season for colour-changing maple leaves. Took a trip to Quebec City this past weekend. For Koki, our dog, it's a visit to her homeland. We stayed one night and took our time visiting the major visiting spots: Old Quebec on Saturday, and the Montmorency Falls on Sunday.

✨ Sparkling Summer - Sunday and Monday

✨ Sparkling Summer - Sunday and Monday

The last two days of the 4-day mini-vacation were largely rest and relax days. A fair chunk of Sunday was spent sleeping-in. Since it was a foggy, rainy, cloudy day, we opted to visit the Yorkdale Mall at a slow pace. The doughnut shop had extremely tasty, luxury doughnuts. We

✨ Sparkling Summer - Saturday

✨ Sparkling Summer - Saturday

Saturday was the "big event" of the long weekend trip to Toronto for Willow and I. In the morning, we went to the Vaughan Mills Outlet Mall. It's a huge place organized in a surprisingly simple fashion: just a rectangular path with shops all around. Walking around in a clockwise

✨ Sparkling Summer - Friday

✨ Sparkling Summer - Friday

Viva 4-day weekend! This time, I'm on a road trip in Ontario with just Willow, because most of our sightseeing targets are not pet-friendly. The first stop was the secret tunnel at Brockville, filled with awesome lights and even sounds! Heading further West, we took a closer look at bits

⛴ New York, NY - Sunday

⛴ New York, NY - Sunday

The forecast for Sunday's weather: 30°C all day long The reality for Sunday's weather: felt like 25°C all day long thanks to breezes and plenty of shade wherever we went. The adventures of this third day in New York City were focused in two zones: Roosevelt Island and

🍎 New York, NY - Saturday

🍎 New York, NY - Saturday

Today's New York City goals were fairly simple: The Dumbo Area, and, The High Line which is located in the Chelsea Area. I naturally woke up early, around 7am, so I spent the extra time tagging landmarks on the maps in my phone. Willow woke up more around 9am, as

✈ New York, NY - Friday

✈ New York, NY - Friday

After a couple of winter visits to New York City, Willow and I have settled on doing a summertime visit this time around, making use of the extended weekend between Canada Day and Independence Day - Friday through Monday, inclusively. To our surprise, the queues for getting through the airport's

📆 A Tale of Two Calendars

📆 A Tale of Two Calendars

Lately, I've been scheduling a ton of meetings with folk. However, in the last couple of weeks, I remarked that some people use RSVP systems that lack quite a bit of love in terms of user-experience design: seamless calendar integrations. The best modern RSVP systems will have some kind of

⚜ Townships Sightseeing 1

⚜ Townships Sightseeing 1

For the long weekend, I'm on a trip to the Eastern Townships of Quebec with the household. With a short, 2-hour drive, we safely arrived at Sherbrooke and started our 2-day visit with lunch at Caffucino. Both Willow and I got the special-of-the-day: the Tuna wrap with a side of

🛀 Bubble bubble, foil and cuddle

🛀 Bubble bubble, foil and cuddle

I live a long way from the holy land of hot springs and pop culture, Japan, but, I can manage to have a little taste of the wonders from that hyper-advanced culture of worldly pleasures at home with the help of two handy items. 1. A thermometer 2. A green-tea

🍵 418 I'm a teapot

🍵 418 I'm a teapot

Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four elements worked together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the steeping method changed. Only the appliance, master of all four elements could maximize the flavours of a brew. My household had been making tea wrong for hundreds of days. Then, this winter,

Hyper Trendy Tasty Pot Coffee

Hyper Trendy Tasty Pot Coffee

As a software developer, I am, basically, a creature who converts coffee into code. Due to the pandemic putting the vast majority of knowledge workers into mandatory work-from-home, it became necessary to adapt and find new ways to ensure my daily dosage is kept up. This is because our usual

Little Neptunian and Big Neptunian: A Tale of Two Neps

Little Neptunian and Big Neptunian: A Tale of Two Neps

As an anime connoisseur, I've remarked on an interesting little insight about some today's trending anime. In particular, I'm considering the "isekai" genre, whose popularity boomed in major ways over the past decade. What exactly is "isekai"? A very concise explanation is that it's basically a trope about being transported/

🏡 Foodie Vacation Micro-dosing: Day 4 Report

🏡 Foodie Vacation Micro-dosing: Day 4 Report

To wrap up this micro-vacation, we opted to take it very easy on our last day to have the stamina to spare for the long drive back home. We had originally planned to visit Mango Like Dessert, specifically the one in the mall because they had better opening hours/days,

🥐 Foodie Vacation Micro-dosing: Day 3 Report

🥐 Foodie Vacation Micro-dosing: Day 3 Report

A lazy Sunday morning was needed to have us sufficiently rested for another tour of the Greater Toronto Metropolitan Area. We decided on sleeping-in and that led to waking up only around 09h00, getting up at 09h30, and basically only leaving the hotel at 11h00. Even Koki was groggy this

🍰 Foodie Vacation Micro-dosing: Day 2 Report

🍰 Foodie Vacation Micro-dosing: Day 2 Report

What is sleep? Is it delicious? Can I eat it? So... I only got to sleep at 02h00 instead of at any reasonable time, but that's okay! Actually, I was investing my time into playing Princess Connect Re:Dive. There's an ongoing, monthly "Clan Battle" event, so my group of

🌴 Foodie Vacation Micro-dosing: Day 1 Report

🌴 Foodie Vacation Micro-dosing: Day 1 Report

Woke up early and gathered up all those "can only be packed in the morning" items. Refreshed my CAA-powered gas-price data-mining-and-analysis spreadsheet, and opted for Brockville (Ontario) for the road trip's gas stop. Started the day with an A&W breakfast combo, for two. The initial drive was harsh. The

Oh? You're Approaching Me?

Oh? You're Approaching Me?

So I took a photo of Koki and Chomusuke doing their routine "face off" the other day, and... it just fit the JoJo meme so perfectly! Last night, I was chatting about the world's newest "JoJo" and the idea to dress up the photo like the meme came to me

# Hello, World!

# Hello, World!