jeremyheckt.com

Learning How to Be Bored Again

Sun, 10 May 2026 19:10:17 -0700

Most people do not like being bored, same with myself. We seek stimulating, or at least acceptably so, things to do when we feel bored.

In the year 2026 being bored usually involves reaching for your phone. Having the little dopamine device in your pocket prevents you from ever being completely bored, just scroll some more or hit refresh! But using this constant drip of less-than-stimulating (or over-stimulating) material to try to solve that bordem is creating problems not just for society but for ourselves and our ability to do things as simple as learn. Being bored should cause us to want to do something, not cause us to continue doing nothing. (Excluding meditation, but if you are someone who meditates then you know that already.)

[Media Reflection] Majora's Mask And What It Has To Say

Tue, 05 May 2026 09:29:41 -0700

Looking Backwards

When I was a child I got an N64 for Christmas, like many children did back in the early 90s. I got several games, including Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (OOT). Both great games, with OOT getting a sequel on the same system a few years later named The Legend Of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (Majora’s) ¹.

I never finished Majora’s as a child. I tried, but the time system was a tad difficult to deal with when I was that small. For those who are not aware of the game, here is a brief rundown:

The Joy of Improving at Climbing

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 17:23:30 -0700

I started climbing recently, specifically bouldering (yes I will do the rope some day, but not today). I remember the very first day I decided to get back into it after a break since college. I was pretty scared to get more than a few feet off the ground.

In bouldering the difficulties are rated (subjectively by the route-setter) from V0 -> V12+. V0 is essentially the easiest, with some places using a VB (V-Beginner) route for the ones that are essentially just a ladder on a wall. I knew this from watching some YouTube videos, but did not know what the colored tape or any of that stuff meant.

Reflecting on Being Logged Off of Short-Form Social Media for Three Months

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 15:32:29 -0700

I will cut to the chase at the start here: I feel much better (mentally) than I did at the start of the year. The very few positives of these sites (seeing “hot takes” on the freshest of the fresh news) is outweighed by the avoidance of the negatives of these sites (see my other post).

I can feel a sense of my attention span returning.

Another thing that I have started recently is keeping my laptop out of my room. I have an iPad, and that is enough. Yes, it has slimmed down functionality but that is the point. My room feels as if the air moves more freely about it when I have less electronics in there…but I will still keep a video game handheld because that is nice in bed sometimes - but video games are not “short-form” media. Or at least the ones I play are not, generally.

Writing a Rust Embedded Driver Is Easier Than I Thought

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 18:27:11 -0800

Why would you want to use a language other than MicroPython for an embedded system like a Pi Pico? It is so easy!

You, maybe

Yes, it is easy. But I decided my goals lie in a loftier place. I learned regular std Rust. I read the books (The Rust Book and Rust For Rustaceans) and I felt like I was ready to take the next step. I figured it would be difficult, and complex, because Rust is supposed to be a “real” systems language. As it turns out when you stand on the shoulders of giants things are a lot easier than they seemed they would be at first glance.

Reflecting on a Month of Logging off of Short Form Media Sites

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 13:20:08 -0800

It has been about a month since I decided to step away from short-form media sites. This for me was mainly text-based short-form BlueSky, but I also refuse to click links to Twitter/X or Instagram unless its something my friend absolutely needs me to see for some reason and they sent it to me.

The first few days, or even the first week, I felt a sort of emptiness with my hands. I used to reach for my phone and just scroll when I got bored and when I felt like I was done I would close the browser just to open it back up almost immediately. But after a few days I began to feel relief that I did not have to read so many complaints or misdirected anger from all the posts in my feeds.

I Will Climb Mountains

Sat, 17 Jan 2026 14:11:45 -0800

Mountain top near Alpental on Snoqualmie Pass in Washington State

Mountains, both physical and metaphorical, have been on my mind a lot recently.

I have started doing endurance training, even if its just a little bit. The book that inspired me to get off my butt is titled Training For The New Alpinism: A Manual For The Climber As Athlete. The book is full of photos of people scaling precarious peaks with nothing but rope and their gear on their backs. I am unlikely to do alpine style climbing but I am more than willing to do grueling hikes to camp on top of mountains, however.

Migrating My Blog

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:14:33 -0800

This post is short. I migrated my blog from a Golang webapp I wrote myself (here). At the time this was actually a good idea as I learned a ton about how to write webapps for Go, even if it was a simple one. Embedding a filesystem into your binary is actually really slick.

I migrated the blog to Hugo, and will simply muck with customizing the theme. It will be forked from this theme because I want to go for a retro look, even if I am just using the pure theme at the start.

Logging Off

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Compressing thought down to 140 or so characters does a lot of things. Reading other people’s compressed thoughts seems to have a negative impact on me, so I think it is time to log off of any media focused on short-form content. That goes for both short-form video, which I already avoided, and now short-form text-based media. I am also going to begin avoiding spending time on any website that is primarily algorithmically driven, or has infinite scrolling mechanisms.

Rearrange Your Room For A Headspace Reset

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I have felt the need to get a reset of my headspace, and emotional reconfiguring if you will. I felt like I was in a rut with the way I was going, feeling like each day was the same as the past. Same habits, same activities, same feelings.

So I rearranged my bedroom today, and it has already felt like a big difference. I moved my bed so that my head is near the window that opens, which is something that I have not done in a few years now that I think about it. During college, and for a few years after, I almost always had my head in this location because I love the fresh, cold air while laying under my blankets.

Getting Back Into Photography And Going Outside

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I decided to pull the trigger on a new camera. I got a Nikon Z6 II, a mirrorless camera released around 2020. It is not the “latest and greatest” but it is absolutely still a strong contender being only a few years old.

I discovered that it had a feature to take a bunch of photos with incremental changes to the focus of the lens, which will aid me in doing my macro photography that I have put to the side for too long.

My Job Is Boring But The Economy Is Shit

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My job has fluctuations in the level of activity. Being a DevOps engineer, one who is typically tasked with responding to issues rather than implementing new features, the job comes in waves. Some days are busy, 5-alarm fire types of days. These days are not so bad. But most days are not this…most days feel as if I am just starting at a blank new tab window in the browser.

Trying Apple's Container Runtime

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I decided to try to run containers locally on my machine instead of on a VM on my homelab. This way I can start to wind down the homelab box, or at least shrink it, as well as eliminate some latency when I am using my reference image storage app that I made. This is easy enough on Linux with either Docker or Podman being acceptable options.

On my Macbook I decided to try Apple’s new container framework for MacOS, specifically MacOS 26. “Cutting over” to it was really easy as it is OCI compliant and allows you to use Dockerfiles:

Sometimes You Just Need A Haircut And A Shave

Tue, 13 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I have been coasting along, not doing terrible but not being terribly productive. I have been half-heartedly trying to pick up some of my side projects that I have allowed to fall to the side.

I noticed that I was spending a lot more time on social media during the past few weeks than I had the few months prior. Doing this for too long during the day gives me this massive “brain fog” feeling where I cannot stay on a task for more than a few moments before wanting to slump over. I decided I was done feeling like this constantly. I also picked up a habit of 1-2 beers after work which, while not “binge drinking” by any means, made me feel sleepy earlier and even more unproductive. I wanted to do something to change.

Things I Find 'Just Neat' About The Julia Programming Language

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Marge Simpson holding an object and saying “I just think they’re neat”

I have been learning the Julia programming language recently and I wanted to take a bit of time to just show some things that I found neat about the language. I may update this over time as I learn more!

I really recommend the book Practical Julia by Lee Phillips, at least one of these examples came from there.

What To Do When The Dream Is Being Ripped Apart

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Watching what is happening in the US right now, particularly in regards to research and higher education, leave me wondering if achieving my goal of a PhD in my lifetime needs to be put on hold. It is unfortunate, but due to this supposed “D.O.G.E.” I am anticipating a lot of funding reductions for schools.

I had been preparing myself, even if somewhat lazily, to go back to school after working in the private sector for so long. It really is unfortunate, because I feel I have grown as much as my current role will allow. I am also tired of working nights/evenings.

It is more than okay to relearn things

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes, as we get older, we get stuck in our ways. Maybe a more apt thing to say would be that we our thinking gets gunked up and we do not take the time to remove the grime.

Last year I undertook a painting course that focused on painting light. In this course one of the points the teacher made was that you needed to unlearn how you see things, and learn to see things as light reflecting off of objects.

Shape Up Sunday

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes, like everyone, I find myself in a funk. Luckily I have the ability to notice the funk ocurring and at least try to get myself out of it.

I seem to tend to do this on Sundays. I am not sure why. Maybe it has to do with me wanting to have a good start to the next work week, but more realistically I think it has to do with me not having been at work the previous day.

E-ink Or Bust?

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I have been trying to use the screen less, but this has the unfortunate side effect of excluding large swaths of information as it exists in a digital format. Well, we have e-ink screens.

I now own two e-ink devices that I have started to use regularly. First, I own an entry level Kindle, with a backlight and USB-C port. I really like this device for reading fiction or anything that feels like it should be a paperback book. I normally keep the backlight at around 3-4 out of a max of 15. I do not want it too bright during the day and when reading in the dark it is more comfortable if it is as dim as I can tolerate without squinting.

Creating a GB Sprite Viewer In Rust

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I had a few days off of work recently around Halloween and I decided I wanted to finally learn some basic Rust. Plus, the logo matches the colors of the season.

The Weekend Project

I wanted to twiddle a few bits with this project, but not too many, so I felt as if a good project would be to extract sprites from GameBoy ROMs. I did an initially internet search and found a similar project here: https://github.com/taylus/gb-rom-viewer. I decided to attack the problem the a similar way as this project, but that I would use Rust.

Animating Sprites On The Pi Pico

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Note: This originally appeared on blog.leateatlabs.com but I am consolidating my writings.

The SSD1306 OLED display is commonly used by hobbyists to add an informative screen to their projects. But, as humans, we know what we truly want to do with screens… and that is to goof off.

The end goal is to make a game for this screen, but first we need to draw something other than text and lines.

Reflecting On Self Hosting

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I have been hosted my own websites for a few years now, both public ones and ones that I use internally. There is a lot of upsides to this, namely cost and learning a lot. However I have been annoyed with having to do things like renew SSL certs periodically, debate if I want to use wildcard certs, go downstairs and reboot the Proxmox server since the HP Elitedesk running it does not auto-power after a power outage.

Knowing How To Proceed Without Knowing How To Start

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I have been thinking a lot about why I feel stuck. Why do I always feel like my brain needs to be on, and why can’t I just let my hobbies be hobbies?

Well, I am sure that there are plenty of reasons… but one in particular that stands out right now is that my day job is not what I want it to be, and because of this I feel a constant pressure to apply myself towards my goals.

Tile-Matching Games, A Super Brief History

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This had originally appeared on another site that I was writing game-specific topics for, but I decided that I was going to fold it into this blog as i never write anything because I have so many set up.

I had originally wrote a blog post about a couple of “puzzle block” games, but I had originally just left it as a very short review and comparison of a handful of games. I felt that the level of detail was beneath what I wanted to present, so I decided to dive deeper into the topic.

Value Chains In Oldschool Runescape Skills

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For the past 10+ years the Old School Runescape grind has been real. Known by many to be “grindy” to max out some or all of their skills at 99/99, why do so many people do it?

(Instant) Ramen Rodeo

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This year I decided that I wanted to keep track of new things I tried. One of the things I really like is ramen, so I decided to keep track of new instant ramen that I purchased and consumed this year.

Below is a list in order of consumption (not preference).

But if you want to know which one was my favorite of the year, it was the Assi Rapokki.

Reflecting On A Warm Summer And How Good Sleep Feels

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I have not written in a while, and for that I do apologize. Not just for this personal blog, but for all of the blogs I wish to write on. I had a very growth-focused summer and it had been very good for me. I am back now, though.

Getting Back Outdoors

I had missed the outdoors. I was a very camping-heavy child and I had taken a break since graduating from college. This year I have taken three tent trips and one cabin trip, with two more tent trips planned. I am even going out there in October! That should certainly be something.

Chasing Sleep

Sat, 06 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I have recently been frustrated with my lack of sleep, as evidence by my writing this post at 2:03am on a Saturday. I decided to finally look at my historical sleep data (I wear a fitness watch).

I immediately noticed that my sleep duration dropped sharply around October and never recovered.

Chart of my sleep duration

Why is that? Something happened. I looked at my other charts to see if any of them lined up, and the one that lined up almost perfectly was my daily “intensity minutes” – which is essentially a measure of how many minutes per day I am more than mildly active.

Fun With Ffmpeg

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I have been having a lot of fun with ffmpeg. I do photography and wanted a FOSS way to make timelapses, slideshows, etc. I thought I would share three sets of commands that currently see frequent use with me.

Make a time-lapse from a set of JPEGs

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -pattern_type glob -i "*.JPG" -s:v 1440x1080 -c:v libx264 -crf 17 -pix_fmt yuv420p my-timelapse.mp4

Flag	Action
`-framerate`	Fromrate of the movie
`-pattern_type glob`	Grab all of the images in a wildcard fashion
`-i`	Input file(s)
`-s:v`	Output resolution
`-c:v`	Encoder Type (H264)
`-crf`	A parameter specific to the H264 codec that determines the quality/compression
`-pix_fmt yuv420p`	This needs to be set to yuv420p to allow many players, such as Quicktime to play the video (“the FFmpeg docs say dumb players, I’ll be more forgiving”)

Source: https://medium.com/@sekhar.rahul/creating-a-time-lapse-video-on-the-command-line-with-ffmpeg-1a7566caf877

Five Months Of Dailies And A Bright Winter Ahead

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Intro

My oh my, what a season Autumn was. I was really rough around the edges there for a while – but I sanded some corners and now I am doing great!

Image of checklist of daily habits for November 2022

My journaling habit suffered a little, but if I am being honest that is probably the least of my concerns. But let us move on to an update!

Devlog: Writing My Own Website

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I decided to write my own personal website. You can see it here: https://www.jeremyheckt.com. I wanted a central place where I could “advertise” myself. It would also convenient to be able to point everybody to the same URL if they wanted to read my writings.

An issue I came across initially is that I publish on several different websites, and I do not want to stop keeping those websites separate. The solution I decided on was to have my website read from a spreadsheet that contained all of my writings in order from newest to oldest. I did not want to manually update this as that is a huge pain…so RSS to the rescue!

The Case For Doing Things The Hard Way (At Least Once)

Fri, 22 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Radishes

It is easier for us to go to the store to buy a bunch of radishes than it is for us to grow some. Unless one is a gardener or has an interest in horticulture it is unlikely that they are prepared to grow radishes. Additionally, one usually wants radishes today and not 45 days from now.

If one chooses to eat a lot of radishes a thought will likely cross their mind at one point inquiring as to how one grows a radish. A seed is a fragile thing that takes a lot of input the radish consumer will find. I need to till some soil (or get a planter), I need to plant the seeds, I need to water them frequently and prevent them from drying out during this stage, I need to watch the leaves for signs of illness, etc.

Text Based Game in Ebiten

Thu, 19 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Why?

Well, why not? I had recently wanted to dig into the Ebiten game framkework for Go and I wanted to create something that was not annoyingly complex for a first complete attempt. I had previously tried to make a Terraria clone in Ebiten but whatever I did was not working performance wise and I determined that to fix it I would likely need to re-write everything. So a text based game it is.

Learning Ebiten Part Two

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I have been working on my Terraria-ish game idea in Ebiten this past week and I can safely say that I have learned a lot - a whole lot. My proficiency with Golang has greatly increased, and I feel much more confident navigating its typing idosyncracies.

There were several programmer-induced bugs that I had to overcome - the biggest one being that the first and last few arrays withing the blockMap were empty which was because I was skipping areas for the GUI border.

Learning Ebiten and Got A Dog

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

I was quiet for a bit becuase I got a dog. Her name is Holly and I love her. She is a 2-ish year old Border Collie mix that I adopted from a rescue. She is a total sweetheart, but is learning not to pull on the leash so much.

I decided I wanted to sit down and learn Ebiten, the 2D game engine for Golang.

Learning Ebiten

I want to make a basic Terraria style game, but much more basic than Terraria - a fun little thing that can grow as big as it wants to. I want to learn this for multiple reasons, but mainly I want to practice procedural generation.

Brackey's Game Jam 2022.1 Post-Mortem: LampLighter

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This past week I had the pleasure of participating in the 2022.1 Bracley’s Game Jam, which you can read more about here: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-7. I decided to try to make a real 3D experience this time, and I think I was successful! I did cut some corners, like missing most of the audio, but that is to be expected in a game-jam scenario when you are a solo indie-dev with a full time job.

Underqualified - Devlog 3

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I have finally produced something that is stable enough to exist on its own! Here is a quick overview of what I have been up to.

Getting the FileBrowser Application to Function

I have finally gotten this software to behave like a human expects. It has a super basic backup button that only lets you go to root sometimes…but I will fix that. I had been chasing down a bug for so long, using so many print statementsm that was causing the FileBrowser to crash when trying to load a folder. I needed to change an or statement to an and statement. I felt silly after spending so much time finding this bug, but it has taught me to think twice about my login when implementing something in code.

Underqualified - Devlog 2

Sat, 12 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

My continued work on Underqualified as proved rewarding so far. I am excited to see where this project goes. It is very enjoyable to build upon a base of a project and then begin to see more and more of your features you have added come to life.

Current Status

I have made two applications for the FishyOS computer the player will be using - TextViewer and FileBrowser. Both are incredibly simplistic.

Underqualified - Devlog 1

Fri, 11 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

I decided to undertake writing a videogame that takes longer than a single game jam. I am going to continue jams as they suit my ADHD very well, but I am undertaking a larger project.

Plot

The game is called Underqualified (working title). The premise is that you are a someone who was looking for a job in the tech industry. You may or may not have embellished your resume a little too much and now you have landed a job that you are extremely unqualified for.

Mindfulness and Discipline: The Same Thing?

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I got to thinking the other day as to whether people who are “highly disciplined” are actually just “highly mindful”. It seems as if a lot of the two words overlap in regards to their meaning when talking about human beings. When one thinks of someone who is disciplined, you also think of someone who is acutely aware of their surroundings, as well as acutely aware of their mental faculties. Both traits are ones that I want in myself, so do I focus on mindfulness or discipline? I think they may overlap so much that they can be classified as essentially the same thing. When one practices mindfulness you begin to become more aware of why you are thinking things: why you crave that beer, why you want cannabis, why you do not want to get off your butt to write your blog post. I think as this year progresses and I continue down my mental health journey I will be able to gain both discipline and mindfulness at the same time by doing the same things. Just one usually involves lifting more weights than the other.

First Post, and 2020 Resolutions

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Happy New Year

Yes, I know, I am a little late as it is currently the 3rd of January. I am going to make this space my personal blog, as opposed to my professional blog which I house at https://blog.letseatlabs.com. Here will be my thoughts on various topics, as well as updates about my life and some behind-the-scenes looks at Let’s Eat Labs.

Resolutions

This year I decided that I would pick just 5 of the top goals I wanted to accomplish, as anything else would be a distraction from what I want the most. Here is what I am going to work on in 2020:

About The Author

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Jeremy Heckt is located in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. He is a maker, a creator, a photographer, and a writer. He is a maker of things that are not only beautiful, but also useful.

Motivated, imaginative, and energetic. Chemistry degree, programmer, previous makerspace director, gardener, dog lover. Let’s discover some new things together.