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I have acquired a copy of Vantage, the latest Stonemaier Games production. It is a bit of a weird one. The game seems to be mostly like No Man’s Sky before all the missing content was patched in. That is to say, it is a first-person exploration game where you mill about on a planet after having crash-landed, and discover … stuff. What kind of stuff? Well, I don’t know as I haven’t played it too much. One time I found a dragon. Another time I found some some gems. Another time I found a flower. ...

I just finished playing a long game of Fate of the Fellowship (i.e. Lord of the Rings: Pandemic). Go read about it here. Immediately. « Back to Posts 19th August 2025

This is a short piece on how to set up dev containers in VSCode with Podman and Claude Code. Download and install Podman Desktop bash this to use podman instead of docker: echo 'alias docker=podman' >> ~/.bashrc` Install the dev containers extension in VS Code and configure it to use podman as the dockerpath for dev containers: Create a Dockerfile: FROM mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/javascript-node:18 WORKDIR /workspace Create a devcontainer.json file: { "name": "Node.js Dev Container with Claude Code", "build": { "dockerfile": "Dockerfile" }, "features": { "ghcr.io/anthropics/devcontainer-features/claude-code:1.0.5": {} }, "workspaceFolder": "/workspace", "customizations": { "vscode": { "extensions": [ "ms-vscode.vscode-json" ] } } } Ensure you have started Podman: podman machine start In VS Code: ctrl + shift + p and then choose Rebuild and reopen in container Use ctrl + shift + p and choose Reopen folders locally to stop « Back to Posts ...

I had a re-think about my project ideas. Previously I was trying to become a full-stack developer in an attempt to remain employed as a software developer. I thought that if I knew front-end and back-end code then I would be alright. The truth is that, of course, you cannot compete with AI on that front. The only way to survive the coming AIpocalypse will be to embrace AI entirely. Lean in to having AI do a lot of the coding for you. ...

As part of my push to stay relevant in the world of software, AI, megaCorps, offshoring, and ethnic-nepotism, I am attempting to become a full-stack developer with an actual portfolio of work to showcase. To this end I have decided to pick up my original purpose for this website: Retrograde Online. Who knows whether it will go anyway, but it’s a good learning vessel regardless. Read about it here? « Back to Posts ...

This post follows on from part one where I just downloaded the essentials for creating a barebones React app. This post will be about React itself, kind of, but mainly about installing TailwindCSS. How to run stuff If you are unfamiliar with using npm to run apps, or you miss the play button that Visual Studio provides, you can open up the package.json file. In it you will see a bunch of dependencies as well as a scripts section. For example in order to run the linter you need to run the command: ...

I’ve decided to have another go at learning React. My first attempt at this was actually for creating Retrograde Online, which was the entire point of this now-pointless blog. As my brain is broken I will try to write down the stages I am going through for a basic React setup, and hope this act of repetition will make the info stick. Here are the steps to follow for setting up the tools: ...

Hello all and welcome to the latest edition of Retrograde Online. In this post I detail how I am once again pushing back against the feelings of boredom and restlessness and trying to reverse some of the entropy of the universe. Cuba Libre I recently bought Cuba Libre and was immediately into the complexity of it. I have never played a COIN1 game before, and Cuba Libre was apparently the best one to get started with learning the rules. ...

Once again I am writing a PSA to myself on pushing code to a remote git repository after having started writing code. I did this before on the previous and equally pointless version of this website. Anyway, you’ve written your code and have done too much faffing about with it to start over with a brand new repository, so you’ve instead created a repo on GitHub and want to push your local code up to it. ...

It’s been a bad week. My father-in-law died unexpectedly after becoming ill with something fairly minor, which somehow snowballed into something very serious, which resulted in his actual death. Unbelievable. We miss him and have to carry on as best we can. I started storing my Marvel Champions hero cards in little cassette tapes, which looks awesome. I just need to print off some comic book art for the covers and it will be complete. ...