Nicolas Ventura

As of 26 May 2026, there have been 94 posts published.

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Run Progress 2026

26 May 2026 I can't believe it's already the end of May! I just came out of a nice, relaxing 3-day weekend. I did a bit of running and working out, and watched Mandalorian and Grogu. (Amazing movie, by the way. Would recommend.) I didn't do a whole lot with my 3 days off, but still felt busy the whole time. Now I'm back on the grind. At least it's only a 4-day week. Read more

My Notes, Out of Context

23 May 2026 I am currently Spring-cleaning my apartment, totally not procrastinating. I found an old notebook I had by my bedside when I was probably between 13 and 17 years old, and some of my old notes are absolutely hilarous out of context. Many of these notes actually didn't even provide context to begin with. Read more

Generating Repeatable, Pseudorandom Sequences

19 May 2026 I'm working on a game called GeoMarin which is a Wordle-style guessing game that tests your geography knowledge of Marin county. Similar to how Wordle has a dictionary of thousands of words to use as possible solutions, one of the tasks I need to complete for GeoMarin is to essentially create a "dictionary" of locations to use as possible solutions. With this, I would generate one random solution per day which would be the same solution across all instances of the game; basically the same way Wordle works. Read more

Alpes Maritimes, Var, and Bouches du Rhone

09 May 2026 I got to go to France again! I didn't keep a journal each day, but I did take a ton of photos - over 600, to be more exact, and I recently posted over 100 of them on my Instagram page. I got to experience a lot more this time than I have in the past, while still being able to visit family, so it was a very enjoyable two weeks in France. Read more

Habit or Addiction

17 April 2026 I logged into Pokemon Go (or PoGo) today before my afternoon walk. I had just become "Forever Friends" with someone and we just completed a remote trade, so when I logged in, I was greeted with my new, Lucky Shiny Cyndaquil! If you remember my Pokemon Heartgold story, Cyndaquil was my starter, and one of my favorite Pokemon of all time. So anyway, this was a great start to my walk. Read more

There is no Justice

12 April 2026 Here's the follow-up from the story about almost becoming roadkill. We went to the police station, and showed the video to the officer. Despite the fact that the officer agrees that the driver clearly broke the law, he said that there was unfortunately nothing he could do. Read more

Inches from Disaster

11 April 2026 All you faithful readers are probably wondering what the "mysterious event" is by now that I referenced in my CCTV Hacking story. Why could I possibly want security camera footage? (Other than the fact, that's kind of cool.) Well, let's just say, please drive safely, people. Read more

CCTV Hacking

10 April 2026 In late March, an event occurred which caused me to request CCTV footage from a local transportation service. That will be saved for another story. But if you're here to read about computery stuff, this is the tale for you. Read more

Cell Division Puzzle

28 March 2026 On YouTube, I recently watched this puzzle introduced by creator @3blue1brown. I figured it would be a pretty easy puzzle and probably involved factorials or exponentials if you wanted an exact numerical answer. I didn't think of it much until a few weeks later when he posted the solution. But before you watch it, read this! I promise, it will be quick. Read more

Marin's Geographic Weakness

13 March 2026 Marin county, California is in a beautiful and extremely defendable location. Marin is surrounded on 3 sides by water, and is only bordered directly by a single other county. It is well-prepared for siege and has some built-in countermeasures for attack. But just how well would it fare in times of war? Read more