Nicolas Ventura
As of 25 January 2026, there have been 80 posts published.
Changing the Bathroom Fan Really Blows
22 June 2025 I can't say I'm a huge fan of this last home upgrade project, and I'm writing this article to vent. I recently replaced my bathroom fan, which I've had no prior experience with and decided to give it a whir. All the warnings seem to have been mist on me, but completing this project was really a breath of fresh air. Read more
Fake Grass
27 March 2025 I highly despise fake grass, which is also known as artificial turf. It not only prevents natural plant growth, but it is actively harmful to the environment. Read more
Composting
27 March 2025 I've been practicing trench composting for over a year now in my small garden. It's been a good way to eliminate waste and improve soil health. By putting food scraps back in the ground, it adds nutrients to the soil, sparking life and feeding my plants. It also gets me going outside and a good discipline to hold myself to - not to mention the more time I spend at my garden, the more I'll inadvertently care for it. However there's some plant-related topics I want to get off my chest. Read more
Speed of Driving
07 January 2025 It's a little stressful when you're driving exactly the speed limit (of course, I would never go beyond the posted speed limit) and someone zooms by you at 10, 15, or sometimes 20+ miles per hour. As a bonus, these people will usually weave through traffic too. What's so important that you'd risk your life, and several other peoples', to save some time? Maybe, man's gotta poo. Who knows? But something I do think about, is how much time are they actually saving, assuming they don't get into a crash or stopped by the police? Read more
Custom Domains in Gmail
23 December 2024 I'm reviving an old series here. This one branches off of story #5, where I split up my Gmail account to use a custom email for each online account. But now, instead of exposing my Gmail account, I can use one of the custom domains I own to send and receive emails, directly in my Gmail mail client, for free! For example, I can now send and receive emails from an address like example@nicfv.com. It was an adventure to figure out this project and quite a lengthy headache at times. Read more
2024: A Year for nicfv
19 December 2024 2024 was a big year! I completed and exceeded both of my New Year's resolutions, did a lot of running, visited 2 new countries, and worked on a lot of cool projects. Let's go over the 2024 recap for this mysterious individual named Nicolas Ventura. Read more
Owning Property, (Almost) Two Years Later
08 December 2024 It's crazy to think, but coming up on two years now, I purchased my condo. I absolutely love it and have no regrets, but there are some things I wish I had considered. Here's a short story of what I wished I could tell myself those 2 years ago, and things (specific to me) that are really important in finding a place to live. Read more
Connecting to Public Wifi
07 December 2024 I'm currently writing this from my laptop running Kubuntu 24.04 in a public space; Peet's Coffee. (The matcha latte here is good.) I had some difficulty connecting to the public wifi. Luckily, I had my smartphone with me, which gave me options. Read more
Working with an NPM Monorepo
07 December 2024 It's no secret that I'm developing a series of npm packages. The primary reason I'm doing this is for code reuse. I want to build up more complex programs using as much of my own software as possible. Second, the packages I'm developing might also benefit other developers. Also, the secret third reason I'm doing this is just for fun. Although there have been times where I really questioned my secret third reason. One of those recent times was when I changed my development strategy from maintaining several independent repositories to maintaining just one monorepo containing all my packages. Read more
Crossing the Road Philosophy
25 November 2024 Anything can be a lot like the game of rock, paper, scissors, if you try hard enough. At least, it ought to be. I'll use this analogy for my proposed rules for crossing the road. It's a dangerous game, and maybe this idea could make it a bit safer. Read more