Jake Varness

jvarness.blogHomeThe home page of my blog, where I write about coding stuff, among other things.

27 Nov 2024

Check out my blog where I post about software engineering topics, recipes that I like to make, and all sorts of other random stuff: jvarness.blog

Current favorite open weight LLMs: Qwen 3.8 Muse Glimmer The 30B NVIDIA one that has a 1M context window who’s name I can’t remember

jvarness.blogCan Local LLMs Replace Subscriptions?Depends on how critical your mission is

Finally, the power of #LocalLLMs is at my fingertips: jvarness.blog/local-llms-a...

jvarness.blogThe Trap of Modern Computer HardwareWhen modern hardware is good, if only for a moment

13 June

Some thoughts on repairability and sustainability of modern computer hardware in 2026 jvarness.blog/the-trap-of-...

jvarness.blogI Used ChatGPT to Edit a Pokemon Save FileI tried using ChatGPT's Agent Mode to create a Pokemon Gold save for an Egglocke. The results were... interesting.

26 Feb

I tried using ChatGPT to edit a Pokemon Gold save file. The results were pretty unexpected: jvarness.blog/nerdery/poke...

arstechnica.comNotepad++ users take note: It's time to check if you're hackedSuspected China-state hackers used update infrastructure to deliver backdoored version.

3 Feb

Sad to hear this: I haven’t used Notepad++ in years, but I remember a time when this was a staple in my toolbelt.

David Amador@djlink.bsky.social

In case you missed yesterday, Notepad++ auto-update mechanism was hacked and was delivering backdoored versions for a couple months. Tons of devs use this, uninstall completely what you have, search for the sus files mentioned in article and only download from official site

1 Feb

Interesting little experiment tonight: I asked ChatGPT to edit a Pokemon save file so that I could do an egglocke in Pokemon Gold. Using Agent Mode and a set of parameters (no legendaries, first-stage only, etc.), it filled two boxes with random pokemon eggs. #ChatGPTEggLocke

1 Feb

I wasn't expecting it to generate pokemon with blank movesets and the worst stats possible the first time I asked 😀 #ChatGPTEggLocke

jvarness.blogReflections on Agentic CodingHow agentic coding is transforming the way I work

17 Jan

Some thoughts on agentic coding in 2026 and how it’s continued to shape my career: jvarness.blog/software-eng...

25 Oct 2025

A new Windows 11 laptop that won’t break in a year: $1000 Reviving “old” tech with open source software: priceless There are some laptops Windows 11 refuses to run on. For everything else, there’s #Linux Mint

29 Oct 2025

I didn’t read that right before I posted it lol. Oops.

9 Sept 2025

Excited to see what Apple has planned for the new iPhone lineup: my 14 Pro is worse for wear.

9 Sept 2025

That 17 tho

Jake Varness reposted

Chess.com

@chess.com

9 Sept 2025

it hurts to know that this will still kick my ass at chess

22 Aug 2025

Trying to decide if I should petition King Macar to be errata’d to create Treasure tokens, or if Treasure tokens should be errata’d to Gold tokens…

13 Aug 2025

Anyone on here enjoy using Windsurf or Cursor enough to pay for it out of pocket? What was your experience going from free to paid?

4 Feb 2025

Tonight's episode of the #Godot Files shows our fearless barbarian hero fighting back for once! The assets included with the book made the missiles look so tiny at first. The editor makes scaling things much easier though, and I think it looks pretty good. Game over screen is working too!

4 Feb 2025

Next thing I think will be saving high scores and stuff like that? There's also some stuff in this book too about adding multiplayer, but I'm not likely going to get too deep into that.

4 Feb 2025

The web developer in me is screaming at myself too saying "bro you gotta make this responsive, it's not responsive". I'm certain there is a way to scale the camera zooming, controls, and other stuff relative to the viewport, I just haven't gotten that deep into it yet.

25 Jan 2025

Tonight on the Godot files: No fighting back against zombies yet, but I learned how to get a little game over screen going, so it's almost like it's a full game now. Onto fighting back 💪

25 Jan 2025

#Godot has a great debugger too: I didn't realize that I had screwed up my script for the GAME OVER screen, and although I had my signals for the RETRY and MENU buttons setup, they weren't triggering. I think the script got dereferenced from the root node when I rearranged the nodes on the scene...

14 Jan 2025

Started using Github Copilot for the first time today: I noticed I was able to do less context-switching between my browser and my editor, but I need to get better at prompts. So far it’s been fun using it.

8 Jan 2025

In tonight's edition of the #godot files, I now have things chasing me and trying to kill me. And they're succeeding. Not to worry, I'm learning how to kill them back soon. Once I'm done making this game from this book, I'm really going to want to start on something homemade.

6 Jan 2025

It's been really great learning #godot and trying to create something that maybe resembles a game! Cannot wait to continue learning. Who knows, maybe one day I'll make something substantial

2 Jan 2025

I'm terrible with CSS, but I discovered today the power of `min`, `max` and `clamp`! I needed the width of a control to be either 500px OR 100vw in width, whichever was _smaller_. I thought I was going to need a media query, but using `min` saved me from having to create a stylesheet!

25 Dec 2024

When you get that notification from PagerDuty that you’re no longer on call 😇🙏

25 Dec 2024

Let’s effing Godot #gamedev

Holy and jolly is on sight today. #BBQmunity

Damn this ended up being really good. #bbqmunity

Also went HAM on some pork for a quimas brekkie dinner #bbqmunity

Holy and jolly is on sight today. #BBQmunity

Forgot the damn photo

We cookin now #bbqmunity

Jake Varness reposted

Chess.com

@chess.com

12 Dec 2024

CONGRATULATIONS TO GUKESH, THE NEW WORLD CHAMPION 🏆 The 18-year-old Indian star has defeated the reigning champion, Ding Liren, to become the youngest-ever undisputed classical chess world champion. Wow! 🇮🇳

Jake Varness reposted

🏆

Created my first EngineObject in #littlejs, and it’s pretty easy to work with, but I need to figure out how to animate my little characters. The only semblance of animation is toggling mirroring on/off

2 Dec 2024

Crazy that Intel's CEO was removed him his position after four decades. I remember thinking that Intel chipsets were always the best for anything I wanted to do, and then I discovered ARM-based Apple laptops and my whole world changed.

I'm dipping my toes into game development using #LittleJs and I have little to no clue what I'm doing. But I did draw a chick and some grass and some dirt. This probably won't amount to anything, but it's a start.

I fixed a 2DS touchscreen today using… A toothbrush. No, seriously, a toothbrush of all things. Nintendo themselves ACTUALLY recommends for cleaning that you use one. Don’t believe me? Read on:

Mortified, I grabbed a children’s toothbrush we had in the kitchen and I started scrubbing away at the nooks and crannies of the screen edges. I’m not sure how long some of the dust that fell out of the screen had been there, but low and behold, whatever dust was in there was the actual problem

So TL:DR; if your DS touchscreen appears to be accepting phantom inputs and calibration isn’t working, scrub it with a dry toothbrush.

I fixed a 2DS touchscreen today using… A toothbrush. No, seriously, a toothbrush of all things. Nintendo themselves ACTUALLY recommends for cleaning that you use one. Don’t believe me? Read on:

The microfiber cloth I had made the screen sparkle, but it still wasn’t working. I opened it up since I had to replace the thumbstick anyway, and the ribbon cables were fine, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Reddit started making me think I was gonna have to replace the screen. To Nintendo I go

To what do my wondering eyes appear but THIS image:

I fixed a 2DS touchscreen today using… A toothbrush. No, seriously, a toothbrush of all things. Nintendo themselves ACTUALLY recommends for cleaning that you use one. Don’t believe me? Read on:

I try calibrating this damn thing, and… By the way, why doesn’t the 2DS come with a way to force you into a calibration screen using the buttons? Every time I tried to navigate to the Settings app, it wouldn’t let me open it because it was detecting touchscreen input even though I wasn’t touching it

So I eventually get to the touch screen calibration: I can’t even touch the target in the top left of the screen, and I don’t believe that the other taps are correctly working since the screen is hitting the right side of the screen automatically… I decided at this point to clean the screen

I fixed a 2DS touchscreen today using… A toothbrush. No, seriously, a toothbrush of all things. Nintendo themselves ACTUALLY recommends for cleaning that you use one. Don’t believe me? Read on:

So I have a 2DS model, the doorstop kind. The touchscreen has only bugged out whenever there was a power surge while it was charging. I know, coulda been worse. Anyway…