It’s been 3 years since my last writing on this subject.

After a great 3 years with Oak Ridge National Laboratories, I feel it is time to share the experience again, as it has taken a drastically more interesting turn.

Of the many accomplishments from ORNL over this time, the one I feel most proud about is Summit, currently the fastest supercomputer in the world.

read more: OLCF.ORNL.GOV/SUMMIT/

Since wrapping up my web project from my first term with the OLCF as an intern, I was brought in again for the next two summers (and during the school year) to continue working on an idea my boss had to save huge investments in watercooling Summit.

Two years later my System76 Oryx Pro v1 is still running strong.

It’s not just the regular cleaning or standard computer upkeep that’s been keeping it alive so well - it’s the amazing software support that System76 has provided throughout it’s lifetime.

When I first got my laptop, I was already very happy with my purchase, and Linux just worked like I so desired.

Now, with two years of software and firmware updates from System76, my laptop is actually running just as well - if not better - than it was when I first received it.

You normally just [[ $VAR == "Value" ]], right? Well what about if the variable is set to an empty scalar? (VAR="")

It gets interesting, but for the TLDR; use if (( ${+VAR} )); to check if it is set.

Now onto why this is the preferred form (about performance)…

January 2021: Factorio 1.1 introduced stop train limits! Read my take on the feature here.

Post has been updated September 2019! Read on further below,

This article was partially inspired by Korezaan’s post:

How Perfect Rail Networks Work

In this post I will show you the principles behind building rail networks in Factorio, so that you understand what you’re doing before you do it, you understand the problems when they appear, and, if no mistakes occur, you create networks that never jam ever.

(I recommend at least scanning over that post, it’s got useful information.)

Just because a train network never jams, does not mean it’s perfect.

This post will attempt to show you that trains are not actually as complicated as they are famed to be.

So here I am to explain…

• Current number of hours played: 504
• Game versions: 0.12 - 0.16
• Longest game in hours: 145
• Time spent figuring out rail theory in hours: still counting
• Amount of notes: None.
• Percent of played worlds with train networks: 100%
• Number of perfect rail networks made: 1

This article is not for those inexperienced with trains, if you’re just getting started, check out this presentation.

2020 Update: a new “cd” (see bottom of post)

This article is due at least in part as a response to Olivier Lacan’s post,

“cd is Wasting Your Time”

After finding this post in r/Linux, I felt I agreed with the comments more so than the article. It’s fairly obvious that most Linux power users rarely ever touch cd when working in their interactive shell, and Olivier’s examples only made us cringe harder.

Take a look at the first few examples he gave of what a ‘routine’ shell use log might look like, and tell me that’s really how you want to use your shell?

If you know me well, you’ve probably already heard of the slew of tricks I have up my .zshrc, but as it turns out, most of those tricks aren’t really that tricky!