TK's Web Quest

Welcome to TK's Web Quest, now fully independent! // Check out some photos of the fall colors from Guanella Pass in the blog! // Now built with 11ty! // Try our new Midnight flavor! // The Worst Webring: Additional slots now open! //
Welcome to TK's Web Quest, now fully independent! // Check out some photos of the fall colors from Guanella Pass in the blog! // Now built with 11ty! // Try our new Midnight flavor! // The Worst Webring: Additional slots now open! //
about.njk

// ABOUT THE AUTHOR

About

Some information about TK

The Author:

My name is Brent, but I go by TK on the internet. I'm a writer, hobbyist sysadmin, video game enjoyer, game developer, photographer, woodturner, and hobby tourist living in Colorado. I maintain this site and blog in my free time, but I also have a lot of other interests, which may cross over from time to time. If you would like to recommend something to me or respond to one of my posts, you can do so by sending me an email.

I grew up with the internet. I don't mean that I grew up when the internet already existed, though the history of the web is long enough that that is also partially true. No, I mean I grew up as the internet was growing up. When I was a kid, it was a fun, interesting place. I spent many many hours on forums, flash game sites, and the smaller side of the web. Facebook got big as I was entering high school. I missed some of the very early days, with BBS systems and the Endless September, but I feel like I got to watch as the internet became a real place. These days, I feel like the current state of the web is hostile to me. What was once a font of creativity has become comodity and capital, sucking the life out of everything. This site is an attempt to wrest back some control over my home away from home, just like I've done with other parts of my digital life.

You will not find me on social sites. No Twitter, no BlueSky, no Facebook, no Mastodon, even. If you search very hard, you may find me in corporate spaces, existing against my will. There is a google account. There is a github account. Neither will be given here. You will find me in chat rooms like The Worst Garbage Online's Discord server. You will find me in comments and guestbooks. You will find me by email. You will find me by my projects, on Itch, on the Lexaloffle BBS, and on my own sites.

interests

I find it difficult to talk about myself generally, and I try as best as I can to not make my entire personality just one thing, which I feel is the fastest way to be the most insufferable or boring person in existence. So, the best way to get to know a person, at least in my experience, is to have that person talk about the things they love earnestly. This is my attempt at that for myself. Hopefully, by reading along, you will begin to get a feeling for my personality.

Learning

I am the kind of person who feels dead if I am not furthering my own understanding of _something_ at any given time. I am so focused on this kind of enrichment that I will, on purpose, make my life harder if there's something to learn from it. Convinience and a smooth experience is the quickest way to a boring life. To me, the topic doesn't really matter that much, just that I'm learning something new every day.

Teaching

I may not have the bonafides of a traditional teacher in any sort of sense. I've never gone to school for teaching. I have never even _been_ a "teacher," but all the same, I find a specific, intense joy in explaining something to someone. Sometimes I worry that I may come off as too overzealous in my insistence to explain things, but I do it for the love of the game. I know that just as often as I can teach others, they can teach me something in return. Everyone has a specialty, and I want to learn about them all.

Video Games

My primary consumptive medium. I have been playing video games in one form or another since I was six years old playing Myst on my grandparents' Windows 98 PC. I grew up with a Sega Genesis (Mega Drive to our friends outside North America) and eventually graduated to a Nintendo 64. Along the way, I had a GameBoy and GameBoy Color. The first console I purchased for myself was a PlayStation 2, which was around the time that I got a GameBoy Advance. After that, I had a Wii, a DS, threw an Nvidia 8600GT into the family desktop PC, had a Dell XPS Studio 16 laptop for a bit, eventually bought an Xbox 360 in college, built my own gaming PC, picked up a VitaTV and PS4 for Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 respectively, fell into owning a Switch somewhere along the way, built a few gaming PCs, picked up an Anbernic RG34XXSP, and way after it was popular, nabbed a PSP. These days, I primarily play games on my PC, which is a modest specimen. If you're curious, you can peep the specs over on the [Uses](/uses/) page. My game preference has shifted wildly over the years, but these days I play a lot of indpenedent games in all kinds of various genres. I love retro games and RPGs, character action and shooters, platformers and adventures. If I had to pick a favorite game of all time, it would have to be Dark Cloud 2 for the PS2, but by volume I've probably played the most of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Woodturning

My primary creative outlet... or it would be if I had a lathe currently. It's definitely a hobby I want to get back into, but the startup cost is kind of steep even with all the tooling I still have from before I got rid of the old lathe. I primarily made pens, but I was very interested in extending my repetoire of projects. My dream machine would be a Jet 12" swing by 18" bed lathe with variable speed control. Maybe when I have a workshop space again, I'll find a way to invest into it again.

Webweaving

Not always my preferred term, but web development sounds so professional and blogging isn't exactly right either anymore, though I do do some of that. I'm interested in the small sites people make for themselves, the community that they are building with their own two hands. I will admit I participate in the wider community less than I'd like to. I write the website you're reading right now by hand using 11ty as a framework.

Self Hosting

More on this later, but I am sick and tired of having every cool thing a computer can do limited by my financial interactions with big companies. The internet is jsut computers, so why can't I make my computers do the cool things that we go to the internet for?! Turns out, through the magic of spending a lot fo money on hardware instead of subscriptions, that's entirely possible! I run a server in my home that hosts a wide variety of services for myself, family and friends. From video streaming services, to financial planning software, to file storage and serving, my home server has become a key part of my technology life and I love working on it, making little improvements here and small upgrades there.

Photography

A hobby I want to engage with more than I do currently. I share a Nikon D5100 with my wife, so I'd like to take more advantage of it. I've also got a Pentax 35mm film camera, but I honestly don't remember the model. I'm reasonably sure it's got a 35mm lens that can't be removed, but I haven't really tried. I like shooting landscapes and architecture. I'm not really a portrait person. I don't think I'll have time to really dig into it soon, but I'm looking forward to my next opportunity.

Archery

This might seem like a bit of an outlier, but I really appreciate target shooting, both with guns and a bow, but archery is significantly cheaper and a lot less strenous. Plus I don't have to have a safe to safely store my equipment. I shoot with a Samick Sage takedown bow in 30 pounds. It's a recurve style bow where the limbs can be reomved from the riser for storage. I don't use a sight, sling or counterweight. Just a tab and arm guard. I don't do any hunting and don't have any desire to. I like shooting as a paractice of skill and mastery, rather than anything violent.

Anime and Manga

Possibly my guiltiest pleasure here in that these are media that I like and interact with, but I do not really interact with the wider community basically at all. I find myself beset by an ingrained and trained sense of shame or embarrassment when discussing them with most folks, even though I am a firm believer in people liking what they like and that people shouldn't feel weird about it. I tend to find the wider community around these to be insufferable. It doesn't help that the content often has objectionable tropes that attract the worst people. There's a lot to avoid here, so I quietly enjoy the things that I enjoy and talk about them with closer friends.

Uses

A modern system is a constantly changing and mutating organism. Tools come and go, defaults change, things are in a constant state of flux. This is a periodically updated list of devices, tools, and services I'm using. Items in *italics* are things I'm looking to move away from, if I can find a suitable replacement. Items separated by a pipe (|) often work in tandem and in my setup must work together. Usually, as a back end tool and a front end GUI. Items separated by commas both do the same job, and I'm either transitioning, or I use different tools depending on the task. As an ease of recommendation, I have linked to as many tools as is feasible here.

TK's Web Quest

The Worst Community Report

Desktop PC

Hardware

  • CPU: Ryzen 7 3800XT
  • RAM: 32GB DDR4, 3200MT/s
  • GPU: Radeon 6700XT
  • SSD: 2TB NVME, 1TB NVME

Software

Home Server

Hardware:

  • CPU: Ryzen 5 1600
  • RAM: 16GB DDR4, 2400MT/s
  • SSD: 128GB SATA (OS), 128GB NVME (cache)
  • HDD: 3x 4TB Seagate BarraCuda 7200RPM

Software:

Services

Phone

Hardware

  • Device: Google Pixel 10a
  • Earbuds: Moondrop Ultrasonic

Applications

Gaming

Desktop PC

Emulation Handheld

  • Hardware: Anbernic RG35XX SP (Silver)
  • Storage: 1x 64gb, 1x 128gb MicroSD
  • Modifications: Tape Mod
  • OS: MuOS

PSP