As we step into 2025, I want to take a moment to thank all of you who’ve visited my blog, read my posts, or shared your thoughts over the past year. Your support and engagement are very appreciated.

Here’s to a new year filled with exciting projects, fun hobbies, and unforgettable moments. Wishing you all a fantastic year ahead.

Let’s make it a great one together!

John

After years of being an exile, diving deep into Wraeclast’s unforgiving world, the time has finally come to venture into the highly-anticipated Path of Exile 2.

The hype is real, and the countdown has begun—I’ll be jumping in within just a few hours.

Early Access: It’s Finally Here

I’m thrilled to have secured early access to Path of Exile 2.

This is my first ever game to pre order buy an early access key.

Like many of you, I’ve already preloaded the game on Steam. As the download progresses, I can’t help but reminisce about my long journey through Path of Exile.

From the moment I first stepped into the Talisman League, to recently wrapping up the Settlers of Kalguur League with my best performance ever—36/40 challenges completed!

It’s been a wild and rewarding ride, and I’m ready for the next one.

Going In Raw: The Witch Awaits

For my first foray into PoE2, I’ve decided to stick with my favorite class(The Witch) and lean into a minion build.

True to my style, I’m going in raw this time: no guides, no meta-checking, just pure exploration and improvisation in SSF.

There’s something incredibly liberating about letting the game surprise you, especially with the rich complexity GGG is known for.

Anticipation and Excitement

I’m wishing everyone heading into the game today the best of luck and hope that PoE2 lives up to our expectations.

Grinding Gear Games has a track record of delivering deep, immersive experiences, so I’m optimistic that this next chapter will be nothing short of incredible.

Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a newcomer, may your loot be plentiful and your RNG kind.

A Message to Fellow Exiles

If you’re downloading the game right now, just like me, let’s share this moment of excitement together.

The years of waiting and speculating are over—it’s time to carve our names into the annals of Wraeclast once again.

Let’s go, exiles, and make this journey unforgettable.

I’ll see you in Path of Exile 2. LOG IN.

GLHF

This world is an illusion, exile

• LEMP droplet from marketplace
• 2 Node applications, 1 for an Express API and another for a Nuxt.js application.

Situation

I am updating my portfolio website and running all the public apps I can on one droplet.

Is it recommended? Not sure.. Probably not advisable but if you’re broke like me, even the lowest droplet can handle most of my demo sites.

My goal is to have node and php apps play together in one server.

All seems to work well but it goes south when running the Nuxt app.

PM2 is stopping for my API when starting Nuxt and then stopping Nuxt when starting the API.

I had to use my Full Stackoverflow skills to make this work.

This guide is mainly for me as a reminder when I eventually forget about this when I move onto other stuff.

Solution

Including the guides I followed for reference.

• Step 1: Setting up LEMP stack
• Step 2: Adding NGINX sites
• Step 3: Set up Node apps and pm2

Now I needed to add an ecosystem config to list all the apps on this server.

module.exports = {
  apps: [
    {
      name: 'nuxt',
      exec_mode: 'cluster',
      instances: 'max', // Max or a number of instances
      script: './node_modules/nuxt/bin/nuxt.js',
      args: 'start'
    },
    {
      name: 'express',
      script: 'path/to/express/api/bin/www', // express project folder/bin/www
      cwd: 'path/to/express/api', // express project folder
      args: 'start',
      node_args: '--require dotenv/config', // Include this to fix issue that dotenv variables are empty
    }
  ]
}

That’s it, see step 2 to update the ports of your apps then restart nginx.

The final working apps are somewhat like this:

List of apps and their ports.

App 1 = port 4000
App 2 = port 5000
App 3 = port 6000

Example config

module.exports = {
  apps: [
    {
      name: 'nuxt',
      exec_mode: 'cluster',
      instances: 'max', // Max or a number of instances
      script: './node_modules/nuxt/bin/nuxt.js',
      args: 'start'
    },
    {
      name: 'express',
      script: 'path/to/express/api/bin/www', // express project folder/bin/www
      cwd: 'path/to/express/api', // express project folder
      args: 'start',
      node_args: '--require dotenv/config', // Include this to fix issue that dotenv variables are empty
    },
    {
      name: 'another-express',
      script: 'path/to/another-express/api/bin/www', // express project folder/bin/www
      cwd: 'path/to/another-express/api', // express project folder
      args: 'start',
      node_args: '--require dotenv/config', // Include this to fix issue that dotenv variables are empty
    }
  ]
}

After these are in place just restart pm2 and the sites should be back up now.

pm2 kill

pm2 start

Here are the demo apps that made me go through this last night.

Express API

Nuxt.js app

I almost forgot

If you want to try out DigitalOcean, you can use my referral link.

Using my link saves us both some extra hosting money.

Closing

Ok that was longer than expected. Let’s end it here for today. Bye then!………..

By the way it was all over the internet that Biden won today…

Bye then for real :D

It’s that time for job hunting again.

Nothing much going right now, working on my previous project for laundry app and porting to multiple frameworks to show prospective employers.

As always I’m placing a Nen limitation on myself to not play any games until I get a new job. (Second or third time doing this)

No noeed to stretch this out, that’s all.

Trick or Treats!

Need to write on that some time later.

During the announcement of a Community Quarantine or “Lockdown”.

Because that is what it is, even officials being interviewed is saying that it is not a “Lockdown” but similar to a “Lockdown”.

You know what comes to mind when I hear the term Lockdown?

Terran Ghosts, Siege Tanks, Carriers and Battlecruisers

Okay I’m getting side tracked back to the topic, so I had to go back to our house with my parents and leave the place I’m renting.

I don’t have much food and supplies. I thought it would suck to be stuck in there alone so when the rumors that there’s going to be a community quarantine I packed my laptop and left.

Fast forward to present, A month and a half quarantined.

It’s back to my Asus again. My old trusty partner for almost 6 years.

When I bought the new box last christmas I gave this to my parents, nice thing is that my good friend handed me down his old laptop.

What I am using in typing this right now. Still works great with MX Linux.

There is this SSD in a portable enclosure I bring everywhere as my work OS, so no problem whichever computer I am using.

This is loaded with Pop OS; An Ubuntu based distro which I really like.

Easy to use and loads Steam games without issues.

It’s all good but when it’s running on older machines like my Asus, the limited resources are creeping out.

Lack of RAM keeps slowing down the system and the Gnome also uses a lot of memory.

When used with IDEs like Android Studio and PHP Storm a significant slowness is noticeable.

Oh and on top of that, the fan broke. (Pics to upload later.)

You can hear the noisy grinding fan causing vibrations on the laptop.

So I realized that to remedy this lack of performance and the risk that this quarantine can be extended again…

Maybe I can get a nice budget laptop.

Requirements is not so high.

• Minimum 16GB RAM
• Decent AMD processor for multitask and to be more cheaper.

Nice to have

• Nice keyboard. I really like the HP Pavilion’s keyboard.

I kept searching and disappointed on how expensive laptops are right now.

A decent specced unit is more expensive than my gaming desktop.

For me, I’m not really a fan of laptops but I think I should invest in one since it is useful for my work.

Found one from Dell I think but when I thought about it long and hard… Why not just upgrade my Asus.

It still works great, just need to do some upgrades then it should be good as new.

Wow that introduction was longer than expected, sorry I kept rambling.

In to the meat of the matter.

There were checklist on what I thought of to improve the performance.

• Replaced Pop OS with MX Linux. ✅
• Max out the RAM to 12GB.
• Slap in the SSD as main drive. ✅
• Replaced Jetbrains' IDEs for lighter Visual Studio Code. ✅

Additional quality of life improvements that are nice to have

• Buy new battery to be used in meetings and on situational work outside.
• Replace speaker, it is cracking sound. Really bothers me even though I can use an external speaker and headsets.
• Replace fan. I had to break it down, add lots of electrical tapes and apply oil as prescribed in forums.

Greatest improvement was switching to MX Linux.

I have used Lubuntu and LXLE before for a long time but they feel like Windows 98.

LXDE isn’t the prettiest but the performance is solid.

On first search for light distros this MX is always showing up.

Gave it a try and popped the SSD’s Pop OS as soon as I can.

Of course I backed up the Pop OS first since I’ll still use that for my powerful computer.

Backing it up was easy using Gparted. I should write about this sometime or maybe just link the guide that I followed.

The built in resource monitor is a nice addition.

Customized it a little made it look really good.

Moved the menu to top then changed the wallpaper and you’re set.

I’m surprised at the wallpaper I used that it looks good here.

To get the same wallpaper, see Unsplash credits at the end. 😜

Conclusion

Don’t buy new laptop. Max out current one and extend it’s life.

Sometimes I’m thinking that my laptop was sulking when I gave it to my parents but now we are back together.

She doesn’t run as smooth back when I was using it heavily.

Her name is Gortys.

A naming convention for my other devices is they should resemble an AI or robot somewhere.

A couple examples includes my mobile internet as Skynet, my phone is GlaDOS and my PC is Claptrap, this laptop is Simaris and last but not the least my other portable HD Ubuntu install is JuiceBox.

Got where the names are from? Then I’m sure we’ll get along.

That should be all for today.

Still here? Thanks for reaching the end.

Appreciate your time!

TODO: Upload other laptop pics or on another post. Changing thermal paste, disassembling and lubing fan etc..

Photo by John Cosio on Unsplash 😉

This is Job hunter John’s Bazaar Adventures.

A bazaar is a permanently enclosed marketplace or street where goods and services are exchanged or sold.

Hmmmm enclosed marketplace for developers.. Programming services…

Yeah… That’s really forced..

Alright. This series should be alive in a while since I’m still open for work..

Freelance or Employment…

Let’s do this in daily stand-up meeting format.

Yesterday:

Yesterday, I had an exam for a local office.

They had really great perks that got me excited in a while.

It consists of 4 parts with exams.

Let’s have some story first, lately everyone seems to be looking for ReactJs or VueJS developers and also NodeJs. So the logical thing to do is to also study those.

Then around 3 in the afternoon I got a call from a recruiter, seems nice and balanced.

As all things should be.

He asked for a schedule for an exam/interview I complied and wanted it ASAP. We’ve agreed to have it at 5PM, more or less in two hours.

I was excited. I’ve setup a Laravel project on Laradock, Nginx and all.

We were on a call where I can share my screen so I can’t search for stuff.

Syntax is allowed but searching for the problems are not. Seems fair enough.

I was pumped. It was a 4 stage exam, I likened to a game of DoTA.

First stage is the first tower.

This is where the pressure is all. An important part where you know if you are at a disadvantage.

First tower is a 30 minutes exam.

Man, I’ve been reading about React, Vue, Node and all that shit until now.

This is child’s play. I have the internet I am unstoppable.

No mere mortal tower can hinder me now.

Then we got into it.

Basic FooBar, got this in the bag. Alright! That Frozen Throne is as good as melted.

Then math hit me. I need to use modulo manually without using % mod.

I can’t search for it. The Scourge rallied, killed Roshan then straight up wrecked our mid to the tree. Sending it to destination fucked.

I was defenseless, no farm, no kills, no items.

Long story short. I failed.

No hard feelings though. Examiner was fair and balanced.

It only occurred to me after that I could have searched for the solution on my phone.

He can’t see me we’re not using our cameras but yeah that doesn’t sit right with me.

This was my lose.

Today:

I am still frustrated about modulo. After the exam I was trying to make it work.

Got it to work but I think I won’t be remembering it.

Math and exams are not my strong suite.

Usually when in interviews I answer to “What is your weakness?": Math, Written Exams, Practical Exams.

Do I suck at those. Come to think of it.

Half of my successful employments were those without exams, just interviews. So when exam is present I have a 50% hired chance.

Blockers:

Math. Exams.

Conclusion

The lesson, do more projects for portfolio so it will offset the exam results hehehehe

Need to finish reading up Flutter articles then play Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus for a break.

That’s all for this today.

Going to write up on that next.

Until the next episode of Jojo’s Bazaar Adventures.

I finished this last year along with 2 HG and another MG, was busy with life.

Got hooked into playing Warframe. (Stopped playing for now)

This took longer than expected. There were many pieces to put together but relaxing as usual.

The pilot is really small. I’m considering painting this in a later time.

I will post on my attempt at painting someday.

We have this Gundam GN-X from Gundam 00 series.

I’m able to catch it on tv occasionally to have an idea of this series. Especially that scene with Lockon…

He looks like an insect, maybe a bumble bee.

Building Process

Building smaller kits like SD and HG is becoming easier now.

That’s why this one took me by surprise.

There were a lot of runners from this one.

A thing I noticed is where filing takes most of the time when building.

Now to pose and take some photos

If you would also like to build this kit you can get it on Amazon with the link below.

Model Kit: Bandai Hobby GN-X Gundam Bandai Master Grade Action Figure

☝️ I receive a commission from Amazon for purchases made through these links.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me with food Gundam money

Thank you

Take this time to take a break but not until the point it eats up my savings. (I think I’ll be good for a couple of months, should have saved like an ant.)

Oh and my Upwork page is still alive so you can hire me from there.

Still considering to be a full-time freelancer but there are more cons than being employed but hey it is welcome.

I figured it’s not for me. I can’t sell myself well yet but practice will make it eventually.

For my real resume and want to contact me for work, please visit my LinkedIn.

I’m clearing my game backlog, binging anime on Netflix, updating my resume and making fictional one like this one.

There’s this Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma I watched before until Season 2 then finished the two new seasons. It’s still fun even though I finished the manga.

I was thinking of this for a while and listed in a Trello board. Some years ago.

These companies or groups that messed up the world or shady in a way.

Wow… That intro was lengthy than I expected, enough of my ramblings let’s get to it.

I wrote the companies and moved to another post.

Remember this is just a figment of my imagination.

What do you think about my portfolio? Pretty awesome right?

Again if you are still here. Thanks a lot!

Appreciate your time.

Hope you enjoyed this mishmash as well as I enjoyed writing it.

If you would also like to read the manga I mentioned: Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma. It is already complete so no need to wait for chapters anymore. You can get the first volume from Amazon with the link below.

Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma, Vol. 1: Shokugeki no Soma (1)

☝️ I receive a commission from Amazon for purchases made through these links.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me with food Gundam money

Thank you

Clap Trap art by GaryckArntzen

John Cosio

Software Engineer > Game Developer > Researcher

Cyberdyne

- Skynet

Research and development on machine learning for the AI project Skynet

You do not talk about company name

- Project Mayhem

I’m not so good with math but the goal was to reset every record to 0 so that works with me. Tabula rasa.

Shadaloo

- Dolls

In charge of monitoring data analytics from Dolls missions and progress.

Aperture Science, Inc.

- GlaDOS

Another AI project.. The cake is a lie…

Umbrella Corporation

- J-Virus

First time venturing into pharmaceuticals and scientific stuff. Worked on research and creation of a virus for Java but ended up to be effective for other applications.

Skynet

- T-800

Research and development on T-8XX series OS.

- Time travel

Calibration of time portal with datepicker with time to prevent John Cosionnor from leading the resistance. Returning back to Cyberdyne to help again in creating AI. Need to fix my infinite for loop.

Neo Ark

- Artificial Neo-Mitochondrial Creatures

Another shady research company tasked me to help in creating enhanced soldiers and mutating people. Didn’t end well… Happens all the time.

Instatainment

- CrossWorlds MMOG

Something new and exciting after the previous work. Game development Helped work with VR experience by making AR Goggles see items only visible to avatars.

Telestrian Industries

- Spray for insect spirits

Research of a chemical spray capable of killing the insect spirits

Shinra Electric Power Company

- Mako Reactors

Designated in maintaining reactors' cooling systems. Pretty efficient and low cost but has a risk to spawn weapons and meteors.

Gazel Ministry

- Mass Driver Facility

Researcher on a nanomachine that can remove the genetic limiters placed on the world’s population but has side effect that can turn people to mutants.

The Camerata

- Transistor

Worked on setting up and customizing the Transistor’s functions. Similar to programming, added basic functions such as Get(), Void(), and so on.

Third Energy

- Dinosaur Migration

Similar to a previous experience which deals with time travel. However my task is to transport dinosaurs from the Mesozoic era to present time to balance out the ecosystem as all things should be.

Hyperion

- CL4P-TP

Worked on claptrap’s personality AI. I really enjoyed these robots I made them a banner in my backlog. I was inspired by the Hyperion’s president which started out as a low-ranking programmer(like me!)…

Shinra Electric Power Co. Logo by Draconovich

When I was a kid I remember first anime I watched was Dragon Ball.

Then I wanted to be like Goku, then Vegeta was introduced, he was not a good guy to say the least. He destroys planets and kills people but he was awesome I think he’s cooler than Goku.

So just a regular day. Checking latest chapters of Mangas and Reddit for spoilers.

Well, recently I’m seeing lot of stories about Isekai or moving to another world. Usually by accidentally getting sucked by a portal or some thing, think of Jumanji.

I remember Fushigi Yuugi and The Vision of Escaflowne for this genre. First one is more for girls and Escaflowne had robots and dragons and other cool stuff. These were shown on our local tv (GMA 7), I am not sure what the story is but I remember the titles.

Anyway to get to the point, I thought what if I were to get transported to an anime world

What should be good, a gaming world like Sword Art Online or something more messed up like Dungeon Seeker.

Then I stumbled into this post, I’m not sure how, I forgot…

That’s it!

If there was some kind of magical phenomenon that transports me to another world. It is clear, I know what I want if there is a choice. I want to be in a different world where the main characters have their hair hiding their eyes, if you know what I mean.

There was a sudden inspiration, I want to do this. I can edit my face to have hidden eyes hehehe.

Here is what happened next:

1. Took a selfie. Yeah I don’t do this a lot, I think it’s kind embarrassing but for the cause I got thru it.

2. Edit my photo, add a little more hair to cover the forehead and eyes then add the signature shadows. I have GIMP in hand so we’ll go with that.

3. Edit the image with the all star main characters from above. I don’t know most of these guys or seen their series.

4. Slap my main character face in there.

5. Write this blog post because why not.

I name this Sir Atbu sama. Here we have the first masterpiece of photo editing work for 2020.

I chuckled to that while typing. Great way to start updating this site again.

This was image was fun to make and something different from coding.

That’s all. I can’t think of anything else. Bye.

Oh and if you are here. Thanks a lot!

I don’t think people actually go here, also according to analytics. hehehe

These tools have been on a roll especially GIMP.

I use it all the time to edit my Gundam photos for example.

GIMP is like Photoshop.

You can edit photos and add filters and stuff but it’s FREE!

Adobe tools are great but the price is too high. I’m only doing graphics from time to time mostly for hobbies.

It doesn’t make sense to shell out money for that while GIMP does what I need.

I’m only scratching the surface with basic stuff for now.

Inkscape is for creating vector graphics.

Only used it for that to create an icon of this logo.

More experienced people might use it to its full potential but hey it’s also FREE!

Can’t complain about these tools.

So give them a try, who knows they might be useful to you too.

Notice how it looks like a terminal icon then I’ve added my initials JC there?

I’m happy with it, feeling so creative here.

I don’t know if there could be tons like that online.

Nothing much to see here.

Sharing a bit about my logo and how it fits the theme of this site.

I’ve been busy lately with migrating my site from WordPress to Hugo. Playing around with Digital Ocean droplets, Setting up Laradock, Laravel projects with CI tools like Travis and Bitbucket Pipelines.

How did I come to the decision to leave WordPress

Well I’ve been doing a lot of WordPress for a long time.

Not entirely though since for now I am having second thoughts to recommend Hugo to clients even with Forestry.

There will still be lots of use for WordPress.

The problem is after you create a child theme, you are not sure if the parent will still be updated unless they are really big.

I’ve haven’t touch my site that much after moving it to Digital Ocean and testing out the Roots stack.

The theme I was using was Beans framework with Bedrock and Trellis.

This was working for a while until editing something or updating plugins or WordPress itself became a hassle.

Everything has to go into composer then you do Trellis commands to push it to your server. Something like trellis deploy production xxx

Not to mention that the local environment for Trellis is Vagrant when almost everything nowadays is moving towards Docker.

This took me a couple of weeks to get working. My setup was I am on a Lubuntu 18.04 laptop then Digital Ocean for server.

Alright I’m getting out of topic.

So I was trying to make a new Droplet with Laradock.

The plan was to have some WordPress sites also on Laradock along with new Laravel Projects.

Getting WordPress to work was successful but when I tried my site(This one) it does not work when changing to my theme.

Following standard debugging of WordPress to use default theme and turning off plugins the culprit was the theme itself.

This happens after I import my files. I am using the WordPress importer.

Ok so at this point I am tired of things not working. I may now know what I am doing.

I’ve exhausted multiple solutions from Stack Overflow.

There is this option to look for a new base theme since Beans is not actively being updated anymore. A bit sad since this was promising some years ago.

I’m checking out Sage it uses blade templating same with Laravel.

The thing is when I go this route the things are still the same.

Then while surfing the vast oceans of the internet(mostly Google) I came upon static site generators and Hugo

When reading the documentation there are a few points that got me interested.

• Hugo is using Go or Go Language

  • Haven’t heard of this before but looks like blade templates.
  • New language to learn and use, that’s a plus

• Hugo has great themes ready to use

• It is fast since they are static sites

• Can be hosted anywhere

• Writing posts and pages are done by using Markdown

  • The new WordPress editor are doing that
  • Don’t like the feel of new page builder like blocks so might as well give this a try
  • Markdown seems simpler to write as you get more familiar. Used in Github, Jira, etc.

After reading and installing it one weekend I got hooked.

There are lots of things to do. Doing automatic deploys on commit and more.

Further development

I am using the issues in Github to add things needed in this site.

It is easier since the code and blog itself are in one place.

Quick recap of my setup

These are what I used for this site. I think that’s all but will update later when I forgot some.

Hugo + Digital Ocean + Laradock + hello-friend-ng theme + Fancybox + Cloudinary + Forestry + Talkyard + Travis CI

Most can be authenticated with your Github account, with this my Github got a lot of important points.

I will be writing more details on the tools and other stuff I used but that will be on another post.

Commercial time

Thank you for reaching this part.

Not sure if this was interesting. Just rambling about my experience on switching.

So far, I’m happy with Hugo and creating new posts and pages.

Would like to take this time to mention a couple of sites that would certainly support me run this blog.

Digital Ocean

Easy cloud hosting for developers.

Create servers on 1 click they play around with them then delete if you messed it up without repair then repeat.

Cloudinary

Image management tools. We can upload our files here instead of making our repo bulky with cover and gallery images.

☝️ I receive a commission from Digital Ocean and incentives from Cloudinary for purchases made through these links.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me with food Gundam money

Thank you

TLDR

Not able to make old theme and updated WordPress to work so instead of redoing site with new theme, moved over to hugo made a blog static.

Learned a couple of new stuff along the way.

To check out the messed up WordPress install you can visit https://wp.johncosio.com/

I also backed up the whole working site as static thanks to [HTTrack](https://www.httrack.com/.

It can be visited at https://static.jcos.io/

What do you think?

Are you considering moving to static site generators like VuePress, Jekyll and Hugo?

Let’s talk in the comments below.

Hello,

Just sharing this photo here since it’s getting some traction in Unsplash.

This is one of my photos taken when I was travelling to Ilo Ilo last year.

I was too lazy to write something about the trip with the other photos.

Feels good to see this being used by other people.

Please do check out Anita’s:

45 Of The Most Stunning Paradises Around The World

Maybe I’ll try to add some more blogs that use my photos.

Happy travelling!

Photo by John Cosio on Unsplash 😉

<p>
  Trying something different with the layouts.
</p>

<p>
  Also playing around with changing the Gundam&#8217;s color with this one.
</p>

Before

After

A quick edit with colors.

Changing from red to blue and the guns near the eyes.

More practice with glowing things like the gun scopes and eye.

Sometime in the future I would like to paint this.

Also I’ve recorded the editing so I can post some speed edit videos. Yey!

One more SD remaining from initial stocks (Might buy 1 last more).

Unicorn Phenex up next!

Saving the Magnum for last in this set.

If you would also like to build this kit you can get it on Amazon with the link below.

Model Kit: SD Gundam EX-Standard Sinanju

☝️ I receive a commission from Amazon for purchases made through these links.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me with food Gundam money

Thank you

I finished over during the holidays. Had some problems using my Mother’s laptop. It was just shutting down without warning.

Can’t blame the laptop since it’s really old. Stopped running Windows XP and had to reformat with Linux.

LXLE made it usable again but that’s a story for another time.

Setting up

I need to get some base to pose the Gundam in the air.

I’ve tried with a pink background with a folder then to make it stand with a chopstick in between two dumbbell.

Well gotta improvise until a proper base.

Before

After

There are some new things I’ve done here.

Multiple color changes of parts.

What I like the most was the chest since that ended up looking normal.

I’ve also did a lot of detailing especially in the face and the Crossbones.

Tried changing the gun to be a lightsaber but it doesn’t look so good.

This was take from the Sinanju to have a dual wielding effect.

Didn’t remove the background cleanly so I used the white background to make it look like it was very bright.

If you would also like to build this kit you can get it on Amazon with the link below.

This kit only comes in SD frame, Cross Silhouette frame sold separately.

I don’t have one yet. 😛

Model Kit: SD Gundam Cross Silhouette Crossbone Gundam X1

☝️ I receive a commission from Amazon for purchases made through these links.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me with food Gundam money

Thank you

Getting the hang of it now.

My brother has been building an HG kit and he said it took him around 3 hours or more.

I’m looking at 2 more SDs then going for an HG or straight to my MG on stand by.

If you would also like to build this kit you can get it on Amazon with the link below.

Model Kit: SD Gundam EX-Standard Sinanju

☝️ I receive a commission from Amazon for purchases made through these links.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me with food Gundam money

Thank you

Tried editing the background out and replacing with space.

Subject is the Gundam Deathscythe-Hell EW version.

Practicing adding glowing things to eyes and the scythe.

Before

After

I got some more posts coming up. Cleaning up the Gundam Crossbones and working on the SD Sinanju.

Still 2 more SD then moving on to my MG kit or get some HG for practice.

If you would also like to build this kit you can get it on Amazon with the link below.

Model Kit: SD Gundam EX-Standard Gundam Deathscythe-Hell EW

☝️ I receive a commission from Amazon for purchases made through these links.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me with food Gundam money

Thank you

This is actually quite relaxing. Haven’t opened Steam in a while.

Space background image in edited photo by Alexander Andrews

So after looking around on how to paint and what best way to do this, I ended up coloring and working on this using my computer.

This is the previous SD we built – Wing Gundam EW

Before

After

Cleaned up some nubs, changes colors and a lot more easier done.

Pros of using computer

• Cheaper I didn’t have to buy any paint
• Faster, it is seen asap. Does not need to wait for paint to dry.
• Can look really good depending on skill level. (Still starting out, my second shot at this)
• Can easily remove nubs as well

Cons

• Can’t really display the finished product since only digital
• Sometimes it’s hard to use mouse with drawings
• That’s all I can think for now

If you would also like to build this kit you can get it on Amazon with the link below.

Model Kit: SD Gundam EX-Standard Wing Gundam Zero EW

☝️ I receive a commission from Amazon for purchases made through these links.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me with food Gundam money

Thank you

Helpful video I saw so far which I used for reference

He does toy photography tutorials and stuff.

Tools for editing

• GIMP

GIMP because it’s free and this is only a hobby I do when there’s time to spare so no need for Photoshop.

Yeah that’s it for now. Just a lot of googling and see what looks good.

Would want to do some bigger and cooler kits but we’ll see.

Funding is a big constraint, the prices of model kits here are expensive as hell. It’s like they replaced the Yen with Pesos but same currency or more.

Maybe I can get one every payday. Maybe…. or more….

Anyway we have this Gundam Crossbones. He looks like a pirate, I’m not familiar with the story but he sure looks cool.

Building Process

These are really getting easier the more kits I work on.

Same old process of cutting the pieces then slapping them together. I didn’t bother taking extra care when removing the pieces since I’ll be editing them out with GIMP later.

A little different with the arms but overall it’s the same.

Trying out something different

I’ve intentionally not added the stickers except for the eyes.

I’ll try working on this later on the computer.

Photo editing the colors and details.

I’ll be calling this Photoshop since that’s what it’s commonly called but I’ll be using GIMP later.

Now to pose and take some photos

If you would also like to build this kit you can get it on Amazon with the link below.

This kit only comes in SD frame, Cross Silhouette frame sold separately.

I don’t have one yet. 😛

Model Kit: SD Gundam Cross Silhouette Crossbone Gundam X1

☝️ I receive a commission from Amazon for purchases made through these links.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me with food Gundam money

Thank you

We have another SD from Gundam Wing.

The Gundam of Heero Yuy. It’s really cool but I like the Deathscythe more, personal preference I guess.

I wanted to start painting but currently still looking and learning from tutorials online.

I’m not sure if this Endless Waltz batch of SD have all of the EW Gundams but it would be great to collect all.

If you would also like to build this kit you can get it on Amazon with the link below.

Model Kit: SD Gundam EX-Standard Wing Gundam Zero EW

☝️ I receive a commission from Amazon for purchases made through these links.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me with food Gundam money

Thank you

Figured I can edit them to add details then clean up nubs.

Picture time!

You might want to see the edited version

If you would also like to build this kit you can get it on Amazon with the link below.

Model Kit: SD Gundam EX-Standard Gundam Deathscythe-Hell EW

☝️ I receive a commission from Amazon for purchases made through these links.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me with food Gundam money

Thank you

See you again next build.

Last week I got back from Japan.

While I was there, the toys especially Gundam kits seems cheaper so I picked up a couple.

Built my first Gundam

The first Gundam series I saw was Gundam Wing in our local channel GMA 7 when I was a kid.

Duo’s Deathscythe was my favorite and was really lucky I got to pick this up.

Building Process

I’ve had some toys like this when I was a little so it was fairly easy.

Follow the instructions even if written in Japanese is clear.

We can follow the images on which parts go to where.

Here’s some pics I took when doing the pieces.

I need more

I think I’m addicted to this new hobby.

I’ve been planning to collect Gundams before since I had one kit when I was a kid and then realized that they’re expensive.

Currently reading and watching tutorials on painting and other stuff.

I’m not contented with the stickers when looking at other cool builds on the internet.

Also haven’t played a game when I got back.

Working on other SDs to get the hang of it.

If you would also like to build this kit you can get it on Amazon with the link below.

Model Kit: SD Gundam EX-Standard Gundam Deathscythe-Hell EW

☝️ I receive a commission from Amazon for purchases made through these links.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me with food Gundam money

Thank you

TLDR

Got and built a Gundam kit and hooked.

Know where to buy Gundam that ships internationally? Any good tutorials for beginner on painting?

Want to share your builds?

I’d love to talk and hear your recommendations.

We have a new FREE game from Humble Bundle!

☝️ I receive a commission from Humble Bundle for purchases made through this link.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me get more games.

Thank you

Get LEGO Lord of the Rings free for a limited time at https://www.humblebundle.com/store/lego-the-lord-of-the-rings

LIMITED TIME OFFER ENDS DECEMBER 22 AT 10 A.M. PACIFIC TIME

Thank to Humble Bundle for another addition to our game library.

Game can be redeemed on Steam.

To get more updates on freebies and cool stuff like these, please subscribe to our newsletter.

Know any other special promotions?

Please let me know in the comments below.

Gameplay

The game focuses on crafting and battles to get items needed for crafting. Seems really simple but there is a lot to it.

On later stages the game could get a little grindy but not to the point that it feels like a slog.

There are lots to do in the games. Craft stuff, craft weapons, furniture and more.

Story

Main character is Flux Dabes, She is a she but I was it was in the middle of the game where I realized that.

Bet she’s hot under that infinisuit. She is a shipping expert and the story mostly revolves around delivering the packages.

Another important character is Juicebox the robot that allows follows you around. Juicebox’s dialogues are entertaining and hilarious.

I also like the pacing of the story. Feels about right.

TLDR

If you are thinking about playing a new game with great fun story and can keep you entertained for hours get this game now. Even better when on sale but It’s worth it. There are also some achievements/perks among other ButterScotch games.

There’s also a nice story of how they start up working on Crashlands.

Thinking of adding gameplay videos here on another post.

That’s all for now.

Until next game, bye!

How are you doing?

So I was thinking about some stuff. When I first created my website it was just so I can create one for myself.

To be able to add to my resume. Thought it could come handy during interviews like “Hey I have experience with WordPress and stuff. Check my email I use my own domain” then I was learning a lot.

There were some ideas of monetizing it, adding some ads, selling stuff but now I’ve decided to just write stuff.

Maybe the readers and the ads will come in time but that is not the target now.

With this I think I’ll be able to add more stuff since I’m not concerned about how many words in a post, does it pass SEO checklists.

I’ve remove the ads. There are useless since there aren’t that many viewers and posts anyways. LOL

For now I’ll just make this like my personal page or something like my Facebook wall.

Post whatever I want without anymore guidelines to follow.

There were some stuff I was into back then like “How to get reader’s attention with titles”, “Make quality content to get followers”, “How to monetize your website” and so on.

Since I just use Facebook for messenger. (People are still easier to contact with Facebook/Messenger)

I have a feeling I’ll be able to update this more often now.

Also, I’ve updated the homepage. I really like it a lot better now with the skate park.

That’s all for now.

See ya

Photo by ME! That is our dog stuffing his mouth with my foot. He is Milo dog.

Pretty good deal at $15 you get 5-7 games.

First time in a while playing some games that actually have and ending.

For some time I was into MMORPGs, DoTA, mobile games(Clash of Clans, Summoners War) but sometimes it’s good to go back to basics.

Back in the day you play games until you see The End, Fin.

It was a really good feeling to watch the credits.

Got my first Humble Endless RPG Lands Bundle with 2 Borderlands and more.

I’ll be busy playing the Borderlands series included in the bundle.

Feels refreshing to play single player story games again.

Now time to play. Starting with Borderlands.

Get your bundles and start expanding your game collection.

☝️ I receive a commission from Humble Bundle for purchases made through these links.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me get more games.

Thank you

Until next game!

Photo by Nhu Nguyen

Was getting burnt out after a really hard project.

I didn’t like beaches because it’s hot and I don’t know how to swim.

Somehow when trying out surfing it was really fun.

It’s like skating but on waves!

Plus it doesn’t hurt as much when falling into water.

Now on to catching bigger waves…

Oh. Need to learn how to swim first.

Photo by Johannes Andersson

There they had a couple of couple of beers.

After some time he got drunk and went home.

When he woke up he remembered the Ukelele they were playing.

He was still dizzy and could throw up but he went for his guitar then went into the wheatfield……

And poof! it became Koko Krunch………. Errr the video below. 😛

Update: May 26, 2019

Not very pretty to watch when I think about it now.

Title should be drunk guy with hangover tries to play guitar 😵

Photo by Mikhail Vasilyev

Yeah… Lot’s of stuff to write here but I’m keeping this ready for now.

This here is the credit card debt(Death).

The idea of puns and credit card debt(Death)

I wanted to start with drawing stuff like these for a long time and share it.

If my memory serves me right, I was talking about this idea with my friends and drew it for more details.

After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

We know the bad of having credit cards and even worse if you are deep and maxed it.

What’s next? Make a digital version of this draft.

I’m gonna do this in GIMP, paint or try to draw in my phone with some apps.

While most of the time it is only used for displaying your products or your company information

We’ll be talking on ways to get some cash back from just having a website online.

Regarding how much and how big or small you get, your mileage may vary.

Back on topic now, Here comes my list:

Place advertisements This is a very common way to get some income, you only need to get an advertiser and place their ads on your website. Google Adsense is one of the most popular ad networks. You can also sell ad space for fixed amount per month.

1. Affiliate Marketing

“Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.”

Is what shows up when you search for it while in my definition, you simply help a company sell their products then they give you a commission.

This is done by placing ads or writing a review of a product and recommend it to customers.

2. Sponsored Reviews

The same as Advertisements and Affiliate Marketing, you write a review for a company and you can charge before you do the writing.

You will be writing some good reviews to convince people to buy your sponsor’s products.

3. Sell Products

Yes, this couldn’t be more obvious.

You can setup an online shop or just present a single product you are focused on.

4. Accept Tips/Donations

Some people don’t really intend to do this but if they have done something really cool, others want to give something.

I think you should provide something valuable like a really cool wallpaper, an amazing app for free or a website template to get people to send you money.

These can come in the form of Paypal Donate buttons, “Buy me a beer”, “Support us”, “Give lunch money”.

5. Using it as a marketing tool

Out of all the items in the list here, this is what worked for me.

When I was looking for web development jobs sometime around 2013, I think having a website increased my chance to get hired.

What better way to show that you can do something by sending them over to your website.

Something like this: “You can view my resume and portfolio at my website.”

So, that’s it for now. These are some of the ways people make money online. I have experienced setting up most of these on websites I manage. Did I miss something or you have other ways to share? I’d love to get some feedback.

Update: May 26, 2019

As for me, for my 5 years of having a website I haven’t earned anything.

So your mileage may really vary. 😛

Photo by Steve Johnson

Last Christmas I got myself this new domain for my URL shortener. JCOS.IO yeah!

Nice present for myself.

I just finished setting it up again because I was busy with work and with life these past few months.

There was a problem with my previous install.

A little introduction to URL shorteners. They make your links short. That is all. 😀

Why would you want to do that???

For example on twitter, the number of characters per tweet is limited to 140 characters. So if you have a really cool link you need to share to your followers and friends no matter what.

“OMGSH!!! hey check out this really cool site. the squirrel is on a jet pack with laser guns and shoots when you click!!! http://www.omglasergunspewpewpew.com/”

This won’t do because this exceeds twitter’s tweet limit. By shortening our link we can be sure that the awesomeness will be shared.

“OMGSH!!! hey check out this really cool site. the squirrel is on a jet pack with laser guns and shoots when you click!!! url.jcos.io/omgpewpew – http://www.omglasergunspewpewpew.com/”

Above example also exceeds tweet limit but you get the point.

Usually we’ll go to Bitly or TinyURL for our shortening needs but YOURLS lets us do the same on our own server. It even means Your Own URL Shortener and it’s free!

I’m not going into details about how to set it up there are many other sites which provide detailed and easy to follow instructions like the following:

url.jcos.io/2 – https://lifehacker.com/sucking-is-the-first-step-to-being-sorta-good-at-somet-1553829831

url.jcos.io/3 – https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/build-your-own-url-shortener-with-yourls–cms-22638

url.jcos.io/4 – https://raventools.com/blog/custom-url-shortener/

url.jcos.io/5 – https://trickspanda.com/install-yourls/

Even the instructions on yourls homepage is clear enough.

url.jcos.io/url/6 – http://yourls.org/#Install

I’ve also read that getting your own domain for URL shortener is great for branding.

That’s cool if you’re into that thing. Branding, marketing and stuff.

Let me know if you’d like some help with setting up your own yourls by leaving a comment below.

I get my domains for less at Namecheap.

They have some promos that you can get for $2 and below for first year.

☝️ I receive a commission from Namecheap for purchases made through these links.

This comes with no additional cost and helps me with food Gundam money

Thank you

Or you can also reach me on twitter: url.jcos.io/twitter – https://twitter.com/sudoist or linkedin: url.jcos.io/linkedin – https://ph.linkedin.com/in/johncosio

Update:

As I’m moving to Digital Ocean and using jcos.io as primary domain, I think I won’t be needing to use a url shortener for now.

Added the original links and it really shortens stuff but I don’t even use twitter now so… Yeahhhh taking it down now.

To earn some extra MONEY.

Yup that is correct, after reading so many articles, guides and tutorials on writing blog posts and making money from your blog; I decided to give it a try.

The problem is after having signing up with those blogging services and customizing how your site looks, you don’t have anything on it.

I find it hard to write something about anything.

This continued on my self-hosted WordPress sites.

I read this article at lifehacker: url.jcos.io/1 sometime ago.

It kind of makes sense, I suck at writing and I don’t have great and world changing topics to write about.

Here is what usually happens when trying to write something before:

• You look for a topic with search keywords and stuff
• You make a draft about it
• It must be long for proper SEO and minimum words
• You don’t publish until you think people will like it and it should be helpful and stuff for them views
• It never gets published
• When you look at it after a long time, you don’t want to publish it anymore
• It is now forgotten. The end.

Some thoughts

When my other website expired with some of my posts(around 5) in a span of a year.

Really low publishing rate.

I got caught in the trap above.

So here is where “Sucking Is the First Step to Being Sorta Good at Something” comes in.

I can now write short and whatever posts.

It doesn’t have to be very good, it just have to be published.

Like prototyping and agile in programming, you get the product out and then you improve it based on customer feedback but in writing… maybe experience….

I stopped trying to write really good, perfect and helpful stuff, I just write….. anything.

Anything that I can think of. Look at this post for example, it’s all over the place.

Even the punctuation and the grammar could be wrong but whatever man.

I’m still writing anyway.

Short story long. Write and write until you improve then write some more.

As programmers say(I read it somewhere but I can’t find it when searching) You don’t become good, you just become less bad.

Oh and about that making money from blog.

I never made any anyway.

Site’s got no traffic, no ads = no income.

Well in a way, we can say I did. Indirectly.

When I showed it to people during interviews.

Make something to show that you can.

My goal now is to flood this site with blog posts and make jcos.io show up in Google’s number 1 spot when searching John Cosio.

What will being on number 1 do? I don’t know, I just me to want to be there.

Maybe I can say that I’m an expert at SEO too.

Oh and being sorta good at writing. That’s a start.

As you can see I’m still getting the hang of this, any tips, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Sige paalam

The game storyline involves a God like figure at the beginning then ends up to be the main antagonist or false at the end.

Spoiler Alert: Some games only reveals this when on the last boss or at the later parts of the game.

The latest game that I’m currently playing is Path of Exile, I wanted to play some Action Role Playing Games after I finished the Star Craft 2: Legacy of the Void story.

Just played coop and single player. I suck big time with playing against other humans.

I feel that I’m really getting old, my reaction time has slowed down a lot in games like Star Craft where there are so many things happening.

Recent games with this example

 Back to topic, I was at ACT IV of Path of Exile when I realized that this does have the same theme.
 
 In ACT III, you would have to defeat the High Templar Dominus of the main city of Theopolis.
 
 By the name itself the place is bound by faith of some sort and maybe it is the central form of their government since Dominus is the one who sentenced criminals to be exiled instead of imprisonment or execution.
 
 They thought they could become God or are working for God but ended up doing shit for Nightmare.
 
 Also Emperor Voll in ACT IV is somewhat similar as he thought he was doing the right thing but ended up a farmable boss that gives lots of exp and loot.

Other games I played before

 In Final Fantasy Tactics, St. Ajora is the preacher known early in the game but in truth he is the host to the demon that is the final boss.

 In Alundra, the main antagonist is Melzas. He was worshipped by the people in town and was praying to him. Their prayers gives him powers and the village priest also helps him to deceive the people to worship him.

 Well, in Star Craft there was this Xel’Naga the Protoss believed to be helping them but in the end it was Amon. Also the last boss of the game.

Some games on the top of my head are Warcraft, Final Fantasy Tactics, Alundra, Final Fantasy 7, Terranigma. Xenogears. Valkyrie Profile. Well I could be wrong with these, will need to play them again and will add more.

I’m just sure about Alundra, Tactics, Path of Exile, Warcraft and Star Craft

Think I missed some of your favorites?

Feel free to add your list on the comments and I might get to try out something new.

Credits:

Thanks to the artist of the Lucavi image. Found it on google images.

Update: May 26, 2019

By the way thanks to Gaurav Ramanan for his answer on how to do spoilers in html

Used this above on the spoilers. Got stuck on that on a while

I’m migrating my site from WordPress to Hugo which now uses Markdown.

Have to write about that later.

There were many people looking for “Experts”.

WordPress Experts, Design Experts, SEO Experts, PHP Experts, Rockstar Designers blah blah blah.

What the heck does that even mean?

Then they are looking for the cheapest and fastest that can deliver.

Is that even possible?

Questions started to pop up one after another which I can’t even answer.

Am I an expert?

I’ve been customizing and building websites from some time but I can’t consider myself an expert.

Is there a gauge or a scale we can use to measure up our expertise? Maybe like a scouter in Dragon Ball which measures power/expertise levels.

A quick google search on expert gives us this “An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability based on research, experience, or occupation and in a particular area of study.”

Well with that definition I can say that I’m an expert but for now I’d stick to “Experienced” or “Practiced” maybe.

That’s all for today, just a random rant out of a random thought.

How about you guys? Are you experts? Is there a certain level before you can consider someone an expert?

Please do let me know by leaving a comment below.

This time we’ll be talking about Plants vs Zombies.

It came out around 2009 when I was still in college, some of my friends introduced me to it.

At first I found it weird. Usual tower defense games have the camera position on top but this is like playing Mario and other side scrolling games. Before I knew it was playing for more than 8 hours straight in story mode.

Gameplay is simple, the plants are there in the lawn to stop the zombies from coming into your house and eat your brains. Just place plants for each lane to survive the zombie waves.

I think the main feature that makes this game so addictive is the Survival Endless mini-game.

The goal is to survive as many rounds and to think of different setups of plants to last that long. I’ve seen some do thousands but my highest is only 78 Flags. 😀

There is the Zen Garden mode where you can collect the plants in the game and water it and grow it then just watch them move around.

Overall a fun and highly repeatable game to keep you entertained and busy for hours.

You can also share your highest survival scores and strategy with friends.

That’s all for now.

See you guys again, bye!

Spore lets you create vehicles, creatures and buildings and more.

It was really a good game and I enjoyed busting planets and evolving creatures and mixing body parts and whatever.

I’ve stumbled upon some of my creations when I played it before.

Doing some art in-game. Check it out.

My spore version of the Hydralisk.

It kinda looks like a cuter imitation Hahaha

I really like the Quillboar race from Warcraft and when playing DotA I used Rigwarl a lot.

This is how he ended up in spore creature creator.

A little closer to how they really look.

Brains not working well.

Just laying on the sofa.

Channel surfing until finding an interesting show.

Watching some Key & Peele skits.

Playing mobile games.

Browse lolcats.

There are just days that things don’t seem to be productive as you’d like to.

I’ll just declare this day as a national day-off and might as well write something here.

I think cats can understand how I’m feeling right now.

Some of them look really bored, lazy and relaxed.

Anyway that’s all about it.

Relaxin’ and lazing around.

Doesn’t make sense?

Ummm yeah, doesn’t even have to.

I used to have another blog and use this as my landing page but it is now inactive.

I’ll be trying to use this from now on.

I haven’t really thought about what to write here.

I just want to be able search myself correctly from Google results.

Maybe next time I’ll land on the number one spot.

By the way I really like black backgrounds with shiny life stream like images from FF7.

Well that’s about it for the first post.

Hope I’ll be able to write again soon.