Dupekill Project Page

Dupekill started out as a quick-and-dirty Python script to get rid of duplicate files in a directory of sounds that a friend and I had ripped from a video game. When we were writing it, I realized that I hadn't seen any apps out there that did what we were doing, so I asked him if I could take his code and improve upon it. He obliged, and over the winter of 2011 I turned the script into Dupekill.

It is now over 10 times faster than the first incarnation, can recurse into subdirectories, can be configured to ignore symlinks and shortcuts, and features a "dry run" to show the user which files would be deleted. I've used it on my own files and have tested it extensively. It does exactly what we set out to do, and I hope someone out there finds it useful.

2022-06-04 Update: There are improvements planned for future releases, including interactive choice per-file of which to keep, and options to choose for all conflicts, via command-line flags. No promises, but there are plans!

Mario and Luigi are iconic Nintendo mascots who have been through many adventures, both together and separately. Thankfully, the adventures they go on together end up being a lot funnier. Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is the third game in the Mario & Luigi series, which started on the GameBoy Advance with Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. Like the two games before it, Bowser's Inside Story has a self-contained plot, a ridiculous and hilarious story, and an engaging battle system that tests your observation skills.

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Over the past 15 years or so, the gaming industry has seen the decline of platforming games and the rise of RPGs and FPS games. Some gamers who grew up during this rise of the RPG genre began to identify themselves as "role playing gamers" as a quick way of summing up their taste in video games. This has sadly led to many people tacking the RPG genre onto any game that vaguely resembles an RPG. Such victims include Metroid, Castlevania, and -- you guessed it -- the Legend of Zelda series.

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2022-06-04 UPDATE: Sporkblog is effectively dead. I would be interested in pursuing a more modern version of Sporkblog, cleaning up the core components. It can occupy the solution space between static site generators and Wordpress. Please contact me if you are interested in collaborating on this goal.

Project Page

Sporkblog started as my first foray into web development. I began work on it in 2008, and quickly learned that the trick to software development is building something in a way that allows you to understand it when you come back to it. Months after finishing Sporkblog's first version, I came back to it and discovered that I had failed. It was a mess, and I needed to clean it up.

I began Sporkblog's next iteration, and with it I held onto some principles that I believed were most important. I decided that the blog should:

• Be easy to navigate, without superfluous information;
• Have easy-to-read source, so hacking can be done somewhat easily;
• Have well-designed HTML so themes can be made with little effort;
• Allow visitors to comment without a distorted image CAPTCHA or registering an account

I also put Sporkblog under Git revision and started learning better project management habits.

In July 2012, Sporkblog's second version was released. It included all of the functionality I considered necessary in a blog, and good enough to run my personal website on. There are still some improvements left that I believe need to be made, but it's ready to be hacked on.

I suspect some people may take notice of this some time, so I decided to answer the question pre-emptively:

Why don't any of your reviews contain scores?

Short Answer

Scores defeat the point of writing a review. My thoughts are not easily shoved into a numeric mold.

Long Answer

When you read a review for something, what matters? If you answered "score," you're wrong. Someone could post a negative review with a top score, or a positive review with an abysmal score. There are two primary questions that should be answered in every good review:

• Would you recommend this product to someone else?
• What reasons do you have to support your opinion?

It's really that simple. That's why a lot of sites have gone to "Yay" or "Nay" systems; they're simple and they allow for greater expression instead of mulling over which specific number to assign to it.

My reviews follow this principle. I urge readers to follow this elegant simplicity and do the same for their reviews.