Writing

Way overdue, but with the release of Microsoft PowerToys 0.83.0, my very own PowerToys Awake comes in tow with a bunch of improvements that I wanted to do for a long time. This release is codenamed DAISY023, in reference to, of course, Daisy-023.

I’ve spent some time optimizing OpenSpartan Workshop (the latest release is definitely mostly a performance improvement), and so you can now enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Get a glimpse into the aggregated playlist wait times for Halo Infinite.

As part of the work on OpenSpartan Workshop I needed the capability to convert a Xbox gamertag into its immutable identifier - the Xbox user ID, also commonly known as the XUID. My plan was to add the option for someone to find all the matches where they played with a specific player.

OK, look - I am not the one to tell you that you absolutely have to track your stats for a damn video game, but I am the kind of person that finds a certain fun in that, just like I find the fun in reverse-engineering the entire Halo Infinite API. There is a certain beauty in looking at your own numbers, even if they are for some meaningless, entirely made-up progression system.

How to easily create automatic rich captions for your videos in DaVinci Resolve without having to pay for the Studio version or using third-party plugins.

A new version of OpenSpartan Workshop is released, adding support for The Exchange, ranked tier counterfactuals, comprehensive event tracking, a faster match search, and more.

I talked about Halo Infinite career ranks some time ago, but I kept needing to come back to the idea that I just wanted to have a quickly accessible list that just tells me what rank experience requirements are and how far along to Hero each rank is. No ads, no, fluff, just the table. Said table is now here.

With the launch of Halo Infinite in 2021, 343 Industries introduced the concept of battle passes in Halo. The concept itself is not new in the gaming industry per-se, but it’s new to Halo. It’s effectively a limited time opportunity for players to earn in-game rewards during what is referred to as a season (although that term becomes a bit overloaded now).

Just yesterday the new build of Halo Infinite dropped. With this build, one of the biggest changes that graced us with its presence is The Exchange - a new virtual venue where a player can use a new in-game currency, Spartan Points, to acquire all sorts of already known cosmetics.

To remove the toil of writing authentication code directly, our team at Microsoft has been working on adding a new tool to the developer toolbox - an authentication broker.

Another week, another release of OpenSpartan Workshop (1.0.3, build ESCHARUM-03052024)! This one was a fun to build because it introduces a few improvements that will delight its users.

Maintenance release inbound! I had to fix a few bugs with the performance of the application, add some parallelization, and update the installer to make sure that the .NET components are not uninstalled when the upgrade of OpenSpartan Workshop happens.

Right after the release of the first version of OpenSpartan Workshop, I am following-up with an update that adds some quality-of-life improvements and some minor new functionality. You can get the latest release on GitHub.

The first version of OpenSpartan Workshop is officially out.