Why you should solve little problems
Opinion

Why you should solve little problems

I love creating many small projects that I can use as opportunities to learn! I hope that I can convince you dear reader, lets get stuff built!

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Migration to Mastodon
Mastodon

Migration to Mastodon

How I joined thousands of developers, jumped the Twitter ship and headed for the great plains of Mastodon! The migration to Mastodon as been awesome!

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Azure DevOps agent on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
QuickFix

Azure DevOps agent on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

How I recently set up an Azure DevOps agent on Ubuntu 22.04. This post describes a workaround for the "No usable version of libssl was found" error message.

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Why does software decay?
Software

Why does software decay?

Why is it that some software projects work decades after initial development and other projects require constant upkeep? Does the software we write today have an expiration date?

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Migrating to React from Durandal, slowly
migration

Migrating to React from Durandal, slowly

One of the client projects that I work on makes use of Durandal and KnockoutJS for their front end. This approach is quite old, so old that Durandal's Github repository has not received significant updates in several years and has even been archived.

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Stream Emojis - Build it yourself πŸ› 
Getting Started

Stream Emojis - Build it yourself πŸ› 

I have been streaming the development of the Assistant for No Man's Sky for a while now, over on my Twitch channel...

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Localization / Localisation - Part 1
Localisation

Localization / Localisation - Part 1

Localisation is one of the parts of designing software that can be very difficult and can be extremely costly when overlooked. As with most...

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1 Year since launching the Assistant for No Man's Sky
Localisation

1 Year since launching the Assistant for No Man's Sky

My life has changed quite a lot since the release of the Assistant for No Man's Sky app! I have learned so much and had the honour of talking with some of the most passionate No Man's Sky players worldwide!

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Static Site generation the hard way
Performance

Static Site generation the hard way

How I used MVC Razor pages to generate a static website from dynamic data for the Assistant for No Man's Sky website

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AssistantNMS Incident 2020-03-31
Management

AssistantNMS Incident 2020-03-31

Recently I have been adding documentation to the Assistant for No Man's Sky API. While I was adding some 'useful' comments and explanations I was also tightening up it's security...

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Intro to Flutter
Flutter

Intro to Flutter

Flutter is a relatively recent addition to cross-platform mobile app development frameworks. It is a Google product, open source, and has a very strong and growing community. If you’re not too familiar with Flutter, the below will cover how it works, and the pros and cons of using it.

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Creating an App for No Man's Sky
Flutter

Creating an App for No Man's Sky

How I created the Assistant for No Man's Sky App. Accidentally released it, and have been working on making it better ever since

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Flutter CI Android App Bundle πŸ“¦
Flutter

Flutter CI Android App Bundle πŸ“¦

How to create an Android App Bundle aab file with Azure DevOps Continuous Integration extensions / tasks. I made an Azure DevOps extension that lets you...

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Flutter pub upgrade Issue [SOLVED]
Flutter

Flutter pub upgrade Issue [SOLVED]

How I encountered and solved a Flutter pub upgrade issue when trying to use Flutter Desktop on the master channel of Flutter

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Creating an App for No Man's Sky
Getting Started

Creating an App for No Man's Sky

I have (like many Software Engineers) have too many side projects. I think it is due to the intoxicating ☠ feeling of starting a project that has a lot of potential.

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Flutter with CI / CD
Flutter

Flutter with CI / CD

Recently I started messing around with creating an app using Flutter. It seems to be really close to React Native in terms of how Components (in this case Widgets) are created and used.

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Digital Ocean lost SSH key πŸ”‘
Digital Ocean

Digital Ocean lost SSH key πŸ”‘

A solution to having lost your SSH key and no longer being able to log in to a Digital Ocean Droplet

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KurtLourens.com Redesigned 🧩 (How it was made)

KurtLourens.com Redesigned 🧩 (How it was made)

kurtlourens.com is my online CV website. I first created the site way back in Feb 2016. Looking back at, the site was poorly constructed as I had a very basic understanding of...

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MathMax.io 'Hacking'

MathMax.io 'Hacking'

kurtlourens.com is my online CV website. I first created the site way back in Feb 2016. Looking back at, the site was poorly constructed as I had a very basic understanding of...

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