For nearly 20 years, Notepad++ has been a staple in my workflow—one of the first programs I install on every new computer, yet I never gave much thought to its origins. I admittedly never paid much attention to the release notes, and when I did, I never really noticed anything unusual. Recently, I found myself wondering about its backstory. As a widely used open-source tool with no commercial ambitions, there had to be a deeper story behind it—and there was.

With endless tasks, deadlines, and resources to track, project management can feel overwhelming. While flashy platforms promise seamless collaboration, visualization, and automation, they are not for everyone. What if the solution was already on your computer? Yes, I’m talking about Microsoft Excel.

You can boast all you want about how good of a gamer you are, but unless you have the trophies to back them up, no one is going to believe you. Even with the skills, some PlayStation trophies are absolutely brutal to earn.

Not every video game genre sticks around forever. Some fade as gaming trends shift, others as technology advances, and a few never take off due to hardware limitations. But as any retro gamer knows, no genre ever truly dies.

The cool thing about a Raspberry Pi 5 is how it can add some pretty powerful processing to a small build. Sure, you're not going to be hosting a full-blown AI model on it any time soon, but you can throw it tasks such as video game emulation and it'll do the job pretty well. That's the basis behind this build which houses a Raspberry Pi 5 in an arcade fightstick shell so you can game wherever you are.

Adobe Acrobat has long been the go-to software for PDF editing, offering a wide range of tools for working with text, images, and interactive elements. However, the high subscription cost and the software’s proprietary nature can make it less appealing for those seeking a cost-effective solution. Fortunately, Inkscape, a free and open-source graphics editor, can edit PDFs and has impressive features.

The WWE 2K games have been gracing our consoles since 2013. Since then, getting a new 2K game about the squared circle is like a Money in the Bank cash-in — you might not always be excited about it, but you know it’s coming. Sometimes, 2K gives us some great, generational updates, but often, they’re barely more than incremental.

There are some games you'll have heard of, because everyone and their mother bought a copy. Other games, you'll know because you can't go five minutes without hearing it referenced as a game that influenced a developer you like. Sometimes, both are true for the same game, but that's more often the exception to the rule.

PLA filament is the go-to material for beginners to 3D printing, and for good reason. It's easy to print, requires minimal fine-tuning, and works well with most consumer-grade printers. However, as users become more experienced and demand more from their prints, PLA's limitations start to show. It lacks durability, struggles in high temperatures, and offers limited post-processing options compared to other filaments.

Network-attached storage (NAS) is essentially a system full of storage drives. This could be a formation of solid-state drives (SSD) or mechanical hard disk drives (HDD). Regardless of which type of storage you use, you're guaranteed to encounter a drive failure somewhere in the future. While NAS-rated storage is designed to run for millions of hours inside such enclosures, nothing lasts forever. It's as inevitable as Neo from The Matrix destroying Agent Smith. The only question is when, but there are a few things you can do to better prepare yourself (and your NAS).

I'm starting to think there's a holy trifecta amongst DIY enthusiasts, including 3D printers, SBCs, and Lego. We've seen projects that take two of these components and mash them together into something cool, although I'd love to see one where all three are used at the same time. Until then, we have this excellent Michelson-Morley interferometer built using a Raspberry Pi and Lego bricks.

VLC Media Player has long been the go-to alternative for Windows Media Player on PCs. In fact, it used to be one of the first few apps I installed as soon as I set up a new computer. Over time, though, the same old design has gotten stale, and several alternatives have popped up that offer a fresh look along with a bunch of useful features. That's when I decided to explore the world of free and open-source media players that could give VLC a run for its money. Thankfully, it didn't take me long to encounter some awesome apps that rival VLC and even beat it in some ways.