https://brighamskarda.com Brigham Skarda's personal blog. Personal Blog en-us Copyright (c) 2025 Brigham Skarda https://brighamskarda.com/favicon.ico https://brighamskarda.com https://brighamskarda.com/articles/sea_of_stars_-_game_review Sea of Stars is a good game that is often overrated, and that can leave a bad feeling in your mouth. That pretty much sums up my feelings for it. It has beautiful art, music, and an engaging combat system. But its story is simple, and my parts of the game lack depth. Let’s get into it, and fear not, the first part of this review is spoiler free. Video GamesThu, 13 Nov 2025 12:00:00 +0000https://brighamskarda.com/articles/fish_report_-_november_7,_2025_lost_creek_reservoir_-_11_fish Things have been pretty slow in my fishing life lately. Since moving up to Ogden I haven't been able to go to any of my normal spots. And if there's one thing I know about fishing, finding "the spot" is like 80% of the battle. AdventuresFri, 07 Nov 2025 12:00:00 +0000https://brighamskarda.com/articles/i'm_on_mastodon Just wanted to announce that I'm on Mastodon now! https://mastodon.social/@brighamskarda LifeTechnologyThu, 30 Oct 2025 12:00:00 +0000https://brighamskarda.com/articles/ride_report_-_october_24,_2025_stansbury_island Well, I went on a small motorcycle ride last week through trappers’ loop (which was a beautiful, though short road through the mountains) thinking it was going to be the last ride of the season. And then this weekend came, and the weather was still quite nice. So, I decided to go out to Stansbury Island on the Great Salt Lake. AdventuresFri, 24 Oct 2025 12:00:00 +0000https://brighamskarda.com/articles/life_update_-_october_3,_2025 Just wanted to give a life update since a lot has changed in the past couple months. LifeFri, 03 Oct 2025 12:00:00 +0000https://brighamskarda.com/articles/final_fantasy_vii_-_game_review Final Fantasy VII is an amazing game. I just finished playing all the way through it for the first time. And I have a lot of thoughts on it. But above all else I enjoyed playing the game and I would recommend it to others. Also, the first section of this post is spoiler free. Let's get right into it. Video GamesWed, 06 Aug 2025 12:00:00 +0000https://brighamskarda.com/articles/my_top_twenty_games_of_all_time Well, various people I know are making lists of their top twenty video games of all time. So I thought I would add my list to the discussion. Video GamesWed, 06 Aug 2025 12:00:00 +0000https://brighamskarda.com/articles/vacation_to_banff This past week I went on a vacation with my family to Banff National Park in Canada. I just wanted to share some of the things we did. AdventuresTue, 29 Jul 2025 12:00:00 +0000https://brighamskarda.com/articles/ride_report_-_july_2,_2025_rain_in_butterfield_canyon Just a small little ride up one of my favorite places. Butterfield Canyon is great because it has a narrow-paved road with lots of sharp turns. It is close to the valley, but not nearly as crowded as either of the cottonwood canyons. AdventuresWed, 02 Jul 2025 12:00:00 +0000https://brighamskarda.com/articles/chess_devlog_huge_performance_improvements I just released v2.0.3 of https://github.com/brighamskarda/chess. And it has some huge improvements. It went from taking over 20 seconds to calculate perft 6 from the staring position to taking just 6.5 seconds with profile guided optimization enabled. Here are some of the changes I made. TechnologyFri, 20 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000https://brighamskarda.com/articles/chess_devlog_perft_testing Just wanted to give an update on a cool little thing I learned about recently. phaul21 brought to my attention that I had no perft testing in my library. TechnologyTue, 17 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000https://brighamskarda.com/articles/introducing_chess_v2_a_new_chess_library_in_golang This has been a project I've been working on for a good bit now, and I'm finally excited to announce version 2.0 of my chess library written in Golang. I've learned a ton from this project, and I'm excited to share it with the world. TechnologyMon, 16 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000https://brighamskarda.com/articles/final_fantasy_ix_-_game_review Recently I finished playing Final Fantasy IX and I wanted to share some of my thoughts. It's a game I've always wanted to play. Its art style and old-school fantasy theme are things that were always appealing to me. I wanted to see what the game was about and if it stood up to the online reviews. Video GamesWed, 04 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000https://brighamskarda.com/articles/ride_report_-_june_3,_2025_little_salt_lake,_parowan_petroglyphs,_and_frisco_kilns This was a bigger ride. I wanted to take the opportunity to ride to southern Utah before it got too hot. The weather was fantastic. It was 75 degrees and sunny pretty much everywhere. AdventuresTue, 03 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000https://brighamskarda.com/articles/my_gripe_with_pgn_notation I just wanted to gripe about the PGN file specification for chess games. Lately I've been working on version two of my chess library written in Go. (Which by the way is looking really nice by the way. It has significantly faster move generation than some of the competition.) TechnologyFri, 02 May 2025 12:00:00 +0000