// Personal website of Chris Smith

My interests

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favourite things

Inspired by Chris Burnell, this page lists things I’m currently interested in, in no particular order. I’m doing this to give people an idea about the person behind the website (this is a personal site, after all!). If anything here catches your attention and you want to geek out about it, drop me a message.

Last updated: 1st December 2025

The open web

I love the web. I miss the days when it wasn’t so dominated by corporations and social media: when everything didn’t have to seem so polished, and people just did things because they were passionate about them, not to “go viral” or whatever.

It’s still a great way to connect with people, and I wish more people would put themselves out there outside the walled gardens of Facebook and its ilk.

Tinkering

I like being able to fiddle with stuff, understand it, and tweak it to work how I want. I love open source software, and stuff that caters towards power users. I’m happy fiddling with electronics, and enjoy DIY.

I run Linux on all my computers, and will tinker with configs to get everything working just so. I write custom styles and user scripts to make websites look and behave how I want to. Using a mobile phone makes me sad because they’re so limited in what they can do in that regard.

I have a 3D printer, and gleefully churn out bits of plastic that perfectly fix problems. I don’t tend to print big “fun” things, but a lot of holders, inserts, cases, hooks, and so on.

Programming

I program for my day job, but I also really enjoy it as a hobby. Some of this is an overlap with tinkering, but I also like the abstract concept of programming as well. There’s something deeply satisfying about designing something well. Getting the level of abstraction right so it’s not too cumbersome but will likely be good enough for future changes. Finding a nice elegant way to do something. Even just refactoring to make something consistent can make me very happy.

My programming languages of choice are:

Video games

I tend to get super into a game, play it every waking moment for a little while, and then drift away from it. Sometimes I just run out of things that interest me, or it just stops being fun for whatever reason. Other times a shiny new thing takes its place. I generally prefer games that I can play cooperatively with friends. The ones I keep coming back to are:

I also enjoy attending LAN events, although it’s more for the social aspect than actually getting sweaty in video games. I’m pretty sure I’ve been to at least one LAN where I spent more time programming than playing games…

Puzzles

I love a good puzzle, especially in the format of a puzzle hunt. My favourites to compete in are Enigame and Glyph. In the same vein, I’m a big fan of Escape Rooms.

I also enjoy crosswords, an occasional sudoku, the NYT connections puzzle, and debugging why none of my code works.

Films

I’ve been watching a lot of films recently. One day I’ll make a nice page here to show off stats and things. For now you can look at my letterboxd profile to see more. My all-time favourites at the minute are:

Music

Like with films, at some point I’ll make a music stats page. For now there’s my last.fm profile. I’ll listen to a lot of things, but my favourites at the minute are all rock/metal bands with strong female vocalists:

Books

I am a voracious reader. I’ll often read for an hour or more before bed. Occasionally I’ll get hooked on a book and accidentally read it to the end, and not get to sleep until 5am or something silly.

I generally read sci-fi and litRPG (a somewhat niche genre, where the characters follow RPG-style game rules; something about the progression you get when people can explicitly level up really tickles my brain).

Some favourites:

Board Games

I like modern board games. I have a decent collection and will sometimes lug it around to foist on my friends at events, and usually have at least a few turn-based games going on Board Game Arena. I’m a big fan of engine building, but I’m also a sucker for unique mechanics and really well executed themes. Some picks: