brainbaking/content/post/2022/04/march-2022.md

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---
title: March 2022 In Review
date: 2022-04-01T10:30:00+02:00
tags:
- metapost
---
March 2022 is no more. I'm starting to feel the same _time anxiousness_ that [Winnie Lim wrote about](https://winnielim.org/journal/time-to-be-while-being-anxious-about-time/): it feels like yesterday writing "February 2022 is no more", while this month has three more days than the previous one! Looking back at the [March blog posts](/post/2022/#Mar), they were mostly about music: creating your own streaming server, choosing the right codec, an introduction to hip-hop. I recently extended my self-hosted Docker images with Gitea (and moved a few low-impact and private repositories off GitHub) and RSS-Bridge (to add a few Twitter/Instagram feeds of friends to my RSS reader). It's great how quickly one can set up virtually _anything_ with Docker. I intend to find out how to encapsulate my wife's Wordpress + Moodle shenanigans into a self-contained Docker image.
This month felt rough. I am struggling to come up with interesting things to summarize here. I can't even remember what happened this month, except that most of it was filled with unpleasant events. A death in the family, COVID (and influenza) doing its thing after the Belgian government decided to not care anymore, Putin deciding to (try and) reclaim Ukraine, quite a tight academic teaching schedule and bread baking workshops in the weekends---it was perhaps all a bit too much.
Previous month in review: [February 2022](/post/2022/03/february-2022).
### Books I've read
Almost nothing. I was just too tired. We were both very exhausted this month and decided to pass the evenings with a Flemish classic series _[Lili en Marleen](https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/72321-lili-en-marleen)_ from the mid nineties. I did start reading up on a philosophical approach to art history and aesthetics---[De Moord Op De Kunst](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51957805-de-moord-op-de-kunst) (_The Murder Of Art_) by Thomas Crombez. Although the material is very interesting, the writing style is a bit dry. My tired brain was unable to sustain much of the words. I'll have to re-read a few sections to better grasp its essence.
### Games I've played
Just as embarrassing: almost none. After buying _Puzzle Quest DS_ in February and playing half of the campaign of _Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes_, I stashed the Nintendo DS away for some reason. Re-reading these month review posts made me realize I should give them a second look. I also promised myself I'd get started on _Dragon Quest VIII 3DS_. That also never happened.
We did buy and finish _[TOEM](https://www.somethingwemade.se/toem/)_ this month, a beautifully crafted photo taking indie game. The pacing is just right, the mood is relaxing, and it's a lot of fun to discover and photograph fauna and flora. It took us `6.5` hours to complete (almost) everything. _TOEM_ is truly a delight. It's from the Swedish devs "Something We Made"---the company name alone puts a smile on my face. We need more (AAA) wholesome feel-good games besides _Animal Crossing_!
{{< youtube U9eeGZA_jrY >}}
After re-reading my journals, I finally bought _Okami HD_ for the Nintendo Switch and played about half an hour. Like [I mentioned before](/post/2022/01/why-i-play-games), its style is simply put gorgeous.
### Selected blog posts
- [A collection of posts on Dockerizing (multiple) Wordpress instance(s)](https://trobertson.site/working-with-data-storage-in-docker-compose/) by T. Robertson
- [After 2 years of work, I am now fully self-hosted](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/tjvhzl/after_2_years_of_work_i_am_now_fully_selfhosted/) (warning: Reddit)
- [A Survival Guide to a PhD](https://karpathy.github.io/2016/09/07/phd/) by Andrej Karpathy (which contains a lot of nonsense I'd like to counter in a future post)
- [A look at search engines with their own indexes](https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html) by Rohan Kumar
- ["MP3 is dead" missed the real, much better story](https://marco.org/2017/05/15/mp3-isnt-dead) by Marco Arment
- [Talent management at The French Laundry restaurant](https://www.quartey.com/writing/french-laundry-talent) by Emmanuel Quartey
- [Auto-rip Music CDs](https://blog.winny.tech/posts/auto-rip_music_cds/) by Winny.tech
> Too many people optimize sites specifically for Google without considering the long-term consequences of their actions. One of many examples is how Googles JavaScript support rendered the practice of testing a website without JavaScript or images “obsolete”: almost no non-GBY engines on this list are JavaScript-aware.
### Other random links
- [A list of Official Nitter mirrors](https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances), the privacy-friendly Twitter front-end with built-in RSS feeds
- [Run your own social network site for your friends](https://runyourown.social/) by Darius Kazemi
- [A Complete Guide To: Wu-Tang Clan](https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Vocab/a_complete_guide_to__wu_tang_clan/2/), a Rate Your Music list by Vocab
- [Ultratop Vlaanderen Jaaroverzichten 2002 albums](https://www.ultratop.be/nl/annual.asp?year=2002&cat=a), a Flemish top album history tracker