favorites of november 23

content/post/2023/12/november-2023.md

@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+---
+title: "Favorites of November 2023"
+date: 2023-12-05T14:20:00+01:00
+tags:
+  - metapost
+---
+
+After Inktober and November's National Novel Writing Month, this time it's [DOSember](https://dosember.com/), a month long of DOS game streaming on the Twitch community! Screw the classic holiday fanfare, let's have a wonderful DOSember instead. I haven't participated in the [DOS Game Club](https://www.dosgameclub.com/)'s monthly sessions lately, but this month we're tackling Lemmings, so I might go ahead and double-check the state of my yellowed serial mouse. Judging from the unexpected influx of traffic to last week's [Renaissance of FPGAS](/post/2023/11/fpgas-and-the-renaissance-of-retro-hardware/) article, I'd say the interest in vintage hardware and software is still very much alive. 
+
+Previous month: [October 2023](/post/2023/11/october-2023).
+
+## Books I've read
+
+Yearning for something digestible in a world far far away, I started re-reading the _Malloreon_ chronicles written by [David Eddings](https://www.eddingschronicles.com/index.html). He has written tons of books set in the same fantasy world, and I honestly liked the earlier series better, but had these still lying around. Eddings' books are a great way to wind down after all that heavy non-fiction artillery.
+
+Thanks to a reader of my _Save Sourdough_ book, I bought Thomas Treffi-Chambelland's [Sourdough baking: A Treatise](https://bread-editions.com/products/traite-de-boulangerie-au-levain), my first bread-related purchase in a long time. Thomas' biologist background is clearly visible as the work starts off with a hefty amount of theory which only makes books such as this one more interesting. I haven't gotten far yet but hope that it will soon reinvigorate my baking experiments.
+
+## Games I've played
+
+Most of this month's gaming was devoted to Mario's wonderful (ha!) return to his 2D platforming roots. But before blindly jumping into [Super Mario Bros. Wonder](https://jefklakscodex.com/games/switch/super-mario-bros-wonder/), I wanted to replay a few Game Boy oldies such as [Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins](https://jefklakscodex.com/games/gameboy/super-mario-land-2/). The _Wario Land_ franchise is up next, even though I know all levels by heart. 
+
+Did you know [Commander Keen](https://jefklakscodex.com/games/gameboycolor/commander-keen/) was published on the Game Boy Color? It's not what you think it is, however: it's a completely different game with _some_ DOS Keen vibes slapped on, such as enemy design, and of course the inclusion of the pogo stick. I loved the 8-bit chiptune soundtrack by by Commodore 64 music chip expert Mark Cooksey, but the main gameplay mechanics raised more than a few eyebrows, so play it at your own risk. For the curious, this is what you're subscribing to:
+
+{{< youtube OpRpBDV5g4A >}}
+
+I also got tricked into buying [Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania](https://jefklakscodex.com/games/switch/dead-cells-return-to-castlevania/) but forgot that I hate most roguelike/roguelite games---this one included. 
+
+## Selected (blog) posts
+
+- Flemish Radio 1 published a [Deze boeken moet je lezen in het middelbaar onderwijs!](https://radio1.be/lees/deze-boeken-moet-je-lezen-in-het-middelbaar-onderwijs) (_you have to read these books in high school!_) list and it's making my head spin. I presume they forgot to mention to pick a few and not plow through everything... 
+- Justin Searls talks at RailsConf 2019 about [selfish programming](https://blog.testdouble.com/talks/2019-05-08-the-selfish-programmer/), a way to learn by building for yourself. 
+- [Love doesn't scale](https://creativegood.com/blog/23/andreessen-love-doesnt-scale.html) according to Mark Hurst---a critique on Marc Andreessen’s Techno-optimist Manifesto. 
+- If you want to have a laugh, you can read Sanjay Brahmawar's [Super iPaaS](https://blog.softwareag.com/super-ipaas-future-of-enterprise-integration) vision of the Software AG's development future. Cloud-first! Leverage the power of generative AI! Sigh.
+- Horst Gutmann celebrates [20 years of blogging](https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2023/11/28/20-years-of-zerokspot/), summarizing the gradual evolution of Zerokspot.com. Congrats!
+- Kev Quirk set up a [pen pals blogging system](https://kevquirk.com/penpals) that I'll be keeping an eye on. I subscribed and am planned in for March 2024.
+- Wesley Aptekar-Cassels tells us why [we should avoid using JavaScript CDNs](https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/why-not-javascript-cdn).
+
+## Other random links
+
+- [ChimeraOS](https://chimeraos.org/about/) is an OS that provides an out of the box couch gaming experience---it basically transforms your Steam library into a console. I didn't know it existed, cool!
+- If you're on the lookout for a robust plain-text accounting app, [Hledger](https://hledger.org/) has got you covered. 
+- [Forklift 4](https://binarynights.com/) is an interesting alternative to MacOS' built-in Finder I have yet to try out. 
+- [KeeperFX](https://keeperfx.net/screenshots) is an open-source remake & fan expansion to Dungeon Keeper. It hit version 1.0 in November! (Thanks, [Michael](https://virtualmoose.org/2023/11/12/keeperfx-1-0-released/))
+- [The Pudding Cup](https://pudding.cool/pudding-cup/) is an award for the best visual and data-driven stories of 2023, which will likely inspire your information visualization thinking mode.
+- [Guile](https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/) looks like an interesting Scheme implementation and extension language platform that I'd want to play with soon.
+- Want to run a large language model such as Llama2 locally? Download [Ollama](https://ollama.ai/) and off you go. 
+- Remember big box PC games? If you're the kind of person who threw away these cardboard boxes, no worries: you can marvel at the sizable artwork online via [bigboxcollectin.com](https://bigboxcollection.com/).
+