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may 2024

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---
title: "Favorites of May 2024"
date: 2024-06-03T14:45:00+02:00
tags:
- metapost
---
It's June, and it looks like it's November. We've never had [that much bad weather](/post/2024/05/endless-pouring/) in years, and doesn't look like it's getting any better. Although admittedly Sunday was quite pleasant with a sunray or two finally managing to break through. We went to the [2024 Dutch Pen Show](https://www.dutchpenshow.com/) hosted in a hotel in Utrecht, The Netherlands and enjoyed the sun while walking around in the city center. No pens were bought on my account though, to my great disappointment. The ones that were begging to be taken home came with a price tag of over `€600`... Ouch. The overload of bottles of ink wasn't good for my choice analysis paralysis either. An enjoyable experience nonetheless, although next time perhaps I'll limit myself to virtual window shopping.
Previous month: [April 2024](/post/2024/05/april-2024).
## Books I've read
My wife recommended me a shorter [Jo Claes episode](http://www.jo-claes.be/) that was a pleasant and relaxing read well-suited for bedtime. Claes is a local crime writer and the crime scene is always in or around Leuven which is a nice touch. His experience as a historian does complement his fiction work. Don't expect anything too complicated though.
I finished Will Larson's [Staff Engineer](https://staffeng.com/) that contains numerous interesting insights in how other Staff+ Engineers tackle their work. What I really hated though is the QR codes in the reference section and the absence of an author name or year. It also feels like some sections of the book contained repeated portions of conducted interviews---it's a self-published work that could perhaps have benefited from a thorough edit. Nonetheless, there's little else out there covering the same contents and I took a lot of notes.
On to the more heavyweights now, with Neal Ford et al.'s architectural works published by O'Reilly, such as _Software Architecture: The Hard Parts_. That's everything but bedtime material, so I'm still figuring out what to digest to wind down the day.
## Games I've played
The [Turtles Cowabunga Collection](https://jefklakscodex.com/games/switch/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-the-cowabunga-collection/) is really good: Digital Eclipse manages to masterfully put together a retro collection, even though none of the games really stand out after playing the more recent _Shredder's Revenge_. Now I have to figure out whether or not to sell my physical Game Boy copies to finance something else. I'll probably regret that move after a few years...
One of my wife’s Switch eShop excavations recently yielded [Lil’ Guardsman](https://jefklakscodex.com/games/switch/lil-guardsman/), a seemingly small and perhaps a bit generic adventure game that’s leaning more towards _Papers, Please_ than a classic adventure game like _Lost in Play_, even though it is just as charming. We had a good time playing through the game together but we regularly misinterpreted what the game actually expected us to do (oops, I admitted a mass-murderer into the city?), ultimately reducing my rating from great to good.
The remake of _Paper Mario 2: The Thousand Year Door_, one of my [best games of all time](/post/2023/10/top-25-best-games-of-all-time/), was released last month! I just got it today and can't wait to dive in again after 20 years.
## Selected (blog) posts
- I let myself be inspired by [Alexander Lichter's Speaking Page](https://www.lichter.io/speaking) to create [a smilar subpage in the Brain Baking Works](/works/speaking/) archive that houses my talks and podcast appearances. It's still a work in progress.
- How about following Alin Panaitiu's advice and doing some [woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software](https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/woodworking-escape-from-software-absurdity/)? It contains an apparently legendary comment on a GitHub issue from a developer of the Docker CLI:
> Sorry I missed your comment of many months ago. I no longer build software; I now make furniture out of wood. The hours are long, the pay sucks, and there’s always the opportunity to remove my finger with a table saw, but nobody asks me if I can add an RSS feed to a DBMS, so there’s that :-)
- Apple Annie's Weblog recently posted an intriguing question: [how often do you redesign your website](https://weblog.anniegreens.lol/2024/05/how-often-do-you-redesign-your-site)? Mine is really due for some heavy paintwork. It's on the backlog but I have no idea when I'll be able to put in some work. That would be after 4 years then, I think?
- Jw's take on the IndieWeb as [a social club for devs](https://so1o.xyz/blog/3-body-problem) did spark an interesting conversation over at Mastodon.
- Ryan Florence delves into the differences between `let` and `const` in Javascript [in his EpicWeb talk](https://www.epicweb.dev/talks/let-me-be). Use `let`, not `const`.
- Baldur Bjarnason shares [his two-year review of work done](https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/2022-23-strategy-review-part-one/) and how to balance consulting work with independent publishing.
- Mike Sass writes [an ode to his lost friends](https://shellsharks.com/an-ode-to-lost-friends#title). That one really touched something.
- Alex Chan shares how to [create webarchives via the commandline](https://alexwlchan.net/2024/creating-a-safari-webarchive/) through Safari. Perhaps I should ditch my Warc ISO-standard methodology?
- Another interesting piece by Alex is how to [document DNS entries as code](https://alexwlchan.net/2024/documenting-my-dns/).
- Roy Tang shared [an interview with Richard Garfield](https://defector.com/the-creator-of-magic-the-gathering-knows-exactly-where-it-all-went-wrong) on the origins of the game and what went wrong.
- Anna Havron shares [how to (not) get over loss of a loved one](https://www.annahavron.com/blog/blog-post-on-getting-over-it).
- [You Should Keep a Developer's Journal](https://stackoverflow.blog/2024/05/22/you-should-keep-a-developer-s-journal/) says Max Pekarsky at the Stack Overflow Blog.
- People are starting to experiment with Large Language Models and [how to integrate them into your Obsidian Vault](https://ollama.com/blog/llms-in-obsidian). I've heard it's still not really worth it.
## Other random links
- Did you know [you can use WebDAV](https://docs.photoprism.app/user-guide/sync/mobile-devices/) to interact between PhotoSync and PhotoPrism? I didn't either.
- Did you know none of your devices really sleep at night? Find out what exactly is going on on your network at night [using Pi-Hole statistics and logs](https://pi-hole.net/blog/2017/02/22/what-really-happens-on-your-network-find-out-with-pi-hole/#page-content).
- [Gotify](https://gotify.net/) is a simple server for sending and receiving messages.
- Note to self: I should really make work of migrating from Nginx [to Caddy](https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/concepts#addresses).
- The [new Hugo release](https://gohugo.io/content-management/content-adapters/) contains something cool called _Content Adapters_. Not sure yet whether or not I need the added complexity.
- In case you own too many ink bottles, there's always [Fountain Pen Companion](https://www.fountainpencompanion.com/). You can also browse [pens by popularity](https://www.fountainpencompanion.com/pages/pens_by_popularity). Guess what, the Twsbi Eco and Lamy Safari are the most popular ones.
- I wish I knew about [Eisvogel](https://github.com/Wandmalfarbe/pandoc-latex-template/tree/master) sooner: a pandoc LaTeX template designed for lecture notes.