january 2024

content/post/2024/01/publish-your-work.md

@@ -17,4 +17,4 @@ It doesn't take a genius or a huge project to make a bit of an impact. Just infl
 
 I don't create or publish in the hopes of influencing others. I create things because I have an urge to create. But it sure is great to help others along the way, however small my contribution might be. I don't care about being found online and I am certainly not actively pushing my stuff down others' throats (Kleon's rule #7: _Don't turn into human spam_). I love reading about the creation process of others. I love sharing my creation process. It's almost second nature: it feels like a wasted opportunity to do something good in this world if I didn't. 
 
-If you made something, great! Why don't you tell us about it? It's simple, you just need to hire a VPS, configure `iptables`, download and customize a Hugo theme, write front matter and markdown, have a CI pipeline setup, and install Nginx. Ah, dang it!
+If you made something, great! Why don't you tell us about it? It's simple, you just need to hire a VPS, configure `iptables`, download and customize a Hugo theme, write front matter and markdown, have a CI pipeline setup, and install Nginx. Ah, dang it!

content/post/2024/02/january-2024.md

@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
+---
+title: "Favorites of January 2024"
+date: 2024-02-03T08:45:00+01:00
+tags:
+  - metapost
+---
+
+The first month of the new year came and went, and with it, surprise flurries of snow, episodes of frozen slippery fun, and sudden peaks in temperature once more confusing our shrubberies that are budding way to soon. It was my last month at the university (see [why I am leaving academia](/post/2024/01/why-i-am-leaving-academia-for-now/)), which felt especially bittersweet considering the fluency of publishing and the engagement of my students lately. I am excited and scared at the same time at what February will bring for me, and hope the new beginning will go at least somewhat smoothly. I'm sure you'll read about it here in a couple of months.
+
+Previous month: [December 2023](/post/2024/01/december-2023).
+
+## Books I've read
+
+Besides the continuation of the _Mallorea_ series by [David Eddings](https://www.eddingschronicles.com/index.html), nothing much. I did pick up and finish _4000 Weeks_ by Oliver Burkeman, and although it served as a great reminder that life is short, the book contains nothing new. Burkeman stands on the shoulders of philosophical giants, of course, and I ultimately felt it's perhaps better to study those giants instead. I took notes nonetheless.
+
+## Games I've played
+
+I finished [Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle](https://jefklakscodex.com/games/switch/mario-plus-rabbids-kingdom-battle/) in the beginning of January. Keen to move to a more mature strategy RPG, I moved on to _Triangle Strategy_, of which the story is about to wrap up. I don't like it. I wish I did: it looks like the _Final Fantasy Tactics_ sequel we never got. The extremely heavy emphasis on story (and cut-scene after cut-scene) combined with a false sense of choice and limited possibilities to power-level and break stats left me wishing I played _Disgaea_ instead.
+
+For 2024, I will try to keep track of my board game stats once again, as I have the feeling too little games actually make it to the table, but I can't back it with data. The added benefit of logging plays means I (sub)consciously try to sneak in more plays. In January, we finally played _Watergate_ a couple of times---so far, the strategy is paying off. I'm not sure yet whether or not to also start reviewing board games on the Codex. We'll see. 
+
+## Selected (blog) posts
+
+- Yacht Club Games [broke down their sales](https://www.yachtclubgames.com/blog/sales-breakdown-a-couple-pocket-months-later) a couple of months after _Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon_ was released, revealing an interesting decline after the initial peak, that mirrors my feelings about the game.
+- I really enjoyed this [very long Leisure Suit Larry III review](https://www.goodolddays.net/game/id%2C1475/Leisure-Suit-Larry-III-Passionate-Patti-in-Pursuit-of-the-Pulsating-Pectorals.html) on The Good Old Days, written as a conversation between the editors.
+- Blake Patterson lamented [the end of the computer magazine era](https://bytecellar.com/2023/12/23/the-era-of-american-computer-magazines-has-drawn-to-a-close/). Luckily he did manage to fill his _Byte Cellar_ shelves to the brim over the years. 
+- Ruben Schade tells us to [stop using pie charts](https://rubenerd.com/avoid-using-pie-charts/) and provides an obvious example to clarify the most important reason: deceiving people with data visualizations. 
+- Baldur Bjarnason [reflects on two years of work](https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/out-of-the-software-crisis-two-year-review/) after his _Out of the Software Crisis_ independent book release.
+- Henrique Dias shows [how to create a digital shoebox](https://hacdias.com/2024/01/13/making-a-digital-shoebox/)---what a neat idea!
+- Glenn Ramsey proves at Kiwi PyCon 2022 that [plain text accounting can be fun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lazZwTmAEHs) (YouTube video)
+- Brit Butler shares his [favorite albums of 2023](https://blog.kingcons.io/posts/Favorite-Albums-of-2023.html). I bought _In These Times_ from _Makaya McCraven_ thanks to this list!
+- ProPublica knows like no other how to combine superb visualizations with gripping stories. Here's [one night on a garbage truck in NYC](https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/nyc-garbage).
+- Joan Westenberg suggests a few radical changes that might help us [quit capitalism](https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/how-to-quit-capitalism). There's still a very long way to go. Yesterday I came across Kohei Saito's degrowth book containing similar insights, and added it to the wish list. 
+- Heather Buchel outlines why in 2023 [your webdesign (still) sucks](https://heather-buchel.com/blog/2023/10/why-your-web-design-sucks/). An interesting front-end dev vs. web designer debate I came across [via Brad Frost](https://bradfrost.com/blog/link/its-2023-here-is-why-your-web-design-sucks/). 
+- According to Brian Bankler, [Board Game Geek Is Becoming Unstable](https://taogaming.wordpress.com/2024/01/20/boardgame-geek-is-becoming-unusable/)---or even unsuitable as a place to discuss board games. 
+- [People are complex and are allowed to have multiple selves](https://kwon.nyc/notes/which-self-is-this/), says Rachel Kwon.
+
+## Other random links
+
+- There's Yet Another Editor in town called [Nova](https://nova.app/) and I have yet to decide whether or not it could replace Sublime. 
+- My wife tipped me http://www.geekychef.com/. In case you want to do something with those _Tears of the Kingdom_ recipes!
+- How about a couple of [Mega Man HAMA magnets](https://www.resetera.com/threads/do-you-have-any-videogame-art-on-your-walls.800907/) to brighten up your office wall?
+- In case you want to create a top nine board game list, use https://www.pubmeeple.com/rankings
+- For people in Belgium and The Netherlands looking for an aggregate site comparing the best board game prices: https://bordspelprijzen.nl/
+- Aleksandr Savenkov created a cool table with The Dice Tower's [People's Choice Top Board Games of All Time](https://asavenkov.com/peoples-choice/), from 2011 up to 2024. It should be a bit more stable than Board Game Geek's _Hotness_ list. I need to buy _Ark Nova_.
+- Did you know there was a [Pharaoh Remaster](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1351080/Pharaoh_A_New_Era/) released last year? I didn't, and it looks as compelling as ever! 
+- While fiddling with Obsidian, I found a few interesting was to add metadata without using frontmatter: [implicit fields](https://blacksmithgu.github.io/obsidian-dataview/annotation/add-metadata/#implicit-fields)---like so: `key:: blah`. Combined with: 
+
+```
+```dataview
+LIST key
+WHERE key
+```
+
+Allows you to quickly list notes _and_ the value (`blah`) as an enumeration. The idea was to piggyback on another idea, [listing games won in Obsidian](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/ad-hoc-tracking-in-dataview-of-games-won/61185).