august in review
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title: August 2022 In Review
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date: 2022-09-02T09:00:00+02:00
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tags:
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- metapost
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---
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August 2022 is no more. August is typicallly an even slower month than July with most colleagues still on leave. Besides the yearly re-examinations, there's ample time to catch up on the latest literature. Another major part of August---besides the traditional [SIGSCE paper deadline](https://sigcse2023.sigcse.org/)---was reserved for editing and re-writing parts of my upcoming creativity book: it's now officially greenlit for the [Manning Early Access Program](https://www.manning.com/meap-program)! I'm quite chuffed and eager to share more details. _Very_ soon!
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It's been a few months since I've got my hands dirty with some serious code. It's perhaps time to start thinking about bootstrapping another hobby project. In true "[Scratch Your Own Itch](https://www.rework.fm/scratch-your-own-itch/)" style, I've been reading more IndieWeb-related API implementations but they don't do much for me anymore. The more I see people add to their personal website tech stack, the more I think I should start _removing_ stuff.
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Previous month in review: [July 2022](/post/2022/08/july-2022).
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### Books I've read
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In last month's review, I said:
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> I'm contemplating on quitting GoodReads.
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This month, I wrote [GoodReads is as good as gone](/post/2022/08/do-you-rely-on-social-reviews/). I enjoyed writing more in my journal lately because of it. I'll try out using [The Story Graph](https://www.thestorygraph.com/) links here. The Open Library is very slow, ugly, and its database is messy. There's also [Oku](https://oku.club/) but it doesn't seem to support something basic as book browsing without logging in?
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- [The Crown Conspiracy](https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/f570e888-ce5a-4f3e-bec9-cbd084057b2a) (The Riyria Revelations #1) by Michael J. Sullivan. A fast-paced adventure where the roguish do-gooders are everything but heroes. 4/5---not a brain burner, great pace, great cast.
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I also started reading Daniel J. Levitin's _Successful Aging_, a thick codex on neuroscience and aging, but progress is slow.
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### Games I've played
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After last month's _Dexter Stardust_, Kristien was really eager to hunt down more point & click adventure games, both new ones on the Nintendo Switch as replay existing classics.
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- [Agent A](https://jefklakscodex.com/games/switch/agent-a/) by Yack & Co. Crazy to think that this was originally "just" a mobile game. If you like escape rooms, you'll love these puzzles.
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- [Spy Fox in Dry Cereal](https://jefklakscodex.com/games/switch/spy-fox-in-dry-cereal/) by Humongous Entertainment. Despite the fact that the Switch port is horrendous, the jokes in there are designed to amuse both children and parents who happen to play along.
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- [Day of the Tentacle](https://jefklakscodex.com/games/pc/day-of-the-tentacle/) by LucasArts. The 1993 classic that is still every bit as good as it was back in 1993. If you never played this, you're not a gamer. This was our fourth playthrough---I think.
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I bought _Cursed to Golf_ at its release date, I've had my eye on it for a while. So far, to be honest, it's disappointing. I'll have a review out somewhere in September. After DoTT, in anticipation of the upcoming _Monkey Island_ release, Kristien & I are replaying the first two editions as well.
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I'm still on the fence about the the new Turtle's _Cowabunga Collection_. I heard it's really good but already have all Game Boy versions, and _Shredder's Revenge_ makes _Turtles in Time_ kind of obsolete. I don't care about online functionality.
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### Selected (blog) posts
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- [You should take more screenshots](https://alexwlchan.net/2022/07/screenshots/) by alexwlchan, via Luke Harris. Damn right you should! I really enjoyed [doing that for my old websites](/post/2020/10/a-personal-journey-through-the-history-of-webdesign/) but still don't do this often enough.
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- [Sharding Yourself](https://www.swyx.io/sharding-yourself/) by swyx, via Jim Nielsen. An interesting approach to increasing the number of writing outlets instead of staying in "I have nothing to say" mode.
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- Peter Rukavina mentioned a "leave what you can" [Little Free Pantry](https://ruk.ca/content/ann-bigs). I've never seen a pantry like that in our area but we're (slowly) getting used to Little Free Libraries.
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- [Twenty Years of Blogging](https://roytang.net/2022/08/twenty-years/) by Roy Tang. _Twenty Years!_
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- [Subscribification](https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2022/07/15/subscriptification/) by Doc Searls via Rubenerd. Ads, ads, ads. It's getting disgusting.
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- [Sarah Solos](https://boardgamegeek.com/blog/10692), a BGG solo blog by Sarah Chapman that I enjoyed scrolling through.
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- [Performance productivity and building a culture that matters](https://werd.io/view/62f0546717aca124174f2f12) by Ben Werdmuller.
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- [Hyundai’s AES key was lifted from an example](https://rubenerd.com/hyundais-aes-key-was-lifted-from-an-example/) by Ruben Schade. Flipping through the linked article, as a programmer, I felt embarrassed.
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- [Work ethics](https://adactio.com/journal/19392) by Jeremy Keith. More work hours indeed equate to less quality, but managers still don't get it.
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- Ars Technica: [US government to make all research it funds open access on publication](https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/us-government-to-make-all-research-it-funds-open-access-on-publication/). Fi-na-lly. Our university mandates the open access publication of pre-printed editions.
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- Business Insider: [Amazon's Empire of Surveillance](https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-empire-of-surveillance-leveraging-monopoly-power-tracking-purchases-2022-8?r=US&IR=T). Yet another reason to dump GoodReads.
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- [The Wiper Blade Adventure](https://www.lkhrs.com/blog/2022/08/wiper-adventure/) by Luke Harris. A random story about random wiper blades that made me laugh.
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### Other random links
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- [Gum](https://github.com/charmbracelet/gum), for writing "glamorous shell scripts", leveraging Go's Bubbles and Lip Gloss frameworks.
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- [Quickchart.io](https://quickchart.io/), an API-based chart generator that looks easier to use than my default go-to JS framework, amCharts.
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- And then there's [ChartJS](https://www.chartjs.org/), perhaps also worth a closer look.
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- https://boardgameprices.co.uk/. Does what it says on the tin.
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- [RingsDB](https://ringsdb.com/), a deckbuilder for the _Lord of the Rings_ living card game.
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- [Bun](https://bun.sh/), a _very fast_ JavaScript runtime drop-in replacement for Node/Deno that just works.
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- [VSCodium](https://vscodium.com/), open source binaries of VS Code that are telemetry-free.
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