December 2022 is no more, or to put it more concisely: 2022 is no more. As much as I enjoy reading other bloggers' year in reviews, re-reading my 2021 attempt only calls forth negative emotions. Generally speaking, this year has been pretty miserable, a sad continuation of the previous year, so I don't want to spend too much time lingering on my increasing frustration, loneliness and sadness with academia and the shitty state this world currently seems to be in. Ruben recently put my feelings in words, so go ahead and read that instead. Meanwhile, I'll continue distracting myself by "being busy". Works wonders! So far.

I also prefer sharing interesting links I gathered using the regular month in review posts instead of summarizing various work events you're probably not interested in or personal events I don't feel comfortable sharing anyway. On top of that, I loathe the end-of-year holiday period where consumerism is kicked into overdrive, disguised in a sauce of fake belongingness. Long story short: here's December's overview. I'll keep the year overview to my journal.

Previous month in review: November 2022.

Books I've read

See 2022 in books for a summary of the books I've read last year. I ended with Grand Hotel Europa, it took a while to finish, but it was worth every single minute. Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer certainly knows how to "write hundreds of curly sentences", as he describes it.

2023 started with two mediocre books I'll briefly mention in next month's in review post. I hope my next picks are going to be worth it: I'm planning to re-read Alain de Botton's Art As Therapy, which I highly enjoyed and finally bought my own (translated) copy of. It's also a very relevant book.

Games I've played

See 2022 in games for a summary of the games I've played last year. I ended the year with:

• Pilgrims: a micro card-based adventure that's over in 30 minutes but can be replayed a couple of times. I love the art direction but was hoping for a more substantial experience. (3/5---Good)
• Yoku's Island Express: a pinball metroidvania game that, at least for me as a metroidvania fan, ultimately did not manage to successfully fuse both genres. The randomness of the pinball mechanics made world navigation a chore and I got tired of that quickly. (2/5---Mediocre)

I've finally had the courage to start a new savegame of Tactics Ogre: Reborn, the 2022 remaster of a 1995 SNES cult classic that's right up my alley: tactical turn-based combat, lots of customization (but not as extreme as the Nippon Ichi games), an engrossing story. Only the rather long length worries me! As I mentioned on Mastodon:

I'm 25 hours into Tactics Ogre: Reborn and it's even better than I remembered. I can't believe this is from 1995! If you like tactical games, this is it. Hopefully Square Enix will one day give the GBA one, Knights of Lodis, the same treatment. But first, Final Fantasy Tactics on Switch, please!

Selected (blog) posts

• ryxcommar bids data science adieu and isn't afraid to tell the truth: "data scientists are shit at code and engineering". Indeed, I noticed that!
• Every web stack is a product now by Thomasorus. I'm starting to drown in the JS frameworks---both front-end and backend this time. Great.
• In the same vein: WTF is an island and why is it in my website? by Rach Smith. Isn't the evolution of web dev tools a great thing?
• Horribly low pay is pushing out my fellow authors says Joanne Harris at The Guardian. Who rings the alarm bell?
• Time to put your photos offline: deepfake alert, yet another concerning article by Benj Edwards---who's a nice fellow at Mastodon, BTW.
• Farewell, Building in Public by Cory Zue. He explains why his revenue sharing posts are a thing of the past now.
• Here's a blogpost discussing the ending of Return to Monkey Island by Spindley Q. Spoiler alert, obviously.
• Gaming Alexandria has a weird history post on AmsterDoom, a FPS set in Amsterdam? I didn't know that ever existed. To be honest, it doesn't look very exciting.
• Spencer Churchill compiled a comprehensive list of the best retro Nintendo games. Unfortunately, it's lacking context.
• Rui Carmo writes about the Retroid Pocket 3, and why it wasn't that great. Watch out with a torrent of revisions---lessons learned, see the new Evercade model...
• Ruben surprises family and friends when he says no to "smart" devices. It's a hilariously recognizable situation.

Other random links

• The Delores: A Thimbleweed Park mini-adventure source code has been made available on GitHub!
• Looking for PC font packs? Here's the ultimate oldskool PC Font Pack. Memories! It looks awful in ULtraEdit though, barely readable, thank god that's (mostly) gone.
• Lode Runner: Mad Monk's Revenge: The Definitive Edition is free and rewritten from scratch! Don't forget to download the music pack that comes with MIDIs from Windows 3.1's The Legend Returns.
• Sorbet is a (self-proclaimed) fast & powerful type checker designed for Ruby. Untested, but compelling, although from the looks of it, a lot of bloat on a dynamic language that won't be needed if devs are trusted and competent. Oh wait.
• I thought I was being the cool kid when I switched from npm and yarn to bum. Nope. I should use Deno now.
• This Albion fansite is worth mentioning. I love fansites and I hate the fact that Fandom killed them.
• Apparently, we need a fork of Gitea called Forgejo because reasons. If I have to switch software every time something like this happens, I'll be a full-time home sys admin.