Our daughter is five weeks old now and it's been a heck of a ride. Nothing proceeded as planned or imagined and the death of my wife's father makes trying to find a rhythm that much harder. It very much feels like a fever that suddenly flares up and hits you in the face only to disappear into the background the day after as other manifestation of chaos pushes itself to the foreground.

If there's one thing I learned in this ridiculously hard year so far, it's that the mantra first seek to understand, then to be understood is incomplete and should get the but most of the times you'll never understand suffix. When I wrote "I'm sorry for your loss" on notes at funerals, I had no idea how it felt to lose someone that close to you. When I wrote "Congratulations with your baby!" and asked them how they were doing, I had no idea what parenthood could possibly entail and what kinds of difficulties and life-changing events parents have to struggle with.

My conclusion is that you simply can't seek to understand if you've never been in exactly that situation---which you never completely will be. People hide a lot of their difficulties and misery: you only get to see (or in this case, read) a tiny sliver of their daily life, and it's very probably a portion skewed towards the positive---just scroll through social media pictures and you'll get what I mean. I wish I understood earlier. I might have come across as not caring. My apologies: I now understand at least a portion of it.

Meanwhile, I try to keep on writing to preserve my sanity!

Previous month: March 2023.

Books I've read

Light reading material to take my mind off a screaming baby. Thick essays are still beckoning but the mental energy is absent and I presume this won't change in the coming months.

• Barbara Stok's The Dog, The Philosopher, and The Wedding comic, which was relaxing and inspiring at the same time and highly recommended---5/5
• Richard Moss's Shareware Heroes: The renegades who redefined gaming at the dawn of the internet. I loved these stories about the rise of shareware and all the games that defined my early youth. If Apogee rings a bell, this is probably going to be an enjoyable nostalgic read. If not, I doubt you'll get the most out of it---4/5
• Jason Schreier's Blood, sweat, and pixels : the triumphant, turbulent stories behind how video games are made. I prefer Richard's writing style and didn't like the way Jason seems to suggest that crunch is inherent to game development. If you prefer reading stories about huge development studios where millions are burned up each month, this is the book for you. Still, it reminded me to replay Pillars of Eternity and finally buy a Shovel Knight game---3/5.

Games I've played

Again: light material that's finished quickly or can be put away in an instant. That's why I love handheld gaming: the Pocket's Sleep mode has been extensively used lately!

• A couple of easy Game Boy games such as Kirby's Dream Land and another Looney Tunes one (Carrot Crazy). I still have a few Looney ones to go! Most of them are average at best but they trigger a particular nineties vibe I like.
• I tried reinstalling and booting up Pillars of Eternity, but its complicated mechanics and world made my tired head spin. Then I reinstalled Plants VS Zombies and simply clicked away. Much better.
• Yesterday, Pierre Gilhodes released Gobliiins 5 on itch.io! I grew up with Gobliins 2 and 3 so naturally this means a lot to me. The one-man project made in Adventure Game Studio is very rough around the edges but the core Gobliins quirkiness is present and I'm having fun! Here's a trailer showcasing its weird goofiness (the release includes a wonky English translation):

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Selected (blog) posts

• The Art of the Shadow: How Painters Have Gotten It Wrong for Centuries at MIT Press is without a doubt the most compelling read of this month.
• Alex Murrell's The Age of Average article was painfully telling (and very thorough).
• Jim Nielsen tries to piece together AI & the science of creativity. I don't think AI encountered the mystery of the creative muse at all, but it's an interesting point of view.
• Ed Summers shows us how to "Save WACZ Now" using the Wayback Machine. I didn't think this was possible and set up an archive system for myself.
• In The State of Neocities, bikobatanari explains why the ship is sinking, which is a bit sad to read.
• I was completely fascinated by the Japanese manhole cover fabrication processes Dave Rupert writes about. Talk about having patience!

I've been testing out video streaming of a retro handheld game via a retro console using one of the retro capture cards. Success: the composite connection works! Okay okay a GB emulator is perhaps faster.

Ricardo Montero responded on Mastodon with similar endeavors: he repurposed an old Pinnacle PCTV capture card which is right up my alley! (see capturing VGA output from DOS on WinXP).

Other random links

• The field of Computer Science Education is finally added to csrankings.org!
• Deepknight Games, a one-man indie show from the co-creator of Dead Cells, released Nuclear Blaze, a cool 2D platform game where you're a firefighter!
• I somehow bookmarked https://enhance.dev/ but have no idea what it's about so there you go.