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July 2022 In Review | 2022-08-01T16:16:00+02:00 |
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July 2022 is no more. Despite the absence of any teaching activities during the summer, things still move slow. Most colleagues I depend on are away, academic conferences like ITiCSE are planned in the summer and eat up time, and the heat has chipped away what was left of my overall motivation. I can't say it has been a productive month, although somehow, we do have yet another paper ready to submit.
The Gitea installation installed in July is working flawlessly and sees daily usage. I kind of regret not doing this sooner---its connection is even faster and more reliable than GitHub. Other than that, nothing major changed in my workflow.
This website got a new search engine! The baked archives page used to be powered by Lunr.js, which has been replaced by Pagefind.app. I guess this is worth its own blog post, I'll save the details for later.
Previous month in review: June 2022.
Books I've read
I'm contemplating on quitting GoodReads---more on that in a future post.
- Indulgence: Around the World in Search of Chocolate by Paul Richardson. A fragrant piece with a lingering aftertaste, not unlike genuine dark chocolate.
- The Cardinal's Blades by Pierre Pevel. For me, the historical part ("he crossed the so-and-so bridge, now we're in so-and-so street, ...") kept getting in the way of unfolding a great dragon breath inducing fencing party. I don't intend to read the sequels.
- Nightchild (Chronicles of the Raven #3) by James Barclay. Mediocre high fantasy that I tried liking but eventually gave up on at page 150. I tried getting into the series years ago and faintly remember not finishing book 1. I should have listened to my younger self.
The two mediocre novels made me realize I should return to the library to hunt down the more engrossing stories. My own library could also do with a cleanup---too many books are just sitting there, never to go back to.
Games I've played
The Turtle beat 'em up streak continued well into July. Apart from that, Kristien discovered a few superb and highly underrated adventure games on the Switch store that we dove into.
- Asterix & Obelix: Slap them All. Only worth your time if you're really, really hungry for an Asterix game. It's not bad, it's just passable at best.
- TNMT: Fall of the Foot Clan and Back from the Sewers, a quick revisit of the first 2 Turtle Game Boy releases. They're both finished in like 30 minutes if played right. I'm planning on replaying the third and final installment later this month.
- Dexter Stardust, the surprise of the month. We loved this classic point & click adventure. Comes with a lot of nods to the Monkey Island games.
The most interesting video I watched this month was a history lesson of a venerable Japanese gaming company called M2:
{{< youtube jc5DlOkOcU4 >}}
The proverb going the extra mile seems to be getting an entire new dimension here. I have nothing but respect for M2, and their conversions, like the 2021 Castlevania Advance Collection, are always excellent.
Selected (blog) posts
- Why Aren't You More Serious? by Ruben Schade. This resonates with me so much. We need to put the word fun back into blogging and writing.
- Discworld on Page and Screen by Jimmy Maher
- Measuring Terminal Latency by Luke Harris. As a bonus, Sublime Text is still faster than VS Code. Yesss.
- The Web Is Fucked By Kev Quirk
- The Fifty Fifty Project by Brian Bankler. An attempt to get an H-index of 50 when it comes to playing board games. Aspirational.
Seems to be a dry month as well.
Other random links
- Adult party brain teasers. Interesting to convert into programming problems.
- BoardGameGeek Solo Gaming Awards. Still looking for an excuse to buy that Mage Knight big box.
- How to build a low-tech website from Low Tech Magazine. Interesting ideas such as dithering on images to heavily reduce their size. It made me take a second look at Brain Baking's media weight.
- A domain blocklist to use in conjunction with Webmention.io.