June has passed, and with it, the first bulk of the exams, meaning it's officially summer in academia. My PhD thesis got deposited in KU Leuven's document storage system---I have a post for that in the waiting queue. It's been another difficult month and I'm glad it's over: it finally paved the way for a bit of structure at home. On the topic of work, I'm still mulling over what will be the next big thing. Hopefully there will be some time to thoroughly contemplate the different options in the coming weeks.

The first (partial) reviews of The Creative Programmer appeared: thanks Henrique Dias and Frank Meeuwsen! Do spread the word!

Previous month: May 2023.

Books I've read

Progress on a book about art has been slow so I switched gears and reached for a philosophical work, Amor Fati: filosoferen tegen het einde (Amor Fati: philosophizing at the end) by Dutch duo André de Vries and Erno Eskens. If you can look past the theoretical sections, it has quite the impact: de Vries was diagnosed by an aggressive form of prostate cancer and reflects back on his life in letters to his friend Eskens. I took extensive notes and still need to mentally process them. In 2017, Just after publication, the author succumbed to the illness, being only 52 years old.

On a similar note, I also read Nick Vaeremans's master's thesis called De Eindebestemming: Een historische en filosofische benadering over de betekenis en houding ten aanzien van de dood (The Final Destination: A historical and philosophical approach on the meaning and the attitude towards death). It's not an in-depth guide but provides a nice overview on what old and new Western philosophers think about death.

Games I've played

Almost nothing?

• I joined The Adventure Game Club on Discord to replay Goblins 3 once more but failed to finish it within the month, being stuck in the throne room. I hope to finish it this month but don't get my hopes up.
• Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon was on sale on the Nintendo Switch eShop so I picked it up for €10, but after about an hour of fiddling with the mechanics, my conclusion is that it's too damn hard for my feeble mind. On top of that, it's a roguelite, meaning endless loops of gameplay repetition while you slowly increase odds of finding better items in your next run---something that's not really my cup of tea. Most roguelites are quite punishing, this one's no exception.

Selected (blog) posts

• Jon Ericson's Beware of Low-hanging Fruit struck a chord. "Why not do this easy thing now so that we can have progress while we're waiting for the harder things to get done?" This obviously also comes with a lot of downsides.
• Ed Summers explains why he doesn't use GitHub's CoPilot. "TL;DR Don’t install Copilot. It rots your brain and destroys the environment.". Nuff said.
• Jeff Peterson has an extensive webpage dedicated to the history of music nibs on fountain pens, especially Waterman ones. It's a joy to read!
• Speaking about custom nibs on pens, here's an overview of Pilot custom nibs and all their custom body models. That Urushi one is huge!
• Only one more, I promise: the blog Mountain of Ink reviews all possible inks and includes scans of different swabs, showcasing "sheen" and shading capabilities.
• Bloonface explains why the Twitter migration fails and what could be improved when it comes to Mastodon and the Fediverse.
• Eli summarizes the modern computer space as "an anomie" and I quite liked that.
• Biggiemac42 wrote in 2021 how to build a special spaceship in Conway's Game of Life. These animated GIFs are mesmerizing to look at. The design was voted Pattern of the Year 2014---I didn't even know there was such a thing. The accompanying video only makes the deceitfully "simple" algorithm even more impressive:

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Other random links

• If you want to get a fountain pen nib customized and live near The Netherlands, Appelboom.com has a nib specialist working for them! These crafts(wo)men are a rarity in Europe.
• Danny Gregory writes essays on his creative journey that gets emailed to your inbox on a weekly basis. We have two of his books and love his pen & ink work.
• Since I like lists, here's one of ResetERA's Essential Nintendo Games, as voted by the community. No big surprises.
• The Web Design Museum houses a lovely Gallery of Web Design History, containing lovely snapshots of late nineties and early noughties sites like GameSpot, Cartoon Network, The Sims, ...