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 The baked archives page used to be powered by Lunr.js, which has been replaced by Pagefind.app.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.