Here are my notes for the past week, from May 13 to 19, 2025
These week has been pretty crazy, I always start these weeknotes saying how it was, right? Like, it was boring, or it was cool, or it was busy. Is this fine? Is it repetitive? I donāt really know, but look, here I am writing something different as I feel like rambling about how I write my week notes from time to time. I am still unsure if I should write āweeknotesā, āweek notesā or āweek-notesā, maybe I should just say ānotes of the weekā. Iāll stop now sorry.
š¬ Iāve had a delightful time talking with a lot of people these past few days via e-mail, Signal, and even Matrix! Some for more time than others, but it has been a really nice experience, getting to meet people a little more and talk about things we share in common, or not!
š„ļø I have been seriously thinking about buying a desk, in fact, I asked my parents to send me pictures of any desks they find. Theyāve been going to a larger city due to medical reasons, and thereās an IKEA there, and I kind of want to buy a desk from their line-up. Weāll see what happens later today! I want a small desk, 1m wide at the most! Let me know if you have some suggestions.
š± I am basically done migrating everything to my new phone. I am commited to returning to a degoogled lifestyle. I used Universal Android Debloater NG to get rid of almost every app I didnāt really need or want. I havenāt logged in to any Google services, other than some via browser and my email via K-9 Mail, but nothing system-wide. Despite HyperOS being such a pain, Iāve circumvented almost all of it, and KISS Launcher helps a lot too. So far, zero real problems.
šŗ Still watching The Last of Us Season 2. This last episode was very sad and at the same time made me very angry about the direction the show went. I know itās like the game but I am still kind of annoyed by it, itās losing me but I may as well finish it. Another episode of Mob Psycho 100 Season 3 made me feel a lot better!
š A childhood friendāactually, more like the daughter of some family friends, I only met her when I was like 3 and she was like, 1.5 years oldācame visit this weekend, We had a pretty nice time, my mom showed her old photos where she shows up alongside my sister and such, when they were tiny. Since then her family went on a whole different journey, although my parents never lost contact. It was kind of a wholesome time to be honest! My parents like her, I kinda do too. Where will this lead? Is this destiny? Weāll see š
š We played Exploding Kittens, Spoons, Cheat and Snap with the regular folks and the old/new friend as well, it was anā¦ interesting dynamic, my friends kept making it weird for meāyou know how it isāShe absolutely killed it at Snap, I didnāt win at all, but I donāt feel like I lostā¦
Reading
The Big Time - by Fritz Lieber, read up to chapter 2. This is what I chose after finishing The Space Merchants, itās a Hugo Award winner that is actually in the public domain, and itās about some sort of time war where both sides are using time travel, and characters from different eras of time are fighting. Thatās the summary though, the story so far is told in first person and I havenāt seen much action yet, just some weird character introductions and some words Iām not sure what they mean, I plan to keep reading though, getting used to old words and slang is always weird.
How to Grill Our Love - Read up to chapter 79. This manga keeps being so fun and wholesome, it makes me want to learn how to cook and get married already or something XD. Seriously though, itās just nice and comfy to read.
Gaming
Ys: The Oath in Felghana - I played a bunch of it this week, it was definitely the most played for a while. The story, the music, the design of the dungeons, the combat, it has been entrancing. I am definitely close to the end. I played a lot of it on my PSP, but after getting to the final dungeon, I decided to transfer it to my computer and play the last section emulated on my computer. It has been a great experience either way, this game just gets everything right, it is everything an action rpg is supposed to be, and I absolutely love it. It is difficult, but it is not unfair, and it is also super rewarding. Even while emulated, I have refused to use any trickery like save-states in the middle of boss fights or so. Earning those victories is the best feeling.
Solomonās Club - For some reason (Ys) I keep ignoring Fire Emblem and Dragon Quest, so I have returned to this little puzzle game for the Game Boy on my anbernig rg35xx sp, Iāve been playing a couple of levels before work, it is really fun all these years later! Itās kind of like Mario vs Donkey Kong, getting a key to open a door each level, using a magic wand to place and platforms at will, avoid enemies and obstacles, all in a bunch of one-screen levels.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Of course I played a few courses with my visit, and of course I beat her everytime. I should have chosen the 100cc difficulty to be honest, because she ended up in 10th or 11th all the time, a friend of hers came too, and my sister joined as well, so it was still pretty fun. I did a horrible move one time she was on first place and I was second and I had been saving up a red shell for the last lap, and yes, I threw it at the last second to surpass herā¦ am I a monster?
2048 - A game that went viral ages ago. I played a FOSS version of it I saw on F-Droid, recommended by my friend R.L. Dane. I got hooked for a bit, but I havenāt really played it much, only during dead times at work. I like the auto-mode where I just see numbers go big.
Week Links
Quite a lot of interesting links this time around! I had plenty of free time and I was discovering new websites left and right! These are some of the highlights for me this week.
Blog posts
On Resurfacing Old Posts - this post by Jedda made me want to revisit my old blog posts as well, maybe even write retrospectives about some of them, and highlight those that hold up after 2 or 3 years since I published them. It sounds like a really fun idea!
How the new Taming Knots works - Brent moved from Pika.page to Hugo, and also got a new domain for his website! weāve been emailing back and forth and talking about a variety of topics like email encryption and ssgs in general, I still canāt convince him to switch to vim thoughā¦
What If We Let Ourselves Get Bored Again? Ariadne once again shared some thoughts about boredom, entertainment and the like, inspired by a post of my own. She shares what sheās done to stop being bombarded by information and enjoy other things instead.
How to be a pro at failure - a reminder to focus not on failing, but finding peace with the feelings you had before those failures, and start creating again.
I gave up on drawing - committing to any hobby comes with plenty of challenges. Measuring how worth it it is to keep going, to keep trying, is a hard line to drawāpun not intended. What we think we want, or what we really want, difficult to point out. isa decided to give up, and guess what? thatās fine.
life on the edge of epiphany - what is this? Amin wrote a blog post? Impossibleā¦ Ok but for real, I was going to write a response to this at some point but forgot about it, in the meantime, please read it yourself!
Robots Saved My Reading - OrbitalMartian managed to get back on track and read again, congratulations man! I mean, extraterrestrial being!
I was happier when I was on Gemini - Nat is a recent addition to my RSS feed, this post is about lacking ideas about what to write more than it is about the gemini protocol. Itās hard to be creative when youād rather experience the creativity of others.
Hardening my New Android Phone - Since I got a new phone, stumbling into this article by Naty was quite opportunistic. I found some nice apps to try out as well! Pretty good stuff!
Videos
This is a real minimal phone - An overview of an old phone, the Blackberry Passport, one of the last phones of this dying brand that tried something different. Honestly kind of awesome.
A look at the first GNOME - A trip down memory lane, at a very old version of GNOME, filled with features and cool retro design and window management, kind of nostalgic, even though I never used Linux back when it was around.
Why everyone (still) hates Betterhelp - I think most readers are aware that Betterhelp aināt it, but I wasnāt quite aware of the things they had done other than privacy issues, so, yeah, interesting stuff.
Look how far weāve come - A trip down memory lane, again, this time itās a look at how emulation handhelds have evolved over the years! I donāt think it goes as far back as it could, but itās still a really nice overview of how the medium has evolved over time.
