Quinceañera, Metal Gear Solid, Book shopping! - W16

Welcome, to my week notes! Can you believe that we are almost done with April already? There have been a lot of things going on lately, but hey, at the very least I keep reading on my XTEINK X4 and nudging other people to buy it too, because it sparks joy.

Jokes aside, here are some of the things that happened between April 14 to 20, from the year 2026!

• 📕 Discovered a super cool plugin for Koreader which let’s you modify the UI in a really awesome way. It basically fixes the biggest caveat with the software, as it’s now much simpler and user-friendly! I switched on the spot, not looking back now. The plugin is SimpleUI, go and get it! I decided to modify the layout on mine and it displays some stats now, very neat.

• 🔋 Thought for a second that my PSP was dead. It wouldn’t turn on, I tried plugging it and the charging indicator wouldn’t light up. Thankfully, I still have my original battery—I replaced it with an Ostent one a while back—and that let me turn it on to charge, then swap back to my current battery. I think simply connecting the AC adapter without a battery would have worked too, alas, it’s more than alive and well.

• 🎮 Messed around with my Anbernic RG35XX SP, using PortMaster to install Fallout on it! Unfortunately, the control scheme depended on analog sticks, which my handheld lacks. I also setup AM2R, which works wonderfully after messing around a bit with the screen ratio. I am looking forward to trying it that one, but I also want to continue with Fallout on my laptop at some point.

• 📺 My YouTube algorithm was on a roll this week, if you usually skip my video links, or don’t even scroll down that far for these posts, I encourage you to check this time, I actually learned quite a bit from these videos, and I’m sure at least one of them will be interesting to you too.

• 🟩 Returned to play daily word games, which I was very into not that long ago. I still prefer and play Tiled Words the most! Although I haven’t made a streak yet, I keep forgetting to play every once in a while.

• 🎂 There was a Quinceañera party for one of our church members! It was a fun time. There was party and a small ceremony to celebrate! I edited a video compiling memories of her life, which took me longer than I’d like to admit, the family sent me lots of photos.

• 📚 Purchased a few books from the Kobo store. I must say a lot of the time my purchases were through… “unofficial”… means. But not this time! Here is a list, let me know which one to start first:

  • Aurora by Kim Stanley Roninson
  • Dawn by Octavia E. Butler
  • The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
  • The Dispossesed by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Hyperion by Dan Simmons
  • The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
  • Welcome to Night Vale and
  • Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink
  • The Pearl by John Steinbeck

Reading

I continued my reading of Clarkesworld Magazine #211, and I’m halfway there with The Indomitable Captain Holli, a novella that I thought I’d hate at first, and then it kept unraveling and revealing some incredible stuff going on and well, it hooked me real good.

As for manga, Fly Me To The Moon remains fun. I’m on chapter 262 and there’s this little arc with a mock exam competition that I’ve enjoyed a bit. Also a relatively new character about to uncover a certain secret that is very intriguing to me!

Also catched up on the weekly chapter of Spy x Family and Blue Lock, as awesome as ever.

Gaming

I’m not sure what took over me, but I started Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker on my PSP! I tried this title a long time ago, around 2017 or so when I first got into PSP gaming. Unfortunately, I pretty much played the game wrong, I guess, and I got to a boss fight that I just couldn’t figure out. I decided to start over and get used to the game again. So far I’ve had a lot of fun. The game is divided in short mission segments. Between each mission you can also do some base management and from there develop new weapons and items.

Anyway, the main gameplay is stealth, and so far it’s been fun. The controls took a bit of getting used to but I stuck with the “Hunter” control type (based on the Monster Hunter games) and haven’t looked back. The latest mission I’m doing is a boss fight against an unmanned vehicle, the same one that I never completed years ago. I’ll definitely do it this time!

I continued my playthrough of Terranigma too, where I completed the last tower, which was the first serious boss fight of the game, against a giant scorpion-like creature. Before that I got a new armor given to me by my childhood friend. and after defeating the monster, I’m looking for the secret areas in the underworld. I already found one of them!

Last but not least, I actually continued with Pokémon Emerald Legacy for a bit, up to the first battle against my antagonist! In case you are wondering, I chose Torchic as my starter by the way! I am happy to have my running shoes now too, although I wish there was a way to always toggle them instead of keeping the button pressed. It’s alright though.

Around the Web

This time I mostly watched YouTube while doing a lot of chores, and I gotta say, the video selection this time was super interesting! I hope you check them out. Of course, first I gotta share some good old blogposts from some people I follow!

Blog posts

• My Workspaces - This is such a good idea for a blogpost but I’m afraid that I don’t think I have more than two pictures of different things. What a trip though… perhaps I could draw from memory? Anyway read it.

• Back In Space - Why do you have to tempt me to try Gemini—the web protocol, not the other ugly thing—again? I will not convert all my markdown posts into that format, nope.

• I won’t save you but I’ll show you how (2026-W16) - After a long hiatus, Cassie is back to blogging, and she has some wonderful news to share. Her weeknotes were sorely missed during these trying times, all the best!

• This isn’t March - Guess the theme for these weeknotes will be “websites on hiatus that suddenly returned”, so, yeah, nice to have you back Jack, not enough gaming updates.

• Fits on a Floppy - Creating code is an art too, so I enjoyed this post which was inspired by some modern programs that would fit on a floppy disk from back in the day!

YouTube

• What Did Ancient Humans Do at Night? - This was an incredibly interesting video, and it explains so much. I am actually kind of interested on experimenting with the information shared here.

• Why Bad Art Makes Great Games - What an essay this was, and I highly agree. The title is a bit wrong though, it’s more about art direction and being willing to not just go for realism, which is where a lot of modern games default to nowadays.

• When Graphics Changed Forever - This was an awesome mini-documentary detailing the technology and improvements between 1996 and 2006 in graphics on both consoles and PCs. It explains a lot in a very approachable way and with a lot of comparisons and visuals which I enjoyed. Always nice to see Resident Evil on a thumbnail.

• Air Powered Segment Display: 3D Printed Microfluidic RAM? - My engineering brain was tickling while watching this vide. This is such a fun technology, and I wonder what other applications it may have.

• I Solved Connect 4 - I rarely watch videos that deal with pure Math and board games, but this one was a welcome surprise, the extremely satisfying graphis and animations helped out a lot.

• Making the most pickproof lock yet - Another wonderful video with a lot of engineering on it. I am no lockpicker, but I am sure Jill, the Master of Unlocking, would have no problem.

• Chill Gaming for Busy Adults - A fun Tech Dweeb video that shares some tips and tricks to actually play videogames when you are a responsible adult, or something. I just play videogames idk.