joelchrono's blog

Links I was sent via email

2026-10-14T17:00:00-06:00

As a somewhat popular blogger, plenty of random stuff is sent to me via email from people that want me to try stuff out.

To be honest though, a lot of the time bots keep spamming services and tools that nobody cares about. This makes surfacing what’s actually good from all a bit annoying to sort out.

Therefore, I am doing the bare minimum here, which is sharing some links, writing what they are supposed to be, and leave it there! Some of them I’ll keep in plain text because I have doubts about it. I’ll also edit this post to note if some more of my readers can vouch for any of these as legit.

Beware of clicking on stuff, I am simply shouting into the void, for all I know, you should avoid all of these for daring to invade my inbox! (ok some are still cool)

Projects

Pixel Area (pxlarea.com) - I already wrote about this project, but I still wanted to acknowledge it one more time! I still enjoy it and it looks like it continues to grow at a steady pace1 If you haven’t claimed your pixel and you have a website, you should check it out!
Quxnet (quxnet.net) - This project seems to be a whole community of forums and profiles and it looks very old school cool, my friend JP already made a profile there so, this is one that seems fine. I didn’t click through enough pages there to see anything suspicious, if anything I enjoy the vibes. Not a fan of the sender using a gmail account instead of the actual domain, but alright.
Slashfriends (slashfriends.org) - There are a lot of neat slashpages, and this one in particular seems neat enough. I haven’t made the time to link to my online friends and a part of me feels weird about it for some reason. ~~I don’t want to left anyone out by mistake or make someone feel bad and such. It also feels kinda corporate?~~)
Be Kind (bekind.berru.info) - This is a pretty interesting project where you can throw bottles with messages and reply to bottles you receive, it tries to be a more meaningul way for online interactions that takes more time and is kind of anonymous too. It seems rather minimal and risk-free and the project is also open sourced on SourceHut, which is a good sign.
Wusoup (www.wusoup.com) - I have not bothered to check this one yet, but it looks like a text chat community sort of place, maybe like IRC? Has anyone here seen what this is about? It doesn’t require an app and it has apparently been worked on since 2008 by a single person. The email was from the actual domain this time.
Copus Network (copus.network) - I have no idea what this is, it’s subtitled as “Internet Treasure Map”, some sort of curator that is actually filled with mostly AI-generated articles, slop and ads for some reason, stay away from this one. I don’t even know why I bother to mention it other than to warn you about it, I guess.

Games

Lala is Bound (mymadnessworks.itch.io/lalaisbound) - When I played Resident Evil, this game was suggested to me via email, as well as the other horror games found in the itch page of this artist. The suggestion was by a different individual though so I figured I’ll share it here!
Fantasy Online 2 (fantasyonline2.com) - This is a 2D pixelart MMOPRG. I was asked to test it out but I haven’t found the time for it. I don’t really play MMOs and I have plenty on my backlog, but the game looks cool enough. The dev did say there was some AI assistance for coding, but not for art/music.

Podcasts

Grammar Girl Podcast (quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl) - On my post about blogposts turning into different blogposts, I was recommended this podcast to get some grammar advice about some questions regarding em dashes and commas. I don’t really feel like listening to a lot of episodes of it, but some seem cool and it may be up your alley.

Finishing up

For some reason I’ve gotten more than one email from different websites asking me to add them to my blogroll. One website in chinese that seems to be a genuine blog (although very pushy on LLMs) and some other chinese website that also does a lot of LLM posts, this one looks very sus because the urls are super obfuscated. I don’t even know you people, why even try?

I ain’t bothering to link those, and I probably shouldn’t have bothered to link to a couple things listed here. In any case, if you find yourself curious about what those links may entail, I can’t stop you.

Also, if you have gotten emails from any of these projects or heard about anything here, feel free to vouch for them being neat stuff.

This is day 52 of #100DaysToOffload

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I expect nothing of my games and books

2026-10-14T12:20:00-06:00

And somehow, if I get to trying it, I am often able to enjoy it. A side of me thinks my taste is pretty good because of this. I’ve never finished a book or videogame thinking that it wasn’t worth it.

To tell the truth, I also happen to get recommendations from friends and reviewers with good taste, excellent podcasts, YouTubers I trust, and all the cool bloggers that I follow here, there is so much good stuff to enjoy, I rarely put myself in a position where I think of something as a slog.

I like to think I’m not easy to please though. I enjoy quality and the effort put into an artwork that goes above and beyond. I have experienced enough to differentiate between something made with passion or lack there of.

Even if the book is not particularly enjoyable, or if a mechanic in a game feels a little unfair, I am willing to let myself appreciate it. I’d even allow my brain to be fooled into thinking it’s great. I will always try to focus on the intent behind any piece of media. To align my mindset with the artist’s.

When I played Resident Evil and its sequel early this year, I wasn’t thinking about the future beyond tank controls, I didn’t worry about the scarce save points. I put myself in the shoes of someone who just bought a PS1 and wanted to try this neat game and it was how it was. Perfect experience. I didn’t worry about outdated elements or cheesy voice acting, I lived in 1998 and everything was glorious.

As I read all of The Expanse, I wasn’t expecting the beat space opera ever, or well explained hard sci-fi. I never thought I’d completely understand the cosmical anomalies present throughout the series. I enjoyed the characters and the bombastic action sequences. I let my brain shove away any magic technology or whatever and focused on the epic character moments and intrigue of it all.

While completing Metroid Prime Remastered it didn’t even cross my mind to compare the 2D games. When someone said “this is just Super Metroid in 3D” I wasn’t even considering Super Metroid’s existence. When that one area had no save points nearby I simply took it as the challenge it was, fair? unfair? It’s a game, and I can go elsewhere to find more upgrades too. So, win?

After finishing Non-Stop by Brian W. Aldiss, I wasn’t worried about the countless modern sci-fi books that have done generation ship plots better, I didn’t mind the non-sensical biology of some of the world-building. I fully committed myself to the environment and its rules, and I had a wonderful time going through all of it. When annoying characters showed up, I am meant to be annoyed, and I push through that anyway.

If a game happens to have a lot of cutscenes, I push through. If I am told to backtrack for the 9th time to the same place, so be it. If a book lacks emotional moments and is more of a dry reporting of events, it is so. If the romance is outdated and cheesy, I still find it kinda cute.

This is pretty much the case for all the books and videogames and movies and pretty much any media I experience. I can pretend quality of life improvements don’t exist, I can imagine myself in the worlds even if I despise the decisions or the politics or a particular character.

Every game I’ve played this year could be in someone’s Top 5 of all time—maybe not the smaller titles/DLC that can be completed in an hour. Perhaps that can’t be said of the books I’ve read this year, but they are still pretty good as well!

~~Now this is where I’ll get challenged by a friend into reading through some boring stuff or playing a game that will make me suffer.~~

Even if a work is not as impactful for me as it may be for others, it’s usually a 4/5 stars experience for me.

Perhaps I should be more critical, as my ranking system ends up kinda useless. Or maybe my standards are too low. Or I simply happen to choose excellent games and books.

Good thing I don’t rank anything on my reviews.

This is day 51 of #100DaysToOffload

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Emio - The Smiling Man

2026-10-13T13:00:00-06:00

After the masterpiece that is Outer Wilds, I wanted to chill for a moment, and what a better way to do so than by going through a detective story!

Famicom Detective Club is a pretty niche series by Nintendo, with only a couple games that were only on the NES—though recently remade for Nintendo Switch.

Emio The Smiling Man came out in 2024, and it brings the formula to current times!

I first heard of this game a couple of years ago in an episode of Into The Aether, brought up by Brendon Bigley, and literally this past week, now that Stephen is finally playing it as well.

I decided to give it a go during my Summer Game Challenge, and it’s finally time to write a review for it here.

Artwork of the game

Story

The game happens in Japan, and it seems to be dated somewhere in the 80s or 90s. The story begins when a high school student is found dead, wearing a paper bag with a creepy smiley face drawn on it.

You take control of a junior detective—which you get to name! Jules Poirot in my case—working for the Utsugi Detective Agency and the police to uncover the truth of this murder.

The case is linked with the urband legend of Emio, the Smiling Man—it’s the name of the videogame, wooooow!—which mentiones a creepy man wearing a paper bag who approaches young girls crying and—unless they smile when seeing him—murders them, covering their face with a paperbag with a smiley face drawn. Matching almost exactly with the event that triggered the game and investigation.

At the same time, this murder is linked with a different case that went cold eighteen years ago, involving the serial murders of girls who died by strangulation too, although there are differences that need to be accounted for. You’ll have to research from multiple perspectives to find out the truth.

Besides your character, you’ll work with Ayumi Tachibana, another junior in the agency that will go through her own investgation with a different group of characters to question. Both of you work for Shunsuke Utsugi, the private detective that runs the agency and mentors you both. He follows yet another lead in the case and seems to have a history working on the previous murders as well…

The game will switch perspectives between both junior detectives as the plot unfolds, and feature separate cutscenes and sequences that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the end!

These characters are very suprised by some newfound information!

Gameplay

It’s basically a visual novel. You can Ask/Listen, Look/Examine, Think, Call with your cellphone, check your notebook and such.

During any talk with a character, the conversation won’t simply be fed into you, you’ll have to react to things in a way that sort of makes sense, and it’s not just about mindlessly pressing talk over and over. The game provides hints of what could be done next as well.

Sometimes you’ll have to think before talking again, sometimes a character will make a nervous face and you’ll have to look at them before continuing a conversation. There are a couple simple puzzles where you’ll look at the environment to figure out what to say next, and the like.

At the end of every day, there’s a review time, where you go through all you’ve learned, fill up some blanks and check notes of your notebook to link clues together.

Although the order in which you find out clues can change slightly, the game itself is rather linear, the reviews are a nice challenge for yourself, but getting something wrong doesn’t punish you much, it only leads to a correction later on to put you in the right track.

The overall gameplay is really simplistic, but it can get confusing sometimes, when a chain of dialogue cuts off suddenly and you have to figure out what to do next. Thinking often helps a lot if you need a hint, but there are definitely situations where I was like a whole minute stuck and making no progress.

You also have the Travel option, that shows up at the end of some dialogues, or while exploring the city. Most of these actions are pretty self-explanatory and will make sense as the game goes on.

Admittedly, tha game it’s rather linear, don’t expect multiple endings and such. It’s a mystery slowly revealing itself to you and it’s very much worth it!

Characters in the game are quite relatable

Art

This game is absolutely beautiful, as long as you are okay with the anime artstyle. It is easy on the eyes, minimal in interface and features plenty of high quality animation as well, such as mouth movements, expressions, hand gestures and the like. This is not your regular visual novel or JRPG with drawings being swapped around. Blinking, changes in posture, there are details everywhere. It kinda feels like they are rigged characters, like some VTuber streamers and YouTube channels. Looks fantastic.

The backgrounds are also very well crafted, with a great amount of detail and many descriptions for you to find using the Look action. There are city streets, forests, the police station, and plenty of other environments, some of them featuring multiple NPCs in the background that have some small animations as well.

This is the kind of stuff that a big company like Nintendo can do within a genre often lead by indie developers and small budgets. The budget doesn’t reach the heights of a Mario or a Zelda at all, but it’s clearly superior to what most visual novels would get, and it really shows in the presentation here.

Is this an accurate description, teachers who read this?

Music & Sound

The soundtrack of this game is fitting of the occassion, it has a nostalgic 80s vibe that makes me think of the origins of this series back in the Famicom, exclusively for Japan. The main theme already sets the mood of the whole thing, but it’s not all there is to it!

It will get tense and emotional, as well as happy, carefree and even comical! The game is not afraid to jump between high stakes moments and comedic relief, and this is perfectly showcased on its soundtrack!

Emio also features fully voiced lines in Japanese. This is absolutely wonderful stuff. Even though I don’t understand the language itself, the emotional expressions and tone is easy to pick up from the excellent performances, and they really enhance every scene during revelations and the like.

If I could speak Japanese this investigation would be even easier!

Overall

Something I really appreciate about this game is how well it manages the tone of its story. There are really gruesome implications and dark moments here, some stuff that I would have never thought Nintendo would even publish, but this game does handle things well.

There are also quite a few fun moments, the game is not afraid to play with your assumptions and use them for comedic relief. There are also a couple genuinely charming moments between the characters. The dialogue is quite fun and easy to go through (as long as you don’t get stuck in a dialogue trying to figure out what’s next!) and the writing of the whole thing is really marvelous, drip-feeding you information in the best of ways.

The final chapters and the build up of the big reveal is genuinely fantastic, and I really think it makes every little nitpick worth it! However, it did feel a bit rushed, and some things are not explained after the credits rolled, so make sure you stick until the end to see that side of things. Definitely worth it in my opinion.

At the end of the day, this is still a visual novel. If you don’t want to basically read and read and click on things, this game will not be for you.

If you want multiple pathways and different endings, this is also not the game you’re looking for.

However, if you are up for an excellent murder mystery story to read through and find out clues before the game gives them to you, this is genuinely fantastic stuff.

The readers who reached the end of this review be like:

This is day 50 of #100DaysToOffload

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Cycling, Jigsaws and Ice - W41

2026-10-12T17:00:00-06:00

Another week of October is gone, just like that. The coldness of the air is finally felt enough for me to wear a long-sleeved shirt every once in a while, I am yet to actually keep a jacket on for a whole day honestly!

🗓️ I made a plan! Detailing the videogames and books I want to complete by the end of October (plus one week of November). So far very good, a book finished, a game started.
📚 Updated the firmware of my XTEINK X4 to the latest version of CrossPoint 1.6.5. There have been plenty of changes that I am yet to actually explore! In any case, it’s pretty cool to see the support for even more devices since then.
🕹️ Decided to buy Astral Ascent for Nintendo Switch, I’ve wanted to have a fast-paced 2-player roguelike for those times I want something challenging for a friend and I. We didn’t get around to playing it this time though.
🎮 Realized that Steam finally let’s me gift games outside my region! I’ve been meaning to gift my favorite games to my online friends sometimes, and it wouldn’t work. Now they let you pay the international price (just like GOG has done for ages). I already made use of this feature for a few of my buddies based on their wishlists. Are you one of the lucky ones?
🛍️ Had a fun time going out for lunch with my parents. This was a more normal visit to the mall. We also went to the library there but nothing caught my eye this time around. I also got a Rice Krispies Treat bar which I hadn’t eaten in ages. So good.
🚲 Finally went out on my bicycle after a bunch of lazyness, the day was cloudy and the air was fresh, I still only wore shorts and a t-shirt though. I went downtown and enjoyed the scenery quite a bit!
📖 I actually stayed in the plaza downtown and read a book sitting on a bench under a treeright in front of the city’s cathedral. The weather got very cold while I read some of the latter chapters of The Left Hand of Darkness, an atmosphere that fit the narrative perfectly.
🙏 This note deals with loss of life
My church visited the hospital to give food, coffee or water to people there. During this, a family outside got news of a patient, a loved one, which passed away. It was a sad and difficult moment, my church gathered around them, we prayed, and cried with them. Hope and solidarity among the suffering.

A bar of Rice Krispies Treats, a panel from Alita Battle Angel, my Kobo and my bicycle in the background, some coffee and sweet bread, art from Echoes of the Eye, a puzzle!

Reading

A magazine, two books and a manga this time around. Some great speculative fiction, cyberpunk, horror and the like.

Started

Clarkesworld Magazine #212 - I decided to return to my XTEINK X4 and start this at last! I managed to complete the first short story: Fishy by Alice Towey. I absolutely fell in love with that short story, it was very charming and it brought me joy.

Completed

The Left Hand of Darkness - Chapters 8-20. In just about a week I managed to bring this book to completion! It only got better as the chapters went on. The world grew on me, the characters, the dire situation, a sense of understanding that deepened over time, similarly to the plot of the book and the development of the characters. This was a very interesting read, and I’m glad I gave it a go at last!

Ongoing

The House on the Borderland - Chapters 13-14. I only did a few pages of this book, but they were extremely powerful stuff. It was one of those moments in the story that barely contain any detail, as the understanding of what’s in front of you is null. Pages and incomplete fragments, frightening stuff. Looking forward to what’s next.

Alita Battle Angel - Chapters 45-48. The final volume of the manga has begun, and some more battles are still on the horizon. I have to say I am quite hyped to bring an end to this. A lof of the cyberpunk aesthethic can be seen in this work, although the story was a little mixed, it reached great highs nonetheless. We’ll see if it sticks the landing.

Watching

A movie and a TV show, both of pretty entertaining!

Bumblebee - I thought I had seen this movie before but it’s not on my Letterboxd… In any case, I really enjoyed this Transformers film, the original designs of these characters are just so awesome to see! This kinda feels like a strong edition of E.T./The Iron Giant and I love it.

Lanterns - Watched chapter 5 of this one which seems to have ended an “arc” or big bad guy and I’m curious to see how the show progresses after the very interesting events that happened at the end of this one.

Gaming

A puzzle game completed, a new mystery begins, and some classic multiplayer fun.

Started

Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye - The first game on my October plan. My breath was taken away the moment I ventured into this adventure within the main game… I have to say I am extremely surprised by where this DLC is going. I will not make any more spoilers. Just play Outer Wilds

Completed

Strange Jigsaws - I got this on a whim a while back and decided I’d finally give it a shot. It absolutely hooked me and I got it beat in a single day. This is a mind-wrecking title and you really owe it to yourself to give it a go. I definitely had to search a couple hints on the website though, I admit. Superb concepts.

Ongoing

Nintendo Switch Sports - I continue to get decent at Golf but I also played with friends locally this time! Fun times.

Ultimate Chicken Horse - Returned to this epic game and it continues to surprise us, we unlocked a whole new map to play through, and the Fox character! There’s only two maps left to unlock.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land - Played this one for a little while again, I completed one level and then I was asked to put another game, some day!

Around the Web

I’m doing better! I had covid. by Hollie - This was a very interesting summary of what Hollie has been going through lately. COVID is still a danger, and shouldn’t be dismissed.
Laptop Stickers: Yay Or Nay? by Wouter Groeneveld - I have stickers on my laptop and I’m actually surprised I’ve not written about it.
Más cacharros que me gustaría probar by Adrian Perales - In Spanish. A post from Adrian sharing some neat tech he doesn’t have. I want him to have some of these though, what to do?
My Hobby Is Learning by Kev Quirk - This is what I enjoy as well, very well put here.
Here Is a Person: Enter the Tildeverse by Brennan Kenneth Brown - I really love Tildes, and this run down some of their history was very epic to go through.
Outer Wilds (2019) by Robert - I’m glad to be a part of this wonderful journey of making everyone I know play Outer Wilds.

This is day 49 of #100DaysToOffload

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Gaming and reading plans

2026-10-08T11:45:00-06:00

I find myself in a very interesting predicament where as my two favorite hobbies often compete for the same periods of free time. I have done very nicely without much planning involved so far until the Summer Game Challenge, and since that worked quite well, I thought it may be useful to write down a list! For now it’s just for October, but we’ll see if it sticks.

A while back I saw a fair amount of YouTube videos and advice on dealing with the backlog, and they kept mentioning how planning ahead takes a significant burden away, clearing up headspace to actually do the thing.

Videogames

October is quite the spooky month, or so I hear! So I wanted to pick a couple of games that would be fit for the occassion. I should beat all these by November 8, 2026. A part of me wants to already give up, but I would love to get to them and actually try.

Of course, I will probably find time to go through the Fire Emblem, Zelda, and Kirby games that I’m also picking away at during this year, though I don’t expect to finish either of them. Here’s the list I wish to get through:

Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye

Completion time: 15 hours.

The DLC for the masterpiece that is Outer Wilds seems to be pretty much a whole sequel inside the base game, and it is apparently quite the scary title! So I believe it will fit nicely for this.

I would ideally play this on my TV at home, but I’m afraid I’ll have to compromise with handheld mode as my parents watch shows during the evening once I’m back from work.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Completion time: 12 hours.

I was told that I should beat a Castlevania, with the vampires and all that, I guess it can only be a good idea! Since Aria of Sorrow I’ve been itching to try another one.

This one will definitely be played on my Anbernic RG35XX SP. I would also try to get some achievements with it, but I’m not completeling it 100%, I’ll try to get the best ending though which is somthing I didn’t do with Aria.

Resident Evil 3

Completion time: 8 hours.

It’s about time I complete the original PS1 trilogy! I don’t think I need to explain why a survival horror would fit for this time of the year.

Even though I could complete this one on the Anbernic as well, and it’s probably the better choice… something about giving it a go on the PSP sounds interesting, The previous title is on PS1 as well, so maybe it makes more sense than this one?

Books

There’s only one book that could be considered “spooky” here, I already have plenty of progress on it, as well as another one here. Given the upcoming movie, the third choice only makes sense, since it shouldn’t be very long either..

The Left Hand of Darkness

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin—Time left: 4 hours.
Progress: 64%

I had my doubts when I could barely understand what was going on and the strange prose used throughout this work, but halfway there I’m fully hooked, and I have a better understanding of everything. This story is wild and its worldbuilding is awesome as well. Good concepts and still halfway there.

I’m reading this one on morning and evening, it has my full focus and will be completed very soon.

The House on the Borderland

Author: William Hope Hodgson—Time left: 4 hours Progress: 53%

I have been really enjoying reading this work of horror beyond understanding and the like, but it takes a bit of time for me,because the atmosphere it feels like something to read late at night, and so far, that hasn’t happened much.

A trick I could use too is listening to the soundtrack of the Resident Evil games while reading it, it can manage to tense things up very well! and since it’s still atmospheric more than stressful, it doesn’t ruin the mood or pacing of the book itself.

Dune: Messiah

Author: Frank Herbert—Reading time: 6 hours.

I want to read this one because of the upcoming movie in December, I think this would be a pretty ideal time to get to it! I have heard some people claim it’s better than the first book, and some others hate on it and the rest of the sequels after the original. I’m sure it’ll be fine though!

My original review talking about the first book and two movies was some very fun and inspired writing, I like to think, so I wonder if the sequel will capture me like that.

Finishing thoughts

I had made a table defining the actual schedule of every single thing, but it ended up being a little bit much. Especially because my progression per day can be a little hard to predict. The books I read can end up beaten much faster, and the videogames can end up taking longer when I get lost or something.

I started The House in the Borderland, a much shorter book, many weeks ago, and I’m already further ahead on Left Hand of Darkness in a matter of days! I don’t understand myself sometimes.

In any case, having a list of stuff is very helpful already, and thirty days should be more than enough, especially if I stop being distracted by my phone and my computer.

There is a vacation trip coming up late in the month where I will also put a lot of focus on these things, if I end up behind schedule, but I hope it doesn’t come to that!

If you have any thoughts about the books or games I bring up here, you are more than welcome to tell me about it, and if you have plans to play or read some other stuff during this month, share it as well!

All the cover art of each work mentioned on this blogpost!

This is day 48 of #100DaysToOffload

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Christmas movie, Fool Us rabbit hole, UNO - W40

2026-10-05T22:34:33-06:00

This was a very crazy week I have to say, full of unexpected surprises and the like, as such, the things that happened kind of have to be more than listicles this time around, we will resume the usual style for future weeknotes, probably, or not!

In any case, here are some events of note that happened from September 29 to October 5, 2026.

🎩 I fell on a Fool Us rabbit hole. It’s a show where magicians all over the world try to fool Penn & Teller—one of the best magicians with a long history and experience in the art. If you’ve never been exposed to it, I have some recommendations with some top performers! Grab a snack and a drink, and have a blast! These are not ranked, but DaOrtiz is my favorite.

🛍️ Decided to go shopping out of nowhere to the supermarket, and I bought a couple stuff such as an UNO edition themed after The Legend of Zelda series. I also got myself a Formula 1 Hot Wheels set of 5.

The crazy part however, is that for the first time in my life, the lights went out inside the supermarket for a long while. It was kind of nervewracking, a few kids screaming but nothing too bad once power was restored. Fun fact, the self-checkout section kept working!

🚌 The bus route for work has finally altered the time of departure on my stop, and I have good news! I now have ten whole minutes more to stay at home in the early morning, less pressure to wake up early and the like, which I actually appreciate. Less time for hobbies during the commute, but whatever.

🦐 For the first time in years, I went out to get some seafood with my parents! My mom found this place nearby and she wanted to check it out, so I decided to invite her and dad to have some for ourselves. I got some shrimp! I forgot what they got, I just ate stuff and enjoyed myself!

🎲 We were so close to playing Land of Eem out of nowhere, but my friends chose simpler card games instead, I even brought my books and all—though I forgot my GM screen too.

We did a few rounds of Phase 10, but we also did UNO K-Pop Demon Hunters edition (while letting the soundtrack of that movie play the whole time) which was fun enough—though I didn’t understand the extra rule it adds at all.

🙈 In an absolutely wild moment, my mom ~~decided to play cupid~~ invited the girl I kinda like (the one I invited to the movies, twice) to visit us. I was not told about this critical information at any point in time, until she literally messaged me asking for my address. So I ended up going out with her—impromptu and against my will (not really)—downtown, we had an ice cream, looked at cool old buildings, and the like.

We also had dinnner, played some card games, watched a christmas movie (in October?) and had a relatively good time. I genuinely felt like I was put into a rom-com manga all of a sudden against my will. I feel that I did everything wrong and fumbled many things badly—yes I’m not going into why here—but it turned out ok and she had fun which is good enough for me and she said I owe her another one.

UNO K-Pop Demon Hunters, some sea food, a UNO Zelda edition, my PSP with FFIV on it, and some pretty lights in some street downtown

Watching

Klaus is an incredible work on animation that works as a retelling of the origin of Santa Claus! It features a mailman who meets an old toy maker, who help bring a very toxic and divided city together for the first time, with the power of acts of kindness! It was a genuinely lovely film with excellent art design and story. A bit weird for October, but it doesn’t matter.

Reading

The Left Hand of Darkness. Chapters 6-7. I got a bit slow on this one as I decided to focus on my gaming and was carried away by some manga too! Still, the chapters were also very long and focused on some pretty interesting themes this time around.

Alita Battle Angel. Chapters 45-46. After probably more than a year without reading this classic manga of the cyberpunk genre, I finally decided to return to this, with only ten or so chapters, it took me a while to get back into the gist of it. I am having fun nonetheless!

Blue Lock. Chapters 360-361. I remember saying I’d stop reading this until the England match was over, but I decided to read some more anyway and ended up getting to a perspective switch outside the match, welp.

Centuria. Chapter 80. Not a lot of reading this one this time around! Just some intersting villain backstory stuff.

Gaming

Completed

Final Fantasy IV has been ongoing for me, for about four years, I have finally completed one of the quintessential entires of the JRPG genre! One of the first with an actual plotline, accompanied by a wonderful soundtrack and turn based combat implementing the ATB system. The PSP version was a joy to go through, I played around 14 hours total since I last touched it last year, just doing endgame dungeons, unlocking ultimate weapons, grinding for levels, and finally beating the last boss, to reach credits and end this story once and for all!

Ongoing

Nintendo Switch Sports was played during the weekent. It was an excellent source of multiplayer fun that I tried with multiple people this week. Both 2-player and 4-player modes! The favorite was volleyball and tennis, as usual.

Guncho is a roguelike that I think I’ve mentioned before. It’s a game where you deal with many enemies in a hex grid, with only six bullets and the environment to help you. You can unlock abilities to swap positions, position yourself, or ricochet bullets, and it’s awesome!

Around the Web

Not a lot of posts this time around, and no descriptions. It’s late!

Fire Emblem is Timeless by Kyle Labriola
Music over podcasts by Rubenerd
October Is Spooky Video Game Month by Wouter Groeneveld
Your Phone Is Not Your Computer by Simon Safar

This is day 47 of #100DaysToOffload

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September 2026 Summary

2026-10-02T16:59:27-06:00

At last, another month we say good bye to, and all of a sudden, the year is on its final stretch, the days go by faster and faster, and I am getting old with everyone around me!

In any case, there’s plenty of stuff to go through here, media, movies, videogames, podcasts. You Know the usual stuff! I have decided I would highlight the best things on this little intro, in case you are bored or looking to just skim through.

Podcasts: The Play Station Episode of Into The Aether, The Wolf 359 podcast as a whole
Manga: Blame! is simply awesome and terrifying.
Movies: Ad Astra, Artificial Intelligence, Catch Me If You Can, War of the Worlds, Coyote vs. ACME.
Videogames: Final Fantasy IV was a definite surprisei to return to. Emio and the Smiling Man was engagn
TV Shows: Lanterns was pretty refreshing for a super hero show, if a bit too adult for my taste.
Books: The Left Hand of Darkness and The House on the Borderland are still halfway through but I’m committed to both.

Some artwork of my favorite media that showed up during the month!

Podcasts

Into The Aether - With the release of the Play Station episode, my listening time for this podcast skyrocketed to a whooping 19 hours throughout the month! Fantastic set of episodes this time around.
The Ten Minute Bible Hour - I listened to a dozen or so episodes of this one again, but they are like ten minutes each so it doesn’t amount to a lot compared to the rest of stuff here. Extremely interesting as always though.
Dungeons and Daddies - A Dungeons & Dragons podcast. On a surprising turn of events, I finally returned to this podcast! I was able to pickup on the overall story again, thankfuly, so I plan to resume this crazy season 3, soon enough.
The Rest is History - Some good stuff here, still all about the Great War, it was early in the month and I’m not I recall all of it though.
Wonders of Web Weaving - I listened to a few episodes of this podcast by James featuring different bloggers and stuff. Including me!
Wold 359 - I made progress and went through a couple more episodes, the finale feels closer now! Really looking forward to that.

Manga

Started

Blame! - Chapter 1-9. This a dystopian sci-fi story that happens inside some sort of mega-structure. We met one guy who is looking for a human with a special gene, which should be able to control the mega-structure itself. Each chapter is full of incredible architechture and a very intriguing atmosphere. Lots of questions lack answers right now, but I am kind of hooked by it. The chapters are a little long though, but they don’t have a lot of dialogue so, it’s all good.

Ongoing

Centuria - Chapter 48-80. A lot of pretty cool action and great moments happened, but I have kind of realized that this manga, while entertaining and still promising, is taking its time to deliver actually interesting plot points. I still enjoy it, because it lets me fill about ten minutes of my time with neat drawings to look at.
Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You Chapter 63-64. Now this is still going to some interesting places. A lot of introspection during these couple chapters, after a pretty heavy and difficult situation, a conflict in need of resolution, which I’m looking forward to see. I love these characters!
Blue Lock - Chapter 357-359. I was reading this with great interest, but decided to wait at least until I’m sure the England vs Japan match is completed, so I can enjoy it all in one go. Fun stuff!
My Wife is from a Thousand Years Ago - Chapters 287-288. This is just a fun rom-com! No complaints, a nice pace and very fun moments, a little spicy but mostly wholesome, which I prefer.

Movies

I was going to like, write kinda proper reviews for these but, meh, they were all pretty decent except for Mercy, you can skip that one.

Avengers Endgame Encore - Fun to rewatch on the big screen at last! The extra scenes aren’t really worth it though.
The Day the Earth Stood Still - An alien tells humanity to chill out or else. Seriously impressive for the time.
War of the Worlds - Tom Cruise running from aliens from Mars. He also tries to be a good father at the same time.
By Any Means - A bunch of racists face the consequences of their actions. A bit of a weird casting choice though.
Mercy - Chris Pratt trapped by AI and staring at screens. The murder mystery was fine, the presentation not really.
Artificial Intelligence - A robot wants the be a real boy and earn a mother’s love. That ending is wild though.
Catch Me If You Can - Leonardo Di Caprio running from Tom Hanks. The movie is based on real events that turned out to be fake!
Ad Astra - Brad Pitt running from the world itself, looking for his father. Surprisingly Hard Sci-Fi stuff here.
Coyote vs. ACME - This one was funny and nostalgic and I loved it. No notes, it made me cry out laughing.

Videogames

Started

Kirby and the Forgotten Land - A friend came over one time and we decided to start this one in 2-player mode. I decided it would be a pretty fun title to add to the multiplayer pile of games I mostly play with other people! It is extremely fun. The artstyle, the level design, the Switch performance and everything combined make for a very pleasant gaming experience.

Ongoing

Final Fantasy IV - This is the game that ended up being revisited the most, with about as much time played of it as Emio, but grinding and progressing through the last few challenges this game has to offer, and the final dungeon which is at my grasp at last. Final Fantasy IV may be the first ever Final Fantasy I complete, and I’m looking forward to it.
Hollow Knight: Silksong - This game started strong in the month, playing it for about five hours in four days. I got into Act 3 and defeated some new bosses, I upgraded my needle and got more stuff from all that.
Fire Emblem Awakening - I made significant progress completing chapters 19 and 20 without a lot of issues, after some grinding throughout many days. Loving the support scenes as well! Waiting for its time to shine some more.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D - I only played this one time, but I made some initial progress as Adult Link, reaching the Forst Temple. I only need to focus and complete the dungeon itself and continue the story some more!
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream - Revisited my island a couple of times, but I haven’t really made a lot more with it. I should try to like, remodel everything or do something more creative, but the spark isn’t quite there for me right now.
Super Smash Bros Ultimate - I had some very epic moments playing with friends this time around, it was awesome.
Completed
Emio: The Smiling Man - I am yet to review this, a detective story with visual novel mechanics that really caught me for three days straight. Pretty much only paused to eat and sleep as soon as I started it! Amazing artwork, great music, intriguing plotline, fun characters, so many suspects! Loved it.

TV Shows

Lanterns - I watched like four episodes of this in a single day and it was a pretty good detective story kinda thing. I wasn’t expecting to like it as much, although I kinda abandoned it halfway through. Will probably finish the season soon.

Books

The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. Up to chapter 14. This is a very interesting horror novel, that deals with the existential, multiple dimensions, entities beyond our understanding, and whatever else. In the form of a diary written by an old man from long ago. It has been very gripping so far, but I paused it for the sake of the next book.
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. Up to chapter 7. This was chosen for the TWGLK Book Club for September and… I didn’t manage to finish it, started too late. Anyway, I am enjoying it as is, and without the time pressure. This is a very interesting book featuring a couple points of view, but mostly focused on an envoy sent by an interplanetary force

Finishing thoughts

I wonder what the reading retention was on this one giving you a summary of summary of the month at the very beginning. I guess we’ll see over time.

It’s not like I should care about this stuff being read, it’s always more of a log for myself so I can lock down when some interesting movie or videogame showed up on my radar with a simple grep command on my terminal.

In any case. This year is flying by, and it’s pretty clear that the yearly recaps will require quite a lot of effort! Looking forward to that.

This is day 46 of #100DaysToOffload

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IndieWeb Fiction Carnival September 2026 - Moonlight

2026-09-30T22:55:00-06:00

Here is my late entry for the IndieWeb Fiction Carnival for September!

The theme was: Moonlight, hosted by James.

We are always three

My Mom told me about the big circles in the sky, of how darkness used to be full of dots of light. I don’t understand the stories. There is no sky outside.

We are going to a new sun now, Dad says this one is younger—but still older than me! The other one was the moon—a big rock that shone in the night sky—how can it be dark when there’s a light above?

We used to be able to find all sorts of things in the feeds, like shows and cartoons, but storage is needed for new planet stuff, and some of the archives had to be taken out. Mom saved a couple of them on our terminal, though.

Some were shows by magicians, my favorite ones. They could multiply, or change, or make objects dissapear! With a wave of the hand or under a cloth—Dad told me it’s “sleight of hand”—I can’t figure it out.

The man was wearing some weird suit, in the middle of a table, the expectator had colorful clothes and her hair was long, he was a little bald. We cut ours to keep the place tidy. Maybe hygiene wasn’t too important back then?

He took three little pieces of bread, put two of them inside a tea cup, flicked the last one towards the audience, and started to talk about an ancient poet.

The man let the cup spill on the mat—the three balls of bread rolled out from it.

He shared a poem while he did it all again:

Once the party is over,
the guests have to leave.
I don’t know that sadness.

As I walk back home,
we are always three:
The moon is my partner,
my shadow follows suit.

Once our trip is over, us passengers have to leave, I look forward for that day.

I will have a new home, friends to play with, a new moon above me, and a shadow to follow me!

Afterword

Well, I rarely do fiction! This is definitely a first for the blog, but I wanted to try my hand at it. Where does this come from? Why do I write about it? Feel free to share your thoughts before reading this, or afterwards too, hehe.

Well, first, I wanted to try doing this for the sake of it. I enjoyed the theme and wanted to explore it.

At first I thought about writing from the point of the view of a certain character from Outer Wilds, but I won’t share much spoilers about that game or the context of all that. Play it yourself, please.

Anyway, I also wanted to write from the perspective of a kid with an untainted sense of wonder. I had read some fiction like Strange Dogs by James S.A. Corey, and of course, The Indomitable Captain Holli by Rich Larson. Completely different stories, but both from the perspective of kids who are yet to understand the world. I thought I could try it out. My inner child is still alive and kicking but maybe I used a couple terms that were too much? Like, “storage”?

And of course, the magic. This talks about a real magician doing a real performance, the wonderful René Lavand is one of my main inspirations in close-up magic. His presentation was absolutely unique. Poetry, classical music, and an elegant presence at the table—performing all of his illusions with a single hand.

The effect can be seen on YouTube but the language is in Spanish. I did my best to translate the main lines of the poem here, it still doesn’t compare to the original which is a bit longer.

I hope you enjoyed this little piece of fiction, perhaps I’ll try some more.

This is day 45 of #100DaysToOffload

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I was on a podcast (again)

2026-09-29T12:20:00-06:00

Once again I am happy to share with you all the secret that I mentioned a couple weeknotes ago! I was in yet another podcast! This time I was a guest in James’ wonderful show:

Wonders of Web Weaving #21: Joel

The podcast is a fantastic show where James interviews different bloggers and writers that are active on the IndieWeb scene. There have been many wonderful people there already, such as Marisabel, Rachel, Mike, and some more.

There’s only about 20 episodes so far, so give it a listen if you care about blogging, the indie web, writing and the like!

The way this came to be is kinda fun. I was actually the one who reached out to James on Signal, to see if he’d be interested in having me on his show. It just seemed like something fun to try, and a way to challenge myself to speak some more English too, and of course ~~the free promotion muahaha~~ having a good chat with a friend. ☺️

My family would be out of town soon, and I’d be able to freely express myself without being shy about it. I also had no work that day, which was more convenient for our difference in timezones, as he would otherwise be long asleep by the time I get back home from a regular work day.

The only problem was… I took my shot with just two days of anticipation. So I wasn’t sure if he’d have the availablity. Still, I let him know.

Thankfully, James was very approachable, and told me he was free at that time, he was even happy to take the proximity of the event as a challenge for his organization skills—things lined up perfectly for both after all.

Going from being one of four people—on my previous podcast experience—to being the main guest was nerve-wracking at first, but James had my back the whole time and I felt pretty comfortable talking and rambling on. I think it also helped that neither of us are English native speakers so I didn’t feel self-conscious about my pronunciation.

The episode goes through many things, such as my start with blogging, how everything developed over time, some thoughts about hobbies like origami and gaming and why I like to share them, as well as what I want for the future of blogging and the web I’m general. I hope you check it out and find it enjoyable! And forgive my ramblings and bad pronunciation of the word “posts”.

Without further to do, feel free to check it out and share your thoughts about it in the comments!

This is day 44 of #100DaysToOffload

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Pixel Art, New book started, lights out! - W39

2026-09-28T22:30:00-06:00

I have been participating with the #3GoodThings hashtag for quite a little while now! I’ve tried to be consistent with it and I’ve been dutiful documenting at least three interesting things that happened that way. Basically, they are a bit of a shorter version of these weeknotes! In case you wanna follow what I’m up to closer to real time.

At last, here are some notes and things of interesting that went on from September 22 to 28, 2026.

🐻 I have done a couple Pixel Bears! for many of my blogging friends. I am definitely looking forward to sharing the final results once they are completed. I only have a few more to do!
🕹 Two Nintendo Switch games were acquired… Red Read Redemption and MIO: Memories in Orbit. I don’t know how they showed up here at all… 😇
🍩 On Thursday we went to a friend’s birthday, but instead of a regular cake we had a bunch of donuts! So that was pretty funpretty fun.
🎨 Some badges have been made too, but I’m not ready to share those yet at all. Wanna do more first. These will be themed after videogames. Although you can get one already from my footer, the one that says “made by a human”!
🍔 On Friday I was invited by some friends to the movies, to watch the new Avengers Endgame Encore. Before that though, we got some great burguers for lunch! It was delicious and I was filled up.
🍕 My sister visit time is over at last, she left today and headed back to continue her studies. Yesterday some friends from church invited her (and me) to a pizza night! It was very fun.
🔌 During a visit to the supermarket, the lights went out! That was actually a bit of a crazy experience, I don’t think that’s ever happened to me. It literally went away for like a minute and some people were screaming and looking for their kids and the like. Very bizarre but actually kind of fun for me.
📚 I recently purchased The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, but I’ve actually gotten some other Kobo books that went unmentioned for a while! Let me know which one should I read next:
- Jade City by Fonda Lee
- Red Rising by Pierce Brown
- There is No Anti-Memetics Division by qntm
- Memory’s Legion by James S.A. Corey

A tasty pizza, my PSP playing FFIV, some donuts, Red Read Redemption and MIO: Memories in Orbit, and my Kobo reader

Reading

The Left Hand of Darkness - Chapters 1-5. One of the most known Sci-Fi works by Ursula K. Le Guin, this book was chosen for the TWG’s Low Key Book Club. Unfortunately, I realized too late and may be unable to complete it for the conversation about it. I’ll still read it though. The story is about a human embassador sent to a planet where genders constantly change with the time and seasons, so he is considered a perversion among them. So far, very confusing!
Centuria - Chapters 73-79. Just a few more action packed chapters. I have to say I’m starting to notice why some reviews say this has almost no substance. I can barely remember anything about it, there are no real epic or memorable moments. Only some entertaining twists and such. Revelations are nice, but no pay offs just yet, a bunch of unsolved mysteries and we are 80 chapters in. Hope something happens soon.

Gaming

Final Fantasy IV - I made even more progress on the last dungeon of the game, and I even teleported out to buy supplies and headed back inside to grind some more and get all the way to the bottom. I unlocked a new sword, the Masamune, beating another boss guardian. I continue to head downwards into the dungeon, I have not played enough to reach the end though. Definitely smelling the ending nearby.
Super Smash Bros - We had a fantastic multiplayer session, and this one was actually kind of crazy. We had the usual battles with 3 lives, but we were told that we had to leave elsewhere, and we decided to do a deathmatch. It was actually extremely competitive, and everyone ended up on red numbers. We even managed to survive someone’s Smash attack. A lucky friend grabbed the giant laser beam gun and managed to hit everyone at once. As epic as it gets.
Minecraft - Played it like 20 minutes, didn’t really feel the itch to do more though.

Watching

The Day The Earth Stood Still - A timeless classic from 1951. The writing is smart and holds up well. They somehow avoid mentioning conflicts so you can easily imagine the events happening today, though the Cold War was clearly present. The plot is simple, but ahead of its time. The terror is mostly implied rather than shown. An alien with technology beyond our understanding, along and unstoppable robot companion visit Earth, looking to share a critical message to every leader on the planet: To chill for once and stop the violence around us, or be turned into dust.
Avengers Endgame Encore - This was a very, very fun time. I hadn’t really watched Endgame since 2019, and it was honestly very interesting to see all of what happened between then and now. Anyway, the movie itself isn’t better than Infinity War, but I still had plenty of nostalgia and love for these characters, and I had a blast revisiting the closure of the Infinity Saga. Not going to lie, the extra scenes aren’t worth much.
Minority Report - A sci-fi film about a pre-crime detective who ends up framed for a pre-crime himself. He has to do everything to prove he is innocent (and will remain so). I only started the film, but I want to see the rest of it (will probably restart lol).

Around the Web

the reduction of intellectual labor by Ava, saddened by the way LLMs are taking away the joy out of a lot of jobs.
On reading books - A very nice slice of life and random thoughts about reading.
Learning scripting by scraping my own website - This was an absolutely lovely display of a human figuring things out.
Awe - A wonderful slice of life once again, this time by James!
Become worthless (to tech companies) - This was a fun one excercise. Ruining your value as a costumer for big tech.

This is day 43 of #100DaysToOffload

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When a blogpost eats another

2026-09-24T20:42:07-06:00

I was halfway through writing a pretty interesting blogpost today. Some thoughts about all the science fiction films I’ve watched this year! It’s seriously so much I realized I should probably save it for the end of the year.

Why you ask? Well, because I can literally make a recap of only sci-fi movies, and a recap of other movies if I want to, and all I have to do is wait for the end of the year.

I’ll definitely save the writing I already did, and probably use some of it for this month’s recap as well.

(If you’re curious about it, this month I have watched The War of the Worlds—awesome and terrifying—, Mercy—pretty meh—, The Day The Earth Stood Still—absolute masterpiece—, and I’m halfway through Minority Report—which is looking great.)

(As another aside, let me know if what I just did with those commas and em dashes is stylistically correct or whatever, I thought it looked kinda neat and I have read a couple books that have used that weird em-dash+comma thing. If you have to know, yes, I am stealing the whole paragraph inside a parenthesis idea from the Murderbot novels. Also is the last dot supposed to go inside or outside the parenthesis? I don’t wanna skim through the novel to check.)

In any case, I think this thing where you start writing something only to realize it should probably be something bigger (or maybe smaller, sometimes) can happen in plenty of situations, and I wonder how much does it take for some people to realize this! The treshold is different for everyone I guess.

For example, I have plenty of posts on a series titled “What Interested Me Today”—which is yet to have an actual category or special index for it—and I’ve thought about stealing some other formats from some fellow bloggers, when my weeknotes aren’t enough and I simply have short thoughts to say.

Perhaps a quick and random list of thoughts is fun, like what Loura did just now as I was writing this post. Or like Steve’s thoughts of the day, which is a fantastic little series that I always peek through to see what’s up with the guy.

But well, maybe I should just write my thoughts on those sci-fi films already, gushing about movies is something I rarely do, after all.

For now, you’ll have to settle with a ramble, bye!

This is day 42 of #100DaysToOffload

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Independence Day, War of the Worlds, Final Fantasy - W38

2026-09-21T19:18:29-06:00

The weather was comfy this week, not a lot of rain, but the chill is starting to be noticeable. I still haven’t worn anything on top of my regular t-shirts though. These weeknotes will cover September 15 to 21, 2026.

Honestly, the stars stars aligned, and I pretty much wrote about every interesting thing happening, or any thoughts that sparked during the week on separate blogposts! Of course, most of the real life events don’t get posts, and those are mentioned here, plus a link here and there.

🇲🇽 It was Mexican Independence Day! On Tuesday my church had a fun event where we had food and played lots of games together. I ended up quite tired. My outfit was rather barebones too, just the jersey for the Mexican team, it was fun to see some friends dressed up with more traditional stuff. The food was absolutely delicious as well. Viva Mexico!
🎮 Completed the Summer Game Challenge, completing a total of 6 games, and making progress in so many more.
📽️ During Wednesday, I got the day off from work, so my family went out shopping and we also went to the movies, we picked a film blindly this time, By Any Means, which was quite something. We also had another coffee… I’ve had a lot of coffee lately. After the movies we went shopping to a supermarket, where I decided to play videogames despite being in public.
🌐 Joined The Worst Webring, a webring started by Brent (a.k.a. TK) that should contain members of people from the TWG Community, so that’s fun. This event also inspired a blogpost.
🍿 On Saturday my parents went on a date and I stayed with my sibling and we ordered some chicken wings at home and watched a movie and it was pretty cool to just chill, eat wings and have some snaks!
🕹️ I was not feeling well on Sunday, so even though my friends stayed to play videogames, I didn’t really felt like playing along. They decided to try Gunstar Heroes, a classic of the Sega Genesis, and went through the whole thing in Easy mode, it looked incredibly fun! I was just watching laying on the sofa.

My PSP showing off Final Fantasy IV, a panel of the Blame manga, a frappuccino, and a scene from War of the Worlds

Watching

War of the Worlds - Another Steven Spielberg movie! This is a retelling of the classic novel by H.G. Wells. It honestly really, really worked for me. The tripods are terrifying, the situation is catastrophic and humanity is helpless. The horror and tension and inability for us to do anything against the aliens who didn’t even consider us an threat really had me on the edge of my seat.
By Any Means - This was a crime thriller film based on real life events where a black FBI agent and a mafia hitman are forced to work together to get to the bottom of some civil rights murders. There were plenty of gruesome moments in this where I just closed my eyes tbh, but I enjoyed what I saw of it. The score was jazzy and kinda cool, and even though the movie has a slow pace,it kept me intrigued.
Mercy - This is one of those “main character stuck in a room reacting to things without doing a lot” movies. Some guy forced to solve a murder case for an AI judge that will kill him because he is actually the prime suspect according to evidence. The plot itself is kinda great, but doing it in this way was boring, and talking about AI and not doing much other than say “AI and humans both make mistakes” is meh.

Reading

Blame! - Chapters 1-9. This is a new sci-fi manga I had on my “plan to read” for a long time. It follows Kyrii, a human with a very powerful gun that is travelling through a giant seemingly endless megastructure, looking for other humans possessing a special gene. There are many unanswered questions, but the atmospheric storytelling of this manga is through the roof. The architecture and mystery of the whole thing hooked me. Kind of a terrifying concept.
Centuria - Chapters 67-72. I continue to enjoy the adventure here, the story got rather dark all of a sudden. The mix between kinda slice of life and life-or-death scenarios is kinda crazy on this one.

Gaming

Final Fantasy IV - Out of nowhere, I decided to return to this gem of a JRPG. Last I played I had unlocked the Lunar Whale and didn’t make much more progress. More than a year passed since then. Now that I returned I decided to follow a bit one of those old plain text guides. I ended up defeating some extra bosses, unlocking summons, and then continuing the story, defeating the Giant’s core (I didn’t remember that was supposed to happen), I also beat some extra dungeons with trials for every character, unlocked the ultimate weapons for most of them, and I’m making my way to the last dungeon of the game! I have found plenty of chests there and right now I’m about to battle one of those difficult bosses: Dark Bahamut.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land - Barely touched this game during the week, I only tried some of the side levels that let me unlock upgrades for my powerups. I didn’t get to play with a friend during the weekend because I got lazy.

Around the Web

Here are some lovely blogposts from cool people online!

30 Days of Gratitude - A whole list of great wholesome posts you should check out.
A Relaxing Vacation - Syl went on a short vacation and shared some of her adventures with her family!
When we didn’t know everyone’s politics - Interesting points brought up by Ruben, definitely worth a read.
Lofi phone - This looks kinda neat, but it’s also very expensive and I’d rather get a proper phone.

YouTube

For some reason space horror made its way into my YouTube recommended (which I enabled for a day during my break just to see), I have to admit I was entertained! Interesting stuff and books that I kinda wanna read. It’s why I started Blame!

This is day 41 of #100DaysToOffload

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I forgot webrings exist

2026-09-20T13:25:58-06:00

I don’t usually check analytics on my website, but the hosting I use on Vercel does provide the ability to check referrals, and I have to admit, every once in a while I enjoy to see those!

It’s not because I am obsessed with people who visit my website (although I kind of am), or because I want to write according to what my readers view the most (although I sometimes do that too). I simply love to see when someone links to a post of mine for the first time, and I see their website on my referrals showing up. A lot of the time it’s only four or five clicks from X or Y small website.

Since I only get the referral, an investigation is sure to follow! I love to explore blogs, digital gardens, and personal websites in any form. Checking their blogrolls, reading through their guestbooks, skimming through posts to see where we may share interests or hobbies.

However, every once in a while I’d find a website that would have no mention of me whatsoever anywhere in the page, and I wasn’t sure how they ended up linking back to me, you know? I had to go even deeper. Maybe using things like FreshRSS’s user queries, websites like Backlink Watch or cool search engines like Marginalia, which has lots of neat information about sites on its index.

But no, even then I couldn’t see where some of those clicks were coming from, and I kind of left it there, it doesn’t matter that much after all. You see where this is going right?

Last year I wrote a pretty extensive list of every blogroll, webring and site that links to me, but well, I always enjoy belonging to more of them, I guess.

Today I wanted to get setup on The Worst Webring, and I edited my footer to add the corresponding URLs for Next, Previous and Random. Typical webring stuff.

I decided I would check if all the other webrings were still working (one of them, the previous link on Geekring, currently does not, by the way), so I clicked on all of the previous and next links, and that’s where it finally hit me.

The reason I was getting referrals from websites that didn’t have any links to me, was because those websites were my neighbours in the webrings I’m on!

So any people clicking around the webrings and ending up visiting my website, come from my neighbors, who don’t really link to my site, but I happen to be the next/previous site on the ring for them!

I didn’t forget webrings exist, I simply forgot how they work, by helping people build connections!

So, that kind of puts me in an awkward position, how come I have never checked up on my neighbors before?

Umm, hi :3

This is day 40 of #100DaysToOffload

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namedrops from fans by Imperfect

Who is my (pixel) neighbor?

2026-09-18T09:25:00-06:00

A couple weeks ago I got an email from a guy named Oleh, mentioning that they added me to a new website/project called Pixel Area, it is a 100x100 field of pixels, each of which can link to the blog or personal website of whoever claims it first.

My spider senses tingled, because the email’s writing felt cold and distant, as if it was generated/translated by an LLM. However, the website looked legit, fun, and it was a genuinely interesting idea. Despite this, the footer featured links to a Bluesky (fine), Mastodon (good!) and… an X account (meh). I wondered if this was something I wanted to be involved, and continued my research.

I checked the Mastodon account and saw a thread with Brennan, who was questioning who was behind the site, if it was vibecoded, and if the blogs linked on it where added with permission.

You can see the short conversation there, but I also decided to reach out about it by replying to the email I got, Oleh replied back soon enough.

He seemed to me like a pretty honest guy who just doesn’t speak English very well and didn’t have a lot of experience programming websites. I am not going to quote things since I didn’t ask for permission, but Oleh confirmed it was assisted by an LLM, just like he did to Brennan, and mentioned all the work he did himself too, in the span of multiple months.

I dislike the use of AI, I (hopefully) have been very clear about it, I think it can end up as a stain on what would otherwise be an awesome thing. I believe a project which is tied to technologies that have stolen and caused harm is not in the spirit of the indieweb or my blog.

But, I also believe that a person or a project can be decent and improve for the better, despite our disagreement on that front.

After all, Bubbles, a beloved project by a lot of the blogging community has used AI, been criticized for it, and learned and improved because of it. I think that Pixel Area, which is a lot smaller in scope, can end up being a nice thing too and slowly get better. There is a human in there who did plenty of work one way or another. I also know the blogs there were picked by a person.

I noticed too, that Oleh removed the link to X from the footer, a very good sign to me. I didn’t request for that to happen, I wonder if some others did, but I appreciate it nonetheless.

Because of all of this, I decided to be OK with the project, and I even did my own pixel-art button on my footer, since the one in the website had a whole different style for my taste… Soon enough Oleh even asked me for permission to change his own design to be pixel art too, so if you now have a super cool 88x31 pixelart button, you can thank me for that ;)

At the end of the day, it is a glorified and super cool blogroll, and I honestly can’t have enough of those.

Many of the bloggers I follow were already there, some of them have already written about it.

You can check the full directory of websites and see if you were added already. You can also request to be removed.

Perhaps not all of the people I just linked above were aware of the fact some LLM assistance was used for this, and I am sorry if that has kind of ruined the enthusiasm.

I hope Oleh learns and understands the craft that goes behind coding a website by hand, and hope he can rework and revise things in the future with a new perspective, maybe the community also reaches out to help reshape and guide the website together.

A part of me still feels like a walking contradiction because of this, don’t get me wrong. Nut it’s how I feel at the moment! I like pixels what can I say?

So, back to the question in the title! Right now you can find me at the X:85, Y:10 coordinates, in the “Echo Heights” district. There are not a lot of neighbors in that area just yet, so if you want to be close to me and you are not part of Pixel Area yet, claim your pixel!

This is day 39 of #100DaysToOffload

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This website exists in a place by njms

Gaming in public

2026-09-17T17:00:00-06:00

When was the last time you were standing somewhere public, took the phone out of your pocket, scrolled on some app for a while, and then left it, and moved on?

When was the last time you did that while still walking? perhaps almost crashing on someone in front of you?

Even if you haven’t done that yourself—I’m very sure you have seen some other people staring at those phone screens, even when others are present, without really thinking much about it.

It is normalized behavior. At the end of the day, one shouldn’t really care about it very much.

However, it seems like when it comes to videogame handhelds, things feel a little different…

After all, when was the last time you played on a handheld console in public, or saw someone else doing so?

It’s like something in our heads tells us that you shouldn’t be gaming when others are seeing. Is it a sense of cringe? as if it would ruin our public image? making us seem childish or immature?

Obviously things have a time and a place, but it does seem like even people who are otherwise big into gaming can get self-conscious about others knowing that’s the case.

Yesterday my family went to the supermarket. My father and I went to the clothing section. I was done putting my stuff on my cart, so I was waiting on the others to be done. That’s when I remembered I had my Play Station Portable on my pocket, since I suddenly decided to return to Final Fantasy IV on the car trip there.

So I pull out the device, I flick up the power switch, and in a second, I was able to resume my exploration of the Lair of the Father, located somewhere on the Moon, experiencing the quintessential ATB combat the series is known for.

I continue playing, defeating some of the toughest enemies in the game, teleporting out of the dungeon to heal up and venturing back into danger, almost managing to reach the last boss. By the time I realized, I was standing there, looking down at my PSP and having the time of my life, even walking back and forth on the aisles with the victory fanfare playing at full volume while I reap my rewards.

And you know what? Nobody cared that much, and I don’t care about what they say either!

Looking through the shirts in the aisles, I saw a couple with cool graphics, one of them had design of a retro-looking NES controller, even my dad pointed it out it was there, but nah, wearing that in public would be way too embarrassing for me ;)

My PSP displaying the game. I was not bold enough to take a picture of me actually playing this on the supermarket, apologies

This is day 38 of #100DaysToOffload

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Favorite origami I've memorized

2026-09-17T13:10:00-06:00

As my blog has developed over time, somehow I ended up writing about reading, videogames and technology above all, but the J in my logo is themed after folded paper for a reason.

I love origami! And it was about time I wrote about it some more. My story with it and the like will have to wait for later, at the moment, I just want to focus on the title of this blogpost.

On a very lovely email, a reader of my blog asked me this:

What’s a model you still enjoy folding even though you’ve long since figured it out?

I would like to say that to me this question has a couple of premises that don’t really apply to me!

“Figuring out” a model isn’t really something I think about? Like, I either memorize the folding steps/crease pattern, or I don’t, and I just follow the diagram and not worry too much. My assumption is that what you mean is memorization here, so I’ll only focus on models I can do on a whim without looking at some instructions online.

I enjoy when the final result looks traditional, if I can fold it in under 20 minutes, or if it takes me 2 hours, I don’t really mind, as long as the design looks effortless. Unfortunately I can’t quite memorize all the steps of some of my favorites, but there’s still plenty of options to choose from.

And because there are so many options, I’m not going to share just one favorite, but five of them!

Dollar Bill Camera by Won Park

When it comes to orgami made with dollar bills, few models get close to this one. This is such a simple design that only takes a few steps to fold, and the last result is extremely pretty and instantly recognizable.

The only caveat for this design, in my opinion, is the way the camera lens is kept in shape. It is just very unreliable, and will often slowly unfold, unless you use a clip or something to keep it together. Making the model with a bigger paper helps fix this though, although it looks less impressive than using an actual bill-sized sheet.

Diagram found at Dollar Origami by Won Park

Dollar Caterpillar/Fireworks by Jeremy Shafer

Jeremy Shafer is one of the most prolific designers and very active on YouTube. This model of his is extremely entertaining to make, consisting of a rather easy pattern done over and over again! It was one of the first models I learned how to do from a YouTube tutorial, and I remember making dozens of them for my friends.

After all, this is fun to fold, and it doubles as an amazing fidget toy to have at the office or the school desk or wherever.

Video Tutorial freely available

Full-Rigged Ship by Patricia Crawford

Perhaps this is one where I may consult a diagram for a certain step, but I still had to include it as a favorite. This is one of the best looking designs I have seen, and to think that it’s only a few steps beyond a traditional bird base boggles my mind.

Doing this with a big dual-sided sheet is an absolute treat, you can fold this and put it on a stand, this one is an artpiece and a joy to fold as well, unless you go too small, since some paper layers can overlap and thicken it a bit. No matter, a truly gorgeous model.

Diagram found on Creating Origami by J.C. Nolan

Rat by Eric Joisel

If something that comes from a bird base sounds impressive, a design made from the fish base, and from none other than Eric Joisel. This guy was a beast, you only need to look up the work he did during his lifetime to understand.

The Rat is easily on my top 5 of all time, memorized or not. The fact that I can fold it by memory is only a blessing for me. It can suffer a bit when done with thick office paper though, this one definitely deserves to be made with quality origami sheets. This is a true piece of art and the artist behind it was one of a kind.

Origami Diagram freely available

Origami Human by Claudio Acuña J.

However, if there is one model that I can do with my eyes closed, over and over again, this one has to be it! This is my most folded model ever, I’m sure. It was not just entertaining to fold, but super fun to play with!

After all, you basically had a super cheap, barebones action figure you could play with without worrying about anything at all. I did this every single day at school, I carried one with me during trips.

In my mind, this model turned into a superhero, doing parkour on the walls and dodging bullets in slow motion—there was just no limit to my imagination!

Video Tutorial freely available

Finishing thoughts

Joisel’s Rat may be my favorite masterpiece to show off what origami is capable to look like, but toy-like nature and simplicity of Acuña’s model was just enough to make it a favorite for me, and the design I’ve folded more than anything else in the list, and maybe second of all time, only behind the traditional crane.

I took the time to link tutorials for some of these models when they are available with the author’s permission.

If you read this, let me know if you also do origami, and what your favorite model to fold by memory is! Did you know the ones I showed here, or was any of these a surprise? Happy to talk more about it.

This is day 37 of #100DaysToOffload

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More meaningful online interactions, please

2026-09-15T17:40:00-06:00

Scrolling through the timeline, these are only a few of the things I’ve seen today, people on different perspectives and paths, perhaps someone…

That finally managed to fix their printer after a system update
Talking about seeing someone else make a funny typo
Sharing their progress on a software project
Letting everyone know about a cool update on their favourite game
Celebrating being done with the work day and going home
Coming up with a random pun/name for a pet
Criticizing people in power that do bad things
Saddened by all the AI and LLMs submitting bad code
Thanking a developer for adding a new feature
Uploading a picture of their new book they’re reading
Sharing a picture of their super cute cat

I look at the replies, and the ones with more comments are from people complaining about AI, or from people annoyed at bad people doing bad things (or the cat, but that’s a phenomenon I’m not getting into)

The point is a lot of people engage with the negative, bad news, and such, nothing wrong with that of course, but it got me thinking…

I have around 2900 followers on my profile—a meaningless sum in the grand scheme of things—I have made lots of posts, I share my blogposts, I share my progress on my videogames, or when there is some celebration, or when I’m reading a book, or when I get stuck under the rain.

I always try to share something positive or that I find amusing or fulfilling, or just nice.

Today alone, between both of my fediverse accounts, without counting boosts, I’ve made a grand total of only 3 original posts, not a lot to be fair, but an okay amount for a regular guy like me.

The oldest one was 11 hours ago, the latest is 3 hours ago, as of the time of writing this post. I have 18 favorites (one post with 11 favorites using a popular hashtag), and 4 boosts.

None of them have a reply.

I have done my due diligence and replied about 15 times in the last 11 hours, to ongoing conversations, giving advice about watches, or surprised that someone followed me, or something else.

Only 5 of them go a reply back. I didn’t bother to count favorites/boosts for these.

A part of me feels like I am begging for attention, that I want people to reply to me or to say things to me, but really, the initial list above this post was from lots of people I stumbled upon, and they also were simply shouting to the void with nobody on the other side.

I am also fully aware, of the amount of people who can’t handle social interaction much, and prefer to acknowledge a post with a favorite and move on. With nothing to add to the conversation, this is very fair.

But why does it seem like everyone has something to say about the negative things going on? Why do people come together only to complain about things that a lot of the time don’t make us feel good?

Don’t get me wrong, mobilizing and raising our voices against evil is noteworthy. But many times we fall on nihilism and doom instead, and we don’t actually do any better after that.

This post is somewhat inspired by Ana Rodrigues’s post: “Tell the speakers that you liked their talks “, and in my head still lingers a post from Jane saying she quit Mastodon. Give them a read if you want to.

I am not quitting or anything, but I feel like the Fediverse and most social media with humans using it, has become a little more silent than before when it comes to talking about normal everyday things, focusing too much on big themes and controversies or something along those lines.

To be clear, the Fediverse doesn’t use an algorithm, the reach of what I share is limited to the chronological timeline, so things can vary because of many factors I can’t really account for.

Even so, I don’t know, just food for thought…

On a positive note, the stars aligned and I somehow got like 5 emails on my inbox this week, one of them in the last 24 hours, so that’s always a win in my books!

And I still have plenty of fun on the Signal groups and Discord communities I’m on, so yeah, who knows.

Maybe I am just an attention-seeker who is annoyed at the lack of comments on my posts. I work very hard to come up with them!!

Okay, but, for real, I think we should choose to engage with things that make us happier! So if the post or article or picture a person shares does that, I invite you to let them know!

This is day 36 of #100DaysToOffload

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Weeknotes - W38/2026 (No.4) by Elena
Weeknotes: 2026-W38 by Thomas Rigby

Summer Game Challenge 2026 results!

2026-09-15T12:30:00-06:00

Back in May I decided to participate in the challenge mentioned in the title. From May 25 to September 7 (Memorial and Labour Day in the US), the goal was to make a list of at least ten games, and try to beat a minimum of four before the due date. As a Mexican, I gave myself some extra time, until September 16, which is Mexican Independence Day.

The goal is to make some progress on the backlog and well, play videogames! And that’s exactly what I did, I think!

My friend Bobby also participated in the challenge, check out his blogpost!

My original list consisted of fiftheen titles, although again, I only needed to beat four of them!

Grapple Dog
Terranigma
Hades
Outer Wilds
Silksong
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
Metroid Prime Remastered
Chants of Sennaar
Emio the Smiling Man
Pipistrello and the Cursed YoYo
Gris
Super Mario 3D World
Metroid Fusion
CrossCode
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy
Transistor (an addition early on!)

The completed ones

In the end, from that list I managed to beat 6/15 games!

Title	Playtime
Hades	42:30
Metroid Prime Remastered	25:15
Transistor	05:50
Gris	04:15
Outer Wilds	32:30
Emio: The Smiling Man	13:20

I made a neat collage of the art of all the completed games, APPRECIATE IT!

And here are some extra thoughts if you want—most of them have reviews you can check out.

Hades

I was already on the last stretch after managing to defeat Hades a couple times before the challenge started, and by May 31st, I rolled credits and got some closure for one of the best titles of the decade.

I know there is still a lot this game has to offer, and I may return eventually for it, but I also don’t want to end up trapped giving dozens of extra hours to this game, which as fun as it may be, wouldn’t let me get other things done!

Metroid Prime Remastered

This is probably my favorite game that I both started and beat during the challenge! Playing continuously from June 1 to 12. A perfect transition to 3D done by Retro Studios that I loved from beginning to end!

The game was absolutely beautiful too, this is the best looking game in the Nintendo Switch as far as I’m concerned, and a pleasure to experience without any hiccups or issues at all. The challenge, the world design and upgrades were all fun. While it does have outdated elements, they weren’t a big deal for me at all. I love Metroid.

Transistor

This one was not on my original list, but I still want to count it since I reaplced it very early on in the the challenge, to be honest, swapping it with Chants of Sennar or something akin.

The combat and the story were the highlight here, a very interesting mix of turn based and action gameplay. The way the plot unfolded was incredible to see, the voice acting and score is also a highlight. There were a couple new things I could try starting a New Game+, but I got my fill, and it was great.

Gris

An unexpected choice for me given my options, I was home alone for a couple of days and decided to go ahead and give it a go. The experience was incredible. Going through it all while nobody else was around, letting the soundtrack play at max volume on my TV, with all the lights turned off, it was great.

The story and art, so beautiful, the platforming and the puzzles were light and elegant, and the vibes were just right for this one, a pleasure to have it finished.

Outer Wilds

But what else can I say about such a perfect experience? This game does not have the prettiest graphics on the Switch, and the performance is not ideal. However, I still pushed through it, and it was still incredible.

I had played like fourteen hours earlier in the year, and I went through almost twenty more as I resumed my journey and simply lived in the moment every time. The story, the mechanics, the characters, the discoveries. The planets aligned for once in a lifetime, they gave us a beautiful arrangement, it shall never be equaled.

Emio: The Smiling Man

My review for this title is still only a draft in my head, but it’s a detective story and visual novel where we are the main protagonist, a young detective who has to work on a rather creepy case and get to the truth of it all.

The art of this game is truly beautiful, the writing was also awesome, drip-feeding information in a great way, the mystery of it all, the score. It is a great visual novel with great production values that I devoured in just three days! I got stuck a couple of times, but not a detriment at all.

The forgotten ones

During all of the challenge, none of these got a time to shine at all, for one reason or another! They are all pretty great games though, but well, time management, procrastination, and stuff.

Grapple Dog - Even though I have progress on this game, and it really is a fun time, I pretty much didn’t touch it at all during the whole challenge, it kind of ended up shelved for the sake of other titles.
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - I think I booted this up once, but my retro handheld use saw itself diminished and I pretty much forgot for a while until it was too late! Definitely still thinking of playing though.
Chants of Sennaar - I would have loved to get to this one, but I didn’t even install it. Besides, after Outer Wilds it was probably better to wait some time to get to this one.
Pipistrello and the Cursed YoYo - This is another one that I didn’t even boot up, it stayed in the box for the whole duration of the challenge, I chose to unbox Emio: The Smiling Man instead.
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy - I am actually surprised I didn’t get at least one more ending of this for so many months. Definitely looking forward to a return though, there’s dozens of hours left for me to experience here!
Metroid Fusion - I guess I just feel like I could beat this in an afternoon and didn’t really bother to check. It’s a fantastic game though, I just wanted new experiences, and Prime provided that Metroid sauce anyway.

The works in progress

Even though these games were not quite completed (I technically rolled credits on Silksong when getting Act 3 though), I still enjoyed a bunch of my time playing a bit of some of them.

Silksong - Honestly I am extremely pleased with the progress I’ve made on Silksong, from getting a lot of extra wishes and items, to finally unlocking Act 3 and starting to face against some new enemies, bosses and new areas that I have loved (and hated) to explore! Will definitely continue this adventure.
Terranigma - To be quite fair, I only played this gem for a couple short sessions, I even forgot to update my journal about it. In any case, I know how good this game is and I have to catch up with Sam soon.
Super Mario 3D World - My friends and I simply didn’t pick this one up enough times… I am very close to the finale though, but we are also collecting all the stars and stamps!
CrossCode - Some of my friends kind of lost steam, and I refuse to go without them even now, I hope they regain their morale and get into this journey again, it has been so nice!

The extras…

During the timespan of the challenge, I completed 9 more titles!—including some DLC and shorter indie games.

Title	Playtime
Monument Valley: Ida’s Dream	00:20
Monument Valley: Forgotten Shores	01:00
Monument Valley II	01:45
Monument Valley II: The Lost Forest	00:20
Monument Valley III	03:16
Monument Valley III: The Garden of Life	01:00
Jabberwocky	00:20
The Two Rivers Hypothesis	00:40

Monument Valley (overall) - This was a wonderful set of levels and artistic visuals that kind of blew me away from beginning to end! The overall puzzle design wasn’t always consistent, and some of the ideas were not explored as much as I would have liked, but everything there is was always a joy!
Jabberwocky - This was just a short indie Game Boy game that I beat in twenty minutes, a fun story you can get for free on itch.io
The Two Rivers Hypothesis - Another short indie title, with a much more serious existential horror theme, it is pretty quick to finish, and it’s a nice time if you are into speculative fiction stuff. Free on itch.io!

And the never ending…

There is always a big supply of other titles I’m playing, trying them out here and there. Games I got started with, games I’ve been poking at for years, you already know many of them!

Fire Emblem Awakening and Ocarina of Time have been an absolute menace on my Nintendo 3DS, with a lot of story yet to experience.
Faster Than Light and Minecraft have gotten plenty of playtime on my PC, especially the latter on a server with friends.
Donkey Kong , Astro Boy Omega Factor and the lovely Final Fantasy VI are still ongoing, claiming their spot on my emulation handheld.
Black Rock Shooter, Ys I & II Chronicles, Final Fantasy IV or Ridge Racer, keeping me busy whenever I give my PSP some love.

And of course, my Nintendo Switch alone has its own set of problems! From Kirby and the Forgotten Land which I’m barely getting started on, or the many little gems in UFO 50. The fantastic Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream which ate a bunch of my summer when it came out, and Super Smash Bros, still king of my multiplayer afternoons.

Not much else to say by now. The challenge is completed! It was a success, I played a bunch, and I had a lot of fun, I am probably going to try to keep a list going for the rest of the year too, but nothing as structural as this. Time to wait for the year’s recap and see how things turn out with only a few months left for 2026.

This is day 35 of #100DaysToOffload

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Play Station episode, Steven Spielberg films and more - W37

2026-09-14T16:10:00-06:00

This week was full of rainy days, but somehow I managed to go back from work unscathed, even though I forgot my umbrella a bunch of times. I have felt this week fly by yet again! Here are some events of note from September 8 to 14, 2026.

🎧 The Into the Aether episode going over The Play Station is finally up. More than SIX hours exploring one of the most interesting videogame libraries! There are mentions to awesome games I love, and if you are yet to listen to this podcast, you owe it to yourself to get started with an episode like this one! You will love it Syl!
🌻 Decided to share some positivity and start writing posts sharing #3GoodThings on my GtS profile! A few of those things will probably be featured on future weeknotes, as is the case here.
🤫 Participated on a secret project I don’t want to spoil for anyone here. I will spill the beans once it’s done though, I’m sure it will take a couple of you by surprise, can’t wait to see your reactions to it…
🥩 Had a wonderful BBQ evening with some friends and family. It was grilled in Potosino style (from San Luis Potosi) and my belly was full and very satisfied, I do miss steak from the northern states in Mexico though, one of these days…
⌨️ The Web Writers’ Collective new logo is up, designed by my friend Naty! I did an 88x31 button for the icon! You can already see it on my site’s footer section and take it from there if you join the club.
☕ My church’s youth group met together at a coffee shop, and we had our reunion in a room there—it’s a big coffee shop! The change of scenery was honestly very refreshing, the coffee was very good, and we had an enjoyable time afterwards.
🏠 My parents and my sister have been on and off the house, because of medical reasons. I have enjoyed my time alone (the games and movies below say so!), but it’s been a lot by now. They returned on the weekend at last, my sister had a surgery and is home recovering, so things are somewhat normal again, which is kind of nice too.
📞 It’s been about two weeks since my phone number was blocked by the government and I am happy to say, I really don’t miss it! Although it’s been a little annoying every once in a while, I don’t get spam messages nor phone calls anymore, life is at peace.
📱 App Recommendation! PhotoSwooper is pretty, it turns your gallery into a dating app, and you swipe to delete or keep pictures, at the end you confirm one more time, and clean up some space!

A panel from a manga, Link in front of the Forest Temple, a group of shocked detectives, a frappe, some artwork from Into The Aether and the beginning of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Watching

During my days home alone, I watched a couple of pictures that happen to be both directed by Steven Spielberg, so that was fun. Zero complaints!

🤖 A.I. Artificial Intelligence - This movie follows the journey of a sentient robot, shaped after a child, built to seek the love of a mother whose actual child is in a comma. The robot really does behave like a kid, in both good and bad ways, but when the real child returns, things turn complicated and Daniel, our protagonist, ends up abandoned on the woods. His child-like mind dreams of becoming a real boy. It is a bit of a retelling of Pinnocchio, but in a very different context that was super interesting to me. Spielberg worked alongside Stanley Kubrick to write it, though Kubrick passed before the film was done. Loved it.
🏃 Catch Me If You Can - This is the movie of a con man who commited check fraud, identity fraud, and all sorts of things, lading a fortune and travelling world wide, pretending to be a pilot, a doctor and even a lawyer. This was apparently based on real life, but it seems like the guy actually made everything up, so in a way he was a pretty good con man anyway. The movie itself is a roller coaster though and extremely entertaining, as Tom Hanks is the FBI agent obsessed with capturing this guy played by Leo Di Captrio. Amazing duo!

Reading

🏚️ The House on the Borderland - Chapters 6-12. Finally making some progress on this novel! I managed to read a few chapters of this during my bus trip to work. The story has remained thrilling. I find the protagonist to be quite interesting, as he is really doing everything in his power to ensure the survival of him and his family.
👊 Centuria - Chapters 51-65. Okay the battles really picked up! It has been non-stop fight after fight and while it’s a little hard to follow, I think I have the advantage of reading multiple chapters in a row, which helps me not forget about what was going on last time. There have been some really cool revelations as well, so that’s nice.
🚬 Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You - Chapters 63-64. This romance comedy/drama finally released some issues—the monthly schedule is killing me!—and I caught up on time. I truly love what the author is doing with this story! It has been rather complicated stuff, but somewhat relatable and very charming. Looking forward to a new issue in a few more weeks…

Gaming

Completed

🔬 The Two Rivers Hypothesis - Wait, where did this come from? A completed videogame in less than a week? Well, don’t be too surprised, this is an existential horror game where we control a remote submarine as it ventures into a laboratory installation where some physical theories and anomalies were studied. It is mostly about finding knowledge as you move forward, and understanding (or being confused) by the revelations of what happened there. It’s only about thirty minutes long, and you can get it for free on itch.io!
🕵️ Emio: The Smiling Man - Wait, where did this come from? A completed game in less than a week? Well, you should be surprised! This is a visual novel—not a genre for everyone it seems—where we play as a young detective solving a murder mystery. The story starts with a young student found dead, with a paperbag on his head with a creepy smiling face drawn on it. The plot thickens at every moment, and the resolution is rather awesome. I played this in three days, up to 5 hours each session. I will write a review for it very soon, though I don’t want to spoil anything else. For a Nintendo game, this deals with very dark topics and some gruesome moments, so discretion is advised!

Started

🦍 Kirby and the Forgotten Land - Since I was home with just one friend of mine, I decided to start another adventure that had a 2-player mode! I remembered Kirby has that, and welp, we ended up playing through the beginning batch of levels until the first boss! It was extremely fun and we got all the quests, saving a bunch of Waddle-Doos. I definitely plan to continue this one by myself too, super fun.
🏰 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Only did the first twenty minutes of this game, which I had never opened before, I was expecting some nice pixel art, but it was genuinly jaw-droppingly gorgeous. I wasn’t planning to play it more, but I might just do that…

Ongoing

⚔️ The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D - After a little break, I have returned! I got the actual Ocarina of Time, made it to the Temple of Time, held the Master Sword, got a huge lore dump, headed to Lon Lon Ranch, got Epona, went to Kakariko Village, obtained the Hookshot, got lost in the Lost Woods way too many times, then finally found the Forest Temple, which I’m going to do this week!
⚔️ Fire Emblem Awakening - Okay, NOW I finally bested Chapter 19, complete and without any losses, I am also halfway through a very good run of Chapter 20, which I expect to beat without hiccups and maybe go beyond it, this week.
🏖️ Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream - CompletingEmio made me want something a little more chill on my Nintendo Switch, so I returned to check on my Miis and had some fun with them!

Around the Web

There are only blog posts on these weeknotes! I hope you find something interesting on each of them.

You don’t need to be good at your hobbies - I wholeheartedly agree, although I like to be good at my hobbies sometimes, but only as a personal goal.
What Do We Feel When We See Another Video Game Remake? - We both know we are both going to buy this, Wouter, you’re not fooling anybody.
My Blog as a Library - This was a very interesting setup that is only expected from someone as cool as Marisabel.
First Day of School - The years have sure passed, this was a very interesting outlook from Jane.
Taking a break from text based social media - Lee decided to do what the title says, and I’m all for it. About a year ago I did the same thing!

This is day 34 of #100DaysToOffload

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Return to Land of Eem

2026-09-11T09:40:00-06:00

Make sure to read the first adventure of this journey!.

Six months after the first campaign. We finally sat around the table once again, and played Land of Eem! for the second time.

We had set a couple of dates before to meet up, and even a session zero where some of my players made new characters, but we didn’t get to play for months. After all, when a couple of party members are still of young age, you can only do so much! Plus, we could only align after church and sometimes other activities would take precedence.

This time some things are different, I purchased the Deluxe Edition Box Set, and I was able to use the official GM Screen, the map and the pysical core rulebook!

The rulebook comes with a starting adventure: Wally’s Waffles and Rats, which is quite different from the one included in the Quickstart guide played last time. Spoilers ahead if you plan to play this with your own friends! But don’t worry much, it will not go the same.

First off all, I went very much not ready for this. I had the character sheets, I didn’t read them, I had all the rulebook, I didn’t bookmark any important pages for reference before the game.

I didn’t remember a lot, I just went straight into the game, hoping for the best, and this is how it went!

The adventure continues!

I did a half-decent introduction into the world of Land of Eem once again, focusing on the Used T’Be Forest and Wally’s Waffles and Wourgs. a restaurant that’s about to shutdown, because Wally lost his property deed and some conglomerate wants to claim his terrain as theirs. The whole thing happens during one last celebration, giving Waffles to everyone who comes arond before the bad guys arrive tomorrow to tear it down.

The adventure started quickly. The party of characters kind of went straight into the quest without speaking to any of the NPC’s in Wally’s restaurant. I offerend a couple of options and they did chat a bit, but I have to admit I wasn’t doing my best coming up with dialogues of my own and I want to blame the adventure design a bit, since it appears like Wally approaches the party and tells them everything they need from the start (honestly fine for a first adventure though).

Of course, I still could have pushed them a bit to participate in some of the activities inside the tavern, like Wally’s Howling Hot Challenge.

There’s another problem for me when it comes to the English naming scheme of pretty much everything in this fantasy land, since it kinda feels like it references things not in my language, but no biggie.

Last time I didn’t really bring up the party members, but I saw Daniel’s post—he went through this very same adventure with his family so give it a read!!—doing that and I thought I’d steal the format. They introduced to each other and said some things too, though it was not as detailed and a little bit rushed.

Xavi the Bard, played by youngest in the group.
Maujii the Gnome, a newcomer on this campaign!
Cube the Dungeoneer, played by the oldest in the group, a gelatinous goo.
Wibak the Wizard, a new mushroom character from the guy who played Loyal Chum last session.
Lyra the Rascal, played by my sister’s boyfriend.

Another thing, we kind of forgot the special abilities of each class for most of the adventure, but some things came in handy on a couple of occassions.

After my party got the info about the deed and those details, they headed into the storage room. For some reason, my party was always scared to go through doors, and they had some trouble deciding who would go first. This is where something like the negative/positive character traits would have come in handy, but I kind of forgot to ask about that.

By now, I forgot who entered first, but well, the events are what matters more here. The room was filled with boxes and the like, so my characters did a search, found some strong-smelling mustard, a torch and not much else.

Walking there, they stumbled with an underground worm, which bit on the leg of one of the party members. Trying to pull it away, another character slipped and ended up hitting against the corner of a box, that hurt quite a bit, but eventually they managed to scare away the worm-thing.

The mustard was supposed to be useful to keep animals away, but they never even tried to use it!

With the torch in hand, they continued forward. They slightly opened the door to a room filled with wine bottles, but they saw some rats and tried to shut the door. However, one of the party members pushed the other, stumbling very close to the now angered rats. They still managed to run away though, and headed elsewhere.

The next room was a bit of an office space, with papers, an armor stand, and a bottled ship model, which was actually a magical item that becomes real sized when put in water! The armor in the statue was small, and the gnome in the party decided to keep it. I have to admit I completely forgot how defense and combat at all worked but anyway.

There was this huge hole in the wall that appeared to be dug by some animals, it was clear the rats the party saw before would not be the only ones in their way. At the end of the small tunnel, my party found a bloodied dynamite stick, which was a bit creepy, but useful.

They were about to get out of that tunnel when the party found themselves on a pickle, the floor ended, and the tunnel could only go down, they would have to descend thirty foot deep. For this they tried to use some rope, an item a character had in their inventory! None of them attempted a jump, they simply tied the gnome to the end of the rope, holding the torch, although they let go of it and it ended up all the way to the bottom. Thanks to a lucky roll, the torch did not go out, at least they saw the bottom now!

My party was once again, very scared, and since the rope was long, they decided they would let (or force, honestly) their gnome friend to walk alone forward and shout about whatever he could see in the way.

Underground, everything was a network of tunnels, and going through them proved a little challenging while tied to a rope. There were also some rats that showed up, but that Maujii managed to scare off. They tried a couple routes without success and eventually Wibak the Wizard saw fit to use a magic spell!

Magic Spells in Land of Eem’s Wizard class work a little weird, but he can basically say whatever he wants and as long as it makes sense for me as GM, I can let it slide. For some reason, his spell said something akin to “let the stars guide our way!” and well, the spell worked! Except that they were underground and there are no stars visible here—the wizard wasn’t very smart.

Eventually the gnome walked too far, and nobody noticed they ran out of rope, and that it had fallen to the ground and the gnome pulled it. They were now stuck 30 foot above the ground.

At last, they had no rope, but they did have the courage to push Cube the Gelatinous Goo and use his gooey properties to yelp. Using him as a trampoline, everyone managed to jump down almost unscathed. Not without having to scare off a few rats that showed up.

They finally made it to a new bifurcation, and they headed to a place full of mushrooms, only to backtrack when the mushrooms turned out to have very sharp teeth.

My scared friends went carefully the other way, a dark room with an inky smell and some black thread all over the place… Two of them, the Gnome and the Bard, went forward, only to get stuck on the thread, which turned out to be a black spider web made of ink. Only then they noticed some strange oval-shaped stones, which turned out to be Inkpot Spider Eggs, and at the distance, four eyes opened.

Before the creature got any closer, they had the brilliant idea of using the dynamite stick and blow everything up. They didn’t get a good throw and the blast got them unstuck of the web, and thrown away all the way onto the dangerous mushroom field. Thankfully, the rest of the party managed to catch them as they flung, and the spider nest was destroyed!

They moved forward, confident in their mission, and here’s where I as the GM, made a bit of a nasty move. The Spider survived, and she was also very much in shock, after seeing how all her eggs were now gone… A conflict started, and it was time for the party to pray for their lives.

It’s what I would say except they where exceptionally good at parley, and after a short conversation with the Spider, ~~my sister’s boyfriend~~, I mean, the Rascal managed to trick her into believing that the neighbouring mushrooms caused the explosion. The Spider told them she still had some eggs but that were stolen by some rats further deep, so the party offered to at least save those, and that way they felt a little less bad about the whole thing.

The Spider let them pass and they found themselves in front of a chasm. They had recovered the rope from earlier, so they were able to go through it without much difficulty.

In front of them, a cave of crystals shone due to the light of the torch—which has managed to survive the whole way through somehow—soon after, they saw the skeleton of a goblin, with a hat and a document with orders to steal a property deed, from Krog and Sons Inc—another company that also wants Wally’s property. As the party realizes the fortune the presence of the crystals implies, they hear the sound of big steps approaching.

A giant rat with a not so giant crown on its head is seen, proclaiming to be the mighty and powerful King Klik. Clearly in possession of the property deed that belongs to Wally. All of my players were kind of scared to get into combat, so they bet everything on parley and did their best to convince King Klik.

The players learned that apparently, some of the meat used by Wally for the restaurant was actually made out of rat, which is something the party took very seriously—they wanted to blackmail poor Wally. However, they first had to get the property deed from King Klik.

How did they convince the rat to give it away, you ask?

Very simple, after a very lucky roll, my ~~evil sister’s boyfriend~~ I mean, the lucky and mischievious Rascal, used the magic bottled ship and inspired King Klik to become the captain of their own pirate ship, with a crew of rats under his command!

Somehow, that worked out! They managed to avoid conflict and they were able to recover the lost Spider eggs as well. King Klik and the rest of the rats dug up a new tunnel heading to the south, and we may eventually find what happened to them!

Without a lot of trouble left, returning to the surface to meet Wally was easy. The party decided to confront him about the rat meat, but I wasn’t feeling like making Wally such a bad guy and so his innocence was proven after checking the refrigerators.

After that ruckus, the party continued to enjoy Waffles for another while, and the adventure was over, for now!

Finishing words

Returning to Land of Eem was incredibly fun. With the inclusion of two new players into the party—and the absence of one of them—dynamics definitely changed a little bit.

I honestly was feeling guilty about making the Inkpot Spider sentient, and even the party felt bad about the lie. This is a friendly reminder for everyone that setting the tone of the adventure on a Session Zero is very important. This genocidal event did leave everyone feeling uncomfortable, and even though we joked about it and moved on, the rest of the session was a bit sour.

There are many ways in which this could have gone better. First, actually understanding conflict. Had I done a better job learning that, I could have conflicts develop in more interesting ways. For a while I forgot about the limited amount of Parley one can do, which is how pretty much everyone in my party got to try and convince the Spider and King Klik through a variety of ways without having to fight at all.

If they had gone into regular combat, the Spider would have been a worthy enemy, and I even could have made them promise to save the rest of the eggs or something as a last wish. Making the Spider just a mindless beast would have worked out fine, defeating or making it run away in an environment that is kill or be killed is more easy to justify, without guilt being involved.

Some things of note and lessons I learned, even if I may be repeating myself:

I really need to pay more attention to the character traits, and use them to move the story in more fun or chaotic directions
Understanding combat, seriously!
Handling things better when the party splits up so everyone has something to do or react to.
Sticking to an atmosphere everyone is comfortable with.
Trying to work around the rolls we get instead of rerolling until I like the result (yeah we did this sometimes).
Keeping items in mind! We used the rope and the torch but other useful things were never looked at.
Get better at describing environemnts and pushing the players to explore instead of peeking at a room and not going in.
Push the party to stay in character, there were a few immersion breaking moments I wish I’d managed better.

However, for something that was very improvised, I’m very happy things worked out okay, I’m not going to be too hard on myself and will simply try to learn!

As always, any advice is appreciated! and I hope you enjoyed.

This is day 33 of #100DaysToOffload

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