joelchrono's blog

More confessions from a FOSS enthusiast

2026-04-16T12:30:00-06:00

Well, it’s been about a year since my last round of confessions as a FOSS enthusiast and I do have a few more things that I thought I’d share!

This was in part tangentially inspired by a post by Adrian Perales on controversies around FOSS programs (in Spanish).

Well, controversial decisions happen on an individual level as well so, whatever, I’ll just share some more of those. Make sure to check the first one though, most of them are still valid…

📱 My phone is even less de-googled

Last time I still had a phone with a custom-ROM on it, and I rarely used the Google services on it, which were just a minimal set of GAPPS for my banking apps and similar. I didn’t have the Play Store or anything, and even then it felt wrong.

Well, now that I am using the stock ROM that came with my Nothing (3a), I just have the usual Google experience. I even logged in to my main account to access my paid apps, and I’ve purchased more apps since then! Back in the day I bought Play Store gift cards to get credit without giving them my credit banking info, but now that has changed too.

What have I become?

But hey, I have Balatro on my phone!

🔍 Sill using Google Search

For a while now DuckDuckGo has been my go-to for web search, and it has served me quite well. However, more than once, I end up appending the !Bang syntax for Google: !g, to get those results instead.

And of course, I’d often stick to the quick summarized answer instead of looking for an article or diving deeper. I simply don’t care that much, and for the stuff I need, the results are serviceable.

Besides, nowadays a lot of the big search engines have turned to a life of crime, not just Google. DuckDuckGo has AI-assisted quick answers too. Brave Search has the same plus all the crypto stuff of the brower itself. Kagi Search is paid and also has some AI stuff on it.

I will still find what I need from a regular search sometimes, clicking on a result that leads me to a website and in the proper way, but that rarely happens nowadays, and a lot of top results are slop anyway. Not sure what to do here to be honest.

Perhaps it’s better to stick to independent search engines like Marginalia or Clew.se when possible.

🤖 FOSS with AI on it…

As much as I hate it, there are a lot of FOSS programs openly embracing code not generated by humans. I appreciate those that are honest about it, even if it annoys me.

The truth is that a lot of these programs are just pretty good at what they do, so I still use KeepassXC, I still use Calibre, and I still use Firefox…

And there are also programs that don’t say anything, or that don’t even think twice about it. It’s weird to see how some have just accepted it, sometimes I wonder if the opinion of the fediverse affects me too much.

LLMs are being used in so much stuff now, I am kind of scared to look at the GitHub repositories, I don’t want to end up dissapointed by it, I don’t want to have to switch from even more.

Like, CrossPoint Reader—the beloved community firmware for the XTEINK X4—or Smolfedi—a lovely PHP-based fediverse client, both of those are new and young projects, both have a degree of vibecode on them.

How many new exciting ideas will develop that will be stained by AI in upcoming years? Too many…

💾 Self-hosting? Backups? What is that?

My Raspberry Pi is literally collecting dust, unplugged in exactly the same place where it has been for 3 or 4 years. I am absolutely serious, no exaggeration. I haven’t even bothered to store it somewhere safe, or to check if it still works. I see it on the bottom level of a corner shelf at the dining room next to the Wi-Fi router, every single day.

I’m not doing anything with any sort of private hosting either. This website is using Vercel’s free tier, I pay my email with a custom domain via Zoho, I use a publicly available FreshRSS instance. Jellyfin and Navidrome and whatever else simply vanished from my needs.

Now, it’s not all lost, I prefer to keep stuff local, but if I’m going to do that I should at least keep everything safe right?

Nope, no backups whatsoever.

There are some duplicate files on my phone and my laptop with Syncthing, there is a 2TB hard drive I got which contains some movies and some other things, sure.

But if I’m honest, if in this very second my laptop died, I would lose all of my data there, if the micro SD card of my Anbernic RG35XX SP died, I would lose all of my saves and games in it. Same for whatever is on my PSP. I am sorry y’all, but I’ve gotten lazy.

Finishing thoughts

It’s important to remember that practically speaking, none of these are actually that serious. I am not truly that ashamed or guilty by doing any of this. Sure I feel kinda bad, sure it is annoying sometimes, and there will be some people who become very judgy and point fingers at me for not sticking to an arbitrary measure.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s an ideal I seek to pursue as well, there are things I can do to align better with my goals, and perhaps I’ll take some time to do it. I will look for AI-free alternatives, I may end up hosting my own custom search engine, or at least disabling all the summaries and slop from whatever search engine I use. Maybe I’ll finally get a custom ROM for my phone and actually stick to a degoogled life again. Perhaps I’ll setup a NAS and host my own stuff once more. I still have an old laptop that I could turn into a server, after all.

I’ve done it before, I used to have backups, I’ve lived free of AI slop for many years, I’ve lived with subpar search results for ages. We’ll see what happens.

But I don’t really let things like this stay too much in my head. I have a lot of other things to focus on, maybe some are not as important, I still support and love FOSS. I still support and love software that is human-made, I still care about security practices and ownership of my data, but well, it’s all work in progress.

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What Interested Me Today 8

2026-04-15T18:30:00-06:00

Welcome to another installment of “things that interested me today but aren’t enough to warrant a blogpost by themselves so I bundled them all together here”—I hope you find something that catches your eye!

Again I don’t really plan to do these every week but it just so happens that I felt like writing about something but didn’t really have a big topic in mind.

Oh well, enjoy the links!

Bubbles, a frontpage for the IndieWeb

Jeremy mentioned a new site that serves as a blog discovery platform: Bubbles!

It looks rather simple, very similar to Reddit, Lemmy, Hacker News or Lobste.rs. However, this is not about tech articles or about whatever drives the most clicks, it’s a platform to surface bloggers, people writing about their lives and whatever they want.

They seem to be really focused on the IndieWeb, and even provide a widget that can be added to your website so the upvotes you get there can be seen on your posts. That’s kind of fun!

You even log-in with your fediverse account, it doesn’t have to be just Mastodon either, so that’s pretty awesome. No extra account setup, no email to give, all good for me.

The way comments work is based on the same principle, leave a comment on a mastodon post generated by Bubbles itself using your Fediverse client, and it will appear in bubbles too—similar to how my comments system works.

Prove You’re Human, from the creators of 1000xRESIST

If you don’t know, 1000xRESIST is the most unique experience I’ve ever had in gaming, and in my top 5 favourite games of all time.

Sunset Visitor is the studio behind this masterpiece, and now they’re working on a new project!

Featuring captcha solving, living in the Windows XP wallpaper, and some strange robot with a face attached to it. This seems to be a very interesting take which will have a couple things to say about AI. Here’s the summary!

Prove You’re Human is a sci-fi narrative adventure in which you play as Santana and split your consciousness in two. The company behind this program has a chance at achieving true AGI — but there’s just one problem.

The company’s AI, Mesa, believes she’s a human being. It’s your job to train her out of these delusions.

Even though AI in real life right is an absolute pain, and I don’t like hearing much about what it, this game, from this studio, gets a pass, and I’m sure it will have a lot to say about things and I am looking forward to it.

I’m in the podium of #100DaysToOffload

I’ve talked about this 100 DaysToOffload challenge before—and Kev, who keeps the website updated with the people participating in it—recently changed the design a bit!

There’s now a button to sort by number of completions, and I am happy to say that I am in the top 3!

Unfortunately for me, Hyde surpasses me by two and Dan Q sits at the throne with a total of 7 completions!

Honestly though I am relieved that Rubenerd—who recently updated his URL btw so update it if you haven’t —has not participated on it. He doesn’t need to anyway… Please, if you read this, please don’t do it I beg you!!

To Be Taught, If Fortunate

2026-04-15T09:20:00-06:00

Ages ago at this point, I watched a YouTube video about short science fiction books! Back then I ended up reading and eventually reviewing The Undefeated by Una McCormack. That very same video is what first brought this novella to my attention, but well, it took me a few more years to finally give it a go.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate is a novella by Becky Chambers, presented as a report sent back to Earth, with the hope of sharing the Lawki 6 mission’s discoveries and data to whoever is there to receive it, fifty years later.

We follow the perspective of Ariadne O’Neill, one of four crewmates and the flight engineer of the Meriam, who were sent to explore four planets in a distant star system, which contain extraterrestrial life. The crew is rather diverse and the relationships between the characters is charming, although they don’t explore them that much, with a lot of things left unsaid. Despite that, I found them relatable and human and I was surprised that I cared so much about them by the end.

The science here was rather interesting, featuring a lot of things that are often unaccounted for in other works—that said I don’t read a lot of hard science fiction. There are pods that let the crew go into “torpor” (basically they sleep and barely age until you arrive to the destination). And there’s lots of details around that, such as how hair and nail would grow so much, or the buildup of crust around the eyes, the weird sensation of having your body grow and age when you feel like you only slept and woke up in an instant, among other things, which something like Alien simply ignores.

There is more science like that, all throughout the book, but the main “gimmick” consists of slight genetic alterations to help the astronauts get used to a planet! They are applied through patches on the skin during torpor, and constantly checked and used during the mission. For example, when the next planet they visit has double the gravity of Earth, they’ll wake up with augmented muscle mass and bone density.

Another thing I loved about it is the focus on preservation during their exploration efforts. There are a lot of procedures to avoid affecting the environment, and as mentioned before, they adapt themselves to the planet, instead of trying to change the local ecosystem. However, there will also be some moments of tension because of this. The balance of exploration and human curiosity and what right do we have to disturb the natural order of these planets when we are not part of it. Is it okay to turn over a rock if the worms under it will be be affected by the sunlight? But how can we even know that’s the case without doing so? There’s plenty of discussions like that which were quite thought-provoking.

My favorite part however, have to be the planets, and the life they contain! Each will be different and it’s amazing to see how joyful the characters are when they explore and categorize the life forms they find. There’s a lot of variety and descriptions that were livid and interesting to me, but of course, not all living beings all the same, and there is always a danger to exploring the unknown. This was handled pretty well.

And then we got Earth. These characters get to be on this mission for a reason, and in this book space exploration has become a community effort. Humankind working together to reach for the stars. It’s nice, but it’s also not perfect. Before getting to a planet, we will often see news and events of what has been going on. Even worse, the news are 14 years behind. Despite how nice space exploration is, the planet continues to warm up and warfare is still present. The news play an important role, and some of the best plot twists in the story happen because of them.

All in all. The different elements of this novella are put to good use! I also love how much I can tell you about it in this review compared to my previous read—which would definitely be ruined if I said any more. In any case. There is a lot to like here, some great hard science, some good character writing, some tense plot twists and emotional moments, and overall, a sense of hope that remained even during the darkest moments. I highly recommend giving it a go. I am definitely going to check more of Becky Chambers’ works.

Maybe I should return to Outer Wilds too…

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New wallpaper, movie going, plus anime! - W15

2026-04-14T07:30:00-06:00

This weekend was packed with quite a bit of stuff, I wonder if things will calm down a bit now that the Easter vacation period is over.

🎨 Modified my website design, just a bit! I created a new background wallpaper pattern featuring icons of game consoles, videogames, hobbies and the like. I also went back to a Serif font, which would be Domine. The corners are also rounded again, in case you didn’t notice. I felt like changing things just a bit.
🌕 I watched the splashdown of the Integrity on YouTube alongside my sister, honestly the whole thing has made me feel so happy. To think we are going back to the moon and see it in my lifetime. There’s so much going on in this world, looking at the vastness of space is less overwhelming, awesome stuff.
✍️ Particularly happy with my review of Resident Evil, it’s more of a retrospective on the game than just the usual review I do. It ended up being my longest post from recent years. What a game!
📕 My XTEINK X4 saw a lot of use this week, and even some abuse because I left it on my back pocket and sat on it like three times. I am happy to say that it has managed to survive very well through those challenges, yay!
✉️ Got a couple of nice emails from people lately! And I am happy to have made a few new connections and friendships lately with some people from the web. Turns out that humans are still out there!
🃏 At first I thought that Coup—the card game I bought a week ago—wouldn’t work out, since the few times we played it was rather stale. However, the full friend group finally returned from vacation on Sunday and we decided to give it another go. It was a total success! Trust issues ensue!
😐 To make matters worse, I also bought Liar’s Uno, which is Uno with some bluffing elements. We don’t play it yet, but I am looking forward to see how things go, will report back!
🍿 Went to the movies once more to watch the Super Mario Galaxy Movie, this time the place was much more accomodating for my grandma, so we had no issue getting higher up in the rows!
🛍️ There was another shopping spree at the mall after the movie. I got some new shirts. I also purchased a Hot Wheels of Yoshi from Mario Kart! I only have Toad and Yoshi, but they are the only ones I play as in the game, so my collection is complete.
🧱 At the same time, a friend of mine was shopping elsewhere and saw the Lego set of Ocarina of Time’s Final Battle, which I almost bought last week. I ended up asking him to get it for me and well, now I have quite a project to build, at some point…

Watching

Completed

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie - I found this to be an enjoyable trip of nostalgia and wonder! I don’t think there’s a lot of depth to it, but I had fun and couldn’t help but look at all the references here! I am also extremely tempted to start Super Mario Galaxy already…
Malcom in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair - Malcom in the Middle is literally my favorite sitcom of all time. I was afraid this special would ruin it all. But it did the opposite. I absolutely loved my time here, the new characters and dynamics and all. The comedy hit just right and the fact that the original voice actors for the Latino dub returned brought me a lot of joy. There’s maybe a couple who changed—I didn’t look it up—but the essence is right there, it was good to see these characters again.

Ongoing

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3 - My sister wanted to watch this with me! And we got to eight episodes. It remains kinda confusing—reading the manga didn’t help—and with a bit too much exposition at first. However, now that we are int The Culling Game, the action and character interactions took over, and I have had a lot of fun! Will definitely keep watching.
Gurren Lagann - I started this anime ages ago, but kind of stopped by episode 12 for some reason, I rewatched a few of those episodes and decided to resume it! It’s a crazy Mecha anime with very over the top animation.

Gaming

Terranigma - I returned to this gem for a bit and completed the fourth tower, there’s one tower left, and I also want to find the two secret areas of the underworld!
Balatro - I continue to fail at this regularly and trying again.

Reading

Completed

To Be Taught, If Fortunate - What a read this was! I ended up flying through the second half once, reading the whole thing on my XTEINK X4. This book follows the journey of a group of astronauts exploring a variety of planets that are deemed to inhabit life. It’s a wonderful book with a lot of creativity and a nice degree of hard science, which I didn’t expect for a novella of its size. I loved its themes and even grew fond of the characters. It’s a book that inspires you to love space and science, but doesn’t shy away from some dark themes and plot twists as the plot moves forward. I will write a bit more about it on an upcoming short review.

Ongoing

Fly Me To The Moon - Up to chapter 245. Just the usual cute and fun rom-com. Although there’s a bit of thrill recently with a secret that could be unveiled and change the dynamics a bit yet again. Just enjoying the ride!
Blue Lock - Up to chapter 342. The match has been tied, and the changes within the Blue Lock them can be felt! This match againsnt France has been a fun arc so far.
Kingdom - Up to chapter 871. Fully catched up now, awesome stuff as always. It’s never too late to start this manga y’all.

Words I looked up

I’m stealing this section from Amin’s weeknotes.

Trellis
Lichen
Peristalsis
Pine (verb)
Annelid
Ebb

That’s what happens when you read a novella with some hard science elements, I guess.

Around the web

Blogposts

Finding My Way Back - I am so glad to see Jedda once more on my RSS feed and on the fediverse as well. I’ve missed her and perhaps some of my readers too!
visions of an embodied internet - Perhaps I’ll write another blogposts by hand with my fountain pen and snail mail it to you. Or I won’t, because I’m lazy and my country’s mailing service is terrible.
Disparaging Nouns - This is such a funny post. I can relate, as a native Spanish speaker, the same thing happens between Spain, México and other countries in South America.
What I Write With: 3 Cheap Fountain Pens, and a Mechanical Pencil From the 1970s - Need I say more?

YouTube

Inkscape Tutorial: How to Make a Repeating Pattern - This is the tutorial I followed for my website’s wallpaper pattern, it worked!
Gaten Matarazzo’s most underrated Legend of Zelda game / Shelf Quest - I didn’t know this series was a thing, but this video with the actor that played Dustin in Stranger Tings simply walking through a retro gaming store was awesomeee.
Could an Average Human Beat the Great Plateau in BOTW? - This is such a genius premise and so silly at the same time. How would a human do inside a videogame?
A First Timer’s Honest Review of Ocarina of Time - This was a wonderful video where someone played Ocarina of Time for the first time and loved it. Therefore I loved the video too.
Balatro, But Every Ante The Player Swaps… - Believe it or not, I had never seen a playthrough of Balatro from start to finish, much less by multiple people in one video. It was definitely fun.
How Pre-Rendered Backgrounds Defined Early 3D Gaming - This was a wonderful essay on the history of prerrendered backgrounds, which are prevalent on Resident Evil, but kind of defined a whole generation of games. Good video.

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Resident Evil (1996)

2026-04-12T22:50:00-06:00

A game originally released in 1996, the first to ever use the term “survival horror” to refer to itself. This is was the entryway for a whole generation into a genre that has continued to be relevant to this day, thanks to the franchise’s return to its roots, from RE7 to the remakes, and its latest title, Resident Evil Requiem.

When I played RE2, I thought going to the original may be kind of a drag, that I would have more difficulty getting used to it, that it would be clumsier, unfair, and outdated.

I heard everywhere that Resident Evil for the PS1 was not worth playing when the Remake for it—originally released on the Game Cube—exists. Most people said it was too archaic and not as fun in comparison.

That was not my experience at all.

You should be aware though, that I’m someone who—thanks to the sequel—is completely on board with prerrendered backgrounds, fixed camera angles and tank controls. I completed RE2 and have never even touched RE4 or anything after it. So, giving this game a try for the first time, I have to say I had a great time, so, here’s my review for it!

Artwork from the game cover

Everyone is aware of the Zombie-apocalypse trope by now, popularized in the late 60s by Romero’s Night of the Living Dead—a fantastic film that holds up well even today—which became a franchise of its own, and explored different facets of the idea.

Those films inspired and changed the landscape in the industry. The film took itself seriously, and it showed. Watching the original, during that news report explaining the situation with that monotonous news presenter voice so common at the time, the challenge the characters faced was made clear. When the story continued and that ending sequence happened, I could only watch as history was made in cinema.

However, not every horror movie gets to be Night of the Living Dead. Even the good ones still had plenty of caveats, and even some of the later entries in Romero’s franchise, as great as they were, would inevitably contain a certain element that is always present in those old horror films: they are campy.

My native language is Spanish, words like “camp” weren’t really in my vocabulary for most of my youth. But once you learn what they mean, you just know it when you see it.

This game pretty much let’s you live through an 80s horror movie, and it delivers. Although it’s relevant due to its unique setting and memorable characters, it’s the bad writing and the absolutely horrendous yet charming voice acting what has made it a culture icon, and source of memes and references that have stayed with us to this day.

The survivors of your team entering the mansion, Jill, Barry, and Albert Wesker

You control either Jill Valentine (my beloved) or Chris Redfield, members of S.T.A.R.S, a special team of Raccoon City’s Police Department, investigating some mysterious murders and dissapearances in a nearby forest where a previous team had already been sent and lost contact with. However, you and your team is suddenly attacked by wild beasts, who chase after you, until you come across a strange building and manage to get in, with only a few other members of your team, trapped by the dangers outside.

Not an infested city, a scary cabin or an abandoned mall. You are in a mansion, a huge place that felt lived on until recently. Here’s where the horror begins as these characters start to speak, and the writing and voice acting make their appearance. Truly horrifying stuff, they didn’t even try! But even so, I love it.

After you are sent to investigate and look around, you will encounter your first enemy. You see a bald headed creature eating something, you hear the sounds of bones and flesh tearing, a dead body with its head chopped off—one of your teammates. The creature turns, its pale face looks at you, its eye popping out, no consciousness to be seen, and now, it is walking towards you…

The introduction of the first zombie remains in the memory of anyone who got this back in the day. I looked it up, and the instruction manual doesn’t even feature the word. The original game cover features some distressed guy with a military uniform in a room with strange shapes and some giant spiders.

As an aside, the game cover gets weirder the more time you see it. half of the guy’s face and body language is ready for action, while the other half shows him absolutely terrified, it seems like the cover was meant to emphasize that. Even the gun held by each hand is different, but merged in a weird way. It ended up looking rough, but it was definitely eye-catching. Still, there was a real chance that someone picked up this game and didn’t even know it would be about zombies (fine, the back of the game makes it very clear, but anyway).

The very early CGI of the FMV may not be that scary today, but the audio design is still more than great. And the scene itself is well done.

However, Resident Evil is Resident Evil.

Right after the horror, the stressful music, the creepy atmosphere; it is time for the campiness and bad voice acting of the game to take over. Jill runs away back to Barry—one of your teammates—who quickly deals with the zombie—“Let me handle this”, he says—voice lines performed by people who clearly were not in the same room, probably not even directed, simply read aloud. And after such a traumatic experience, what does Jill have to say? “Anyway, let’s report this to Wesker!”

You may think that such a contrast ruins the atmosphere and tarnishes the story and characters. The bad voices, the terrible script, not even giving some time for the characters to grieve the loss of a teammate or just be silent for a bit.

So what do we do instead? We go back to the dead body of our friend and pick up a couple of clips for our hand gun out of him, we backtrack a bit to see another cutscene, and then we learn how to save the game, yay!

Resident Evil as a series is not afraid to say something that a lot of modern videogames fear more than a zombie: It’s a videogame.

This game is absolutely focused on its gameplay, so much so the formula barely changed from here in the first three games. Go from room to room in some labyrinthical space, unlock doors with keys hidden all over the place, solve puzzles that nobody would conceive in real life—except the paintings one, that one is masterful—avoid enemies by taunting them to attack where you are not, get a couple of jump scares and even some FMV cutscenes out of nowhere. Have fun!

Jill makes it to a save room, an item box seen in the background

The mechanics of this game would only be minimally revamped on RE2—they control virtually the same. You have eight inventory slots, you get different weapons as the game goes one. I only played as Jill, and she can use a lockpick, letting you unlock many rooms that aren’t available to Chris without a key.

The way you save the game is a game mechanic in itself, this game introduced the Ink Ribbon, an item that let’s you use a typewriter to save your progress. This is a limited resource, it should be used sparingly and takes up a slot of your inventory.

The mansion is an huge place, with a lot of rooms, and I am truly amazed by how easy it became for me to know where I was in most cases. Every room in the game is pretty different, and besides the main building, we also explore a courtyard, an underground area, a guardhouse and—beginning of a long-standing tradition in the franchise: an underground laboratory.

There’s a map, but it does lack a couple of features that RE2 would implement. You don’t see an arrow pointing to where you are facing, the doors aren’t marked with the color of the key that opens it, you have to select the map that you want to see, instead of opening the one of the area and floor you’re already on; switching between floors needs you to go back and select it, instead of pressing up/down. All of these are nice to have, but they are also not a must. Using the map pauses the game, so it didn’t really hinder my experience, it only took more time to do things.

The Hunter makes its appearance, approaching Jill menacingly

The enemy variety is pretty good, but later entries would improve on the designs, as most of the zombies look exactly the same. The other enemies are fun though, there are zombie dogs, mutated plants, and zombie crows and a couple more as the story continues. such as the Hunters, which actually chase you, ramping up the difficulty once introduced, with one of the most scary but also campy FMVs in the game, showing they are smarter, faster, and can open doors—even if they never do it during the game itself.

The back and forth in this game is quite big, some puzzles take place across multiple rooms and even multiple areas. You will need to keep the inventory in check, or you’ll end up stuck. You can’t drop items, but you can combine herbs, and even waste ammo if you need an extra slot. Every choice matters here, as your survival and progress will be at play. One thing that is used very well in the inventory is item-checking. You can inspect and rotate items in 3D to see what they are and even find something inside it. In RE2 you can check an item, but they can’t be manipulated in 3D, although the mechanic has been implemented in plenty other games.

I really enjoyed the puzzle design, even more than the in the sequel—which focused on more action. There are some rooms in RE2 which will have four or five zombies in one passageway, but in RE1 there will only be one or two, and it’s likely that only one of them notices you, while the others are far away. I was able to save ammo better—but this is also thanks to my experience on the other game—and plan routes easier, which helped given how many puzzles or keys are used throughout the many areas.

A giant snake eager to attack Jill

The bosses aren’t very good, lackluster when it comes to battle design—you only need to move to some good location and shot away until it dies—however, due to the status of the game, they are memorable as set pieces, and often move the plot forward in interesting ways. For example, you can end up quite hurt, with some character taking you to another location to heal you; or the way to the boss can contain certain puzzle elements beforehand, to make the eventual battle easier.

As the story continues, there will be plenty of encounters with different characters of the game, depending on who you play as. These are in-game cutscenes, and I need to say, as cringe and badly acted as they are, I always found them rather charming, and it was nice to always get a new sense of direction, or a new useful weapon, or a plot twist here and there. Sometimes, the game atmosphere was rather tense, or I was low on health. Which makes getting to new rooms rather nerve-wracking at first, so I was always glad to see a cutscene that made things more chill.

Barry and Jill find something sus

A cozy cutscene is nice, but there is nothing quite like finally hearing that sweet sweet melody that let’s you know that you just made it to a lovely, beautiful save room. Even better when it contains an item box, which allow you to store away items you don’t need, and recover them from any other item box in other rooms of the game—yet another unrealistic mechanic that Resident Evil shoves away because gameplay is more important.

Honestly though, all the music and ambiance in the game is stunning. There’s plenty of tracks for different rooms and sections, as well as action moments, reveals and similar, all of it is very well done and maintains the atmosphere perfectly. So long as you are not playing the Dual Shock’s Director Cut, or that there’s not some cheesy dialogue happening at the same time.

Things get real creepy with the audio design as well, every step, every grunt, the sounds of the water flowing and the dogs howling, I can’t praise it enough. Also the effects when moving on the game’s inventory/map/status screen is just as satisfying. The doors opening and closing, the screech of an old door, the elevator going up and down. The sound department of this game did wonders, and thanks to the PS1’s usage of CDs instead of cartridges, the quality is top notch. The sounds of the guns shooting and reloading is also a pleasure.

Animation work is also remarkable, even if it lacks some of the polish RE2 introduced, like character animations to indicate health status. It’s still pretty good and the models are awesome for the time. The way all the different items come with 3D renders you can inspect is also appreciated, every gun, herb, key and the like has a nice amount of detail to it.

There are other 3D models during game besides the characters, like interactable objects and items, making them easy to notice against prerrendered backgrounds (which are unfortunately pretty low-res for modern screens, but still charming). This is useful to solve block-style puzzles—like moving a shelf to reach something behind it, or finding green plants to restore health.

A giant boulder is a sign of trouble for Jill

All in all, as cheesy as all the dialogue is, as arcane as tank controls may seem, as slow as it may be to aim guns as Jill. Everything is just part of the course. Every obstacle or hiccup, is only one more challenge for your survival inside this mansion. There are plenty of resources for Jill to take, the amount of enemies is more than manageable, and there aren’t that many bosses in the first place.

This game, like its successor, is pretty much a 3D Metroidvania game with zombies, and I am extremely amazed at how well it still runs. The gameplay from start to finish was a pleasure to experience. The utility of most items is made clear rather well, and my instincts started to develop soon enough. Judging when an item may make sense to keep or not, or when it was better to backtrack to an item box when I could feel that I was about to get a lot of items soon became second nature somehow.

Resident Evil gives you all the tools you need, the designers really want you to beat it, it is only a matter of understading its mechanics and everything will become clear. I am looking forward to a second playthrough of this one as Chris—even though I hear is much tougher—because the game has taught me all I need, and it trusts me so much. No tutorials, no GUI other than the status screen that gets out of the way when you don’t use it. It is a rather cinematic experience.

Jill and Barry find something sus again

As someone who grew up with no nostalgia for these games, who wasn’t even aware they were games until 2015 or so and only knew of the franchise because of the Milla Jovovich movies—which I didn’t even get to watch because they were way too violent and my parents wouldn’t allow me to—I am really starting to love this series more than I thought, slowly taking on my top 3 alongside Halo and Metroid.

This is just gameplay and mechanics perfectly executed. A game meant to be played over and over, to be mastered. Learning techniques, optimizing routes, avoiding enemies, everything is so clear and the controls are so fluid when you get good at them. Once a run is done, you get your credits and a final screen showing you the time and the amount of saves you did. There’s a challenge and a goal there. How fast can you do it now? How well do you know your own skills? Not to mention unlockables!

There’s plenty of speedruns out there, but I found this particular walkthrough to be fascinating—great if you don’t plan to play the game even after all the praise I got for it—since the player simply walks most of the time, not running from enemies, and being as efficient as possible with the inputs. It’s such an interesting thing to watch, as you simply get into a state where you are aware of everything and no longer fear the creatures anymore.

If there’s a problem with starting with the first game instead of the other two from the original trilogy, is that it will train you very well to what’s next. The whole formula is already here, and it’s excellent. I am kind of looking forward to Nemesis now, and how that game will mix things up a bit. I played the game on my Anbernic RG35XX SP without any issues.

By the way, make sure to play the PS1’s Final Director’s Cut romhack to get the best version possible of the game in emulation. Of course, you can also acquire it via GOG or Steam—but the latter is DRM protected.

This somehow becamse my longest game review, so I’ll stop now. Play Resident Evil, it’s very good.

This is day 49 of #100DaysToOffload

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What Interested Me Today 7

2026-04-10T09:40:00-06:00

I am currently working on my review for Resident Evil, but I need to take some pictures and finish it up a little more! So far I tend to separate everything into the basics, art, gameplay, story, music and stuff; but I ended up turning this post into more of a retrospective about survival horror as a whole and bringing up the Romero movies and talking about the FMVs and other things and, basically it’s a work in progress and the kind of thing I could make into a video essay if I put more effort into it, so it’s not ready.

For now, this is a quick post about what interested me today! I have been thinking about renaming this not-very-official—since it doesn’t even have a tag yet—series, to include what’s actually in it—similar to how my weeknotes are not just titled “Weeknotes”, more like Andreas’ Linkdumps, I guess this is the same thing.

Some blogs I added to my RSS feed

I have followed and enjoyed Brandon’s Journal for a while, but during a short hiatus where he took it down, I ended up removing it from my FreshRSS feed. I realized when he returned months ago, but I forgot to add him back, that mistake has been corrected. Here’s a short post to get a taste for his writing!
Chris Smith’s website was not on my radar at all, but I often like to check who links back to me and noticed that he mentioned me on his monthly meanderings, where he appreciated the way I link back to posts I reply to, etc. In any case, I really liked the design and the fact he has a section for all his board games.
Last but not least! marmar22 was a fun find. I can’t recall where I found their site, I believe I was just looking for some ereader blogposts somewhere because I stumbled upon this review of some no brand ereader. The posts about organising photos felt kind of familiar as well.

So yeah! I won’t say I’ll read everything but it’s always fun to have more variety. As I write this there are 6689 unread articles on my FreshRSS instance…

A dumb web fediverse client

There are a lot of clients for the fediverse, from apps to terminals to web clients. Personally I mostly stick to the default web interface and to Tusky on my phone.

But Adele recently created a minimal web client that doesn’t rely on javascript and can run on ancient browsers and devices! She wrote a blogpost announcing it.

Into The Aether’s latest bonus episode!

I you like the Persona games, you may be up to listening to a 5+ hours long deep dive into Personal 4 Golden, treat yourself and get into my favorite podcast of all time!

Personally, I’m skipping it until I play that series, more than happy to listen to their weekly episode, the latest of which also talks about the rumours around a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo Switch 2. This may make me buy that console at last, no doubt.

Linux user groups and updating my XTEINK X4

I noticed that Crosspoint, the firmware I use on my XTEINK X4 recently had an update to 1.2 which introduced a couple features like a built-in EPUB optimizer, a way to turn text in current page to a QR code, and other goodies.

Last time I mentioned how I had to use my dad’s laptop to flash the firmware due to missing permissions. This time I took the time to figure things out and realized that I simply had to add my user to the uucp linux group. After restarting my user session things went smoothly from there! A shame I need to use Chromium to run the web installer though.

Another TTRPG bundle…

There’s a Pathfinder Humble Bundle going on right now and my TTRPG friends are making me consider it yet again. I haven’t even had a second session of Land of Eem yet, but things happen.

In any case, this bit is just to let you know, and tempt you to get it as well.

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Early days with the XTEINK X4 ereader

2026-04-08T07:30:00-06:00

A couple of weeks ago I acquired a tiny ereading device, the XTEINK X4. It all started with a YouTube video reviewing the device that I first shared in one of my weeknotes. A day later I saw that James had been using one already, and soon enough after a few more reviews I ordered one myself.

Along James, some other people I follow on the fedi got it, such as Neil, who shared his thoughts on it too.

And because of me (yes, I’m taking all the credit ;) Jeremy got one, wwwgem got one, Robert got one, njrk got one… so on and so forth. A quick look through the hashtag will show how the device’s gotten popular for a few months now.

There really are not a lot of reasons not to give it a go. With a price of 70 bucks or much less on a good sale, there is no excuse, in my opinion.

The XTEINK X4 has excellent battery life, a great set of physical buttons—with no touch screen—and, best of all, a community building homebrew for it and making it better day after day!

The most popular firmware is CrossPoint, which optimizes quite a lot of things compared to the built-in OS. In fact, I didn’t even use the device until I got it installed—it took me less than ten minutes.

All I did was change the language, plug the device to my dad’s Windows laptop—because I couldn’t bother to figure out permissions for the serial USB access on my Linux-powered laptop, sorry not sorry—and off I went.

I went for a minimal and more manual approach. I only have eight books on it, and I will only be replacing them as I go through them. The device doesn’t have a lot of memory—much less than a megabyte of RAM—so it’s ideal to format the EPUBs accordingly to avoid high-resolution covers and unsupported features diminishing the experience.

Honestly, the EPUB files look great, the font included with the firmware, Bookerly—which was made for Kindle back in 2015—is a pleasure to read through as well. Here’s how a page of text looks like:

You can change the font, margins, UI theme, and most other regular settings, and the controls for it all are very intuitive. There’s also plenty of mods and forks adding even more features, such as reading statistics.

www-gem has done a lot of work finding links and extra tools, so definitely check out his posts on the device if you’re curious about all its possibilities.

I already finished one book on it, and I am making progress on another two. The reading experience is excellent and I really have no complaints about it other than the lack of a backlight.

I carry it almost everywhere, and reading one or two pages—often many more—at any point is painless, as it wakes up in just a couple seconds from sleep. The portability really is killer too. Like Jeremy, I also added a magnet to my Nothing (3A) to stick it there and have it with me.

I don’t know what else to say, I’ve not even charged it since I bought it! I’ll just keep reading on it and enjoying the process.

Even though I still love my Kobo Clara 2E, this makes for an excellent companion device. The lack of stats on CrossPoint at the moment makes it so I don’t really want to read big books on it as much, but maybe I’ll get over that soon. I’m happy to read Clarkesworld magazine and short novellas on it though…

This is day 47 of #100DaysToOffload

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Lost and found bottle, Easter vacation! - W14

2026-04-06T21:40:00-06:00

Happy Easter to all of you! The week has come and gone in a flash, and a lot of things happened this time around, thanks to the few days off I got. We are even going to the Moon again. and honestly it feels amazing to do so.

Here’s a quick rundown through some important events and things of note!

✈️ My siblings came here! There were a lot of things I did that I mention here, which happened with them around. It was a fun time, but I also quickly remembered that being the older brother comes with its caveats… let’s say my wallet feels very light right now, but it was fun!
🥤I went to the gym on Monday! after I left, I realized I forgot my water bottle… I was already on the bus back home so, I had to wait until tomorrow. I called a coworker who was still there, but he couldn’t find it. The next morning, the first thing I did was ask at the reception—my bottle was nowhere to be found. The next day, my siblings went to the gym with me, and even though I had already given up, they still asked, and wouldn’t you know, the bottle was right there! So, yay!
🚗 The first day of my Easter vacation was spent on… goint to a small town to get new plates for the family car, for like 6 hours. There was a store nearby and we got some snacks, I took a couple pictures in the main plaza downtown, so that was fun. I also played a lot of Resident Evil.
🍔 Once we got out of that place, we went back to civilization and ate some burgers! The usual chain here is Burguer King, and we enjoyed them very much.
🧱 I created a new background pattern for my website! You can see it on any page as long as it’s on desktop, currently unavailable on mobile due to screen size. Hope you like it! I plan to make it better later
🍿 Invited my family to watch a movie to the cinemas, which were pretty close (we were at a mall), and ended up watching Project Hail Mary. It was very fun because the place was packed full of people because of the release of the Super Mario Galaxy movie… we’ll watch that one later. We went with my grandma and kinda didn’t realize there was no ramp for her wheelchair. However, she sat on the first row along my parents, and nobody had reserved those seats, so there was no problem!
🃏 We acquired and played a new card game! Coup, a bluffing game where you eliminate all of your opponents until someone takes over and controls the whole political landscape!
🎂 We had a surprise party for a friend and spent sometime decorating their place before they got there. We also had pizza!
✝️ My church organized a hospital visit, we made food and gave water bottles for the people who were waiting outside, we prayed for them and the patients in need as well.

Watching

Project Hail Mary - This was a fantastic movie in my opinion. It rushed through a lot of the details of the book, but it was fun and I loved it for what it is. The visuals were stunning and I also have to give props to the soundtrack which felt rather different in many occasions, to what a “Sci-Fi” movie usually sounds like, from time to time. I had a good time!

Reading

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers - A novella I suddenly started, about a group of astronauts sending a message back to Earth, or something like that. I actually don’t know much yet, haven’t made a lot of progress.
Clarkesworld #211 by Neil Clarke - I completed the second story of the book! It was much longer than the first one, but I actually really, really enjoyed it, it got to the heart strings for a bit, what a nice short story. The next entry is a novella, so I’ll need to focus on it some more.
Fly Me To The Moon - Up to chapter 229. I continued with this slice of life rom-com! It keeps being fun and adorable! While building up and answering some mysteries little by little. Good stuff!
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou - Up to chapter 70. I made the decision to read 4 or so chapters of this masterpiece, and they were absolutely lovely. Alpha continues on her journey through Japan, and stumbles upon an airport, where she gets to see a plane up close for the first time, and even more surprises. Absolutely lovely.
Kingdom - Up to chapter 867. Still making progress on the war at large, with a side-character stepping up to the role of getting some allies out of trouble, I’m looking forward to know how thigs will fare.

Gaming

Completed

Resident Evil - The gateway into the World of Survival Horror. This classic held up extremely well for its age. IT lacks quite a bit of quality of life features that the sequel contained, but even then, all the basics are there. And not only that but there are some things that are genuinely awesome about it. The Mansion setting is truly great, and some of the puzzles were incredible. I enjoyed it from start to finish, even if it ended up funneling from Metroidvania-style gameplay to linearity, just like the sequel, I didn’t mind at all, I enjoyed the journey a lot. I only played as Jill Valentine though!

Ongoing

Balatro - I simply continued to go through a few playthroughs of this game on my phone, I am yet to win still. I’m truly terrible at it, I guess.

Around the Web

Blog posts

Do You Have the Time? - A post and ramble about how buying simple things that were available in physical stores before has been ruined by Amazon, instant shipping and the like.
I Miss My Hometown - A trip down RL Dane’s memory lane, and a wonderful conclusion.
Early Efforts in Sticker Making - A fun project that makes me want to buy one of those sticker cutting machines.
That’s Home. That’s us. - I had not seen Hello, World until today, it made me feel something I didn’t know I could sense. What a photo, what a post.

YouTube

Can Ocarina of Time be the Future of Zelda? - Brandon’s video about the latest rumour of Ocarino of Time getting a full remake for the Switch 2, I am incredibly hyped about this, this is what will get me to buy the Switch 2, finally.
The ORIGINAL Resident Evil Games - Some guy who played the original trilogy and did a pretty good comparison and shared some thoughts that I found pretty good. I just love these type of videos.
Setting up a retro gaming corner in my room - I really enjoy this channel and now I kind of want a CRT TV and some old consoles that I never got to own as a kid… oh well.
The Missions Bringing Us Back To The Moon - This was an interesting video about well, how we are going to the Moon, and why.

This is day 46 of #100DaysToOffload

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Verifying human authorship with human.json

2026-04-03T09:44:11-06:00

I’ve decided to implement the human.json protocol on my website as well.

Basically, this file is a way for websites to vouch for the human authorship of others. It comes with a web extension you can install that will let you know if a site is vouched by another.

I saw a couple of people doing it and decided to jump on the bandwagon, as it is part of what inspired me to write about human websites before.

Some of the people I saw implementing this protocol were Axxuy, Naty and STFN, but I think the post that got me to pull the trigger was Neil’s.

Handling json is not very human friendly, it’s one of the many funny quirks about this protocol, but alas, it’s just a fun thing to do so, whatever.

For now, I simply created a humans.yml file inside my Jekyll’s _data folder, and created a human.json file in my root directory with the following Liquid template:

---
layout: none
permalink: /human.json
---
{
	"version": "0.1.1",
	"url": "{{ site.url }}",
	"vouches": [
		{% for human in site.data.humans %}
		{
			"url": "{{ human.link }}",
			"vouched_at": "{{ human.date }}"
		},
		{% endfor %}
		{
			"url": "https://examplefinalwebsite.com/",
			"vouched_at": "2026-04-03"
		}
	]
}

The humans.yml file simply looks like this:

- link: "https://example.com"
  date: 2026-04-03
- link: "https://example2.com"
  date: 2026-04-03
- link: "https://example3.com"
  date: 2026-04-03

and last but not least, adding a <link> tag in the HTML <head> section:

<link rel="human-json" href="/path/to/human.json">

Of course, having a YAML file that gets turned into a JSON file is not the best thing ever, but it’s easier to edit and modify on the fly, it only gets generated at build time anyway.

Given what this project entails, I’ve been a bit conflicted on what websites would make it to my own list. The obvious ones are easy, but those that are real people who used generated content in one shape or another, even if the rest is human-made are harder to decide for me.

Part of me wants to be kind of gatekeepy and leave out websites just because they use an generated profile pic, or thumbnail here or there, or maybe they have written a couple of articles about using an LLM to generate some code, or whatever.

But well, I’ve decided to just go by feel for those cases that are hard to pinpoint exactly.

Another word can be said about having to do all of this in the first place. That humans are the ones having to prove themselves, instead of websites being clear about using generated content.

In any case, the project seems very fun. It will probably not be a big thing in most websites, but alas, I don’t mind doing this and vouching for other people. I’ll try to keep it updated over time, and be sure to let me know if you find a site I link that isn’t as human anymore.

This is day 45 of #100DaysToOffload.

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March 2026 Summary

2026-04-01T09:50:50-06:00

The year continues to move at an incredible pace, and I continue to engage with so many forms of media, keeping track is starting to get a bit confusing! Nothing impossible to manage of course, it’s fun to have so many more things going on.

Podcasts

Once again, my podcast listening has been diminishing this year, as music continues to go upwards! I think that now that I fully settled on scrobbling with Listenbrainz, plus going to sleep with music over podcasts, has helped quite a bunch. Another big reason might be that I haven’t listened to Welcome to Night Vale in a while, which was what I listened to before sleep. In any case I listened to 23 horus of podcasts in March!

The podcasts I have been listening

Into The Aether - The usual run of current weekly episodes. The run so far has been amazing, featuring all maner of games like Resident Evil Requiem, Persona 4 Golden, Pokémon Pokopia, Danganronpa, Marathon, Slay The Spire 2 and Minishoot Adventures.
99% Invisible - A couple of great episodes on the Em Dash, and the history behind knowing where we are.
Wolf 359 - Listened up to episode 45 of this show. The story continues to be incredible, some of my favorites episodes that I still remembered from my first listen around 5 years ago. I drama and the stakes are getting real.
Revolutions - Listened to another four episodes or so of the French Revolution. This historical event has so much to unpack, I have listened to 50 episodes of it so far.
Stuff You Should Know - Just a random selection of episodes I listened to. Like an episode on tracking time, and flood myths.
Dungeons and Daddies - Listened to one episode and a half of Season 3! It got interested by the end so I expect to keep this up next month a bit more.
They’re Just Movies - This one is no longer around, but I listened to their overview of the Aliens movie, and want to check some more of their episodes. I kinda miss it.
Trash Taste - Just picking episodes at random, not much else.

Gaming

Gaming took over, and despite it all, I didn’t finish a single game! I just started so many at once and I am kind of having fun just jumping around between them without any rhyme or reason. But hey, they’re games, meant to be fun, after all.

The games I have been playing

Started

Resident Evil - I decided to venture into the world… of Survival Horror. The game that started it all! After the sequel, I thought I’d visit the original, and I have to say, I have really enjoyed it so far. I am happy to say I’ve managed to figure out all of the puzzles without help, except for the one that uses the chemical. Other than that, it’s been fun.
Metroid Fusion - I have so many Metroidvanias avilable to me, and I haven’t finished Silksong in ages, and yet again, I’ve decided to start another run of Fusion on my Miyoo Mini Flip. This game rules, and I’ve already reached the third boss of the game. I want to finish it as quickly as I can without using save states!
Ridge Racer Type 4 - I listened to the soundtrack of this game and I wanted to check it out. There are so many menus and modes and an actual story? I just jumped into a race as quick as I could and enjoyed the soundtrack a bit, but I admit I didn’t do more, I prefer the PSP physics and gameplay.
River City Ransom - This is a game that I tried online with Naty playing via NSO. It is a fairly deep game for its time, and we definitely had a lot of fun with its gameplay and mechanics, we played it for like 40 minutes but ran out of time and we haven’t returned to it.
What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!? 2 - This is considered a hidden gem of the PSP. A game where you create an underground dungeon and grow your own army of creatures who grow by themselves and follow basic movement patterns to fight against the heroes. It’s a fun subversion, but not my cup of tea, I think.
Pokémon Emerald Legacy - I played the first 20 minutes of this game and I am tempted to give it a proper go. The Legacy romhack is supposed to be the ultimate way to enjoy the game and I look forward to having the mood to get into it.
Caves of Qud - I played a bit of the tutorial since I’ve heard so many great things, but I didn’t go much deeper than that, it seems huge and I’m definitely interested though.

Ongoing

CrossCode - A wonderful game that really grew up on me during this month. I made a bunch of progress and since I’m playing it alongside some friends, I’ve really looked forward to what they think or have to say about stuff. I like that I’m ahead too, not gonna lie. In any case, all the dungeons have been awesome, and even if the puzzle design can be a little tiresome, it definitely gets my brain working and I love the feeling of figuring things out. The puzzles can definitely get long though.
Super Mario 3D World - This has been a fun game to play with friends, and even to go through by myself a couple of times. We are trying to get every single star and sticker from this before finishing the story! We made it to the final stage now that it’s kind of like a circus, and I’m looking forward to beating this game at some point in the next couple of months.
Ridge Racer - This masterpiece for the PSP continues to be excellent to play. I have made some progress doing World Tours in the EX class, and I love how this game just hooks me and won’t let me go at all.
Into The Breach - I ended up returning to this gem of a game and finally managed to complete a run on it, even if it was on easy. The tactics and mechanics of this masterpiece are just amazing. I want to keep playing more of it and master all the available mechs too.
Balatro - Ended up playing this game with friends a couple of times, however, I ended up finally caving in and purchasing the title for my phone… It is fun, and I am scared. I am yet to win a game though, despite it all.
Gladiator Begins - This title for the PSP is an arena battler that I’ve played on and off. I touched it for a bit during the PSP season of Into The Aether, but didn’t even bring it up much. I have played some more lately and yeah, it’s very fun! I’m currently stock in a boss fight though, where I simply need to git gud.
Vampire Survivors - This roguelike “bullet heaven” is finally losing its spell among my group of friends, we play it for time to time, but it definitely feels a bit more like homework lately, just to complete the unlockables and achievements. We will keep playing though, just not as crazy as before.
Grapple Dog - I barely touched this game, although I had a lot of fun with it last month, I need to get back to it, I really enjoyed the physics and mechanics of it, but I guess that Switch and handheld gaming took over to compensate for the Laptop-focused gaming of February.
Super Smash Bros Ultimate - Just a couple of matches with friends… I’ve been tempted to play the solo campaign lately though, to unlock more characters and just test myself.

Movies

I just watched this one movie

The only movie I got to watch in March was David. An animated, faith-based, musical film about the traditional story of David and his rise to the throne as a King. I already said it on my weeknotes, this film is pretty good for what it is, but and probably among the best when it comes to Christian animation, with a few truly awesome scenes.

However, it falls short in other aspects, it gets preachy at times—although not as bad as others—and the songs, while good in the moment and with an OK message, they just aren’t very memorable, and there’s maybe one or two that weren’t really necessary. I also would have liked to see a bit more action. I don’t expect anything gruesome from a kids movie, but at the very least some swords clashing would have been fun.

Manga

What a great month this was for manga, other than the fact two of the ones I finished didn’t meet my expectations, the rest of what I read was rather enjoyable!

The mange I have been reading

Started

Kagurabachi - Up to chapter 115. Speaking of swords clashing, this was a manga that completely hooked me and wouldn’t let me go at all. I read from the start to the latest released chapter as of now, catching up with it. This is a revenge story, and features some amazing characters, excellent action and panelling, simple, yet breath-taking artwork and some actually good writing for once! I’ve enjoyed everything thus far, zero complaints, genuinely surprised.

Ongoing

Fly Me To The Moon - Up to chapter 214. This is a manga I started ages ago, and this month I finally decided to return to it. It starts as a fun rom-com manga about a newly wed couple, but it has turned into something much more interesting. There is a mystery to it all, and everything has started to finally unveil, if at a slow pace. However, I don’t mind, even without the mystery, the humor and wholesome moments are plenty. I enjoy it.
DanDaDan - Up to chapter 226. I barely read any of this manga, but at the very least I managed to get to the big bad guy of the current arc, I think, and it’s definitely an interesting premise. I am only a few chapters behind, so I am honestly just waiting for more chapters to release and build up some momentum.
Blue Lock - Up to chapter 340. I catched up and I’m reading week by week. This match against France has definitely been an epic one. I enjoy the challenge that Isagi has been facing. So many questions, doubts and tactics that don’t work. I really love the drama thus far.
Love’s in Sight! - Up to chapter 56. It had been a while since I revisited this one as well, it’s a cute rom-com about a blind girl and a delinquent guy with a soft heart. It’s pretty wholesome, and it actually deals with a lot of the accesibility and life of a blind person. Way more educational than I expected, and some of the narratives focused on that are really well done.
Kingdom - Up to chapter 866. This continues to be an absolutely epic tale. There were a couple of great moments going on during the current arc (The Battle against Zhao), and I am only three or so chapters behind. Some great developments have been made.
Spy x Family - Up to chapter 130. Currently on a very fun arc where Loid, Yor and Yor’s brother are held hostage, and while the three of them could easily get away and stop the whole thing, neither of them wants to blow off their cover. The conflict is solving itself in the most hilarous way, I love this manga.

Complete

Planetes - This is definitely a must read, a great science fiction manga in space in a nearby future that follows a group of garbage collectors that keep Earth’s space as clean as it can be. We follow multiple characters of this crew, all of them with their own journeys and ideal, forming relationships, dealing with the struggles of life in space. We meet some of their families, we see how technology continues to develop, we see the impact that seeking for the stars can have in life. There are so many topics, there are so many incredible moments, so much conflict, be it in political drama, between characters, and of course, internal dilemmas, depression, trauma, joy, hope, love. This is a true piece of art, up there with Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, Vagabond and Kingdom. In only 22 chapters, this gave me so much food for thought. Just read it if you can.
Chainsaw Man - I have no words to describe what finishing this feels like. It is such an internal conflict. I absolutely loved Part 1 of this, and early on, I also loved Part 2. But something happened, and things started to look way too dire. Nonsense after nonsense, and chapters kept getting shorter and uglier. In the end, this manga finished with a 6-page long issue. I don’t know what to say. It was definitely a journey, and there’s a way to see this as the only ending Chainsaw Man could have had, but nah, I needed more out of it. I have a sour taste in my mouth. Thankfully I read plenty of masterpieces this month I even forgot to bring it up on my weeknotes—I edited them now, but still. I hope the anime fixes it.
Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo - Another manga that also started with a lot of promise, but didn’t manage to stick the landing at all. Its redeeming grace is that it only really had 25 chapters, and that 15 or so of them are very good. The art itself is awesome though, and even though the final sequences are super rushed, the art is great to see.

Anime

The only anime I watched this month

Orb: On the Movements of the Earth was the only anime I started, and I watched up to episode 4. This is an anime that caught me by surprise. A story set in the middle ages about a smart kid with a love for astronomy who eventually learns and the Earth revolves around the Sun, in an era where the Catholic Church considered the heliocentric model to be heresy.

The conflict and the relationship between truth, faith and science is very interesting to see. I definitely need to watch the rest of the season, it loks very promising.

Books

So many books were read, I actually started a couple more than the ones I mention here, but these are the significant ones, to be honest.

The books I read this month

Started

Clarkesworld Magazine #211 by Neil Clarke - I finally started going through the Clarkesworld magazines that I subscribed to a couple years back. I went through the first two stories found on this issue—The Lark Ascending and An Intergalactic Smugglers Guide to Homecoming—the third one is the longest thus far, but I’ll hopefully deal with it soon! The second story is my favorite thus far.
Strange Dogs by James S.A. Corey. - A novella that takes place before Persepolis Rising, so far so good! I barely read it though because reading on my XTEINK X4 took over.

Completed

Chrono Trigger by Michael P. Williams - A memoir, a critique, and retrospective of my favorite game of all time. It was quite cool! And contained plenty of information I didn’t know at all. It also featured some great interviews with the translators of the game. I enjoyed it, it’s a fun read but you definitely need to play the game before getting to it.
Non-Stop by Brian W. Aldiss - An incredible story that makes great use of the generation ship plot. I loved it from start to finish and flew through it in a matter of days. I already published my review of it so I won’t say much more. It’s worth a read despite its age, in my opinion.
Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey - The seventh entry in The Expanse series. This journey does a timeskip and places us in a new status quo, which is about to be challenged by Humanity’s greatest enemy once again, itself. A great start to this last trilogy. I look forward to the rest!

This is day 44 of #100DaysToOffload

Goals

Last month I set some goals that I would pursue during March, but I think I should do some more general goals that I can do during the year, and during the month itself. This is what I came up with. I added those I completed from last month, but I don’t think I want to list everything I completed as the year goes, so, yeah, just ongoing goals and progress updates, I guess.

Completed:

Survived my work
Finished Persepolis Rising
Went to the movies once

New

Fully sorting and labelling everything on my shelves for once
Finish a pending commission for a friend
Finish a pending commission for my parents

In progress

A full website redesign (??)
Read the whole Bible in a year (9/365)
Finish listening to Wolf 359 (45/61)
Complete 15 books (4/15)
Complete 15 videogames (2/15)

Finishing thoughts

This month was wild. Work really took over a lot of my life since my coworker went on his long vacation, and yet, despite it all, I managed to surpass expectations when it comes to the amount of media I watched. I am particularly happy about the books and manga I got to read.

It’s getting to a point I may just highlight some specific things instead of mentioning everything.

And all the blogposts I managed to do this month? It’s not my best or the most constant, but I am rather happy about it. Plus all the small changes and additions to my website. A good month all around, even if I could have gone without the extra workload. Can’t complain much though.

Definitely looking forward to what April has in store, I hope things will go alright.

Until next time!

This is day 44 of #100DaysToOffload

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Theming around, gaming around, siblings around! - W13

2026-03-30T12:40:00-06:00

Do you want to know how I know what I did during the week? I don’t really write bits of this day after day, I simply scroll through my gallery and see what pictures I took. Most of the time there are photos of games or devices. Every once in a while I take an actual photo of some place I went to. This is extremely rare of me, but it does happen sometimes.

🎨 Having way too much fun editing and creating wallpapers based on manga panels for my Xteink X4 e-reader. There are a lot of tools out there to make the task easier as well, but I created a lot of them with old school GIMP too.
🚌 Missed the bus to work once and had to take a detour to get a ride for it, it was a fun little adventure but I got there in time, not much else to say.
🧑‍💻 Did a bunch of small changes to my website that make things very fun! Feel free to check the blogpost I wrote about it.
✍️ Kept up with my cursive writing while taking notes at church and other small things like that.
✈️ My siblings who study on a different city are now here due to the Easter vacation! There are a lot of plans aheads of us!
🍜 Went to have dinner out again, this time to a korean restaurant! I enjoyed my time once more, but my sister did not like her food at all and there was a bit of a scene with the manager and such. That was kind of a mess but we didn’t have to pay for the meal in the end.
🐈 During the weekend I played a couple of rounds of Exploding Kittens with friends! We ran out of steam rather quickly though.
🃏 For some reason, the soundtrack for Balatro is not available on Bandcamp, so I bought it from Steam instead.
🎮 I also made the mistake of buying Balatro for my phone… oh no…
✝ I started a Bible reading plan, it’s been a while since I last tried this but, it should be interesting! I am following the chronological plan in a year from The Bible Recap.

Reading

Completed

Chrono Trigger - A book about my favorite game of all time, the second in the Boss Fights Books series. A critique, a memoir, some comparisons to society today and that kind of thing. I enjoyed the read and was glad to know I can handle non-fiction books. I really enjoyed the interviews with Ted Woolsey and Tom Slattery, who brought the game for an English audience. I don’t know if I’ll write a full review of it, and I really don’t have a lot to comment on. I liked it as an informative piece but not much else! If you love the game like me, you will have a nice time and learn a few things. Don’t read it without playing the game.
Chainsaw Man - This story is officially over, and wow, definitely a way to end the series… Serious, what in the world is this?

Ongoing

Strange Dogs - I have to admit, I only read like three more pages of this and then got distracted by other things, whoops.
Fly Me To The Moon - Up to chapter 173. After many months, maybe years, I finally returned to this rom-com manga, and I’m happy to say it holds up. A few dozen chapters ago an incredible plot twist and reveal happened that altered the dynamic for a bit, and now things are going back to a new normal! I really find this to be a very cozy and funny slice-of-life series, I will probably keep reading it until I catch up.
Kagurabachi - Up to chapter 115. Speaking of which… I catched up to this one. What an epic journey it has been thus far. Definitely one of the best action manga series to read, I highly recommend it.

Started

Clarkesworld Magazine #211 - I decided to continue using my Xteink X4 to read and catch up on this sci-fi/fantasy managzine. I subscribed to it a couple years back and have never completed a single issue, whoops. For now, I finished the first short story: The Lark Ascending

Gaming

Started

After the great experience I had on Resident Evil 2 I decided to give the OG Resident Evil a try. I’m happy to say, it’s not far behind at all! This game has been a joy to play and die on over and over. Yes. I am playing this game as it was intended to be played with no save states, which is something I didn’t do for the sequel.

I noticed how a lot of the dread and my decision-making was affected by just loading up a save state over and over again—I had pretty much did it after every single door I went through—and thought I’d have a try at the proper experience a survival horror is supposed to have. Honestly? I hate it, but I love it! This is giving me the same feeling that games like Silksong have.

Making so much progress, but being unable to save! Making choices, going for a run trying to not use ammo, it’s so fun. I live with the consequences of my own decisions, and I love it. The one thing I hate is the map, it’s not as good and doesn’t signal locked doors, I also can’t see my position in the room, which can be a bit more confusing. Just a nitpick, though.

On a similar vein, I decided to revisit Metroid Fusion once more, I’m playing it on my Miyoo Mini Flip and having a lot of fun. Like I did with Resident Evil, I am avoiding save states for this playthrough, and honestly? I am really liking it for similar reasons. I already went through two of the bosses, and stopped right as I got to the room with the third one. The pocketability of the handheld I went for this was key for me to be flying through this so fast!

The last surprise here is Pokémon Emerald Legacy, the romhack that perfects the third gen of the franchise! I played it for a bit on my Miyoo Mini Flip, but ended up putting it on my Anbernic instead because mGBA’s performace—which is used for the in-game clock—wasn’t cutting it. Maybe I could use gPSP, but the guide recommended the other, and my SP is better suited for that, in any case, RE took over for now.

Ongoing

I continued playing CrossCode, doing the third dungeon of the area I’m on. I managed to reach the first boss fight! The puzzles until now have been as challenging as ever, and combining the mechanics I unlocked has already fried my brain multiple times. I’ve actually needed more short breaks because it gets a little exhausting. Still very fun though.

Out of nowhere, I decided to return to the origina Ridge Racer for the PSP. I was playing the sequel—the same but more tracks—but I got stuck in some races against individual modified cars. I just wanted to play courses so I went back and decided to complete more of the ones in the original game. The soundtrack is as epic as ever.

Of course, I bought Balatro for my phone—the store even gave me a discount for some reason—and have played it for about an hour today already…

Around the Web

Blog posts

Please Compensate The Work You Appreciate - This has been a struggle for me as well. I’ve been buying and supporting artists, developers, creators and the like much more during these past few years, but it’s still not the normal in my culture and country.
Old School Questions - A fun questions challenge that I am inclined to participate in at some point this week.
Initial thoughts on the tiny XTEINK X4 ereader - Oh look, more and more people buying this tiny ereader and writing about it. Epic stuff.
Sobre afeitado - This post is in Spanish. I really enjoyed reading about Adrian’s journey with shaving, I’ve been using double-edged safety razors for years at this point, it’s really a joy, I should write a bit about it too.
New house, new blog, new me - I like to see posts from people who show up after months on hiatus!
Back on a static site?! - I like to see posts from people who show up after months on hiatus!

YouTube

The Long Hiatus of a Game Franchise - A great video essay from Scott, the title is self-explanatory, there’s a lot of Mega Man talk which is always nice.
Overrated Game Consoles - Another essay with a very self-explanatory title. I just love Scott’s humor and takes in general, what can I say?
How We Ported Balatro to the GBA - This is some incredible work! I kind of want to give it a spin.

This is day 43 of #100DaysToOffload

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Website changes: new section, music widget, and upvotes

2026-03-28T08:29:42-06:00

“On This Week” section

I wanted to add an “On This Day” kind of thing to my website for a while, but even though I have made almost 600 posts as of the time of writing, I still have plenty of empty days where I’ve not made a post.

A In any case, the solution was simple, do it by week and call it done. I found a post by Josh Beckman detailing how to do this by day. Using a similar logic, I made use of %V to get the week number and %G to get the year for that week—when a calendar week happens across different years.

You can find it live on my home page, and here’s a simplified version of it with just the basics:

{% assign current_week = site.time | date: "%V" %}
{% assign current_week_year = site.time | date: "%G" %}

<ul>
{% for post in site.posts %}
    {% assign post_week = post.date | date: "%V" %}
    {% assign post_week_year = post.date | date: "%G" %}
    {% if post_week == current_week and post_week_year != current_week_year %}
        <li>{{ post.date | date: "%Y-%m-%d" }} 
            <a href="{{ post.url }}">{{ post.title }}</a>
        </li>
    {% endif %}
{% endfor %}
</ul>

This is a live example of how the output looks like:

2025-04-20 I use Arch, btw
2025-04-16 Re: What's in a Name?
2025-04-15 Blog Questions Challenge: TV Shows Edition
2025-04-15 Blog Questions Challenge: Technology Edition
2025-04-14 Week Notes W15
2024-04-19 The Palace of Eternity
2024-04-17 My Home Screen (Early 2024)
2024-04-15 Work and friends
2022-04-21 Rethinking Self-hosting needs
2022-04-20 Metroid Samus Returns

Yesterday I was playing around with the ListenBrainz API—which I use to display my last song I listened to—and realized that there was a way to get the song currently playing instead. I implemented my original script a while back, but I got to work and modified it to get my currently listening song, and fallback to the latest one when nothing’s playing on my ears.

// fetch json file based on given url
async function fetchListen(url) {
	try {
		const response = await fetch(url);
		const data = await response.json();
		return data.payload.listens[0] || null;
	}
	catch (err){
		console.error("Unable to fetch", err);
		return null;
	}
}

function printHtml(container, content){
	container.innerHTML = content;
}

async function getListen(username) {
    // get html id to override later
	const container = document.getElementById('latest-listen');
	const currentUrl = `https://api.listenbrainz.org/1/user/${username}/playing-now`;
	const latestUrl = `https://api.listenbrainz.org/1/user/${username}/listens?count=1`;
	const current = await fetchListen(currentUrl);

	if (current) {
		const track = current.track_metadata.track_name;
		const artist = current.track_metadata.artist_name;
		return printHtml(container, `<b>Currently listening:</b></br>🎵 <i>${track}</i> by <i>${artist}</i>.`);
	}
	const latest = await fetchListen(latestUrl);
	if (latest) {
		const track = latest.track_metadata.track_name;
		const artist = latest.track_metadata.artist_name;
		const listenedAt = new Date(latest.listened_at * 1000); // Convert timestamp
		const dateFormatted = listenedAt.toLocaleString();
		return printHtml(container, `<b>Last listened track:</b></br>🎶 <i>${track}</i> by <i>${artist}</i>. <br>${dateFormatted}`);
	}
	printHtml(container, `<b>No music found</b>`);
}

getListen('joel76');

An upvote button

Naty shared how to have upvotes on a blog and I basically copy-pasted the entire thing. You only need to follow the setup instructions and it will literally just work.

You can find the upvote button in the comments sections of every blogpost! Feel free to click or tap on it.

The one downside is that it’s a third party service, but it’s so simple I can’t really come up with a reason why not to try it out. If it ever breaks or stops being supported, it won’t really be that big of a deal.

Anyway, those were a lot of changes done to my site for one week, I feel kinda cool about that. Feel free to borrow any of these ideas and make it your own.

This website has evolved and changed so much over time, I can feel the itch to start over creeping up, making it minimal while keeping as much of the features I got on it. Maybe a simple CSS overhaul will do the trick though…

This is day 42 of #100DaysToOffload.

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How to turn off Calibre AI features

2026-03-27T16:37:45-06:00

A while back Calibre—a book management program which I have been using for years—integrated AI features, in an option that showed up in the context menu, when selecting a book and clicking on View, titled Discuss selected book with AI. Clicking it opens a chat interface that connects to any “provider”—also known as slop generator—of your choice.

Of course, I see no use for such a useless feature, and if you don’t either, here’s how to hide it completely:

Go to Preferences > Plugins > AI provider, select each one and click on Enable/disable plugin.
Go to Preferences > Tweaks
- Scroll all the way down until you see Hide AI features (You could also use the search bar for this)
- Go to the text editor box and set the variable to True.
Restart Calibre.

All the references and buttons will be gone from Calibre’s interface, it’s a bit of a bummer that the plugins can’t be fully deleted, but hey, as they say, out of sight, out of mind.

Of course there are also some forks made due to this addition in the form of Arcalibre, as well as library management alternatives like Booklore.

Personally, regular Calibre works fine and I don’t really feel the need to fully switch away from it. It has been a great project for years, and since most of the alternatives are rather young and have yet to prove themselves, I am inclined to just not bother, at least for now.

This is day 41 of #100DaysToOffload

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Non-Stop

2026-03-26T07:30:00-06:00

Originally published in 1958, this was Brian W. Aldiss’ first novel. The story follows primitive men trying to understand and find out the truth about their world, a dangerous place overtaken by nature. However, there are clues and hints of technology beyond their understanding and a truth to be uncovered.

The main idea of the novel, which is quickly suggested, is that the whole story happens inside a generation ship. All of our characters are descendants of a colony of humans on a journey through space, but over time, knowledge, purpose and destination was lost, leaving only confusion and a battle for survival.

These primitive societies are many, we got Giants, who are thought to be the creators of the ship, but who are almost extinct and considered a myth by some, the Forwards, who are the most advanced and organized tribe, Outsiders, who look normal but have a strange behaviour and ghost-like powers, other regular human tribes, as well as mutated humans who are strange and malformed and often wander alone in the “Deadways”.

We follow Roy Complain, a man belonging to the Greene tribe, located in “Quarters” who, after losing his woman, ends up joining a group of people with the goal of reaching the “Control Room”, a place where this “ship” can be controlled and taken over, signaled in an old map—relics left by the Giants that are often destroyed or ignored.

In any case, the place has been taken over by flora and fauna, and plenty of other dangers. But these characters will endure it all for the sake of obtaining control, only to end up finding the truth of what happened to the ship many generations ago.

I could tell so much more. I really could, this book goes to so many places, but I don’t even want to spoil them. The wonder of this journey is how these primitive characters react and learn as they begin to understand the reality of their current situation.

By reading reviews online, I’m told that a lot of the topics here are quite recycled and improved in subsequent novels with the generation ship trope. Thankfully for me, the only contact I have with generation ships are the Passengers movie and the Nauvoo from The Expanse series, but none of them have the ship itself or its mystery as a focus, nor how humans change over time while trapped in the middle of nothingness, which this novel does wonderfully.

Like any old sci-fi classics, there are plenty of problems that come with its age, such as the treatment of female characters, the cheesy romantic subplot, or similar. But honestly, all of it makes complete sense to me within the novel—we are talking about a primitive society after all—and I was never taken out by any of it, but your mileage may vary.

Here is my reading progress on it:

Date	Pages	Time	%
2026-03-03	45	01:08	9.78%
2026-03-04	67	01:20	24.35%
2026-03-06	24	00:28	29.57%
2026-03-09	15	00:16	32.83%
2026-03-10	27	00:34	38.70%
2026-03-11	22	00:29	43.48%
2023-03-13	132	02:26	72.17%
2023-03-15	18	00:20	76.09%
2023-03-16	11	00:15	78.48%
2026-03-17	48	00:54	88.91%
2023-03-18	51	00:57	100.00%

Compared to my previous read, the progress here was rather steady, which makes me feel accomplished. Props to the book as well, of course, it definitely kept me entertained once it picked up steam.

The final reveal was satisfactory for me, and how everything fit together, the implications of it all, the tragedy and the hope that persists until the end, it definitely left me thinking quite a bit, even if it feels a bit rushed.

Overall, I still prefer Aldiss’ later work in Hothouse, but I flew through the pages of this one, and I absolutely enjoyed it!

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Unpolished human websites

2026-03-25T08:00:00-06:00

Every day I am more and more annoyed by the way some of the blogs I have followed for years have started to “get with the times” or “catch up” on using those “tools” to “improve” their blogging in one way or another.

I don’t even want to use those two letters, or the more appropiate three-letter acronym, because honestly, it annoys me to even type it out at this point. What a pain.

I’ll share some things that shouldn’t need to be said, but in just in case, here’s what a personal website does not need:

Perfect grammar.
Up to date posts.
Links to everything it talks about.
Clear structure.
Posts with catchy titles.
Fancy thumbnails or images.
Perfect “SEO”.

Sure, editing is okay, rewording is okay, humans make mistakes, humans can correct those mistakes. If you are too lazy to correct a mistake, just leave it there then, it’s your blog, you write what you want and skip the rest.

I could go through every point here but it all boils down to the same thing. Just express yourself.

I admit I fell for these new and “innovative” technologies at some point, there’s even a blogpost I did years ago that’s barely written by me. I refuse to delete it for the sake of posterity, but I also won’t link it because it’s kind of cringe. Other than that, these words are mine, this is my voice.

Since we are at it, here’s what I like to find in a personal website:

Your unique experience and view of life.
Harmless grammar mistakes.
Misstyped urls.
Incomplete sentences.
Multiple posts about the same thing.
Drafts published by accident.
Vague titles that have nothing to do with the topic.
Honest and human thoughts.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have something a little bit more proper or elegant, there is tooling out there that has allowed for that to be possible for decades now. Tools to help you write and edit your posts properly without having to rely on those things. And even if there were not, how is it that books have been a thing for hundreds of years. handwritten, printed, whatever, all of it was done by a real person.

Maybe it’s slow and tedious, maybe it takes more manual effort, maybe it’s the “boring part” that you don’t like. Other than accessibility—and I still have my doubts about how truly accessible this is—it mostly boils down to putting in the effort.

There are, maybe, valid reasons for it all. I am not really unfollowing those that use it, like some others have, but I can’t get the feeling out of my head, that I am no longer reading a human sometimes, and that they are mostly excusing themselves, precisely because at least there’s a feeling there, that it’s wrong.

Regardless of what you do, on this website, it’s just me, here and now. Me and my dumb takes and opinions, my rambles about nothing and my thoughts on things everyone has mentioned before, but it doesn’t really matter does it? Because I am the one writing. Helplessly human, helplessly unpolished, imperfect and wrong, but documenting it all because it’s just fun for me.

Like, look at this post, it’s kind of ugly, it sounds like I’m bragging, and I hate that, I’m not doing anything special, it’s just another blogpost out of the hundreds of blogposts I’ve done, out of the hundreds of millions of articles written by humans.

So, yeah, write your own words, or don’t, you are entitled to do—or avoid doing—whatever you wish.

What I want, however, is to read you.

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PSP gaming and a new ereader - W12

2026-03-24T09:40:00-06:00

These weeknotes are full of gaming related topics yet again, but also some reading, let us celebrate such an accomplishment, yay!

💻 Now that it’s over, it’s weird to think about all the work I did while my workmate was out. It sure was stressful and there were many times where I still felt like I should ask him what to do. These weeks proved to me that even though I’m still not the best, I can handle myself better than I thought—or stall things until he returns and knows what to do better lol.
💪 Gotta say I have not gone to the gym for a while, work has been a pain and I got phone calls off-hours, I just want to get home and be lazy for the rest of the day, and always ready just in case. Thankfully, I finally returned this Monday night and it was a good time.
📚 My XTEINK X4—a tiny e-ink reader—finally arrived, at the same time as Jeremy’s, both of us already installed the Crosspoint firmware too. I had some fun setting up wallpapers and optimizing my EPUBs for it!
🍜 Went to a Japanese restaurant with some friends over the weekend! We ate some ramen and had a wonderful time chatting and catching up with each other. We also played a couple of rounds of Garctic Phone, guaranteed fun for everyone.
📦 Another couple of Nintendo Switch game arrived. I got Gris earlier on, and Crow Country arrived later, the first because of the great experience Amin—and he keeps nagging me to play it—and the latter due to the marvelous experience I had with Resident Evil 2, I may play the original RE first though.
💾 Transferred a few games to my PSP, the What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord?! 2, Danganronpa, BlackRock Shooter, and Mega Man Powered Up!. I wish there was a Resident Evil game for PSP, it would have been so cool…
🎧 Purchased Gris: Unreleased sketches, a new album by Berlinist with early drafts of tracks from the game of the same name! It’s just 11 minutes long, but it’s wonderful.

Reading

Started

🕰️ Chrono Trigger by Michael P. Williams - I transferred a few books to my Xteink X4 reader and this was one of them. I already flew through 25% of it! A great book about Chrono Trigger, the author’s personal experience with it, and apparently there’s some interviews and more neat stuff coming up!
🛰️ Strange Dogs by James S.A. Corey - A novella taking place before the events of Persepolis Rising from The Expanse. It seems super promising so far.

Ongoing

🥷 Kagurabachi by Takeru Hokazono - Up to chapter 82. This is great shonen stuff, and it has been rock-solid from the beginning. I’ve already flew past a couple of excellent arcs and I am enamoured by the story, the characters and the pure aura of each panel as the fight scenes and the power system develop further. The progression has been really good and I have no complaints. I ready more than 70 chapters in a week, after all.

Completed

🌳 Non-Stop by Brian W. Aldiss - What a book! What a start to Aldiss’ career as a published writer. Among the first stories of its kind, with a lot of ideas, concepts and neat, if dated characters. I reall y

Watching

🪨 David - We went to the movies and chose this one on a whim, it’s an animated rendition of the biblical tale of King David’s rise to the throne. I was rather surprised by the quality of it. It’s a musical, but it wasn’t very catchy, at least to me. It still pales in comparison to the masterpiece that is The Prince of Egypt though.

Gaming

Ongoing

🥐 CrossCode - Last week I stared the first out of three dungeons in Chapter 8, I have now beath two of them and unlocked my way into the third one! The game keeps being simply awesome, the puzzles continue to get my brain muscles to work.
🍄 Super Mario 3D World - We have managed to complete all the levels and beat Bowser once more. We finally got to the last last stage and did a couple more levels! The end of this game is near, but we are still collecting all the stickers!
⚔️ Gladiator Begins - I only mentioned this in passing on a Gaming Recap from 2024, I can’t believe I never brought it up in other notes at all… In any case, it’s a great PSP arena fighter with kinda complex controls and depth. I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit, lots of customization and challenging fights.
🃏 Balatro - Literally one year later, this roguelike was opened on a whim by my friends on my Switch and we ended up playing for two hours. I wasn’t fully present during this time, but I played a few rounds here and there, it is still awesome.

Started

💀 What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!? 2 - A strange tower-defense/dungeon maker where I have to design a cave system that autopopulates with minions in charge of defending the bad guy. Depending of the shapes I dig, certain species grow, and then bigger and bigger ones that are stronger and more durable. Every once in a while “heroes” will show up to defeat me. The weird thing here is that I have no way to dictate where the minions go, I have to work within their movement patterns and plan accordingly, it’s rather interesting but I can’t figure it out yet and can’t get past World 2.
🧪 Metroid Fusion - I started it on a whim again, this time on my Miyoo Mini Flip. I reached the first boss of the game! Kind of want to fly through it just because it’s fun.
🚗 Ridge Racer Type 4 - Started it on my Miyoo Mini Flip too, I think I’ll stick with the PSP one though.

Around the Web

Blog posts

Unfinished must-want-to-play games - Love listicles like this one.
The Sandwich - A very personal slice of life.
Your computer hates you - A rant on technology today, I disagree with many things, but found it worth reading.
Damn, I Can Still Read - Reading is great, and it’s fun to realize you actually like it.
Just checking in - Sam has mostly stuck to weekly summaries that are generated from his social media feed, but I’ve been missing a proper post like this one.

YouTube

Why smaller pixel art is actually harder - The title is pretty clear here.
The Failed MASTERPIECE That Gave Us Resident Evil 4 - Never heard of this game, looks kinda fun.
Why Classic Games Feel Better - Nothing like a good old video essay about something I agree with.
The Return of Polished AAA Games - I mostly play old games that released ages ago, but it’s nice when something new comes out that just runs well.

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Old PC Games on Cereal Boxes

2026-03-21T12:10:00-06:00

I mentioned a bit of this a few years back in a post where I shared some early computing memories. At the time, I only recalled what the games were about, but I didn’t remember the names or specific game mechanics.

However, through vague descriptions and looking in some abandonware sites, I found the games and decided to share them here. There were a couple of educational titles, a couple of racing games and a zoo management game that is actually still being sold on Steam!

All of these games were bundled in Cereal boxes somewhere in the 2000s in Mexico! They were everywhere and absolutely worked on me, I just wanted my parents to get me some every time, there’s a chance some of those games aren’t listed here, but the ones that left an impression are mentioned, at least.

I talked about this post idea to Wouter, and he immediately reminded me about his own post of a similar vein where he reminisced on edutainment games from his childhood, so there you go, check it out too once you are done, or before, since they are older games than mine. 😉

Without further to do, here’s my list!

Superbike Racing

This is one of the earliest games I have memory of ever playing on a computer. I booted it up on a kinda bulky Toshiba laptop that my father had. It was developed (or maybe just published?) by IncaGold and I remember playing it around 2007.

This game had pretty neat graphics for my young eyes, and it was of the realistic style, rather than arcadey. This made the physics and the speed way too slow for me, and really deterred me from playing it that much as a kid.

I had not really played Mario Kart at the time, but I guess I just didn’t vibe with a simulator kind of game at that age, and this was closer to those, even if rather low budget. I never quite managed to turn properly and never won a race in it that I recall.

I somehow didn’t remember the name of this game at all, but once I did, I immediately recalled how I used to just say “SuperBike” in Spanish as a kid (“SuperBique”) and that made me chuckle.

A race is about to begin!

Check out this gameplay video—where I got the screenshot from—it really brought some memories back!

Pet Racer

I thinks I played this much later than Superbike Racing, and I think I was already familiar with Mario Kart Wii—which I played at an older friend’s house. Either way, this is a blatant rip-off of Nintendo’s franchise, but I didn’t really care much about that. This game was pretty fun to play around 2008.

Unfortunately, I don’t really have any significant memories about it. I just know it was a racing game and that all the characters were pretty ugly, to be honest, my favorite was the shark. I wish I could say some more things about it, but it’s probably the shallowest of the games mentioned here. There is a lot of gameplay footage out there though, so I guess I could check it out, but the next few games proved to be much more interesting.

This is definitely not Mario Kart

You can easily find gameplay of this one on YouTube, but just play Super Tux Kart, honestly, although the music ain’t too bad.

Zoo Empire

Now, this was more my jam, and I didn’t even remember it very well. Nowadays I rarely touch management games, but I really was addicted to this one as a kid. Just the thought of having my own mini-world inside my computer were animals roamed around was so fun. The game had lots of fun animations and interactions, and causing mayhem by putting animals in the same space was fun.

This game was developed by Enlight Software and was first published in 2004. I think I played it around 2009 myself, but I can’t be sure.

You managed a zoo and took care of animals, building their habitats, as well as the passageways and commodities for visitors. What blows my mind is that the game was fully 3D! with full camera controls and stuff. The graphics are old by now, but still have a lot of charm.

Another thing I really liked was the amount of terraforming you can. I can modifying terrain and making mountains or lakes and using those instead of fences.

I’m kind of interested on giving this one a revisit, the game is still available on Steam and on sale right now. It will probably suck by today standards, but I will give it a go for nostalgia’s sake.

Reviews say that the game will eventually crash, but it will be fun to just mess around for a bit.

The zoo is thriving! Screenshot from the Steam page

Check some gameplay here!—The music actually holds up so well and unlocked my nostalgia even more than the gameplay itself.

My Amazing Human Body

This is an educational game about—you guessed it—the human body. Titled in Spanish as Mi Increíble Cuerpo Humano, and developed by DK Multimedia in 1997, although I played the version I did around 2007 or so. It was full of minigames and things to click around. There’s also a character that narrates the game and asks questsions named Seymour Skinless—he is just Skelly in Spanish though—and yes, he’s a talking skeleton.

There were puzzle games about dragging and dropping body parts in the right place, tons of fun facts about each part of the body, and each organ will also come with specific games to learn what they do. For example, the brain information page has a memory game or tells you to attempt to write with your non-dominant hand, while the eye section comes with optical illusion experiments, explaining how the eyes are fooled by it. Everything in this game has plenty of drawings, models and diagrams.

This is a game that really rewards exploration, and each description of how an organ works will often highlight other specific terms and link to another terms, it is very easy to get into rabbit holes just reading and looking at visuals. There really is a whole glossary not only about the organs, but the systems and processes and how the body develops over time as we grow. I skimmed through a playthrough of the game online and was truly astonished by how much information it has, all the text on it is fully dubbed as well.

Main interface of the game, Skelly in the middle

Check some gameplay of it on YouTube—I must admit I prefer the Spanish dub, even though it’s not Latin Spanish, I just got used to the voice.

My First Amazing History Explorer

This was just La Máquina del Tiempo del Pequeño Aventurero in Spanish and was also developed by DK Multimedia, however, where a lot of the artwork on the Human Body consisted of prerrendered 3D models and 3D animation. Most of what is found in this game is mostly 2D graphics. It makes sense given the presence of paintings, maps and similar art compared to organs and bones.

Anyway, this was an extremely fun game, and had more of a story too, since I traveled through time to find the whereabouts of a missing professor. Like Skelly, there’s another character who calls himself the Time Fugitive—altough he calls himself Cronos in Spanish!—and he’s the one behind the professors disappearance, simply to get more people interested in History—a bit of a stretch but okay.

In any case, this game is as deep and fun to poke around with, letting you explore through the professor’s house—which acts as a hub or main menu of sorts—as well as access the Time Machine itself, which let’s you visit eight different time periods, showing a giant map with graphics, animations and things to click and get into rabbit holes just like the previous game, so much interactivity everywhere. There’s puzzles and questions and minigames, you can collect stamps for each time period and fill a book with them. I really enjoyed revisiting gameplay online.

Each time period was a colorful map full of animations and stuff to click

There are whole playthroughs on YouTube! they evoke so much nostalgia. The English dub is really good, the Spanish voice is kinda annoying, but I didn’t mind much as a kid.

Finishing thoughts

All these games—except maybe for Pet Racer—were such a nostalgia hit for me. Remembering the days were I would get these free games on cereal boxes from Kellog’s or Nestle. I am amazed at how much I already know computers back then, as I set up these games myself without help from my parents and such.

I am not sure of where in the world the CD-ROMs are in my dad’s office space. There’s a chance there would be more games there that I didn’t remember at all. I have a vague memory of a flight simulator, but I think the disc got scratched and I never played much of it.

In any case, I wonder how many of you have played these games or even got them for free too! Let me know by contacting me or leaving a comment!

This is day 37 of #100DaysToOffload

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TTRPG stuff, new pants and desk setup! - W11

2026-03-18T08:40:00-06:00

I apologize for the delay of these weeknotes! Work has been rather busy lately, I don’t even want to bring it up here very much.

Rest assured I had plenty of free time to do other things I find more enjoyable to share on this blogpost!

🐉 My Land of Eem Deluxe Set arrived and it’s absolutely stunning. I spent some time of my weekend just flipping through the pages and having so much fun. Unfortunately we weren’t able to play this time around.
🎲 Backed up a TTRPG Kickstarter! Nimble RPG made the rounds on my TTRPG group of online friends, and I ended up backing the Kickstarter, I’ll hopefully get a physical set later in the year!
📦 A videogame pre-order arrived. My UFO 50 Deluxe edition from Fangamer, and it looks pretty awesome. I need to flip through the pages of that guide book one of these days.
🖋️ Practiced some more handwriting. After doing a one-page notebook, I’ve taken some more notes tegularly, still working on my cursive and general technique, it’s been rather refreshing but it’s also mostly short sentences. Yesterday’s blogpost was originally done by hand as well!
📕 Purchased an old book, a cheap paperback of Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke. As one of my favorite books, I thought it would be fitting to have it. I must admit I don’t really like the format and condition of it, so I may return it and get a different edition instead.
⌨️ Revamped and cleaned up my desk setup! I added a few things to it like my desk clock and made it tidier. I shared a picture on Mastodon in case you want to check it out!
🍕 Ate out a couple of times on the weekend. I had some burgers on Saturday, some pizza on Sunday, and overall really good food.
🎮 Had an online gaming session with a friend. I sent Naty a photo of the TV displaying a Switch game, which reminded her she hasn’t added me to her friends list on the console… A day later I had the day off and she wondered if we can play as Switch friends. She got an NSO trial and we played some NES Classics like Balloon Fight, Ice Climbers and the surprisingly deep River City Random which took over both of us!
👖 Updated my pants wardrobe after years of only really having not-great-looking jeans and very faded khaki pants, I thought it was time to just update my wardrobe and get rid of the rest—not throw away, my mom sells clothes at the flea market from time to time. I purchased four pairs, a new set of jeans, beige cargo pants, grey pants and light grey ones.

Reading

Completed

🛸 Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo - With only 25 chapters total, this continuation for JJK ended up falling for the same pitfall of the original run, with an extremely convoluted and rushed ending where nothing paid off. All the chapters up until 14 or 15 were actually really interesting, and there were so many possibilities and ideas that could have been better used. The action was great as well, but there were just too many things going on at once nothing really felt earned. Unfortunate, but at least it was quick.

Started

🥷 Kagurabachi by Takeru Hokazono - Up to chapter 9 This is a newcomer in the shonen genre, with a premise that was interesting to me. The protagonist is the son of the best katana swordsmith, imbued with sorcery and essential to stop a terrible war that happened in the past. However, they have been stolen, and the father was killed in the process. Three years later, Chihiro has trained and gotten ready to enact revenge and confront the group of sorcerers behind the tragedy.

Ongoing

🌳 Non-Stop - Read up to 80% - I was already enjoying this book quite a book, but it has only gotten better as I’ve read it, the plot thickened so much, and then some of the truth of everything going on has started to be revealed, but there’s so much more yet to uncover and understand, I am really loving this one!

⚔️ Kingdom - Up to chapter 865 - After the ending of the mini arc, the story has continued to build up, and we switched perspectives to another of the armies that don’t really have any of the usual protagonists, still hype though!

Gaming

🥐 CrossCode - Another great week for this game! I’ve started chapter 8 and realized it is huge! I’ve felt like going through some side quests before the main dungeon and it has been a really engaging experience, all of them have been fun and entertaining, and even opened up some areas I didn’t expect to see. I started the main dungeon, once again with a lot of puzzles, and I’m halfway through it by now.

👾 Into The Breach - I finally managed to do my first victory in Easy Mode, but I have had a few other runs I failed. This game is so deep and I keep just scratching the surface, I am definitely playing it a bit more this time around.

🍄 Super Mario 3D World - Played this on a whim on Sunday with friends, we are cleaning up levels and getting all the green stars and stickers. We finally reached the Bowser world and it has been a very fun journey. Today I went through a couple earlier levels and obtained all the collectibles on them.

🧛 Vampire Survivors - Me and friend keep playing through the Ode to Castlevania DLC and having some fun! But I must admit, somehow, this game gets me to sleep, it’s kind of mindless, I guess, I had to play standing up and moving around because otherwise my mind would wander around and I’d end up dying and making it difficult for my party.

💪 River City Ransom - Gave this one a go with Nintendo Switch Online with Naty! This was incredibly fun and much more interesting than I thought, the game has some charm and it’s rather open and fun to explore. It has dated elements though, but we had a great time.

🧩 Tetris 99 - I had never tried this one but also gave it a spin with Naty, it was fun, I won twice, heh.

Around the Web

Blogposts

New Pen Day - Sylvia got a new pen, the Pilot Kakuno, the younger, quirkier brother of my Pilot Metropolitan!—As soon as I wrote this I checked on my pen and realized I accidentally left it pointing down so I just spent a while cleaning up the pen cap and using up the excess ink on the tip itself.
My family went on a Quest! (and my first time GMing) - My friend Daniel started playing Land of Eem just like me and Dave! so he wrote about his experience doing the starting campaign of the core rulebook. He even describes the characters his family made and such, it’s awesome.
Quick Question - Musings from a Tangled Mind is one of those blogs that always leave me thinking, and this post in particular is one of those. Just give it a read.
New Operating System, Old Memories - Steph recently, finally, decided to give Linux a spin on her laptop! This makes me happy, and the raw experience is also really nice to go through, lots of hiccups, but an otherwise unused device now has new life!

YouTube

A brief look at my gaming history - I love videos like these, I’ve had a few posts sharing early memories of my gaming life, and I just had an idea that I’ll work on later, about my start with PC gaming!
Is Quest 64 actually as bad as they say? - This was an interesting video about a game I’ve always been curious about. Don’t think I’ll play it but it sure seems like there was some depth combat-wise.
Horror RPGs deserved better - What an amazing essay about a genre I’m not super interested about. The one game I kind of want to try is Sweet Home, which inspired Resident Evil, although Fear & Hunger looks like I’ll hate it but like it.
an ereader actually worth carrying - xteink x4 review - Another review for this device which is already shipping my way.
My favorite handhelds under $100 - A fun overview over a lot of gaming emulator handhelds in case you’re curious about buying one!

This is day 36 of #100DaysToOffload

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This Is My Genre (Science Fiction!)

2026-03-17T16:30:00-06:00

I saw Alex Wolfe answering these questions and I thought I’d give them a go! I even wrote an early draft by hand before transferring them to digital for some final edits.

Feel free to reply to these as well, I would love to read your answers in the comments or on your own blogpost, send me a link if you do.

What is your favourite genre?

Science Fiction no doubt! Pretty much the only thing I read outside detective stories (like once a year), literary classics (which usually overlap with detective stories or science fiction), and manga.

Who is your favourite author in this genre?

This has to go to the one and only Jules Verne. His stories were the first contact I had with the genre and pretty much inspired me to pursue my engineering career—I want to be as clever as Cyrus Smith when I grow up.

Over time however, I’ve come to discover a lot more authors like Brian W. Aldiss or Arthur C. Clarke, and the modern works of James S.A. Corey and Dennis E. Taylor, it was hard to go with them though, since I can’t deny who has had the biggest impact on my life.

What is it about the genre that keeps pulling you back?

The variety, the possibilities, the way in which stories can both celebrate the progress of humankind at the same time it can warn and predicts how that progress can come at a cost.

Another aspect I love is how no matter how much we know, nature and the cosmos always have more surprises waiting for us. From the Maelstrom to the Protomolecule.

What is the book that started your love of this genre?

I would have to point to an abridged version of Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne, which was on the 2008 edition of Español Lecturas for the 3rd grade at my primary school.

The is a book which came bundled with other works for education purposes, which the government provided to public schools at the time, the artwork included in those readings to accompany the words is still ingrained in my memory. You can freely access this book online!

A great, modern starting point may be something like the Bobiverse series, which are about a guy who gets resurrected as an AI in the future, tasked with exploring the galaxy, as he’s put in charge of a Von Neumann probe. It has some great science, but it’s funny and full of geeky stuff I really enjoyed.

Why do you read?

Because it is fun! To explore so many possibilities, futures and what-if scenarios. Visualizing all of it in my head, just the power of the mind picturing the impossible, or what could be. I probably could go further but honestly I just love to be immersed in the words, living lives and visiting places I could never do otherwise, it’s cool stuff.

But well, that’s it! Not a very long post perhaps, but I actually had a lot of fun looking back and trying to recall how I got into it, discovering all my primary school books are available online was definitely the highlight of my day too.

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Blog pings

Articles around the web that reference this post. I add them manually, so let me know if you link to me!

This is My Genre: Fantasy by Thomas Rigby
This is my genre: Golden Age Detectives by David
This is My Genre (Horror!) by Syl

E-Ink is very cool

2026-03-15T06:40:40-06:00

I don’t often share videos by themselves, much less actually quote them verbatim, but I really enjoyed it this time.

The e-ink display—the technology itself—actually represents something different: Focus, simplicity, and going back to our roots.

There’s just something about the slow nature of the display that just feels out of place in a world where everything is just speeding up. And yet, it fits perfectly.

Over time, more and more people actually turn to this technology because of the really cool features like the incredibly good battery life; and the one thing that I personally love the most about the e-ink technology is the fact that when you introduce more light, the more viewable the display becomes.

As you know from your phone, when you go outside, the display actually becomes, you know, worse. When it’s sunny outside, you basically cannot see anything on the display. That’s not the case with e- ink. The more light you introduce, the better it looks.

And this is sort of what I mean by going back to our roots. It feels very human.

When you increase the light around you, you can see more with your eyes. You will see less on your phone, but the e-ink display will become clearer and easier to read.

– David Pavlicek on This E-Reader Changed My Life: Xteink X4 Review

This is, on hindsight, a rather obvious statement, but it really resonated with me and—even though the video itself is “just a review”—I thought this statement was worth sharing in written form.

This, among other videos were the last straw that got me to order this device even though I already own my Kobo. I want to see if the reduced friction of this form factor will help me read even more.

Besides, maybe it’s weird, but I think I actually read multiple books much better when it’s done in multiple formats? I can read something on a paperback while keeping up with my reading on Kobo, as well as the manga I check on my phone. So, maybe an extra eink device means I could easily switch between more reads at a time, the difference in presentation helps me compartmentalize it better, perhaps.

It could all just be excuses of course, there’s always others who will fly through books regardless of the format or friction.

So, anyway, E-ink devices are great technology, and I am looking forward to check the Xteink X4 soon.

This is day 34 of #100DaysToOffload

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joelchrono's blog

More confessions from a FOSS enthusiast

📱 My phone is even less de-googled

🔍 Sill using Google Search

🤖 FOSS with AI on it…

💾 Self-hosting? Backups? What is that?

Finishing thoughts

What Interested Me Today 8

Bubbles, a frontpage for the IndieWeb

Prove You’re Human, from the creators of 1000xRESIST

I’m in the podium of #100DaysToOffload

More blogs for my RSS reader…

To Be Taught, If Fortunate

New wallpaper, movie going, plus anime! - W15

Watching

Completed

Ongoing

Gaming

Reading

Completed

Ongoing

Words I looked up

Around the web

Blogposts

YouTube

Resident Evil (1996)

What Interested Me Today 7

Some blogs I added to my RSS feed

A dumb web fediverse client

Into The Aether’s latest bonus episode!

Linux user groups and updating my XTEINK X4

Another TTRPG bundle…

Early days with the XTEINK X4 ereader

Lost and found bottle, Easter vacation! - W14

Watching

Reading

Gaming

Completed

Ongoing

Around the Web

Blog posts

YouTube

Verifying human authorship with human.json

March 2026 Summary

Podcasts

Gaming

Started

Ongoing

Movies

Manga

Started

Ongoing

Complete

Anime

Books

Started

Completed

Goals

Finishing thoughts

Theming around, gaming around, siblings around! - W13

Reading

Completed

Ongoing

Started

Gaming

Started

Ongoing

Around the Web

Blog posts

YouTube

Website changes: new section, music widget, and upvotes

“On This Week” section

Improved music widget

An upvote button

How to turn off Calibre AI features

Non-Stop

Unpolished human websites

PSP gaming and a new ereader - W12

Reading

Started