Personally, I haven’t added too many new people to my feed, but there have been a few which I’ll share!

• Fyr.io - Matt seems like a pretty cool guy! he is not super active or posting daily, but he’s definitely posting plenty of interesting things. The one post that caught my eye this month is the one about patient gaming.

• Kelson Vibber - This guy with a cool name has plenty of thoughts on tech and life, similar to mine. His post on planned obsolescence vibed with me. He also reads lots of sci-fi, many works I don’t even know of too!

• WC Robinson - This is a pretty big website with lots of posts and when I saw their series about the games that shaped them I guess I just had to add them to my RSS feed. Good taste!

Admittedly, I am not following a lot of new people here, and I haven’t even reached out to all of these yet. I hope they see this post though and I’ll probably send it to them too.

Of course, I am also keeping an eye on some of the friends I have already. Such as:

• Syl, who continues to share her awesome thoughts on gaming and other shenanigans like music and gaming, as well as life updates I enjoy to read.

• OrbitalMartian is taking a slower approach, but has plenty of variety regarding tech, software and random life shenanigans.

• Ariadne, who keeps sharing her notes on productiviy and tech, plus plenty of music and book recommendations, who end up in my backlog.

• Sam from The Tangent Space is a favorite of mine, sharing his history with gaming, weekly digest updates and the like, very good stuff!

• Jedda, despite the difficult moments on her life, has taken this event as a personal challenge, and she is doing fantastically.

• Naty, a great friend who is passionate about a lot of things and documenting her journey learning about blogging and the indieweb!

There’s plenty others I follow, but I’m running out of time today. So here’s another short list with a few more!

• small cypress
• Alex Wolfe
• Dave Henry
• Christopher Himes
• Lazybear
• James’ Coffe Blog

Enough already, go read those if you don’t have enough with my own posts ;)

This is day 19 of #100DaysToOffload and 14 of #Blaugust2026

• Even though I am Mexican, there’s a lot of Mexican food everyone seems to love, but I just don’t like as much. I can eat it if I have to be polite, but yeah, I’d rather not. I don’t like Mole nor Menudo, even though both are quite popular and I’d recommend trying them out if you ever come visit this country. I also tend to avoid spicy food if possible.

• I love origami as a hobby, this is not new information for most of you, but I do want to share my favorite origami model, which would be the Rat by Eric Joisel, he was one of the best origamists ever, and this model is one of the most expressive I know of, with a simplicity which I adore. There’s a diagram available if you want to give it a try, though it is of intermediate difficulty. In second place the Horse by Hideo Komatsu is lovely for opposite reasons, it is much more complex to fold, yet it looks as clean as a traditional crane. Both are fantastic. Check my origami page—though none of these models is pictured there…

• I love gaming, and most of my gaming is done in a handheld format, I currently possess a Nintendo Switch OLED, a PSP 3000, and Anbernic RG 35XXSP, a Miyoo Mini Flip and a New Nintendo 3DS XL, I also have a Miyoo Mini Plus that is currently on my sister’s care, and a Game Boy Advance SP which still works and was my first proper handheld—other than the cheap ones that came with 5 versions of tetris and blocky games I guess.

• When I was in high school I pretty much introduced every one of my friends to speedcubing. I taught at least half a dozen of them how to solve the Rubik’s cubes and provided learning resources to many more, I did a couple of meet-ups and even went to a small event with a friend, teach algorithms, techniques to improve, etc. I would also recommend puzzles to get and would find the best local online stores to order from. As such I’d ask them to select what to buy and I would order a bunch of cubes at once to my house and distribute it from there. Looking back, I kind of promoted the hobby more than I realized and it was a sign of things to come… cough cough

• My favorite primary color is blue, and in case it isn’t clear by my profile picture and my website, my favorite color is turquoise or neon purple.

• I have lived on four different states all over my country (México), the south, the north, and currently on the central region, all sorts of weather conditions and altitudes. Not too bad I’d say.

• For some reason my first ever full anime was Neon Genesis Evangelion. I didn’t even know it was a mecha anime, I was not expecting what it would become later. Of course I was already exposed to some classics, such as Dragon Ball, Captain Tsubasa or Yu-Gi-Oh, which are constantly airing on public TV channels in Mexico and which I have never seen more than a couple episodes each. Evangelion was the first one I chose to watch consciously from start to finish.

• Finishing games was not very common for me as a kid. Looking back, the first game I ever completed is probably Halo 3 with my friends, though memory fails me. I would have to ponder some more on this… The earliest games since then is Ocarina of Time and Chrono Trigger in 2015-2016.

• I have had four dogs, and only two of them at the moment. The first was Chicharito, a chihuaha I had for almost 14 years. I dug the grave myself, and it was surprisingly quick how I got over it after that. The second was Navi, who I barely got to have for a couple months due to a disease, she died first years ago,I wrote about that back then. My two remaining dogs came after and got to be with Chicharito for a few years, they are 3 or so years old and I’m quite happy to have them.

• My current YouTube obsession continues to be football. I keep watching documentaries and goal compilations from X or Y players or my national team, the World Cup does something to me, heeeelp

This is day 13 of #100DaysToOffload and day 8 of #Blaugust2026

The games I chose should be pretty manageable within that time frame. I selected some titles where I already have progress in the mix, since that’s not against the rules. In any case, I split them up and listed them here in no particular order.

Resumed plays

• Grapple Dog - I’ve managed to complete two of the worlds in the game and I am halfway through the third one, in about 6 hours of playtime. I would like to beat this game! The grappling mechanic is pretty fun but it can also feel a bit samey. I am enjoying the challenge of collecting all the things though.

• Terranigma - This is a restart of a game I had 13 hours of playtime on. I am a couple hours in and about to progress to the next chapter of the story, which will significantly change what the game’s about thus far. I think this has been long overdue for a completion from me, so I would love to finally reach credits on it.

• Hades - With 30 hours of playtime, I really want to get this game’s credits rolling. It has been a joy to play so far! A true masterpiece with a lot going on for its story and gameplay. I just need to do a few more runs to get the ending. I will keep playing it every once in a while after that though, but for this challenge? credits are enough.

• Outer Wilds - This one is a real gem, after 14 hours of almost continuous play, I can’t recall what got me to suddenly stop. I really need to continue the story told here, it is mindblowing and super cool, and I’m sure I’ll get a lot of fun out of it once I return. So many clues and things to figure out, some day soon.

• Silksong - I reached credits on Silksong after 67 hours or so, but I really wnat to experience everything Pharloom has to offer. I want to do the 3rd Act of the game and see the new bosses and the rest of the story for myself. I want to challenge my skills and get good, suffering through whatever this game throws at me, because I know I have what it takes, or that’s what I want to believe!

First time plays

• Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - After completing the first two games of the series, it only makes sense to complete the original trilogy! I did play a bit of this game years ago on my PSP, but I never got far, and I want to see I can do with all I’ve learned from the previous titles. I’m always happy to see more ofs Jill Valentine, who hasn’t been around much on later games in the series.

• Metroid Prime Remastered - Since I purchased Metroid Prime 4 Beyond, it is only fair of me to try and complete the one that started Samus’ journey into the 3D world in first person view! I have heard the game holds up magnificently and performs really well on the Switch, so I am really looking forward to this one, always happy to play more Metroid.

• Chants of Sennaar - This one seems like a super interesting puzzle kind of game, similar perhaps to Outer Wilds, without the physics and such, though. I have heard great things so if you have played it feel free to hype me up with a comment or email about it. I heard it’s not too long so that’s another reason why I chose it.

• Emio and the Smiling Man - This one was a bit of an impulse purchase last year. I knew nothing about it other than the praise it got on Into The Aether when Brendon talked about it. It’s parrt of the Famicom Detective Club game series, so I expect some great mystery and looking around rooms and the like. Apparently it has some great thriller/horror elements too? Will check it out for sure.

• Pipstrello and the Cursed YoYo - I got this because of Wouter last year and it looks incredible. It’s a bit of a Metroidvania but with gameplay akin to 2D Zelda games. I’ve heard good things so I definitely want to give it a try.

Bonus games

Although I only have to beat four of these to consider the challenge complete, and my list of ten is already pretty good, there’s some titles that may have a chance to be completed along these. Here are some of them.

• Gris - I know that Amin has greatly enjoyed this game, and since I already have it on my Switch, and it’s actually rather short, I really think I should give it a go and maybe finish it before some of the main titles here!

• Super Mario 3D World - This is a title I’m playing with friends during some Sundays, therefore I can’t promise I’ll complete it, because my friends would have to be in the mood and choose this over some other videogames, card games or whatever other activity there is.

• Metroid Fusion - I am pretty confident I can beat this very quickly, but it is not a first time playthrough and I’ve already beaten it multiple times so it does not really count.

• The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy - I don’t think I would be able to finish this game so quickly, but I would definitely get a couple of the endings. I haven’t given this one a go in a long while, I really need to return to it.

• CrossCode - I am loving this game so much! but I am playing it along with some friends and I don’t want to get ahead of them. It’s a fantastic story in a great world and lovely characters, I think I would finish it if I were by myself, but I won’t betray my friends!

If you want to join me on this challenge, feel free to let me know! I would love to see your progress updates as well, you’ll see mine on my weeknotes, though I’ve been thinking about making a separate post just for my games, who knows.

This is day 71 of #100DaysToOffload

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.

All of this under the assumption that all the hardware and peripherals required, magically work for the indefinite amount of time I’ll be stranded in the middle of nowhere. Except for internet.

But well, I just thought that my own answer would be rather boring, so I decided to ask some friends about it! And I’ll also provide my own commentary, if I agree or disagree with their choice, and the like!

As you can see by the word count of this—if you are visiting my website and not just reading via RSS—this ended up being a lot of text!

Feel free to reply with your own picks of course. I personally reached out to the bloggers here, and I don’t plan to add new submissions, but please share your own post, and I will link to it at the end!

The first replies got added first and so on, and hey, there’s a table of contents.

By the way, this is definitely inspired by TechDweeb’s video collab, check it out as well!

• Jana
• Cory
• Daniel
• Gina
• Ariadne
• OrbitalMartian
• Wouter
• Naty
• Jeremy
• Bojidar
• Brent (TK)
• Alyssa
• Dave
• Amin
• Gabz
• Bobby
• Sotolf
• FlamedFury
• And my choice is…
• Wrapping up

Jana

The quickest reply came from Jana! Who has listed some other games on her site already, in case you want to know more lol. Although there haven’t been many blogposts about gaming itself, maybe that can change sometime soon? 😉

I would pick Cyberpunk 2077.

I’d imagine that on an island I would want to have something to play that can offer a variety of things to potentially do and have a pretty long playtime.

Plus it should be able to effectively immerse myself in a different setting, so I can escape into a different reality, if I feel like it.

All of these things Cyberpunk 2077 accomplishes for me in a way like very little games have before.

I’ll definitely try Cyberpunk at some point during the next 10 years of my life, maybe. I still don’t have a computer powerful enough to play it and all I remember are the early days about how broken it was and such. I imagine it is excellent today, and I’ve heard good things of the Switch 2 port as well, which realistically is the way I may end up playing it, unless the Steam Machine’s price is within my reach, and actually available in Mexican storefronts. But hey the desert island has it all so, no reason to worry.

Cory

Cory rarely writes about games on his site—it ends in .dev for a reason—but I decided to reach out anyway and was surprised to find a game I am very much not familiar with!

If I had to choose, it would be the PS1 version of SaGa Frontier. I got it as an unexpected Christmas gift and it’s the game I’ve single handedly spent the most time with.

It’s an open ended RPG with numerous main characters, overlapping story lines and NPCs. I remain nostalgic about the graphics and have the music burned into my brain. I played through all of the characters’ storylines multiple times, particularly Blue’s (I probably took different paths through Blue’s at least 5 times)

Ain’t it nice when life-changing experiences start with a gift of all things? My PSP surely agrees.

I have never played a game from the SaGa series, I am not sure how much I’d be able to take whatever ancient mechanics it may have, but if I have gone through half of FFVII and all of Soul Reaver, and many older SNES games, it may be worth trying ;)

Daniel

Daniel selfhosts a lot of things, and we’ve been friends for a while, although I often forget his username for some strange reason (I’m sorry)…

My gut reaction was one of two games: Minecraft and Slay the Spire. StS is a deck building roguelike: each round feels unique and exciting; the perfect balance of RNG, meta-progression and difficulty. Daily challenges too ;). Minecraft, of course, is an absolute classic, with so many different ways to play: creative, survival, custom challenges and a crazy modding scene.

Honestly though, Pokémon is where my heart lies. I have been playing it as long as I remember, from Pokémon Black on my 3DS to the amazing variety of romhacks avilable today! Nuzlockes are a great way to ramp up the difficulty (I’m not that great at them xD). The question is… what game? If I could just cheat and say all of them, I would… But my final pick is:

*drum-roll*

Pokémon Unknown.

It’s a hack designed around a randomizer! Like StS, there is a kinda roguelike feel to it, designed for both nuzlocking and challenge. It should keep me occupied for a long time! My only other question is… can I bring my knitting too? :)

No, you can’t.

Seriously though, I gotta admit I didn’t see that coming, definitely an unknown choice! I am sure there are some fans of the franchise very happy to see Pokémon represented here! And it makes so much sense in hindsight, since every single game in the series has countless hours of gameplay and tasks to do, I must say I am tempted to pick one of these too, but we’ll see.

Gina

Gina is often busy helping whole governments move towards FOSS technologies, or doing talks in conventions and the like, but she was kind enough to share her thoughts on the matter:

Good question! And highly relevant since I’ll have to sit on a plane for 30 hours from Amsterdam to Sydney soon 💀 Let’s see. Objectively, as we all know, the best game of all time is The Legend of Zelda; Ocarina of Time. But, I’ve recently started playing that game for the millionth time, so something else would be nice. I could imagine that Powerwash Simulator would be very relaxing, in case I’m panicked about being on a deserted island. But also very boring after a while.

So my answer would probably be the game that I’m currently playing; Hogwart’s Legacy. I never cared much for the movies, but the game has been really fun so far It also helps that my Steam Deck wasn’t saving my game for a while due to my ssd being full, so I basically get to redo at least 5 five levels, yay 🥲

Another good one would have been Read Dead Redemption 2. The only reason I didn’t mention it is because I never finish the missions due to the constant bounties on my head from accidentally killing people with my horse. So yeah, Hogwarts Legacy.

Quite a lot of options mentioned! I never played this one either, I’m completely blind when it comes to Harry Potter. I haven’t tried RDR2 either, but I agree with Ocarina of Time being a great candidate as well.

Ariadne

Despite the focus on productivity of Noisy Deadlines, Ariadne has actually come up with one of the most interesting choices thus far!

Thanks for asking, Joel!

You are welcome! Thanks for replying at all!

For me it would have to be a game that I can replay more than once: I can create different characters each time and the story is not too linear. So that means a role-playing game, preferably in the Dungeons and Dragons world. I’d like a game that I can choose my character’s race, class, appearance, etc, with choices impacting gameplay. The first game that came to mind was the classic Neverwinter Nights, based on the DnD Forgotten Realms setting. I could play this game forever, creating different characters and having different companions to join my party each time. Also, I’d want ALL the expansion packs 😎.

I guess Baldur’s Gate or Dragon Age are tempting choices and would tick all the boxes, but Neverwinter Nights is the one I have the deepest connection to. It’s the game I’ve returned to the most, and I know it would keep me entertained no matter how long I was stranded.

I have never gotten into these type of RPGs! I have heard the whole internet going crazy for Baldur’s Gate 3, but I never heard of Neverwinter Nights before. This one looks extremely interesting, I may look into it but, my backlog hurts.

OrbitalMartian

Even if OrbitalMartian refuses to blog consistently (he’s on a good streak right now, at least), I still wanted to reach out to him and see what kind of game he would bring to the table, I mean, to a desert.

Despite living in orbit, the response came back soon enough! And here’s what the only alien blogger I know had to say:

The game I would bring to a desert island is FlightGear, a difficult choice as I’ve got a fair few games that I’d love to bring but my top one is definitely FlightGear. The question of why is rather simple, but I’ll expand it as much as I can. It’s a flight simulator with a wide variety of aircraft available to fly. Another bonus is that it’s free and open source, and as I try to keep to software that is FLOSS as much as is possible, it’s a perfect fit for me.

With all peripherals and hardware magically working, I would be able to use a HOTAS or yoke and pedals, with no problems. With no network connectivity, there will be no multiplayer functionality but there is always an offline, singleplayer mode that you can enable AI traffic to fly alongside other aircraft. I would also say one of the biggest reasons I’d choose FlightGear would be because I love flying, I’ve never done it in real life but it’s a lot of fun in the simulator.

I should have seen it coming, a Martian who likes flying ships, it’s to closest it gets to his flying saucer orbiting the earth right now, although he could have gone for something related to Star Wars, maybe?

Wouter

Despite my prompt clearly stating that every game system and periferal magically works without any need of electricity, Wouter—who writes about life, gaming, technology and such—decided to limit himself even further—it definitely wasn’t my fault he got it wrong—here’s what he had to say!

If I could bring only one game to a deserted island, it would have to be a handheld game. I don’t think there’s going to be a plug for that TV, meaning we’ll have to stack those AA batteries, grouped by four. Are you getting where I’m getting at? Indeed, the sturdy old Game Boy. It’s solid as a rock and there’ll probably plenty of rock-dropping on that island. Plus, those four AA batteries will last you more than twenty hours. On top of that, it’ll give you an excuse to get out of the sun.

As for the game cart, that’ll have to be the greatest Zelda game ever made: The Legend of Zelda Link’s Awakening. I’m sure many of you will pick some kind of roguelike/lite game to increase the so-called replayability. Well guess what, Link’s Awakening is soothing and I can replay that any time even though I know most dungeons and locations by heart. Plus, I’ll probably also have other responsibilities on that island to ensure my survival, such as fishing (check), taking photos of weirdos (check), conch collecting (check), and finding swords on a beach (check). Good luck with your descend!

Imagine bringing a game about being stranded on a deserted island, while you are stranded on a deserted island. Wouter’s sense of humor never ceases to amaze me!

But, I must admit, it’s an excellent choice! I am yet to complete this game myself, even if I’ve gone through a couple of the dungeons a few times, I always end up a little bit lost.

Naty

Naty is a great friend who writes about her blogging workflow and plenty of tech shenanigans, and she doesn’t have a lot of time for gaming nowadays. I was still curious to know her answer to this question, and after reaching out, she ended up with probably the most obscure game of them all!

Given a desert‑island scenario, I’d probably escape reality by revisiting fond childhood memories by playing a rather obscure, Japan‑only release, PlayStation 1 game (I didn’t realize it was obscure until now) called Hermie Hopperhead: Scrap Panic, released in 1995. Oh, how I love the OG grey PlayStation from back then.

Hermie is the game’s protagonist with funky, spiky red hair. The basic gist of this 2D side‑scroller is you collect stars for points and squash enemies by jumping on them. You collect “helper pets” that follow you; they hatch from eggs and are upgraded with points at the end of rounds. Pets have two modes: follow (they just trail Hermie) and release (they act independently to attack enemies; but they won’t avoid hazards, so they can all fall off cliffs if you’re not careful).

The OST is the biggest draw for me—it might feel repetitive to some (many tracks are instrumental variations on the same tune), but the slight jazz vibe is catchy and fun. I listened to it so much as a kid that the tunes still take me back to a happy place. The graphics, especially the multi-layer parallax scrolling and highly detailed sprites were exceptional I thought. Later in the game, there’s even a steampunk robot twist which is graphically appealing. I loved the aesthetics then and still do!

Another reason it’s perfect for a desert island: the game’s reputation for being overly difficult means it’ll probably take ages to beat. I don’t remember if I ever finished it as a kid… but I don’t mind games that need a slow grind, so that’s fine by me.

I literally have no words, I don’t know this game at all, but hey, now we do!

Jeremy

JP barely writes, but when he does, it’s often about software, gaming and tech. He gave another rather lenghty reply this time around, what will it be I wonder?

The answer is in the first paragraph and it’s something you already know, why am I trying to build up the suspense in the first place?

If I’m allowed one game to bring to a desert island, I’d have to pick Cyberpunk 2077. There are some games I enjoy more, but Cyberpunk has a little bit of everything I like in a game.

My favorite games do a good job of pacing out all the action with memorable narrative scenes. When a game has the right balance it’s just really difficult to put down. Cyberpunk is one of those games that I find to be really well paced, enough so that I’m usually looking forward to the next boss battle just as much as the next big narrative moment.

But there’s also a ton of variety in Cyberpunk 2077, which is the biggest reason I would pick it over other favorites like, say, something from the Half-Life series. If I have only one game to play, I know I could pretty easily get at least a few hundred more hours out of Cyberpunk between experimenting with different character builds and hunting down all the side content.

Then the cherry on top would have to be how much fun it is to just explore Cyberpunk’s world. Night City, despite some flaws, is still one of the best depictions of a sprawling futuristic city that I’ve seen in a game. It’s a lot of fun to drive around, but when you get out and just explore on foot there are lots of little world building details sprinkled around everywhere that would otherwise be really easy to miss. I love stuff like that.

So even though there are other titles that would be stronger contenders for my absolute favorite, Cyberpunk 2077 is still somewhere in my top 5 games list and is the one game I would pick to bring to a desert island.

There were a few more things said this time around, in case you wanted more reasons to try this game.

Bojidar

Certain bloggers have trouble understading what “a couple of paragraphs” means, especially for a collab post where everyone deserves time to shine. Such is the case with Bojidar, who seems to have lackluster reading comprehension overall, even if his writing is pretty alright…

Based on the theme of survival on a desert island, my thoughts immediatelly drifts to Lucky Castaway stranded with a Slot Machine, but… I realize it won’t be the most practical game to bring with me.

If I’m going for practicality, on a desert island I care about two things: meeting basic survival needs food and water, and communicating with the wider world. As Joel, in a rare skit of benevolence, stated that all hardware magically works, I would extend that to all network hardware and similar.
For communicating with the wider world, a massively multiplayer game sounds like the way to go.

Internet, does, not, work, sigh.

MMORPG sounds fun; I used to play Albion Online some years back, but I’ve been thinking of trying out Guild Wars 2 if I ever get back into MMORPGs. As long as there is a large enough playerbase, I imagine I can send messages in chat until I catch the attention of a person who can help coordinate my timely rescue.

There, is, no, escapeeee…

As for food and water… some amount of research along the lines of “food dispensing videogame arcade”, I managed to find the one and only, unique, revolutionary, visionary, SNACKADE. It’s a video game arcade which dispenses snacks whenever you collect them in-game. Sadly, from the scant information available, it seems SNACKADE only exists as a prototype and was never deployed for real—but I would count that as part of the “all hardware magically working” deal.

What in the world is this?

But all that talk of practicality makes me think of the practicality of being on a desert island in the first place. After all, the question is about a game I would rather bring with me, not a game I would rather be stranded with. And if I go to a desert island in a bid to get away from civilization… I think I would want a game which I can truly be away from civilization with. For years. Something I can invest decades in, and still find new things to discover and do; without having to resort to one-hitpoint speedruns.

And I have just a game for this:

Luanti née Minetest. A voxel game (I love those!) of infinite, procedurally-generated worlds (space to explore!) and emergent gameplay (things to learn!), with incredible moddability (infinite content for ages, bound only by my creativity!), courtesy of both its Lua support and open-source C++ codebase.
Just… in the spirit of defining the game I play, I think I would like say that I’m playing “contributor of Luanti content” so I can get Joel to throw in a free internet connection for uploading the occasional mod to ContentDB. Hey—it’s a multiplayer game, alright?

THERE IS NO INTERNET AAAAAAA.

Brent (TK)

Breathe in… and out…

Okay, so, I also asked Brent from Taming Knots—a blog about technology, Linux and videogames!—to participate on this, and he kindly provided me another very long essay—okay, maybe I am terrible at giving instructions—with a game that doesn’t need internet this time… I think.

The ever-classic “What would you bring to a desert island?” question is one I have never had an easy time answering. I am pragmatic to a fault and so if I am ever faced with this question, my mind immediately jumps to all of the surrounding questions about the practicality of such an endeavor. A “desert” island implies a small enough island as to never receive a meaningful amount of fresh water, with no trees or other natural resources to sustain oneself, yet there must be a structure of some kind, even if it is simply a television plugged into the sand in order for the thought experiment to work. My concern, then, is less about the video game itself, and more about what video game would offer the most benefit practically to me in that situation. Entertainment is important, of course, but survival is paramount. The question becomes “What game can offer me the best chance of survival?”

Interesting twist but definitely not what I asked?

Unless, of course, the starvation and slow death is a part of the entire point. With no resources and no hope of rescue, the only solace you have left is a game. The ultimate art form of distraction and time-wasting, now there to help you forget your empty stomach and cracked lips. The question then becomes “What game do I want to die with?”

Here’s another question that I did not ask…

Then, the question becomes less about the practicality of everything. You get the asker to make concessions: “yes, you have food, water and shelter,” “no there’s no hope of rescue,” “yes there are natural resources to build things out of,” “no there is no electricity other than what is needed to run the game,” on and on. The problem becomes one of context and holding something to a high pedestal. But a perfect game doesn’t exist. Nothing will be good forever. There is no Citizen Kane of anything. Even Citizen Kane isn’t Citizen Kane forever and without context. The question becomes “What is the perfect game?”

Some people just can’t help but overthink things huh.

None of these questions have an answer. Not a good one. Not a satisfying one. In a way, that’s the point. There is no world in which someone doesn’t come to regret their choice eventually. Even if they could look at all of the parallel realities and determine that, yes, this game would give them the most enjoyment out of any option. There is no better one. Eventually they will come to resent the game. Hate the game. Discard it. It’s a symbol of how you can never pick the right thing. Never pick the perfect thing. The question itself becomes torture for the soul.

Dark Cloud 2

Well, look at that, another rather obscure game! Never played it myself but I’m always up for an RPG developed by Level-5.

Not much else to add!

Alyssa

I found Alyssa’s blog during Blaugust and have been following her posts since then!

Her taste in gaming very much aligns with mine! So I decided to reach out to her and see what she had to say about this question.

This is a tough one to consider! I thought about choosing Koudelka or Resident Evil 2 Remake, two of my favorite games that I’ve spent a lot of time mastering. But upon reflecting further, I’ve decided I’d rather choose a game I haven’t yet mastered, one that still has much to offer me in terms of both gameplay and lore, and that’s Elden Ring.

I’ve completed Elden Ring’s main campaign with three characters, but there is still so much to mine from it, including the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, which I haven’t finished. If I’m going to be stuck on a desert island, I want a game that’s full of possibilities to explore. Elden Ring provides seemingly countless ways to build a character, along with interesting challenges like staying at level 1 throughout the game or defeating each region’s bosses using a different weapon. Something else I’d like to do is fully make use of all the summons, which I haven’t spent enough time getting to know. Elden Ring still has plenty of secrets to uncover within its vast and intriguing world, so it’s sure to hold my attention throughout those long desert-island days.

I have heard so much about Elden Ring in Into The Aether and from multiple people, it’s one of those games that was destined to become an all time great the moment it came out. I definitely look forward to playing it someday, it feels like the moment I start it on a whim, I’ll get completely hooked on for a couple weeks straight. And much like I’ve done with Silksong, I’ll procrastinate reaching the ending for no reason at all!

Dave

Okay, so Dave—a self proclaimed “fake gamer” documenting his journey procrastinating making his own tabletop RPG—was kind of enough to write something here, which is finally of a good length, yay!

Were I to be stuck on a desert island and had to choose one game to bring along with, the decision would be tough.

Having ADHD I tend to bounce between games depending on my mood. Currently I have roughly twenty games “In flight”. But, the one game I always come back to is The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt.

Some context. I stopped gaming in my late teens at the end of the 20th century. I did not restart until the Steam Deck came out, and the first game I played all the way through on that was The Witcher III. The story was top notch, and the open world left much to be explored.

I love that game, and will never tire of it, despite seeing many shiny objects to distract me.

I have always heard of this game, but I haven’t played it either. Given its size and the amount of story and quests on it, it’s a great pick for this situation.

Buckle up, the next one is long…

Amin

This guy is purposefully trying to troll me, as punishment, I won’t link to his blog.

My first thought when asked what game I should have on a desert island is that the primary concern is replayability. And, as luck would have it, I’m very much into roguelites. One top pick would be Astral Ascent, which has a great story, fantastic art, and lots of difficulty levels and variations, as well the new Outer Reaches DLC, which about doubles the size of the game’s world. The other game that tops my list is Noita, which I’ve gotten into recently, as it seems to be essentially endless in terms of gameplay variations, even apparently having alternate realities.

Another route would be a sandbox game, of which the archetypal example is Minecraft; my own pick, however, would be Kerbal Space Program. I haven’t played in a while, but the possibilities are endless and it’s a fantastic game to keep my intellectual side active.

That said, KSP is a little compute-hungry, which made me think of power requirements… Do we have a power outlet on this island, or is it just a “last hurrah” of gaming before the battery on the handheld or laptop or phone runs out? That very much changes the proposition.

Again, everything but the internet magically works.

Knowing that Joel has not thought this through nearly as far as me, I have to assume that power is provided, as he surely did not consider it being absent. Therefore, we can assume one power outlet on our desert island. Perhaps solar powered, with a battery backup? We found the parts to build a PC and solar system in boxes that floated to shore! How fortuitous.

Stop this at once.

Okay, but what if someone answered with a game that requires internet access? Would Joel strike that down? If not, that also presumes we have internet access. How we managed that on a deserted island, I know not, but I’ll take it. I’ll answer with some random MMO (maybe Veloren? I’ve had fun with that) and use it to call for help. If I can get anyone to believe me, in a game’s chatroom.

I already said the internet. doesn’t. work.

If I told Joel this idea, he would surely forbid it. (messages joel) Okay yeah, internet is officially forbidden.

I had told you this from the very beginning.

Since technology level is now apparently part of the deal here, I have to assume that electricity would be unrealistic, too. I’d probably just be given a handhold or laptop and whatever battery power it has left.

ELECTRICITY IS FINE.

In this case, you might think I would optimize my choice by power consumption, to maximize playing time, but I have a different tack.

My final answer: I request a deck of playing cards and a flat surface.

I have a feeling that Bojidar and Amin are very good friends.

Gabz

A bit of a last second request, but I also got Gabz to participate on this! Let’s see what happens…

I feel like I am going to cheat my way to this one, in a way, because I have two possible ones; two amazing picks.

No cheating, you’ll have to pick in the end…

Pokémon Crystal Legacy and Ghost of Tsushima. These two are by far my most-played games. 

Pokémon Crystal is a familiar dish that you keep coming back to when you need a taste of something simple, nostalgic, and satisfying. Ghost is just an amazingly beautiful-looking game. The best way I can describe it is like a playable painting or a piece of poetry.

I’ve heard great things of Ghosts of Tsushima as well, not that I have a system that can even play it like it deserves, same situation as Cyberpunk 2077…

If I had to pick just one of the two as my desert island game, yikes, I gotta go with Pokémon Crystal. Although Ghost is arguably the better game, Crystal offers more replayability as each run can be different; and it’s cozy.

Okay, I think that’s it, although I’ll be ruminating about this decision all day and argue with myself lol

Don’t worry Gabz, the interesting thing is that this makes for the second apparition of the Pokémon franchise, it is the best-selling videogame series for a reason, I guess.

Bobby

I love Bobby’s website! He often writes about his life as a teacher, but also shares a lot of his thoughts about games on his Credit Feed posts, which I try to never miss.

Anyway, he was pretty enthusiastic about the idea of getting stranded with nothing but games to survive, which is a little worrisome, but alas, here’s what he said:

Solitude. Yes please. And I get a game to play too? Sweet. A few games come to mind, but there can only be one. Should I take the game that brings comfort or the one I could git gud at with my free time? As much as I would love to play the same loop of some shmup, like Crimzon Clover World EXplosion, until I had the top score, I think I’ll take the first game that came to mind.

A short, comforting adventure. One where I could stroll through different biomes and encounter exotic fauna while listening to relaxing music. One where the protaganist and I share the same predicament: that wonderful feeling of isolation… Super Metroid is my desert island game.

Would you look at that, the first (and only? maybe?) Metroidvania that made it to the list! And it is the epitome of the genre that came out back in the SNES days!

That is one absolutely goated choice, and I completely approve of it.

Sotolf

This Sotolf guy can be quite a pain sometimes, but he’s a good fellow, I like to think, and I love his blog! Rather odd and grumpy sometimes but he does his best.

But well, as I say, a pain, who keeps trying to get away with more than one game and stuff.

So, I’ll try to keep to the premise of the question, and not just say a PC, because there is so much other things that i can do on the PC, and just pretend that the game is all that I get. So here we go:

The peripherals. don’t. matter. You can have a PC with just one game installed on it…

When faced with a question like this it’s so easy for me to just say my favourite game, Tetris, but I would think the stay would be rather long, and as much as I love Tetris it’s not really something that would hold for a long time.

You never know, but I agree to be honest, I would prefer to go with Lumines myself.

I’m leaning more towards a big RPG like Persona 5, which also has enough RNG stuff that it will be playable for a while, since I think I would be alone on the island, the social aspects of the games would also probably be a salve on the soul.

Now if I do have access to books to keep myself sane as well my answer would probably be different, and I would go for Siralim: Ultimate there is a bit of a recency bias there since it’s a game that I’m currently playing. It has a lot of procedural generation, and just a ton of fun stuff to do, and just fun to experiment with different monster teams, occupations, interact with the different systems, it’s just a really fun game to tinker with, and something that hopefully would keep me occupied until rescue arrives :)

So there you go, one AAA game and an indie, probably leaning towards the latter personally.

Umm, well, I didn’t mention books in any capacity so I guess I am kinda confused…

I’ll say you picked Siralim Ultimate and call it a day. No double picks! I haven’t heard of that one that much so, it’s a very interesting choice!

FlamedFury

Okay so, there was some miscommunication on my part once again but I will let this one slide…

If I was stranded on a desert island and had to take one game with me that would just magically work it would be World Of Warcraft (lol). While I love video games, and the idea of playing and finishing video games, I’m just not a gamer like that. I would describe my self as a WoW player who also likes video games on the side. After playing WoW for almost 20 years - it’s just so natural to me and doesn’t take any mental power for me to pick up and carry on where I last left off - which I value at this point in my life.

To be fair my WoW cycle these days is: New expansion > level up > Clear new raid > Complete new Mythic+ season > break until next patch.

I always intend to play other games in between but life happens, lol

Obviously, fLaMEd’s—who literally writes about every possible interest and has way too many pages on his blog—made a choice that required internet, however, I did fail to mention the caveat to him on a timely manner which definitely wasn’t the case in previous answers. I felt a little guilty because of this, but in the end he gave me another answer!

EDIT: So just after I passed this back to Joel he informed me that I can’t have internet - lame! And while it all remains true my second game would be Pokemon FireRed on my Miyoo Mini. I imagine if I was on a desert island with not much else to do except make sure I have food, water, and shelter I’d finally finish my play through ;)

So yeah, Pokémon, is definitely a winner, with three people going for those games, gotta respect that!

And my choice is…

If you know me, you probably think you already know my answer, it might seem clear as day given my username, of all things. It makes a lot of sense, I kind of want to choose it because it’s so easy and, and perfectly valid, generally speaking…

But, I don’t think I would choose Chrono Trigger.

As much as I love it, and as much as I’d like to get all the endings and play in New Game+ and know all of its secrets, I just don’t think it’s a game long enough to hold me for an undetermined period of time.

It would have to be something longer, and something I’m not very familiar with, but with gameplay that I know will be enjoyable for me. Something I can replay multiple times with harder difficulties as well.

I thought about some games frome the Monster Hunter series. I have 400+ hours in Freedom Unite, so maybe something like Generations Ultimate could be a nice change of pace that sticks with the traditional combat I prefer, while featuring enough modern quality of life changes, or I could go with Rise+Sunbreak which I love, even if it’s too easy in the low rank.

But it can’t be something that holds my attention with pure gameplay mechanics, I need a story, and more openness, maybe something like Breath of the Wild, with its DLC and all the time to spare, could offer me hundreds of hour of exploration and gameplay. But the theme of the story and the decay of its world may hit a little too close to home given the situation, which would be the same reason Minecraft is out of the question too.

Besides, I need a story that can actually rival with Chrono Trigger, with characters I am invested in, emotional stories, plot twists and subverted expectations, something that the silent and muted vibes of BOTW doesn’t quite provide.

At the same time I need to be able to stop and focus on my survival at any needed point, and to be able to jump back in and out without losing the thread of what’s going on, as gaming is not all I would have to do in an island if I want to live.

So, yes, to me, the one game that hits the mark, would have to be:

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition.

Long, full of story, full of great gameplay, exploration, collectibles, easy to jump in and out of, simply perfect for something like this, I think. 😁

Wrapping up

There were a couple of other people I reached out to, but they didn’t have time, and even though I pushed the deadline like two weeks due to my own procrastination, I guess some people procrastinate even more than me.

In any case, if I reached out to you and you want to provide me with your response, feel free! I’ll update this post as soon as possible.

Also, if you were too lazy to read all of that, here’s the list of games!

• Jana - Cyberpunk 2077
• Cory - SaGa Frontier
• Daniel - Pokémon Unknown
• Gina - Hogwarts Legacy
• Ariadne - Neverwinter Nights
• OrbitalMartian - FlightGear
• Wouter - The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening
• Naty - Hermie Hopperhead: Scrap Panic
• Jeremy - Cyberpunk 2077
• Bojidar- Luanti
• Brent (TK) - Dark Cloud 2
• Alyssa - Elden Ring
• Dave - The Witcher III: Wild Hunt
• Amin - A deck of cards
• Gabz - Pokémon Crystal Legacy
• Bobby - Super Metroid
• Sotolf - Siralim Ultimate
• FlamedFury - Pokémon FireRed
• Me - Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition

And once again, if you make your own post with this theme, feel free to share me the link and I’ll add it here anyway!

This was quite the overwhelming endeavor, I am really thankful if you made it to the end and read all the commentary and answers given throughout the whole thing!

I hope you have a wonderful day! And thanks to all of those who decided to participate and provide me with answers, except for you Amin, you are truly evil…

Until later!

I was inspired by many people, such as Jeremy who was the one who gave me the final push, Jedda who was at it since earlier, or Ariadne, who was among the first I saw!

There’s also Thomas, TK, Tracy (woah that’s three T’s!), Cassie, Sylvia, Sam (wooah that’s CSS!?), and many, many more!

Since the day I started, I’ve asked myself how worth it is it to actually write down stuff like this, the random things that happen day after day, that are just a part of everyone’s life.

I have great friends and fellow bloggers who kind of don’t see the point of it, some people want to portray a certain character to their websites, which is perfectly understandable to me. But hey, my website is mostly about my life, not really just gaming or technology or reviews, if I feel like writing it, I’ll probably end up sharing it here, so weeknotes felt right to me.

Somehow, some people even said I’m part of why they decided to start doing their own weekly notes, a huge honor for me, I must say.

I am always looking forward to see what people are up to week after week sharing their story, slices of a life that are as familiar as they are unrelatable, as fascinating as they are stressful, and as fun as they are a chore. It’s life after all!

This act of documenting our day, each project, idea, event or shenanigan, is just so interesting to me, both to write myself, and to read up from others. My feed reader is almost like a weekly newsletter of everyone’s updates and thoughts, the same topic, and yet different all the time.

Of course, while some people I admire have lost motivation or gotten busy. Some others have continued to be fascinated by the everyday. In the end, not everyone has the time or the energy to commit on a regular basis, priorities are set somewhere else, and that agency is a beautiful thing too.

I will continue to write these for another year, and more, I hope! And I look forward to all of yours as well, to inspire new ones and uncover old ones, because those small parts of life are the ones that make us realize we are all just people living under the same sun, on this pot of land we call earth.

Right now, especially because of Blaugust, my feeds are being bombarded by new blogposts everyday, this means that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take some measures and ensure my head doesn’t get overwhelmed by all the words being written and published online for me to read.

I’ve done one or two things to organize my feeds, and I’ve seen other people like Matt judging blogposts by their titles and skipping through the rest.

In my case, it’s not a matter of leaving things as unread, I don’t really care about that at all. Actually, right now there are 3,612 unread articles in my FreshRSS instance, feel free to suffer on my behalf :)

However, I worry about sticking to the same blogs and not growing them further. This is a problem not many have, as I know of others who want to trim down their selection further more—looking at you Amin. Of course, I will probably change my mind in two days, but for now, I want to try to read blogposts from the people I read a bit less, or that may even be completely new (to me).

I constantly mention people on this website that I read all the time, you can usually find them on my blogroll as well. I already know I’ll enjoy whatever Sylvia, RL Dane, Naty or Jakov come up with. And if you are a blogger who reads me constantly and interacts with me, you already know I’m talking about you too—I’m purposefully avoiding to highlight the ones I link all the time ;)

So, at least for a little while, I’m going to willfully skip through my usual reads and try to give a chance to the people I haven’t read as much, and that are totally new to me.

For the sake of it, here are links to some recent additions to my feeds. Some of them are doing Blaugust, but not necessarily, I have checked some of their posts and from what I’ve read, I think I’ll like them.

• Syl’s Blog - I already shared a post from here on my weeknotes, lots of gaming related posts which I’m 100% here for, and some others about music and personal thoughts.
• Unfiltered Thoughts - The title alone lets you know what this is about. Short, personal thoughts, about tech, life, and blogging itself.
• The Tangent Space - More weeknotes to enjoy! With some gaming notes on them, can’t complain at all.
• LMNT - This one is from an artist and it shows, there’s wallpapers, and a lot of other things related to designing icons, logos and websites!
• Thread Pool - I saw this blog on Mastodon a while back and I check it here and there, it’s about technology, coding and just life in general!

Of course, if you know of any other bloggers out there who you think I have not seen and that I may enjoy, feel free to send me a link!

The title should be clear enough, you will be able to hear my wonderful English pronunciation for the first time ever, unless I’ve sent you a voice message sometime ago on Signal or you were one of the 6 or 7 people around that one time I joined someone playing Monster Hunter Freedom Unite on Twitch via a Discord call.

I participated in episode 13 of The Worst Community Report podcast (here’s the RSS feed) and I kind of dread to link it here. Still, I have to admit that I expect some feedback out of it.

For some context. The Worst Community Report is a variety podcast hosted by members of the community on Discord of TWG (The Worst Garbage), which is kind of like a podcast network, mostly just in name and values, there are no ad deals or hosting services and such. Into The Aether, my most listened podcast show, is part of such a place.

Because of this, a fair amount of episodes can lack some context or talk about internal shenanigans that a 3rd party would be aware of unless they spend time in the server like I do. Overall, it has that “internet friends talking about random stuff” feel going for it, which I enjoy.

Honestly, I was super nervous all the time, and I haven’t actually listened to it since the recording, I am so afraid of hearing my voice, I don’t know if my small laughter showing up sometimes when others talked was left in, or that time I broke down midway trying to process what I was even saying lol. It felt like eternity to me, but maybe it wasn’t that bad. Any reassuring words or honest feedback is welcome. 😅

This episode was centered on bloggers, and a few of the TWG Discord members participated. Including:

• Brent, the main host, who writes about Linux, FOSS and weeknotes. I’ve exchanged emails with him, leading to some cool conversations across a couple months now! I still don’t reply back to the latest one oof.
• Cassie, who writes plenty stuff, from weeknotes, to blogging, books, technology and life in general. Also her website design is superb, absolutely lovely.
• Cameron Swingle, who mostly sticks to game reviews, all of which are about super niche titles. I took a look at the Top 25 Games series, and only recognized like 8 of them, crazy stuff.
• and me.

We talked about how we got started, our blogging setups, and stuff like that, so if you want to, give it a listen! Even if you don’t like my voice, maybe the topic will be enough to keep you interested.

This is it for now, have a good one!

Nowadays I still keep the last two, with a simple redirect, but I have been exploring around looking for websites linking to me and sending emails for them requesting to update my web address and so.

Because of this process, I’ve encountered websites that have added me to their blogrolls or linked me in some way, and I thought it’d be fun to share some of those. While we are at it, I have linked to some other sites that I’m a part of, from clubs, webrings, viral challenges, independent search engines and some other mentions I found.

I think I want to create a /slashpage for this, but I am not too sure about what to call it, maybe something along the lines of /memberships or /mentions? let me know what you think!

Update: I can’t believe I forgot this since I literally read Wouter’s post recently, but he did an /impact featuring the sites that have mentioned him as well, although he listed them by country, and made a heat map too. Go check it out!

Alas, here is an incomplete compilation of links that link me back!

Blogrolls

Sorry that I didn’t add a description for this section, there are just, quite a bit of them so, I got lazy. Thinking about it, is this basically a reverse blogroll? 🤯

• Adrian Perales
• BASIC
• Benja TK
• Benjamin Hollon
• Benji
• Bobby’s Blog
• Brain Baking
• Burgeon Lab
• Cool as Heck
• Dom Corriveau
• FlamedFury
• Garrit Franke
• Hund
• Jan-Lukas Else
• Lazybear
• Marisabel
• Matt’s Blog
• Moddedbear
• Noisy Deadlines
• Scientiac
• Shellsharks
• Simbly Scribbles
• TK’s Web Quest
• The Art of Not Asking Why
• Tom Brandis

Webrings

These are fun, webrings are a series of websites that link to each other, until they form a ring! (check the footer on this site). Say hi to my neighbors.

• Polyring Club: A ring for polymaths, and almost everyone.
• Fediring: Are you in the fediverse? You can be here too.
• Geekring: I think you know the gist of this one already.
• Static Quest: If your website is static html, hand-made or generated, welcome!
• IndieWeb Webring: If you belong to the IndieWeb, you belong here!

Directories

I think there are plenty of these out there, but I haven’t really looked for more.

• Blogroll.org: A human curated blogroll directory.
• Bukmark Club: If you link to other sites in your own, you show up here!
• Blogroll.club: Another human curated blogroll directory!
• Indieseek.xyz: A human edited Indieweb directory.

Clubs

These are kind of like webrings but there’s no ring, just a site listing sites that fit a certain critera, just for fun.

• 512Kb Club: For very light websites.
• 1MB Club: For kinda light websites.
• Dark Theme Club: For websites with dark themes.
• Cookie Zero: For urls without cookies!

Challenges

I’ve participated in a couple of different challenges or online events where I got listed, it’s neat.

• 100 Days To Offload: Just write 100 posts in a day and you’re good. I did it 4 times.
• CSS Naked Day 2024: Get rid of that stylesheet for once.
• WeblogPoMo2024: A month long blogging challege started by Anne Sturdivant.
• Blaugust 2025: A month long blogging challenge started by Belghast
• Blog Question Replies: A list of participants of blog question challenges.
• App Defaults: People who have listed their app defaults.

Search engines

I mean, I obviously show up in search engines, but a couple of the independent ones have added me to their index too, and I’m happy to shout them out regardless.

• Clew: The search engine being developed by Amin.
• Kagi’s Small Web: A random website is opened with that link, sometimes mine shows up!
• Marginalia Search: A pretty cool search engine.
• Wiby.me: A search engine like the early internet days.

Some mentions

I am mentioned in quite a few posts sometimes, and get some responses as well. Looking for each specific one would be a bit chaotic, but here are some easy ones :D

• I was the first guest to appear in Lazybear’s Over/Under series
• And the second guest to show up in Jakov’s People and Websites
• Marisabel recommended me in the 100th People & Blogs
• I regularly appear on Adamdesk’s Little Bits
• And in Shellshark’s Scrolls!
• From time to time I’ll appear in Jedda’s Postroll
• I was a pen pal with Kev

I have been following Hollie for a while, since her small good things website has been such a joy to read whenever it popped up in my feeds.

At some point she rebuilt her site from scratch using HTML-only. She wasn’t a programmer and didn’t understand static site generators, so there were problems. The result of this was that all her older posts were now gone! And her new RSS feed with only a few posts showed no article content either.

I remember asking her about it, and she was struggling to keep the RSS feed updated¹ manually, so it was pretty bare bones to reduce maintenance. She was planning to bring back her archive at some point though, which made me happy.

A couple days ago, she moved to Eleventy, and I couldn’t be happier! She got a gist of how an SSG works, and she did so with the help of her friends, who have been there for support and questions she might have.

So, in the end, I’ve decided I can do this. And that it’s okay to ask friends for the absolutely inevitable help I’ll need to build/modify something using code I don’t know how to read.

People like that are a wonderful thing, so I too wanted to say thanks, to all of those who have helped me with my site in one way or another. From letting me know of any bugs, to writing guides that I’ve followed in the past, to just having cool website designs that I can copy to my own inspire me!

Honestly, there’s a lot of people and tutorials I’ve followed over the years, to change so many things in my site and improving little by little, so a big thanks to:

• Everyone who lets me know when a link I shared isn’t working! Oops!
• All the websites and bloggers I’ve referenced on previous posts about messing around with my website
• Amin, the light theme friend who notices when my CSS gets borked. And has provided plenty of other feedback too.
• Jedda helped me notice that the favicon I got is very very blurry on iOS somehow. Still working on it!
• Dusan who has written a couple of scripts to help me archive my comments section, in case I ever remove it or Mastodon goes away. I stole his avatar section too.
• Chris Wiegman because quite a bit of my blog design was initially inspired by his.
• Kev who wrote the guide and started the challenge that got me into writing at all!

There is a lot of other people who have reached out multiple times, when my RSS feeds breaks, when some image or text goes out of bounds, or when I have a typo somewhere. And a lot of others who have inspired me to improve, to write about something and to keep going on this little blogging thing I got going on.

And of course, there are some who have been kind enough to even donate to me from time to time, that’s just wild!

Well, anyway, thanks y’all, and congrats Hollie for taking the step to try a static site generator!

I didn’t really expect I would be able to do this so quickly, but I guess that all the changes going on in my life have made this task easier.

Hyde keeps blaming weeknotes—he’s just jealous that I finally managed to beat him—and I guess it kinda makes sense. Except that I’ve honestly poured much more words into them than regular blog posts would have in the past. If I didn’t write weeknotes, I would have even more time to type even two blog posts for each! One could say that writing weeknotes handicapped my performance. 😉

Alas, I have divided the amount of posts for each of those categories that “write themselves” or that were a given, I guess:

• 28 weeknotes
• 7 monthly summaries
• 5 videogame reviews
• 5 book reviews
• 5 blog question challenges
• 3 responses

That makes for 50 of my posts being somewhat “automatic”, something I tasked myself with writing, or where I followed a template or answered a set of questions, instead of doing something more “organic”, I guess.

But I also really think I’ve done some of my most inspired, out of nowhere, thoughtful posts in a while. With a few replies and links to other people’s blogposts, and some relatively original, interesting ideas and experiences that I decided to share.

Month by month, weeknotes and reviews were commonplace, sometimes even one after another, when a week didn’t give me a lot of time to write something different, and the commitment with my weeknotes took over instead.

January is probably the “weakest” when it comes to “original” content. However, I think that all of those recaps were pretty fun, and seeing how my weeknotes started wasn’t too bad either, I only wrote about having a lot to write about, without a lot of more thought-out stuff.

February was also a bit weak, with not a lot separating each weeknote, other than a quick post about gaming on my laptop and storage management. A book review, a game review and the usual.

March was actually much busier! I wrote about going outside, some random skills you should learn, and even confessed my sins as a FOSS enthusiast. Besides those rambles, I wrote some memories, such as how I got my first console or how Google used to be kinda cool.

I unsubscribed from Spotify and went on a deep dive sharing how I am a fake fan of many things. It was quite a fruitful month, I’d like to mention—even if it was one of the “automatic” ones—that I really liked the effort I put into my delayed anime recap for 2024.

April remained strong, with one of the most boosted and replied to blog posts in a while: Blogging Expectations. I shared my experience switching to Arch, and what’s on my phone storage, updating my default apps list as well. One of my favorites though has to be my Casio AE-1200 review, if only because of the title for it!

In May, I started one of my favorite series, which is currently on hiatus: Videogame Franchises where I wrote about some of the game series I’ve followed and played throughout my life! There are still some heavy-hitters I need to write about, one of these days.

I also wrote what could be my favorite post of this year’s challenge: The constant need for a source of entertainment which also had a lot of visibility on the fediverse, and some great replies via email too, I loved all the engagement it got, and I wrote about that too!. I also shared my struggles organizing my feeds and about the music that plays in my head.

When June arrived, It was filled with game and book reviews! And I wrote another ramble about how I used to take notes, a memory/response about how time flies, and another favorite of mine, a ramble about why not having to work should be the goal, but isn’t because the world is a mess.

Gotta point out I also did a readership survey and wrote my review of an incredible game, 1000xRESIST, which you should play.

In July, I finally switched things up a bit, and now that I am giving a title to my weeknotes, it somehow makes it feel more like a blog post instead of a template! Still, I have shared a few posts, such as how Casio’s website failed me, an updated What’s on my Phone and another post that got a few responses, about my struggles with consumerism.

I don’t plan to slow down my pace for the rest of the year, but I don’t think I’ll do another 100 posts before it ends, so, if I participate it’ll be at the start of 2026, if all goes well.

Thanks for reading my website! I really enjoyed the engagement and the conversations around many of my posts, I’ve discovered quite a lot of other bloggers and members of the small web, and made quite a few new connections and friendships.

Now I only need to find what hashtag to use for the rest of my blogposts this year!

This is day 100 of #100DaysToOffload

I want to try expanding a little more on things. So instead of a couple lines, you can consider each more like short blogposts inside a bigger blogpost.

Some feedback I got from my survey—which you can still answer if you want!—is that some of you simply skip weeknotes, for one reason or another. Giving the post a proper title may be a good way to know at a glance if you may actually care about what it will be about!

Some weeks are obviously more boring than others, but maybe having to come up with a title will also make me come up with better, more interesting topics to bring up here!

JulyReply & SmallWebJuly

I saw a couple of great challenges popping up for July, and I just wanted to let y’all know I am trying to participate on this! Alongside some great people too.

JulyReply was started by Robert Birming, I already have some good blog posts bookmarked that I’d love to reply to here, not much for this one.

The second one, SmallWebJuly is seemingly easier, and yet, challenging. I feel like I already do a lot to participate exclusively in the small web, the most time I spent outside of it is on Discord, but the community I interact with is nothing but friendly and positive, which means I don’t really want to leave it, despite the many, many caveats with the platform.

I think this is not only about being a part of the small web, but making the web a smaller part of myself. Life goes on in the real world too, and being more present is something I keep trying to achieve day after day.

These are the rules I’ll personally adopt.

• Less than 30 hours of YouTube (combined) - I try to stop using YouTube as much as possible, I keep saying that over and over, but I think progress is being made; only 25 hours were spent on it last month via Tubular. Of course, it’s still a lot, but it is less than an hour per day!
• Minimal time on big social media - Yes, I have some accounts in Meta platforms, I’m sorry. The exception is WhatsApp, I still need to use that constantly. Reddit only for search queries, too.
• Go to the gym again - I took June off pretty much, and last week too. I want to go back and get into a routine again, it is always something that makes me feel good in the end, but starting is a pain, and the time, maybe I’ll just excercise at home? But I already paid the year, so I’ll try to commit.
• Trying to minimize phone screen time (hard mode) - This one is the most difficult one, but I will try. I’ll probably deviate to Nintendo Switch, but more reading wouldn’t hurt either.
• Actually clean up my bedroom (ultrahard mode) - It keeps being a mess no matter what. I’m just lazy and end up misplacing things.

New phone who dis?

I’ll probably write a bit more about this later, but yeah, I got a new phone, again. And it was for the exact same problem as before: the power button has ghost button presses, and bootloops the device at random.

I already had the itch to switch anyway, because I just didn’t feel fully happy running the horrible HyperOS skin on my Xiaomi device. It wasn’t too bad, but it just had a hiccup here and there that I wasn’t a fan of.

The phone I bought? The Nothing Phone 3(a), a midrange device featuring the second cleanest stock firmware available: NothingOS, only behind Google Pixel phones. The experience has been remarkable for me, the extra features are quite nice and thoughtful. The only annoyance is the addition of an AI button. But I’ve managed to remap some functionality into it using Key Mapper and now serves as a camera button. Now only its positioning is a bit annoying, but not a big deal.

Getting rid of old stuff

I bought a new desk months ago, but I have not moved the old one from my bedroom, until this week! I am giving it away to a family friend, since their daughter is starting school soon, and she needs a desk to do her homework on.

At the same time, I have a desktop computer I haven’t touched in ages, for some reason. This is the device I used late in my my high school years, and during university as well. I even made heavy use of it during the covid pandemic, since that’s where I first started playing around with Linux and Godot back then.

Nowadays, I mostly stick to my laptop, I just don’t have a use for the power it provides, and it’s old anyway, it’s not like it’s that much more powerful or needed.

I intended to use it as a server, but realistically, I won’t get around to it, and resurrecting my Raspberry Pi 4 would be better anyway, for my usecase.

So, goodbye desk, and computer too, soon enough.

Watching F1 (I don’t know what’s F1)

My sister loves Formula 1, she got into it quite a bit, and some friends from church invited us to watch it, so I went along.

Honestly, I don’t follow this that much. Sometimes a race will be on TV because my sister put it on, and I’ll watch along and get some excitement out of it, I only know Checo Perez from RedBull because he is Mexican and everyone loves him, but now he’s not racing anymore and yeah I know some other names but it’s not something I really follow.

I didn’t even know this movie existed until I saw the first few minutes of Apple’s event (the same one where they announced the new Liquid Glass interface) and thought “my sister is going to want to watch this, won’t she?”

Behold, it happened, so we went to the mall and watched it.

The movie wasn’t too bad! I rather enjoyed it. At no point in time did I think “they used CGI for this” at all, the races felt grounded and were a joy to watch. The story itself was kinda interesting too, but it felt a bit dry to me, and I always had that feeling of Apple wanting everything to look as nice as possible everytime.

Maybe it’s just good cinematography, but I couldn’t shake that feeling away. For example, mild spoilers incoming: There’s a scene in Las Vegas where they play poker, and instead of using poker chips, they use transparent glass beads to bet. Like, what? Only Apple would ask for something like that. 🤣

Of course, everytime a real driver showed up, my sister (and most of the theater) went crazy, Checo Perez, Carlos Sainz, Lewis Hamilton and many others had some cameos here and there.

Overall, not a bad watch, I’d say.

I also watched one more episode of Death Note, by the way!

Returning to gaming

In preparation for my Top 25 Videogames of All Time, I decided to return to some of the old favorites of mine, for now, that was Hades and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Hades is one I just play sporadically, last time I played multiple days in a row was in March this year, before that it was December, 2024, and before that, August of the same year. So, it’s not a game I return to commonly. Still, during my latest streak from July 3 to today, I’ve managed to defeat the last boss two times in a row! I’ve managed to progress more in the story, at last. It’s been great, and I’ve tried some new cool strategies. I’m still sticking to the bow as my main weapon, but it’s wild how varied it can feel depending on the boons I get during a run.

Of course, the main dish ended up being The Legend of Zelda Breath of The Wild.

Last time I played it was in June, 2024. According to my last autosave in the game. I don’t think I did a lot though, since last time I mentioned it on a blogpost, was in February, 2024. More than a year ago, either way.

After failing again at one of the boss fights—Thunderblight Ganon is a nightmare—I decided to head elsewhere, and to adopt a more relaxed gameplay style known as just walking around until something catches my fancy.

This way, I stumbled upon a foggy forest, and discovered one of the coolest zones in the game. I have been playing around and finding secrets here and there. I am still not a fan of the breakable equipment, but honestly the wonder, exploration and freedom of this game is above and beyond what other games can only grasp. Even after 50 hours of gameplay, this masterpiece still manages to hook me. I’ve completed some of the shrines I’ve found in the forest, but I still need to discover a couple others, still hidden somewhere in the woods.

Hollow Knight hasn’t stayed behind! I played 5 hours in a day, since I asked for a day off—more on that down below. I mostly focused on grinding for Geo, upgrading some charms, and defeating one of the DLC boss fights, practicing to defeat Grimm, from The Grimm Troupe. This was a fantastic challenge, and I to see how I went from a complete noob, to actually demolishing without breaking a sweat, was fantastic. It really felt like learning a dance given the patterns and design of the fight. I am looking forward to facing it again. I still have a long way to go to beat the Trial of the Fools though.

In other news, I also played Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Smash Bros Ultimate.

A graduation in the family

I asked for a day off last Wednesday, because I wanted to go to my sister’s graduation! She is done with high school and will study University in another state hours away from home. I’ll be an only child once again!

After the event, some flowers and goodbyes, it was BBQ time! We tagged along a few other families with students who graduated as well, and had some great, unhealthy amount of meat!

I also played a lot of Hollow Knight there. A friend had their Switch too, and I saw him playing Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus, a game he borrowed from me and finally got around to it, it loooks fun! I look forward to trying it out some day.

Fake Casios strikes once again

I know I should stop trusting cheap prices from online sellers, based on past experiences but I couldn’t help it. I was meaning to buy a digital watch for my sister due to her graduation, and another one for my dad, since his birthday is coming soon.

So I got them, but they arrived and both of them were in a different box than usual, both boxes had the exact same barcode on them even though the watch models were different, and the displays looked both a bit darker than they should. The buttons were flimsy and the metal strap even more so. I concluded they were fake, and now I have to refund both of them.

Thankfully, it is super easy to do so, and I’ll ship them back later today. I decided to buy new ones from the official Casio website, and I went for slightly more premium variants too, and added another watch for myself while we were at it. I had a 20% off coupon that still worked because of my birthday last month, and I made good use of it! The Casio A168, L700 and A130 are on the way!

Not a lot of reading

I continued with Nemesis Games for a few more chapters, but I didn’t have enough time to read, or I replaced reading with gaming for the most part. Still enjoying the story though, Amos is quickly becoming the true protagonist in this adventure!

Also fully catched up with DanDaDan, which continues to be a pretty crazy mess, and one chapter of Hunter x Hunter where we are seeing the origin story of one of the main antagonist groups in the manga, it’s much more wholesome than I thought, and I love the added complexity to their dynamic.

Around the web

What, am I changing my “Week Links” to a new title too? Well, YES!

Blog posts

• Where Hope Takes Light - With a title like that, do you really need me to explain? Just go and give this small post a read. I saw it mentioned on a snippet by Marisabel
• My Weird Habits - Normal people are the weird ones, or that’s what I like to think!
• The July experiment: week one - a phone detox challenge thing, honestly, the fact Manu uses his phone less than 2 hours a day consistently without breaking a sweat is insane to me. It’s 2 pm as I write this (I’ll publish it until the night) and I already went past 5 hours of screen time.
• Social Dissociation - sometimes we are so unique and different, than regular people seem alien to us. Might as well mention some of my old posts about being a cultural outsider and struggling to explain my hobbies.
• How To Bully Your Friends Into Using Signal - I don’t know if I would actually be able to pull this off, but hey, give it a go and tell me how it went.
• my personal canon - I stumbled upon this blogpost and I think it’s a pretty interesting idea! So I thought I may participate in the future, it may even count as one of my JulyReplies!

Videos

• Check out my OLED Nintendo Switch Lite - A 3rd party screen for the Switch lite that is probably better than the original, but is it 100+ bucks + taxes better than the original?
• My Dad’s still beating Dark Souls as his first videogame - This man doesn’t cease to amaze me. Being on your 60s and making progress in one of the hardest games of modern times, crazy.
• The Windows 7 Smartphone - I hadn’t seen a video by Michael MJD in a while, this was a joy to watch! What a funny little device, I hope he installs Linux on it.

Final thoughts

Hey, it’s over! What did you think of this format? I thought it was fun, but it also happens to have been a pretty busy week, I wonder how it will fare when things are less eventful.

I also got a haircut, and other things like that, no card games this time around, sad times.

This is day 93 of #100DaysToOffload

Yeah, I want to know everything about you…

So, please, answer my survey!

If you want, you can just send your answers by contacting me elsewhere

• How old are you?
• What’s your gender?
• What’s your country?
• Have you interacted with me before? (socials, chat, etc)
• How do you interact with my blog? (rss, website, other)
• How long have you been reading me? (years, months?)
• How did you find my website (other sites? looking something up?)
• Do you have a blog? (please share it!)
• How many websites do you follow regularly?
• Why do you read my website? (be as detailed as you want!)
• What posts of mine do you like the most? (link them or something :P)
• What other blogs do you like? (link link link!)
• Any feedback, tips or requests? (be kind pls say)
• Anything else? (wanna show me something cool?)

I am looking forward to this. I don’t really know the actual reach I have, to be honest! Even if this was sitting on your RSS reader for a while or whatever, feel free to answer anytime!

Also, I may or may not make an updated blogpost sharing some of the general stats and results I get from this, so just keep that in mind in case it concerns you.

Thank you so much for reading me!

This is day 90 of #100DaysToOffload

I am no stranger to answering posts publicly instead than through private means, but I don’t think that’s the solution here, since some of those emails and chats have been less general and more personal.

What is the solution then? Of course, to write about the problem at hand!

This is it, I am definitely writing something right now, in this very moment, I’m typing, word by word, letter by letter, about this problem I have, where I’m spending way too much time writing but not blog posts, you see, but now this is a blog post, technically speaking, so, I did the thing!

Problem solved, I have achieved to write a blog post for everyone to enjoy, since this is exactly the kind of quality writing people expect to show up on their RSS feeds, am I right? I also just want to write some more short stuff anyway, so this fits the bill perfectly fine too.

But hey, I can also keep going, keep blogging about blogging like pretty much everyone does!

…

In case you are wondering, I have been replying to most emails from my work computer. I type my reply on Notepad++ and once I’m done I transfer the text file to my phone. I would like to say I had a fancy method to tranfer the text from my locked down work laptop to my phone from the get go, but it was a bit meh at first.

I could not log-in to my proper email domain, but gmail still worked, so, at first I decided to write them there, let it save as a draft, check on my phone and copy paste to a proper reply email. After some extra edits, I hit send and called it a day.

Obviously, passing every email I wrote through Google first was not great, I didn’t like it, especially those that were supposed to be encrypted…

Don’t worry, I didn’t send many this way, besides, some of the recipients use Gmail accounts anyway.

For some reason I forgot that stuff like hastebin exists, but as soon as I remembered it, I went that route instead, still not ideal but well, it is what it is.

How would you transfer a private conversation in this situation? I am not quite sure about what would be the best way. Installing encryption tools is a no-go here, I thought about just using a QR code generator from the text, but that has a limit, and I couldn’t find a website that would turn the text into the QR, just a link to a not so private pastebin.

Whatever the case, I kinda think that going back to gmail might be the best move? it may be hard for people to stumble into one of those earlier hastebins, but not impossible…

Oh wait! I think I can password-lock them, right? I think there are some services that allow that, or maybe upload the text file to something like send, you know, that might be the actual best move!

Or maybe I should stop writing personal emails at work. That’s one area where messaging apps kind of win! But I like my emails…

This is day 68 of #100DaysToOffload

Some of them were related to my feed organization struggles, some of them are about my thoughts on constantly seeking entertaining, a few others, old friends, and people I’ve emailed before, all of them were really nice to read. ^^

This was a nice way to remember that there’s people who read me, and it has encouraged me to keep on writing for those who have found me worthy. It’s nice to know that it’s not just bots crawling around my archives, but real human beings surfing the web and seeking to interact and communicate with each other.

I know I didn’t ask for your permission, but I am giving a shout-out to y’all anyway. Thanks for reaching out via email, the conversations have been great!

• Raul
• Anita
• TK
• Thomas Rigby
• Amin
• Basic
• Nikki

If you reached out and I didn’t mention you, I am sorry, please let me know!

Knowing that I’ve also inspired some people to create websites, and to participate in challenges and respond to my posts with their own articles, brings me joy! I’ve tried to read what I can, and to send emails back as well.

This is what the web is all about.

This is day 66 of #100DaysToOffload

There are those for news, comics and project updates, as well as one for Personal Websites.

Later on, I also created a category for all the websites doing #100DaysToOffload, like me.

This has been the case for 3 years.

What has not been the case for 3 years, is the quantity! The amount of blog posts I follow has grown by a lot. I am susbcribed to 250 websites, more or less, and I constantly adding more to the mix. There really are a lot of feeds to follow.

Obviously, a couple of categories is not really sustainable anymore. Not everyone posts at the same rate, and sadly, I don’t have the time to read every single thing every single person I follow writes.

There’s also the problem of some bloggers writing with more frequency than others, with different levels of relevance as well.

Ruben Schade posts a lot of stuff at all times, which means he’ll show up much more regularly than Flamed who doesn’t post that often.

There’s also HexDSL or Hollie who share micro-thoughts or drawings more than regular posts, which means that they have a lot of entries on their feeds, and even if they’re quick to read, they take more screen space than I’d like.

And of course, there are those bloggers that will take ages before they publish something, like Hund or Analog Office, sometimes they share some absolute bangers, sometimes it’s a simple post catching up, letting us know they’re still around. Whatever the case, I don’t want to miss out!

Chatting with Amin, he told me he has some categories based on how much he values the posts to read them later, be it weeks, or just a few days. He has Gold, Silver and Bronze!

He told me I am in the Silver category, so from now on my current goal is to achieve Gold status some day—the odds are against me though, because he has very high standards. 🥲

Anyway, I don’t think three categories is enough for the volume of blog posts I get every week. I could trim down the feeds, let go of some of them that I don’t follow that much. But that’s too easy.

I’ve created a few categories that I’ll try to improve over time, right now it’s something like this:

• Blogging Friends: for people I interact with often, regardless of how often they post.
• Sporadic Bloggers: for those that really take a while to post stuff, I moved a couple friends here to not miss out on them.
• 100DaysToOffload: People who are doing, or have completed the challenge already.
• Blogs in Spanish: I follow so few people writing in Spanish I just grouped them all. If you have recommendations let me know!
• TWG Discord: Members from the only Discord server I actually interact with, that also have blogs, kinda specific but it works.
• Reviewers: This one is kinda empty, but it’s pretty clear what it will contain, for games or books alike.

I still have to actually move plenty of feeds around to the correct categories, but I think it’s a decent start. How do you guys do it?

This is day 63 of #100DaysToOffload

Do you floss your teeth

I only remember to do this like once ever 4 or so months, I honestly have never had big problems because of it, I think. Like, I’ve never had teeth removed or caries or any sort of damage done to them. Other than regular wear after all the years they’ve served me, I guess.

Tea, coffee, or water?

I drink water the most, I have nothing against drinking tea, and I always do so if my stomach or throat are dying in pain.

Coffee, that’s something I really like! However, I only drink it if it’s available. That is, if my dad prepares some in the coffee maker, or if workmates invite me a cup. Of course, if there’s instant coffee in some event, I will prepare one for myself.

I rarely drink more than a cup a day, and I don’t do it every day, but everytime I do, it’s quite enjoyable.

Footwear preference?

As of now, my favorite shoes are the “Adidas Forum Low CL Cordura Black”

I find them pretty comfortable, and I absolutely don’t care at all about their looks. They are a pretty basic design, and while originally black, the suede has changed its color over time to a more dark gray with a slight blue-ish hue, which I honestly really like. They work and I can wear them all day without issues, they fit me perfectly fine.

Favourite dessert?

Carlota de Limón, it’s a fantastic dessert which is pretty popular in Mexican culture. Maria cookies are a part of every Mexican’s life, and they are the essential ingredient of a Carlota. I will never get tired of eating it, and I will always want more.

It’s quite simple and traditional, and so tastey, especially when eaten right out of the fridge. Simply perfect for summer, and every other season as well.

The first thing you do when you wake up?

Read! my local church has a Bible study early in the morning, I join a phone call and we all read a bible chapter and talk about it, then we pray together, and continue the day! I have managed to keep it going throughout the whole year somehow, which has been nice, a couple of misses, but never for long.

Age you’d like to stick at?

I am pretty happy with my current age, but somewhere in the range of 28-35 is probably the sweet spot for me.

How many hats do you own?

I have one sun hat, and four baseball caps. I barely wear anything though.

I used the sun hat during my time as an intern in the HR recruitment department, where I would walk for hours leaving fliers door by door, or to people on the streets. It’s weird to think about how that happened almost 2 years ago now.

Describe the last photo you took?

The last photo I took is a shot of Dragon Quest XI, where I (the protagonist of the game) am about to go inside a Casino. The roof is red, same as the carpet in the floor, it looks real classy, but for some reason the Casino’s front sign is super colorful and kinda disrupts the elegance of the whole sorroundings.

Worst TV show?

I don’t think I’ve truly watched a horrible TV show, so I can’t really come up with anything I actually completely hate.

If we are talking about a season though, The Flash became unwatchable for me after season 5 or so. I only kept going because my sister still liked it, but everyone stopped after season 7. I just couldn’t take it any longer.

As a child, what was your aspiration for adulthood?

I wanted to work with robots! I think that’s why I ended up as a mechatronics engineer, although I have to say, I am much more of a programming fan rather than dealing with sensors and actuators.

This is day 59 of #100DaysToOffload

One of the notable changes is the lack of any Nextcloud services. My Raspberry Pi is still not online, and I haven’t really missed it that much. Most of my file management is now done on my computer with local files, and I sync stuff with Syncthing to my phone.

Other changes would be browsers, the removal of Simple Apps in favor on the Fossify forks, and a couple new sections I saw some people add, like blogging and social media.

Here we go:

• 📮 Mail Server: Disroot.org, Proton.me
• 📨 Mail Client: Thunderbird, K-9 Mail
• 📝 Notes: Joplin, Signal (Note to Self)
• ✅ To-Do: Signal (Note to Self)
• 📱 Launcher: KISS Launcher, Rofi
• 📷 Photo Shooting: Google Camera
• 🟦 Photos Management: Fossify Gallery
• 📆 Calendar: Fossify Calendar
• 📅 Calendar Backend: Local-only
• 📁 Cloud File Storage: Syncthing
• 📖 RSS: FreshRSS, Newsboat, Capy Reader
• 🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts Management: Fossify Contacts
• 🔎 Browser: Zen Browser, Fennec
• 💬 Chat: Signal, WhatsApp, Threema, Discord
• 🔖 Bookmarks: Zen Browser
• 📑 Reading: Mihon, KOReader
• 📚 Book tracking: Bookwrym, The Storygraph, This site
• 🍿 Media Tracking: Letterboxd, Backloggd
• 📜 Word Processing: Neovim, Markdown
• 📈 Spreadsheets: Google Sheets
• 📊 Presentations: Google Slides
• 📰 News: FreshRSS, The Verge, 404 Media, etc.
• 🎵 Music: YT Music, RiMusic, BlackPlayer
• 🎼 Music scrobbler: Listenbrainz, Simple Scrobbler
• 🎤 Podcasts: AntennaPod
• 🔐 Password Management: KeepassXC, KeepassDX, Aegis OTP
• 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Social Media: Fosstodon, Polymaths Social
• 🔍 Search Engine: DuckDuckGo
• 📝 Blogging: Jekyll, Vercel

What are yours?

Changelog

- New sections: Social Media, Blogging, etc
- Added Neovim
- Replaced FeedMe with Capy Reader
- Replaced Tachiyomi with Mihon
- Replaced Firefox/Mulch with Zen Browser/Fennec
- Replaced Spotify with YT Music.
- Replaced Simple Apps (calendar, gallery) with Fossify forks
- Replaced Mi Cam with Google Camera (modded apk)
- Removed Tasks.org
- Removed Shotwell
- Removed Khal
- Removed MEGA
- Removed Nextcloud from most defaults.
- Removed sections: Shopping List, Meal Planning, Budgeting

This is post 56 of #100DaysToOffload

It’s almost like I keep finding question challenges to answer day after day!

Do you like your name?

I do actually! I think Joel is a pretty cool name, it is kind of popular but not super popular, somewhere in the top 150 in Mexico, from what I found online. It means “Yahweh is God”, which makes sense to me :P

Do people regularly misspell/mispronounce your name?

It was fairly common to be called “Jose” from time to time, by people glancing at my name in a list or something. Whenever I introduced myself, they would sometimes hear names like “Noe”—Noah in Spanish—or even just the last syllable “El”—“He” in Spanish.

I’ve even gotten mail directed to “Jose” at least once, nothing too bad though.

If you were going change your name to anything else, what would you choose?

No idea, I’d like to keep the letter J to be honest, maybe James or Jack but like, I’m fine as is.

Do you go by your first name?

Yep, Joel is my first name.

Do you have a middle name?

Yes I do, won’t tell~

Do you have a nickname?

It depends, at work… nah, sometimes I’m called Junior for reasons you can assume. Sometimes I’ve been called Jo, which is not great in Spanish but makes sense in English I think. I’m also called Jojoy by family, in Spanish, don’t ever call me that in English.

Michael also added a couple of extra sections to this challenge, which are the following!

Random Opinion

I wish my name pronounced in English was the same as in Spanish (kinda like “Ho-ell”) instead of “Joule/Yoel” or whatever.

Bonus Fact

I said I won’t tell my middle name, but if you are curious, it ends with “el” too.

This is day 50 of #100DaysToOffload

Before actually answering the questions, I’d like to name some of the TV shows that come to my head at this time. I will not include anime, k-dramas (only watched like 2 anyway) or cartoons, I will include shows only available on streaming platforms as well.

• Daredevil
• Doctor Who
• Malcom in the Middle
• Star Trek (TOS and TNG)
• The Flash
• The Arrow
• Law & Order
• Young Sheldon
• George & Mandy
• Superman & Lois
• Stranger Things
• The Returned
• Friends
• Drake & Josh
• iCarly
• Victorious
• Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide
• Sherlock
• Legends of Tomorrow

Those are the ones that came to my mind, I think there’s some others but I didn’t really watch enough to be sure. For example, I know I watched like 20 or so random episodes of The Big Bang Theory and I have a general idea of how it evolved over time, but I haven’t really watched it, same goes for House M.D. and other shows. Law & Order gets a pass because, well, it is what it is. The rest I watched fully, or at least until their new seasons got bad, looking at Doctor Who and The Flash…

What TV character from a beloved show do you wish you could be best friends with in real life?

This one is difficult, the answer did not come to my head at all, but I will keep writing until something comes up. I’m thinking, I’m thinking, but I still have nothing. I want to say a character from Malcom in The Middle, but maybe not.

I think I’ll have to go with… nope, not yet. Sheldon…? I haven’t even watched The Big Bang Theory properly yet. Maybe Georgie from Young Sheldon? Nah probably not, I think I will have to go with OH WAIT, NOW I KNOW…

The Doctor! from Doctor Who! Oh man, that would be awesome, I think I’d make for a pretty cool companion and friend travelling through time and space… although it would be really dangerous. Hmm, let me think a bit more.

Matt Murdock from Daredevil? A bit too gritty and not a lot of quality friendship time would be available, and I may end up kidnapped somehow. Still thinking, still thinking…

Maybe from a sitcom show I have watched, should I return to Malcom in the Middle? It’s my favorite show (spoilers I guess) but to be friends with any of them? they are all such a troublesome bunch, I am not sure. I am an adult now after all, are we assuming that the characters grow up outside of the show too? If so… nope.

I’m literally clueless right now. OH RIGHT I KNOW WHO.

No, I don’t, just me fooling myself into knowing something hoping it works as a placebo.

A minute later…

Still nothing. Welp.

Alright, alright, I’ll have to pick the option I wanted to avoid at all costs. I would want to be friends with…

AAAAAAAAAH I STILL DON’T KNOW, I was trying to force myself into thinking something again (didn’t work).

Characters from Star Trek feel like too safe of a choice, and I would feel like a poser as I haven’t actually watched half of the episodes in the TOS and TNG series… so maybe not.

I’m knocking my head against the keyboard right now (figure of speech).

CISCO!

No, not the company that sells modems and stuff.

Cisco Ramon from The Flash! Yeah! That guy! he seems pretty funny and he is a nerd and does lots of hackery stuff, at least in the early seasons. Yeah I think I’d like to be friends with him!

Now I’m overthinking it, but no! I will stick to that choice, yeah. And maybe I’ll stop writing what I think directly from my brain.

If you could binge-watch an entire series again for the first time, which one would you choose and why?

I can always enjoy Malcom in the Middle, across the ages and the times, it is always fresh for me, and there will forever be different lenses and perspectives to understand the characters and their actions. It’s the quintessential family sitcom show, so, I don’t really need to watch it for the first time. Actually, every time I watch it, it’s like the first time at that moment in my life.

What I wish I could watch for the first time, is probably Doctor Who.

Doctor Who is a show that I started watching to spend time with my sister back in the day, it made her happy, and it was quite enjoyable as well. At some point in the early seasons I realized I absolutely loved it.

However, it took some time to get there, I didn’t care that much about it at first. Sure I paid attention to the story, but I didn’t appreciate it for what it was. But when I started to think “hold up, this is really good”, I also didn’t want to bother going back to the start and seeing what details I had missed. So I just kept going, and really enjoying all of it, even some of the bad parts of the 12th Doctor, until it got absolutely ruined by the 13th Doctor’s run, killed by terrible writing and directing.

At this point in my life, I think I could go for a rewatch, even though I’ll never have a chance to watch it truly blind like back then.

There is another huge reason I want to check it out again… I know English now!

When I started the series somewhere in 2016, I really didn’t know enough of the language as I do today, and even if I could follow some YouTube tutorials in English, I was totally unable to get the accent of the TV Show, or to listen to multiple voices at once. You may be asking why is this not a problem with other shows?

Well, other shows have great Latino dubs, Malcom has a great dub and a fantastic localization for its humor and dialogues, the same cannot be said for Doctor Who.

In fact, Doctor Who does not have a Latino dub, as far as I know, and I think the Castillian Spanish dub is not great either, and fails to capture most of the British humor of the series. I will admit though, I only watched like, 3 episodes in with the Spanish dub, and maybe it works for people from Spain, not me though.

So, yeah, Doctor Who for the win!

Name a TV show that changed your perspective on the world or taught you something valuable

Malcom in the Middle is a show that is filled to the brim with life lessons, both good and bad examples of how to handle lots of realistic situations, and relatable family issues.

It’s a show that has been on air for years in Mexico, because it is so relatable to every single one of us. A middle-class family trying to get by day by day.

Across the multiple episodes, I have learned plenty of things. Here’s a short list.

• Don’t blame people without evidence
• Stand up for what is right, even if it turns you into an enemy.
• Do not take advantage of those unable to make conscious decisions.
• Don’t assume the worst of your children (or of people in general).
• You are not that important for the place you work for.
• Just because you are smart, doesn’t mean you’re above others.

In a way, they feel kinda “obvious” but at the same time, watching it when you are 9 or 12 years old, can really change you for the better or (admittedly) not—it still features plenty of bad kid behavior and such, but hey, I turned out alright, right?!

I had some other things to list, I just really enjoy this show, it is the one show I watched with my family every night before sleep, when I was 10, when I was 14, when I was 18, when I was 23—Not exactly sure about the exact ages but you see my point. Every time, I will always either laugh out loud, or I will be able to reflect on what’s going on, with the parenting style of Lois or Hal, be it good or bad, or the misfits or behavior of the kids, or whatever Francis is up to away from home. I can see what might work if handled a bit differently, it has always been super fun, enjoyable and even thought-provoking.

In a way, I want to write more, because this show deserves the attention, but, maybe that’s better left for another blog post.

Final thoughts

I think I have plenty of other shows I am yet to watch, to be honest. But the answers I gave made sense to me somehow, except for the first one which was a true ramble compared to the rest, but hey, that’s really similar to what my head was going through at the time of writing.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed these answers, I highly recommend giving the mentioned shows a watch! The one show that didn’t made it into the answers properly was Daredevil, but it’s just soo goood, so I wanted to at least say that here. Give that one a go, the original Netflix series is a masterpiece from start to finish!

Until later!

Btw, I will nominate the following people!

• @mihobu
• @tiramisu
• @anarodrigues
• @cory

This is day 49 of #100DaysToOffload