Podcasts

This month was rather light on podcasting, only listening to 28 hours of podcast episodes, which is less than half compared to January.

• Into The Aether - Same weekly listening as usual! Great things to come such as the PS1 and the PSVita bonues episodes! Some great games talked about here that caught my interest were Danganronpa, Under the Island, and CAIRN.
• Trash Taste - I catched up on a few episodes where they rated the anime taste of their audience, talked about surviving apocalyptic scenarios, and their favorite things of 2025.
• Sir Khan - Listened to some Warhammer 40K lore about the Ultramarines and similar things. Love the audio work on these ones.
• SAYER - Just some episodes I slept to, to be honest.

Gaming

This month I barely touched my Nintendo Switch, with my Anbernic RG35XX SP and my computer taking up most of my gaming time, for once! it’s so weird because it’s the same thing that happened on February of last year!

Completed

• Resident Evil 2 - I didn’t expect for this game to grip me in the way it did, but this classic of survival horror accompanied me during two straight weeks on my commutes to work, and I completed the Leon A and Claire B scenario right on time. The review is up so feel free to check it out! Spoiler: I absolutely loved it and you should give it a try too. This game is so good it may steal a spot on my Top 25, not joking at all, many great mechanics and excellent replay value too.

Started

• Peak - This is a very fun multiplayer game where you cooperate with friends to reach the peak of a mountain! You go through different biomes, find helpful items and try to not die or run out of stamina to keep going! I played with JP for a couple sessions, as well as some friends from Discord.
• Grapple Dog - I had acquired this game last year in the a Humble Bundle and started it on a whim! I’ve done a couple of the worlds already and having a blast. It’s a fun platformer with grappling mechanics, great physics and fun level design.
• Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero? - I only really poked a this one for a second, but it’s a tough as nails platformer similar to Ghosts ‘n Goblins.

Ongoing

• CrossCode - On the last day of the month, I played this one for an hour, which amounted to the most played Switch game of the month. I am making progress though and plan to focus more on it during March.
• Ninja Five-O - I completed all of the easy mode of this game, but I want to give it another go in Normal to access 3 levels that are unavailable to me, and see the true ending of it all.
• Final Fantasy VI - I made some more progress of this SNES classic at last, as I continue to find my friends again and plan to fight against the evil Kefka.
• Donkey Kong - Tried this gem of the original Game Boy, considered to be one of the best puzzle platformers of all time.
• Nintendo Switch Sports - I think we played this for like 15 minutes for a bowling match and then ran out of time.

Reading

Maybe it’s only one book, but it’s more reading that in January, which is a win for me. I read 481 pages for 9 hours, 36 minutes.

• Persepolis Rising - Read up to chapter 31, which makes me super happy, as I finally started to recover from the reading slump I was going through. the pace was kind of slow as well, but it is already starting to pick up and I can’t wait to finish it early in March.

Manga

I enjoyed a great new manga this month, and continued on with some serials. The chapters of Planetes are longer than some other weekly manga, which is why the count seems low. In any case, good progress was made.

Started

• Planetes - Read up to chapter 16. I had this one on my TBR list for a long time, and for some reason I finally decided to give it a go. This is a masterpiece, up there with Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou when it comes to thought-provoking—although not as comfy—manga to read and be engulfed by. A great piece of science fiction about the life of crew of space garbage cleaners in their day to day lives.

Ongoing

• Spy x Family - Read up to chapter 129. Just a couple more chapters with a bit of a focus on comedy and action this time around.
• Blue Lock - Read up to chapter 337. The match against France has begun, and it is already shattering the way Blue Lock has worked so far, the french are giving them a run for it, and Isagi has been rather useless so far. I’m really interested to see how our characters evolve from here!
• DanDaDan - Read up to chapter 224. Really enjoying the progress on this one, and the way the new villain is approaching our protagonists is rather smart as well, I’m looking forward for more developemnt of this arc.

Movies / TV Shows / Anime

I didn’t watch any movies or anime, and I can’t really say I watched any TV Shows either. I pretty much just stuck with whatever my parents or grandma (who has been with us for a whole month now) decided to watch in any given time. I guess we watched some Bones, some The Good Doctor and similar dramas, but only during dinner or lunch time, and never really staying until the end.

I did watch a lot of Resident Evil youtube essays though.

Music

I continue to have pretty much the same taste in music as always, but decided to share the top 5 albums of the month this time around. All of them are videogame soundtracks!

• Plants vs Zombies Soundtrack - Laura Shigihara
• Outer Wilds Soundtrack - Andrew Prahlow
• Hyper Light Drifter Soundtrack - Disasterpiece
• Gris Soundtrack - Berlinist
• Minecraft - Volume Alpha - C418

Goals for March

I think it might be cool to share some goals I want to have this month! To fill these a bit more and just have something to look forward to.

• Survive my workmate asking for like 3 weeks of vacation and leaving it all on my hands.
• Finishing Persepolis Rising by the first week of the month.
• Watching a couple of movies, maybe going to the cinema once.
• Listening to some more City Pop again, maybe find a new artist.
• Completing two videogames! I should go back to Silksong, or play a short videogame like Monument Valley 2, I am also curious on Strange Jigsaws, which I bought on a whim on January…
• Finish, maybe, my relisten of Wolf 359, and writing a review or a post about it.
• Finish season 3 of Dungeons and Daddies, since it’s over and I really should go back to it.

Finishing thoughts

This was the first month where I finally had home office from work again after quite a while, I am so happy because not only does it give me a chance to spend my dead time in other fun things, it is just nice to not wake up early just one more day…

I must say, a lot of my time this month was spent scrolling on social, it is one of the reasons I stopped sharing my device usage this past few months, I have really dropped the ball lately and lost control of my screen usage like crazy. I may need a bit of a detox, if I’m honest. Maybe another monthly challenge to consider…

For now, this is it, good bye!

This is day 23 of #100DaysToOffload

I went through 50 movies total, and because of that, the summaries will be much shorter than in other recaps. I will, however write some highlights and maybe a few rankings later on.

Movies I watched in 2025

I’ll go through the movies and share how present they are in my mind today. I’ll use the film emoji (🎞) for movies watched in theaters, and the sparkle emoji (✨) for movies that were new to me this year. All the others are movies I had seen before.

January

• 🎞️ Sonic the Hedgehog 3 - An actually fantastic time at the cinemas, Jim Carrey carries this one! Shadow is cool.
• 🎞️ The Moon - A korean movie about going to space, it’s so incredibly melodramatic I kinda remember it fondly.
• Interstellar - Absolute cinema, what an incredible movie, what a soundtrack. Just, everything.
• ✨ Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning - Not a bad Mission Impossible.
• ✨ Inside Man - This one was a weirdly directed crime movie, but there’s a PSP on it.

February

• ✨ Back in Action - A family comedy spy film, kinda meh but there’s a Nintendo Switch on it.
• 🎞️ Mufasa: The Lion King - Saw it at a matinee for free, no complaints, I brought my PSP with me.
• Shrek 2 - The best Shrek movie, and a fantastic movie overall.

March

• 🎞️ Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire - Don’t remember it much but it has Godzilla on it, and its pink.
• Avengers: Infinity War - A great Marvel movie, watched at home with my sister who was visiting.
• 🎞️ Mickey 17 - My sister chose this due to the actor, not family friendly and Mark Ruffalo plays Trump, but cool sci-fi.
• Batman: Mask of the Phantasm - My sister and I watched it and cried together because this is the best Batman film there is.

April

• ✨ The Forge - A kinda random Christian film about a rebellious kid who plays basketball and videogames too much.
• ✨ Ford v Ferrari - The cinematography here was just excellent and I kinda need a rewatch, I started it halfway through.
• 🎞️ Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith - This movie had a rerelease for the anniversary and I couldn’t be happier. This was a fantastic experience and seeing it on the big screen is something I’m grateful for.

May

• 🎞️ Thunderbolts* - A Marvel movie with heroes who actually have emotions and stuff again, I loved it!
• ✨ 21 Blackjack - I watched this in two days and had a pretty good time, a very 2000s movie.
• 🎞️ Karate Kids: Legends - I mean of course I would go watch a movie that mixes both the old movies, the remake and the Cobra Kai series in one film, I enjoyed it but it was way too short.

June

• 🎞️ Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning - This one was way too long and lots of exposition but the action was mindblowing to me, a really good ending for the whole franchise I think, if a bit too nostalgic.
• World War Z - A random pick on a Sunday afternoon, it was cool I guess.
• Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - Another random pick on the same Sunday afternoon, I still love it though.
• Transformers One - This is a legendary movie, one of the few I’ve written a blogpost about, so go and watch it okay? Masterpiece.
• Tangled - My favorite of the 3D animated Disney films, I love the songs here, they are way too good.
• ✨ The Fugitive - Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones best each other, awesome thriller, and a wonderful dad movie.
• ✨ Arrival - A very good film of speculative fiction, which I expected to be more hard sci-fi but it’s more philosophical.
• How to Train Your Dragon 3 - A wonderful ending to the franchise, I enjoyed it! But I was busy while watching it in the background.
• ✨ A Minecraft Movie - Didn’t watch it fully either, just some parts, but it was genuinely hilarious, I couldn’t believe how crazy it was.

July

• 🎞️ F1 - The Formula One movie featuring Brad Pitt and some other people I forget, I loved how this one looked though, the races were awesome.
• ✨ Grave of the Fireflies - I thought this movie wouldn’t be a big deal, but it broke me… I watched it with my sister, and after it was over, we stayed, absolutely silent, until the credits finished. Gut-wrenching.
• ✨ The Blob - This classic movie from the 50s is not very good but also rather memorable, why did I watch it? A podcast mentioned it.

August

• Aliens - Alien with more guns and epic action.
• ✨ Alien 3 - Aliens with annoying characters and ugly puppet work.
• ✨ Alien Resurrection - Alien with very very weird writing and wacky characters.
• ✨ Prometheus - Back to horror and dread and a very cool android.
• ✨ Overcomer - Random Christian film about a girl who likes trail running and there’s family drama.
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - The title says it all, a true classic, excellent effects as well.
• ✨ Alien: Covenant - Alien again but now they are white and ugly until the last one which is cool.

September

• ✨ Alien: Romulus - Alien, but newer, the effects were absolutely mindblowing, a good mix of practical and CGI.
• 🎞️ The Fantastic 4: First Steps - Another movie with cool scenes in space, and retrofuturism for the win.
• ✨ Along Came a Spider - A crime thriller, you won’t see the twist coming here, but the first scene is very over the top.
• AVP: Alien vs Predator - Speaking of over the top, this is just a crazy fun popcorn flick uniting the two biggest franchises with aliens on them.

October

• ✨ Ocean’s Eleven - A masterfully done heist film, all the characters are so fun, good interactions and plot. They don’t make them like they used to.
• 🎞️ TRON: Ares - Decided to watch this one as I was hyped by the trailers and it was rather enjoyable to me. However, it pales in comparison to the next two films.
• ✨ TRON - This is the OG and the effects hold up decently, with some nostalgia googles. I actually had a great time here! A very weird fun movie.
• TRON: Legacy - Now this, this was good. I loved it and it was awesome, the soundtrack is simply amazing to this day, the aesthetics are top notch.
• ✨ KPop Demon Hunters - Put this on Netflix and found myself having a blast and actually getting emotional as the movie kept going, some great songs and a nice story”

November

• 🎞️ Predator: Badlands - A random choice that turned out to be a great movie! This had some great buddy comedy stuff while also featuring some really cool action moments and character development!

December

• ✨ Dead Poets Society - I love everything about this movie, this is a masterpiece, until that finale. Oh man, I’m crying again.
• ✨ Godzilla Minus One Minus Color - I love everything about this movie, this is a masterpiece, this time in B&W. Oh man I’m crying again.
• 🎞️ Avatar: Fire and Ash - I don’t love everything about this movie, it’s not a masterpiece, but the visual effects are absolutely top notch.

Top 5 movies I saw on theaters

1. Star Wars: Episode 3 - Revenge of the Sith (technically a rewatch too, I don’t care, this was peak in cinemas)
2. Avatar: Fire and Ash
3. F1: The Movie
4. Sonic The Hedgehog 3
5. The Fantastic 4: First Steps

Top 5 movies new to me

1. Ocean’s Eleven
2. Dead Poets Society
3. Godzilla Minus One Minus Color (technically watched the original already but I don’t care)
4. KPop Demon Hunters
5. Alien: Romulus

Top 5 movies watched again

1. Interstellar
2. Aliens
3. TRON: Legacy
4. Transformers One
5. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

Some random stats and thoughts

• I watched a grand total of 50 films this year, from where:
  • 14 were seen in theaters! A little more than one per month.
  • 23 were seen for the first time! That’s almost two new to me films per month.
  • 13 were seen again this year! I don’t need to say how many those are per month.

• I only watched a total of 9 animated movies this year, and that’s counting Mufasa: The Lion King. It’s usually a favourite genre of mine, didn’t even represent 20% of my movie watching this time…

• Perhaps not any single TRON movie can be considered a masterpiece, but as a whole, the franchise is honestly pretty awesome, and I’m glad it has managed to exist, even if it only is once every decade or so, and never quite landing.

• I love how, despite how different all the Alien movies can get, I eventually just learned what to expect and embraced that they always end or get retconned in a very dire way.

• I am really so so happy that I watched Revenge of the Sith on theaters, I felt in awe the whole time, a simply glorious feast to the eyes, can’t say it enough.

• Again, Grave of the Fireflies late at night with my little sister was incredibly heart-wrenching, we just kept watching it and seeing how things happened and crying a bit… and I’m seriously tearing up a little as I remember it right now.

• I watched The Blob from YouTube while at work, it was definitely interesting to have it as a background noise at first, and then for it to somehow get actually interesting. Good stuff.

• Was gonna watch One Battle After Another on theaters, but the first 5 minutes were so uncomfortable to watch—it was me and my parents and it got weird quick—which is why we went for TRON: Ares instead, even if it wasn’t that great, it still led me to the rest of the TRON movies, and of course, the masterpiece that is the TRON: Uprising animated show, so, it was the right choice.

• We were very close to leaving theaters too for Mickey 17—again, not a very good movie to watch as a family—but we pushed through it, I wonder where the line goes when it comes to what it takes to make us leave a movie.

Finishing thoughts

And well, those were quite a lot of movies! Almost one movie per week was watched in 2025 by me. That is something I’m pretty happy with.

The Alien saga, the Tron saga, all of those dad movies or random movies with gambling related themes, I have no idea what happened but the point is that it’s over, and this new year is already looking pretty good as well! But that’s something I’ll bring up when the 2026 recap comes along.

For now, this is it, enjoy the read!

Over time, some of my posts have gathered enough attention by some people to inspire them (or trigger them) to write a reply to my own stuff.

This is usually a pretty nice way for conversation to spark among the blogging community and it’s always nice to see someone replying to me and mentioning me on social media or sending me an email sharing a link to their public response.

A few days ago, I wrote a blog post talking about webrings, clubs, and blogroll I’m part of, a huge list of sites and pages that link my website on them, this of course didn’t take into account individual blogposts, just the main url.

Webmentions have been around for a while now, they are a very interesting protocol that allows websites to interact and call each other as if they were their own sort of social media. It’s very extensive and not too difficult to implement in something like Wordpress, and there are drop-in solutions available as well. However, while very cool, I didn’t want to bother setting them up even if it’s not too difficult. They are also pretty prone to spam and other maintenance issues, from what I’ve seen.

Sometimes when I realized a blogpost was replied to by other bloggers, I would add links to the bottom of my original article, to help the conversation get to more people and amplify its reach.

This is nothing new, I’ve seen some other posts like Marisabel’s and Jedda’s calling these link replies Community Echoes, and yes, that name is absolutely awesome, and while I probably can just use it without any further thoughts, I wanted to name them something else just to be ~unique and different~

Alas, Blog pings are upon us. Maybe the name doesn’t make much sense (I think pong would be better in this case?) but let’s not pay any attention to that.

How it looks

Right now there’s a new slashpage at /pings and you can visit it right now to see how it works!

Basically, it’s a list of blogposts of mine, with another nested list of links that reference or are related to the post I wrote.

At the same time, every blog post will now include the blog pings at the bottom of the article, an example would be Blogging Expectations which has managed to inspire quite a lot of comments and replies!

These are present in the RSS feed as well, and they still manage to be under the footnotes if the post has them.¹

The setup

I use Jekyll for my website, and it makes use of the YAML metadata to add certain parameters, such as the title, date, permalink and other values. Alongside the officially supported ones, you can also create your own, and call them at any moment making use of the Liquid templating language.

First, I added metadata like this:

title: "Example Title"
date: "YYYY-MM-DD"
mentions: 
    - title: Blogging Expectations
      url: https://kevquirk.com/blog/blogging-expectations
      author: Kev Quirk
    - title: Blogging Expectations
      url: https://thomasrigby.com/posts/blogging-expectations
      author: Thomas Rigby

In my case, I use a Jekyll Layout for all my posts, so I added the following to the end section of it. This can probably be turned into an Jekyll Include, which would let me simply drop it in other places, if I wanted to do so.

Right now, I have this in both my post.html and my feed.xml templates.

<!--Rest of HTML post template here-->
{% if page.mentions %}
<h2>Blog pings</h2>
<p>Articles around the web that reference this post. 
I add them manually, so let me know if you link to me!</p>
<ul>
{% for mention in page.mentions %}

<li><a href="{{ mention.url }}">{{ mention.title }}</a> by {{ mention.author }}</li>

{% endfor%}
</ul>
{% endif %}
<!--Rest of HTML post template here-->

Finally, to generate the page that lists every post and every ping to it. I came up with the following Liquid syntax and put it in a pings.md file in my root directory. Keep in mind I removed some classes and HTML elements that I use in my personal implementation and styling.

<ul>
{% for post in site.posts %}
{% if post.mentions %}
    <li>
        <span><a href="{{ post.url }}"><b>{{ post.title }}</b></a></span>
        <span>{{ post.date | date: "%b %d, %Y" }}</span>
        <ul>
            {% for mention in post.mentions %}
                <li><a href="{{ mention.url }}"> {{ mention.title }}</a> by {{ mention.author }}</li>
            {% endfor%}
        </ul>
    </li>
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
</ul>

Finding the pings

With everything set and done, now I just have to know where have I been mentioned in the past. There are a couple of ways to do this, such as simply googling your url and excluding your website using a search engine. Here are a couple options:

• Marginalia actually lets you see the backlinks to your site rather easily.
• Backlinkwatch allows you to look up backlinks too, it looks like it was made in the 90s but works well enough.
• FreshRSS works if you follow a lot of blogs and websites, using a User Query to look up your url in websites other than yours.

Finishing up

Well, this is pretty much it, to be honest. It does require quite a bit of manual labor to get going, and will probably stay that way as more and more sites link to my posts. I don’t really mind though, it’s kind of fun for me to just collect all of those pings.

So, yeah, if you want to link an article of mine in your website, let me know at once!

Some early memories

To be honest, the design of the Alien has always been ingrained in my head, I don’t have memories where I thought of an alien and the xenomorph didn’t pop-up first. Still, I didn’t grow up with the original series at all.

I was a kid when the original Alien vs Predator movies came out, and I have clear memories of watching some bits of the first one (or maybe both of them) on public TV via Canal 5. I do remember watching the first and second Predator, but I won’t talk about those today.

I don’t even know how I got away with watching them at all, given how gruesome they can be, I don’t really recall any nightmares or anything to be honest. I watched a couple of clips on YouTube and they still seem like something fun to watch, and the kind of movie that the fans of both franchises would go crazy for. I remember liking them, they were just so cool, seeing the two most iconic aliens in the same place was surelly mind-blowing for the people who saw the originals back in the day, I’m sure the forums at the time were going wild.

Anyway, despite that, I really hadn’t watched Alien at all, I knew of how cool Ripley is through cultural osmosis, but at the time I was unaware of the wonders of the internet, and my parents very rarely rented movies, and if they did it wouldn’t be a gruesome horror film like Alien.

At some point in time, around 2015 or 2016, My interest in these films grew. I got into space opera stuff and old monster films, I’d say it was my love for the Halo games and the Flood aliens that made me look into other monsters that inspired it. Now that I think about it, watching Stranger Things influenced me as well, given the similar creature designs.

I remember watching a lot of videos on YouTube about aliens, zombies, kaijus, and the visual effects used on those older 80s films. Specifically Godzilla¹, the Of The Dead zombies, The Thing—my absolute favorite horror movie²—and of course, Alien.

What made me do this

I must admit I didn’t see this marathon coming at all. I saw the original Alien earlier in the year with my sister, and I had seen it before too, but none of the rest until now.

Scrolling around on the TWG Discord server, someone asked if anyone was watching Alien: Earth. I didn’t even know what that was, but it’s a new TV show airing on Hulu and Disney Plus. I have access to Disney Plus and I had some free days to spare, so I decided I would give it a watch.

Of course, since I hadn’t watched anything but the first film and the AvP spin-offs, I didn’t want to start the TV show without doing my proper homework, so I did the typical online search of “Alien movies to watch before Alien:Earth? reddit” and well, to be honest, I could’ve skipped this as the answer was clear. I was going to at least watch the ones from the 80s and 90s

The films

I don’t really have fully-fledged reviews of all the movies, these are just general thoughts about it and my experience in watching them alongside the latest series. Spoilers ahead.

Alien

The original Alien is a classic, but I didn’t rewatch it as the last time I did was just a few months ago. It is a great film that holds up well except for maybe a couple of scenes. Honestly I have nothing new to say about such a masterpiece, just go watch it if you haven’t. It’s pure cinema.

Aliens

The one that started the marathon was Aliens, the one sequel that is considered to be equal, or even better than the original. I had heard about it already, and it definitely delivers in my opinion.

Ripley was in hibernation longer than expected, in that time, a colony now lives in the planet where the first xenomorph was found. When she wakes up, she warns everyone of the danger, nobody believes her, until an emergency signal is sent from the settlement, she’s now has to go to the planet with a group of mercenaries to look for any survivors, and obviously, the people in charge have their own not-so-hidden motives.

This movie features some incredible action scenes. But I think that the horror of it all isn’t far behind from the original. The first reveal of the alien nest was a masterclass in suspense, and nobody can forget the fantastic shot when the little girl is taken away to the nest.

Right, the Queen was also an interesting addition to the lore of the franchise, I wonder if it was what Ridley intended from the start since the eggs must come from somewhere in the original film. In any case, the design of the Queen and the nest is fantastic, and I also really enjoyed the layout of the station buildings.

Androids in Alien are super interesting to me, they are quite difficult to read, and it always feels like they are scheming something. Ripley’s mistrust of them is justified given the previous film, and I enjoy how they play around with that relationship until the very end.

Another cool concept was the cargo exosuit. The scene where all of the machinery is showcased in motion with extreme detail to all the cables and joints was a pleasure to watch, I’m sure the fans of mecha anime were having a blast too. And the last scene where it’s used to put an end to the Queen, just epic.

Aliens 3

And well, the third film virtually retcons the acomplishments of the second one, the side-characters that had managed to survive are now dead, and Ripley finds herself in a prison planet filled with criminals that are also religious zealots, also they haven’t seen a woman in decades.

As a ship is sent to rescue her, she realizes that a xenomorph was still in the ship, and now everyone is in danger. This time the alien has a much more animalistic behaviour, since it didn’t grow from human host. Prisoners die left and right, and hysteria grows among the group, until Ripley comes up with a plan to deal with the creature and save the day.

I can see why this one didn’t hit, killing off the surviving members and giving a bunch of weirdos instead was definitely a move. I still really like the setting though, a prison is definitely an interesting place for an Alien to hunt and move around in.

The creature here was fine, but the visual effects are objectively worse in general. They tried to use CGI but the colors are just not right for pretty much every scene, and it’s jarring to look at.

The final part of the movie is also kinda weird. Ripley figures out she’s a host for a Queen, and decides to kill herself by jumping into a lava pit, to not let her rescuers get their hands on the xenomorph, who they obviously want to study and use as a bioweapon. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a decent send-off to the character, but the way everything is shot is kind of goofy in my opinion.

Honestly, I didn’t look to hard and just understood the intent, and it was fine for me. This movie gets some bad reputation but I can respect it as a standalone film, and I also miss the times when a sequel would go for something crazy like this instead of how safe they play it during the recent years.

Alien Resurrection

Well, in the previous film Ripley died, but I guess the studio decided that they want to bring her back again and made this.

In a science research ship 200 years later, Ripley is cloned from blood samples retrieved from the medical facility in the prison of the previous film, to also get the xenomorph that was developing inside of her. The baby is removed and Ripley is left alive and studied. She now has enhanced strength and her blog is acidic.

At the same time, some ship of mercenaries arrives with some cargo, random people to use as hosts. This group is very varied and weird, like a bunch of Guardian of the Galaxy cosplayers. Eventually things go out of control, and they team up with Ripley to escape from the xenomorphs once again.

The tone of this one is extremely weird. Like, they decide that “breath” is a good security lock, and everyone acts super goofy, like a cartoon villain even. Winona Ryder shows up too but I like her character.

Ripley is really different from the previous film, she is still cool though, I think? Also, despite the weird sense of humor, the horror is more gruesome and disgusting than before. It’s just confusing.

The aliens look pretty good again, since CGI and practical effects are used wisely and there are some scenes with cool moments. But again, sometimes it just got way too much for me. That last alien is also way too ugly, it’s just terrible to me, what were they thinking?

At least there is a relatively happy ending, but what a mess.

Finishing up

In general, I really enjoyed the science fiction of it all. The universe and the aesthetics are honestly incredible, the set designs, from the original to Resurrection, manages to stay pretty consistent and realistic. It kind of reminds me of the classic Star Wars look where everything looks used and almost obsolete. Alien stands out though, because everything also looks functional and like it was designed to last for decades and to follow a set of standards. Given the fact the first 4 movies happen in the span of more than 250 years in universe, it’s honestly really neat.

I loved most of the Alien designs, the original is the very definition of iconic. Incredibly sleek and elegant and raw and terrifying, truly alien.

Overall, I think all of the movies kind of work better when taken as separate works. I think of them as an anthology of sorts, where they are trying to rehash the same concept in multiple ways and different parameters and they see how it goes.

Like, there’s the original Alien, Alien but many of them, Alien but in a prison, and Alien but it’s Ripley. All of them from different directors and going for a different flavor, each of them adding their own little something to the lore.

Yeah the first two are much better, but all of them felt worth the watch for me, if only for the concept and the ships and overall vibes of the settings.

Also, space looks super fun in these movies. Especially in Aliens, I absolutely loved how blue it looks during the shots of the spaceships, filled with stars and nebulas, just full of contrast and color, compared to the blackness seen more often today, it looked so awesome! I think they were paintings, because of how lively they were.

I also watched Prometheus and the first three episodes of Alien: Earth at this point, and I plan to watch Covenant and Romulus as well some other time, but this is enough.

But the way, Alien: Earth has been fantastic and has introduced a few more crazy concepts into the mix, I am enjoying it a bunch and I really do think that knowing how far the franchise has gone helps the experience. But hey, if you don’t feel like it, just watch the first two movies and skip to the show.

Well, I didn’t think I’d write so much about a bunch of movies, maybe I should do this a bit more often? For now, I’m out.

I also wrote quite a few blog posts in between the weeknotes and the reviews, which makes me quite happy. Still not as many as March, but that was just a really good streak that broke by the last half, compared to the consistency of this month. I’m happy!

Overall, it was a rollercoaster of emotions, my sister currently studying abroad visited, my parents were travelling for a variety of reasons, my birthday happened, and at the same time, it just felt kind of normal, weird stuff.

Regardless, here is the media I enjoyed throughout the month.

Podcasts

I listened to a total of 57 hours of podcasts! It’s been a relatively quiet month, to be honest.

• Welcome to Night Vale - For sleep and not much else, but sometimes the plot is so good I relisten.
• Into The Aether - Some great episodes, they recently got rid of ads and went indie again, love it.
• Darknet Diaries - I listened to many great stories, Shannen’s (Ep. 145) was my favorite.
• The Ten Minute Bible Hour - Now at chapter 12 of Matthew, but it remains super interesting.
• Retro Game Time Machine - The episodes on Left 4 Dead was fun, I always wanted to try it.
• Dotzip - The 5 hour long episode about 1000xRESIST, it was beautiful and glorious.
• The Worst Community Report - Just some fun banter from people in the Discord server I’m a part of.

Movies

There were a lot of movies this time around, like, I don’t think I’ve watched as many movies in a single month since I started doing monthly summaries! I’ve been thinking that I already dedicate a paragraph or so to all of these on my weeknotes, so I’ll just stick to one-sentence reviews from now on for media, I think.

• A Minecraft Movie - Fun, ridiculous, but uncanny animation, Jack Black has fun.
• How To Train Your Dragon 3 - Perfect finale, an amazing trilogy and closure to the characters.
• Arrival - Cool concepts and amazing visuals with some mind-bending moments.
• The Fugitive - Cool thriller with Harrison Ford being chased by Tomy Lee Jones, it can only be fun.
• Tangled - Probably the best of the 3D Disney animation movies? Great songs too.
• Transformers One - This was a great prequel/origin story and I love it, a rewatch.
• Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - Pure nostalgia for me, amazing VFX for the time though.
• World War Z - A zombie movie where they go fast, what were they thinking?
• Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning - Thrilling action sequences, convoluted talks in between.

Anime

It is always a good month when I actually get to complete an anime show, which was the case this time. Even if I don’t know if it was best use of my time, I still think that if I enjoyed it, it was worth it.

Completed

• Solo Leveling - Good adaptation, meh animation but it gets a lot better on season two, epic finale.

Ongoing

• Mashle Season 2 - Really fun, I love the dub localization, it just makes me laugh, but the action is cool.
• Death Note - Only three episodes in, but yeah, it’s good! I am going slowly for no real reason, hmm.

Manga

Quite a few ongoing series! And of course, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou! I’ve been having a lot of fun with all these.

• Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou - Simply perfect read for the turbulent times of today. Just amazing.
• How to Grill Our Love - Wholesome side-character stories for now, still great and cozy.
• Hunter x Hunter - Catching up and slowing down, the plot just keeps thickening, good stuff.
• One Punch Man - Finally returned to this. New arc is developing, Saitama remains OP.
• Sakamoto Days - Fully catched up now, and I am on cliff-hanger, oof. Still, top-notch action here.
• DanDaDan - Ridiculously fun arc with tornadoes, while still having incredible character development.

Books

One finished, one started, not bad, not great. Will the day come when I can read as much as others?

• The Big Time - What a weird book to have finished, an interesting work for its time, but confusing for me, as a non-native speaker.
• Nemesis Games - Finally started the fifth book of The Expanse. This is off to a great start, since all the characters of the crew are having their own concurrent arcs right now, and they are quite fun and distinct from previous adventures.

Gaming

Yeah I just love videogames, what an incredible medium. The games I completed represent many facets of my taste and I had a blast with all of them. It is extremely weird for me to just roll credits three times in a month, but it was worth it.

Completed

• 1000xRESIST - Maybe my favorite game this year? It definitely looks like it.
• Ys: The Oath in Felghana - An incredible action rpg that ticks all the boxes, recommended.
• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - What a Metroidvania, an amazing entry that’s remains among the best.

Ongoing

• Hollow Knight - I am in the endgame now, exploring as many corners I can find because I want to enjoy this game as much as possible. I will face the final boss some time soon! Maybe some of the extra bosses as well.
• Dragon Quest XI - Still charmed by this story, I played hours this month, and I’ve made it to a pretty big moment of the story. This game just sparks joy.
• Final Fantasy VI - I also progressed a lot here, made it to the second half of the game, and it’s so good, holds up great today. Gotta level up my characters though.
• Full Metal Furies - The current choice with my couch gaming friends. it’s been great to fight cool bosses and hordes of enemies.
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade - I didn’t really play it much, but I intend to complete the story this month to be done with it.
• Monster Hunter Rise - Did a high rank mission and realized I really need to upgrade my equipment.
• Super Mario 3D World - Just some levels here and there.

Shelved

• Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver Remastered - I got this on Steam but it got picked for October in my gaming club, so I decided to play it until then, the original voice acting and the remastered graphics are super good though.

Device Usage

Laptop

I used my laptop for a total of 75 hours. Not a lot to say here, I use my computer at work a lot more lately, for obvious reasons.

• Firefox for 37 hours
• Zen Browser for 14 hours
• Alacritty for 10 hours
• Signal for 2 hours
• PPSSPP for 1 hour

Phone

I used my phone for a total of 252 hours. That is definitely a problem, I’ve been way too active on Fosstodon and Polymaths Social this time. At least I cut down on YouTube consumption and the like. I also returned to some mainstream social media lately, but at least I didn’t use them much, ugh.

• Tusky for 42 hours
• Fennec for 41 hours
• Mattermost for 28 hours
• Tubular for 25 hours
• Signal for 21 hours
• Discord for 17 hours
• WhatsApp for 16 hours
• Mihon for 8 hours
• Instagram for 7 hours
• Lite for 5 hours
• Reddit for 2 hours

Kobo

Not a lot of reading compared to other months, it’s a bit of a shame, but it’s the cost of finishing so many videogames! Time ends up going somewhere else.

I read 291 pages in 6 hours and 10 minutes

• The Big Time for 2 hours and 10 minutes, 96 pages
• Nemesis Games for 4 hours, 195 pages

Final thoughts

Not a lot to add this time around. I hope you guys have a great day. Thank you for reading this post. What were you up to this month?

This is day 92 of #100DaysToOffload

Extremely prolific on the blogging side of things, with a total of 17 posts. Which may be less than some other months this year, but still feels like I was pretty consistent overall, and I wrote a couple of new favorites, that gathered quite a lot of attention and conversation from fellow peers. Such as my post on the constant need for a source of entertainment or my feed organization issues.

Of course, my phone decided to start failing on me, so I ended up migrating to a new device, the Xiaomi 12T Pro, and it has been a prety mixed experience, but I am overall happy with the performance and the slightly more degoogled life.

I also managed to start and continue conversations via email and messaging apps with plenty of people from the Fediverse and online friends. Hello to all of you!

And of course I bought a new desk and mechanical keyboard, I reorganized my bedroom and a upgraded my old laptop from Fedora 37 to 42 on a single day (actually, it was right now, but I might write about it anyway).

Overall, a lot of crazy things. For now, let’s go over some of the media that I enjoyed throughout May.

Podcasts

• Into The Aether - I have enjoyed a lot of the new episodes, Brendon is on vacation so there have been some nice guests for a couple of episodes. I literally don’t miss a week at this point, it’s a great show.
• Welcome to Night Vale - Just the regular bedtime listening, although a couple of the episodes proved engaging enough, so that I relistened to them on my way to work.
• Dungeons and Daddies - Finally got full in to Season 3 of this show. I am extremely engaged now and it has been a hilarious time. I listened to like 4 or 5 episodes this month and it was a joy! I didn’t think it would, but it hooked me again.
• The Ten Minute Bible Hour - Still reading Matthew 10 after like a year, but I am here for it. Honestly, some very good episodes lately!
• Sir Khan - I had a mini craze for Warhammer 40K again, so I listened to a long episode of this show to scratch that itch.
• NPC & XL - I have been listening to every episode of this podcast so far, it is almost a ritual for me, although it’s also an extremely tempting show, almost dangerous to me.

Movies

• Thunderbolts* - A fantastic superhero team movie, I genuinely enjoyed it. Finally, a good movie where heroes have problems and where there’s actual people to be saved. It has been way too long without one of these, a must watch in my opinion.
• Blackjack 21 - A movie I watched in two weekends, it was a pretty interesting and kinda silly premise of a bunch of nerds (who are way too attractive to be nerds) are in a group of card counting (lead by their teacher) and the main guy wants to make money for Harvard so he bets on 21, the card game. It was kinda whacky but an OK time.
• Karate Kids: Legends - Went to the movies to watch Jackie Chan again, I was so happy. This movie goes way too fast and makes a ton of weird decisions and skips over way too many things. But when a fight happens, it’s just a delight, you can tell where the choreography comes and is inspired by, and it was all just plain fun. Watching Danie LaRusso was also pretty fun, as well as the post-credits scene!

Anime & TV Shows

• The Last of Us Season 2 - Oh boy I pretty much didn’t like the direction this went on. I already knew what happens in the game but I really thought it could be different this time, but man, this was just so mixed for me, the visual effects were amazing sometimes and absolute trash other times, the deus ex machinas were way too much this time around. I will probably keep watching the next season because my sister wants to, I would stop if I were by myself.
• Mob Psycho 100 Season 2 & 3 - Finished watching this show for the second time, it was a complete joy. My favorite anime, most likely. I really recommend giving this one a try, as it really is some of the best character development I have ever seen in any story.
• Dr. Stone Season 4 - The latest season of Dr. Stone really takes the science to the next level. Now that they are on their way to the United States, our party will have to face against another group of humans who have developed science even further than them. The development of the story here is quite fun, and I really enjoyed it, although I had to turn off my brain a couple of times.
• Weak Hero: Class 1 - I initially hated this show, it was so different than the manwha, which is some of the best I’ve read. Turns out, and I realized after a couple episodes, that this is a prequel, and expands on the story quite a bit. So, I ended up really respecting what it did, although I heard the second season is a mess that tries to fit the rest of the story in like 8 episdoes, so, no thanks.

Manga

• A Rare Marriage: How to Grill our Love - Up to chapter 89. This has always been a pretty wholesome manga to read, it’s a slice of life romance comedy about the shenanigans of a newly wed couple who bond over cooking, and other things! It’s just a nice comfy read.
• Hunter × Hunter - Up to chapter 374. The arc has finally begun, this arc is quite different to the rest, there is political intrigue, there is murder, it’s a bit of a whodunnit, new ways to use nen, it has a lot of good stuff so far.
• DanDaDan - Up to chapter 189. I only read a few chapters, and it’s as bonkers as ever, I just love these characters, although I didn’t read that many chapters this time.

Books

I finished:

• Cibola Burn: Can I really say more about a book from The Expanse series? I have already written my review for it, and since it’s already the 4th one, I included spoilers, since they are quite unavoidable at this point. It is a pretty great continuation for the story, although, somehow, I felt like the stakes were slightly lower this time, but that’s what happens when most of the plot happens in a single planet instead of in a solar system level scale. Good stuff and great new and returning characters!
• The Space Merchants: An amazing book that holds up despite its age, the review is already out too. This is a great satire about a guy in the upper echelon of society, thanks to his job as a copysmith for an huge advertising business. Now he has to advertise Venus as the next frontier for Humanity, but his plans will go south. Good stuff.

And started:

• The Big Time: At first I was a bit confused by it, since its style is older, more classic than Space Merchants. However, after some dictionary lookups, I quickly got into the plot of this tale, about a battle across time between the Spiders and the Snakes, two mysterious groups that have fought since times unknown, all of this from the perspective of some really strange characters living in The Place, an area outside of time where warriors go to rest after their countless battles.

Gaming

• Dragon Quest XI - The story has had some amazing developments, I have escaped from some people that wanted to capture me, I decided to go to Costa Valor, so I can open the gates to the open sea and navigate towards new places to explore. The objective of the game is now clear, to find the 6 gems that will lead me towards Ygdrassil, a huge tree that seems to be quite important to the world at large, and my destiny as the Luminary. I’m quite happy to see what’s next!
• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - I have explored more and more of the castle, defeating plenty of bosses and getting new equipment. I faced some interesting blocked pathways that made me realize my soul skills can be used for more than just offense or defense, but to go through obstacles in fun ways. I unlocked some new abilities like turning into a bat, and one of the strongest swords in the game.
• Ys: The Oath in Felghana - I have reached the final door for the last boss fight. I still haven’t gone in, because I still want to farm to upgrade my equipment and get new weapons. This has been quite a journey and I really want to beat it sometime this week.
• Final Fantasy VI - I only played this one for a bit, I am on my way to the Sealed Gate, traversing through a dangerous cave filled with lava pits and traps. I think I am close to the exit though enemies here are quite annoying, since they have lots of health and the easiest way to defeat them uses a lot of mana.
• Hollow Knight - I barely played anything this time, but I really look forward to play more of it sometime soon, I guess my Metroidvania slot is currently filled with Aria of Sorrow!
• Full Metal Furies - We managed to advance to the second world/area and have had a blast unlocking new moves for each of our characters.
• Astro Boy: Omega Factor - I am still playing some stages of this game, it’s just a fun beat ‘em up to play during my commute to work.
• Solomon’s Club - Another little Game Boy game with one-screen puzzle levels that are quite fun. I have mentioned it before but I hadn’t played it in a while, just simple gameplay and mechanics, not much else.
• Hades - I did a couple of runs, but I haven’t really done any more progress other than some interesting story bits and buying new stuff for the House of Hades.
• Final Fantasy VII - Barely played anything of this one, but I had some fun setting up my Anbernic handheld with bluetooth controls and HDMI output and exploring the Gold Saucer to get some item I need to continue the story!

Device Usage

Mobile

I used my phone for 155 hours

• Tusky for 25 hours
• Signal for 17 hours
• Fennec for 17 hours
• WhatsApp for 14 hours
• Tubular for 13 hours
• Discord for 8 hours
• K-9 Mail for 5 hours
• Instagram for 5 horus
• Bottled for 5 hours
• Mihon for 5 hours
• Element X for 4 hours

Laptop

I used my laptop for 96 hours

• Zen Browser for 45 horus
• Firefox for 15 hours
• Alacritty for 12 hours
• Thunderbird for 3 hours
• Signal for 3 hours
• Inkscape for 2 hours

Kobo

I read for a total of 11 hours

• The Big Time for 3:16 hours (123 pages)
• The Space Merchants for 5:03 hours (263 pages)
• Cibola Burn for 2:15 hours (107 pages)

This is day 75 of #100DaysToOffload

Alas, let us get started with the summary for April, 2025.

Podcasts

• Into The Aether - lots of RPGs on these past few episodes, not enough PSP games but I am still having a blast as always.
• Unexplained - Had time to listen to the Season 6 Episode 12 three-parter, A Darkness on the Edge of Town. I think I started the episode too many times since I listened to before sleeping…
• Sir Khan - I returned to Warhammer 40K lore, and this Spanish podcast still remains the one I enjoy the most, every episode is just hype and filled with great narration.
• Into The Aether (Patreon) - Still listening to the early episodes, but also some of the Any% ones which are only 10 minutes long.
• The Ten Minute Bible Hour - Listening up to episode 233, which is still going through Matthew 10, and it’s been great!
• Retro Game Time Machine - A little too many racing/sports games episodes for my taste lately, but I am still enjoying listening to them.
• NPC: Next Portable Console - Just more news regarding handhelds, the Retroid Flip 2 has been pretty well received it seems, despite its thickness and strange design choices.

Movies

• Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith - This movie was rereleased on theaters for its 20th anniversary, and I had the pleasure of watching it on the big screen. Honestly, this movie holds up so well compared to the earlier prequels, it was so hype, and John Williams’ score was outstanding, when Battle of the Heroes started playing I was just so invested into it. That last act is wonderful, that choreography is superb. It was awesome.
• The Forge - Much earlier in the month I saw this. Christian media is usually not that great at being good for anyone but other Christians. Other than The Chosen in recent years, of course. This one had some interesting themes when it comes to parental figures and letting go of distractions even if they aren’t really that bad—like videogames or lazyness, is this a personal attack or what?—still, not amazing or anything.
• Ford v Ferrari - I didn’t actually see this one from the start, but I heavily enjoyed what I saw of it, and I just wanted to mention it anyway, it was pretty cool.

TV Shows

• The Last of Us - Watched all of season 1 and caught up to episode 3 of season 2. This is a pretty dark and grim show, that shows some really ugly sides of humanity. It’s about an outbreak where fungi takes over the world and humans become Infected, which reproduce by biting humans—basically, zombies. It follows Joel and Ellie—the only person with immunity to the fungus—as they travel to a hospital where they may be able to develop a cure. They will face terrible dangers, most of them aren’t the Infected, but humans, desperate to survive.

Anime

• Mob Psycho 100 - Finally returned to watching this to my sister, we only saw a couple of episodes, only leaving the last one of Season 1 to watch today (now May 1st). This is such a good series with very fun character dynamics, and of course, amazing fight sequences with psychic powers!

Manga

• Usogui - Read up to chapter A gambling manga I started early this month. I thought it was quite entertaining, and it’s full of action sequences as well, which I didn’t expect, the art can be a bit mediocre at times, but I heard it gets really, really great later on. The story is enough to keep me interested though.
• Hunter x Hunter - I keep going very slowly on this one.
• Uncle from Another World - I returned to this, but I am also going quite slow.

Gaming

• Hollow Knight - Still exploring, still having fun. I fought against one big jellyfish boss and I had to fight along another knight to be able to defeat them. It was a very epic sequence and I really enjoyed it. I think I can now proceed with the story, as a new area is available to me, but I still have not explored it at all. I am currently checking out some areas not fully filled in my map.
• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Still exploring, still having fun, I pretty much started this game on a whim, returning to an old save that only had like 30 minutes of progress. I’ve explored and found my way around a lot of the castle, and collecting souls is pretty fun. I love all the mobility options I have now as well. It’s just a solid game that is holding up much better than I expected, although I am making use of save states pretty often, because I always forget to buy potions.
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blase - I completed chapter 28 and this game just exceeded my expectations by a lot. Not only gameplay-wise, but on its story. For most of the game, I’ve been flying through dialogue scenes, yes, reading all of them, but not really bothering much to connect plot points and the like. I already enjoyed the character interactions and the gameplay itself, but having the story develop in such a way is a great plus too.
• Craftmine - Even though I only played this for a day in a LAN party with friends, it was simply a blast. Turning Minecraft into a meta-game of itself is such a unique and crazy idea. It impressed me a lot, and I hope we can set up another session one of these days. Although I should try to play it solo to be honest.
• Ember Knights - We completed the DLC and enjoyed a lot of it, there were new bosses and environments. One of the bosses is an isometric version of the Mantis Lords fight from Hollow Knight, which I thought was pretty fun.
• Full Metal Furies - This is our now 4-player co-op game after Ember Knights, not only does it have better performance, and an actual story, it’s also a bit more of an beat’em up with RPG elements, with levels instead of procedural generation, which I actually quite like.
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Only played this like 10 minutes, but it was already very enjoyable and I’m tempted to keep going, I should dedicate myself to other games though, I feel.
• Spelunky - Just another fun 4-player session that ended up in absolute chaos, we are still unable to reach the 3rd environment.

Reading

• Cibola Burn - Read up to chapter 48, enjoying every chapter of it. I will definitely finish it tomorrow, for sure. Reading 40 chapters in a month is not bad, but I feel like I could have gone much faster if I wanted to. But well, things happen.

Device Usage

As I moved to Arch, I probably lost a couple of days of device usage data, but I think it’s still pretty close.

Laptop

I used my laptop for 104 hours.

• Zen Browser for 64 hours
• Alacritty for 16 hours
• Signal for 4 hours
• Minecraft for 2 hours
• Inkscape for 1 hour
• Thunar for 1 hour

Phone

I used my phone for a total of 177 hours (+3).

• Tubular for 37 hours (-13)
• Tusky for 28 hours (+10)
• Signal for 28 hours (+15)
• Fennec for 24 hours (+4)
• WhatsApp for 18 hours (+3)
• Discord for 7 hours (-9)
• Mihon for 4 hours (-3)

Kobo

I read a total of 12 hours

• Cibola Burn: 12 hours, 657 pages

This is day 58 of #100DaysToOffload

Something that I found quite nice about this year was how we started watching anime as a family quite a bit now, my parents really like Spy x Family so, that has been a very good time.

I’ve also bonded with my sister a little more over watching some anime shows, it’s fun to show her old and new shows and watching her reactions to how the stories and characters develop.

Anyway, let’s talk about the anime I watched throughout 2024!

Spy x Family (Season 2)

Spy x Family is such a great show, apparently some people expected more out of it, and said that it was just more of the same thing, but honestly that’s exactly why I like it. The show is filled with lots of comedy, and at the same time it has superb action and animation. It hasn’t really advanced the plot that much, so many would say it’s filler, but I think that the plot it’s honestly just an excuse to have these characters interacting, which is what I love the most of the slice of life genre, I guess the combination with spy thriller is what set some people’s expectations in a different direction, but it works for me.

Of course, this is the one anime that we watch as a family as well, and making comparisons and jokes about it is pretty funny and chaotic.

Uncle from Another World

This is one I watched on a single morning, I think I was sick or on vacation, can’t remember exactly, but it was very hilarious to me. It’s about a guy who has been in a comma for years, and his nephew comes to see him once he finally wakes up. Turns out that he has been living in another world during his sleep, and has magic powers.

The story is split in the real world, with some pretty fun slice of life shenanigans, and also via backstory, thanks to a spell that can display the memories of uncle as if it is a magic TV. His nephew and his friend then watch what happened in that other world and well, it’s just so funny.

The only caveat I have with this one is that it is kind of family friendly until it definitely isn’t, nothing actually happens, it’s usually just misunderstandings and accidents and such. It gets so close to being a hilarious fantasy show for everyone to enjoy, but nope. Still fun to watch if you can bear the fan service moments though.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

Now this is what I’m talking about. This is fantasy at its best. Back when I read the manga, I knew it was going to be something to behold, and the anime did not disappoint.

It is a wonderful story about the wonders of life, where we follow Frieren, a powerful elf mage, who outlives all of her party of heroes, the same heroes that defeated the Demon Lord and freed the world from it opening the way to a new era of peace.

Many decades have passed, and the heroes are starting to become legends. She embarks on a new journey with a new group of characters under her care, and reminisces on her memories of the past, starting to understand humanity and life in a way she hasn’t been able to before.

There’s a lot to love here, action, thought-provoking moments, slice of life and chill stories, all the characters are absolutely great too, they have an excellent dynamic and very wholesome moments, there is a bit of back and fort between the past and the future, how history repeats itself and how life is short, yet valuable.

Some of the best fantasy I’ve seen in a while, not just in anime, but in storytelling altogether. Definitely my favorite of the year.

Dr. Stone (Seasons 1-3 & Special)

I was planning to watch this one from the start of last year, and I didn’t get around to it until many months later, it was quite a big surprise to see how much it clicked for me.

This story is very much in the realm of post-apocalyptic science fiction. In one fell swoop, all of humanity, every living person in the planet, was turned to stone, including our protagonist, Senku.

Thousands of years go by, and by pure chance, the stars align and Senku returns to normal, and luckily enough, he is a scientist with complete and absolute trust in the power of science to overcome every problem. His sheer determination kept him conscious the whole time, counting every second that went by to keep track of how many years have passed. And he soon goes to work on figuring out how he managed to returned to normal.

His mission: to bring back to life every human, using the power of science to aid his quest. He manages to recreate many inventions with the resources he has available, makes new friends and does his best to figure out how everything happened to begin with.

This is such an interesting premise and its full of very strong character moments and crazy plot development, and it also has many goofy fun moments as well, I really binged the full thing, and I’m now enjoying Season 4!

Ace of the Diamond

This is one of those anime shows that I might end up returning to this year. It’s about baseball! and the main character is actually not the best, or the luckiest, or the strongest, or anything. He’s a rough diamond, and it’s all about his evolution as a pitcher!

I stopped watching it after like 20 episodes, since it has like 70 or so and it’s the kinda show that I think is better to watch on a weekly basis, since some episodes feel a bit filler but still quite exciting.

I may return to it this year, who knows.

Haikyu!! (Season 1-4, The Dumpster Battle)

Haikyu was a complete and absolute success in my house, everyone in watched it all in a matter of weeks, and loved every second of it, except my mom who says she doesn’t like it but watched anyway.

This is one of the best sports anime I have ever seen, with a lot of emotion and fantastic characters that evolve and become friends and teammates in a really grounded manner.

Overcoming fears and challenges, practicing to be the best they can be, the tropes and themes can be kind of the traditional, but everything is really well handled and written, I even cried in multiple times, that’s how good it is, I highly recommend it.

Hajime no Ippo (The Fighting!, Boxer’s Fist)

I believe Hajime no Ippo was not just yet another sports anime for me, but an awakening experience that made me realize there’s still a lot I can do to better myself, regardless of my circumstances.

This anime tells the story of Ippo, a kid who gets bullied because he helps his mom on her work renting boats for fishing, so he reeks all the time and gets ridiculed for it often. After a mysterious boxer defends him from some bullies, he decides to follow on his footsteps and joins the boxing gym to fight and find his true strength.

He does everything, he runs, he trains, and he faces challenge after challenge, on his quest to become the champion of Japan in his category. This anime is full of raw emotion, inner conflicts and intense fight sequences that were rather inspiring for me. I think it was an integral part of why I finally started going to the gym again after years without doing barely any exercise.

As cringe as it sounds, I found myself running in place, shadow-boxing, tiring myself out while watching this anime at the same time. You see, I was home alone for a week, so I could just watch it at full volume after work, unbothered by anything or anyone. I watched all of it in that week, and it was glorious, I absolutely recommend it.

Jujutsu Kaisen (Seasons 1-2, JJK 0)

This is probably the most popular anime of the last few years, and for clear reasons, it reigned supreme among shonen manga, and it got a great studio to do its animations as well, so the fighting choreography and visuals were absolutely top-notch.

It’s about a guy who ends up being the vessel of an evil sorcerer, but manages to take control of his body, joins an academy of sorcerers and exorcises curses and the like. However, as a vessel, he’s deemed dangerous, and they want to execute him to get rid of him and the devil within, there’s some interesting stuff going on, but I’ll leave the rest for you to discover.

I watched this with my sister in a matter of weeks, and it was great! We also watched the movie and it was equally awesome. I finished reading the manga of this as well, and I think the anime really helps cut down on a lot of the explanations and walls of text the manga has, I am eagerly waiting for season 3 to come out soon.

I don’t think the story is a masterpiece or anything, but it works great, and the characters are all pretty awesome both in personality and designs, it’s no surprise I see them on clothes and stuff all the time.

Delicious in Dungeon

This was a very nice surprise, the fantasy anime that somehow managed to compete with Frieren and managed to be great on its own way!

This one has a party of characters going into a dungeon to save the protagonist’s sister from a red dragon that ate her. This dungeon is enchanted, so humans inside it never truly die, they can be healed and reanimated with magic.

The entire thing is basically a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in the best sense, and the character dynamics are also great, they have some friction sometimes, but it’s all handled pretty nicely. Something present in the title and in every chapter, is the use of food made from the plants and creatures found inside the dungeons, magical beasts and monsters that no regular explorer would dare to eat. Turns out, it’s perfectly fine! and they end up making lots of tasty dishes and learning about the biology of the place.

It’s not all fun and giggles though, there’s a mystery behind it all, and once it starts to get uncovered, The story goes places. A great anime overall!

That’s it folks!

On the last second I thought “I should add banner images or something” and I did! I just used the ones in Anilist which were perfect for this, now this post looks kinda cool! Maybe I’ll edit all my other recaps to add banners like that.

Anyway, sorry for the delay, I had already written 70% of this in January but things happen.

This is day 29 of #100DaysToOffload

December was fun! I had vacation time, the first time I’ve been on vacation since I started working, it has been pretty fun! I went to visit my family in Veracruz, in a small town there where my grandparents on my dad’s side used to live. I visited aunts, uncles, cousins and such, I had a great time.

Besides everything mentioned here, I also played quite a bit of tabletop games, such as Mexican Train, Exploding Kittens, Uno and the like.

Podcasts

This month was pretty similar to November, mostly listening while asleep and such so, yeah…

• Welcome to Night Vale for 20.2 hours. Sleep lots of random episodes, good stuff.
• Retro Game Time Machine for 10.3 hours. I have to admit I don’t even remember which episodes of this I listened to, oops.
• Into The Aether for 9.3 hours. Apparently the new Indiana Jones game is insanely good, aldo Dragon Quest III is the only game tempting me to buy it, I will probably fall for it.
• Dungeons and Daddies for 5.6 hours. The story is getting fun again now that a new character showed up and is so chaotic and fun I love this.
• Trash Taste for 4.9 hours. Their episode rambling on tabletops games with ProZD was absolutely fun!
• Late Night Linux Family for 4.8 hours. Just the regular news and events and developer linuxy things.
• NPC: Next Portable Console for 4.4 hours. Listening to Brandon and friends talking about handhelds is always fun, there’s something about the audio that is really bothering me though, like white noise or something.

  Manga

  Lots of manga was read this month, it was really nice to have during my vacation trip.

• Death Note: I completed this manga in a matter of days, it is a very interesting story where we follow Light Yagami, as he finds a notebook that will kill any person whose name’s written in it. Yagami is an ace student and intends to bring justice and rid the world of evil, until L, the greatest detective, decides to find the culprit of these mysterious murders. This was a fantastic read! I understand why it was so popular back in the day, kinda want to watch the anime next. I also read all the official short stories.
• Jujutsu Kaisen: I read lots of JJK this time, up to chapter 224, the action is great but I really think that a lot of things are happening just for the sake of the plot without much justification, some things are explained afterwards but its been a little hard to follow. Still, the action rocks!
• DanDaDan: I am still reading this and I caught up to the manga, its very fun and some crazy stuff is happening. I keep enjoying it a lot.
• Frieren Beyond Journey’s End: I also caught up to this, I just love these characters, and the stakes of the adventure are quite good, it’s thrilling, I want to keep reading!
• Kingdom: The new arc is evolving quite nicely, there’s been a bunch of politics and non-action sequences that I still enjoy, and it looks like war is upon us soon enough as well, epic.
• Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou: I read a couple of chapters of it this month, always enjoyable and nostalgic somehow, I will keep reading this at my own pace, monthly mayhaps.

Movies

• Gladiator 2: We went to the movies to watch this one and I kinda liked it, it was a nice movie to eat popcorn to. We went to a really fancy cinema that was twice as expensive as normal, I don’t know why, but we could still afford it so it wasn’t that bad, besides, the seats were super comfortable, and the popcorn was really good. The movie was OK.

Gaming

Since I decided to complete 5 games before I buy one, I’ve been working hard at it to finish some games soon!

• Hollow Knight: I made a lot of progress in this game already, playing it for around 15 hours, I have enjoyed it a lot. It is quite the challenge but I still really like the atmosphere and the gameplay quite a bit.
• Hades: This game as proved to be much more fun than I thought this last two months compared to when I started it early in the year, I really should have given it a proper chance to evolve more and play it more consistently, hopefully I beat it once this month.
• I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: I keep dropping this game for long times and then playing it for 3 hours straight, I really think I’ll finish it this month though, hopefully.
• Super Smash Bros Ultimate: The usual party fighting game I play every sunday with friends, what’s not to love?
• Super Mario Bros Wonder: I played this solo for a bit throughout the month, really fun platforming, may finish it by March if I don’t forget to play it or something else shows up.
• Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury: I’ve not played it since the last time I mentioned it weeks ago, but I played it this month, so here it is.
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword: I played like 10 hours of this game this month, it is absolutely amazing, although I admit I have made a lot of use of save states, since I don’t want my characters to die.
• Final Fantasy VI: I finally returned to this game for a little bit, I also watched a 15-hour long playthrough of it that literally ended where I stopped playing, so that’s fun.

Books

My goal this year was 12 books, and I somehow managed to finish 3 in December, making for a total of 15!

• Caliban’s War: Fantastic continuation for the series, I will read the next one now that the new year has begun! Not much more needs to be said, I really enjoyed it, the world building keeps being top notch!
• Farewell Earth’s Bliss: A dark, bleak future where humans colonize Mars by sending criminals sentenced to live in isolation in the red planet, where a society of convicts has developed. An interesting work with no optimism to be found.
• Roadside Picnic: An amazing take where aliens came to Earth, and then left without further to do, abandoning a bunch of junk and scrap behind, technology beyond human comprehension. The characters move the story forward on this one, a simply fantastic read.

Device Usage

I used my phone, my Kobo and my Anbernic handheld quite a bit, the latter doesn’t have a time activity tracker yet though, but here is what my other devices say.

Laptop

I used my laptop for a total of 76 hours, I was away from it for more than a week, so it only makes sense!

• Firefox for 52 hours
• Alacritty for 7 hours
• Inkscape for 4 hours
• Calibre for 3 hours

Phone

I used my phone for 190 hours, I was on vacation without my computer, so it only makes sense.

• YouTube for 56 hours
• Mihon for 30 hours
• Signal for 16 hours
• WhatsApp for 15 hours
• Firefox for 14 hours
• Tusky for 13 hours
• Discord for 11 hours

Kobo

I read for 27 hours! Almost 30, but didn’t manage to

• Roadside Picnico for 7:53 hours, 484 pages
• Farewell, Earth’s Bliss for 7:14 hours, 444 pages
• Caliban’s War for 11:40 hours, 762 pages

Finishing thoughts

Anyway, after this I’ll work on the rest of posts looking back at 2024, those should be fun! I only need to dedicate some time to them, I have lots of pending tasks to complete right now…

Oh right, and this shall be day 1, of the fourth run of #100DaysToOffload!

Podcasts

This month was quite regular when it comes to my podcast listening. Also to save you time, I wil use the ✨ emoji when new or uncommon stuff shows up in my media.

• ✨ The Nerd Nest for 1.8 hours, this is a new one! I wanted to give a listen to their Game Awards episode and liked it.
• Welcome to Night Vale for 20 hours. Lots of sleeping listening to this podcast for once, I think I forgot to setup the sleep timer one day.
• Retro Game Time Machine for 7 hours. They’ve been doing some very interesting games lately, including Super Mario RPG!
• Dungeons and Daddies for 5.4 hours. I finally finished a couple of episdoes, but I’m still behind on the 3rd season.
• Into The Aether for 5.2 hours, because of course I listen to them!
• The Rest is History for 3.8 hours, I listened to some of their episodes on 1968, awesome stuff.
• NPC: Next Portable Console for 2.4 hours, just regularly scheduled episodes.

Gaming

• ✨ Hollow Knight: This is my current focus now that I finished PoP, and I want to beat it alongside my friends who are trying it too.
• ✨ Balatro: I returned to this for a bit to play with friends and talk about the best poker plays and jokers to try out.
• ✨ Lumines Remastered: I did a single run of Lumines and I managed to get into my own top 10 runs, but didn’t beat my PB yet.
• ✨ I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: I played this game for like 5 hours last week and advanced the story quite a bit.
• Dragon Quest XI: I continued playing this game for a bit more, I am really liking it but it has been displaced a little bit.
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown: I finished this game, I love it, check my review of it.
• Nintendo Switch Sports: I play this with friends and my sibling sometimes and it’s super fun!

Books

• Caliban’s War: I started this book and I’m on chapter 20 of it, I am really liking it, it’s the sequel to Leviathan Wakes and it’s just as good so far.
• Leviathan Wakes: I finished this book, check my review early this month.
• Black Easter: I finished this book, liked it a bit less but it was still quite good.

Manga

• JuJutsu Kaisen: I’ve read a lot of JJK, I am beyond the season 2 of the anime and it gets so good.
• DanDaDan: I am loving this and I still don’t watch the anime but I’ve seen some shorts and I might watch it soon.
• Kingdom: I read a couple chapters, always a joy and super epic.

Device Usage

I am using my phone too much, and my laptop not enough, I have uninstalled some apps recently and I hope that helps, I will probably unsubscribe from YouTube Premium honestly, and cut on my messaging as well.

Laptop

I used my laptop for 71 hours

• Firefox for 52 hours
• Alacritty for 8 hours
• Signal for 1 hour

Phone

I used my phone for 221 hours

• WhatsApp for 53 hours
• YouTube for 43 hours
• Signal for 24 hours
• Bottled for 18 hours
• Tusky for 14 hours
• Firefox for 10 hours
• Discord for 9 hours
• Mihon for 8 hours

E-Reader

I read for 17 hours, gotta go for 30 next time.

• Caliban’s War for 7:38 hours, 485 pages
• Black Easter for 3:14 hours, 156 pages
• Leviatan Wakes for 5:10 hours, 333 pages

Finishing thoughts

I made a lot of blog posts because of #WritingMonth, not my best streak at all, but still filled with variety and the start of my week notes as well.

I think I will try to focus on reading more, it’s been a little difficult to balance out my gaming and my reading, but I think there’s a way, maybe calendar blocking or something like that? I don’t know. Should I plan this out some more? maybe. For now, it is now December, and I’ll see what this month brings, lots of gifts I hope!

This is day 96 of #100DaysToOffload

I have to say that during this month I felt like I didn’t listen to that many new podcasts, or new episodes at all, I actually didn’t reach 60 hours of listening this month, and stuck with the same shows as always.

I can’t really say a lot of new stuff or highlights about these since I mention them every month, so yeah, just the names this time

• Into The Aether for 15.1 hours
• Trash Taste for 10.6 hours
• Welcome to Night Vale for 6.9 hours
• Late Night Linus for 5.3 hours
• Retro Game Time Machine for 3.3 hours
• Unexplained for 2.4 hours

Movies

Even though I didn’t really watch any anime or shows this time around, I did watch more movies than usual, which was quite interesting to me.

• Transformers One was not a movie I expected to like enough to even write a review of it, it is actually a fantastic movie that I recommend watching at some point, both fun and tragic, and it works!
• Casino Royale was the first of Daniel Craig’s James Bond movies, and it is a very fun time! I think it was a little long, we actually watching it in two days because of that, but it was still pretty good.
• Quantum of Solace is the black sheep of these newer Bond movies, and I can see why, as the direction and fight scenes felt a lot clunkier, but I still enjoyed it for what it was.
• Skyfall regains its footing and has a lot of epic Bond movies, neither of these three movies (maybe the first one) is a masterpiece but hey, they kept me hooked so that’s good.
• Hercules (the Disney one) was started by my sister on a whime and I just kept watching it, the animation of this movie remains stellar and I wish more 2D animated movies were a thing.
• The Thing from 1982 remains one of my favorite movies due to its direction and fantastical practical effects, and even though I am not a fan of horror as a whole, just the plot and concept of this one is absolutely fantastic, frightening and scary.

Books

• Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey from the Expanse series was not finished this month, but I only have like 10 chapters left now, I have really enjoyed my time with it, and the only reason I didn’t finish it was because of procrastination and also that I didn’t want to get ahead of my book club.
• Black Easter by James Blish is a rather interesting book set in a world where magic and demonology are actually real, and I started it on a whim when I catched up on the previous book too quickly. It is rather interesting and I’ll probably finish it in November as well.

Manga

Jujutsu Kaisen was everything this time, so, not a lot else to talk about as other non-mange things entertained me more this month.

Anime

Dungeon Meshi was watched up to episode 13 with my sister, still awesome! And it got some interesting plot developments, I hope we finish it in November.

Gaming

• Fire Emblem: Blazing Blade is a tactics RPG I started playing ages ago, I recently got back into it on my Anbernic RG35XX SP and it is honestly really fun!
• Nintendo Switch Sports was a recent purchase and I’ve played with family and friends at home, it is quite a relaxing game. I am a bit annoyed that there are still many games missing from Wii Sports and Resort that did not get an update for this game, but it is how it is.
• WEBFISHING is a very interesting fishing game where you can play online with others and chat while fishing and collecting different things. It is a rather relaxing and cozy game that I feel everyone should try!
• Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition was started early in the month and has pretty much become my night time videogame, so far the early hours of the game are rather nice, and every time I load up the game it tells me how the story is going so far, I really just getting back to it, playing 30 minutes and always reaching a good point to save, or just put the Switch to sleep and continue later.
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown had a lot of momentum the first week of the month, playing like 8 hours of it in just 3 days, but other things got in the way. I must finish it in Novebember, it has proven to be a fantastic game and I just keep doing other things, but it is definitely my top game of the year.
• Astroboy Omega Factor for the GBA was a little gem I didn’t expect to enjoy as much, I think I played like 3 hours of it in a day and I think I will finish it soon this month, if I remember to pick it back up.
• Monster Hunter Rise saw some action later in the month, playing online with a friend and teaching them the ways of the hunter. I look forward to playing some more during these last couple months.
• Faster Than Light was not played much, but the last week of October I managed to finally reach the final stage and I almost defeated the final ship, I only needed to do one more hit, but it wasn’t meant to be…

Device usage

For some reason, this month I decided to try an app to chat with random people around the world, I do not think the app is really good UX-wise, but it somehow kept me entertained a lot, cutting down a lot of my YouTube usage and Manga reading. As I met interesting people to chat with, I moved to other apps, I only used it like 4 hours in the last week of October and it’ll probably see less usage later on.

Regardless, here are the stats.

Laptop

I used my laptop for a total of 81 hours

• Firefox for 55 hours
• GIMP for 5 hours
• Alacritty for 4 hours
• WEBFISHING for 5 hours
• Faster Than Light for 2 hours

Phone

I used my phone for 222 hours

• Bottled for 44 hours
• WhatsApp for 30 hours
• YouTube for 30 hours
• Signal for 20 hours
• Firefox for 18 hours
• Tusky for 17 hours
• Discord for 14 hours
• Instagram for 8 hours
• Mihon for 4 hours

E-Reader

During October, I read for a total of 12:42 hours, 748 pages:

• Leviathan Wakes for 9:39 hours, 568 pages
• Black Easter for 2:30 hours, 138 pages

Final thoughts

So, yeah, a lot of my time was completely stolen by that chatting app, but I think I’m over it now, and I want to focus on both reading and gaming more this month of November, as well as writing a lot of blog posts! I actually joined #WritingMonth with the goal of 15 blog posts before the month ends.

This is day 85 of #100DaysToOffload

Transformers One? That was a good movie, a prequel to the whole franchise, now in a fully animated form. Honestly, awesome move, I was getting tired of having like 90% of the movie be about the people. ¹

The story is all about how Optimus Prime and Megatron came to be, and it’s honestly something I’m surprised they didn’t do earlier? Maybe it was the the original cartoon, which I have never really watched, and I don’t really know the franchise’s lore. Regardless, the character designs abandon the greasy and reflective look of the live action movies, and are instead going back to pretty faithful recreations of the classic designs from the 80s, and I gotta say, I totally love them.

Anyway, seriously, the movie is great. The animation felt a bit jarring at first, because I’m used to the kinda slow—yet weirdly acrobatic—movements of the live action films, here the characters are snappy, and they have quite a lot of timing and moments that only work in animation form. The faces are also kinda weird, but that’s just how the originals were, and it works much better as the designs transform. The evolution of the characters in personality and design was quite nice as well.

I am sure that true Transformers fans had a blast recognizing every single one of those obscure models and names featured in a lot of scenes. I was happy enough recognizing a couple of characters here and there and not much else. The nostalgia is real strong on this one.

But really, it was a fun movie, with great action, surprisingly good animation, especially as I got used to it, and later on during the climax of the movie, it’s chef’s kiss.

And yeah, in the end, this is a movie made to sell toys, and boy am I not eager to see little kids playing with the original designs of those awesome characters. I know I wasn’t even alive in the 80s, but I still have nostalgia, I hope tons of kids get Transformers and have fun with them because those designs are still super cool and I would love to be a kid again and play too. I’m not crazy enough to start a collection of Transformers mini-figures or anything—I’m already pretty set on collecting switch games—but I kinda wish I still had some of the ones I owned as a kid.

Anyway, good nostalgia-bait, I was entertained and enjoying myself, and that’s all that matters to me, maybe I should watch the 1986 movie on YouTube now, since it’s everywhere somehow.

This is day 78 of #100DaysToOffload

Podcasts

I only listened to 69 hours of podcasts this month, compared to 96 in august, quite the opposite huh.

• NPC: Next Portable Console is a rather new podcast that talks about the world of portable gaming devices, from the cheap retro handhelds by Anbernic and Miyoo, to official ones like the PSVita, portable mods tabletop consoles and high end stuff like the Steam Deck or Ayaneo lineup, also accesories and related news in this small world. I’ve listened to every single episode so far.
• Retro Game Time Machine has been back at it for me, with episodes on Minecraft, Bayonetta, Mirror’s Edge and others, I was quite hooked this month.
• Welcome to Night Vale was my usual bedtime listening show, I actually got quite hooked on a recent arc, so I re-listened to some older episodes instead and will go back where I left off when I’m awake.
• Stuff You Should Know made some interesting episodes on glasses, the 1904 Olympic Marathon and Internet Mysteries!
• Vergecast, Late Night Linux and Into The Aether were of course part of my listening cycle.

Anime & Shows

• JuJutsu Kaisen Season 1 & 2 were introduced to me by my sister. I wasn’t really that much into it at first, but it quickly got really, really good, and we basically binged the whole thing in a week.
• Dungeon Meshi was started only a few hours ago, still during September, and we watched the first 4 episodes, it was quite an interesting premise with charming characters, so we will probably keep watching it and finish it during October.

Movies

• JuJutsu Kaisen 0 was a requisite before going into season 2, and boy am I happy to have seen it, it is a prequel to everything going on during the anime show, but the backstory is quite awesome! Great action sequences and fun anime moments, and an epic setup for things to come in the series.
• Officer Black Belt is a korean action film about a martial artist who fights against predators and abusers, becoming a martial arts officer. The film tackes some serious issues, and it’s one you can’t judge by its horrible cover on Netflix, it has a weird tone and comedy sometimes, but the action is genuinely great and kept me entertained for a bit.

Books

Behold, books are upon us.

• Hothouse was finally finished by me, after like a month of hiatus due to gaming and manga and stuff. Anyway, I was really amazed by this book, everytime I picked it up I was inmersed by its world and environments, I highly recommend it.

• Leviathan Wakes is the first book in the Expanse series, and I’m currently in the process of reading it! I am in a small book club now and I’m flying through its pages like nothing else before, having to commit with other people helps a lot too, and it’s nice to talk about what’s going on. The book follows multiple plot lines masterfully, and has quite a great world I’m very invested in very much.

Manga

• JuJutsu Kaisen was something I started as soon as I finished season 2, I actually went back to the beginning again, and it is really cool to see how those pages were brought to life in the show. I am enjoying the art and the panelling quite a bit on this one.
• JuJutsu Kaisen 0 is actually the oneshot that started it all. I think the movie is much better, but it’s nice to see the early design of some of the characters, very cool stuff.
• DanDaDan is so so close to finally get its anime released, so I’m doing my best to catch up with it, if only JJK hadn’t shown up, I am only 20 or so chapters behind, so that’s good!

Gaming

I bought quite a lot of games last month for my Switch, but I’ve only really played the following:

• Faster Than Light is something I didn’t expect to like as much, but it did, and now I’ve played it for like 11 hours in 2 days, it is a great game with simple mechanics that are hard to master. I am really having a fun time with it and probably will for a while longer.
• Monster Hunter Rise saw a lot of action this month, I have done quite a bit of high rank quests, but I didn’t play as often as before this month. Still a fair bit though.

Device Usage

Laptop

I used my computer for around 40 hours

• Firefox for 15 hours
• Faster Than Light for 11 hours
• Alacritty for 5 hours
• Inkscape for 4 hours

Phone

I used my phone for 185 hours

• YouTube for 48 hours
• WhatsApp for 26 hours
• Tusky for 17 hours
• Signal for 14 hours
• Discord for 12 hours
• Mihon for 10 hours
• Firefox for 9 hours

E-Reader

I finally had enough usage time for my Kobo to be worth sharing.

During September, I read for a total of 11:20 hours, 737 pages:

• Leviathan Wakes for 5:48 hours, 330 pages
• Hothouse for 5:07 hours, 384 pages

Finishing thoughts

I am happy to finally be reading more lately, it is always nice to see progress being made on that part, but I have also enjoyed a lot of the gaming and the anime I’ve watched, so it is cool to be able to do all that. Podcasting + Faster Than Light will probably be a killer combo during October, so we’ll see!

This is day 77 of #100DaysToOffload

Podcasts

I listened to 96 hours of podcasts! Although a fair amount of that was while asleep.

• Trash Taste had some really entertaining episodes recently so of course I listened to some of them!
• I listened to many of the Late Night Linux Family shows, more than usual for some reason.
• The Vergecast was also really interesting lately, with their episodes about Gemini and Google being a monopoly
• Stuff You Should Know was indeed awesome
• Darknet Diaries was left behind for a bit lately, but not anymore
• Into The Aether had some fun stuff, but they took a break for a bit so, yeah.
• Dungeons and Daddies was also fun, I am following season 3 as episodes come out.
• Relatos de la Noche remained on top, as my new favorite for night time listening.

Anime & Shows

• Dr. Stone was pretty unexpected, but I chose it on a whim and I basically caught up with it and now I’m just waiting for the time a new season, probably the last one, comes out. The plot is quite interestin; in a world were humanity got turned to stone, pretified for millenia, and the elements deteriorated every building and sight of its existence, leaving almost nothing left. By sheer luck, a teenage scientist breaks out of his petrification, and decides to figure out how to undo petrification and build back civilization with the power of science!

• Loki season 2 was quite the ride, I watched it with a friend in 2 days and it was pretty entertaining, I really like the timey-wimey stuff in it. There were some great developments but my biggest take-away is that I want to watch Doctor Who again.

Manga

• Sakamoto Days made a return with all of its might. I had forgotten how crazy it went with a lot of its fight scenes. I appreciate the creativeness of a lot of its panels and how things developed, it got me hooked until I catched up to its latest chapter. There are a ton of stunning visuals here and I can only hope the anime for it—they definitely have took their time releasing one—manages to do it justice. I am on chapter 178.

• DanDaDan is got a lot of reading time from me as well, but I still a few dozen chapters until I catch up with it. Still, the arc I read was totally crazy like always, but a bit smaller in scale. Despite this, the new character is definitely among my favorites now. I am on chapter 129 so far.

• Creature! is a manga I started a while ago and that I found totally amusing to read, it wasn’t good in the same sense as SD or DDD, but its art was too good for a story that kept going all over the place. I kinda want to find more stories like this of humans surviving some world full of unsurmountable creatures and dangers in some apocalyptic world that also has a serious tone, other than Attack on Titan I guess, which also evolves into something different but in a better way.

• How to Grill Our Love is maybe my favorite cooking manga—a.k.a. the only one I’ve read—with a wholesome marriage in the middle of it all. I don’t know what else to say, its a pretty comfy read and I want to it all the food being cooked in it.

Gaming

• Final Fantasy VI has been really enjoyable, I played a ton of it last month, pretty much a third of the story is complete.
• Monster Hunter Rise has also seen a revival, I am almost done with the village quests and I’ll be doing some of the Guild quests soon enough. I really want to get some new gear though, like the Nargacuga set and some more elemental weapons.
• Trails in the Sky FC saw some progress early in the month, but it stalled for a bit later on, I’ll still try and return to it since its been super enjoyable.

Reading

• Hothouse by Brain W. Aldiss is a book I returned to after a while focusing on gaming instead of reading. The story has evolved in unexpected ways and I want to finish it quickly in September to focus on another book!

Device usage

Laptop

I am not sure why but I think I kinda borked my ActivityWatch data for this month, I don’t really know what happened exactly, but I’m fairly angry right now…

Phone

I used my phone for 223 hours which is kind of horrifying but welp.

• Youtube for 52 hours (help)
• Facebook for 25 hours (help)
• WhatsApp for 20 hours (help)
• Aniyomi for 19 hours (Dr. Stone lol)
• Tusky for 17 hours
• Discord for 15 hours
• Firefox for 12 hours
• Mihon for 11 hours
• Signal for 9 hours

E-Reader

• I read Hothouse for for 4 hours and 8 minutes, 204 pages

Final thoughts

Anyway, I lost my laptop data but I am quite sure I didn’t use it very much anyway. Especially because of the anime binge-watching I did earlier in the month as well as the manga and book reading. And of course, the amount of YouTube I consumed.

I guess everything always balances out and it is what it is. Regardless, have a good day everyone!

This is day 68 of #100DaysToOffload

Podcasts

I listened to 79 hours of Podcasts!

• Into The Aether was the definitive winner this time around thanks to it’s 15 hour long bonus episode: Games of the Decate 2000-2009, as well as their 7th season premiere about the Nintendo GameCube. These are some absolute behemots that I listened to in a matter of days, and it was glorious. I highly recommend to start with either if you are a crazy person who likes games.
• Trash Taste has been super fun lately with episodes were they just rate random stuff, the most popular games, the best anime, the GOATs of Things and such. Listening to their banter is very fun even though I lose quite a bit of brain cells sometimes.
• NPC: Next Portable Console is a new podcast that talks about portable consoles and gaming setups, from the Miyoo Mini Plus to the PSVita and stuff like that, it’s really enjoyable and if you like Into The Aether, Brendon Bigley cohosts this one as well!

The usual subjects remain present, such as Revolutions, Late Night Linux, the Rest is History and Dungeons and Daddies.

Anime & Shows

• Hajime No Ippo is one of the classics of anime, maybe the quintessential boxing anime to watch. I binged the whole 76 episodes on Netflix in a matter of days, and I was absolutely hooked by it.

  There is this classic trope of “main character just gets stronger and stronger and wins in the end”, but I think this gets a lot more nuanced than that. The whole cast of side characters is quite charming as well. The whole show is a lesson on perseverance, never giving up and building yourself to be the best you can be.

  Ippo is a remarkable character who keeps improving himself through hard work, it was extremely inspiring for me even now, I am definitely reading the manga soon. It even got me to excercise more often as well! I highly recommend it.

Manga

• Blue Lock was a bit left behind for me, I think my general interest in sports has rosen up since I played soccer a few times last month. This series keeps evolving in interesting ways and the arc I’m reading seems to be close to the end! I am at chapter 251.

• Shadow Star is my latest addition to the reading list. I found it due to a short. The art is kinda outdated and I find the pacing strange. I think it’s a weird mix between Pokemon and Evangelion, with a typical shonen protagonist that finds a “shadow dragon” and is now entangled in a conspiracy, where she meets other kids with their own dragons and goals, and the government is also trying to understand what those beings are and keep the whole thing a secret.

  Don’t let the cute artstyle and the “power of friendship” facade fool you. The fun and optimistic protagonist ends up facing some rather dark situations, with horror and sci-fi elements I didn’t expect, it’s rather intriguing.

• DanDaDan is about to get an anime super soon, so I am trying to catch up and be up to date with the manga as soon as possible. I am at chapter 121.
• Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is maybe my favorite manga to read on rainy and chill days. I only read 2 or 3 chapters when the mood is just right, I don’t want this manga to end, it is so good and so cozy. It is just fantastic. I am at chapter 58.

Movies

• Justice League: Doom was a movie I already knew and got spoiled on ages ago due to YouTube Shorts and videos about Batman being cool, but I still decided to give it a watch and yeah, it’s cool!
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem came out last year and follows the artstyle of Into the Spiderverse with their own twists on things. This movie looks incredible and it’s also super ugly at the same time except for the turtles themselves. The character design of everything else is almost like John Carpenter’s The Thing and somehow it all fits for a kids movie? The animation was top notch and it was an entertaining story. It does have a bunch of random pop culture references which may age poorly in 5 years, but they were quite funny to me.
• The Equalizer is an action movie with Denzel Washington and it is indeed an action movie. I quite enjoyed the action moments, lots of over the top shots that somehow land. I was in the mood for this kind of stuff and went for it, it doesn’t beat John Wick, but it’s cool.
• Safe House is another action movie with Denzel Washington in it, it’s a spy-thriller conspiracy kinda thing where Ryan Reynolds is after him but ends up on his side because the CIA has dark secrets and stuff. Kinda predictable but still fun.

Games

• Metroid Fusion is wonderful, I already finished it and wrote my review of it last month, so go check it out!
• Pokemón Unbound looked like something fun to continue after Metroid, so I gave it a shot and decided to keep going! It is a completely original story built on top of Pokemon FireRed. It has tons of quality of life improvements and options, and like 7 generations of Pokemon to catch. I have played it for 10 hours somehow and I’m on my way to the 3rd gym.
• Final Fantasy VI just made a surprising comeback. After losing my save file years ago, I had started the game a few months ago and played it for a bit over 2 hours, then forgot it until recently. I played 4 hours of this game once again and I am having a lot of fun. I remember some bits of the story and I was worried they wouldn’t hit the same, but honestly this game still managed to get me engaged with the plot and the characters. I am having fun!
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is yet another game that I returned to after not playing it since last year, this game is so fun and I decided to just do some more quests on it and advance a bit of the story. Some new plot moments are happening and I’m starting to see why people like this so much.
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was kind of lost for a couple of weeks for me, but I still managed to play 3 hours in a day and also in short bursts later on. I have been exploring a lot of the world map after beating a boss that is basically telling me to explore every corner, so I shall keep doing it!
• Minecraft is still a joy to play in 2024, and a server I maintain for friends got new life after another member joined. We play on and off from time to time and July was a big month with lots of activity. We had our first encounter with the Warden and it was complete madness. We died and we didn’t beat it, but we managed to escape with our items!
• Hyper Light Drifter is beautiful, but I kinda forgot about it for months. Thankfully a friend of mine came over and we continued the journey in local multiplayer for like 3 hours. It was fantastic, we found a lot of secrets and found bosses to fight against. I think I’ll still take my time with it for another bit though.

Device usage

My phone usage ramped up a bit, and my laptop usage was not as high as before. I didn’t read of use my Miyoo Mini Plus as much, and the RG35XX SP does not track activity time on it, so here’s what I got.

Phone usage

I used my phone for 190 hours.

• YouTube for 39 hours
• Discord for 32 hours
• WhatsApp for 19 hours
• Tusky for 18 hours
• Facebook for 17 hours
• Signal for 11 hours
• Firefox for 7 hours
• Mihon for 5 hours

Laptop Usage

I used my laptop for 53 hours.

• Firefox for 37 hours
• Minecraft for 3 hours
• Alacritty for 2 hours

Final thoughts

This month I did a lot of stuff where I didn’t use a device quite a bit. For example I swapped the shell of my PSP in about 4 hours, and I played soccer a couple of times during the weekend with friends, I even rode a stationary bike we’ve had since forever while watching Hajime no Ippo. So I was quite satisfied with everything I did this month, except I didn’t read or write as much, hopefully August changes that!

This is day 64 of #100DaysToOffload

Podcasts

• Stuff You Should Know: I listened to a TON of episodes, literally like 12 episodes that came out this month. This is such an interesting Podcast and the host are really nice, I can sleep to it, or just have it in the background. I wish they had a Patreon or something without ads because that’s the only annoyance here.
• Dungeons and Daddies: The 3rd season of the show just began and it is going great so far, it is a completely different adventure very separate from the previous two seasons, and that’s great. I am liking it quite a bit.
• Relatos de la Noche: This is a horror podcast in Spanish, but there’s actually an English version now with the same host! It’s called Tales of the Night, give it a listen! It’s pretty good.
• Into The Aether: The main hosts of the show went on vacation for a bit, returned for the Nintendo Direct and then vanished for another bit, but the special episodes with guests have been awesome.
• Trash Taste: Back again with the boys, their episode on the most popular games of all time was unhinged.

Manga

• Monster: Masterpiece, I completed this and it was fantastic, the intrigue, the mystery, the climax. This is something you should give a read to, or watch the anime! Even if you hate anime or manga and their tropes, you should give this a go. Completely unique psychological thriller, it’s really worth it.
• Dandadan: With the upcoming anime of this manga where both the paranormal and alien invasions exist, I decided to keep reading this and yes, it keeps getting crazy, the panelling and the action here is great fun, and the story just keeps getting weirder and crazier but in a fun way. This is the total opposite of Monster, but it’s still good.
• Blue Lock: I went back to this sports manga and it is just, unhinged. Crazy moments and panels just keep coming and the stakes get higher, everything for the sake of scoring a goal! Honestly kind of ridiculous moments but the hype is still real despite it all.

Anime

• Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End: The first season of this anime was finished by me and my sister. This is one of the most beautiful pieces of media I’ve seen in a while. This is a fantasy anime that gracefully deals with the common tropes that plague the genre. It is a wonderful story with amazing animation and incredible tought provoking moments. If you are confortable with silence, and contemplating the beauty of your existence, give this a go.

• Mob Psycho 100: I introduced my sister to this anime and it still rocks.

Movies & Shows

• Inside Out 2: The sequel is here, and it didn’t disappoint at all! I quite liked this movie, it is not as tight as the first one, despite the short runtime, but it’s still a fun time.

• The Acolyte: The new Star Wars show in the block. Not as bad as I’ve heard but not as good as some say, I think. The directing is weird, the cuts are strange, but the intrigue is there and the plot is kinda moving, so far I’ve watched 4 episodes and I plan to keep going, so yeah, good enough so far.

Games

Here’s where the fun begins once again! Since I got a Miyoo Mini Plus I have kept playing a lot of stuff.

• Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga: I finished this game after actual years of starting and leaving over and over again. I am so glad I finally started this and got it done, it was a great game and a fantastic entry to the RPG genre.
• Metroid Zero Mission: I got this done in a bit over 4 hours and it was great, this is not the first time I complete it but it felt great to know my way around it and just know how to move and stuff. Despite it, I still forgot some things and figuring my way around things was awesome as well.
• Kirby’s Dream Land: This was a short game, the first Kirby game ever, and it definitely has all of what would turn the franchise into the success it is. It’s short and sweet, worth a playthrough!
• Final Fantasy VII: I managed to move my save file from my PSP to my Miyoo Mini Plus, and it has been a fantastic way to return to it. I am finally making progress again, and it’s awesome! I just got out of Rocket Town and just exploring around.
• Pokemon Unbound: After getting the Anbernic RG35XX SP, I decided to also try playing Pokemon once again! It’s been quite fun, and it’s a great game for the bus rides. The clamshell form factor is truly nostalgic for me.

Device Usage

Alright so here is what I’ve spent my time on!

Laptop

My laptop was used for 55 hours

• Firefox for 44 hours
• Alacritty for 3 hours

Phone

My phone was used for like 166 hours

• Facebook Lite for 32 hours (idk what happened I’m sorry)
• WhatsApp for 21 hours (idk what happened I’m sorry)
• Tusky for 16 hours
• Discord for 16 hours
• YouTube for 14 hours
• Signal for 10 hours
• Tubular for 9 hours

Finishing Thoughts

That was a lot of stuff, I somehow used Facebook more this month as well, rather strange I gotta say.

Anyway, this is it!

This is day 60 of #100DaysToOffload.

I listened to 93 hours of Podcasts this month, the usual subjects to be honest but also some surprises!

• Into The Aether: I’ve followed this podcast for a while, and I’ve been active on their discord server for a bit, which also has made me not want to miss out on the episodes to take part of the conversation, a bit of a vicious cycle is forming, but it remains fun as always!

• Eye of The Duck: I listened to some great episodes here, these are not movie reviews, they are more like mini documentaries where they also talk about the most important scene of the film for them. I listened to their episodes on Deep Impact, Spider-Man 2, Gravity and others.

• Dungeons and Daddies: Finally finished this show, season 2 was good and had great moments but I think I still prefer season 1, it felt more cohesive and the stakes were also bigger in my opinion. I admit I didn’t pay as much attention to this season though, I often got distracted or didn’t listen to full episodes in one go.

• The Rest is History: This was a new addition I saw in someone’s AntennPodEcho, and I listened to their 5 episodes series about the Titanic and they completely won me over, I’ve listened to other series of them and I quite enjoy this new discovery!

• Casefile True Crime: This is also a new addition, a rather minimal and very easy to sleep to true crime podcast with a great host (with a good voice), I’ve only listened to a couple episodes on repeat to sleep lol.

Books

This month I managed to read quite a bit more books, and I am quite happy about that. You have already seen some reviews of these that you can check in this site.

• Dune: This was a wonderful read that reinvigorated my desire to keep reading alongside my newly acquired Kobo. It was a fantastic journey, you can read my review here
• The Palace of Eternity: Another great read, which had quite a unique premise and great worldbuilding, it is quite impossible to predict how the plot unfolds, and it just happens so naturally, very engaging.
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles: My first book from Agatha Christie, did not dissapoint, I really enjoyed it and right when I thought I knew who it was, everything changed at every turn. I read along with @isa and we had a blast.
• The Machine Stops: This is a short story that is truly ahead of its time, it was a quite a fascinating—and somewhat horrifying—read which is hard to belive is more than a century old. It is a dystopia where all of Humanity’s needs are now taken care of by The Machine, it encompasses so much in just a few pages, completely worth a read.

Games

• A Short Hike: A cute and small open world game that offers a lot of entertaining side quests and funny dialogues to enjoy life and keep trying!
• Inside: An atmospheric puzzle platformer with great sound design and fantastic mechanics, it was quite challenging but satisfying.
• I Was A Teenage Exocolonist: A roleplaying visual novel where I’m living the life of a little kid who will grow up in the first human exocolony, I make choices, there’s some weird mystery going on and I’ll play it and finish it this month hopefully.
• Hades: I fell of this game on March, but I did a couple more runs this time and it is definitely fun. I just have so many other things going on right now I can’t quite focus on it more.
• God Of War: Chains of Olympus: I gave this PSP title a go once more, it is more challenging than I remember, but the fights are fun and sometimes I just get in the zone and blast through everyone, kind of like Hades but with cooler moves that I wish Hades’ sequel has.
• Balatro: Oh Balatro, fun and still impossible to beat for me! But maybe May is the month I’ll finally win.
• Worms W.M.D.: I got this game and played it with my friends over and over during the weekends, it is super funny and quite simple to get into, even if half my the time we keep shooting missiles to themselves.

Movies

• Spy x Family Code:White: Just a really fun movie to watch from the Spy x Family anime, you don’t need to watch it to understand the plot here. There’s tons of fun, tons of action and some really wholesome moments. I enjoyed it a lot with my family at the movies. It won’t win any prizes, but it was a good time.

Manga

• Just Listen to the Song: This is a one-shot that is just about not thinking too much about the meaning of the art one might create sometimes, it is fun and I don’t want to think much about it.
• Monster: I didn’t manage to finish this manga because I was too busy reading books, but its going and just, more things pop up, it is great.
• One Punch Man: I decided to go back to OPM for a bit and catch up, it is really fun and some intrigue for a new arc is getting closer, some new fights have happened which were cool.
• Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End: Because of the anime, which I am watching, I decided to catch up on the Manga as well, there’s a lot of good stuff waiting to happen on screen! Can’t wait!
• DanDaDan: Just a few chapters of this one again, an anime is coming out so I am trying to catch up to this once more, it is getting quite interesting too, but this one is always kind of insane.
• Elfen Lied: This was a manga I saw recommended a while ago, it was more gory and dark and yet somehow trying to be cute and a bit of a romance? I don’t think I’ll keep reading. But maybe I’ll change my mind one day.

Anime & TV Shows

• Spy x Family Season 2: In preparation for the movie, we decided to watch Season 2 of this anime. It was hilarious and enjoyable, but the main mission was put aside, which is a bit strange, however I already knew since I read the manga, and I don’t really think it is that needed. Just some slice of life goodness is ok.
• Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End: I have watched half the season so far with my sister, this show is beautiful, simply fantastic, I love it so much. The manga was a masterpiece already, and this is somehow above it.
• Young Sheldon: Just a comedy show to watch during dinner with my family, it is funnier than I expected! Kinda reminiscent to Malcom in the Middle, but the family interactions are so different that its just its own thing, and it works for us.

Device Usage

So, now for how my device usage went in April…

Android

I used my phone for 198 hours

• YouTube for 52 hours—again with the addiction, ugh.
• Tusky for 32 hours—at least its a good addiction.
• Discord for 17 hours—not as great but still fun.
• WhatsApp for 16 hours—actually surprised about this one.
• Cromite for 14 hours—visited a lot of blogs this time.
• Signal for 13 hours—talk to me pls.

Laptop

I used my laptop for a total of 60 hours

• Firefox for 40 hours.
• Alacritty for 9 hours.
• GIMP for 5 hours.
• Discord for 3 hours.
• Signal for 1 hour.
• Inkscape for 3 hours.

E-Reader

I read 1090 pages in the span of 19 hours

• The Machine Stops in 1:21 hours.
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 6:40 hours.
• The Palace of Eternity for 5:20 hours.
• Dune for 5:55 hours.

Finishing thoughts

So, quite a lot of media was consumed during April, I am quite happy about that.

This month might be much less varied, but that’s because I am taking part in #WeblogPoMo2024, where I’ll be writing one post per day! so this is my first post for the challenge, if you decide to join, please let me know!

And, this is day 33 of #100DaysToOffload

Podcasts

• Sir Khan: I’ve been getting back into Warhammer 40K lore and this Spanish podcast is just great, pure narrative and epic moments!
• Trash Taste: I listened to some great episodes that were quite fun. The one about conspiracy theories was hilarious.
• Relatos de la Noche: Horror stories narrated in Spanish, great voice and no ad reads in the middle make this good enough for me.
• CALLISTO: This was a short science fiction psychological horror drama that took me by surprise, I wish it was longer—it only has three episodes—but it was enjoyable and intriguing nonetheless.

Manga

In Progress

• Monster: I am very close to the end of this Manga and it just keeps getting more and more convoluted in a wonderful way, everything is coming together and flashbacks are bringing answers, and creating new questions. I hope the ending delivers, because this mystery is one of the best I’ve read.
• Komi Can’t Communicate: Just read a few chapters for this, but they were more extras rather than actual plot, I hope more happens next.
• Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End: After watching the anime I decided to catch up on the Manga too, and it is still absolutely great!
• Dandadan: After the anime trailer came out I decided to catch up on the Manga too, and it is still absolutely great!

Finished

• Remina: This was a Junji Ito story, science fiction horror end of the world story about a wandering planet getting closer and closer to Earth, the mass hysteria and the fight for survival, and the absolutely insane last couple of chapters made this a really interesting read.

Anime

• Uncle From Another World: This was quite a funny anime that has a bunch of isekai tropes, except that the character is a grown up adult and he just finished his journey and came back to reality. So, his nephew decides to turn him into a YouTuber. It was so funny I finished it in a day.

• Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End: I watched the first 5 episodes and I ended up crying a couple of times, this is a beautifully done rendition that improves on the original material quite gracefully, I will keep watching.

• Gurren Lagann: I watched a couple more episodes of this one, it is still fun mecha battles and some interesting plotpoints just happened, gotta watch more.

Books

In progress

• Dune: I started reading this after Dune Part Two came out, I am at 69% of the story and I am loving it quite a lot, it really is as good as people say.
• The Palace of Eternity: I saw another YouTuber recommending this sci-fi space opera and I decided to read it alongside Dune, I was actually impressed by it and I hope I finish it soon.

Finished

• The Undefeated: I was looking for something short to read and this came up, it was quite an interesting story that didn’t quite feel like sci-fi in anything but background setting. More of a memoir, but good.
• Tender is The Flesh: A dystopia where animal meat cannot be ingested and cannibalism becomes accepted in society. It is more of a character driven story, and all the characters are kind of despicable, discretion is adviced.

Movies

• Dune: Part Two: Absolutely fantastical movie, a must watch! I found it much better than the first part. The score, the cinematography, the color and everything was incredible. I liked it a lot.
• Kung Fu Panda 4: This was much better than I expected, but not better than the first two. I think it was rather short, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Po actually learned something instea
• Damsel: This was a Netflix movie that was picked at random, Millie Bobby Brown is on everything these days huh, good for her! The story was rather interesting, and darker than I expected. A princess tale turned nightmare.
• The Lion King: A true classic we watched as a family early on the month, still a masterpiece.

Device Usage

Laptop

I used my laptop for 90 hours total

• Firefox for 67 hours
• Alacritty for 14 hours
• Gimp for 3 hours
• Calibre for 2 hours

Phone

I used my phone for 180 hours total

• YouTube for 50 hours
• WhatsApp for 26 hours
• Tusky for 22 hours
• Cromite for 16 hours
• Librera for 9 hours
• Bible for 8 hours
• Mihon for 5 hours
• Discord for 5 hours
• Signal for 5 hours

E-Reader

I got an ereader recently, and here are my current stats so far, fetched from KOReader.

I’ve read a total of 1647 pages in the span of 23 hours

• Dune Read for 16:04 hours
• The Palace of Eternity for 3:17 hours
• The Undefeated for 2:18 hours

So yeah, a bunch of stuff! I hope you found some interesting stuff to check for yourself! I hope you had a good month too!

This is day 25 of #100DaysToOffload

Books

• Out Of The Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis. I finished this book and I was quite fond of it. I am eager to read the sequel, but I also want to try a lot of different books this year, so we’ll see.

Movies

• Howl’s Moving Castle: This was a nice Ghibli movie I wanted to watch for a while, it was a pretty great movie with awesome animation.
• Concrete Utopia: A korean movie I watched at the cinema and I found it quite entertaining. Post-apocalyptic world where a single apartments building remains standing and society around it tries to survive.

Podcasts

• The Vergecast: Listened to quite a bit of episodes about OpenAI, Apple Vision Pro and other recent things going on.
• Pretending to be People: I listened to a few episodes of this Real Time Roleplay podcast, which does not use D&D mechanics and is kind of interesting! Murder case story.
• SCP: Find Us Alive: This is a radio transmission from an SCP base stuck in a pocket dimension. Super interesting sci-fi audio show.
• Radio Rental: Just real life stories of bizarre events and weird things that happened to people, with a fantastic presentation, maybe a meta-narrative? Still need to listen more.
• The Ten Minute Bible Hour: I listened to a bunch of episodes, studying Matthew still. Interesting stuff and points of view regarding the Scriptures.
• Relatos de la Noche: Just horror stories I somehow sleep to before sleep, in Spanish, good stuff, the host has a nice voice to sleep to.

Manga

• Monster: Read chapters 77 to 96
• Kingdom: Read chapters 776 to 782
• Sakamoto Days: I only read one chapter

Anime

• Solo Leveling: I started watching this anime based on one of the first manhuas I ever read, so far, so good! But I haven’t catched up to it. Should give Frieren a watch…

Videogames

• Balatro: New roguelike poker game. Insanely addicting, actually great, epic, a must.
• Yoshi’s Island: A classic platformer that holds up really really well to this day.
• Lumines: Super addicting game I’ve mentioned before.
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: I managed to beat another Ganon and unlocked Mipha’s healing ability. Did some shrines.

Device Usage

Laptop

I used my laptop for a total of 62 hours

• Firefox for 35 hours
• Alacritty for 17 hours
• GIMP for 6 hours
• Inkscape for 1 hour

Phone

I used my phone for a total of 197 hours.

• Tusky for 39 hours
• WhatsApp for 29 hours
• YouTube for 22 hours
• Cromite for 16 hours
• Bible for 9 hours
• Facebook for 9 hours
• Signal for 6 hours
• K-9 Mail for 5 hours

Finishing Up

Again, I am sorry for the delay posting this! I know you guys really wanted to know how what I did this month. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen again next month! Had a lot of things.

This is day 20 of #100DaysToOffload

Anyway, here’s what I did during the month of January!

Books

• Out of The Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis. Still in progress, a fantasy disguised as science fiction, liking it a lot! The age of it feels a bit more, not in the concepts but the writing, the way some things are described are fairly alien to me, but I guess it makes sense since it happens in a different planet.
• Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, truly thought provoking, you can read my review of it too! I was very impressed by the ideas showcased in it the whole way through, glad to have gone blind into it.
• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, absolutely great book! Wrote a review here. I think I would have liked it a lot more if it wasn’t because the main plot twists were spoiled by the not so good movie. Still really enjoyable.

Movies

• Godzilla Minus One: This was the movie that got me started this year, I paid to bring my family to watch it. It was absolutely beautiful, stunning. The acting, the plot, the sountrack, the effects, the concepts, the meaning behind it all. This movie was insanely good and you must go watch it. That atomic breath scene literally made me cry.
• Shin Godzilla: This is not just another Godzilla movie, I’ve known about Shin Godzilla for ages but I didn’t really bother watching it until now. I am satisfied with it, the style is a lot different to Minus One’s, but I still had a really good time with it.
• Godzilla vs Kong: I mean, this is just fun. The fights and the effects are awesome, as well as the sound design, not much makes sense about the story, and the cinematography is a bit weird sometimes, but its enjoyable nonetheless.
• Spectre: We watched this James Bond movie out of nowhere and it managed to keep me watching it, it had been a while since I just watched a good old spy thriller and this one wasn’t half bad. Not a masterpiece, kinda wanna watch the other Bond movies now.

Podcasts

• Into The Aether: I kind of started listening to this podcast almost as episodes come out, its actually kind of fun to interact in the Discord server about whatever happened in each episode, I’ve discovered some games that I actually want to play! Because they’re older games and romhacks, fun!
• Pretending to be People: This is a podcast kind of like Dungeons and Daddies but using different game mechanics, I forgot the name of them but anyway, it is a bit of a murder mystery story and I am liking it quite a bit so far!
• Retro Game Time Machine: Still liking this podcast a lot! Just good old game reviews and a bit of a look back at what was going on back when it came out.
• Revolutions: The French revolution is coming to an end and I think I’ll keep listening to whatever’s next, very good stuff as always.

Manga

• Monster: Ever since Tachiyomi stopped being supported I kind of stopped reading manga, but I have read a couple of chapters of Monster this month, not much else though.

Videogames

• Lumines: I am addicted, this game is so fun. I think I’ve played for 15 hours or something and I am still trying to beat my record, it is beautifully simple, and the music is great too. I played on my PSP initially but I ended up also buying it for Switch, still play on both though, since the PSP is better for work commutes.

• Triangle Strategy: This is a tactics rpg that I wish I could’ve played more, I like its art and story, as well as the gameplay, but it feels too important to just play while doing something else, so I have not dedicated as much time to it.

• Limbo: This is the first game I finished this year, I wrote a review for it here
• Ori and the Blind Forest: This is the second game I finished, a beautiful Metroidvania that I loved a lot. Wrote a review here
• Ember Knights: This is a roguelite that I’ve been playing with my friends on the weekends, super fun although a little laggy on Switch. It plays a lot like Hades and its quite addicting.
• Ultimate Chicken Horse: A fantastic party game that I’ve played with friends on Weekends, its great fun for pros and noobs alike.
• Super Mario Bros Wonder: I got this game and have played it a bit with my friends, but I need to give it more time too.
• Final Fantasy IV: I got the ship that will lead me to the moon and then maybe I’ll finish this game once and for all.

Device Usage

Laptop

I used my laptop for 57 hours

• Firefox for 38 hours
• Alactitty for 8 hours
• GIMP for 8 hours
• Inkscape for 1 hour

Phone

I used my phone for 211 hours

• Youtube for 52 hours
• WhatsApp for 46 hours
• Tusky for 21 hours
• Librera for 15 hours
• Cromite for 12 hours
• Discord for 12 hours
• Signal for 7 hours
• Facebook for 6 hours
• Bible for 4 hours

This is day 9 of #100DaysToOffload