• 🎨 Modified my website design, just a bit! I created a new background wallpaper pattern featuring icons of game consoles, videogames, hobbies and the like. I also went back to a Serif font, which would be Domine. The corners are also rounded again, in case you didn’t notice. I felt like changing things just a bit.

• 🌕 I watched the splashdown of the Integrity on YouTube alongside my sister, honestly the whole thing has made me feel so happy. To think we are going back to the moon and see it in my lifetime. There’s so much going on in this world, looking at the vastness of space is less overwhelming, awesome stuff.

• ✍️ Particularly happy with my review of Resident Evil, it’s more of a retrospective on the game than just the usual review I do. It ended up being my longest post from recent years. What a game!

• 📕 My XTEINK X4 saw a lot of use this week, and even some abuse because I left it on my back pocket and sat on it like three times. I am happy to say that it has managed to survive very well through those challenges, yay!

• ✉️ Got a couple of nice emails from people lately! And I am happy to have made a few new connections and friendships lately with some people from the web. Turns out that humans are still out there!

• 🃏 At first I thought that Coup—the card game I bought a week ago—wouldn’t work out, since the few times we played it was rather stale. However, the full friend group finally returned from vacation on Sunday and we decided to give it another go. It was a total success! Trust issues ensue!

• 😐 To make matters worse, I also bought Liar’s Uno, which is Uno with some bluffing elements. We don’t play it yet, but I am looking forward to see how things go, will report back!

• 🍿 Went to the movies once more to watch the Super Mario Galaxy Movie, this time the place was much more accomodating for my grandma, so we had no issue getting higher up in the rows!

• 🛍️ There was another shopping spree at the mall after the movie. I got some new shirts. I also purchased a Hot Wheels of Yoshi from Mario Kart! I only have Toad and Yoshi, but they are the only ones I play as in the game, so my collection is complete.

• 🧱 At the same time, a friend of mine was shopping elsewhere and saw the Lego set of Ocarina of Time’s Final Battle, which I almost bought last week. I ended up asking him to get it for me and well, now I have quite a project to build, at some point…

Watching

Completed

• The Super Mario Galaxy Movie - I found this to be an enjoyable trip of nostalgia and wonder! I don’t think there’s a lot of depth to it, but I had fun and couldn’t help but look at all the references here! I am also extremely tempted to start Super Mario Galaxy already…

• Malcom in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair - Malcom in the Middle is literally my favorite sitcom of all time. I was afraid this special would ruin it all. But it did the opposite. I absolutely loved my time here, the new characters and dynamics and all. The comedy hit just right and the fact that the original voice actors for the Latino dub returned brought me a lot of joy. There’s maybe a couple who changed—I didn’t look it up—but the essence is right there, it was good to see these characters again.

Ongoing

• Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3 - My sister wanted to watch this with me! And we got to eight episodes. It remains kinda confusing—reading the manga didn’t help—and with a bit too much exposition at first. However, now that we are int The Culling Game, the action and character interactions took over, and I have had a lot of fun! Will definitely keep watching.

• Gurren Lagann - I started this anime ages ago, but kind of stopped by episode 12 for some reason, I rewatched a few of those episodes and decided to resume it! It’s a crazy Mecha anime with very over the top animation.

Gaming

• Terranigma - I returned to this gem for a bit and completed the fourth tower, there’s one tower left, and I also want to find the two secret areas of the underworld!

• Balatro - I continue to fail at this regularly and trying again.

Reading

Completed

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

Ongoing

• Fly Me To The Moon - Up to chapter 245. Just the usual cute and fun rom-com. Although there’s a bit of thrill recently with a secret that could be unveiled and change the dynamics a bit yet again. Just enjoying the ride!

• Blue Lock - Up to chapter 342. The match has been tied, and the changes within the Blue Lock them can be felt! This match againsnt France has been a fun arc so far.

• Kingdom - Up to chapter 871. Fully catched up now, awesome stuff as always. It’s never too late to start this manga y’all.

Words I looked up

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

• Trellis
• Lichen
• Peristalsis
• Pine (verb)
• Annelid
• Ebb

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

Around the web

Blogposts

• Finding My Way Back - I am so glad to see Jedda once more on my RSS feed and on the fediverse as well. I’ve missed her and perhaps some of my readers too!

• visions of an embodied internet - Perhaps I’ll write another blogposts by hand with my fountain pen and snail mail it to you. Or I won’t, because I’m lazy and my country’s mailing service is terrible.

• Disparaging Nouns - This is such a funny post. I can relate, as a native Spanish speaker, the same thing happens between Spain, México and other countries in South America.

• What I Write With: 3 Cheap Fountain Pens, and a Mechanical Pencil From the 1970s - Need I say more?

YouTube

• Inkscape Tutorial: How to Make a Repeating Pattern - This is the tutorial I followed for my website’s wallpaper pattern, it worked!

• Gaten Matarazzo’s most underrated Legend of Zelda game / Shelf Quest - I didn’t know this series was a thing, but this video with the actor that played Dustin in Stranger Tings simply walking through a retro gaming store was awesomeee.

• Could an Average Human Beat the Great Plateau in BOTW? - This is such a genius premise and so silly at the same time. How would a human do inside a videogame?

• A First Timer’s Honest Review of Ocarina of Time - This was a wonderful video where someone played Ocarina of Time for the first time and loved it. Therefore I loved the video too.

• Balatro, But Every Ante The Player Swaps… - Believe it or not, I had never seen a playthrough of Balatro from start to finish, much less by multiple people in one video. It was definitely fun.

• How Pre-Rendered Backgrounds Defined Early 3D Gaming - This was a wonderful essay on the history of prerrendered backgrounds, which are prevalent on Resident Evil, but kind of defined a whole generation of games. Good video.

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

• ✈️ My siblings came here! There were a lot of things I did that I mention here, which happened with them around. It was a fun time, but I also quickly remembered that being the older brother comes with its caveats… let’s say my wallet feels very light right now, but it was fun!

• 🥤I went to the gym on Monday! after I left, I realized I forgot my water bottle… I was already on the bus back home so, I had to wait until tomorrow. I called a coworker who was still there, but he couldn’t find it. The next morning, the first thing I did was ask at the reception—my bottle was nowhere to be found. The next day, my siblings went to the gym with me, and even though I had already given up, they still asked, and wouldn’t you know, the bottle was right there! So, yay!

• 🚗 The first day of my Easter vacation was spent on… goint to a small town to get new plates for the family car, for like 6 hours. There was a store nearby and we got some snacks, I took a couple pictures in the main plaza downtown, so that was fun. I also played a lot of Resident Evil.

• 🍔 Once we got out of that place, we went back to civilization and ate some burgers! The usual chain here is Burguer King, and we enjoyed them very much.

• 🧱 I created a new background pattern for my website! You can see it on any page as long as it’s on desktop, currently unavailable on mobile due to screen size. Hope you like it! I plan to make it better later

• 🍿 Invited my family to watch a movie to the cinemas, which were pretty close (we were at a mall), and ended up watching Project Hail Mary. It was very fun because the place was packed full of people because of the release of the Super Mario Galaxy movie… we’ll watch that one later. We went with my grandma and kinda didn’t realize there was no ramp for her wheelchair. However, she sat on the first row along my parents, and nobody had reserved those seats, so there was no problem!

• 🃏 We acquired and played a new card game! Coup, a bluffing game where you eliminate all of your opponents until someone takes over and controls the whole political landscape!

• 🎂 We had a surprise party for a friend and spent sometime decorating their place before they got there. We also had pizza!

• ✝️ My church organized a hospital visit, we made food and gave water bottles for the people who were waiting outside, we prayed for them and the patients in need as well.

Watching

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

Reading

• To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers - A novella I suddenly started, about a group of astronauts sending a message back to Earth, or something like that. I actually don’t know much yet, haven’t made a lot of progress.

• Clarkesworld #211 by Neil Clarke - I completed the second story of the book! It was much longer than the first one, but I actually really, really enjoyed it, it got to the heart strings for a bit, what a nice short story. The next entry is a novella, so I’ll need to focus on it some more.

• Fly Me To The Moon - Up to chapter 229. I continued with this slice of life rom-com! It keeps being fun and adorable! While building up and answering some mysteries little by little. Good stuff!

• Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou - Up to chapter 70. I made the decision to read 4 or so chapters of this masterpiece, and they were absolutely lovely. Alpha continues on her journey through Japan, and stumbles upon an airport, where she gets to see a plane up close for the first time, and even more surprises. Absolutely lovely.

• Kingdom - Up to chapter 867. Still making progress on the war at large, with a side-character stepping up to the role of getting some allies out of trouble, I’m looking forward to know how thigs will fare.

Gaming

Completed

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

Ongoing

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

Around the Web

Blog posts

• Do You Have the Time? - A post and ramble about how buying simple things that were available in physical stores before has been ruined by Amazon, instant shipping and the like.

• I Miss My Hometown - A trip down RL Dane’s memory lane, and a wonderful conclusion.

• Early Efforts in Sticker Making - A fun project that makes me want to buy one of those sticker cutting machines.

• That’s Home. That’s us. - I had not seen Hello, World until today, it made me feel something I didn’t know I could sense. What a photo, what a post.

YouTube

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

This is day 46 of #100DaysToOffload

• 🎨 Having way too much fun editing and creating wallpapers based on manga panels for my Xteink X4 e-reader. There are a lot of tools out there to make the task easier as well, but I created a lot of them with old school GIMP too.

• 🚌 Missed the bus to work once and had to take a detour to get a ride for it, it was a fun little adventure but I got there in time, not much else to say.

• 🧑‍💻 Did a bunch of small changes to my website that make things very fun! Feel free to check the blogpost I wrote about it.

• ✍️ Kept up with my cursive writing while taking notes at church and other small things like that.

• ✈️ My siblings who study on a different city are now here due to the Easter vacation! There are a lot of plans aheads of us!

• 🍜 Went to have dinner out again, this time to a korean restaurant! I enjoyed my time once more, but my sister did not like her food at all and there was a bit of a scene with the manager and such. That was kind of a mess but we didn’t have to pay for the meal in the end.

• 🐈 During the weekend I played a couple of rounds of Exploding Kittens with friends! We ran out of steam rather quickly though.

• 🃏 For some reason, the soundtrack for Balatro is not available on Bandcamp, so I bought it from Steam instead.

• 🎮 I also made the mistake of buying Balatro for my phone… oh no…

• ✝ I started a Bible reading plan, it’s been a while since I last tried this but, it should be interesting! I am following the chronological plan in a year from The Bible Recap.

Reading

Completed

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

• Chainsaw Man - This story is officially over, and wow, definitely a way to end the series… Serious, what in the world is this?

Ongoing

• Strange Dogs - I have to admit, I only read like three more pages of this and then got distracted by other things, whoops.

• Fly Me To The Moon - Up to chapter 173. After many months, maybe years, I finally returned to this rom-com manga, and I’m happy to say it holds up. A few dozen chapters ago an incredible plot twist and reveal happened that altered the dynamic for a bit, and now things are going back to a new normal! I really find this to be a very cozy and funny slice-of-life series, I will probably keep reading it until I catch up.

• Kagurabachi - Up to chapter 115. Speaking of which… I catched up to this one. What an epic journey it has been thus far. Definitely one of the best action manga series to read, I highly recommend it.

Started

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

Gaming

Started

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

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

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

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

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

Ongoing

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

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

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

Around the Web

Blog posts

• Please Compensate The Work You Appreciate - This has been a struggle for me as well. I’ve been buying and supporting artists, developers, creators and the like much more during these past few years, but it’s still not the normal in my culture and country.

• Old School Questions - A fun questions challenge that I am inclined to participate in at some point this week.

• Initial thoughts on the tiny XTEINK X4 ereader - Oh look, more and more people buying this tiny ereader and writing about it. Epic stuff.

• Sobre afeitado - This post is in Spanish. I really enjoyed reading about Adrian’s journey with shaving, I’ve been using double-edged safety razors for years at this point, it’s really a joy, I should write a bit about it too.

• New house, new blog, new me - I like to see posts from people who show up after months on hiatus!

• Back on a static site?! - I like to see posts from people who show up after months on hiatus!

YouTube

• The Long Hiatus of a Game Franchise - A great video essay from Scott, the title is self-explanatory, there’s a lot of Mega Man talk which is always nice.

• Overrated Game Consoles - Another essay with a very self-explanatory title. I just love Scott’s humor and takes in general, what can I say?

• How We Ported Balatro to the GBA - This is some incredible work! I kind of want to give it a spin.

This is day 43 of #100DaysToOffload

• 💻 Now that it’s over, it’s weird to think about all the work I did while my workmate was out. It sure was stressful and there were many times where I still felt like I should ask him what to do. These weeks proved to me that even though I’m still not the best, I can handle myself better than I thought—or stall things until he returns and knows what to do better lol.

• 💪 Gotta say I have not gone to the gym for a while, work has been a pain and I got phone calls off-hours, I just want to get home and be lazy for the rest of the day, and always ready just in case. Thankfully, I finally returned this Monday night and it was a good time.

• 📚 My XTEINK X4—a tiny e-ink reader—finally arrived, at the same time as Jeremy’s, both of us already installed the Crosspoint firmware too. I had some fun setting up wallpapers and optimizing my EPUBs for it!

• 🍜 Went to a Japanese restaurant with some friends over the weekend! We ate some ramen and had a wonderful time chatting and catching up with each other. We also played a couple of rounds of Garctic Phone, guaranteed fun for everyone.

• 📦 Another couple of Nintendo Switch game arrived. I got Gris earlier on, and Crow Country arrived later, the first because of the great experience Amin—and he keeps nagging me to play it—and the latter due to the marvelous experience I had with Resident Evil 2, I may play the original RE first though.

• 💾 Transferred a few games to my PSP, the What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord?! 2, Danganronpa, BlackRock Shooter, and Mega Man Powered Up!. I wish there was a Resident Evil game for PSP, it would have been so cool…

• 🎧 Purchased Gris: Unreleased sketches, a new album by Berlinist with early drafts of tracks from the game of the same name! It’s just 11 minutes long, but it’s wonderful.

Reading

Started

• 🕰️ Chrono Trigger by Michael P. Williams - I transferred a few books to my Xteink X4 reader and this was one of them. I already flew through 25% of it! A great book about Chrono Trigger, the author’s personal experience with it, and apparently there’s some interviews and more neat stuff coming up!

• 🛰️ Strange Dogs by James S.A. Corey - A novella taking place before the events of Persepolis Rising from The Expanse. It seems super promising so far.

Ongoing

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

Completed

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

Watching

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

Gaming

Ongoing

• 🥐 CrossCode - Last week I stared the first out of three dungeons in Chapter 8, I have now beath two of them and unlocked my way into the third one! The game keeps being simply awesome, the puzzles continue to get my brain muscles to work.

• 🍄 Super Mario 3D World - We have managed to complete all the levels and beat Bowser once more. We finally got to the last last stage and did a couple more levels! The end of this game is near, but we are still collecting all the stickers!

• ⚔️ Gladiator Begins - I only mentioned this in passing on a Gaming Recap from 2024, I can’t believe I never brought it up in other notes at all… In any case, it’s a great PSP arena fighter with kinda complex controls and depth. I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit, lots of customization and challenging fights.

• 🃏 Balatro - Literally one year later, this roguelike was opened on a whim by my friends on my Switch and we ended up playing for two hours. I wasn’t fully present during this time, but I played a few rounds here and there, it is still awesome.

Started

• 💀 What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!? 2 - A strange tower-defense/dungeon maker where I have to design a cave system that autopopulates with minions in charge of defending the bad guy. Depending of the shapes I dig, certain species grow, and then bigger and bigger ones that are stronger and more durable. Every once in a while “heroes” will show up to defeat me. The weird thing here is that I have no way to dictate where the minions go, I have to work within their movement patterns and plan accordingly, it’s rather interesting but I can’t figure it out yet and can’t get past World 2.

• 🧪 Metroid Fusion - I started it on a whim again, this time on my Miyoo Mini Flip. I reached the first boss of the game! Kind of want to fly through it just because it’s fun.

• 🚗 Ridge Racer Type 4 - Started it on my Miyoo Mini Flip too, I think I’ll stick with the PSP one though.

Around the Web

Blog posts

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

YouTube

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

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

• 🐉 My Land of Eem Deluxe Set arrived and it’s absolutely stunning. I spent some time of my weekend just flipping through the pages and having so much fun. Unfortunately we weren’t able to play this time around.

• 🎲 Backed up a TTRPG Kickstarter! Nimble RPG made the rounds on my TTRPG group of online friends, and I ended up backing the Kickstarter, I’ll hopefully get a physical set later in the year!

• 📦 A videogame pre-order arrived. My UFO 50 Deluxe edition from Fangamer, and it looks pretty awesome. I need to flip through the pages of that guide book one of these days.

• 🖋️ Practiced some more handwriting. After doing a one-page notebook, I’ve taken some more notes tegularly, still working on my cursive and general technique, it’s been rather refreshing but it’s also mostly short sentences. Yesterday’s blogpost was originally done by hand as well!

• 📕 Purchased an old book, a cheap paperback of Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke. As one of my favorite books, I thought it would be fitting to have it. I must admit I don’t really like the format and condition of it, so I may return it and get a different edition instead.

• ⌨️ Revamped and cleaned up my desk setup! I added a few things to it like my desk clock and made it tidier. I shared a picture on Mastodon in case you want to check it out!

• 🍕 Ate out a couple of times on the weekend. I had some burgers on Saturday, some pizza on Sunday, and overall really good food.

• 🎮 Had an online gaming session with a friend. I sent Naty a photo of the TV displaying a Switch game, which reminded her she hasn’t added me to her friends list on the console… A day later I had the day off and she wondered if we can play as Switch friends. She got an NSO trial and we played some NES Classics like Balloon Fight, Ice Climbers and the surprisingly deep River City Random which took over both of us!

• 👖 Updated my pants wardrobe after years of only really having not-great-looking jeans and very faded khaki pants, I thought it was time to just update my wardrobe and get rid of the rest—not throw away, my mom sells clothes at the flea market from time to time. I purchased four pairs, a new set of jeans, beige cargo pants, grey pants and light grey ones.

Reading

Completed

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

Started

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

Ongoing

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

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

Gaming

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around the Web

Blogposts

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

YouTube

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

This is day 36 of #100DaysToOffload

• 🌐 Went to another Indieweb Event! I actually brought up the topic of the new Mastodon share button there and even made my implementation on the fly. Also made a very short blogpost too to accompany it.

• 📦 Ordered (and returned) some phone cases. I was mildly interested on trying some cases that just protect the borders of the phone—I have a Nothing 3(a) by the way—so I found some metallic ones that I screw in place and such. Sadly, they are too bulky, and the smooth surface of the aluminum is too slippery for my liking. I returned it all going downtown to the post office!

• 🏷️ My first physical game was purchased… as I returned the phone cases, I actually picked up Pokémon Legends Z-A at a delivery center too… yeah. In a way I feel alright since it was cheap and I don’t mind. I am allowing myself one game a month after all.

• 📙 I purchased a physical book. I recently learned that Denis Villeneuve is working on a movie for Arthur C. Clarke’s novel, Redezvous with Rama after Michał revewed it, so I kind of wanted to get a copy for myself. I’ve been curious about visiting more of Clarke’s works, especially because Childhood’s End continues to be very present in my mind.

• 🥩 I went to a BBQ party! Some friends from church got together and we ate some good steak and sausages and the like. I also got a call from my siblings in the middle of it all, and we all had a good time chatting and enjoying the food, I was stuffed, but it was worth it.

• 🗺️ I found my Hollow Knight map! After a few weeks without success, I decided to check out every box in my physical Switch collection and finally, after opening up my Final Fantasy VII+VIII Twin Pack box, there it was! My Hollow Knight map was safe and sound and now it’s stored and flattened on a folder alongside my poster of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy.

• 🃏 Card games were played. We had a very nice match of Oh Hell! with my friends on Sunday! It had been a while but it’s still as fun as ever. We listened to the soundtrack of Plants vs Zombies while playing! after that we had a round of Spoons, and for that I put up the soundtrack of Q-UP, it was exhilarating.

• ✍️ I’m quite happy with my blogposts this week. I don’t often list or talk about the posts I do during the week—they are already there anyway—but I’m actually rather happy not just with the post, but the feedback and the conversations about them! So many suggestions for music on Bandcamp, inspiring some people to try and do a one-page notebook, etc!

Watching

• 🌎 Orb: On the Movements of the Earth - Watched up to episode 4. This anime takes place in the Middle Ages, when most of Humanity and the Catholic Church held the belief that Earth was the center of the universe. The rest is heresy and prohibited. We follow the journey of a young kid with a great future ahead of him, going to university at an early age to study theology. However, his love for astronomy will lead him to the heliocentric model and the search for truth, all to uncover the beauty of the space above. This is some top tier writing and plot, absolutely worth a watch I’d say. It deals with some complex topics rather interestingly, it almost made me cry already, so, beware.

Reading

Completed

• 👨‍🚀 Planetes by Makoto Yukimura. - This was absolutely wonderful to read. The art was incredible, the characters were so good. Filled with interesting dialogue, thought provoking moments, slice of life fun, and a lot of great hard science fiction concepts. I’ll probably have to write about this one on a separate post. I absolutely, highly recommend giving it a read.

• 🚀 Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey - I mentioned on my last weeknotes that I’d try to finish this book by “next week”, and well, It only took me a day to fly through 20 more chapters. This was a great read, and I already published my review for it so, just go there. TL;DR: Read the series already.

Started

• 🌳 Non-Stop by Brian W. Aldiss. - Read up to 32%. This is a book by the same author of Hothouse, one of my absolute favorites, with an incredible setting and world-building in a matter of pages. Such excellence can be glimpsed in this novel as well, which was his first published book. The premise seems quite interesting already, although it definitely has some dated elements showing through. Nothing too unusual for the 50s though. The premise seems to have been played up countless times today, but I am happy to have not experienced any of those, I really enjoy the execution here so far anyway.

• 🛸 Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo by Gege Akutami - Read up to chapter 2. This is a new entry into the Jujutsu Kaisen universe set decades after the events of the original run. The protagonists are the grandchildren of some of the sorcerers we know and love, and the premise revolves around an alien civilization that has come to Earth, and share the same powers as sorcerers do. Unlike JJK, Gege only does the writing here, and so far it has been awesome, the art by Yuji Iwasake is still great as well! Looking forward to the rest.

Ongoing

• ⚔️ Kingdom by Hara Yasuhisa - Read up up to ch. 864. These past couple of chapters have focused on a conflict between archers. It’s a small arc within the war, but it actually got me tearing up when I read it this week. These characters are awesome, but the weight of it all, the emotion, the writing. It’s simply incredible stuff, and I didn’t even remember these characters existed like 10 chapters ago.

Gaming

• 🥐 CrossCode - Continued to play through this game and some incredible revelations have been made. I completed the sixth and seventh chapters after playing for almost five hours. Had some epic boss fights, action sequences and parkour sections here, not to mention the storytelling and character development have been top notch thus far. There was a twist to the plot that was done super well, and I am really looking forward to see how the rest of the game continues. Really good stuff.

• 👾 Into The Breach - I have had the itch to return to a solid tactics game and I thought I should revisit Into The Breach. I played it for 3 hours in a day. This is such a great game that gets my head gears turning like nothing else. One wrong move and things are over, even though I have all the info I need for victory, my brain ain’t big enough.

• 🐾 Grapple Dog - Didn’t play very much, but I still progressed through a few more levels of this platformer. It’s fun to move around on and completing all the levels in full is fun, I could go for them again and try to speedrun them too, but I wanna finish the game first.

• 🗡️ Caves of Qud - I tried the tutorial and this one seems to be super duper deep. I want to give it a fair shake though, and see what it has to offer, but I only played it like 30 minutes, so I still have a lot to learn.

• 🥊 Super Smash Bros Ultimate - Had a super quick match of this one before we had to leave, maybe next weekend!

Around the Web

Blogposts

• Long Books Are Good For You - If you aren’t careful you will end up reading 500 pages in 3 days, or less.

• About my book notes - It’s always fun when Derek Sivers shares some thoughts about his book notetaking, or about anything at all. Except that I only read fiction and I don’t take notes for those.

• Handwriting a blog - I’ve done this before! and it’s pretty fun to see others doing it, I love the little drawings on the side too.

• Mailcall - Axxuy wrote about sending actual physical mail to people. Writing letters is something I’ve been interested on trying for a while. I already own a letter to a friend who sent me some stuff overseas… One day.

YouTube

• Wii Sports Resort - Intro - Move out of the way Final Fantasy VII! This is the best videogame opening sequence of all time. Just wow.
• I Built a Tiny E-Reader - This is a fun open source project! a super tiny e-ink screen reader that I actually kind of want to build.
• Playing around with my Xteink X4 and my experience was… Simple - This is a tiny cheap e-reader that seems to be forming a community around it. Sadly it seems KOReader will never run on it. Although its next iteration might.
• How to defeat the backlog - I watched this video while I was searching for my Hollow Knight map, digging through my 70+ physical Switch games.
• I Tried To Quit Spotify. It Cost $5,000 - It’s always cool to find the Innioasis Y1 in the wild! Well produced video too, but I disagreed with its conclusion a bit.

This is day 31 of #100DaysToOffload

Just some musings here for you guys to enjoy, check out the original posts as well, of course.

From 1Password to Apple Passwords

I find amusing how Apple has managed to win over so many tech enthusiasts over the years, such a curious phenomena, to have many people embracing its services despite all the caveats they have.

Of course, practicality is not to be dismissed, but I’m still baffled.

No single company actually cares that much about you, and the moment they see the opportunity, your data can be a bargain chip to keep you locked down, which is okay sometimes, until it isn’t anymore.

Think about how Google initially promised infinite storage for Google Photos and now it’s only 15GB shared with Google Drive unless you pay a subscription fee. Or about Apple itself making their current operating system inaccessible and impossible to understand to plenty of people who just don’t get their new glassy UI design.

In any case though, I guess that KeepassXC which I use today could do an oopsie too, and potentially lead to data loss of my password database…

So, yeah, backups are what matters, and I’m glad they’re being done here.

Steam Next Fest - February 2026

I wanted to write a similar post to this one myself, but I don’t think I am enough of a PC gamer for it—I also got extremely lazy. This event from Steam is quite insane, with lots of demos available to try out.

And what did I do instead? Play Peak, and watch videos about what demos are worth trying, without actually giving them a go.

Oh I’m also very happy that Alabaster Dawn shows up in here, that game looks like a masterpiece already and I’m dying to give it a go one day, it’s from the same people who made CrossCode so, it ought to be great.

Vampire Crawlers looks like absolute danger too, I am extremely thankful that it’s not available on mobile phones yet, because it really seems like the only thing that could rival Slice & Dice for me…

Liar, Liar Time on Fire

This is a post from a new blog I just started to follow and I already find it very very relatable. Aleem looks at screen usage, sees it is too high, and well, now he’s very worried about it and shall do a lot of things to try and fight back.

I am not one of those people that can say “I use my phone for a lot of productive things”, I kinda just read Manga, play Sliced & Dice, chat on Signal or Discord, and scroll Reddit or the Fediverse, maybe Podcasts too (AntennaPod for the win).

My screen time today as I write this is 6 hours, but I could easily reach 9 or 10 hours in days where I don’t read or write as much as I’ve done this time.

I vibe with this quote:

I want to make more deliberate choices about how I use my time. That seems much smarter than the phone claims to be. And perhaps in the silence the phone was trying to drown out, I’ll discover more human opportunities for wonder and joy.

iPod vs Smartphone - which lasts longer?

Andreas is back with some very whacky tech shenanigans. He replaced the battery of his iPod and decided it would be a fun idea to compare how it would fare against a modern smartphone.

I seriously can’t understand how is it that he thoughts a 650 mAh battery would be able to beat a modern smartphone with about 4000 mAh.

Like, this was clearly going to go one way as soon as Airplane Mode got enabled…

But hey, the experiment was really fun to read and I enjoyed the journey even if the destination would be clear as day.

I can only wonder why not do some sort of battery mod for the iPod while being at it? If the PSP can have battery mods I’m sure the iPod community has done plenty as well. It would be fun to try I think.

(The related Mastodon thread is very fun, btw)

A Ham Radio T-Shirt Design Contest

I have zero idea about ham radio, I know nothing about it. But the idea of designing a T-Shirt and the theme of the contest itself is actually very very interesting to me, the prompt is: “Signal from the Static.”

Father ominous, I must say.

I’m kinda inspired to try my hand at something, using Inkscape and messing around for a bit…

We’ll see how it goes! And hey, maybe some of you want to participate too?

Final thoughts

Here I am being grumpy about Apple devices taking over tech enthusiasts while at the same time I read and share two articles talking about Apple products, bleh.

This was fun! I just get to banter and talk whatever I want and maybe some of it clicks with you and maybe some of it is rather useless, but I was feeling like making a random stream of thoughts kind of post, and here it is! Enjoy.

This is day 26 of #100DaysToOffllad

Other than that, I’ll just leave you with the notes, I guess.

• 🌃 Because of the situation happening in my country, I really didn’t want to be outside once night time happened. I went straight from work to my house everyday, so no gymgoing or anything for the whole week. Just the gym, to be honest. I admit I didn’t do any excercise at home either.

• 💾 For a few hours, I was panicking because I could not find my set of game card cases with dozens of Switch games in them. I searched far and wide without success, until they showed up on my laundry basket for some reason… that really got me pretty worried!

• 📖 I am happy to announce that my reading slump is finally over! I don’t know what got to me these past couple months, but it seems to be mostly gone now, and I couldn’t be happier. I read so much more this time around, will mention it later on the proper section.

• 🍔 I went out with my parents for lunch, and had some chicken burguers from KFC! I enjoyed the change of scenery very much, and the food too. We also got some apple pies which I ate later for dinner once I had a cup of coffee. It was a quick run to the mall and back this time around, so we didn’t do much shopping, although I’ve been looking for a sling bag. Feel free to share any recommendations EDC people!

• 📦 Another happy development, my Land of Eem Deluxe Box Set finally shipped. It was stuck for quite a while due to some problems on the warehouse related to weather conditions and suff. I got a support ticket and they quickly got to me right on time! I am now just waiting for it to show up to my house.

• 🌐 My blogpost about setting up phones being a nightmare made it to the front page of HackerNews. It got a lot of very funny replies, so much so I kind of want to do a continuation. But honestly it’s pretty simple, so many people saying things without reading in full, without any sort of respect and acting like know-it-alls. Don’t worry, I laughed so hard at all of them and don’t really feel letdown at all. It’s just so funny to me.

• 💻 My coworker asked for a very long vacation period, like, three weeks in a row. This has put me in a bit of an interesting position, but I should be more than capable to deal with any scenarios that may happen. Sometimes I feel like I don’t do enough, or that others may think that, but this is a chance for me to prove myself.

Reading

Reading is back on the menu, and I am super happy about that fact.

• Persepolis Rising - Up to chapter 40. I flew through 30 chapters in a week. At this pace I’ll be able to finish this by next week, which is really awesome. This book started a little slow, but the pace has been going up, as well as my willingness to actually read for once, and I’m happy to be in a better headspace to enjoy it. The crew has been having a very rough time, but the tables are finally starting to turn a bit…

• Planetes - Up to chapter 16. Some of what I’ve read of this has almost made me cry. The stories and the way the plot has moved forward have been really thought-provoking, and this is really going up among my favorites, it’s really, really good.

• Spy x Family - We are getting some fun action thriller stuff with Yor and Loid this time around, it’s fun stuff so far and an enjoyable read. It’s nice to go back to the adults and their shenanigans for once.

• Blue Lock - Up to chapter 337. Okay so the Japanese team is actually struggling this time, and France is not backing down. The mental conflict here has been very, very intense, as the values of Isagi and his team are being challenged like never before. I am loving this one so far.

Gaming

I didn’t touch Grapple Dog this week, and since I finished Resident Evil 2, I guess I just needed to laze around on the gaming side of things.

• 🏔️ Peak - A new game that I bought on a whim—to play with friends more than for the game itself—and so far it has been an incredibly fun experience. I played it a couple of times with Jeremy as well as with members of the TWG Discord and my time has been simply phenomenal. So much fun, so much chaos! Playing with my friends and trying to make it to the top. We even tried a mod to play as more than 4 people, and it went very well until the very last area where things only loaded up for 4 of us, and I was left behind. Still continued as one of us made it to the peak! Will keep playing it, it’s just a nice way to chat and chill.
• 🥐 CrossCode - After Amin told me that he would finally play Chrono Trigger once I beat this game, I had to gear up and dust off my Nintendo Switch—I barely touched it at all this month. I only played around an hour because I was busy reading, but I had fun and really look forward to continue more of this adventure by next week. Apparently the plot will thicken quite a lot so, we’ll see.
• 🏰 Lost Castle - I let myself be fooled into buying this roguelike 4-player game, but honestly, it wasn’t that much fun, the variety was there for the enemies and weapons but it still felt samey to play, just dungeon crawling rooms and defeating goblins and all. This ended up being a bit of a meh impulse purchase that I may never touch again.
• 🧛 Vampire Survivors - Instead of that, my friends and I returned to this gem for a bit! We started the Ode to Castlevania stage and had an amazing time unlocking portals and a new character and similar things. We played rather well and almost made it to 30 minutes. However, we were rushing through enemies and got careless trying to unlock one more thing. Ended up dying with 30 seconds left for victory… Still had fun!

Around the Web

Nothing like introducing a section to my weeknotes only for me to completely ignore it the next week. Yay!

Here’s the usual stuff for you!

Blogposts

• the exquisite pleasure of being back home - tiramisu was in México and I completely missed out on it, but there’s a few posts before this one talking about his visit! I feel bad about some things he said (like how he got tired of the food) so I may write about that!

• What I pay for this website - Elena decided to the cost of keeping her blog running! I found it interesting and made me want to do the same thing for my own page.

• revive me - A blogpost from Elle catching up on a lot of things, being disillusioned by the current web, yet inspired to keep working on her site, trying FreshRSS and other neat things.

• Have We Forgotten How to Design? - An amazing rant about services, technology and start-ups not designing something well from the start and patching things up in absurd ways. Lovely.

YouTube

• Custom firmware saved the Anvernic RG DS - Apparently there’s some new firmware for this handheld that makes it actually usable for DS emulation, and I’m a bit interested on it. But not for now, don’t worry. Plenty of games to complete first.

• Resident Evil 1–4: Should you play the Remakes or Originals? - The title explains it all! I found this comparison to be quite nice. I think I’ll personally play all of the originals first before even trying the remakes, my laptop can’t run them anyway so.

• These 3 Next Fest Games are GOTY Contenders - Brendon, from Into The Aether shares some incredible games with demos available right now, these look incredible and you may want to check them out as well!

• Resident Evil 2 — How failing school ruined a Survival Horror classic - This is just a very nice life story that wasn’t very relatable to me, but I enjoyed it, especially since it mentioned the game I just played. I was ready to hate on it but nah, we good.

Now that I’m finishing them in early Monday, so many things have happened… My country is in a state of disarray, as conflict between the army and drug cartels has risen after the leader of the biggest cartel in Mexico died. I type this after my workplace gave us the day off to avoid any risks. Me and family are safe, thank God. Alas, let’s continue with the rest of the notes!

• 📅 A few days ago I forgot to bring up that I assisted to a Homebrew Website Club meeting! I was invited by Naty and have been to a couple meet-ups already, but never talked until now. you can check the last event’s notes to see what we talked about! I introduced myself, talked about my bookshelf and my blog pings, and shared how I find people who mention my website via FreshRSS user queries.

• ✍️ I also had the chance to join the HWC Writing Edition meeting, which was hosted by James himself! That was pretty cool, although I didn’t speak at all on this one since I wasn’t by myself.

• 🏋️ Gymgoing was a bit of a failure this week, I went only once. However, I did use the stationary bike on my room, so that’s at least something, right?

• 🎮 Last week I couldn’t get my 8BitDo Pro 2 controller to connect via Bluetooth to my Laptop, but after dabbling around in a manner of ways, and installing tools like evtest and connecting to it via bluetoothctl something happened and it is now getting properly recognized and usable wirelessly! I played a lot more times later in the week and it connects without any issues now.

• 💾 I cleaned up my bedroom during the weekend, and honestly I am much happier with it once again. I found some inspiration to write about some old hardware of mine collecting dust. There’s a couple things yet to do, but they can wait.

• ⏲️ For the first time in ages, I did a 10-solves speedcubing session. The results were pretty good, if I do say so myself. My best time was 18.38 seconds, by best average of 5 was 19.98, my overall average was 25.55.

• ⌚ I think it might be nice to mention the watch I wore throughout the week! It’s often my Casio Royale, but this week I switched it up for the Casio CA-53W, I also wore the A-130WE yesterday!

Gaming

Completed

• Resident Evil 2 - I cannot praise this game enough. This old title for the PS1 has been an absolute success for me, I finished playing the whole Leon A side and it was a joy from start to finish! I also started and finished the Claire B side, and experiencing a the story from a different angle was incredible to see, so much effort went into this game, and I enjoyed the variety between both scenarios, even if they don’t perfectly line up. For a game from the late 90s, it is commendable. It’s basically four campaigns—plus a bunch of extra modes to unlock—allowing for so much fun and replayability. I may revisit it some other time, but I’m also curious to try the other classics.

Ongoing

• Grapple Dog - I have played some more levels of this game and it is really fun! A cute platformer with some challenge but rather great level design so far, I’ve already completed the first two worlds, and gotten a bunch of the collectibles as well, it’s rather awesome to traverse and the gameplay design has been top notch, every level introduces interesting mechanics! I kind of want to get all the achievements of this one, and I’m poking away at it whenever I’m on my laptop.

• Final Fantasy VI - After obtaining the Falcon, my new flying ship, I decided to just grind for a little bit, but didn’t progress much in the story, I talked to a few people in a new town, to find some of my lost friends!

• Slice & Dice - A few fights here and there, nothing too much happening, but I played it and had fun!

Reading

• Planetes - I’ve read a few more chapters of this and I still find it super enjoyable. The plot has started to pick up and a timeskip happened that puts us right in the vanguard of space exploration. I an really looking forward for the rest of it, and I’m also a bit upset that it won’t much longer, as the manga is already finished with less than 30 chapters total.

• Persepolis Rising - I keep struggling to commit to actually reading this book. I love the progress I made thus far, need to keep it up.

Around the Web

This time I added a new section where I will mention things I discovered or learned during the week! It can contain games, websites and other tidbits that aren’t blogposts or videos.

Blogposts

• first impressions of my MP3 player (Innioasis Y1) - I love seeing more fellow bloggers getting into this kinda retro-inspired single-purpose device trend that I’ve noticed more lately. It may be just a temporary thing, but I genuinely find joy in it.
• Unpublishing posts - I was actually going to share the series that Syl unpublished, but this post sharing some thoughts about getting too personal on the web. I don’t really mind that much when it comes to music, but there’s some things that I may have doubts on. Do whatever you like with your site people!
• Letting go of old hobbies - This is such an interesting post, what happens when you had your fill with the hobby you enjoyed doing? When you are content with your skill, or your setup, and you don’t need to pursue any more? Good stuff.
• Emulate vs Paying up! - Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen made it to the Nintendo Switch, and they are not $20, but $26 USD in my country. I am not paying that kind of money for a GBA game that I can already play on my Anbernic or my Miyoo devices.
• Rediscovering my CD collection - Elena shares some thoughts about her CD collection, ripping them up, digital vs physical media and optimizing the physical space they use, as well as some general thoughts about her music listening habits!

YouTube

• These are Anbernic’s strangest handhelds - This was an incredible video featuring Anbernic’s mishaps creating handhelds. They always seem to have a caveat that makes them one step away from perfection. This was a very fun watch.
• Handheld gaming has changed - A video reflecting on modern handheld gaming. The experience on the go should be quick and easy to return to. It doesn’t need to be a grandiose adventure, just something quick to lock-in to and spend time, but things have gotten muddier lately.
• How Capcom botched the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 - This was a wonderful video that explains in details the things that the RE remakes—wonderful games by themselves—
• The transformative power of classical music - A YouTube short led me to this wonderful TED talk, I really enjoyed the speech given here, and the piano performance and the way things are laid out was simply superb, just give this one a watch, it’s an old one, but still holds up.

Cool discoveries

• TTRPG Resources - Dave wrote a cool list of resources he has been finding as he explores the world of tabletop RPGs.

• Games like Resident Evil - I found out about some games that follow the classic fixed camera and tank controls of the original games. Some interesting ones are Alisa, which features PS1-style graphics, or Tormented Souls, which is a more modern take that still sticks to the classic formula.

This is day 21 of #100DaysToOffload

• 📱 As I mentioned last week, I can’t complain enough about the amount of permissions and things to disable when setting up new devices for my parents. I didn’t go all in with stuff like UAD, but I removed some of the common ones, and replaced a few apps, such as Chrome for Vivaldi and a few of the Fossify Apps.

• 🎮 I suddenly decided to acquire a new controller, the 8BitDo Pro 2, and I have to admit, I am absolutely in love with it. I already liked the Ultimate 2C, but the ergonomics and the slightly bigger size fit me better, and the face buttons are glorious, they feel so much better than any other controller I have. I am excited to use it more. Might write a review of it!

• 🎒 Had to replace my backpack since my laptop corners started to slice through the bottom of my old one. Workplace provided me with a new one and I took the opportunity and swapped out the pins I had on it! I have quite a big collection so it’s fun to mix things up.

• 🕹️ I also impulse-purchased a Miyoo Mini Flip and I just love this little thing so much already! I installed MinUI on it, a super simple interface that felt right at home with the tiny screen. It feels very nice, if probably not for a long period of time, the buttons rival the original GBA SP, and are nicer to press than my v1 RG35XX SP. I want to make it a very minimal device with a limited game set, we’ll see how it goes.

• 📞 Valentine’s Day came and went, and I didn’t do much! I had a bit of an online video meeting with some long distance friends, and we played some party games together, although that was on Friday before the actual day was set. One of the more extrovered in that group made it so we made a letter for another, who would get chosen at random. It was a fun time.

• 📄 I did the first origami I had folded in ages, it was for the letter mentioned before, actually! I folded an origami heart, as well as Joisel’s Butterfly model. I will take pictures later today! I think they are pretty nice. The heart was actually new to me, if rather simple, but I really enjoy when seemingly simply figures are done cleanly and with just a few folds.

• 💌 On actual Valentine’s Day, I went downtown with friends to spend some time together and we ended up at the house of one of them, we had tacos, snacks and we also played an awesome online game called Gartic Phone, where we have to draw and guess each other’s drawings and prompts, it is a fantastic time. I gave chocolates to everyone too, and got some myself!

• 🎲 My physical set of Land of Eem got delayed due to snowstorms and the like, so I am a bit upset that it’s going to take even longer to get to me, but well, it is how it is sometimes.

• ⚔️ We didn’t get to play Land of Eem at all either, as some of our party members couldn’t come and we decided to play Betrayal at House at the Hill this time around, it was a fun time but I was a little annoyed heh.

Gaming

• 🧟 Resident Evil 2 - I’ve been playing this on my handheld so much more and making progress through the game and it is absolutely fantastic! I love it so much. It has flaws, sure, but they are rather charming and work well anyway. I have been enamoured by the puzzle design and the way the Police Station has opened up throughout the game. I am now exploring some Underground area, and made my way to the Sewers. I met some new characters and new enemies and… this is so fun! the dub acting is pure nostalgia and, I don’t know, I just I love this game and I’m glad I do. I will play more.

• 🐾 Grapple Dog - This is the game I decided to test the 8Bitdo Pro 2 with on my laptop, I played the first level twice, because the Linux version of the game didn’t start-up reliably, so I ran it with Proton but something happened to the save data. In any case, it is a very fun game so far! I am pretty willing to keep playing it on there, but I may purchase it on Switch just because.

• 🧙 Final Fantasy VI - I returned to finish the dungeon in Dary’ls Tomb, which is Setzer’s quest to reclaim a new flying ship, the faster there is! From here the world is pretty much open for me to explore as I please, and I definitely want to find all of my party and maybe some new members to join me on my quest for a better tomorrow! Also, one of the best overworld themes of all time.

• 🦍 Donkey Kong (1994) - On a whim, I started this game just to test the waters, and I have to say, I can see why it’s so fun! A simple, challenging game for the Game Boy that I may explore further later, I must admit though, that I should probably return to Mario vs Donkey Kong first, at least for now.

Reading

• Persepolis Rising - Up to chapter 5. I keep being super slow with this one, but an interesting conflict has started to develop, once again featuring Holden making a decision that may affect the future of the space society Humanity has managed to build over the last 30 years!

• Planetes - Up to chapter 7. This has been a very interesting manga so far, so thought-provoking and with an actual plot developing in the background as well. All of the chapters have stayed quite long, each of them with 40+ pages, double the usual I read. This hasn’t stopped me from really liking and going through it in small chunks. It’s pretty much a love letter for space exploration, I simply find it beautiful.

Around the Web

Blogposts

• My new mobile phone - Michał recently acquited an new phone, featuring an e-ink screen and some other very limiting features, and I respect the committment!
• New series - Good offline apps - Dom recently shared this neat idea, about apps that work offline and don’t require an internet connection in any way! I think it’s a pretty cool idea.
• Mewgenics: Worth The 14 Year Wait - Cameron always reviews the strangest games, but this one, from the creator of Binding of Isaac seems to be at about the limit of what I enjoy in terms of artstyle, I’ll keep it in mind…
• The Good Old Hyperlink - The hyperlink is awesome, and it makes the internet go round! Lovely post this one.
• The cost of not caring - Robert’s post titles are often ominous, but I love how they always to a somewhat mundane experience of life. This one was a short one, but enjoyable, and very important to remember.

YouTube

• My favorite game on every retro system - TechDweeb once again making my backlog of retro games grow further more, it is how it is.
• Maybe don’t buy a used 3DS anymore? - An interesting essay comparing the landscape today where 3DS gaming is finally feasible on actually powerful 3rd party hardware, if still very expensive.
• Apple has a transparency issue - I loved the Mac Address channel, even if I don’t care about Apple itself, and to have it return with such a well produced video is nice.
• Retrogaming on a $30 Walmart TV box - This was an awesome video! I didn’t watch it completely but if you want a cheap gaming setup, this seems super well explained.

This is day 17 of #100DaysToOffload

In any case. I hope you enjoy! Quite a lot of links scattered around this time, and lots of new media making an appearance!

• ✍️ Have you ever read Good Internet Magazine?, it’s a wonderful project that aims to show articles about the small web, blogging, accesibility and internet stuff. And guess what? I somehow managed to make it into the Fall/Winter 2025 issue! You can read my article online, which talks about Markdown. Thanks Amin for reminding me I did this in the first place… I literally forgot after submitting my post.

• 🎵 There was a Bandcamp Friday this week! and I made full use of it to acquire a couple of great soundtracks for Gris and Plants vs Zombies! I actually thought I’d listen to Gris a lot, but the nostalgia of Laura Shigihara’s work completely won me over.

• 🏋🏻I only went to the gym once this week, I feel bad about that but I’m not gonna punish myself much about it, I basically fell asleep on the bus on the way and ended up back home by the time I realized, whoops.

• 📱 After finding a really good deal on Costco, both of my parents have upgraded their phone devices to the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE, I paid one of them—won’t tell which! I often enjoy setting up new devices, but I had a hard time enjoying this one, there were so many checkboxes that I had to uncheck. I finished setting up my mother’s device but I’ll work on my father’s this week, thankfully he is patient.

• 📕 I keep on learning about being a Game Master for Land of Eem, and Dave has recommended me a different book which I got titled The No-Prep GameMaster, which looks rather interesting. I rarely read non-fiction but, it looks like this contains some good advice!

• ⚽ Went out with some friends who are from different cities during Saturday and we had a blast. Played some games outside, like Soccer and Volleybal, had some good snacks, had some good food, and catched up with each other, it was a wonderful time!

Reading

• Overscan - As I mentioned on my reading recap, I really want to write a review for this anthology that I completed last year, so I just reread it, and it was even better than my first read. I flew through the pages after I bought the digital edition. Writing a review this week, but rest assured, you should give it a go.

• Persepolis Rising - Read quite a bit more of this, but I am still very slow, I can’t believe I’m the one keeping my book club behind! I never thought this would happen. I need to lock-in and rush through this book now!

• ✨ Planetes - Okay, this was a surprise. This Manga is INCREDIBLE, I started it on a whim and after just two chapters I was hooked. It’s basically a sort of slice of life science fiction series with some astronauts cleaning up the skies from the debris of old satellites and space trash. Some great commentary and moments have been had, looking forward for more.

• DanDaDan - I finally caught up to this one! And the new arc has been rather interesting! We returned to a villain that has been teased for a while, and I’m interested to know how it develops.

• Blue Lock - I caught up again on the match between France and Japan, and it is a real challenge, Blue Lock can barely react now and all of their plans circling around Isagi have been stopped, a new evolution is required for victory to come.

Gaming

• Final Fantasy VI - I’ve been making quite a bit of progress on this at last, recovering Edgar and the Figaro Castle, and making my way towards Setzer’s quest to recover his wings! This should be very, very fun, as the world begins to open up for me once again.

• ✨ Ninja Five-O - This is a very interesting and fun game! I basically finished it on Easy Mode today, but I want to try Normal Mode too, which should include extra levels as well, that make matters quite interesting. At first it seemed like a rather average GBA title, but the simplicity shouldn’t fool you, this game does have some really interesting mechanics, like a hook that lets you swing around, some stealth and kinda neat bosses.

• ✨ Resident Evil 2 - This is the Low Key Gaming Club title for this month, and I decided to join in once again. I played a bit of it on my Anbernic handheld and it has been quite good! I need to keep playing some more though. I started with Leon’s route, and I’m currently inside the police station.

• ✨ Land of Eem - I was told I should put this on the gaming section so here it will be now! This weekend we didn’t actually play though, we spent a long while creating characters together and coming up with backstories and relationships! It was very interesting to actually learn how the system works better by doing everything ourselves.

Around the web

Blogposts

• Introducing My Recommendations Page - Stephanie’s site has been a new discovery of mine, and her recommendations page is absolutely amazing, she inspired me to update my bookshelf section usin <details> to add summaries to each entry.
• Scrolls #28 - It’s been a while but Scrolls is back! A wonderful compilation of links and cool people to check out, I highly recommend following it!
• Some Changes and Blogging Thoughts - Syl has added a guestbook to her site and continues to complete and work on some great personal projects.
• Addictive gameplay - Robert shared some great thoughts on addictive gameplay and the conflict and similarities it has with more negative, harmful things like gambling.

Videos

• Check out my “Five Game Handheld” - This is the video that got me to order the Miyoo Mini Flip, and an interesting system that I kinda already use…
• Kaguya Sama Love is War reaction - This YouTube channel does the best anime reaction videos in my opinion, the guy has a way with words and providing actual commentary of the themes dealt by each episode, and Kaguya-sama Love is War is top tier either way.

This is day 14 of #100DaysToOffload

• 🏰 Because of Dave, I ended up buying Land of Eem, a whimsical and more colorful take on TTRPGs, that would end up with my frist time GMing (and playing at all) with some friends! This was an interesting experience and I am writing a complete blogpost about the whole ordeal, it was definitely the highlight of my week and I can’t wait to share my thoughts about it. Spoiler: It was incredibly fun, and I have now ordered the physical deluxe set online…

• 🏋️ I’ve continued to go to the gym pretty faithfully so far! Even though I missed the previous week, this one was quite uneventful, everything was done and I continue to show up, which is nice!

• 🏠 I had a day off on Thursday that I used to play a lot of videogames! I actually had to take care of my grandma who is visiting due to the winter season—it’s much warmer where I live. I also got to cook—reheat, to be precise—some leftovers my mom made and we had a pretty chill time!

• 🎲 Because of the TTRPG shenanigans, I actually ordered my first every full set of dice! I actually got seven sets for all my friends. However, I accidentally got them sent downtown to a pick-up center, and I forgot to go there from work, so I ended up having to go downtown on Saturday to get them in time. I also ordered a new charger for my PSP, because I kind of lost my previous one somewhere.

• 🛏️ For a long time, my room has been invaded by an extra bed we use for visits sometimes. However, at long last, I have convinced my parents to sell that bed, and now I have a lot of space on my bedroom! Which proceeded to be invaded by a stationary bike… oh well.

• 🕹 In a moment of weakness I ordered the Miyoo Mini Flip, and I am super excited about it… I probably should wait for whatever Anbernic does within that same size and form factor, but I couldn’t help it, it is how it is.

• 🛍 Today was a day off so we went as a family to another city to upgrade my Grandma’s lenses. We also went to the Mall, where I purchased two books: Farenheit 451 and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Of course I purchased a few clothes for my family as well. We ate Chinese food to finish off! It was a very fun time.

Gaming

• CrossCode - So I played like 8 hours of this game in a couple of days during my day off, and I finally got grabbed by the plot in a way I didn’t quite expect. The dungeon was rather tough, full of challenging puzzles, but I eventually figured things out and had a lot of fun!
• Hollow Knight: Silksong - I continue to do everything I can to complete this game 100%. I had fulfilled a few wishes that I had missed and faced against some extra bosses and the like, super fun stuff.
• Prinny: Can I Really be the Hero? - Started this on a whim after charging up my PSP. This is a fun tough old-school platformer similar to Ghosts & Ghouls, I’m not sure I’ll keep playing it but it was fun to test it out.
• Nintendo Switch Sports - Just a bowling match with friends after we were done with Land of Eem.

Reading

• Persepolis Rising - Just another chapter read and not much more, I will definitely catch up in February now, promise!
• DanDaDan - I got hoooked again by the misadventures of these characters, what a delight to read their shenanigans, and there’s quite a lot of stakes building up for the newest arc.

Watching

• George & Mandy: First Marriage - During Sunday and Monday we finished up season two of this sitcom, and had quite a bit of fun watching it together during the night.

Around the Web

• Internet Things Lately - Syls has started to share links to interesting things from the web, so in case the ones I share here aren’t enough, give hers a go!

• Making up for old games of dubious origin - Ruben has been replacing his pirated games with real ones because he has money, fun stuff!

• Link Dumps - If you want even more cool links shared by some neat people, make sure to follow the blogs listed in this post by Shellsharks!

• To act like a child again - Being careless and not planning things from time to time is just fun, a careful balance must be achieved, of course. Just a fun slice of life.

Videos

• The Downfall of OnePlus will be Studied - Just a fun video from MKBHD, I hadn’t watched Marques in a while but I enjoyed the trip down memory lane.
• Your First Session | Running the Game - As you can see, TTRPG videos will be a bit regular here for a while.
• Building the Impossible Lightsaber - This was an awesome video with an awesome project and the end result is outstanding.
• My new favorite TTRPG? Land of Eem Review - Well yeah just one of many reviews I saw about Land of Eem.
• I did redstone for the Minecraft Movie - Mumbo Jumbo worked on the Minecraft movie? That was a surprise, and the concepts here were super fun!

This is day 9 of #100DaysToOffload

In any case not a lot of things happened this time around, but I do feel like writing just a bit more, so there you go!

• 💪 I didn’t go to the gym this week, but that’s perfectly okay. My parents went on a trip the whole week and I prefer to enjoy my time home alone!

• 🍿 Instead of playing a lot of videogames, I decided to do something a little bit more passive and just watch movies! Like my previous runs with Tron or Alien, I decided this time to just watch films from the 80s, and also Megamind, but whatever, more about this in the section below! Maybe I should keep watching the Terminator films though…

• 🕹️ This weekend was one of the few where my friends didn’t show up to do some multiplayer gaming, it was a pretty chill time, to be honest. As great as it is to play together, I am an introvert at heart, and I appreciate being by myself with no outside pressure to do anything else! I played a bunch of Silksong.

• 😴 I continue to procrastinate on writing blogposts… I have this one post about block-pushing puzzles on videogames that is pretty much done and I am yet to publish for no real reason, it’s actually rather long, and the reason is I feel I should take screenshot but I am too lazy to do it.

• 🖥️ Work continues to be pretty chill, no real complaints, but I’ve noticed an increase in the amount of time I spent sitting on my desk instead of standing up. I can adjust the height, I just started to get lazy…

• 🧥 Maybe it’s because of the season, but I’ve started to feel very good about my body lately, like, I have even worn buttoned shirts and left them tucked in because I like how I look. I somehow lost weight during Christmas time, so maybe that’s helping too. Point is, I will keep going to the gym and I will try to stay healthy, but, I am quite content with myself.

Gaming

I’m rather surprised at how much gaming happened this time around, I’m glad I got a nice balance going.

• 🪡 Hollow Knight: Silksong - I returned to this beauty and since I want to do 100% of what this game has to offer, I have faced against some new bosses in some hidden areas. I am also making my way through Bilewater, the worse area in the game, and got to one of the most hideous boss fights against a gauntlet of enemies followed by a rather tedious boss. I managed to defeat it in the end though, achieveing ultimate glory!

• 🏫 The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy - I ended up returning to this game for quite a bit! I completed a boss fight and progressed through the alternative route I’ve been playing for a while. It continues to be extremely interesting and engaging!

• 🚀 Outer Wilds - I didn’t get to play as much this time around, but I explored a bit and found some more clues about what is going on in this world, progressing through the game, gathering knowledge and stuff. Amazing game in every sense!

• ⚔️ Slice & Dice - I had an extremely good run of Blursed Mode where I managed to win 140 times before I messed up badly, such is life someitmes.

Watching

Lots of movies were watched this week! Actually kind of sick, all of these absolute masterpieces.

• The Terminator - I had never watched this movie from start to finish, maybe the finale a few times, I was familiar with the story, but the film itself was a bit of a blur. Honestly this was surprising. I always heard Terminator 2 was the better action flick, but the thriller and the chases and the violence of this one had me on the edge of my seat. I didn’t expect to see much of the future at all, but showing the despair and the dire situation in those flashbacks—more like flashforwards?—was very, very interesting. The set pieces, the visual effects, everything here was amazing to watch.

• Back to the Future - This movie is my childhood, showing up on Canal 5—a public mexican TV channel—quite often. Watching it myself without many distractions or advertising was pretty fun! Can’t belive I took so long for that. This movie holds up super well and it’s a masterpiece of its time. These characters and moments are simply iconic, I got the Casio calculator because of this.

• Megamind - Its been years since the last time I rewatched this, and it still holds up amazingly well. Definitely one of the best animated movies, with great writing and fun, but a genuinely good message and lesson as well. Quite a bit of nuance and thought provoking moments that are rare to see mixed in with the comedy and action this has.

Reading

I keep on without reading as much as I could, ugh I gotta step up in February…

• Persepolis Rising - Finished chapter… 1. Yeah I’ve been slacking on this one, my bad! But at least I’m seeing a couple of returning characters at last, which has been fun.

• Blue Lock - Until chapter 332. Just following the weekly release at this point! It’s fun!

• DanDaDan - Until chapter 202. Finally decided to catch up a bit on DanDaDan which I kinda stopped reading for a few months, still fun!

Around the Web

Not videos this time around! Just some neat blogs I thought I’d share.

• It’s not procrastination. It’s a side quest - Dave is doing Dave things and trying to justify himself about not doing things he should do.
• What is the oldest thing you own? - This genuinely seems like a very fun theme, I should try and write about it, but I haven’t even finished my yearly recaps.
• Talent can be quiet, if you want it to be - It’s nice to just enjoy hobbies without monetizing everything, but we live in a society…
• New format for digest posts - Sam decided to change the style of his weeknotes and now it’s truly a log of posts and things that happened in real time! Interesting.
• Being positive about tech right now - Things seem to go bad all the time, but it’s good to stay hopeful, I truly hope things will get better soon.

This is day 6 of #100DaysToOffload

• 👞 Went to the mall with family! I got myself a very nice pair of dress shoes. There are not a lot of occassions for me to wear some, but I haven’t had a pair in years. My dad was the one looking for some and I just had to match… he had chosen a different model but ended up going for the one I picked, like son like father?

• ✍️ I wrote a little slice of life post to change things up, it is about buying a phone case for my mom! Simple really but wanted to write something that wasn’t a weeknote or a recap!

• 💰 The dollar has been going down in price and buying physical games is getting quite cheaper, I’m still holding on though, haven’t done any purchases other than Risk of Rain Returns which I don’t count, digital, cheap and for friends, not me.

• 🕹️ Nintendo’s Year in Review is finally out! and it has been amazing.to see the stats for all the games I played throughout the year, they also added a little timeline of every game I have played since I bought the system, I must admit it was really fun to scroll through. The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, Hollow Knight: Silksong and Dragon Quest XI X: Echoes of an Elusive Age were my most played games on the system.

• 🎵 I’ve been listening to the Outer Wilds soundtrack non-stop since I started the game. It is what I sleep to pretty much on a daily basis now, it’s simply a joy to my ears, alongside some of Silksong’s and Hyper Light Drifter’s, of course.

Gaming

There was no time for me to play more Outer Wilds which makes me extremely sad, I’ll get to it again this week though!

• Vampire Survivors - We are still having a ton of fun playing co-op. We even decided to buy the Ode to Castlevania DLC to unlock more stages and characters from the Castlevania series, it’s extremely awesome and the powers are just so fun.

• Hollow Knight: Silksong - I played a little more of this, and discovered a few new paths connecting the world! I am genuinely impressed at how all of Pharloom was put together by Team Cherry.

• Risk of Rain Returns - Decided to give this a try in solo, just a single run! I lost in the first stage, I am not too good at this one, I guess.

• Slice & Dice - Recently noticed that I stopped bringing up this game on my weeknotes, rest assured that not a week has gone by without me playing at least a minute of this. I’m currently on a pretty good Blursed run.

Watching

A couple of movies from the 80s which were available on Netflix and I chose to watch on a whim, can’t complain much really, had a great time.

• Back to the Future - Oh yeah I had a bit of a throwback watching the ultimate 80s movie there is! This is such an amazing film, gotta love to see it every once in a while! Holds up pretty well to this day just fine. I even watched the second half in English too! I often go for the dubs since Latino dubs are pretty top notch especially back then, it was a fun experience.

• The Running Man - This is definitely an 80s film as well, lots of action, lots of muscles, lots of women dancing. I found it quite interesting as a display of society’s obsession with violent, mindless entertainment, misinformation, and the like. There’s a remake that just came out and I haven’t seen, could be interesting.

Reading

Finally begun the next Expanse book, and the usual (and one very special) reads of manga!

• Persepolis Rising (The Expanse #7) - I finally finished the prologue of this one and a bit of the first chapter, I wish I could say more about it but this is looking extremely different! You should just start this series, please, it’s worth it!
• Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou - Read chapters 64-66. It was about time I suited myself for some of the sweetest treats there can be, a few chapters of this manga. Just one of the little joys of life.

• Usogui - Up to chapter 68 - New arc still being setup, some new faces showing up, don’t know what the bet or plot will be though other than some conspiracy.

• Spy x Family - Up to chapter 127 - More cute moments with Anya, and the school dealing with the aftermath of a messy situation.

• Chainsaw Man - Up to chapter 225 - The fight between Chainsaw Man and the War Devil continues!

• Blue Lock - Up to chapter 331 - Japan doing what it can to surpass the French team-up! But things are getting complicated.

Around the Web

• The Mad, Joyful Chaos of the Creative Process - R.L. Dane has been writing a bunch and this little post of his was lovely, check the rest of his latest work though!
• the emperor’s new clothes - Some real day to day concerns and complaints about tiramisu being forced to use AI stuff on a day to day basis due to work, rough stuff.

YouTube

• Ranking Villains By Their Chances Of Beating Mr. Incredible - This was such a random video and the royster of villains too, it’s just funny.
• Hollow Knight: Silksong - The Cartoon Parody - I quite liked this animation work, and the voice acting as well! Just a lovely and wholesome animation about one of my favorite games ever.

This is day 5 of #100DaysToOffload

• 🩺 My dog needed to get his wound cleaned up daily and at first I couldn’t do it, so I had to take him to the vet, except that I was home alone the whole week so I asked family friends to help me out and bring him to the vet a couple times.

• 🐕 At the same time, a coworker needed to take care of his dogs since he was going on vacation with family and asked me to help. So every day I had to ask for permission to leave and return in the middle of the work shift, or to leave early to go with my own dog and give him his meds and treatment. Lots of dog problems.

• 🏠 As I just said, I was home alone! It was a pretty fun week with movies, videogames and a dog that got to roam around inside the house, we often only let them be outside, but since my parents weren’t there and I know my dog actually behaves fine inside, I left him be with me.

• 🖥️ Work has been quite rough! My workmate was on vacation and I had to carry his duties myself. There were a couple things that I just left hanging there to be honest, but I am very happy with myself overall.

Gaming

This was a crazy week when it comes to videogames, what can I say?

• ✨🚀 Outer Wilds - This is an incredible journey that Jeremy really wanted me to play, given this game was his GOTY back in 2024. I decided to give it a go all of a sudden and I have been completely trapped by its story. This is a once in a lifetime adventure, and I am absolutely loving it.

• ✨🌍 Terranigma - Another masterpiece that I started many many years ago, I decided to start a new journey and see how I would handle it! The story and the graphics and gameplay of this holds up incredibly well even today. Although the map is a bit hit or miss.

• ✨👾 Risk of Rain Returns - This is my first purchase of the year. I often buy games to play with friends, and this one got on sale at the perfect time. This 2D roguelike shooter survival game is quite awesome, and playing it with friends was great. However, the camera was a little messy and if someone fell down it was almost impossible to do anything about it, it may be better as a solo experience, or online.

• 🧛 Vampire Survivors - Played quite a bit more with friends as well, unlocked a new character too!

Reading

• ⚔️ Kingdom - Up to chapter 862. As I keep saying, this manga is fantastic, this latest arc is amazingly strong and I am super hyped about how all the events will begin to unfold. The odds this time are at an all time high, some key figures are out of the battlefield and the up and coming heroes will have to deal with most of the blow. I am so looking forward to what’s next.

• ⚽ Blue Lock - I’m just going chapter by chapter now, this week was the start of the match against France, and it looks like a rather difficult match up from early on! Looking forward to see how Blue Lock Japan deals with the next generation of the current world champions!

• 🏫 Spy x Family - Some fun chapters with Anya Forger as she uncovers a plot against the teacher of his class! It was very fun to see how things got solved and the plot moved a bit!

Watching

• The Negotiator - I always enjoy watching a movie completely blind featuring like Samuel L. Jackson. This movie was pretty fun, about a policeman who is an expert in hostage situations, framed for murder, and he decides to take hostages himself until he can prove his innocence! This was very tense, and even though I guessed who the criminal really was, the intrigue about how they would find out was still very fun.

Around the Web

There’s only videos this week, I know it’s late and maybe you expected more, but I have failed you all…

• Overanalyzing The First 13 Minutes Of Silksong - This was a super fun, spoiler-free showcase of how good Silksong is simply by explaining what goes on in the first section of the game!

• The Death of Start and Select - Just a fun video that talks about these two buttons that have been replaced at this point in time by pretty much every controller. Honestly Plus (+) and Minus (-) are much more better, in my opinion.

• The World Design of Hollow Knight: Silksong - A fantastic video from the Boss Keys seris by GMTK exploring the amazing details behind’s Silksong exploration and progression throughout the mysterious region of Pharloom.

• We NEED to Discuss Switch 2 - A review of the Switch 2 six months after its release. Honestly I’m kind of happy that I’ve waited, I have been playing many great games and I truly feel no need to get it for the most part at this point!

This is day 4 of #100DaysToOffload

• 🎉 Happy New Year you all! 2025 is over already and we must pave the way to a new tomorrow, one day after another! 2026 is upon us!

• 🍚 The other day we went to eat out at a Korean food restaurant! It was a new place I had never visited before, me and my siblings were invited by family friends and it was actually rather nice, we ended up stuffed full of rice and other goodies.

• 🃏 During the New Year we kinda just played board games and spent the time together as family. We had a great match of Scrabble and I managed to win one of them and get a draw on the other with my father. Cool stuff!

• 🐶 My dog (the one that got hit by a car) was now attacked by a bigger dog. He’s mostly fine but we have to clean up the wound daily and I can’t help but wonder why he likes to put his life in danger all the time.

Gaming

Completed

• Monument Valley is the first game I complete this year! It was free on the Epic Games Store for Android and I decided to pick it up alongside the sequel for it! Honestly it was a short but sweet experience, great perspective-based puzzles, thoroughly enjoyable.

Ongoing

• Hollow Knight: Silksong saw a lot of progress! I have been exploring some nasty, ugly areas like the Petrified Ducts, and I’ve also explored some more of The Slab, finally fighting against one of my favourite bosses in the game so far, the First Sinner. This was a very fun challenge and it took me a few tries, but I emerged victorious in the end.

• Slice & Dice is once again taking over my free time, just a great roguelike, nothing needs to be said.

Reading

Completed

• Exit Stragegy - I finally finished the fourth book of The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells! This was another pretty fun short story that I really enjoyed, but once again like the last couple books, the chapters of these are just way too long for me. I kept avoiding a read because I couldn’t squeeze enough time to get it done, and I always felt weird leaving a chapter midway through. In the end I accepted it, but I still don’t like it. The story was pretty awesome anyway! Lots of cool action moments and Murderbot being Murderbot.

Ongoing

• Kingdom - Read up to chapter 849. The next arc has begun, the invasion of the Zhao kingdom begins, so many knots have been tied up nicely, and the way for a new encounter starts now.
• Blue Lock - Read up to chapter 329. Seeing how all the match ups begin to form is just so fun! The next match is France vs Japan, and it is going to be pretty crazy!
• Chainsaw Man - Read up to chapter 224. Crazy shenanigans going on.

Watching

• The Amateur - I haven’t finished Mr. Robot and maybe I should check it out again after a while. This was an interesting movie with an interesting premise! But it felt kind of random at times, it didn’t hold my attention very well, but there goes my first movie of the year!
• Death Wish - A bit of an action/revenge flick where the guy from Die Hard kills the people who killed his wife and left his daughter in a comma. Very American stuff, a random pick that I don’t enjoy when I think about it but it was very entertaining nonetheless.
• Dr. Stone - I started the second part of the latest season of this anime! Science Future has been a wild ride, and at this point I just have fun with the characters and how they get away from wacky situations with the power of science!

Around the Web

Blogposts

• A game I am playing: BotW - Oh look, someone is playing a fantastic videogame and sharing some thoughts about it, so I have to share it.
• I have had an unproductive and happy holiday - Every once in a while it’s cool to just hang out with people instead of focusing too much on personal projects and the like.
• 2025 In Video Games - I wasn’t gonna highlight any yearly recap post but Wouter played some games I asked him to play so he gets a pass. Besides, there are cool stats there!
• Android Writing - New Tablet, Keyboard and Pen - I’ve been thinking about buying a tablet lately, for some reason, I don’t really need it, but still.
• Passing Down Traditions - Traditions change overtime and that comes with some ups and downs, just a stream of thought I enjoyed reading.

Videos

• I made auto-aim for mini golf - Stuff Made Here is an all-time favorite channel of mine, the kinda stuff that keeps my engineering mind going. This was a fantastic project and I want to see it evolve even more!
• Made my girlfriend play Super Metroid - This was such a funny video, and I am yet to play Super Metroid myself… I want a girlfriend to play videogames with smh.
• The Best Game You’ll Never Play - Steel Battalion - I had no idea a game like this even existed, it looks kind of incredible. I will never play it, to be honest, but it’s a bit of a dream now, maybe once I’m in my 40s or something a game like this will show up again.
• Something About Super Metroid ANIMATED SPEEDRUN - I had seen this type of animation videos floating around and this totally killed me, very fun stuff!

This is day 2 of #100DaysToOffload

• 🛌 During these vacatons I’ve been staying in bed until like 11 am or so. It’s weird, I am awake doing nothing and just chilling. I could have written more blogposts, but it is how it is.

• 🛠 I went to work on Friday as an operator, doing manual tasks that are out of my expertise. However, my workplace needed to meet a quota and offered us vacation days for doing the deed. It was boring and we constantly ran out of things to do due to machining issues, and doing the work itself was a little tedious when it got going, but it’s over now!

• 🎁 It is the season! Merry Christmas everybody. I spent time with my family and some friends, delivered everyone some gifts cuz I’m the big brother with a job and it felt good to provide some nice goodies to everyone! Shoes, clothes, boots, gift cards and more! Even for some friends too.

• 🛍 I won’t boast anymore of what I gave, but I will about what I was given (or got for myself): I got some pijama pants, some socks, some underwear, two pairs of shoes, a sweater, a water bottle, a wallet, and a t-shirt

• 🫔 Our Christmas food was Tamales! and I did the dough myself with my bare hands. It was a tedious process actually, but in the end the result was delicious! Honestly it had been a while since I had tamales as good as those.

• 🃏 We played quite a bit of board games with the family! from Mexican Train and That’s Not A Hat to a newcomer called Happy Salmon which was an extreme success.

• 📺 Started watching Stranger Things season 5 with my sisters, and well, it definitely is a season of Stranger Things. Only the ending is left now.

• 🕹 I played plenty of games (yeah just a note now) such as Vampire Survivors with friends, I kind of started a play of Metroid Zero Mission on my Switch for some reason. During the weekend we played Nintendo Switch Sports and Spelunky, and I played a bit of Hollow Knight: Silksong during the whole week.

• 📚 Haven’t really read that much manga or books again, I guess I didn’t complete my goal to read 15 books in a year, but hey, it doesn’t matter that much.

That’s enough, no links this time around! Go spend some time outside or something. But seriously, I didn’t really read any blogposts at all and I don’t wanna do homework on a rush during the last day of the year.

See you in 2026!

And Christmas is upon us! I hope those who celebrate get to have a great time with family and friends. Be kind to each other in these tyring times, all of you!

• 🏭 A lot of work going on at work, there was some data loss that affected a bunch of the internal systems of the company I work for, and I had to manually fill up a bunch of things, I don’t want to get into it that much, but it was a very manual and repetitive process and I barely got time to sit at my desk for it. Nothing too bad really, when it comes to complexity.

• 🕹 I umm, caved for one last purchase of the year of Nintendo Switch games, I acquired Tales of Graces F Remastered, a game from a JRPG franchise that I have never tried before, but I saw it had multiplayer support and that seemed kind of interesting to me. I also acquired the Star Wars Heritage Pack physical release, which comes with five games in cart (the one I care about the most is The Force Unleashed) and two digital downloads (the KOTOR duology, which I wish was physical, but whatever).

• 💾 For a couple years, the hard drive where I stored a bunch of totally legal Linux distributions that I used for my Raspberry Pi 4 a couple years ago, was lost. However, I finally found it laying in some random corner of my house… and it’s dead, RIP.

• 🛍️ All my siblings are finally reunited at home, and the first thing we did (besides lunch) was go to the movies and watch Avatar: Fire and Ash, and after that, some Christmas shopping for new shoes! I got one of my siblings a pair, I got my mom another, and I got two pairs for myself. My father paid for his (I’ll gift him something else) and my other sibling already got a Kobo, so all good.

Watching

Only a very big and long movie this time around, not a lot else, interesting how the year has gone when it comes to my movie consumption. No anime or shows to speak of.

• Avatar: Fire and Ash - Well, I watched this movie with everyone in the family, we got one of the fancy rooms with bigger seats for everyone, and honestly, it was a pretty cool experience overall! I really enjoyed the new antagonist as well, it was a very interesting dynamic overall. I think it could have been a little hshorter, there were some parts that felt like endings and then it kept going! In any case, it feels like a sequel to The Way of Water rather than a whole new story, which I guess was the point. There wasn’t enough fire or ash though, bummer.

Gaming

Quite a bit of games this time, I even brought my Switch to my commute instead of using one of my smaller handhelds, it was pretty fun!

• Hollow Knight: Silksong - Played quite a bit more of this. Fought another optional boss, and I also unlocked the blue phial, that lets me get extra life essence!
• Vampire Survivors - Completed a full run in a local 4-player session, it was amazing! Getting the hang of it but I still can’t last 10 minutes by myself.
• Full Metal Furies - Just some progress in new stages! It has been quite fun.
• Nintendo Switch Sports - Another fun session, this time it was some online multiplayer, me and a sibling vs the world. We even won once at Bowling.

Reading

Welp, I read like half a chapter of Exit Strategy too, but I am not even giving that a listicle.

• My Wife is from a Thousand Years Ago - Up to chapter 281. It continues to be pretty wholesome and adorable, and there have been a few references to how time has passed for different characters and it’s kind of relatable as well.

Around the web

Some blogs to keep y’all reading! Or videos, making a return.

Blogposts

• What is there left to say? - AI is NOT it.
• My life was better 10 years ago - I wonder how much is it that we were just kids and how much is it that the world has truly gotten worse, there’s a ratio somewhere, right?
• Typing is physical and wonderful - Pens are very cool, but typing ain’t bad at all, both are worth learning well.
• To sigh a deep sigh of releasing - Just Annie writing something wonderful again.

Videos

• If Hollow Knight: Silksong Was Made by Other Game Studios… - The title alone is enough.
• We’re Watching a New Genre Rise in Real-Time - Ain’t Balatro kinda cool?
• What we lost when graphics got better… - This video was so good I have to share it to all of you.
• Hiding handsome Squidward under the sea - Just a very fun and random idea.

• ️🎙️ My #AntennaPodEcho came out at last, and well, it’s no surprise that Into The Aether made it, twice this time hehe.

• 🍔 My family got invited to by some friends to try out their burger business and they were absolutely delicious. I am not promoting or anything because it’s a local thing, but yeah, that was some good food.

• 🎵 Got some music from Bandcamp! Sun Kissed Lady by Natsu Summer & Ryusenkei, who I have already listened to in the Orange Airmail album, really into it! Also, I bought the Minecraft soundtrack by C418.

• 🎁 Gifted my sister a Kobo Clara Colour! thankfully my family isn’t very nitpicky with opening gifts on Christmas day, we just use them whenever we get them and pack them up for the photos once the date arrives.

• 🎶 Found this neat tool to generate a graphic similar to Spotify Wrapped but with data gathered from your scrobbler of choice, Listenbrainz, LastFM, and even Navidrome.

• 🍕 With my sibling in town we all went together for some pizza on the weekend at the mall, we also invited a friend of the family and enjoyed our time together! We even played some card games publicly, laughing and throwing tantrums without any care of the people eating around us, it was kind of an interesting experience, I was self-conscious, but nobody actually cared much.

• 🃏 We finally had another match of Betrayal at House of the Hill, and well, we didn’t finish, but the scenario seemed incredibly cool. It was just cat and mouse chase where we literally got shrunked down, and the traitor actually had some cats hunting us down! I really enjoyed what we managed to play of it, I wish we could have seen who won.

Reading

• Exit Strategy - Read up to chapter 6! Will I finish soon? I hope!
• My Wife is from a Thousand Years Ago - Read up to chapter 271 and more but that’s for next week. I’ve been charmed again by this little rom-com manhua, and yeah, it’s just very fun to scroll through.
• Frieren Beyond Journey’s End - Catched up to chapter 146. This arc is absolutely terrifying me, I am hooked and looking forward to how it unfolds…
• Usogui - Up to chapter 67. Somehow returned to this after a while, it was a little strange to catch up but the arc is over and things will develop again, hopefully I’ll follow it a bit better this time.

Gaming

• Hollow Knight: Silksong - I have defeated the final boss and got my first ending. That fight was pretty cool! And it is not as hard as some of the other boss fights, even those that can be totally skipped—cough cough Savage Beastfly cough—however, I know I am way behind on my total progress, and I actually want to complete the whole thing. It has been a challenge, but I’ve been able to overcome it!
• Vampire Survivors - Welp, I started this game in local multiplayer with friends all of a sudden, and it was really, really fun!
• Astro Boy Omega Factor - Pretty much reached the ending again, but this game continues to have tricks up its sleeve, so I continue going at it!

Around the Web

• Code, pride and ego - I enjoyed this little slice of life/flow of thoughts about developing code and receiving feedback in a professional environemnt, and for the world wide web. Good stuff.
• Vacuum boy - This is the second blog post I read about a random vacuum cleaning robot, not sure what to do with such information.
• Reminiscing About Zunes - I am happy to see more random blogposts about old music players, why wouldn’t I be?
• I’m starting a new job! - Somehow Bojidar landed a job, congratulations man!
• If no one remembers it, then did it really happen? - The memories you have are unique, sometimes way too much…
• A Busy Winter Day - Ah, a day off, such a blessing, soon to come!

It’s fine though, even though I was a little late last time, and I didn’t even use emojis for each note liks usual, quite a lot of things ended up happening anyway.

• 📕 Everyone at the book club finally caught up, which means I’ll be starting the next book of The Expanse this week! I have been a little slow, but I’ll do my best either way.

• 📻 After my review of the Innioasis Y1, someone told me there’s a built-in LastFM plugin to actually generate a .scrobble.log file that I can import to ListenBrainz (there are some scrobbling tools out there for this) This is honestly fantastic, and I’ll be definitely using it going forward.

• 🎮 One of the gaming sessions this week was at my friend’s camper! They had a TV that is hidden most of the time but lifts up from under a table when needed, however, it didn’t work for some reasond… But they also had a projector! Which worked, although sound was a mess. The point was gaming though, which we accomplished.

• ✍️ My idea for the blogposts I keep talking about still isn’t quite done yet, a couple things were still not ready for production, but this will be the week for sure!

• 📚 My sister came to visit at last! She brought me four books from a book fair that was going on where she studies, the Foundation trilogy and one from the Robot series: Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov! I am looking forward to checking them out some day.

• 🌮 Due to the times and visits we’ve had, I’ve gone with my family and friends to dinner a few times! It has been pretty fun.

• 🎉 Got together for lunch during the weekend with some more family friends as well! It was a bit of a more organized thing, and I must admit I got a little overwhelmed, but I had fun in the end!

Gaming

• Mario vs Donkey Kong - I only advanced a couple of levels this time around. Because of my goal to star every level and get all the gifts, I’ve been a little stuck with some levels of World 4. However, I am having a lot of fun trying to optimize each of them!
• Astro Boy Omega Factor - Returned to this for a bit, I am currently defeating the last boss fights of the game, which are against the world’s strongest robots! Struggling, but not that much.
• Final Fantasy IV - The Complete Collection - After the post I made about ongoing games this yeah, I decided to revisit this one and grinded for a little bit. The enemies in the Moon are way too strong even though I’m at level 49, it’s kind of ridiculous to be honest.
• Final Fantasy VI - Also revisited this one for the same reasons as explained above, I went all the way to the town of Nikeah on a Chocobo and I am expecting some fun stuff to happen there!
• Super Mario 3D World - There was this level in World 6 where most of the floor was just poison and we kept falling to it. Thankfully we managed to complete it and get all the stars and the sticker! We did a few more levels too, super fun!
• Nintendo Switch Sports - Another fantastic match of Golf, Bowling and Tennis, it’s just awesome to play with friends, but seriously, Golf is just so good. I am considering to get the Mario Golf game, but I must resist…
• TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge - Started another playthrough just on easy mode, but it was so late at night we were done by the second level. A bit of a shame to be honest, but well, we had fun!
• Silksong - I wanted to play more, but I couldn’t do more than just another try at the boss, and then I am considering to just explore that place where the floor is poisoned, but I don’t know…
• KarmaZoo - A quick try of this little game again, I really wish the main game could be local multiplayer, the party mode gets a bit stale rather quickly. good for a short burst though.
• Ultimate Chicken Horse - Just more matches with friends!

Reading

• Komi Can’t Communicate - I have finished reading this! I am honestly kind of emotional about this. Komi-san was probably the first Manga I ever read a few years ago! It was a fantastic read for so long and I just kept on reading it for a few weeks and months. However, at some point, the story started to get convoluted with more and more characters and side stories, and the main point about Komi dealing with her communication disorder and trying to make friends with Tadano’s encouragement took a backseat. Eventually though the relationship developed further and despite a few more hiccups, I think everything tied up quite nicely!

• Spy x Family - Read up to chapter 126. Oh, the current arc is a fun one, after some really effective backstory moments, the manga returns to some fun shenanigans with Anya that actually have higher stakes than what one may think. It’s fun stuff!

• Blue Lock - Read up to chapter 327. The aftermath of Japan vs Nigeria was not what I expected at all, but it’s cool so I don’t mind to keep reading!

Around the web

I actually can’t recall watching any YouTube this week, so there are only blogposts this week, it’s kind of crazy to think about.

• Moving from Plex to Navidrome for music - Cassie decided to put all her music on Navidrome. Some people aren’t into mp3 players I guess.
• Reignite your creative joy - Ain’t it nice to sort through some of your old stuff and discover good ideas you had ages ago?
• A Simple, Low-Maintenance Life - Brandon is back again with a post reflecting on his life choices that had led him to be way too involved in things that ultimately don’t matter that much, focus on real life guys, and make the best of it.
• Retro Achievements and GOTY 2025 - Any blogpost that acknowledges Parasite Eve is a fantastic game (making me feel bad I am yet to actually complete it), deserves a mention. Tons of more great stuff here though!
• Can’t quit music streaming :( - This guy forgets you can just rip whatever music you want from YouTube with yt-dlp, but it’s okay.
• Spotify Wrapped 2025 Edition - You know what, I will do this too, I don’t even care. ñalsfkjañsd.