Weeknotes 2024 W27: Tor

Quick bits:

• I had dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant, which I had some trouble finding (I initially cycled right past it) because the location looks very much like a Kneipe¹¹1 German for pub.  — it most likely used to be one! The juxtaposition of traditional German and Ethiopian decor sure is something else.

• I very nearly lost my 300-something-day Duolingo streak with less than an hour to spare. But I did it!

• Some days, it feels like nothing one does actually matters. On other days, you see the Tories suffer a crushing defeat, and you realize there very much is hope still.

• No concrete news on the job search, but next week­notes you’ll have an update. Probably.

• The giant football goal in front of Brandenburger Tor — the one that’s in place during UEFA Euro 2024 — is funny because Tor means both gate (as in Brandenburg Gate) and goal. I think this is intentional but my brain is very slow sometimes.

Shower thoughts:

• Whenever I hear the term “set dressing,” I imagine an enormous bottle of vinaigrette being splurted over a film set. Can’t help it.

I had an MRI scan of my head the other day, to identify the occasional bizarre headaches I get. I’ve been waiting a long time for this scan; MRI appointments are very difficult to get in Berlin.

They put the resulting scans on what they call a “CD-ROM,” which is a strange, shiny round metallic disc onto which data is engraved using ancient technology from a lost century, for which I need special hardware that I don’t have.

Do I need to buy a CD/DVD reader now? What year is this?

I suppose that I don’t need to access the contents of the CD-ROM myself and can just give it to my neurologist, yeah?

Traffic in Berlin continues to be a menace.

• A cyclist overtook me from the right as I was turning right, nearly crashing into each other. Overtaking from the right happens so often — why the fuck do people do this?!

• As I was waiting on my bike at a red light, a cyclist from behind me went straight through, and then got called over by the police who were standing just a bit further. Cyclists can be a menace on the street and I can’t say I’m unhappy to see people facing consequences.

• A bus overtook me as I was cycling and simultaneously pulled in at a bus stop. Being pushed out of the way by a bus is extraordinarily scary — luckily I managed to get out of the way before anything bad happened.

I have been struggling with motivation to make games.

I started with the question: What are the games that I want to make?

But I don’t think this is quite the right question. Maybe better: What are the games that I myself want to play? What do I enjoy about games?

I think there are two types of games that I truly enjoy:

• Story-rich games. I want to immerse myself in a believable world with realistic characters, a good story that means something, and sticks around in my memory long after I finish the game.

• Casual games. Easy to learn, hard to master, yet rewarding every time. My Solitaire game is a good example of this: I can fire it up and play for a couple of minutes, and it’ll be good fun.

There are other sorts of games that I play as well. Factorio²²2 Factorio (Wube Software, 2020), published by Wube Software.  and Cities: Skylines II³³3 Cities: Skylines II (Colossal Order, 2023), published by Paradox Interactive.  are two of the games that I play, but don’t really enjoy: they suck up time and I feel drained, and fairly consistently feel unsatisfied afterwards.

Story-rich games take an immense amount of time and effort to pull off, so I don’t think it is realistic for me to focus on those. There is overlap with my interest in fiction writing though, of course.

So perhaps it’ll be casual games that I focus on. But the problem is I don’t really have any games that I can draw inspiration from: there aren’t really many games in this particular category that I enjoy. Perhaps I need to do some more research and discovery on what games already exist in this space, and carve out my own niche.

At least I still have the Solitaire game to polish up.

I very much want the game to have its own feel, and so I’ve been experimenting with a rather bold design:

I’m currently working on redesigning the playing cards, as these need to fit the theme as well. That is a lot more work than anticipated, and I’m not sure whether I want to do the entire design in Affinity Designer, or programmatically create the card designs.

I’ve spent some time learning Godot, though I’m sticking to LÖVE for the Solitaire game I made.

LÖVE is nice because it gives so much freedom, and it stays out of your way. Godot is so much more structured, and as a result it is much more restrictive in how you can do the stuff you want.

I also, frankly, like coming up with my own solutions to problems. I like figuring out how to structure my game code, and sometimes the Godot way is not really the way I want to go.

On the other hand, Godot comes with so much stuff already out of the box. For any game that isn’t super simple (like Solitaire), I imagine that Godot is the way to go.

On the Internet, I got into an argument. I updated some of the SerenityOS documentation to remove male-specific language, which got rejected because:

We have had the long-standing rule in our project that we do not concern ourselves with controversial topics as to not alienate anyone who'd like to join in the project. […] mentioning "they/them" (while not using "them" in the changes), pronouns, and relating it to males makes this PR a focal point for heated discussions.

Truly staggering that “to not alienate anyone who'd like to join in the project” means retaining male-specific language and forbidding discussion about being gender-inclusive. I am disappointed, but not surprised; SerenityOS has historically been full of mediocre tech bros.⁴⁴4 One of the SerenityOS maintainers even got into my mentions on Mas­to­don with a response so sexist it bordered on femicidal, which, fortunately and justly, got their Mas­to­don account suspended. 

The attention to Serenity OS came from the announcement of the Ladybird web browser, which was spun off from Serenity OS. Its contributing guidelines have this giant red flag:

This is a purely technical project. As such, it is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics or religious beliefs. Any changes that appear ideologically motivated will be rejected.

Political beliefs, like, you know, women should be welcome.

Ladybird and Serenity are two projects to steer clear of.

Entertainment:

• I purchased VESPER – Hierophant (single) after it being in my wish list for a long time.

• I bought Thronebreaker⁵⁵5 Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (CD Projekt Red, 2018), published by CD Projekt.  (at a discount) and I have to admit that it’s not quite my thing. The gameplay is odd, but I’m playing it for the story.

Toots and tweets:

• Craig Hockenberry on adding “Date Deceased” in Contacts

Links:

• The Pac-Man Rule: This is something that I find Germans/Berliners are particularly bad at. I have attended many meetups where the conversation groups are closed off with no way of participating unless you want to elbow some people (which is not my style).

• Config 2024: In defense of an old pixel (Marcin Wichary)

• True Facts: Five Freaky Eels (Ze Frank)

• All the RAGE: A Franchise Retrospective Ooh, only 1 hour and 45 minutes! Rage is a game I am conflicted about: it really does feel like a showcase of what the then-latest id tech could do, but it also feels like there was so much potential wasted here. Anyway, go watch the video; Noah says it better than I ever could.

• The Last Surviving Giant Passenger Hovercraft (The Tim Traveler)

• The Asshole Filter (siderea)

• Jorio’s ports of old Mac games: Nanosaur, Bugdom, Otto Matic, Mighty Mike, Cro-Mag Rally. I remember all of those!

• Should Joe Biden drop out? 1968 may have the answer. (Garrison Hayes)

Tech links:

• The 3 Types of CSS Utility Classes (James Kerr)

• A classic motion design mistake, featuring Google Calendar (Robin-Yann Storm): Using animation state to store information is a recipe for failure.

• "Technical" skills (Sasha Laundy)