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     14 
     15 Favorites of December 2023
     16 
     17 [11] 1 January 2024
     18 
     19 Happy New Year! Hopefully 2024 will bring the needed peace and solace to
     20 everyone. 2023 was a very difficult year for us, with lots of what you might
     21 call “low lows” and a few “high highs”. We usually make fun of that saying, but
     22 this seems like the first time it’s appropriate to use it.
     23 
     24 As far as blogging goes, 2023 was a great year. See the Brain Baking [12]blog
     25 post archive for 2023: with 90 posts last year, that’s on average 7.5 a month
     26 or 1.875 a week. The best part about 2023 in blogging was the feedback I got,
     27 and the new friends and e-mail pen pals I made. As frequently mentioned before,
     28 [13]blogging keeps on giving. If there’s one thing I never ever intend to give
     29 up, it’s blogging.
     30 
     31 The following posts turned out to be the most popular of 2023:
     32 
     33  1. [14]FPGAs And The Renaissance of Retro Hardware
     34  2. [15]Overlooked Reasons To Still Buy Physical Media
     35  3. [16]Goodbye, ProtonMail
     36  4. [17]Phomemo Thermal Printing On MacOS
     37  5. [18]DOOM Turned Thirty
     38 
     39 As for Jefklak’s Codex, the most popular article was the one on [19]Freaky Trip
     40 , a bizarre (and very buggy) single-screen adventure/puzzle game. That one got
     41 a few hits simply because I couldn’t find any reviews online myself! As far as
     42 visitor counts go, the Codex gets almost none, but I still have a lot of fun
     43 filling it. It’s my own thing, and I’ve pondered on that subject recently in 
     44 [20]On Writing For Yourself In Public.
     45 
     46 Previous month: [21]October 2023.
     47 
     48 Books I’ve read
     49 
     50 Not much this month. Read my [22]2023 in books overview post to find out about
     51 the 22 books I managed to finish last year.
     52 
     53 The Malloreon chronicles by [23]David Eddings continues to be my go-to bed-time
     54 material. Books 1 and 2 are done and although the tension doesn’t exactly build
     55 up, I don’t mind to keep on reading as it’s a light read and entertaining
     56 enough.
     57 
     58 Games I’ve played
     59 
     60 After finishing Super Mario Bros. Wonder, I continued with the 2D Mario strike
     61 with the Mario Land Game Boy series that evolved into Wario Land and Wario Land
     62 II. The best is yet to come, though, as Wario Land 3 is on my [24]25 Best Games
     63 of All Time list! I know them all by heart but still breeze through these
     64 platformers once every few years.
     65 
     66 My wife discovered a cheap Switch eShop code for Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom
     67 Battle and since I love tactical turn-based games, I eagerly dove in. It’s okay
     68 so far: the core gameplay is very solid, but everything slathered on top is not
     69 my cup of tea. I’m nearing the end and will have a review up shortly.
     70 Meanwhile, Kristien insists on playing [25]Railbound, a cosy railway puzzle
     71 game with sometimes devilishly difficult levels! Most of the time, I just don’t
     72 “see it”, but we’re having fun together nonetheless.
     73 
     74 Selected (blog) posts
     75 
     76   • Gibru writes several interesting articles on AI and LLM generation,
     77     including [26]Contextualizing the Artistic Process.
     78   • Jonas Downey is convinced that having [27]side projects is essential for
     79     creatives, and I agree. This could grow into a powerful manifesto.
     80   • Cory Zue provides an overview on his side projects and why [28]building
     81     publicly in private works for him.
     82   • Keith McNulty explains why [29]the MBTI tests are corporate astrology
     83     (Medum link).
     84   • Michael Klamerus explains his process on [30]finding small indie games.
     85   • This sobering article at Eurogamer reminds us that in the video game
     86     industry, 2023 was also the year of low lows and high highs: [31]You Can’t
     87     Talk About Games Without Talking About The Layoffs.
     88   • Glyph explains how to set up the best possible [32]Phython development
     89     environment for MacOS. Don’t use brew install like I did.
     90   • Speaking of Python, [33]why is Python so slow? Jake VanderPlas deciphers
     91     the Python internals to figure out why.
     92   • Vlad-Stefan Harbuz’s blog is great: it’s a combination between computing
     93     and philosophical work. Here’s his [34]overview on resources on the
     94     philosophy of work I still have to dig into.
     95   • Here’s an interesting piece on [35]Mickey Mouse and the Public Domain. As
     96     of today, one of the earliest versions of Mickey hits public domain in USA.
     97   • [36]You Don’t Need Statistics On Your Blog says William Woodruff. Perhaps I
     98     should take on the challenge and ditch GoatCounter in favor of a few grep
     99     scripts in access logs, if that?
    100 
    101 Other random links
    102 
    103   • [37]Déjà Dup Backups is a Gnome-powered UI-friendly backup tool for Unix.
    104   • Did you know you can [38]Scheme in Scheme on WASM in the browser? wait what
    105     now? The Spritely Institute also has cool info on Lisp hackatons if that’s
    106     your jam.
    107   • If you want to follow physical video game releases, look no further than 
    108     [39]https://www.physicalreleases.com/
    109   • The [40]Into The Aether Podcast released a six-hour long episode on the
    110     2023 Game of the Year. It’s great, but I have been slogging through it on
    111     and off all week and I’m still just over 03:21:00 hours/minutes in! Who
    112     decided that three-plus hours of jabbering about video games is a good
    113     thing? Because it totally is!
    114 
    115 I hope to keep up the blogging rhythm in 2024. That’s everything I wish for in
    116 2024 besides the obvious ones.
    117 
    118 [41]metapost
    119 
    120 [42] You Might Also Like...
    121 
    122   • [43]2023 In Books 28 Dec 2023
    123   • [44]DOOM Turned Thirty 11 Dec 2023
    124   • [45]FPGAs And The Renaissance Of Retro Hardware 27 Nov 2023
    125   • [46]On Writing For Yourself In Public 06 Nov 2023
    126   • [47]Favorites of October 2023 02 Nov 2023
    127   • [48]Top 25 Best Games Of All Time (GOAT) 08 Oct 2023
    128   • [49]Overlooked Reasons To Still Buy Physical Media 25 Sep 2023
    129 
    130 [50] Bio and Support
    131 
    132 [51] A photo of Me!
    133 
    134 I'm [52]Wouter Groeneveld, a Brain Baker, and I love the smell of freshly baked
    135 thoughts (and bread) in the morning. I sometimes convince others to bake their
    136 brain (and bread) too.
    137 
    138 If you found this article amusing and/or helpful, you can support me via [53]
    139 PayPal or [54]Ko-Fi. I also like to hear your feedback via [55]Mastodon or 
    140 email. Thanks!
    141 
    142 JavaScript is disabled. I use it to obfuscate my e-mail, keeping spambots at
    143 bay.
    144 Reach me using: [firstname] at [this domain].
    145 
    146 ↑ [56]Top [57]Brain Baking | [58]Archives | [59]© CC BY 4.0 License.
    147 
    148 
    149 References:
    150 
    151 [1] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/december-2023/#top
    152 [2] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/december-2023/#
    153 [4] https://brainbaking.com/
    154 [5] https://brainbaking.com/archives
    155 [6] https://brainbaking.com/subscribe
    156 [7] https://brainbaking.com/works
    157 [8] https://brainbaking.com/about
    158 [9] https://brainbaking.com/links
    159 [10] https://brainbaking.com/
    160 [11] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/december-2023/
    161 [12] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/
    162 [13] https://brainbaking.com/post/2021/10/a-triumph-for-blogging/
    163 [14] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/fpgas-and-the-renaissance-of-retro-hardware/
    164 [15] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/09/overlooked-reasons-to-still-buy-physical-media/
    165 [16] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/01/goodbye-protonmail/
    166 [17] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/02/phomemo-thermal-printing-on-macos/
    167 [18] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/12/doom-turned-thirty/
    168 [19] https://jefklakscodex.com/games/switch/freaky-trip/
    169 [20] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/on-writing-for-yourself-in-public/
    170 [21] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/october-2023
    171 [22] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/12/2023-in-books
    172 [23] https://www.eddingschronicles.com/index.html
    173 [24] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/10/top-25-best-games-of-all-time
    174 [25] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1967510/Railbound/
    175 [26] https://elusivewordsmith.com/posts/Playground/contextualizing/
    176 [27] https://jonas.do/writing/2023-10-05-side-projects/
    177 [28] https://www.coryzue.com/writing/building-in-private/
    178 [29] https://medium.com/swlh/the-mbti-is-corporate-astrology-c132d93e684f
    179 [30] https://virtualmoose.org/2023/12/13/finding-indie-games/
    180 [31] https://www.eurogamer.net/you-cant-talk-about-2023-in-games-without-talking-about-layoffs
    181 [32] https://blog.glyph.im/2023/08/get-your-mac-python-from-python-dot-org.html
    182 [33] http://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2014/05/09/why-python-is-slow/
    183 [34] https://vladh.net/wage-labour-resources/
    184 [35] https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/
    185 [36] https://blog.yossarian.net/2023/12/24/You-dont-need-analytics-on-your-blog
    186 [37] https://apps.gnome.org/en-GB/DejaDup/
    187 [38] https://spritely.institute/news/scheme-in-scheme-on-wasm-in-the-browser.html
    188 [39] https://www.physicalreleases.com/
    189 [40] https://intothecast.online/
    190 [41] https://brainbaking.com/tags/metapost
    191 [42] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/december-2023/#related
    192 [43] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/12/2023-in-books/
    193 [44] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/12/doom-turned-thirty/
    194 [45] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/fpgas-and-the-renaissance-of-retro-hardware/
    195 [46] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/on-writing-for-yourself-in-public/
    196 [47] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/october-2023/
    197 [48] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/10/top-25-best-games-of-all-time/
    198 [49] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/09/overlooked-reasons-to-still-buy-physical-media/
    199 [50] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/december-2023/#bio
    200 [51] https://brainbaking.com/
    201 [52] https://brainbaking.com/about
    202 [53] https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=R2WTKY7G9V2KQ
    203 [54] https://ko-fi.com/woutergroeneveld
    204 [55] https://dosgame.club/@jefklak
    205 [56] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/december-2023/#header
    206 [57] https://brainbaking.com/
    207 [58] https://brainbaking.com/archives
    208 [59] https://brainbaking.com/copyright-and-tracking-policy