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Favorites of December 2023

[11] 1 January 2024

Happy New Year! Hopefully 2024 will bring the needed peace and solace to
everyone. 2023 was a very difficult year for us, with lots of what you might
call “low lows” and a few “high highs”. We usually make fun of that saying, but
this seems like the first time it’s appropriate to use it.

As far as blogging goes, 2023 was a great year. See the Brain Baking [12]blog
post archive for 2023: with 90 posts last year, that’s on average 7.5 a month
or 1.875 a week. The best part about 2023 in blogging was the feedback I got,
and the new friends and e-mail pen pals I made. As frequently mentioned before,
[13]blogging keeps on giving. If there’s one thing I never ever intend to give
up, it’s blogging.

The following posts turned out to be the most popular of 2023:

 1. [14]FPGAs And The Renaissance of Retro Hardware
 2. [15]Overlooked Reasons To Still Buy Physical Media
 3. [16]Goodbye, ProtonMail
 4. [17]Phomemo Thermal Printing On MacOS
 5. [18]DOOM Turned Thirty

As for Jefklak’s Codex, the most popular article was the one on [19]Freaky Trip
, a bizarre (and very buggy) single-screen adventure/puzzle game. That one got
a few hits simply because I couldn’t find any reviews online myself! As far as
visitor counts go, the Codex gets almost none, but I still have a lot of fun
filling it. It’s my own thing, and I’ve pondered on that subject recently in 
[20]On Writing For Yourself In Public.

Previous month: [21]October 2023.

Books I’ve read

Not much this month. Read my [22]2023 in books overview post to find out about
the 22 books I managed to finish last year.

The Malloreon chronicles by [23]David Eddings continues to be my go-to bed-time
material. Books 1 and 2 are done and although the tension doesn’t exactly build
up, I don’t mind to keep on reading as it’s a light read and entertaining
enough.

Games I’ve played

After finishing Super Mario Bros. Wonder, I continued with the 2D Mario strike
with the Mario Land Game Boy series that evolved into Wario Land and Wario Land
II. The best is yet to come, though, as Wario Land 3 is on my [24]25 Best Games
of All Time list! I know them all by heart but still breeze through these
platformers once every few years.

My wife discovered a cheap Switch eShop code for Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom
Battle and since I love tactical turn-based games, I eagerly dove in. It’s okay
so far: the core gameplay is very solid, but everything slathered on top is not
my cup of tea. I’m nearing the end and will have a review up shortly.
Meanwhile, Kristien insists on playing [25]Railbound, a cosy railway puzzle
game with sometimes devilishly difficult levels! Most of the time, I just don’t
“see it”, but we’re having fun together nonetheless.

Selected (blog) posts

  • Gibru writes several interesting articles on AI and LLM generation,
    including [26]Contextualizing the Artistic Process.
  • Jonas Downey is convinced that having [27]side projects is essential for
    creatives, and I agree. This could grow into a powerful manifesto.
  • Cory Zue provides an overview on his side projects and why [28]building
    publicly in private works for him.
  • Keith McNulty explains why [29]the MBTI tests are corporate astrology
    (Medum link).
  • Michael Klamerus explains his process on [30]finding small indie games.
  • This sobering article at Eurogamer reminds us that in the video game
    industry, 2023 was also the year of low lows and high highs: [31]You Can’t
    Talk About Games Without Talking About The Layoffs.
  • Glyph explains how to set up the best possible [32]Phython development
    environment for MacOS. Don’t use brew install like I did.
  • Speaking of Python, [33]why is Python so slow? Jake VanderPlas deciphers
    the Python internals to figure out why.
  • Vlad-Stefan Harbuz’s blog is great: it’s a combination between computing
    and philosophical work. Here’s his [34]overview on resources on the
    philosophy of work I still have to dig into.
  • Here’s an interesting piece on [35]Mickey Mouse and the Public Domain. As
    of today, one of the earliest versions of Mickey hits public domain in USA.
  • [36]You Don’t Need Statistics On Your Blog says William Woodruff. Perhaps I
    should take on the challenge and ditch GoatCounter in favor of a few grep
    scripts in access logs, if that?

Other random links

  • [37]Déjà Dup Backups is a Gnome-powered UI-friendly backup tool for Unix.
  • Did you know you can [38]Scheme in Scheme on WASM in the browser? wait what
    now? The Spritely Institute also has cool info on Lisp hackatons if that’s
    your jam.
  • If you want to follow physical video game releases, look no further than 
    [39]https://www.physicalreleases.com/
  • The [40]Into The Aether Podcast released a six-hour long episode on the
    2023 Game of the Year. It’s great, but I have been slogging through it on
    and off all week and I’m still just over 03:21:00 hours/minutes in! Who
    decided that three-plus hours of jabbering about video games is a good
    thing? Because it totally is!

I hope to keep up the blogging rhythm in 2024. That’s everything I wish for in
2024 besides the obvious ones.

[41]metapost

[42] You Might Also Like...

  • [43]2023 In Books 28 Dec 2023
  • [44]DOOM Turned Thirty 11 Dec 2023
  • [45]FPGAs And The Renaissance Of Retro Hardware 27 Nov 2023
  • [46]On Writing For Yourself In Public 06 Nov 2023
  • [47]Favorites of October 2023 02 Nov 2023
  • [48]Top 25 Best Games Of All Time (GOAT) 08 Oct 2023
  • [49]Overlooked Reasons To Still Buy Physical Media 25 Sep 2023

[50] Bio and Support

[51] A photo of Me!

I'm [52]Wouter Groeneveld, a Brain Baker, and I love the smell of freshly baked
thoughts (and bread) in the morning. I sometimes convince others to bake their
brain (and bread) too.

If you found this article amusing and/or helpful, you can support me via [53]
PayPal or [54]Ko-Fi. I also like to hear your feedback via [55]Mastodon or 
email. Thanks!

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Reach me using: [firstname] at [this domain].

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References:

[1] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/december-2023/#top
[2] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/december-2023/#
[4] https://brainbaking.com/
[5] https://brainbaking.com/archives
[6] https://brainbaking.com/subscribe
[7] https://brainbaking.com/works
[8] https://brainbaking.com/about
[9] https://brainbaking.com/links
[10] https://brainbaking.com/
[11] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/december-2023/
[12] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/
[13] https://brainbaking.com/post/2021/10/a-triumph-for-blogging/
[14] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/fpgas-and-the-renaissance-of-retro-hardware/
[15] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/09/overlooked-reasons-to-still-buy-physical-media/
[16] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/01/goodbye-protonmail/
[17] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/02/phomemo-thermal-printing-on-macos/
[18] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/12/doom-turned-thirty/
[19] https://jefklakscodex.com/games/switch/freaky-trip/
[20] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/on-writing-for-yourself-in-public/
[21] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/october-2023
[22] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/12/2023-in-books
[23] https://www.eddingschronicles.com/index.html
[24] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/10/top-25-best-games-of-all-time
[25] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1967510/Railbound/
[26] https://elusivewordsmith.com/posts/Playground/contextualizing/
[27] https://jonas.do/writing/2023-10-05-side-projects/
[28] https://www.coryzue.com/writing/building-in-private/
[29] https://medium.com/swlh/the-mbti-is-corporate-astrology-c132d93e684f
[30] https://virtualmoose.org/2023/12/13/finding-indie-games/
[31] https://www.eurogamer.net/you-cant-talk-about-2023-in-games-without-talking-about-layoffs
[32] https://blog.glyph.im/2023/08/get-your-mac-python-from-python-dot-org.html
[33] http://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2014/05/09/why-python-is-slow/
[34] https://vladh.net/wage-labour-resources/
[35] https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/
[36] https://blog.yossarian.net/2023/12/24/You-dont-need-analytics-on-your-blog
[37] https://apps.gnome.org/en-GB/DejaDup/
[38] https://spritely.institute/news/scheme-in-scheme-on-wasm-in-the-browser.html
[39] https://www.physicalreleases.com/
[40] https://intothecast.online/
[41] https://brainbaking.com/tags/metapost
[42] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/december-2023/#related
[43] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/12/2023-in-books/
[44] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/12/doom-turned-thirty/
[45] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/fpgas-and-the-renaissance-of-retro-hardware/
[46] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/on-writing-for-yourself-in-public/
[47] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/october-2023/
[48] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/10/top-25-best-games-of-all-time/
[49] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/09/overlooked-reasons-to-still-buy-physical-media/
[50] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/december-2023/#bio
[51] https://brainbaking.com/
[52] https://brainbaking.com/about
[53] https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=R2WTKY7G9V2KQ
[54] https://ko-fi.com/woutergroeneveld
[55] https://dosgame.club/@jefklak
[56] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/december-2023/#header
[57] https://brainbaking.com/
[58] https://brainbaking.com/archives
[59] https://brainbaking.com/copyright-and-tracking-policy
