Weird week this week, it was full bore at work, working on some new labels for demanding people, that was a lot of my week, debugging templating code and working on writing some new, working in a templating language is always weird, you’re kind of restricted in weird ways, and then suddenly not in others. It broke my brain enough that most of the evenings I was mush but well, that’s how life is some weeks, I was also on-call this week, but at least it was a rather quiet one, which is nice, the week was enough to deal with as it was. Towards the end of the week on thursday and friday we had the last death throes of winter, or at least I hope it was, with ~20 cm of snow coming down, but luckily that got melted away again mostly on saturday.

Books

I finished up Wanderlust this week, and it was really fun, just a good amount of action with enough drama around it, I’m usually more into the drama than action, there are some really fun characters in this one though, and it will be fun to continue on with their adventures later as well, just a lot of fun.

The next one was Derelict by LJ Cohen, which is a new author to me, I met them on the fediverse when I was talking about wanting books that end up in a found family place, and they were saying that’s the kind of books that they write, the first third of it or so was a bit hard for me to get through, but then it set pace and was really enjoyable the rest of the part through, I really liked Nomi, but that might because she was the only one not being a teenager with daddy-issues. This was a lot of fun, and it got me reading on the weekend again, which usually don’t happen unless I’m really into a book.

And I just got finished with derelict on saturday, and I was talking around with people on friday, and a couple of pepole were starting Red Mars by Kim Stanly Robinson, and since I already have the books, and never got around to read them now seemed like an as good place as could be, I’m only around 40 pages in, but this seems to have quite a lot more drama than what I expected at least from the beginning, if it continues on like this I think this is going to be a rather wild ride, looking foreward to it.

Games

For most of the week I was crashing at home, and I got really into Rush Rally 3 again, it’s just a really nice arcady rally game, I usually don’t focus that much on getting high placements, I just really enjoy driving fast on the tracks and enjoying the feeling of slowly getting a bit better, and sliding and slipping around the tight curves. This one really has the feeling of some older colin mc rae rally games that were the first ones I played in the genre, and those and this one just have this fun feeling, while at the same time being quite simple games, it’s one where it’s nice just putting on a podcast and getting some driving on.

At the end of the week I got my first little haul of buying games this year, it’s the first time in a while I’ve been splurging a bit again, this time I got 3 games.

I had been testing out a “gray market demo” version of Little Rocket Lab and I really enjoyed it, so I bought it, and I’m now working my way back to where I was the last time, I’ve always wanted to get into factorio, but it’s always felt a bit too grimy and a downer in a way, so I tried this one on a whim, and so far I’m really enjoying it, it’s pretty much a factory game merged with cozy-game graphics. It’s just a nice cozy world to work on getting used to my machine building and factory slinging, the last time I got up to starting to recycling goods, and that’s the part that really got me to want to go on, I really hope that there is some more focus in that direction, I really like building up logistics networks with spliting up and joining of resources and the like. I think a factory game about recycling, and building up things from recycling trash would be something right up my alley, I’ve been looking at another game called middenmoon which is very much in that direction, and maybe something that I’ll get if I really get through this one, I hope I will, for now at least I’ve been having a lot of fun with this game, and hope it will go on with that.

On a whim I got Grapple Dog as well, it was really cheap and cheery and Joel was recommending it, and he usually knows about fun games, I haven’t played that much yet, only the first 2 levels, but it’s been fun, it controls well, and the grappling in the moments when I manage to get a flow going it feels great, until I crash and burn, miss my hookshot and land on a bed of spikes that is, it’s fun and something I’ll keep on playing a bit on and off.

I also got Dawnfolk which is a bit of an off part for me, I’m not really a strategy game kind of person, but this one kind of felt like one that might be simple enough that it will be something I can deal with, it does look really cute, and the small mini-games look like fun, so I got it, and probably will try to pla it a bit more, I only have really played through the tutorial on this one so far.

Media

I’m still going on with podcasts, and the episodes are starting to gather up again, I’ve kind of been mostly in enjoying gaming podcasts mood, and have been kind of putting off listening to other stuff.

I’m starting to burn out a bit on mewgenics content, and have ended up just focusing on one person playing it, and just don’t watch the others, it is a cool game, but not a watch 3 hours a day of it cool game. I’v been instead looking ato some factory focused ones, so that’s how I have been thinking of middenmoon and mine mogul, which both are games in early access, they are interesting, but I’m not really an early access kind of guy, and especially not in a genre that is new to me, I’d rather have something that is finished that I can enjoy, not something that is not yet balanced well and probably just stops somewhere where I’m not ready for it.