The Odyssey, air bubbles, and Monument Valley - W29

The World Cup final is over, and justice has been made. As much as I love Messi as a player, Argentina just fell off this tournament and I didn’t want them to win at all. Spain managed to play fair and attack during the whole game, and even though two of their goals were invalidated, they still managed to score and snatch victory at last.

I would like to apologize for becoming a football fan all of a sudden. I’m actually surprised how little I mentioned the World Cup back in 2022 since I actually followed it quite a bit, but alas, To the weeknotes we go!

• 🎂 My dad’s birthday happened this week! So we went out to have some food and also shopping for gifts! I even got out of my workplace early so I didn’t double my lunch intake. My siblings made him get a couple of free things from some mall shops because of his birthday, so that was fun.

• 🪟 Took the time to install screen protectors to my XTEINK X4 and to my Nintendo 3DS… I didn’t take the time to do it… properly. Now every single screen on those devices has one (or more) bubbles on it, and I’m sure a lot of you will feel extremely annoyed by the thought. I just wanted to let you feel uncomfortable out of nowehere, yes I am that evil. I will keep playing Fire Emblem Awakening and happily ignore such little things.

• 🎮 In case you didn’t read my post about tracking my gaming, it was all just to share a PSP homebrew called GameDiary, which let’s you track your gaming on the PSP! It’s super cool and quite reliable so far, a great tool that gives the 3DS’ Activity Log a run for its money!

• 🤖 Wrote about the AI-generated webinar about using LLM for work and yeah, in case you missed it, it was a pain! though I had fun laughing about how ridiculous it was.

• 🍿 I was completely unaware that my family was going to kidnap me to go watch The Odyssey on Friday, but at least this time my sibling paid for the tickets, and I got a single popcorn bucket for everyone, which served its purpose well.

• 🍗 My family bought some food before the movies—it’s why a single popcorn bucket worked out—but I had already eaten lunch at my workplace, so I was a little mad about it, but still ate a bit out of everyone’s plate without paying a cent, I am not sorry.

• 📚 The movie got me interested on the original works by Homer, I’ll be reading a Spanish translation since it’s still my native language and it might be fun for a change of pace. I went for the translation in prose by Carlos García Gual, by Editorial Alianza… I may read the Illiad first though.

• ☕ My mom actually invited my friend—the one I invited to the movies a couple weeks ago—out of nowhere and without me knowing it, not to the movie, but to meet up later with everyone (especially my siblings who hand’t seen her in a while). Hovever, the movie was so long she ended up waiting for like an hour. I didn’t realize this until the movie ended, and was a bit upset my mom didn’t even bring it up. At least she brought a book. We all got some coffee afterwards and had a nice conversation. I made a couple discoveries that made me think this will only ever stay as a friendship, which is probably for the best.

• 🚲 On Saturday I went to the gym by bike again! This time was not as painful as I only did some back exercises. I locked my bike a bit better than last time, where my back wheel could have been totally stolen, so that’s nice! I am yet to go consistently for four days a week though, I keep missing here and there.

Watching

• The Odyssey - Well well well, I found this movie to be really enjoyable! Being almost three hours long, it managed to catch my attention the whole way through. The visuals were fantastic, the mix of fantasy and reality was rather amusing to me. I have seen a lot of discussion online about how it botchered the original work and the character of Odysseus, so I have made it a goal of mine to read the original works soon enough. As a standalong work of fiction and cinematography, I have to say it’s probably my favorite of the year. Even the all-star casting somehow worked for me, yes, even the choice of Zendaya for Athena felt fitting by the end. I want to hear your thoughts and talk about it though.

Gaming

Finished

• Monument Valley 2 + The Lost Forest - After beating the last DLC of Monument Valley, I had to continue on my geometry defying adventure. The sequel added a couple of great mechanics, such as controlling multiple characters at once. Most of the levels are still amazing pieces of art and puzzle design, with a story too! Music and sound design continue to be great. A great continuation to the story and it ended up with one of the most difficult puzzles of the trilogy too!

• Monument Valley 3 + The Garden of Life - The latest entry to the series, this is the one with the most amount of actual story and narrative behind the puzzles! I really enjoyed the new mechanics added here, such as curved and spherical shapes, portals and mirrors, and a few other surprises! There was also a bunch of extra single-screen levels that ended up unlocking the most innovative and complex puzzle of the game. Won’t say more, a trilogy worth experiencing, in my opinion.

Started

• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Well, I was chatting with Syl the other day and she mentioned playing this game on her 3DS! So, of course I decided it would be a good idea to play along. She has only finished the first dungeon, so I asked her to wait for me to catch up. I played to the point where I find the Kokiri Sword, and I’m collecting rupees to buy myself a shield. You know how it goes, let the adventure begin!

Ongoing

• Fire Emblem Awakening - I’m on Chapter 17 of the story now! I spent some time doing a bunch of the paralogues and leveling up the character support levels of many people to get them to marry! I also restarted a bunch of those battles because I kept making somewhat clumsy mistakes. Still really enjoying the mechanics of this game, though I must admit I’ve been craving a different tactics RPG, maybe returning to Jeanne D’Arc, or trying something new like Unicorn Overlord. I want to finish this though, and the story is still excellent.

• Black Rock Shooter - I finished all the missions of the first stage! Including the first real boss, which was another cool/cute anime girl who even said some things in Spanish—reminding me of Asuka’s Feliz Jueves! meme—so that’s neat. After losing once, I defeated her, which unlocked a cool cutscene, as well as the free roaming mode to grind XP, including an extra boss. I ought to play so more still.

• Ys I & II Chronicles - What a surprise this was! I decided to return to yet another PSP action rpg title, and after talking to a bunch of people in town I finally realized where I’m supposed to go next. Looking forward to what this game has to offer, at some point.

• Ridge Racer - Tried a couple of course tracks of this wonderful game once again. I was unable to win the last race of the tours though.

• Lumines - Played it like five minutes, still rocks but I was only testing GameDiary.

Reading

• Leviathan Falls - Up to chapter 11. Finally managed to make progress, a single chapter of this epic book… Yeah barely anything but whatever. I am returning to this now that the World Cup is over, you’ll see next week, I will definitely reach chapter 18 or even 20.

• Uncle from Another World - Up to chapter 22. Somehow I returned to this! The adventures of Uncle continue on this fun reverse-isekai manga, the gags just keep working for me and getting me to laugh too much, even after leaving this for months, cool stuff! I need to find more manga to read though.

Around the Web

Blog posts

• On ethics and usefulness - Linus Torvalds, the guy who made Linux, has always shown a certain “pragmatism” to things which made me feel he would eventually embrace AI, not great stuff, but I saw it coming. Manuel shares some thoughts.
• What’s a computer? - Dom is back with an update post of his shenanigans, his job and life has kept him away from most news in the tech space, and that has been a blessing for the most part. Good for him!
• I’m Volunteering for My Library! - Syl is doing wonderful things as she now does some work in the local library. That’s so awesome and I am yet to visit mine! If I ever do so I’ll write about it for sure…
• I Spent 2 Weeks Without Video Games - Josh did what the title says, and concluded that videogames don’t affect him negatively in any significant way. I am on a similar boat, they are just a way to pass time for me and would easily be replaced by any other hobby of mine if I had to abandon them.

YouTube

Lots of videos this time around. They are all genuinely great, so I hope you give them a watch!

• Why Japan and China See Handheld Gaming So Differently - Short video, straight to the point.
• I found the next best thing - Handheld console review + slice of life stories recreated with paper cutouts.
• The Best Games Are Kinda Bad - Featuring Tears of the Kingdom, over/underrated games and the like.
• Yea… no wonder it won the Oscar - About the Rocky movie, its history and place in cinema.
• the moment you realize the technology doesn’t exist yet - On Shrek, its evolution and animation.
• I rebuilt this PSP from scratch - A whole redesign from scratch with CNC machining and custom PCBs
• The Giant Monster Design Pacific Rim Got Right - Analysis on Kaiju monster design
• Can A Game Be Objectively Bad? - Featuring Final Fantasy XIII and other titles.
• How Civivi is doing the impossible - 275 years of bizarre, brilliant folding knives - Evolution of long knives that fold.

This is day 99 of #100DaysToOffload.