July 2026 Summary

July has been left behind, Mexico didn’t make it further in the World Cup, but at least Spain won instead of Argentina. It does seem like the U-20 team is doing pretty well in the CONCACAF Championship though! group leaders and ready for quarter finals.

Back to July, I am rather impressed with the amount of gaming that happened this month! It was really quite a diverse bunch of titles, and movies are not too far behind either, way too many superhero films somehow, and of course, The Odyssey, which was a highlight already, that was truly fantastic cinema.

This month my family and friends also visited, which affected a bit of my schedule, it’s also part of why I watched so many movies, and a TV show too, just to spend time with them and such. it was nice to go out.

Oh, of course, I also stayed home alone during the last week! That was a surprise for the weeknotes but thought I may as well say so here. That would explain how I completed one of the many games featured here, so that was fun.

Podcasts

• Into The Aether - I am still up to date on the weekly shenanigans and gaming shared on this podcast. It continues to be super chill and entertaining for me as well.

• Trash Taste - Same as the above to be honest! Some fun banter, hot takes, and such.

• 99% Invisible - This is a very good one, I checked a lot of interesting episodes on their backlog. Very informative and genuinely interesting topics.

• Avatar: Braving the Elements - Listened to a couple of great episodes going over two of my favorites in the show, The Blind Bandit and Zuko Alone!

• Late Night Linux - Honestly, with so many news in the Linux space going in directions I dislike, I wanted to be somewhat informed about it, returning to this one has been alright.

• Wolf 359 - I finally listened to more episodes of this, including some of my all-time favorites that I still remembered from my first listen, though everything around it was fuzzy, great stuff.

Videogames

Completed

• Transistor - a predecessor to Hades that features a mix of turn-based/action combat and a sort-of murder mystery/conspiracy story in a cyberpunk future. My review is already written I just need to edit it and add some screenshots for it.

• Monument Valley: Forgotten Shores (DLC) - This was a DLC for the original game that features more levels and great art!

• Monument Valley II (+ The Lost Forest DLC) - The sequel and the DLC. Featuring new characters to control, sometimes all at once, and a more understandable story, if still obscure, with some new mechanics and great level design. The DLC was actually much more complicated especially the last level, I had to look it up a bit.

• Monument Valley III (+ The Garden of Life DLC) - This one had a much more understandable story than the others, and a bigger set of levels to complete. Each puzzle helps you restore and bring more characters to your island/lighthouse, and you can eventually play little levels for each character you bring back too. Overall, it’s much easier than both previous games, but the last level is a true challenge, probably the most complicated of the whole trilogy. A weird change, but a welcome one.

• Jabberwocky - A short Game Boy game that became my test subject for RetroAchievements. The story was quite funny and there’s one puzzle too, most of it is walking and dialogue though, but enjoyable nonetheless for 20 minutes or so.

• Gris - It seems like I was up for some more artistic videogames as I chose this to play and beat in a couple of days. This was a wonderful platformer. Not a difficult one, but more aesthetic, atmospheric and awe-inspiring than most! My review will be coming soon. I beat this one in a couple days while my family was out!

Ongoing

• Astro Boy: Omega Factor - Another one I tested for RetroAchievements and worked out alright! Unfortunately have made a lot of progress on it, so I won’t ever get all of them unless I decide to replay it for some reason, but I won’t. Great little beat’em up though.

• Donkey Kong (1994) - This was my ultimate choice for RetroAchievements, and it was truly fantastic, I have progressed all the way up to world 4 now, and every level keeps being simply fantastic. This game is impressive for its time and genuinely a joy to go through so far.

• Ys I & II Chronicles - I tested this when I setup PSP PlayTime tracking and it kind of stuck for a bit. This is a classic action RPG and it shows, but it doesn’t seem too hard now that I’ve spent some more time on it, I am interested on revisiting it sometime.

• Fire Emblem Awakening - Well, I’ve made a bunch more progress on this game since I started it last month, I’m on chapter 19 and I’ve completed plenty of paralogues as well! The story continues to be great and I am loving the mechanics too, which have turned out to be quite interesting. I still restart a lot though.

• Lumines
• Slice & Dice

Started

• The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D - It’s happening! I wrote a bunch about Zelda already, I’m playing along with Syl and having quite a blast with the game itself. I’ve made a lot of progress and got to Jabu Jabu’s Belly, I’m waiting for Syl to catch up with me right now.

• Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith - My sister wanted to try this game so I let her borrow my handheld, she got stuck on the first level’s boss. I decided to start a new game myself and have played up to Count Dooku’s boss fight. I love the combat system and the pixel art so far.

• Black Rock Shooter - An action RPG shooter, exclusive for the PSP, with an interesting post-apocalyptic story where robots are destroying humanity, until an anime girl showed up!

Movies

• Masters of the Universe - This was better than I expected, very self-aware of what it is, way too many jokes about swords though.

• Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender - Epic animation, good nostalgia, excellent action and choreography, fine story if a bit rehashed.

• The Odyssey - As cinematographic as it gets, it’s Christopher Nolan after all. I really enjoyed it and I am interested on reading it.

• Unstoppable - Two blue-collar workers save the day after a train goes out of control.

• Megamind - Among the best animated superhero films. Second watch this year somehow.

• Yes Day - A pretty cringe family comedy movie but the mom is Electra so that’s cool.

• Superman - Great return to form for the character, fun action and emotional moments, humor was mixed for me.

• Supergirl - This didn’t stick the landing as well but I liked the ideas and the spacey vibe it had.

TV Shows

• Avatar: The Last Airbender (Live Action Season 2) - In the end this was mostly decent, but it just didn’t hit as well as the original, it skipped over a lot of important things and I wouldn’t really recommend it unless you really don’t care at all about animation for some reason—that would be quite a shame.

Books

• Leviathan Falls - Up to chapter 25. Most of my progress was this week though, I really fell off reading most of the month because of all the gaming I did. However, I decided to read a bit more on my commute which helped me get back on track. This is the last book of The Expanse, and it has actually built up a bunch of stuff I didn’t expect, with many plotlines that will culminate somewhere, and I am still unable to see where, which is great.

Manga

Started

• Centuria - Up to chapter 38. This is a dark fantasy shonen manga that features an orphan slave boy who is blessed/cursed by a sea goddess with powers beyond human capacity. After a wreckage, he and a baby girl are the only survivors. On a new continent, he wants to protect her and have a simple life in peace. There’s quite a bit of eldritch horror and other humans with similar abilities, a prophecy that he refuses to accept, and other interesting plot devices. I’ve enjoyed it so far though the artstyle is not exactly awesome.

Ongoing

• Uncle from Another World - Up to chapter 27. Returned to this after a few months, it has been a pretty fun fantasy isekai and got me laughing quite a bit! Still has that fan-service problem but it’s whatever.

• Blue Lock - Up to chapter 354. Many of the later chapters were setting up the Japan vs England match and they have been a little mixed, I may wait until the whole arc is over before I continue reading!

• Kingdom - Up to chapter 873. I’ve only read a couple of these since I want to build up until I have a nice chunk to go through on a single session. This continues to be very epic, you should really read it already.

• Spy x Family - Up to chapter 137. Fun stories and slice of life I have no complaints, it brings me joy every single time.

Completed

• Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie - I ended up finishing this rom-com at last, and it was really quite good. I enjoyed the dynamic with a couple that was already together from the start and seeing how things developed with the rest of the cast too. It made me happy quite a bit and was a pretty consistent and fun journey. I think it didn’t have anything particularly special, but I rooted for these characters so, it was nice to see how things went.

Music

Top Albums

• FTL: Original Soundtrack by Ben Prunty
• Time Once Lost by Rozen
• Outer Wilds by Andrew Pharlow
• Hades by Darren Korb
• Plants vs Zombies by Laura Shigihara

Goals

• Participate in Blaugust and post every day!
• Try a bicycle commute to work
• Finish a pending commission for a friends
• Finish a pending commission for my parents
• A full website redesign
• Create some pixel bears for a few friends (2/10)
• Play all the games from the UFO 50 collection (3/50)
• Complete 15 videogames (14/15)
• Complete 15 books (7/15)
• Read the whole bible in a year (82/365)
• Finish Listening to Wolf 359 (49/61)
• Cycling every weekend
• Participate in July Reply (did two posts)

Finishing thoughts: Blaugust begins!

Now that I share this, I didn’t want to forget mentioning, it’s the beginning of Blaugust!

That means I want to post even more often than normal, which should not be too difficult for me as I’ve done this in the past. My posts may get a bit shorter in average, but I do have a couple drafts ready to share this month that will also be quite long…

Make sure to participate and sign up if you haven’t!, it should be pretty fun if you are up for the challenge.

So, well, that’s pretty much it, what about you dear reader? Did you find any of the stuff shared here interesting for you? Or is there something I missed out on? Feel free to tell me!

This is day 6 of #100DaysToOffload