This past week was a rough one that I hope not to experience again anytime soon. Without diving into the details, I survived and the week overall had some slivers of sunshine that made it all worthwhile in the end.
What follows is a recap of those slivers of sunshine. There's really no rhyme or reason except that they stood out to me. While this missive is dated, please don't assume that there will be any pattern as to when to expect another one of these. This one may be both the first and the last one to grace these digital pages.
The Sun Eater Saga Continues
I finished another adventure in Christopher Ruocchio's Sun Eater series, specifically Ashes of Man (book 5).
For a series I was lukewarm towards at first, each installment has turned out to be a true roller coaster of an experience. While the first one isn't necessarily bad, it does take some time to find its feet, but every volume after the first continues to get better and better, though the fourth book did test me as a reader as it was one of the darkest chapters in scifi/fantasy that I think I've ever personally experienced. Onwards and upwards to Disquiet Gods.
From Wizard Photos to Discovering IF
One of my side projects that I find the most fun for the least amount of reason is photos.wzrds.fun, which is really just my own personal static image feed, called Ocular that I found/explored/adopted thanks to serendipitously stumbling upon posts by Mastodonians like @rostiger@merveilles.town and occult@ominous.net, among others.
As this feed is a mix of personal photos that I've taken along with photos and artwork that I've collected over the years, I like to provide proper attribution when at all possible. This week, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the image I wanted to upload was originally from the 20th century science fiction magazine IF Magazine, which lo and behold is available in its entirety via the Internet Archive.
Obviously, once discovering this tidbit of information, the next logical step was to download and add all checks notes 174 issues of this magazine to my personal library. I've so far read the first story, Twelve Times Zero by Howard Browne from the inaugural edition. I enjoyed it but definitely a product of its time.
This connection, researching the source of an image in my personal collection so I can properly cite that image when posting to one of my own corners of the internet that then leads to acquiring every issue of a science fiction magazine that's coincidentally available through the Internet Archive, seems (1) both extremely par for the course for something connected to the fediverse and (2) increases my enjoyment from my photos.wzrds.fun project.
Thank you, David Pierce, for Reintroducing Me to Joan Westenberg
Similar to the story above, this next one was another connection that started one place and ended up somewhere entirely else with plenty of food for thought and future explorations along the way.
One of the few newsletters that (1) I'm subscribed to and (2) I will actually open is David Pierce's Installer. The issue from this week, "My favorite feel-good show is back" , contained more nuggets than usual that interested me, and, no, surprisingly none of them involved Ted Lasso though I, like many, love the show, too.
Upon further review, almost all of those nuggets were thanks to the "Screen Share" section of the newsletter that featured JA Westenberg's smart phone home screen.
Not only did their lock screen feature an extremely dope piece of art (see above), but I learned of their projects "Kerouac" (a writing-centric app that borrows a few features from GitHub but that just scratches the surface) and "Post Through It" (basically a private, single user social media timeline where you can post to your heart's content without fear of reprisal or judgment). I'm just surprised that I haven't caved to temptation and created accounts for either of them yet.
Beyond the above, it'd been awhile since I checked out Joan's work, and I immediately gave them the ole follow on the fediverse when I read their essays, "Your Book Body-Count is Worthless" and "Everything is Lonely". Both of these speak to me in that uncomfortable way that only happens when you see a reflection of yourself in a mirror that you didn't even know you were looking into. I mention these specifically, because I believe both topics deserve deeper dives and more serious consideration than I'm willing to devote at the moment.
Westerberg.io
Joan's Substack: Westenberg
Giving Back to Indie Game Developers with the Game Industry Hardship Fund
Despite having to make my first student loan payment in a long while that was particularly painful, I consider today a win overall. I took advantage of itch.io's current deal and picked up one of the Game Industry Hardship Fund bundles, which includes 127 DRM free indie games for $10 USD.
I knew nothing about any of the games in this bundle, did almost no research, and, in fact, had never used itch.io before either. I picked a game at random from the bundle, Atomic Owl, and, no, the list wasn't sorted alphabetically (at least I don't think it was).
Nevertheless, after about an hour of Atomic Owl's gameplay, I can safely say that if this game is any indication of other gems to be discovered in this bundle then I am a happy camper! The pixel artwork is fantastic, the chip tune soundtrack is the perfect accompaniment, and the gameplay itself is pretty fun, too.
Oh, and with the game, I also ended up with the OST soundtrack and two PDFs: a manga/zine and a concept artbook as well! So much value in my opinion and I'm very happy with the purchase and can recommend Atomic Owl at least from the bundle.