I deny all the cookie banners

Definitely the Windows Internals books, I don’t think there’s anything else quite like it (wrt. Windows). I was also pleasantly surprised by de depth of Windows Via C/C++, which I expected to be one of those beginner tutorials distracted by language basics, but instead it’s the opposite, just a really in depth dive into low level Windows APIs.

I tried John Carmack’s “program something with just the OpenBSD base system” experiment and after some adjustment I got to like vi (not vim), ksh and bmake. For a long time this stayed my go-to happy place for hobby coding. Fun thing: on a hacker camp they had a PDP/11 running 2BSD and it was just immediately familiar. Same tools, same vi -> Ctrl-Z -> make -> fg workflow.

Very different but similar in a way: I still consider the general Windows 95 - 2000 peak UI design in many ways and I still regularly use Visual C++ 6 to play around with some Win32 programming.

Web search gives you pages of slop results too, now

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Before a 4 month stay in Vienna, I tried upping my German game: consumed lots of German-language media (news, books, videos), attended a language course, really tried immersing myself as well as I could. It was enough to get by okay, but I felt frustrated not being to follow along always or express myself precisely. Since coming back I haven’t been able to pick it up and in fact have come to associate the language with the sad realization that it’s behind me.

Edit: just a positive note, I can now easily follow along with German-language talks, musicals, articles etc which feels like a superpower!

To relive anew, Ico on the PS2. I could boot it up right now but it wouldn’t be like that first playthrough, my first foray outside of PC and Nintendo.

Danger Dan, “Oktober in Europa”. I can’t listen to any of his stuff any more because it makes me remember this one

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Another Mine listener! 😍

I also like me some ok.danke.tschüss

That was the joke 😅

But here it is (I think?): https://xkcd.com/979/

rsync to an rsync.net account, serves me well

Chaotic neutral here

I cycle wallpapers from different OSes, but never the one running. Work W11 laptop has the Debian wallpaper now, OpenBSD laptop the Windows 10 backlit glass one, etc

(I do the same with game character names)

Thanks for reminding me of that comic! Took me some time to find it though

For those who forgot their password: https://archive.is/20251021174356/https://www.theverge.com/report/803237/microsoft-xbox-devkit-price-hikes-developers

“Never again” is stronger than I’d put it but we probably won’t be vacationing in France again because god forbid a guy doesn’t want to eat animals.

Edit: for some positivity, I loved every trip to Germany and also Austria, the latter so much in fact that we went to live in Vienna for a short time. If not for my partner I’d move right back.

Even when you get to the actual website results you now have to wade through the AI slop sites

Portable handhelds, I mean form factors like the PSP and Nintendo DS. The downside of the console/handheld convergence is that the handhelds need pretty big screens.

Three oliebollen, what a delightful start to a depressing day at the office!

Games and YouTube!

In my ‘office’ room, I have an Xbox 360, Xbox One X, PlayStation 3, 4 and Wii U hooked up to an HDMI switch to one of my monitors. When not working I’ll play games on that monitor, preferably something a little mindless or grindy like a racing game, platformer or Diablo, while half watching YouTube videos on the other. Digital Foundry, Practical Engineering, documentaries, that sort of stuff.

That’s for now at least, some other time I’ll be into a programming project or something else.