This week’s gonna be brutal. There’s lectures; research project meetings; preparations for my university’s participation in Düsseldorf’s Nacht der Museen where, among other things, our game design students present their work; and the event itself on Saturday 7pm–1am CEST. Then there’s a Fantasy Writers’ Week online workshop Monday thro...

Even though April’s been way too warm so far, it might average out toward the end and thus not be an immediate cause for alarm—at least, that’s what I keep telling myself to enjoy the sun. On the other hand, not enjoying the sun wouldn’t make anything better or worse. Also, there are enough conflicts going on, some of them escalating, ...

During the last month, I’ve freed up a lot of time to intensify my writing projects. Now, lo and behold, Meta is helping me with this! Isn’t that nice! Last year, I wasn’t on Instagram for two or three months while Meta tried to blackmail me into either officially acquiescing to their (in the EU) unlawful use of my data or paying an ou...

After an intense March replete with bachelor and master degree exams, the summer term starts this week with a term project kick-off on Tuesday and my first lecture on Wednesday. And I’m all set, right on time! I did make myself familiar with all the shiny stuff that had arrived over the last weeks for my new training regime, and it’s g...

When I link to books, mine as well as others, the first link I give out is usually the publisher page, and a recommendation to buy at independent bookstores. I link to Amazon for my books too, of course, because I want to be able to pay my rent. But I’d very much prefer if people bought them elsewhere! Why? A few examples. When I self-...

One year ago, along a Kunstpalast exhibition in March 2023, I started going out again (after, as mentioned, three years of pandemic (semi-)lockdowns, burnout, two sports/wear-&-tear-related surgeries, a common cold from hell, and a Corona infection) to exhibitions and art events, theater performances and movies, concerts and operas, yo...

Several factors chipped in to buy me that colorful bouquet of burnout symptoms in late 2022 and my way-too-slow recuperation in 2023: severe overwork; being grounded (in Germany) for years during the pandemic; a common cold from hell and a successive Corona infection; and two lengthy disruptions of my training regime courtesy of arm/sh...

Let’s pretend for a moment there’ll still be history books a hundred years from now, and they look back at the first half of the twenty-first century. From our perspective right here, there’s a rise of authoritarianism, ethno-nationalism, evangelical white supremacy, racism, and straight-up fascism, and we can see how these elements ha...

Yesterday, finally, I uploaded my very last pre-Corona photos to Flickr, mostly Singapore 2019 and Beijing 2016, and I’m looking forward to opening that bottomless pit with new photos I took during December/January in Singapore and Malaysia. What I’m not looking forward to, in contrast, is trying to have my scanner repaired or buying a...

One thing that kept me from enjoying the new year right away was that I’d tested positive for Covid-19 in early January—but only for five days, of which I spent merely two in bed. Lost my sense of smell for two or three days until it slowly came back, which was a weird experience. Anyway, no big deal—five shots between 2021 and 2023 an...

Too many things kept me from regular writing while I was away in Singapore, which also included a fantastic trip to Malaysia from Penang Island via Ipoh and Melaka to KL—where we arrived just in time for the Countdown and New Year celebrations at the Petronas Twin Towers. Everything was awesome, I tell you! Only thing that didn’t work ...

It took me two years, January 2011 to November 2013, to downsize my home library to under 1,000 books—giving away 1,200 (all fine) and throwing away another 300 (damaged books, outdated textbooks, and similar). Since then, I’ve only stocked up on ebooks, and I bought perhaps ten physical books, not counting role-playing stuff, in ten y...

Lots of things have kept me busy—while I was (and still am) occupied with my Ludotronics book release, another comp copy arrived: my book contribution “Shared Realities, Solitary Actions: Media Languages as Agents of Formation, Reinforcement, and Change” in the anthology Narratives Crossing Boundaries: Storytelling in a Transmedia and ...

Yesterday, I wrote over at Mastodon: “Sitting on the balcony after a good run, enjoying a home-made turkey & egg double cheeseburger and an espresso-tonic, looking forward to watching The Equalizer 3 in a late-night screening. That’s how summer should be like!” And yes, it felt like that the whole week, more so than during my entire Au...

Today, for the first time since I received knee surgery back in January, I tackled one of my formerly regular 10km dirttrack/hill runs. Not at my usual speed, mostly—I’m still too scared, and I’m also not exactly in top shape. But it sure felt great! What also resumed as of last Friday is work; my watching-the-balcony-being-flooded-by-...

Weather’s been mixed; temperatures rose again last week but it rained about every other day. I did and do a lot of running, writing, playing, editing photos, and watching movies, and I enjoy the latest advances in refreshment engineering. However, academia’s gravity field caught up with me again. I attended my university’s term project...

Not much has changed, weather-wise, except for one beautiful summer day the day before yesterday that felt just like the vacation weather I feel acutely entitled to! And while so far it hasn’t been raining today, it looks like it’s fixing to all the time, and temperatures snapped back into the low 70s. You can do better, summer! On my ...

The week before last, when I was critically preoccupied with wrapping up loose ends before summer vacation, the newsletter completely slipped my mind. It’s been a staycation so far, only without the balcony I redecorated around this time last year because it’s raining all the time. No floodwaters yet or anything, thank goodness. But it...

Now that we’re about halfway through the year, which happens to coincide with the first moon landing’s anniversary and also my birthday, it’s a good time to take stock. 2023 didn’t start out promising here, with that common cold from hell in January, Covid in February, and the lengthy break I had to take from running thanks to meniscus...

My memory of the past week primarily revolves around cleaning my desk, drawers, devices, and various keyboards in particular, the latter at length reflected upon in four overlong Instagram posts. But I also attended the CGL’s annual Open Lab event Wednesday night—to chat with graduates, students, and friends, check out the graduation p...

Someone recently wrote, I can’t remember where, that the internet itself is the “town square” everybody’s been going on about, not any one social media network. And that people usually want to go and sit in bars and restaurants or go shopping, not hang around in the “town square” the entire day. Well, you had the shopping malls and the...

Fediverse admins are not amused. They don’t mind if Lord Elno intermittently sprinkles some extra pixie dust over his daily dose of birdie powder and fucks up Twitter in new and exciting ways, so that fresh waves of exiles hit the shores of the most prominent instances, including mastodon.social. What they do mind, however, is that thi...

It was already Tuesday when I realized I’d skipped last Sunday’s newsletter. Not that I was stressed-out or anything—I was just terribly busy! All weekend last week, I consolidated various backups to a new and fast hard disk I’d bought earlier, which was complicated. The Mac I’m temporarily working with (courtesy of my university’s IT ...

Not that I’d ever complain personally about a good hot summer arriving early—from 85 °F onward and climbing, I begin to feel like myself. I get a lot more things done, get better at making decisions, and enjoy life in general. This weekend, for example, I attended four concerts, three classical at Tonhalle Düsseldorf and one rock conce...

As the last sixteen or so days were pretty insane, I had to skip last week’s newsletter and social media activities in general. What I’d originally thought I’d be terribly busy with were my upcoming book’s page proofs. But CRC-Press did a terrific job, so that turned out to be a cinch. Only one major issue needed fixing, involving thre...

My book’s page proofs arrived last week, and I will be exceptionally busy for the next ten days. Every mistake not caught by me during this time will find its way into the finished product, and I can already say—after speed-scrolling through the document—that not all illustrations have been placed where they should have been placed. As...

Yesterday, after a busy Saturday that included spending a lot of time at the local Japan Day and preparing and enjoying dinner, I finally sat down with a glass of 1776 57.3% Barrel Proof Straight Rye on the rocks and thought, hey, why not have a look at Facebook, which I hadn’t opened for ages! Well, turns out its enshittification has ...

On several occasions, I mentioned that I’d love to go back to analog photography, which has gotten a distinct “be careful what you wish for” vibe lately. Not only did I sort of inherit a Nikon FA with an intimidating array of lenses a while ago; last week I also sort of inherited a Toptron Microcam TC-505 toy camera for 110 film, a Rol...

For the first time in ages, not counting travel squaries at Pixelfed and a few shots at betweendrafts and voidpunkverse, I neither published any blog posts nor uploaded anything to Flickr. Not only was that week packed with 18 hours worth of lectures plus preparations and follow-up handouts, a belated bachelor exam, an important meetin...

Last week up until today, besides lectures and everything else, I had to go through my publisher’s copyedits, a fun package of ~600 pages distributed over 30 documents, 100 text-intensive illustrations, and a brutal 180 items “Works Quoted” section. Which—besides books and papers and articles—references everything from Aristotle to the...