Last week was a busy week. First, it was filled with oral exams, where our bachelor’s degree candidates presented their research and answered our questions. Traditionally, as a peculiarity of our university’s game design department, these exam sessions are attended not only by the examining committee, i.e., the students’ thesis advisor...

»Schnelltest« is what the at-home COVID-19 test kit is called in Germany. I burned through an entire stack last week, only to find that the T-line became asymptotically thinner without ever vanishing completely. Thus, for the weekend, I decided to no longer check, which means I’m both positive and negative right now! I do feel a lot be...

Last week, two days after I wrote that “it felt as if the tiniest amount of balance had returned to the world,” I tested positive for COVID-19. Thank you, World. Today, I might have finally entered the home stretch, but I’m still testing positive and feel like it. Also, my throat keeps being on fire for large parts of the day. (Plus, m...

While most lectures and seminars have shifted back onsite since October, our game design students’ end-term project presentations last Friday were conducted online for several good reasons. Later that day, however, we did go out and physically celebrated—for the first time since Covid-19 hit Germany around February 2020! From well-earn...

It was quite calm last week, but it was the calm before the storm. Beginning tomorrow, our students’ exam theses will roll in. Not all at once, however—again this year, many fell sick, and their individual deadlines are scattered all over the place. It’s so hard to keep track, I hope I won’t forget anyone! (Just kidding.) Last week, I ...

Last week was filled with university tasks, from staff meetings to exam organization to planning next term’s course schedule. True to my new year’s resolution, however, I managed to keep things in perspective and, well, manageable for a change. Another and hopefully final round of editing concluded last week for my book contribution, a...

Another week that just flew by. Apart from the end-of-term & self-initiated projects presentations at the CLG last Wednesday, which were awesome and exciting, not a lot has happened. Which is a good thing! Usually, I never make any new year’s resolutions—beyond the default one not to do anything I don’t really love to do for long. But ...

No, I didn’t plan on pausing my newsletter for a whole damn month. Just last week, I recovered from what felt like a half-dozen common colds, who’d visited me all at once for an enormous house party that lasted from December 30 to about January 25. Time didn’t stand still, of course, as I had to do some touch-up editing, both for my bo...

After Reichsmarschall Elno’s carpet bombing run two days ago, banning journalists and critics left and right, nuking Twitter Journal and Spaces, banning outgoing links to Mastodon and other Fediverse instances not only in bios and tweets, but even DMs, I decided to put my primary handle too on ice and call it a day. (As mentioned in la...

Today, I invested almost three hours to deactivate six dormant Twitter accounts for good, and to freeze another 24—in use or semi-dormant—with goodbye tweets, best wishes, and glimpses of hope for a revival in a better future where Lord Elno has become ancient history. I really thought Twitter would run out of confirmation codes! Now, ...

Yes, I’m a day late! I was busy throughout the weekend (again); today was a lecture day; and I submitted my manuscript. 144,000 words distributed over 31 documents with call-outs for 65 illustrations and 10 textboxes, 22 chapter abstracts, & 65 alt texts; 65 illustrations, 1 cover image, & 4 cover template drafts; a bunch of documents ...

Besides my daylight jobs, I’ve been preparing my manuscript for my publisher all week, and—guess what—I had to do it in MS Word. Now, I know my way around in many complex apps, including word processors like LibreOffice or Papyrus Author, outliners like Scrivener, preparation software like Markdown or LaTeX, and desktop publishing soft...

Monday last week, I had knee surgery at an outpatient clinic, general anesthesia and all, and everything went smoothly. I’m still not sure what had happened to my left meniscus in late July, but maybe it didn’t need a specific reason to blow up after twenty-five years of running. This was my second surgery in my life already; the first...

To be honest, it’s very hard for me to watch Twitter go up in flames. It’s been my primary digital home for sixteen years, that’s even longer than my various blogs exist, from where I actively participated in historic events like #SanDiegoFire, Sichuan #earthquake, #mumbai, #iranelection, and #AskIsrael. I always kept my stream clean, ...

Temperatures around where I live dropped from the low-70s to the mid-50s °F last week, but the world hasn’t exactly improved. Also, Twitter is about to implode thanks to Lord Elno von Bullshit, and I left Duolingo because they found a whole new world underneath the bottom of the barrel they’ve been scraping for years to dig themselves ...

On a global level, there was this prominent trope in science fiction where all the nations of the Earth would work together once of a common threat arose, like an alien invasion. On a national level, we have the moon shot trope, as a titanic effort across all industries for an almost impossible goal. On a personal level, we have that t...

After a full month, I’m enjoying a weekend again—reading books, playing games, watching anime, cooking meals, having drinks. I could get used to that. Last week, I wrapped up jury duty for a game award, attended a local indie developer meeting, held lectures, attended meetings, got an overdue haircut, and sent a finished chapter to my ...

Yesterday, I watched the final stretch of Action Button’s six hour review of Boku no Natsuyasumi / ぼくのなつやすみ by Tim Rogers. Besides everything you can learn about games and game design, this review is also a very personal journey into the nature of nostalgia. I’ve always been interested in nostalgia as a phenomenon; but the last time I ...

Last Friday, I gave my first full on-site lecture since the beginning of the pandemic. I have to say, it was fantastic. Not only was it less stressful on my side and more lively on the students’ side than any online or hybrid lecture I’d given over the past three years; these first-term students also conveyed a wide range of background...

Last week was a blast—three fantastic days full of great presentations at the last and final Clash of Realities conference, planned and carried out by program and technical teams from the Cologne Game Lab and the ifs International Film School Cologne, who did the most terrific job. And what a line-up! Even if you’re not fully immersed ...

Another week went by without blog posts, photo edits, or any other social media activities of note. Instead, I’ve been busy with a thousand other things, among them working on my Clash of Realities presentation for next Wednesday. This week won’t be different in that regard—after several appointments on Monday and Tuesday, I’ll be in C...

Not a lot to tell—I’m back in the world of the living, thanks to a late 2015 21.5″ iMac I borrowed from my university’s IT department. It runs macOS 12.6 Monterey, it’s admirably fast for its age, and the crack along the upper part of the display is practically invisible in night mode. Thus, all I did last week was set up the Mac and c...

This was a terrible week. It started off just fine; my Playdate arrived, and I was looking forward to unboxing and playing around with it over the weekend. But then, Thursday night, my Late 2015 27″ Retina iMac died. I tried what I could—I’m a certified computer support technician, after all—but to no avail. Hard disk, RAM, power suppl...

I’d be lying if I said it was the most disciplined and productive week ever; the check mark distribution on my to-do list is suspiciously sparse. But at least I continued working on my second edition of Ludotronics. Back in June and July, I rearranged, rewrote, or scrapped a substantial number of passages I felt could be clearer, had c...

Spending one’s summer vacation at home isn’t the same as going on vacation. At home, you’re not confronted with unfamiliar surroundings, new and different people, or novel activities, and that’s the problem—your overall time-out counts a lot less without a mental time-out from all the things you pursue and think about on a daily basis....

Not a lot to tell—I’ve been doing my best to relax while climate catastrophe effects temporarily keep the pandemic in check; Putin’s openly genocidal assault against the Ukraine continues; fossil fuel industries make obscene profits from the war and rob people blind; and any common effort toward change in this country that I live in is...

The second week was more relaxed than the first, and I managed to keep away from almost all work-related activities. I’m so proud of myself! :D Most of the time, I lived on the balcony, enjoying the sun. I also listened to music a lot, which I hadn’t done for ages; a balanced mix of art music and popular music albums that I randomly se...

The first week was off to a rocky start thanks to another COVID scare—a friend whom my SO had met last weekend called in on Monday to tell us they were positive, which meant checks and being hyperalert to every real or imagined physical irregularity until we could be sure we didn’t catch it after all, which was around Thursday. Things ...

Officially, I’m on vacation in August. Once again, thanks to the pandemic, I’m not going anywhere except on my new & improved balcony. Third year in a row, Japan’s still highly restrictive entry regulations make it impossible for me to visit my friends there, bummer. And even though I finished the major revision for my textbook’s secon...

Last week appeared frighteningly normal. The weather had its ups and down, but then got back into the 85+ °F range right where I love it. I wrote, edited, mentored students, celebrated my birthday, went to an indie developer event that was great, and met with friends to eat and drink improbable amounts of gambas and Super Bock, respect...