Joel Auterson

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 22:21:58 +0000

Another banger Algorhythms

Sat, 03 Oct 2026 13:10:03 +0000

Well, here I am in the credits of Gears of War: E-Day. Worked on this for the last couple years along with my fellow companions at Companion Group.

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 15:49:43 +0100

I thought this piece from Josh Collinsworth was a great read.

https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/productivity

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 21:55:49 +0000

Rolled credits on The Incident at Galley House, absolute banger

Sat, 26 Sep 2026 12:13:31 +0000

Made a rose and cardamom and pistachio cake for Lucy’s birthday! First time ever making a proper round cake with layers, think it turned out alright

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 23:40:10 +0000

The Olllam at Hackney Church, class gig. Been a fan since before I moved to London, finally got to see them play

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:16:56 +0000

One problem with living in the big city is all the nosy passers by

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 23:46:39 +0000

Rolled credits on Denshattack! - what a joyous spectacle that game is. Maybe a little tiny bit too long but I had a lovely time and I’m a little sad it’s over.

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 20:56:05 +0000

Finally made a cake where I didn’t screw up the icing!

Fuck it, make it anyway

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 17:11:49 +0100

Carrying on in the face of creative devaluation.

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 22:49:06 +0000

Loved celebrating my pal Tice Cin’s book launch, go read Safe Spaces!

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 21:59:45 +0000

Geese at Troxy

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 15:45:02 +0000

Fucked it lads

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 19:33:06 +0000

Tepid programmer take: git hooks always suck. They are never good. I am not a child

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 15:49:16 +0000

Such a joy to share a stage with this lot again. Boomerang forever

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 10:57:59 +0000

Read a blog recently where the author said “LLMs use fewer tokens for input than output so they’re cheap if you don’t use them to generate code” which does kind of ignore that “reasoning” involves models generating text to talk to themselves ad nauseum

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 10:09:16 +0000

Games just look better on 4:3 and we have regressed as a society since we started pretending otherwise

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 11:27:05 +0000

I’m a man of culture, you know

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 16:47:04 +0000

I need to do a little redesign on my blog so that posts don’t absolutely HAVE to have images, because it means I often don’t write because a big “proper” post feels like a huge undertaking and I could be writing things bigger than notes, smaller than posts

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 11:56:01 +0000

In today’s Japanese lesson I learned about たこさんウィンナー (Mr Octopus Wiener) and I have to share it with you

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 18:45:32 +0000

Happy eclipse day to everyone except the guy who brought his DJ decks to the once in a lifetime celestial event

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 23:17:09 +0000

I’ve now read all of Earthsea. Don’t think a fantasy series has affected me so deeply since I first read Tolkien or Pratchett. And now there is no more! I am bereft

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 17:42:54 +0000

Made the trek to Kilburn for perhaps the best coffee I’ve had in London at Killbean

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 13:38:23 +0000

Day for it

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 18:03:21 +0000

Would you believe this thing was marketed as a Small Form Factor GPU

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 15:21:15 +0000

It’s a lovely day

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 09:20:26 +0000

In somewhat typical fashion, Google have changed how Back handling works in the newest Android SDK but have not, predictably, made the new way usable from the NDK. Hopefully they will by the time the opt out stops working but I ain’t holding my breath tbh

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 19:36:33 +0000

Our first home grown tomatoes of the year (actually ever) and they’re pretty good!

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:49:57 +0000

Rolled credits on The Mermaid Mask. Loved it! Loved Tangle Tower but this one is even better.

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 23:27:44 +0000

Rolled credits on Chrono Trigger for the first time ever. If you’ll permit me a hot take: Chrono Trigger is really good

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 21:54:37 +0000

Had a lovely time in Brighton with amazing people and now I’m going home. My heart and belly are very full. I love game developers

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 18:25:31 +0000

Made banana bread last week and today in the oven discovered…this. I guess it’s overflowed banana bread. Consistency kind of like gingerbread. Should I try it?

(Obviously I already did. It’s pretty good tbh)

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 14:01:55 +0000

I’ve received four emails this week from Twitch streamers asking for Steam keys for DWG, and in every single case their Twitch - which they link to! - shows they were last live over five years ago. This is truly the lowest effort grift

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 13:14:29 +0000

I’m going to be at Develop Brighton this year! I’ve nothing to pitch but I’m around and would love to hang out with you, yes you.

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 08:13:21 +0000

This old girl gave us a big scare last week. Fully lost bladder control on Thursday, spent all of Friday at the vet’s. We feared the worst. Got her blood and urine results back yesterday and…she’s fine. Back to normal. No idea what happened. Drama queen.

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 22:18:01 +0000

Can’t stop looking at this horrifying AI generated Simpson Thing in a burger place in Armenia

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 23:07:42 +0000

Rolled credits (the second time) on Island Off Outer Darkness. What a wonderfully singular game it is. Clunky, obtuse, intensely autobiographical in a way that borders on uncomfortable. Some of the best character writing in games period. Fuck you too, Clav

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 18:21:15 +0000

Foggy in Glenarm today

Plot is the momentum killer, or something

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 08:57:35 +0100

Some thoughts after 33 hours of Saros.

Tue, 26 May 2026 21:17:33 +0000

Video Dave and Open Mike Eagle at Jazz Cafe

Mon, 25 May 2026 17:59:54 +0000

Lisbon’s lovely, we’ll be back

Sun, 03 May 2026 22:45:26 +0000

That was pretty special

Fri, 01 May 2026 22:39:45 +0000

Big fan of Cornwall

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 23:39:09 +0000

Sage Francis and Atmosphere at Electric Brixton

Star Wars Outlaws is really good

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 19:36:08 +0100

So I rolled credits on Star Wars Outlaws today and I have come away from it feeling far more strongly than I ever expected.

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 10:53:40 +0000

Not done a blog in a bit, kind of tempted to write a big ol “here’s why scene graphs are sick actually” but I feel like anyone who needs to know what a scene graph is already knows they’re sick

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:56:50 +0000

No lie in for me today then

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 10:32:16 +0000

I just wanted to play Medabots on Game Boy

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:04:10 +0000

When I booted this up I got asked what colour clothes I was wearing on the 3rd of July in, I assume, 2007, and I GOT IT RIGHT STILL YOUNG BABYEE

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 09:54:44 +0000

Got Arch running on a laptop with a modern Intel chip and I think the battery life might be even better than my Macbook, presumably because it’s Linux and the only things running are the things I asked it to run.

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 21:04:46 +0000

Saw Evening All Afternoon at the Donmar there and thought it was really good

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 11:29:37 +0000

Had a lovely time at the V&A event. I saw some cool things, did a LARP in a toilet queue, saw some pals, met some nice new people and bellowed Glassdoor reviews to the tune of I Dreamed A Dream at Robot Karaoke

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 18:20:49 +0000

Looking forward to the games event at the V&A this evening - if any mutuals are going, say hi!

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 23:13:27 +0000

On my way home from the launch of METAL GEAR SONNETS, a poetry collection by Laurie Eaves about, well, you can guess. Just fantastic. It’s out now with Broken Sleep, get it.

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 12:57:53 +0000

My first attempt at carrot cake! It sure ain’t pretty but it tastes pretty good

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 11:11:03 +0000

In the face of endless wars of aggression it’s easy and sometimes necessary to slip into self-soothing behaviours- oops, sorry, generative AI has ruined all your hobbies, get back to work

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 14:04:20 +0000

Feels like spring today don’t it

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 14:01:13 +0000

Useful, sadly relevant phrase learned in this morning’s Japanese lesson: 猫ちゃんがソファーに粗相をしました

Giving up on Elden Ring

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 18:37:46 +0000

The final boss of the Elden Ring DLC has defeated me. I’m trying to be at peace with this.

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 16:47:06 +0000

Made it to the pub at the end of the rainbow

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 14:09:29 +0000

Absolutely not the day for it but salvation was eventually found

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 11:16:46 +0000

Celebrated four years together by smashing up some bowls

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 22:35:50 +0000

We live inside a dream

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 17:09:56 +0000

A good big stomp along the Ridgeway today

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 11:47:39 +0000

To quantify “nothing”: DWG has been downloaded around 3,500 times on iOS. On Android it’s more like 400. Most of our sales are in the UK, where Android is fairly common vs the US. The reverse of our last game in several ways!

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 11:40:52 +0000

Been quite fun watching Dave’s Word Game fluctuate up and down the charts on the App Store. Think our peak is 83, but it goes right down to not even being in the top 200. App Store’s discovery algorithm is opaque but good to us. Play Store gives us nothing

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 10:28:50 +0000

Social media adds constant wear and tear to my brain and soul but it’s also the only way I can find out about indie games given few of the websites have the staff to cover them these days. I love blogs, if you have a blog with an RSS feed send me it!

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 15:12:36 +0000

Got promoted to Staff Software Engineer at the day job and found out someone else is making a game in my game engine so that’s a lovely start to my year professionally

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 19:28:40 +0000

Not much of a view from the top of Binnian but still gorgeous to be out in the Mournes on the first day of the year

The games of 2025

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 18:57:43 +0000

I do this every year and I need to stop writing “hope next year is better for the industry!” because it just never is. I still hope, though.

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 00:10:58 +0000

This evening I encountered a Christingle for the first time. How the English conquered the world I will never understand. Have a lovely Christmas friends, it’s hard out here but I love you and I’m glad to know you.

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 11:48:19 +0000

This dog keeps alternating between loudly snoring and yelling while walking around

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 18:53:37 +0000

Think that’s a new record for the amount of time it’s taken me to get a response to a GitHub issue

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 13:12:32 +0000

Thank you! No unfortunately not, I did apply years ago and got rejected, I’ll need to try again at some point.

Things I learned making a game engine

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 12:50:19 +0000

I’ve spent the last few years building my own game engine from scratch. Here are some of the things I learned.

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 10:15:34 +0000

That’s my WIFE

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 11:09:50 +0000

Random discovery I’ll share in case it helps a future traveller (or future me): the native C++ SDK for Google Play Games hasn’t been updated to support 16KB page size, making it now functionally unusable. You need to JNI bridge across to the Java SDK.

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 23:50:06 +0000

Another fab Algorhthyms, loved the owl theme even if it was slightly frightening

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 13:42:43 +0000

This creature spent 25 minutes yelling at her fishy toy while I was trying to do my Japanese lesson today

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 10:41:35 +0000

This can only end well

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 17:45:20 +0000

Listening to The Veils’ 2016 album Total Depravity and reminded that El-P has not put a foot wrong musically ever

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 23:10:52 +0000

Astro Bloc and Talisk at Metronome in Nottingham. Just fantastic.

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 23:32:35 +0000

aron! and Dodie at Roundhouse

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 10:37:05 +0000

After hearing about it on Side Story, Anthology of the Killer has become one of my favourite games I played this year. Just absurdly good.

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 22:40:02 +0000

Went over the big bridge, very scary, I was brave

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 02:05:44 +0000

Flew over Greenland today, beaut

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 23:00:02 +0000

Made some flapjacks, they fell apart a lil tiny bit but quite pleased with them all the same

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 13:15:25 +0000

Thought this was very good

https://codegood.co/writing/why-your-best-engineers-are-interviewing-elsewhere

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:18:23 +0000

Had a class time. This community is so lovely

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 12:33:37 +0000

Looking forward to my second Algorhythms event this evening!

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 21:05:18 +0000

Back to London we go

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 14:32:06 +0000

Forgiven

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 08:55:35 +0000

Left her with her grandparents for two weeks and now she won’t speak to me

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 18:14:46 +0000

Once again fallen into the trap of finding new ways to make writing on my blog easier instead of spending that time writing on my blog

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 06:07:14 +0000

Last day of honeymoon today! I suspect going back from this to London winter is going to be a bit jarring

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 13:45:39 +0000

I had a lovely weekend, thanks

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 19:21:11 +0000

Just did my first 10K in over a decade (a few months after doing my first 5K in about the same time). Wasn’t fast but I didn’t stop! Feeling very proud of myself

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 20:10:16 +0000

Watched the first episode of Frieren and I’m fuckin bawling man

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 18:28:24 +0000

Not been a member of a political party for about five years but I think I’ve seen enough to feel good about changing that today

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 21:27:13 +0000

The Deep Blue Okay by Self Esteem is a song my brain simply refuses to get bored of. Whole album tbh

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 14:06:46 +0000

Good lord I’m getting married in two weeks

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 17:29:24 +0000

So there are a lot of Fediverse servers, right. One for basically any topic or community you could think of. Unfortunately today while researching something unrelated I stumbled across a “feminist” (TERF) instance. I’m not going to say the name or link to it.

Anyway, it’s built on some software called Soapbox which is a Mastodon/Pleroma/whatever frontend. Looked it up and found the guy who made it, thinking “does he know?”. Anyway that was the shot, here’s the chaser.

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 09:40:20 +0000

Went to my first Algorhythms event last night and it was fantastic

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 18:14:42 +0000

Not mushroom left in Lucy’s backpack by the end of the day

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 18:08:58 +0000

Gorgeous day walking on the High Weald and around the (Five) Hundred Acre Wood

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 10:02:30 +0000

The world is full of horrors but, conversely, my cat’s head is really warm when she comes for a cuddle after she’s been sleeping

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 09:58:14 +0000

Went to see me old mate Gecko play with Chris Read and a full band at Folklore in Hackney last night and it was lovely

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 22:40:19 +0000

I am begging you lot not to sleep on Shinobi Art of Vengeance, it’s so so good

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 13:42:26 +0000

How is she so perfect

Sat, 30 Aug 2025 16:05:31 +0000

Oh go on here’s some more

Sat, 30 Aug 2025 11:17:42 +0000

I love the Peak District

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 21:26:22 +0000

Two years on. Still decent. Miss you Gbo

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 13:40:26 +0000

I wasn’t late to the meeting, I delayed my attendance by eleven minutes, because of Silksong

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 12:19:58 +0000

Never played MGS3 before so all these years I assumed Snake Eater was something metaphorical and not a thing you literally do in the game

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 12:30:39 +0000

Finally got around to mounting (by which I mean Lucy did it for me, I made a bollocks of it last time) the magazine covers for the games I worked on that got far enough to get magazine covers. The frames came in a pack of four so here’s hoping.

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 13:05:08 +0000

Definitely a birthday theme

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 09:41:57 +0000

My granda (on the right) with his siblings and his father. Year: who knows, but the boy in the front celebrated his 90th birthday the other day.

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 13:27:26 +0000

There’s something about Nintendo’s style of trailer voiceover that rubs me the wrong way. There’ll be a well made cinematic looking trailer and some overenthusiastic American yelling “your fairy companion can also attack and pick up items!!!”

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 19:22:22 +0000

Footy footy

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 16:24:04 +0000

Some more of the day

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 12:27:08 +0000

Please appreciate my friend Vincent’s sign. Happy Trans Pride pals

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 09:02:46 +0000

Father, it is hot, I require ice lolly

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 22:07:11 +0000

St Vincent at Somerset House

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 12:34:30 +0000

Every time I try to follow an American recipe it’s like “use a cup of milk, three bushels of flour, two cubits of sugar and eleven hands of egg”

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 07:15:29 +0000

The world is full of horrors and the games industry is no respite but I am going to allow myself to be a little bit excited about a new Destiny expansion today.

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 22:59:47 +0000

Finally got to the bottom of weird Linux ethernet issue - seems from Linux kernel 6.9 onwards some kind of power saving setting is turned on by default and this breaks it entirely. Putting this here so I can find it when I inevitably run into this again.

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 23:39:40 +0000

The annual Develop karaoke was a beautiful gorgeous thing. Look at all this wonderful faces. I love them

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 12:01:50 +0000

Cold brew season is here again

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 16:10:26 +0000

My Switch 2 arrived from Argos with the seals on the actual product box already cut. Presumably warehouse workers taking photos of the Mario Kart code for resale. Thankfully redeems ok and the console itself looks untouched!

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 16:48:03 +0000

Launch day of the Switch 1, back in the old Improbable office. Different era man. I’ll be unboxing the Switch 2 in my house with my cat.

Sat, 31 May 2025 17:18:53 +0000

Made terrariums. Terraria?

Thu, 29 May 2025 16:17:33 +0000

Watching it like a hawk waiting for season 2 to drop

Thu, 29 May 2025 07:27:26 +0000

Went to get the microsuction done and it didn’t fully work, my ears are too powerful, so next is macrosuction. Fetch the Henry

Fri, 23 May 2025 23:23:09 +0000

Bonus Jezza

Fri, 23 May 2025 22:22:09 +0000

And Kneecap, obviously

Fri, 23 May 2025 22:14:26 +0000

WITCH, Nadine Shah, Fcukers and CMAT at Wide Awake

Thu, 22 May 2025 08:15:55 +0000

Our next game is a Zach-like (Gage rather than -tronics)

Tue, 20 May 2025 12:45:14 +0000

First game of Feud in a while, a new opponent, let’s see how I do. The Feud community likes to make fun of me for how bad I am at my own game so I am not optimistic.

Sat, 17 May 2025 09:06:31 +0000

Modern C++ has a decent amount of stuff in the standard library but there are a few things I was naively surprised it lacks:

base64
any cryptography stuff at all really
HTTP!

Wed, 14 May 2025 09:38:59 +0000

Random discovery of the day is that GNU’s linker has different rules to those of MSVC or LLVM - the latter two are happy to resolve linkages at the final executable or library, while ld seems to require that every intermediate object binary be linked up?

Thu, 08 May 2025 22:19:58 +0000

Kissing Gate, Dog Race and Ugly at Village Underground

Wed, 07 May 2025 22:10:13 +0000

In light of the recent AI news I hereby renounce my 1254-day Duolingo streak. Finally, I am free.

Wed, 07 May 2025 11:32:52 +0000

So, two weeks on, got to try and bend my finger and it…doesn’t. At all! Even with force applied. So that’s a bit scary. But I did get to choose the colours on this fetching new splint so that’s something.

Mon, 05 May 2025 11:49:33 +0000

Met some new types of guy yesterday

Mon, 05 May 2025 10:03:25 +0000

Generative AI has ruined bold text for me. If you put bold text in a paragraph I’m ignoring the whole thing sorry

Sat, 03 May 2025 08:27:49 +0000

Taking quad bikes through the Sahara desert to a 2000 year old Roman fort might be the coolest thing I’ve done on a holiday ever

Thu, 01 May 2025 20:00:55 +0000

Saw these in the wrong order

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 17:39:05 +0000

More Tunisia exploring, saw Berber villages and the place they filmed The Phantom Menace. Breathtaking country.

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 08:53:17 +0000

Salt flats in Tunisia (yes I did taste it)

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 12:00:32 +0000

Exploring Djerba!

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 23:27:12 +0000

It’s been quite a day

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 13:40:13 +0000

Putting haptics into our game (and engine) and while it definitely makes the game feel better it does create a gap between the iOS and Android versions - iOS haptics are so much more advanced and flexible. I think Android 16 is supposed to address this. 🤞

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 22:35:33 +0000

Added a tiny little bit of controller rumble to our new game and it’s amazing how transformative it is. Is this what they meant by vibe programming? Don’t answer that.

Fri, 04 Apr 2025 16:49:10 +0000

Think I might have caught the mechanical keyboard bug alas

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 15:20:34 +0000

I asked WhatsApp’s new AI how to get rid of it and it hallucinated a setting that doesn’t exist, a brave new world

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 22:57:02 +0000

Dream come true

Sat, 22 Mar 2025 14:25:14 +0000

Beededededoop. Sam. It’s Die Hardman. If you eat too much banana bread too quickly, you’ll get a status called “feeling a bit sick”. You can clear it by waiting, going out for a walk, or having a coffee. Give it some time before having more banana bread.

Sat, 22 Mar 2025 13:52:44 +0000

Yeah that’ll do

Sat, 22 Mar 2025 13:05:56 +0000

Let’s go

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 17:00:36 +0000

Upgraded my monitor to a 4K OLED and so obviously I’ve been playing the ideal game for the format: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 23:59:18 +0000

Just rolled credits on Wilmot Works It Out - perfect game, perfect ending, no notes.

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 13:39:15 +0000

Playing Chrono Trigger for the first time and delighted to find it absolutely lives up to its reputation

Sat, 08 Mar 2025 17:06:25 +0000

Lovely day for a big walk

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 09:44:32 +0000

Forever explaining the topsy-turvy land of Northern Ireland to people, where the Nationalists and Republicans are broadly on the left and the Unionists are broadly on the right

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 22:50:12 +0000

Worth it though

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 20:04:10 +0000

In the queue for the Jack White gig thinking “fuck there’s loads of ageing rockers here” and then had a terrible moment of self realisation

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 19:19:44 +0000

It’s been a horrible old grey day today but the blossoms have come out on our tree and that’s just lovely. I remember once my friend Antosh told me when I was in a bad place something like “the seasons keep changing, that encourages me”. It does yknow

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 23:44:40 +0000

I’ve reached that point in the development of my game engine I’ve been dreading: I’ve got to implement a scroll pane for UI.

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:30:43 +0000

Hadn’t used it for a couple of years but the official Mastodon iOS app is really surprisingly great now

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:50:17 +0000

Had a lovely time at the Debug Awards - saw our game on a big screen, saw our game on the cover of a magazine, saw lots of lovely pals and wonderful games getting their flowers.

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 11:33:51 +0000

Your outie uses version control, even on solo projects.

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 22:40:10 +0000

This girl punished us for cheating on her by immediately vomiting up her dinner

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 21:44:38 +0000

Went to cat yoga at the cat cafe for our anniversary!

My favourite command-line tools

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:16:21 +0000

A friend got a MacBook recently and was asking for recommendations. I found myself wishing I had a list of all my default-installed command-line tools, so that’s what this is.

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 23:40:23 +0000

Ah lads it feels good to read poems in front of people again

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 22:41:15 +0000

Transatlantic Sessions, what a treat

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 21:27:04 +0000

When I was 21 and doing poetry gigs several times a week it used to drive me mad when older poets said “keep writing!”. Found it so patronising. Now I am 31 and just wrote my first poem in over a year and I think maybe they were onto something

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 13:48:25 +0000

So I finished Baldur’s Gate 1, and while it’s a fascinating artefact of its time it’s not actually all that enjoyable. Baldur’s Gate 2 is, from a technical standpoint, almost identical, yet an hour in and it absolutely whips? Overjoyed, frankly

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 11:16:14 +0000

Went up to Leicester yesterday to do a tasting for the food for our wedding and now I’m somehow even more excited.

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 13:51:41 +0000

She has other ideas

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 13:44:04 +0000

People fear he’s writing poems again

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 22:06:00 +0000

Holy shit Severance rules

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 14:31:59 +0000

I’ve been recently playing Dragon Age Inquisition, maxed out at 4K with Auto HDR, and I’m increasingly of the belief that games simply do not need to look any better than this.

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:19:38 +0000

Nvidia deserve to lose their market share for this “AI 4x frame generation” nonsense when “sloptimization” was RIGHT THERE

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:29:05 +0000

A little update from me and Bearwaves: our as-yet-unannounced Game Two is well underway, and while we’re not ready to show anything publicly yet we’ve been testing with friends and family and the response has been really positive. DM if you’re interested!

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 00:33:30 +0000

My anxiety checklist: am I hungry? Am I tired? Have I watched the lord of the rings in the last year?

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 00:23:00 +0000

Just watched all the LOTR extendeds in one day so that’s me emotionally restabilised for the next wee while

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 11:17:45 +0000

Must be using LinkedIn wrong - every time I see one of those “why game X was destined to fail” posts I click into the profile of the post author and cannot for the life of me find any record of the games they’ve shipped? Any pro LI users have advice?

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 10:13:34 +0000

In the theme song for “Bob the Builder”, Bob and his colleagues are described as “working all day til the sun goes down”; a clear violation of the EU Working Time Directive

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 23:59:20 +0000

Finished Bad Sisters S2 - the first season went from dark comedy to thriller, the new one starts at thriller and just keeps tightening the screws. Nail biting stuff

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 20:59:36 +0000

Brought the in-laws to visit The Good Place (Ireland)

The games of 2024

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 13:00:00 +0000

I wrote this time last year that I hoped 2024 was a better year for the games industry - this has turned out not to be the case.

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 18:12:08 +0000

Happy to have experienced the best Bluey episode, Sleepytime

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 00:14:03 +0000

Coming to the disappointing conclusion that developing games for Android without any Java at all is impractical enough as to be impossible.

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 23:38:55 +0000

I know we didn’t mark the occasion really but last month was a decade since we started Boomerang Club. If you know, you know. If you don’t, you missed out

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 17:01:25 +0000

My granny made this tapestry and I think in another life she could have been a kickass pixel artist

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 01:06:22 +0000

Back home for Christmas. Little traditions.

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 19:33:28 +0000

Lucy got me this pegboard for Christmas and I bloody LOVE it

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 14:39:46 +0000

Having to use Perforce is a form of slow torture. Who invented this? What’s their address? Just wanna talk

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 08:44:10 +0000

Some morning game dev with my helper

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 08:18:51 +0000

Didn’t stay up for TGAs but think it says a lot that in catching up I saw an article about every game announcement and trailer and only found out who won game of the year on Bluesky

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 20:10:04 +0000

We fixed this in Bridgy yesterday. Here’s the PR, if helpful: https://github.com/snarfed/granary/pull/844

If you click through the linked issues you’ll see discussion on the Bluesky side. They might be able to retroactively fix existing images, but unsure

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 20:05:41 +0000

A PSA: Bluesky changed their API recently so that image uploads need to include their aspect ratio, otherwise they’ll appear letterboxed (like the first image). If you use a third-party tool it’ll need updated.

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 11:23:34 +0000

New sleep position unlocked

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 13:57:54 +0000

Bopped a fascist over the head with a violin then threw him off this wall, 10/10 game no notes

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 09:43:43 +0000

Baffled by how difficult it is to render a rectangle outline using a shader without pixel alignment going all wonky. GPUs were a mistake

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 16:57:23 +0000

Made the longlist for Best Cuddles

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 15:44:52 +0000

New clipping. track is fuckin great

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 09:10:37 +0000

Trying to get an animation framework in place for Game 2 and struggling - some animations can happen in parallel while some need to effectively pause state updates and structuring this in a neat way is proving tricky. Feud’s wee state machine won’t cut it.

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 15:45:49 +0000

Thinking about becoming a Qud sicko

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 12:27:20 +0000

I got Him

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:32:06 +0000

Gotta hand it to MachineGames for deciding at some point “we are the studio that makes games about killing Nazis” and just running with that forever

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 21:48:01 +0000

Forbidden chocolate bar

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 19:44:59 +0000

Would die for Merrill

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 14:20:58 +0000

Spotify kinda sucks as a company so instead of Wrapped lemme just tell ya that I listened to a lot of CMAT this year and if you didn’t do that then you should do that next year.

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 08:47:02 +0000

Just realised I’d done the last few areas of Elden Ring using not my beloved Uchigatana +18, but in fact an Uchigatana that hadn’t been upgraded at all. Actually lowkey kind of proud of myself

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 22:13:48 +0000

Just had one player a single dice roll away from permadeath in our years-long D&D campaign. Heart still racing

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 13:57:32 +0000

Enjoying having a phone camera with a decent zoom lens so I can take pictures like this one

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 15:04:08 +0000

OK human, we need to have a conversation about the quality of treats lately

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 16:18:45 +0000

I use harfbuzz for layout, which uses Freetype metrics, so the hard thing was getting those to line up with the glyph metrics emitted by MSDFgen.

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 16:15:46 +0000

Finally got my engine’s distance field font rendering (top) looking PRETTY MUCH as good as bitmap fonts (bottom). Already starting to think about what it might look like to move away from atlases altogether and just rasterise glyph vectors on the GPU…

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 23:17:39 +0000

This was fantastic.

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 12:52:12 +0000

Our sixteen year old cat brought this little guy in today, thankfully unharmed. First time she’s done this since we’ve known her, didn’t think the old girl still had it in her!

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 09:56:16 +0000

Alright then, who am I mutually planning to see at Glasto but realistically we’ll never align our schedules or energy levels

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 23:17:31 +0000

A new APWOT day is a good day.

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 22:22:17 +0000

Rolled credits on Alan Wake 2. I flipped from not really liking the game - I maintain the combat is Bad and there’s too much of it - to really getting invested in the story by the end. The DLC whips too, it transpires. Might even play Final Draft.

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 18:25:24 +0000

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 17:11:38 +0000

Now that is a post climbing luncheon

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 20:10:13 +0000

The drop in production budget between seasons 1 and 2 of One Punch Man is pretty noticeable huh

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 14:23:32 +0000

My pal Scott been raving about this stuff for literally over half my life and I finally tried it and…yeah it’s pretty great actually

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 12:55:50 +0000

Went to the KattenKabinet (cat art museum) today and was delighted to discover they also had actual cats.

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 17:17:40 +0000

Cycled up to Zaanse Schans to see the windmills! Had to be done really

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 11:57:58 +0000

Amsterdam is real pretty

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 10:43:54 +0000

Happy Dragon Age day! If any of you spoil Veilguard for me before I can get to it (gotta finish 2 and Inquisition replays first…) then the Dread Wolf will eat you, thanks

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 10:36:34 +0000

They say it does rain in Bristol but I’ve never seen any evidence of it.

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 21:33:36 +0000

Anyone using Moonlight/Sunshine for game streaming and have any tips about getting smoother performance out of it?

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 07:54:39 +0000

Got a real hankering to play Elden Ring yesterday because the freezers at little Sainsburys were humming exactly the same note as the drone on Altus Plateau.

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 22:02:24 +0000

Dug out the old faithful Nexus 7 and installed a touch input blocker so our cat could have her own little Cat TV to watch the birds on that she’s free to attack if she likes.

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 22:05:16 +0000

We did it! Total time was right around six hours. I hardly ever get to play dungeons or raids totally blind so this was just wonderful.

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 10:28:26 +0000

Gutted to hear my favourite musician B Dolan has announced the end of touring. I’ve been going to B gigs for over a decade, since before phones had good cameras. I don’t think I’d have got into poetry without his work. Best ever to do it.

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 22:48:19 +0000

Dungeoning with my pals.

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 09:03:34 +0000

Playing Metaphor: ReFantazio which has some of the most stunning UI work I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile I can’t get the text boxes to reflow properly in my own game engine.

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 16:26:17 +0000

Parents are visiting so had a wee wander round Greenwich.

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 10:39:05 +0000

One other photo from the weekend I forgot to upload…

Sat, 05 Oct 2024 17:14:12 +0000

A 22km walk today. We saw hares, red deer, buzzards and about a billion pheasants. Scotland in autumn is just staggeringly pretty.

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 18:02:31 +0000

Gorgeous day walking in Scotland.

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 15:01:53 +0000

Not as pretty as the outside though. I’d missed you Edinburgh.

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 14:45:38 +0000

Missed our train and have an hour to kill but at least Edinburgh Waverley is pretty.

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 22:18:37 +0000

Got my layout being actually flexible now with preferred dimensions, expand, and fill. Alignment next. Loosely basing it on GTK because I like using GTK!

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 22:20:54 +0000

Starting to get the flexible layout stuff implemented in Growl, my pet game engine. Very early days yet!

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 11:04:21 +0000

Went on a little autumnal walk (to Argos)

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 17:05:35 +0000

Made it home in time for bowls.

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 03:34:22 +0000

I have eaten extremely well on this trip

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:14:04 +0000

Vancouver’s really pretty.

Is Bluesky in the Fediverse?

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 23:36:16 +0100

And does it even really matter?

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 18:33:49 +0000

Managed to beat my 5K again! Dead pleased

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 18:02:11 +0000

Chuckling at this from the new Steam update.

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 09:53:49 +0000

It’s a lovely fresh crisp day here so here are four games with Impeccable Autumn Vibes. What are yours?

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 15:36:19 +0000

700 quid and they don’t even give you the stand, good grief lads

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 09:31:51 +0000

I like Bluesky a lot and I like Mastodon too but mostly I really like websites tbh

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 09:28:18 +0000

People: there should be a social media platform that’s not owned by a corporation and can’t die due to lack of investment

Mastodon: hi, we-

People: no

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 22:25:24 +0000

Sad to hear about Cohost, I thought it was really neat.

Sat, 07 Sep 2024 20:55:48 +0000

Astro Bot is so so good.

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 19:52:27 +0000

Well Kato refuses to go near the cat flap but it’s serving well as a window for all the neighbourhood cats.

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 18:27:32 +0000

First time I’ve managed a 5k in under half an hour since I was a teenager. To most runners I’m sure this is nothing but I’m ecstatic.

On not taking it personally

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 18:40:44 +0100

How do we navigate caring about our work when that work is, by nature, disposable?

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 16:55:00 +0100

I’m sorry to say it’s just a very ugly cURL script! It looks like this:

url="$(echo $note | sed -e 's|content|https://www.joelotter.com|' -e 's|\.md|/|')"

echo "Waiting for URL to become available..."
until $(curl --output /dev/null --silent --head --fail $url); do
 printf '.'
 sleep 5
done
echo "Page is up."

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 19:55:09 +0000

Had a very cute visitor today.

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 15:05:54 +0000

A lovely day at the footy. 7-0!

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 17:36:41 +0000

Thanks! I’d heard a little bit about Astro but not really read into it - from looking at it just now I think it’s probably a bit more heavyweight than what I’d need. Additionally I’ve reached the point where anything running on Node activates a trauma response in my brain. 😆

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 15:20:51 +0000

Great spot, thanks, have fixed!

IndieWeb, 2024 edition

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 12:25:29 +0100

I’ve been running this website on IndieWeb principles and tech for over a year now, so I thought it was time for an updated edition.

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 11:05:34 +0000

I am seized by energy and a desire to Do Things, which will probably translate to spending the day having choice paralysis and then Doing Nothing.

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 21:13:59 +0000

This was wonderful.

Mon, 26 Aug 2024 20:14:36 +0000

A lovely day wandering at Castle Ward.

Sun, 25 Aug 2024 16:54:27 +0000

Finally got around to reconfiguring the debug UI in Growl, rendering the game scene into an Imgui window - starting to look like a real engine now.

Sat, 24 Aug 2024 12:52:37 +0000

Belated birthday treat was this sauna on a beach in Northern Ireland! Running back and forth from the sea to the sauna definitely gets the aul circulation going.

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 15:42:23 +0000

The evenings getting dark earlier is sad yes but I got my first whiff of autumn air on my run last night and it was just lovely.

Sat, 17 Aug 2024 22:56:41 +0000

We are so back

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 10:21:37 +0000

I have learned to make banana bread and now I am unstoppable

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 21:09:54 +0000

She definitely wants something, I just can’t tell what.

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 21:26:04 +0000

When I’m trying to work but this face is demanding cuddles there’s really not a choice to be made.

Sun, 04 Aug 2024 14:10:12 +0000

Cornwall’s bloody gorgeous, it turns out. We saw dolphins by the boat and it was like a religious experience.

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 21:22:52 +0000

Went to see the robot ghosts of ABBA and it was really really good actually.

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 23:50:59 +0000

Rolled credits on 1000xRESIST. Need to go away and have a proper think about it but safe to say it’s the best game I’ve played this year.

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 16:26:12 +0000

I threw the big axe

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 19:29:52 +0000

Just got myself unstuck from a tricky Lua-C interop thing that I’d been going round in circles on for weeks now. Pleased!

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 20:09:47 +0000

“Can’t climb this weekend because foxes ate my shoes” sounds made up. And yet.

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 10:29:22 +0000

Flock is just so lovely

Deal to Dover

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 09:43:00 +0100

I have lived in England for over a decade but have yet to visit the famous cliffs. It’s Thursday, it’s sunny, I’ve nothing to do until my new job begins next week, so I get up early and hop on a train to the south coast.

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 15:54:33 +0000

Today I saw something I’d never seen before - the contrails from a plane casting a shadow.

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 08:42:29 +0000

Off on an excursion today

New job smell

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 20:25:35 +0100

I had my last day at Emitwise yesterday, and now I’m in the odd liminal space that happens before I start my new job next week.

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 10:41:37 +0000

Good lord KVM switches are a complicated thing to try and buy

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 23:00:33 +0000

Down in Brighton for Develop and what a joy it is to be around wonderful game devs again.

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 21:46:49 +0000

Brittany Howard and Hozier at Finsbury Park

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 19:07:08 +0000

Much to unpack here

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 07:45:30 +0000

Finding it hard to get super excited by the election results - the Tories have really just changed the colour of their ties - but seeing Corbyn hold his seat and Ashworth lose his to a pro-Palestine independent gave me no small amount of joy.

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 17:35:58 +0000

I don’t particularly rate Duolingo these days as a method for learning but still quite proud of this

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 10:23:34 +0000

[whispering to my date while watching Chappell Roan when Chappell Roan first appears on the stage] that’s Chappell

Sat, 29 Jun 2024 12:53:09 +0000

She’s just admiring the views.

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 15:20:57 +0000

It’s heatwave week in London, which means cold brew season is here. You absolutely can heat it up, it’s got a lovely round flavour, but it’s a faff so I usually only bother when it’s real hot outside (and, because this is the UK, inside).

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 16:56:45 +0000

There really is nowhere like Northern Ireland in the sunshine.

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 10:52:20 +0000

The people saying “AI will hasten the transition to clean energy” are the same people who said that about Bitcoin, and should not be trusted, on anything.

Sat, 22 Jun 2024 23:10:23 +0000

Home for one of my oldest pals’ 30th. Been friends with these two my entire life.

Sat, 22 Jun 2024 23:06:36 +0000

A wee day in Belfast with some very old pals.

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 17:04:29 +0000

This post brought to you by my rediscovering that the 3DS is simply my favourite bit of gaming hardware ever created.

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 17:02:10 +0000

Become increasingly clear to me that bells-and-whistles graphics do not matter - that much is obvious to everyone - but also, as a Computer Toucher, that the really exciting thing is talented teams pushing underpowered hardware to the absolute limit.

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 14:07:57 +0000

Managed to go the whole way to and through one of the UK’s largest airports yesterday and not a single StreetPass hit. What have we become as a society?

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 13:15:25 +0000

Having a great time getting back into Elden Ring.

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 13:03:53 +0000

Doing my best Jim Holden face

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 12:51:17 +0000

Cuttin about in a boiler suit tied at the waist holding a coffee, fully living out my James Holden fantasy

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 20:17:05 +0000

Having a weird thing in Windows 11 where it won’t play audio from both communications device and audio device simultaneously - I have a headset with a chat mixer and this approach worked perfectly in Win 10. Anyone seen this happen?!

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 08:58:48 +0000

Quite glad I’m not on Twitter these days so I don’t have to see the folks who refused to vote for Corbyn inform me it’s my moral duty to vote for Labour in the next election.

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 09:21:03 +0000

Wrapped up Final Shape and, goddamn, they really stuck the landing.

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 21:52:28 +0000

Arrived in Bristol a little early to meet our friends (by three weeks…) but decided to have a lovely day anyway.

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 22:25:09 +0000

Destiny is so back (shots from opening mission only!)

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 17:54:26 +0000

Things change every time I go home so it’s somewhat reassuring that Belfast International remains the world’s worst airport.

Sat, 01 Jun 2024 15:49:47 +0000

First geocache in years!

Sat, 01 Jun 2024 12:18:17 +0000

Went to my cousin’s wedding yesterday - a gorgeous day.

Thu, 30 May 2024 13:45:45 +0000

A wander round Mussenden today

Thu, 30 May 2024 12:03:27 +0000

A walk along Castlerock beach last night. I love how late it gets dark in NI - I took these after 10pm.

Wed, 29 May 2024 22:07:21 +0000

Took our wee nephew to the Belfast Transport Museum, which was a real favourite when we were wee and it’s still great, actually

Sun, 26 May 2024 15:03:54 +0000

Zeret Kitchen in Camberwell remains one of my favourite restaurants in London

Sat, 25 May 2024 21:39:44 +0000

Went to Wide Awake and saw Fat Dog, Charlotte Adigery, Young Fathers, King Gizz

Fri, 24 May 2024 09:20:23 +0000

The problem with using Google Keep as a second brain for 12 years is that it doesn’t capture what else might have been in your head at that moment.

Thu, 23 May 2024 21:20:24 +0000

Dolores Forever and Orla Gartland at Lafayette

Thu, 23 May 2024 16:41:34 +0000

Sure it’s the day for it isn’t it

Wed, 22 May 2024 19:47:33 +0000

Looks like Bluesky has DMs now! Though, per the protocol documentation, it’s run purely within the main bsky.social instance and isn’t encrypted. Looking forward to seeing how it looks in AT Proto once that’s in!

https://docs.bsky.app/blog/2024-protocol-roadmap#product-features

Wed, 22 May 2024 08:55:44 +0000

Starting to get a feel for AC6 now I think. Moved to a lightweight build after this fight and it already feels so much better.

Tue, 21 May 2024 12:26:57 +0000

This game is hard and I am bad at it

Tue, 21 May 2024 12:24:28 +0000

Armored Phwoar

All my Japan tips

Mon, 20 May 2024 18:10:28 +0100

I have been to Japan exactly once, so you should definitely listen to me.

Sun, 19 May 2024 12:51:31 +0000

Post-climb park-nic

Sun, 19 May 2024 12:22:42 +0000

Managed a fair few V2/V3 routes bouldering today, which isn’t all that exciting but for us it’s a big step up, chuffed

Sat, 18 May 2024 09:48:31 +0000

Can anyone recommend a Google Analytics alternative that isn’t a privacy nightmare for a personal website?

Fri, 17 May 2024 21:02:55 +0000

Flo Fest 2024 begins

Thu, 16 May 2024 22:21:32 +0000

Well, it’ll be a while before it’s a home, but we bought a house!

Had a few pals round to sit on the empty floor and drink champagne out of paper cups. Now the real work begins…

Tue, 14 May 2024 21:22:28 +0000

She peed in the box right after I took this but it was very sweet while it lasted

Tue, 14 May 2024 09:55:52 +0000

I have decided today is a System of a Down day

Mon, 13 May 2024 16:25:03 +0000

Not sure how I only just clocked that the gap between Game Boy and Game Boy Color was nine years, that’s wild

Sun, 12 May 2024 13:40:25 +0000

Not a huge fan

Sat, 11 May 2024 16:29:20 +0000

The harness was not a hit

Fri, 10 May 2024 22:38:13 +0000

Northern Lights visible from Nottingham!

Fri, 10 May 2024 14:58:49 +0000

It’s sensational, having such a good time with it

Thu, 09 May 2024 22:21:18 +0000

It only took me four years but I did it!

Thu, 09 May 2024 17:56:14 +0000

Animal Well is 33MB, holy shit

Thu, 09 May 2024 11:10:02 +0000

Bloodborne is a cosy game, I will not elaborate

Mon, 06 May 2024 11:37:18 +0000

Been playing with shader support in Growl - shaders can now be edited in realtime, and have built in uniforms like resolution and time. Goal is to be able to paste in whatever from Shadertoy and have it work!

Mon, 06 May 2024 08:23:06 +0000

Was not prepared for how much fun the Netflix One Piece adaptation is. It’s ace.

Fri, 03 May 2024 09:26:16 +0000

We look the same in the mornings

Wed, 01 May 2024 17:16:25 +0000

Not AC though, never that

Wed, 01 May 2024 17:11:12 +0000

Central Line has 4G now, truly living in the future

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 21:24:12 +0000

Had a rather lovely weekend seeing friends old and new

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 07:25:08 +0000

Having a fantastic time with Dragon’s Dogma 2, to my relief

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 12:04:11 +0000

Had a lovely time with Botany Manor. Short and sweet.

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 18:57:03 +0000

New build smell

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 18:00:28 +0000

It is with deep regret I announce that I am back in the UK, a country I already had a strong dislike of which has blossomed into deep hatred from simply being elsewhere for twenty days

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 23:06:57 +0000

Our last day yesterday so we went to Asakusa, had wonderful food including some incredible wagyu, and did a bit of shopping.

Japan has been a revelation I’ll want to write about separately but suffice to say I’m deeply sad to be leaving this place.

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 03:33:10 +0000

Yesterday we went to Kamakura to see the Great Buddha, also saw a Great Butterfly, and went to the beach.

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 14:41:18 +0000

Spent Wednesday evening in Kabukicho - def worth a visit, especially if you’ve played the Like A Dragon games as it’s the inspiration for Kamurocho. Had drinks in the Golden Gai, met some lovely people, had far too much shochu.

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 02:01:34 +0000

There’s a Pokémon Center in the mall below it too which made me very happy

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 01:34:55 +0000

Had a very busy day on Wednesday. Went up the Tokyo Sky Tree which is just incredible views. You can book it online in advance. Tokyo: real big.

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 06:59:37 +0000

Some wandering around Tokyo yesterday - Nishiki fish market, Ginza and the crossing at Shibuya!

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 02:42:01 +0000

Had started taking for granted how quiet everyone is in Japan until I went in a cafe with a load of Americans

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 04:22:24 +0000

Last afternoon in Kyoto so we did the Philosopher’s Walk, then got the train up to Tokyo. Saw Mt Fuji out the window! Tokyo is really something else

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 02:41:48 +0000

Did the usual touristy bits in Kyoto yesterday - Nishiki Market, Kiomizu-dera, Fushimi Inari.

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 07:44:59 +0000

We’re staying in a ryokan (traditional inn) in Ohara outside Kyoto. It’s got an onsen (natural hot spring) which I love.

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 07:34:14 +0000

A brief stop-over in Kyoto yesterday on the way to our ryōkan! We saw Higashi Honganji temple and had the best ramen of my life

Sat, 13 Apr 2024 04:52:24 +0000

Yesterday we went to Nara and saw the bowing deer. They were very polite. It’s a gorgeous place. One of my favourite days so far.

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 08:47:20 +0000

Last night we went to Round One, a massive arcade (eight floors?) in Osaka. I was bad at the games I understood and worse at the rest. I regret to inform I did not, in fact, win the cuddly Piplup.

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 09:19:51 +0000

A few rare shots of Osaka that aren’t of food. This city has really grown on me.

We went to the castle today and that was lovely.

Wed, 10 Apr 2024 05:57:26 +0000

And now for my favourite part of the trip so far - retro game store Super Potato in Osaka

Wed, 10 Apr 2024 01:47:56 +0000

Yesterday we went to Ōkunoshima, an island off the Hiroshima coast famous for hundreds of very friendly wild rabbits. Definitely Lucy’s highlight of the trip so far. A stunning place.

We made it to Osaka last night - very excited to explore!

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 23:48:43 +0000

Arrived in Tadanoumi, did some exploring, ate okonomiyaki in a tiny restaurant and had a lovely chat with some locals. Definitely the hardest my Japanese has been worked since we got here, but we got there.

Today: rabbit island.

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 10:40:55 +0000

Left Nagoya today and heading towards Hiroshima - my first time on the Shinkansen!

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 03:18:06 +0000

Managed to get miso katsu on our last night in Nagoya and it did not disappoint

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 04:24:41 +0000

Things I ate in Japan, part one of many

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 09:27:02 +0000

We saw him also

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 23:52:25 +0000

I SAW HIM

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 13:51:35 +0000

Happy to report the Guinness in Japan is better than it is in England

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 03:17:39 +0000

We made it to Japan! First night mostly spent recovering from jetlag but we did have some wonderful monjayaki. Off to the F1 the next few days!

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 10:19:23 +0000

Lamb is traditional at Easter, and even more traditional is making stock the next day

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 01:16:47 +0000

I introduced Lucy to Tunic and now it’s 2am and she won’t come to bed

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 10:50:47 +0000

People always say ‘yee haw’ but they never ask ‘haw yee?’

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 15:15:33 +0000

Trying to retrain my brain from “I’m tired, I don’t want to do exercise” to “if I do exercise I might feel less tired”

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 11:12:53 +0000

Sure! The basic thesis, really, is that AP is very server-oriented, whereas AT is more oriented around the individual user and their data.

So, while your data obviously does live on a server in an AT world, you aren’t necessarily too fussed about which server that is, and it can move - account portability is listed as their main reason to not use AP. So AT’s focus is more around individuals in one giant federated network, whereas AP as it’s mostly used today is more about communities which are themselves interoperable. Out-of-the-box AT is less interested in building narrower, more gated communities, though they do say it should be able to be narrowed down to support that.

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 09:59:12 +0000

I hadn’t used Firefox for quite a while but in my effort to get away from Chrome and with Safari not being available on Windows or Linux I’ve installed it. It’s really fast! I’d forgotten that.

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 14:07:10 +0000

A lovely spicy Sunday

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:00:49 +0000

Cycled into work for the first time this year and I feel great

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 17:54:16 +0000

My wee nephew just said “bye bye” to me on the phone, first words I’ve heard him say 🥲

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 10:55:54 +0000

Yesterday’s mammoth cooking project

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 18:26:19 +0000

My favourite thing about living in the UK is those magazines that report on what happens in soaps like it’s news. Must be utterly baffling for anyone who moves here

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 10:14:46 +0000

Hell yeah new Pope

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 11:49:55 +0000

Older gent in front at the pharmacy, kept insisting he had something to show them. Pulled out of a brown envelope…a picture of Charles & Camilla? On closer inspection, a 100th birthday card! Don’t think I’d ever met a centenarian. Amazing.

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 14:33:33 +0000

I knew my partner was The One the first time I visited her parents and in her childhood bedroom was a full run of Artemis Fowl

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 13:55:59 +0000

People who self-censor swears are so f*cking funny to me

Sat, 02 Mar 2024 00:51:00 +0000

God damn, they already got the garbage fake mobile games doing bug killers

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 23:16:59 +0000

A thoroughly wasted evening trying to make Wi-Fi work on a Raspberry Pi Zero. I’ve been using Linux for nearly two decades and Wi-Fi still baffles me.

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 18:40:28 +0000

Very pleased to discover several games recently ported to the Epic store are using eos4j!

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 16:45:27 +0000

Random silly thing I’m quite proud of is this Pi Zero graph thing I made to show how many Feud players are currently in matches

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 10:25:38 +0000

breathe in, breathe out, new Krazam

Tue, 27 Feb 2024 18:44:06 +0000

Had kind of gone off IDLES these last years but the new album is a welcome return to form

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 17:18:12 +0000

The challenge with putting an action sequence set to a musical number in your game is that the action has to be really good in order for me to justify listening to the same song for double-digit minutes. Control earns this. Alan Wake 2, sadly, does not.

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 12:35:41 +0000

Upon the High Weald yesterday

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 22:43:44 +0000

Might ship a game tomorrow

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:57:26 +0000

Day 2 of being off sick and can’t shake this guilty feeling that I ought to be Doing Something Productive with my day, despite the fact my brain is absolutely not capable of it right now

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 20:46:11 +0000

Rolled credits on Yakuza 0. What a wonderful, brilliant, stupid, incredible game

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 20:57:06 +0000

game pretty

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 18:15:23 +0000

The last game I touched professionally - excited to finally play it

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 21:00:49 +0000

Just submitted the final build of Feud 2.0 for review to the stores. It’s real, it’s happening, we’re doing it

Sat, 17 Feb 2024 17:32:29 +0000

cool guys don’t look at explosions (except us)

Sat, 17 Feb 2024 12:37:17 +0000

Instagram ad targeting is not the one

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 18:39:27 +0000

A bit buggy but I now have Lua scripting inside Growl’s debug UI!

Wed, 14 Feb 2024 00:02:47 +0000

Two years with this wonderful human 🥰

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 19:13:27 +0000

Rude

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 13:09:03 +0000

Some lunchtime shader learning

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 22:57:02 +0000

Rolled credits on Witcher 3 after playing off-and-on for about eight years. Just outstanding, sad it’s over.

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 19:00:13 +0000

I think this might be the most onion I’ve ever seen in one place

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 13:32:29 +0000

Feeling deeply, profoundly demoralised today, despite a weekend of making big strides forward on my game engine

You gotta do your prerolls

Sat, 10 Feb 2024 13:33:16 +0000

My pal Zach has this ritual when we play D&D - before we start, he rolls the D20. Over and over and over again.

Sat, 10 Feb 2024 00:13:52 +0000

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 20:11:30 +0000

First Warlord’s Ruin clear!

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 17:55:47 +0000

Not sure yet if we’ll get any kind of boost from visibility on Steam when we leave Early Access but here’s hoping.

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 16:21:47 +0000

I just realised that Feud has crossed the 70,000 players mark! Very pleased

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 15:31:11 +0000

At what point is the deadline for working my way through the leftover Christmas chocolate? At what point does it just become “we have too much chocolate in the house”?

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 21:05:58 +0000

Our game mentioned on Rock Paper Shotgun today - life goal unlocked

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 20:24:37 +0000

I’m the biggest clean freak of anyone I know - to a probably unhealthy degree - and a past me would have absolutely had a panic attack, but at this point I’m so fucking cat-pilled I just went “aww sorry baby”, cleaned up and gave her an apology cuddle.

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 20:20:24 +0000

Managed to startle the cat when she was in her litter box today…which unfortunately meant in her haste to get away she trod on one of her recently laid delights. And then proceeded to run around the flat, which I could prove because she left prints. Cats!

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 15:29:16 +0000

Walkies

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 14:45:27 +0000

Just spent ages messing around with diagram software trying to get my network diagram to look right, only to give up and just do it on a whiteboard and take a picture of it. My handwriting aside, it’s far more readable

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 14:06:44 +0000

I want to follow more blogs and things on my feed reader - what are some of your favourites?

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 18:46:52 +0000

Working out who to contact for press stuff in games now seems so much harder than it did five years ago. How does this work? Who do I talk to? Aaaahhh

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 14:45:18 +0000

brid.gy’s Bluesky integration now supports publishing! This post was published by Bridgy! Wow! There’s some code of mine in there, do have a go.

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 23:49:40 +0000

Actually just not finishing the demo to not spoil myself for launch

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 22:22:55 +0000

The inventory screen is inspired

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 22:19:37 +0000

Really very impressed by the Pacific Drive demo

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 12:02:34 +0000

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 19:29:57 +0000

Was quite proud of my 900-ish day streak in Duolingo until I looked at this calendar

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 13:04:28 +0000

We have been climbing

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 00:25:44 +0000

This rewatch of the Expanse is great, actually even better for having now read the books. Though it does mean we now say “we should space her” when we put the cat outside when she’s being annoying at 4am

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 18:07:22 +0000

Any games press types On Here who would like to try out a prerelease build of Feud 2.0? Get in touch if so!

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 17:23:19 +0000

Quite a nice day of Feud polishing and bug fixing. Still got a couple of localisations to review and import but other than that I’m feeling good about the release on the 23rd!

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 11:03:15 +0000

Trying to explain mastodon to this guy

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 09:37:08 +0000

Also the little tribute to Super Mario Sunshine in the cassette levels made me cackle

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 09:31:26 +0000

Celeste 64 is just wonderful. They could have so easily made it into a throwaway gag but it’s a tough-as-nails retro 3D platformer with typically beautiful music.

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 23:33:05 +0000

Not sure if I always get the Best Dressed commendation at the end of a Destiny match because I’m the best dressed, or because I’m actually quite shit at the game

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 14:46:02 +0000

Me when I start reading Perl documentation

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 10:51:59 +0000

A bit of a Hot Take I guess but…I think Lightning was a better connector than USB-C. It is at the very least more durable. I wish Apple had tried to make it an open standard, but then I guess we’d have multiple competing open standards, again.

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 09:54:13 +0000

Well, they got the name right.

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 08:35:40 +0000

Trying to see how far I can get with NieR Reincarnation before it gets pulled offline.

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 23:15:52 +0000

Jusant is just stunning

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 16:25:22 +0000

Rubs hands with glee oh boy

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 13:30:55 +0000

brid.gy I would obviously keep, because brid.gy is incredible

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 13:27:26 +0000

What I think I’d like is some sort of simple web server that sits next to Hugo and provides the Micropub/Webmention endpoints and serves the site. I think having the content live in Git rather than a DB is definitely something I’d want to keep.

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 13:23:35 +0000

So at this point I’ve got:

Hugo website hosted on GitHub Pages, deployed by GitHub Actions
Micropub and media endpoints running on AWS Lambda, with API Gateway stuff
Brid.gy to syndicate things and backfeed interactions
Webmention.io to collect webmentions

Does it work? Yes! Is it better than if I’d just written a fucking server? hahahaha no

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 23:53:48 +0000

Had some lovely Japanese food. Shout out to the couple next for us who asked for spoons for miso soup

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 18:19:05 +0000

Ultra Sun was the last good Pokémon game. My mind will not be changed.

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 15:13:15 +0000

A very cosy kitten

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 17:58:16 +0000

At this point Embracer Group are just committing mass vandalism to an entire artistic medium. Fuck ’em.

https://www.eurogamer.net/embracer-cancels-deus-ex-game-in-development-for-two-years

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 09:06:20 +0000

Spotted so many red kites on the bus to Oxford. Hard to believe these were once extinct in England!

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 08:38:59 +0000

I ended up moving my Micropub endpoint from DigitalOcean to Lambda - I usually prefer working on DO (the AWS console/config is just painful) but the lack of support for custom domains, plus the 1MB limit on POST requests, kind of made the choice obvious.

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 23:57:11 +0000

If you’re reading this post on Mastodon, it’s gone through a fairly baroque sequence of steps:

A Micropub endpoint running as a serverless function
Hugo to build for my website
A hacky GHA script to run the publishing
brid.gy to do the actual publishing.

Still, it’s nice to be able to write on my static site and have it syndicated without touching Git.

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 14:58:37 +0000

I shouldn’t be becoming numb to this but it is really just quite hard not to at this point

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/25/24049050/microsoft-activision-blizzard-layoffs

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 20:09:45 +0000

eos4j v1.2.0 has been released! This new version adds support for the Ecom interface in Epic Online Services. It also fixes a bug with conversion from timestamps to Java Date objects.

https://github.com/Bearwaves/eos4j/releases/tag/1.2.0

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 13:38:51 +0000

My new profile photo is from a New Years’ Day walk near the farm my mum grew up on, which is still farmed by my uncle. This old house and the area around it are referred to as “Macaleese’s” after the family that used to live there nearly a century ago. It was used to store hay bales until the top floor collapsed. I love it.

The games of 2023

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 14:29:24 +0000

As many have written, 2023 was a great year for the games themselves and a pretty dire year for the industry and the people working in it. Let’s hope things improve in 2024.

Wed, 27 Dec 2023 23:50:13 +0000

Quite liking where I’ve got my Vim setup to now. I don’t really miss an IDE, which is a first.

Wed, 27 Dec 2023 15:02:28 +0000

I replaced the debug cat image in Growl with a picture of our actual cat. So long debug cat, you served us well.

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 11:00:57 +0000

We finally harvested our Lion’s mane! It became some rather nice crab cake-like things.

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 13:30:56 +0000

We got the modelling clay out the other weekend so I decided to make this lightly deranged toothbrush holder.

Sun, 17 Dec 2023 20:55:25 +0000

Just saw the Wide Ocean Big Jacket devs have a new game out - instant buy for me.

https://beforethegreenmoon.com/

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 19:39:56 +0000

Well, there’s still a fair amount of work to do - bugs to fix, translations to review - but as of today Feud is feature-complete for graduating from Early Access. It’s nearly eight years since we started working on it - longer than my professional game development career lasted!

Sat, 18 Nov 2023 11:56:44 +0000

Our girl utterly transfixed by Cat TV today

Sat, 18 Nov 2023 09:48:34 +0000

🦦 test note pls ignore 🦦

https://www.joelotter.com

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 18:43:58 +0000

Just played a tiny prototype of what might well become the next Bearwaves game and I am very energised.

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 15:31:57 +0000

I’ve lost two entire days of work to Terraform lockfile nonsense

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 11:44:09 +0000

David Cameron to be Foreign Secretary - despite not being an MP. Nobody voted for him. They’ll have to make him a Lord. The government can literally just put whoever they want in the cabinet with no real consequences. I know “the Lords is anti-democratic” is hardly a hot take but Fucking Hell

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 11:04:10 +0000

Good morning!

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 18:37:33 +0000

I think Embracer should rename as they have fully moved into their Extinguisher phase

https://www.eurogamer.net/embracer-owned-time-splitters-studio-free-radical-reportedly-facing-closure

Sun, 05 Nov 2023 19:45:00 +0000

Oh hey the fire worked

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 11:10:49 +0000

When I worked in the games industry I remember being told the average tenure was six years and thinking that was crazy low. I lasted…five and a half years.

Bluesky backfeed support in Bridgy

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 22:26:00 +0000

My “weekend project” of implementing Bluesky support into Bridgy is finally, several months later, complete! Ish.

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 10:50:51 +0000

Some chonky carrots yesterday

Sat, 28 Oct 2023 16:31:37 +0100

Sounds like my computer might actually be able to run Alan Wake 2, which is a relief.

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 14:35:43 +0100

Do you have a website? I love websites. Please show me your website. Here’s mine:

https://www.joelotter.com

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 16:04:35 +0100

Rolled credits on Signalis last night and haven’t been able to get it out of my head, so it’s good this excellent video essay from Sam Greer exists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUnVUXAn-fQ

Wed, 25 Oct 2023 11:25:00 +0100

Beware of cat burglars in the area

Using Vim for writing

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 15:11:56 +0100

I do most of my daily work in Vim, and by this point I find it quite hard to use anything else, but for writing that isn’t code (or, let’s be real, mostly YAML these days) it could be a lot better.

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 15:35:16 +0100

This post is POSSE’d! https://www.joelotter.com/notes/2023/10/23-posse/

I wrote a whole blog about the process:

https://www.joelotter.com/posts/2023/03/indieweb/

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 15:30:21 +0100

Pretty cool seeing POSSE getting traction on The Verge, of all places:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/23/23928550/posse-posting-activitypub-standard-twitter-tumblr-mastodon

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 13:35:18 +0100

eos4j v1.1.0 has been released! This new version features support for the Leaderboards interface in Epic Online Services.

https://github.com/Bearwaves/eos4j/releases/tag/1.1.0

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 11:24:05 +0100

Last night I went to the launch of Amy Acre’s new collection, Mothersong. There were readings from Amy, Fran Locke, Cai Draper and Jess Murrain, and it was lovely.

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 15:05:10 +0100

UK petition: Do not require schools to tell parents their child is transgender/non-binary

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/636802

Sat, 30 Sep 2023 13:05:56 +0100

We lost my wonderful Granny today at the age of 92. I’ve never known someone so warm, selfless, and caring. She died peacefully and surrounded by her loved ones, so it’s the best it could have been, but I am devastated. Love you forever Granny.

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 09:06:38 +0100

Been playing Chants of Sennaar and it’s really something special.

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 14:53:38 +0100

Had my first report on eos4j this weekend from someone actually using it in their game! Very exciting.

https://github.com/Bearwaves/eos4j

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 15:18:20 +0100

Steve Ballmer was the same age I am now in this video. Fucking hell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgJS2tQPGKQ

Sat, 16 Sep 2023 12:23:16 +0100

Rye’s summer with us came to an end last week and now she’s off to see her mum and dad in Australia! I’m going to miss this lil pudding so much. 🥹

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 08:37:21 +0100

I worked at Improbable in 2019, when Unity tried to change their TOS to screw us over. They ended up backtracking and put their TOS on GitHub, saying they would not change TOS retroactively.

It appears to be gone.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16hnibp/unity_silently_removed_their_github_repo_to_track/

Wed, 13 Sep 2023 16:14:01 +0100

lol, lmao

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 11:29:48 +0100

“You’re not getting into the kitchen unless it’s to feed me.”

Turns out immersive theatre isn’t video games

Sat, 19 Aug 2023 22:12:43 +0100

I went to see Punchdrunk’s The Burnt City the other night. In the bar on the way in, I confidently said to my partner, “immersive theatre is video games”.

It isn’t.

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 10:12:30 +0100

Nothing says confidence in your product like giving users the option to hide the fact they bought your product.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/2/23816924/twitter-x-blue-subscribers-hide-blue-check-option

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 15:57:58 +0100

Since launching on the Epic store a couple of months ago, Feud has had something like 28,000 new players. That feels significant!

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 15:55:38 +0100

Sleepy angel baby compilation

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 14:51:14 +0100

I’m at day four of going cold turkey on Sertraline (ran out, pharmacy being slow) and lemme tell ya I am having nil craic with these withdrawal symptoms

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 19:21:21 +0100

Really enjoying all the ‘astronomers baffled’ content the last couple days

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/07/this-white-dwarf-star-has-two-faces

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 18:15:54 +0100

I kind of wish I cared about sports so I could read Defector all the time.

https://defector.com/burning-down-the-house

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 11:46:39 +0100

In ’the naming of cats’, T.S. Eliot posits that every cat has a secret name known only to themselves. I have determined that my cat’s secret name is ‘piss goblin’

Wed, 17 May 2023 11:47:55 +0100

Oh cool thanks Slack I cannot possibly see this ever being used for anything bad

Fri, 05 May 2023 12:20:56 +0100

I always get a kick out of explaining to people how #golang’s magical, mildly terrifying timestamp formatting works.

Fri, 05 May 2023 10:51:26 +0100

Thinking of writing a GitHub bot to replace me at work that just comments “could you please split this up” on every PR.

Mon, 01 May 2023 23:37:59 +0100

A glorious, if slightly muggy, day walking on the High Weald.

Mon, 24 Apr 2023 10:50:02 +0100

“The masses are not balking at paying for Twitter Blue because they’re trying to shelter themselves within a crumbling elitist internet order, but because they think Musk is offering an unworthy product and is also a dickhead.”

https://slate.com/technology/2023/04/elon-musk-twitter-blue-checkmarks-verification-lebron-james.html

Sat, 15 Apr 2023 11:43:11 +0100

The period of time between the construction of the Great Pyramid and the reign of Cleopatra is greater than the time between Cleopatra and now.
The gap between Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex is greater than T. Rex to us.
If the earth’s existence represents a twenty-four hour day, humans have existed for ~3 seconds.

I keep having to rotate time to make it fit in my brain

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 11:19:26 +0100

Someone created this evil-joel emoji on our work Slack and honestly it is quite useful for when I need to be vaguely menacing

Mon, 27 Mar 2023 15:02:02 +0100

I’ll be wandering around WASD this week if any pals want to hang out! I’ll be at the Thursday night thing and at the expo on Friday and prob Saturday. Please be aware I have been doing gamedev again so will probably trauma-dump.

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 11:12:41 +0000

I was on Twitter in 2019, I can promise you I have thought about feral hogs.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/feral-hogs-are-the-invasive-menace-youve-never-thought-about/

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 12:10:42 +0000

Alright, I caved. I have a Steam Deck. I also have £45 of store credit to get nice games for it; recommendations please!

Mon, 13 Mar 2023 16:45:51 +0000

Discord, or the Death of Lore

http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5509

Sun, 12 Mar 2023 20:28:36 +0000

Been attempting to integrate a native C library into a Java project and it’s proving to be a total nightmare, even with jnigen. Once again cursing myself for choosing to write a game in Java.

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 20:58:00 +0000

We went for a walk/forage on the Ridgeway today which was very muddy but gorgeous. We found:

Jelly ears!
Oysters!
Gorse!
Nettles!
Wild garlic!
Turkey tails!
Ground ivy!

On POSSE and IndieWeb

Fri, 10 Mar 2023 17:43:55 +0000

I’ve gone down into the depths these last couple of weeks with IndieWeb, POSSE and a whole bunch of other arcane terminology. Now that I’ve come up for air, let’s chat about it.

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 11:55:14 +0000

I will admit it irks me slightly that my application for a Switch developer license was declined when the eShop is full of shit like this.

https://kotaku.com/nintendo-switch-eshop-aaa-digital-clock-release-1850205218

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 16:59:22 +0000

Some interesting insights here - where have all the engineers who have been laid off gone to?

https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/big-tech-job-switching-stats/

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 10:43:07 +0000

So after posting my Manifesto I tried some pizza from Veggie Crust on the Old Kent Road and while it was no Mario it was some pretty good Good Shit Pizza.

The Good Shit Pizza Manifesto

Mon, 06 Mar 2023 19:13:30 +0000

I moved from East to South London in the summer of last year. South London has been amazing, especially for food, but there’s one thing missing.

Sun, 05 Mar 2023 18:57:43 +0000

We went to a couple of cool exhibitions today - the ASMR one at the Design Museum and the one about Japanese silk braiding (Kumihimo) at Japan House.

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 21:06:08 +0000

How Complex Systems Fail (extra credit for the URL)

https://how.complexsystems.fail/

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 17:47:12 +0000

Rolled credits (well, you know what I mean) on Lightfall. I actually quite enjoyed the action movie vibe of the campaign as a whole but every complaint about the narrative is valid; it feels like we’re back to the bad old days.

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 02:32:47 +0000

Getting Webmentions working has been a bit of a pain in the arse but I think I’m getting there, slowly.

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 01:42:22 +0000

I’ve just finished up moving my website over to Hugo! It’s been pretty good so far. Took a little while to get used to Go templating again but I think it’s about there.

https://gohugo.io/

The games of 2022

Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I had a really great year in 2022. I also played fewer games in 2022 than maybe any year previous. I don’t necessarily want to think about what that might mean, thank you very much.

Packaging Android NDK APKs without Gradle

Sun, 09 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I struggled recently to work out how to build an APK out of a native Android app without using Gradle.

Reverse-engineering Daylio backups

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I use an app called Daylio as a diary and a mood tracker. It’s really good! I recommend it.

I also use an app called Habit to track things I want to do every day, like “stay off social media” or “work on a project”.

The games of 2021

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I’m genuinely impressed that 2021 managed to be a generally worse year than 2020, for a variety of fun reasons. It had some high highs but also some very low lows. It was a year in which I mostly quit social media (a positive change!), which means I was out of The Games Discourse for the last third. Do I miss it? Like hell.

The games I played in 2020

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

2020 has been hot garbage. It has had very few redeeming factors and I am not appreciative of it at all.

Some great games, though.

COVID-19 app incompatibility points at a larger issue in tech

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

After six months and £11m of public money wasted, England and Wales finally have a functional contact tracing app for COVID-19. You can download it now - as long as your phone is new enough. Why this limitation?

Notarizing Java applications on macOS

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Notarization is required as of macOS 10.15 (Catalina), and it’s a bit of a minefield - doubly so for a Java application, or anything built outside Xcode.

The best days of my life

Wed, 05 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I finally got around to picking up Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC. This was a very big step for me. Let me explain.

Speed Up Catalina With This One Weird Tip!

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The newest version of macOS (well, that’s out) has caused a lot of issues for a lot of people, game developers especially. I’ll write about my notarization woes in a separate post, but this should help address quite a specific issue.

Games I played in 2019

Tue, 31 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

As has become a yearly tradition, here is my list of video games I played in 2019.

A sun (☀️) means I liked it a LOT and would recommend you at least have a look at it. Some rain (🌧) means it didn’t really do it for me or was disappointing in some way (I did not play any bad games this year). Anything without an emoji is Real Nice. A trophy (🏆) signifies my personal favourite game of the year.

Games I played in 2018

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t do game-of-the-year lists now because games are so varied it’s nigh impossible to compare two games from different genres. Here is a list of every game I played for the first time in 2018. Like last year:

🏆 - my personal favourite game this year
☀️ - loved it, recommend without hesitation
🌧 - didn’t really like it/felt like a chore to pay
everything else - pretty damn good, give it a go if your taste swings that way.

Games I played in 2017

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Here follows the list of all the games I played in 2017, not including the ones I only played for a few minutes or the ones I bounced straight off.

A sun (☀️) means I have very strong positive feelings about the game; a rainy cloud (🌧️) means I have some negative or mixed feelings. Everything else is Pretty Darn Nice.

Final Fantasy XV (PS4, 2016) ☀️
The Last Guardian (PS4, 2016) 🌧️
Overwatch (PS4, 2016)
BOTW (Switch, 2017) ☀️
Shovel Knight (Switch, 2017)
Fast RMX (Switch, 2017)
Snake Pass (Switch, 2017)
Nier Automata (Switch, 2017) ☀️
The Sexy Brutale (PS4, 2017) ☀️
Wonderboy: The Dragon’s Trap (Switch, 2017) ☀️
Thumper (Switch, 2017)
Tomb Raider (PC, 2013)
Elder Scrolls Online (PC, 2014)
ABZU (PC, 2016)
Bioshock (PC, 2007) ☀️
Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4, 2017) ☀️
Dishonored (PC, 2012) ☀️
GoNNer (Switch, 2017) ☀️
Kamiko (Switch, 2017)
Ori and the Blind Forest (PC, 2015)
PUBG (PC, 2017)
Virginia (PC, 2016)
What Remains of Edith Finch (PC, 2017) ☀️
Wolfenstein: The New Order (PC, 2014)
Pyre (PC, 2017) ☀️
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (PC, 2013)
No Man’s Sky (PC, 2016)
Pony Island (PC, 2016)
Mario Rabbids: Kingdom Battle (Switch, 2017) ☀️
Destiny 2 (PS4, 2017)
Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS, 2012)
Professor Layton and The Curious Village (DS, 2007)
Torment: Tides of Numenera (PC, 2017)
Hob (PC, 2017) 🌧️
Nuclear Throne (PC, 2015)
Devil Daggers (PC, 2016)
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (PC, 2017) 🌧️
Night in the Woods (PC, 2017) ☀️ (Probably my favourite game of 2017)
Pokemon Ultra Sun (3DS, 2017)
Super Mario Odyssey (Switch, 2017) ☀️
Flinthook (PC, 2017) 🌧️
Her Story (PC, 2015) ☀️
Dishonored 2 (PC, 2016)
Undertale (PC, 2015) ☀️
Thirty Flights of Loving (PC, 2012)
Everything (PC, 2017)
Tooth and Tail (PC, 2017)
Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (PC, 2011) ☀️
Reigns: Her Majesty (iOS, 2017)
Chasing Birds (PC, 2017)
Dujanah (PC, 2017) ☀️
Persona 5 (PC, 2017) ☀️
Final Fantasy XII (PC, 2017)
Golf Story (Switch, 2017)

one-fifty: Virginia (2016)

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Virginia is one of the best films I’ve played this year.

one-fifty: What Remains of Edith Finch (2017)

Sat, 12 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In my early teens, after experiencing my first death in the family, I developed an odd fascination with the preservation of spaces.

one-fifty: a new writing project

Mon, 31 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I love games. I love playing games, I love reading about games, but I’ve realised that what I love most is talking about games, as anyone who’s spent time around me can attest.

Joel's Top 5 (2016)

Fri, 30 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

What a great year, eh? OK, so 2016’s been fairly appalling, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been some great films, games, albums and a bunch of other stuff. Here are my top Things this year, from as many genres of Thing as I can be bothered.

Update from the Fringe

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

My flatmate/co-host Jake bangs on my door shortly after I wake up.

“Coffee?” “Please mate.”

Pokémon Go

Sat, 30 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This isn’t really going to be a game review. Taken purely as a game, and ignoring its wider impact, Pokémon Go is not very good. It crashed frequently before a recent update, there’s nothing to do outside populated areas, the drain on battery and mobile data is high, and it’s incredibly hard for new players coming in to the game a few weeks late to catch up.

Termloop: pixel mode

Thu, 28 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been reading a lot about PICO-8 recently, and found it really interesting. For the uninitiated, PICO-8 is a ‘fantasy console’ - a games console which exists purely as a program and set of development tools, rather than a real piece of hardware. Developers can create games for PICO-8 which are small enough to be embedded directly into a .png image, which is really cool.

New site design

Sat, 23 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I’d got a little bit bored with the design on this website, and that boredom gave me no desire to write on it. Boo.

It's time to stop pre-ordering

Sat, 07 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a little while since I was really excited for the release of a game. The last time was probably Halo 4’s release this time three years ago (for the record, it was disappointing), and the last time I pre-ordered a game was, I think, Mass Effect 3, six months earlier.

A DJ Khaled Tinder bot

Sun, 17 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I had great fun last month writing a Reddit bot that pretended to be DJ Khaled. It’s been running ever since, but I thought it was about time to extend Khaled’s internet empire into another social media service. The obvious candidate: Tinder.

A DJ Khaled Reddit bot

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I’d wanted to make a Reddit bot for a little while, really just as a toy project, and finding the excellent PRAW library for Python (as well as finally having some time off) gave me the kick I needed to get it done. It’s also April Fool’s Day, so I thought I’d make something a bit stupid.

Pixels Are Evil

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The game development landscape has changed significantly over the last few years (understatement of the century, but whatever). One of the most significant of these changes , especially for game developers - though it’s one that often goes unnoticed - is the rise of screen resolution and aspect ratio fragmentation.

Review: FIFA 15

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Anyone who knows me will know that I’m not really a huge fan of the beautiful game. I am, however, quite into gaming, and so thought that it was only fair this latest upgrade get a review. I’ll look at a few different sections. Without further ado…

Review: 'Shame' by John Berkavitch

Sat, 10 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

“Put your hands in the air. Now put them down if you’ve never done anything you regret.”

Uplift: A Postmortem

Mon, 21 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Before I begin, I should point out: Uplift isn’t dead. The Kickstarter for Uplift is dead. Sensationalist title, I know. Let’s pretend I’ve been learning how to be a journalist. Because having a blog definitely makes me a journalist, right? Ahem.

Review: FEZ (PC)

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Polytron’s XBLA hit (and personal favourite of Mojang’s Notch) has finally made in onto PC in the last couple of weeks. I downloaded the game yesterday and finished it this morning, after a small delay - I saw the sunrise creeping at my window and decided I’d better get some sleep. FEZ is absolutely fantastic.

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