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Entries from September 2026

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l Marathon (30 Sep at 16:24)

Happy birthday to me! I'm currently vacationing in Greek islands, not really for my birthday but it does happen to include my birthday, the 47th one. Vacationing for my birthday is not really my thing. My birthday thing is more like this: After the red-eye flight, get up the next morning at 5:30am and take a taxi to the village of Marathon, Greece, and then run the original marathon course back to Athens, Greece.

This wasn't some kind of epic achievement; people run this course all the time (usually in the organized event). But it's also sorta sacred ground for distance runners. Report: Finding the start was not too hard. There's a plaza that I suspect was made for when they had the Olympics in 2004, with modern looking pan-cultural sculpture things that they let vines grow over, and a stone that I let myself believe is from the original 1896 olympics:

ΣΤ Φoν Ηoμ

Here Sigma Tau 40 is short for "(Atari) ST (10)40." Actually, just kidding, the 40 is for marking the 40 kilometers (even though the rest of the signage counts upward) in the route—this original one is actually only 40km instead of the now-traditional and much rounder 42.195km. I got fairly lucky with the weather; it was about 65ºF and overcast. The forecast called for rain all morning, even a "yellow alert"—whose severity I a not really calibrated on—but when I got up it felt perfect and so I did not let myself wimp out. It rained a few times and the ground was wet and my hat kept blowing off, but I was relieved that heat was not a real issue. I also wore brand new sneakers like an idiot (especially since I have been suffering some achilles problem for months).

The course itself couldn't be easier to follow. There's a blue line painted on the ground for almost the whole thing:

Blue line

Also, the course is now a major road, so you get to breathe diesel fumes to power you up for pretty much the whole time. Most of it has decent sidewalks, but several miles are like this:

You get better at dodging bushes as it goes

So in addition to it not being long enough, I would not try to run this to set a Personal Record. The route also has about 9 miles of relentless uphill in the middle third. I was a bit worried about this too because I haven't really been training for long distances (I think the last time I ran 20+ miles was the Detroit Marathon in 2022?) But I was going slow and drinking plenty of water, and ultimately it wasn't even that hard. It finishes in the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, a beautiful all-marble stadium, and so of course I also paid the €12 to get in there, and then of course it has a track in excellent condition so I needed to do a lap before shouting "νενικήκαμεν!" and then dying, but then it seemed so close to a "proper" 26.2 miles that I did five more laps to do so. Here's winner:

I'm Winner

My time was 5h1m0s, which is of course bad, but given that I was not racing at all and this includes the coffee and water and posting to Bluesky and waiting in line for tickets breaks, it's not embarrassing. Otherwise I have been doing relaxing things and also Tom things (math/programming but with a nice scenic backdrop and a beer) on this trip. Relatedly: The hills are alive with the sound of Noperts! More on this and other topics soon.

(6 comments — 13 hours ago) [ comment ]

Entries from August 2026

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l August 32 (31 Aug at 23:55)

September already! I have been making progress on a video, but also enjoying the summer and a little travel, and also in one of those traps where the project is *almost* good enough, but still takes like 3 years to run. Very easy to get in an Optimization Hole in that kind of situation. Filmed some live-action stuff outside today.

The best game I played this month (perhaps this year) is Derelict Star. This is a an exploration-based precision platformer and it asks a lot of the player, but it's just my kind of game. Fundamentally you have a strange physics engine with precise (but mysterious) feedback, and all of your progression comes from understanding its nuances. It's a big game with lots to explore, and an impressive variety of puzzles and challenges given the seemingly small rule set. Some of the puzzles are incredibly elegant (I'm thinking of the green key rooms). Sometimes you will know what you need to do but spend 45 minutes grinding it out! I got all the power cells without any hints or assists. I'm not above using an external map or hint, but I do admire when a game can be self-contained but still feel like you're discovering a lot. I think this game might be too hard for people who aren't really into platformers, but I loved it and would recommend it if that sounds like your jam.

I also finally finished Unbeatable, which is a ... well I'm not even sure what. It is ostensibly a rhythm game, but the story mode is mostly an anime-like walking simulator? The game is super buggy and has a lot of confusing rough edges, like sometimes it'll just rapid-fire show you a bunch of background scenes and then roll the credits, which is especially confusing since the story is disjointed. It must sound like I didn't like this game, but I actually did: Some of it is quite funny; it's got a lot of good original music, and the rough edges mostly come across as "punk rock" more than cutting corners.

I also played through Olija, an adventure platformer (vaguely reminiscent of the far superior Another World). It had some good art and some mediocre art, but mostly it was pretty mid. I usually like Devolver games more! Along similar lines I played Primal Planet, which is more explorey and did have generally quite good art, but the combat and platforming was a bit too clunky. I finished both but I would not particularly recommend them.

I saved writing this blog post until it was too late, having forgot that August does not have 32 days, and now I'm in danger of losing points!

(4 comments — 3 weeks ago) [ comment ]

Entries from July 2026

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l In fact: (31 Jul at 23:05)

I can tell you this: I did that talk for A.E.O.U.D. in New York and then inhaled Manhattan wildsmoke/miasma for a few days and then came back. I'm trying to finish up that project and make a silly video about it, but freed from the constraints of deadline I'm also letting it wander a bit (not smart; I have at least 3 or 4 other rather-in-progress things that I would still like to finish) but who cares? It's summer.

And also: I did videogames. I finally fully finished Moonring, which I recommend. It's a well-made game that has a few flaws (the late game is a bit "ambitious but incomplete," Wind-Waker style) but a lot of good stuff. I also got through Evil Egg, an overstimulating twin-stick shooter. I loved the graphical style and figuring out its quirks, although it was unclear to me how/whether I was finishing it. I also finished Returnal and was not tempted to 100% it, which is good. I think I'm close on Ball × Pitt, which is fun and has clever things but is also a bit "Mobile Game Hell" at times, so I will withhold judgment for now.

And now: I regret to inform you that I am very tired from having woken up way too early to receive water company maintenance plumber, and so I cannot think of anything additional to say before just fully falling aslee

(6 comments — almost 2 months ago) [ comment ]

Entries from June 2026

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l Again, yes (30 Jun at 23:59)

Hello my blog, my ball and chain, my primary source of -1,000 points for lateness. Did I know the month was ending? Yes. Was I sitting at my computer doing something else? Yes. Did I then just get tired and go to bed, forgetting about my chore? Again yes.

One piece of cover is that my site was down yesterday. I foolishly rebooted my server without looking at it, and learned this morning that my magnificent TLS reverse proxy httpv was not actually configured correctly to restart when the server came back online. My invincible website! It had been running continuously since that video, which now seems like a million years ago. I simply had never done systemctl enable httpv. Anyway, that should be okay, but might as well take another -1,000 points.

Next up: I initiated and got deep into a new stupid project, which hopefully I'll have ready for AEOUD in Brooklyn. The project part is "almost done" but I also need to make the story/visuals, which I basically just have the long 4th of July weekend for. So it's getting tight. I'm probably the only idiot in the world who does a new topic for every single appearance, which is probably why I usually just get stressed out and don't even respond to people who kindly e-mail me inviting me to talk somewhere.

But I like newness, which is why I also made myself run out of time by downloading Returnal, which I thought was going to be a straightforward single-player third-person shooter that I could just play through in bits when I needed a break. Turns out is actually a single-player Roguelike bullet-hell third-person shooter, which random-reward genre is known to be addictive to accomplishment-driven players like myself. Might as well take another -1,000 points for that error while we're in the mood. It is a good game, although it is funny to me how incredibly slow the walking-simulator sections are compared to the normal twitchy gameplay. I'm sure that as video game professionals they did this on purpose, but it's impossible for me to imagine someone who likes twitchy dodgy bullet-hell also being patient enough to enjoy a ten second long animation of the player picking up a piece of paper. I have picked up paper multiple times in my life, and done so in at most one second, even wearing a spacesuit.

We've got some record-level heat here! It had better at least reach 100°F if it's going to flirt with that level.

(12 comments — 2 months ago) [ comment ]

Entries from May 2026

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l Stereolithography (31 May at 11:20)

Hi!

I'm currently in STL (not the 3D printing format, although can we really be sure that we're not inside an enormous stop-motion 3D-printed simulation?) for a friend's 40th birthday / Festkolloquium. It's at the City Museum, which is a place I highly recommend and which is certainly rekindling my warehouse fantasies. I gave a talk about another geometry problem I got sucked into, which might end up being a video but I think is more likely to just be a project I tinker with and gracefully avoid going in a math hole about.

In June I'll be in NYC presenting something at An Evening of Unnecessary Detail again!

I finished Oeuf, Stephen's Egg Roll, which I liked. I didn't know if I was going to want to finish it when I started, but the game is good at teaching you its moves and encouraging you along the way. I also played through the entirety of Lone Fungus: Melody of Spores and Minishoot' Adventures this month, which is how you know I was substantially vegetating. The first is a straightforward sequel; I think I liked the original more because it was less polished (in particular, movement power-ups allowed for significant sequence breaking). I liked the gloomy synth soundtrack in this one, and the bonus levels, but it was mostly quite easy. (I only upgraded the strength stat for a little extra challenge!) Minishoot' (yes with the apostrophe) is a genre mashup of "twin stick shooter" and "metroidvania," and was quite charming. I probably should have played it on the hard difficulty (yes I am so good at video games!!!), but I had a lot of fun exploring that world. My chief complaint is that essentially every secret is of the same type. I played The Cabin Factory, which is a one-session horror game with a smart structure, and it creeped me out the right amount. And now I'm pretty deep into Moonring. This is a strictly turn-based "RPG" with lovely low-color graphics that makes me wish I was playing on OLED. It reminds me very much of the old DOS Ultima games, and I expect it was inspired by them. I admire the design of this one; it exercises a lot of restraint in its mechanics and expression. The leveling system is pretty neat (essentially all "achievement"-based; no xp), and the interface is well thought out. It recreates for me the feeling of playing these underexplained games in the 90s and not being sure if you're "supposed to" go through this dungeon yet.

OK! Now it is time for Brunch with friends.

(2 comments — almost 4 months ago) [ comment ]

... May 2026 continued

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6 Posts from 2026

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