2022 books

Here’s a list of books I read in 2022. The ones in bold I recommend.

Fiction:

1632 by Eric Flint
Alex Verus 1: Fated by Benedict Jacka
Alex Verus 2: Cursed by Benedict Jacka
Alex Verus 3: Taken by Benedict Jacka
Alex Verus 4: Chosen by Benedict Jacka
Alex Verus 5: Hidden by Benedict Jacka
Alex Verus 6: Burned by Benedict Jacka
Alex Verus 7: Bound by Benedict Jacka
Alex Verus 8: Marked by Benedict Jacka
Alex Verus 9: Fallen by Benedict Jacka
Alex Verus 10: Forged by Benedict Jacka
Alex Verus 11: Risen by Benedict Jacka
Art of the Adept 2: Secrets and Spellcraft by Michael G Manning
Art of the Adept 3: Scholar of Magic by Michael G Manning
Aspects by John M Ford
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman
Bastion (Immortal Great Souls 1) by Phil Tucker
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Citadel: Training in Necessity by Unillustrated
City of Broken Magic by Mirah Bolender
Cradle 11: Dreadgod by Will Wight
Crown of Vengeance by James Mallory and Mercedes Lackey
Cytonic by Brandon Sanderson
Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Gamechanger by L. X. Beckett
Genius by Leopoldo Gout
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Grand Game by Tom Elliot (LitRPG)
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Head-on by John Scalzi
He Who Fights with Monsters 1 by Shirtaloon
He Who Fights with Monsters 2 by Shirtaloon
He Who Fights with Monsters 3 by Shirtaloon
He Who Fights with Monsters 4 by Shirtaloon
He Who Fights with Monsters 5 by Shirtaloon
Highfire by Eoin Colfer
Immortality Code by Douglas E Richards
In Other Lands by Sarah Rees
Insane City by Dave Barry
Iron Prince by Bryce O’Conner and Luke Chmilenko
Isolate (Grand Illusion 1) by L E Modesitt Jr
The Kevin Jenkins Experience by Hambone
Kusuriya no Hitorigoto / Alchemist’s Journal by Natsu Hyuuga et al
The Left-handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix
Lock In by John Scalzi
Mage’s Blood by David Hair
Mark of the Fool by J M Clarke
Martian Abroad by Carrie Vaughn
Master Li and Number Ten Ox 1: Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart
Master Li and Number Ten Ox 2: Story of the Stone by Barry Hughart
Master Li and Number Ten Ox 3: Eight Skilled Gentlemen by Barry Hughart
Mazer in Prison by Orson Scot Card
Memory of Earth by Orson Scott Card
Memory of Earth 2: Call of Earth by Orson Scott Card
Millenial Mage by J L Mullins
Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl
Orc on the Wild Side by Tom Holt
Pact by wildbow
Penric’s Progress by Louis McMaster Bujold
Penric’s Travels by Louis McMaster Bujold
Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson
Powder Mage 1 by Brian McClellan
Primal Hunter by Zogarth
Quantum Shadows by L E Modesitt (in the style of Gene Wolf)
Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
Recluse 1: Magic of Recluse by L E Modesitt Jr
Recluse 2: Towers of the Sunset by L E Modesitt Jr
Recluse 3: Magic Engineer by L E Modesitt Jr
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
Red Rising 2: Golden Son by Pierce Brown
Red Rising 3: Morning Star by Pierce Brown
Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon
RE: Trailer Trash by FortySixtyFour
Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
Rook and Rose 1: Mask of Mirrors by M A Carrick
Rook and Rose 2: The Liar’s Knot by M A Carrick
Salvaged by Madeleine Roux
Salvos by V A Lewis (LitRPG)
Scardown by Elizabeth Bear
Servant Mage by Kate Elliot
Significant Digits by Alexander Deebus
Sleep In a Sea of Stars by Chistopher Paolini
Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
Soulmage by meowcats734
Starsight by Brandon Sanderson
Story of My Life by Hellen Keller
Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows
A Succession of Bad Days by Graydon Saunders
The Starless Sea by Eric Morgenstern
Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson
The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi
The Every by Dave Eggers
The Last Emperox by John Scalzi
The Philosopher’s War by Tom Miller
The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds
The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau
The Truth and Other Stories by Stanislaw Lem
The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood
Thief’s Magic by Trudi Canavan
Three Body Problem 2: Wallfacer: Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
Throne of the Five Winds by S C Emmett
Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng
Venemous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman
Vigor Mortis by Natalie Maher
Ward by Wildbow
Weirkey 1: Soulhome by Sarah Lin
Weirkey 2: Rainhorn by Sarah Lin
Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell

Nonfiction:

The Art of Computer Programming v1 by Donald Knuth
The Art of Computer Programming v2 by Donald Knuth
Attack and Defense by James Davies
Burning Wheel (RPG) by Luke Crane
The Economist (magazine)
Home Improvement 1-2-3
Illustrated Guide to Everything Sold in Hardware Stores (1988) by Steve Ettlinger
Inadequate Equilibria by Eliezer Yudkowsky
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Programming Crystal by Ivo Balbaert
Sigbovik 2021
Spymistress by William Stevenson
What If? by Randall Munroe
What If? 2 by Randall Munroe

2021 books

Here’s a list of books I read in 2021. The ones in bold I recommend.

Fiction:

Enigma by Graeme Base
City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett
Look to Windward (Culture 7) by Ian Banks
Surface Detail (Culture 8) by Ian M Banks
Pump Six by Paolo Bacigalupi
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Lexicon by Max Barry
Mage Errant 1 by John Bierce
Mage Errant 2 by John Bierce
Mage Errant 3 by John Bierce
Mage Errant 4 by John Bierce
Mage Errant 5 by John Bierce
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
Lilith’s Brood (Xenogenesis 1) by Octavia E Butler
Elegy Beach (Change 2) by Steven Boyett
Curse of Charion by Louis Bujold
Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
Bohemian Gospel by Dan Carpenter
Convergence (Foreigner 18) by C J Cherryh
Emergence (Foreigner 19) by C J Cherryh
Convergence (Foreigner 21) by C J Cherryh
Iron Prince by Bryce O’Conner and Luke Chmilenko
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Artemis Fowl (Artemis Fowl 1) by Eoin Colfer
The Arctic Incident (Artemis Fowl 2) by Eoin Colfer
Eternity Code (Artemis Fowl 3) by Eoin Colfer
Opal Deception (Artemis Fowl 4) by Eoin Colfer
Space Between Worlds by J Conrad and Micaiah Johnson
Little Brother by Cory Doctrow
Homeland (Little Brother 2) by Cory Doctrow
Children of Chaos by Dave Duncan
The Alchemist’s Apprentice by Dave Duncan
The Alchemist’s Code by Dave Duncan
The Alchemist’s Pursuit by Dave Duncan
The Cutting Edge by Dave Duncan
Upland Outlaws by Dave Duncan
The Stricken Field by Dave Duncan
Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst
Vita Nostra by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko
How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse by K. Eason
Malazan (Malazan 1) by Steven Erikson
Daughter of the Empire by Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts
Mistress of the Empire by Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts
Servant of the Empire by Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts
Dragon’s Egg (Cheela 1) by Robert L Forward
Mother of Learning by Domagoj Kurmaic/nobody103
Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
The Warehouse by Rob Hart
Forging Hephestus by Drew Hayes
Super Powereds, v1 by Drew Hayes
Super Powereds, v2 by Drew Hayes
Super Powereds, v3 by Drew Hayes
Super Powereds, v4 by Drew Hayes
Johannes Cabal by Johnathan L. Howard
The Medusa Plague by Mary Kirchoff
Six Wakes by Muir Lafferty
King of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
First Contacts by Murray Leinster
Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem
Perfect Vacuum by Stanislaw Lem
Tuf Voyaging by George R R Martin
Memory of Empire by Arkady Martine
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
The Host by Stephanie Meyers
The city & the city by China Mieville
*The House that Made the 16 Loops of time by Tamsyn Muir
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
The Last Graduate (Schoolomance 2) by Naomi Novik
Stiletto (Chequey, book 2) by Daniel O’Malley
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett
Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
Jingo by Terry Pratchett
The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett
Monsterous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
Snuff by Terry Pratchett
Sourcery by Terry Pratchett
The Truth by Terry Pratchett
The Woven Ring (Sol’s Harvest 1) by M D Presley
Years of Rice + Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Torch That Ignites the Stars by Andrew Rowe
Sleep Donation by Karen Russell
A Darker Shade of Magic by V E Schwab
Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V E Schwab
Vicious by V E Schwab
Vengeance by V E Schwab
Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
Why Is This Night Different Than All Other Nights? by Lemony Snicket
Dark Storm (Rhenwars 1) by M L Spenser
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Nimona by Noele Stevenson
Hunter x Hunter manga v1-36 by Yoshihiro Togashi
Worth the Candle by Alexander Wales
Educated by Tara Westover
Soulsmith (Cradle 2) by Will Wight
Blackflame (Cradle 3) by Will Wight
Skysworn (Cradle 4) by Will Wight
Ghostwater (Cradle 5) by Will Wight
Underlord (Cradle 6) by Will Wight
Uncrowned (Cradle 7) by Will Wight
Wintersteel (Cradle 8) by Will Wight
Bloodlines (Cradle 9) by Will Wight
Reaper (Cradle 10) by Will Wight
The Crimson Vault (Travelers Gate 2) by Will Wight
*Dinosaurs by Walter Jon Williams
Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson
Thousand Li by Tao Wong
Thousand Li 2 by Tao Wong
Thousand Li 3 by Tao Wong
Thousand Li 4 by Tao Wong
Thousand Li 5 by Tao Wong
Sorcerer’s Legacy by Janny Wurts (see also Feist)
Heretical Edge by ceruleuanscrawling
Mark of the Fool by UnstoppableJuggernaut
there is no antimemetics division by qntm
Only Villains Do That by Webbonomicon
Worm by wildbow

Nonfiction:

Compiling with Continuations by Andrew W. Appel
The Rule of Benedict by St Benedict (read the front material only)
Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley
Whole Brain Emulation Roadmap by Nick Bostrom
Data Matching by Peter Christen
Attack and Defense by James Davies and Akira Ishida
Engines of Creation by K. Eric Drexler
Class by Paul Fussell
The Food Lab by J Kenzi Lopez-Alt
Primitive Technology by John Plant
Monero whitepaper by Nicolas van Saberhagen
Secrets and Lies by Bruce Schneier
The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll

2020 Review

What happened in 2020? Well,

  • (General news) COVID-19 of course, and Trump left office
  • I stayed inside. I’ve been getting groceries delivered, even–I’ve been somewhere other than my house maybe twice since COVID-19 lockdown started.
  • I started watching wayyy more videos, especially video game streams.
  • I looked into buying land in Colorado and living in an RV
  • I transcribed my log books, and started coverting them all to a standard, computer-parsable format (mostly done, one left).
  • I deleted bs.
  • I figured out twitch streaming, both with a standalone capture card and on linux.
  • I got hardware random number generators to work.
  • I designed v1 and v2 of a protocol to allow a set of computers to store a large amount of content. It’s designed to back up things like the Internet Archive. I’m calling the project “valhalla”, after ArchiveTeams’s project valhalla and IA.BAK.
  • I learned to use an oscilloscope, and bit-banged SPI and I2C for a while, trying to get a 9-axis sensor to work unsuccessfully.
  • I learned how to make a pretty good pizza
  • I played a bunch of video games
  • I worked on the Lazy Beaver problem, and tied the state of the art.
  • I made a master TODO list, and finished every single TODO I had that took an hour or less.
  • I figured out how to make VMs in Linux and run them all the time
  • I got a tablet, and learned GIMP and InkScape well enough to draw some stuff.
  • I wrote a custom client for omegle
  • I did a yearly backup
  • I did various research. I learned about algorithms, data structures, RALA, and quantum physics.
  • I wrote up my cookbook and released it.
  • I wrote some blog posts 🙂
  • Four of my friends moved to Ohio, two from nearby me. I only know one person in the state I’m in well at this point.
  • A friend of mine got out of jail and got to go home.

2020 books

Here’s a list of books I read in 2020. The ones in bold I recommend.

Fiction:

A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer
A Crucible of Souls by Mitchell Hogan
Alcatraz and the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson
A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine
Apex (Nexus 3) by Ramez Naam
A Practical Guide to Evil, to end of book 5
Arena by Holly Jennings
Ariel by Steven Barnett
Ascend Online by Luke Chmilenko
Bastard Operator from Hell
Circe, by Madeline Miller
City of Brass by S A Chakrabarty p1-460
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Colour out of Space by HP Lovecraft
Crux (Nexus 2) by Ramez Naam
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Cultivation Chat Group – ch1-56
Dark Lord of Derholm by Dianna Wynne Jones
Dayworld by Philip Jose Farmer
Dayworld Rebel by Philip Jose Farmer # gave up halfway
Dust by Hugh Howey
Emperor Mage by Tamora Pierce
Enchantress by James Maxwell
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Fall by Neal Stephenson p1-545
Forging Divinity by Andrew Rowe
Future Indefinite by Dave Duncan
Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now by Cory Doctrow
Ghostwater by Will Wight
Gideon the Ninth by Tansyn Muir
House of Blades by Will Wight
House of Earth and Blood by Sarah Maas
Ithenalin’s Restoration by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Lament by Maggie Stiefvater
Legacy of the Fallen by Luke Chmilenko p1-316
Lone Wolf / Kai adventure series 1-5, magnakai 1, by Joe Dever
Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
Magician by Raymond Feist
Magicians by Lev Grossman
Making Money by Terry Pratchett
Mirror Gate by Jeff Wheeler
New York Fantastic by Paula Guran
Nexus by Ramez Naam
Night of Madness by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Ninth House by Leigh Bardogo
Od Magic by Patricia McKillip p1-222
One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence
On the Shoulders of Titans by Andrew Rowe
Past Imperative by Dave Duncan
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Present Tense by Dave Duncan
Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, p1-534?
Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter (some)
Relics of War by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Starfish (Rifters 1) by Peter Watts
Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal (all)
Shift (Silo 6-8) by Hugh Howey
Shining Path by Matthew Skala
Shouldn’t You Be In School? by Lemony Snicket
Sister Sable, by T Mountebank, p1-378
Skysworn by Will Wight
Skyward by Brandon Sanderson
Snowspelled by Stephanie Burges
Spellmonger by Terry Mancour, p1-165
Starfish by Peter Watts
Stone Unturned by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Storm Glass by Jeff Wheeler
Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe
The Alien’s Lover by Zoey Draven
The Archived by Victoria Schwab
The Atrocity Archive by Charles Stross
The Blood of a Dragon by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Burning White (Lightbringer 5) by Brent Weeks
The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
The Fractured World by David Aries
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
The Magic Goes Away by Larry Niven
The Maker of Universes by Philip Jose Farmer
The Misenchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex by Tamsyn Muir
The Necromancer’s House by Christopher Buehlman
The Queen’s Poisoner by Jeff Wheeler
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
The Sorcerer’s Widow by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Spell of the Black Dagger by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Spriggan Mirror by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Unwilling Warlord by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Vondish Ambassador by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima, p1-116
The Wiz Biz by Rick Cook
The Woven Ring by MD Presley, p1-28
Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Twig by wildbow (arc 1-18)
Uncrowned by Will Wight
Underlord by Will Wight
Unsong by Scott Alexander
Unsouled by Will Wight
When Did You See Her Last? by Lemony Snicket
Wintersteel by Will Wight
With a Single Spell by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Wool by Hugh Howey (v1-5)

Nonfiction (mostly I read web nonfiction):

507 Mechanical Movements by Henry T Brown
Advanced Magick for Beginners by Alan Chapman
Broadcast Channels with Confidential Messages
Busy Beaver Frontier by Scott Aaronson. I did some work based on it.
Computational Geometry by Mark de Berg
Craeft by Alexander Langlands
D&D 5e Player’s Handbook
D&D 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide
Forrest Mem’s Notebook
Forrest Mim’s Engineer’s Notebook
Forrest Mim’s Mini Notebook
Intel’s x86-64 manual
Introduction to Analysis by Maxwell Rosenlicht
Kademelia by Peter Maymounkov
kleiman v wright australian tax document
Incremental String Searching by Bertrand Meyer (KNP algorithm)
Rules to One Night Ultimate Werewolf
The Art of Computer Programming, v1, v3 by Donald Knuth (parts)
The Pragmatic Programmer
The Rust Programming Language
There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom by Richard Feynman
Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
W65025 manual (6502 clone)

2020 Videogames

In 2020 I’m newly retired, so I’ve had free time. I think it’s fun to do reviews, so without further ado here’s every video game I played in 2020!

I recommend:

  • (4/5) Among Us – Very fun. It’s only fun with voice chat with friends, so I’ve only gotten to play once or twice. I’ve been watching it more than playing it. Also free to play for mobile gamers–I’m tired of the “everyone buys a copy” model of group gameplay.
  • (4/5) Brogue. Brogue is an ascii-art roguelike. It’s great, and it has a nice difficulty ramp. It’s a good “quick break” game. I play it in preference to other roguelikes partly because I haven’t done it to death yet, and partly because I don’t need a numpad?
  • (4/5) Cook Serve Delicious 3. One of the more fun games I played this year. You get really into it, but I had trouble relaxing and paying attention to the real world when I played too much, haha. I own but haven’t played the first two–I gather this is pretty much just a refinement.
  • (4/5) Green Hell. Price tag is a bit high for the number of hours I got out of it, but I haven’t finished the story. Great graphics, and the BEST map design I’ve seen in a 3D game in a long time. It feels like a real place, with reasonable geography instead of copy-pasted tiles. I love that as you walk along, you can just spot a cultivated area from the rest of the jungle–it feels more like it’s treating me like an adult than most survival games. Everything still gets highlighted if you can pick it up. I played the survival mode, which was okay but gets old quickly. I started the story mode–I think it would be fine, but it has some LONG unskippable scenes at the start, including a very hand-holdy tutorial, that I think they should have cut. I did start getting into the story and was having fun, but I stopped. I might finish the game some time.
  • (4/5) Hyperrogue. One of my recent favorites. The dev has made a fair number of highly experimental games, most of which are a total miss with me, but this one is fun. I do wish the early game wasn’t quite as repetitive. Failing another solution, I might actually want this not to be permadeath, or to have a save feature? I bought it on steam to support the dev and get achievements, but it’s also available a version or two behind free, which is how I tried it. Constantly getting updates and new worlds.
  • (4/5) Minecraft – Compact Claustrophobia modpack. Fun idea, nice variety. After one expansion felt a little samey, and it was hard to start with two people. I’d consider finishing this pack.
  • (4/5) Overcooked 2. Overcooked 2 is just more levels for Overcooked. The foods in the second game is more fun, and it has better controls and less bugs. If you’re considering playing Overcooked, I recommend just starting with the second game, despite very fun levels in the first. I especially appreciate that the second game didn’t just re-use foods from the first.
  • (4/5) Please Don’t Press Anything. A unique little game where you try to get all the endings. I had a lot of fun with this one, but it could have used some kind of built-in hints like Reventure. Also, it had a lot of red herrings. Got it for $2, which it was well worth.
  • (5/5) Reventure. Probably the best game new to me this year. It’s a short game where you try to get each of about 100 endings. The art and writing are cute and funny. The level design is INCREDIBLE. One thing I found interesting is the early prototype–if I had played it, I would NOT have imagined it would someday be any fun at all, let alone as amazing as it is. As a game designer I found that interesting! I did 100% complete this one–there’s a nice in-game hint system, but there were still 1-3 “huh” puzzles, especially in the post-game content, one of which I had to look up. It’s still getting updates so I’m hoping those will be swapped for something else.
  • (5/5) Rimworld. Dwarf fortress, but with good cute graphics, set in the Firefly universe. Only has 1-10 pawns instead of hundreds of dwarves. Basically Dwarf Fortress but with a good UI. I wish you could do a little more in Rimworld, but it’s a fantastic, relaxing game.
  • (5/5) Slay the Spire. Probably the game I played most this year. A deckbuilding adventure through a series of RPG fights. A bit luck-based, but relaxing and fun. I like that you can play fast or slow. Very, very well-designed UI–you can really learn how things work. My favorite part is that because it’s singleplayer, it’s really designed to let you build a game-breaking deck. That’s how it should be!
  • (4/5) Stationeers. I had a lot of fun with this one. It’s similar to Space Engineers but… fun. It has better UI by a mile too, even if it’s not perfect. I lost steam after playing with friends and then going back to being alone, as I often do for base-building games. Looks like you can genuinely make some complicated stuff using simple parts. Mining might not be ideal.
  • (5/5) Spy Party. One of my favorite games. Very fun, and an incredibly high skill ceiling. There’s finally starting to be enough people to play a game with straners sometimes. Bad support for “hot seat”–I want to play with beginners in person, and it got even harder with the introduction of an ELO equivalent and removing the manual switch to use “beginner” gameplay.
  • (4/5) Telling Lies. A storytelling game. The core mechanic is that you can use a search engine for any phrase, and it will show the top 5 survellance footage results for that. The game internally has transcripts of every video. I didn’t really finish the game, but I had a lot of fun with it. The game was well-made. I felt the video acting didn’t really add a huge amount, and they could have done a text version, but I understand it wouldn’t have had any popular appeal. The acting was decent. There’s some uncomfortable content, on purpose.
  • (4/5) Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (TABS). Delightful. Very silly, not what you’d expect from the name. What everyone should have been doing with physics engines since they were invented. Imagine that when a caveman attacks, the club moves on its own and the caveman just gets ragdolled along, glued to it. Also the caveman and club have googley eyes. Don’t try to win or it will stop being fun. Learn how to turn on slo-mo and move the camera.
  • (4/5) We Were Here Together. Lots of fun. I believe the second game out of three. Still some crashes and UI issues. MUCH better puzzles and the grpahics are gorgeous. They need to fix the crashes or improve the autosave, we ended up replaying a lot of both games from crashes. It’s possible I should be recommending the third game but I haven’t played it yet.

The Rest

  • (3/5) 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel. More fun that it sounds. If you play to mess around and win by accident, it’s pretty good. Definitely play with a second human player, though.
  • (1.5/5) 7 billion humans. Better than the original, still not fun. Soulless game about a soulless, beige corporation. Just play Zachtronics instead. If you’re on a phone and want to engage your brain, play Euclidea.
  • (3/5) A Dark Room. Idle game.
  • (1/5) Amazing Cultivation Simulator. A big disappointment. Bad english voice acting which can’t be turned off, and a long, unskippable tutorial. I didn’t get to actual gameplay. I like Rimworld and cultivation novels so I had high hopes.
  • (3/5) ADOM (Steam version) – Fun like the original, which I would give 5/5. Developed some major issues on Linux, but I appreciate that there’s a graphical version available, one of my friends will play it now.
  • (4/5) agar.io – Good, but used to be better. Too difficult to get into games now. Very fun and addictive gameplay.
  • (3/5) Amorous – Furry dating sim. All of the hot characters are background art you can’t interact with, and the characters you can actually talk to are a bunch of sulky nerds who for some reason came to a nightclub. I think it was free, though.
  • (0/5) Apis. Alpha game, AFAIK I was the first player. Pretty much no fun right now (to the point of not really being a game yet), but it could potentially become fun if the author puts in work.
  • (4/5) Autonauts. I played a ton of Autonauts this year, almost finished it, which is rare for me. My main complaint is that it’s fundamentally supposed to be a game about programming robots, but I can’t actually make them do more than about 3 things, even as a professional programmer. Add more programming! It can be optional, that’s fine. They’re adding some kind of tower defense waves instead, which is bullshit. Not recommended because it’s not for everyone.
  • (3/5) A-Z Inc. Points for having the guts to have a simple game. At first this looked like just the bones of Swarm Simulator, but the more you look at the UI and the ascension system, the worse it actually is. I would regularly reset because I found out an ascension “perk” actually made me worse off.
  • (5/5) Beat Saber. Great game, and my favorite way to stay in shape early this year. Oculus VR only, if you have VR you already have this game so no need to recommend. Not QUITE worth getting a VR set just to play it at current prices.
  • (1/5) Big Tall Small. Good idea, but no fun to play. Needed better controls and level design, maybe some art.
  • (0.5/5) Blush Blush. Boring.
  • (3/5) Business Shark. I had too much fun with this simple game. All you do is just eat a bunch of office workers.
  • (3/5) chess.com. Turns out I like chess while I’m high?
  • (3/5) Circle Empires Rivals. Decent, more fun than the singleplayer original. It shouldn’t really have been a separate game from Circle Empires, and I’m annoyed I couldn’t get it DRM-free like the original.
  • (3/5) Cross Virus. By Dan-box. Really interesting puzzle mechanics.
  • (4/5) Cultist Simulator. Really fun to learn how to play–I love games that drop you in with no explanation. Great art and writing, I wish I could have gotten their tarot deck. Probably the best gameplay “ambience” I’ve seen–getting a card that’s labeled “fleeting sense of radiance” that disappears in 5 seconds? Great. Also the core stats are very well thought out for “feel” and real-life accuracy–dread (depression) conquers fascination (mania), etc. It has a few gameplay gotchas, but they’re not too big–layout issues, inability to go back to skipped text, or to put your game in an unwinnable state early on). Unfortunately it’s a “roguelike”, and it’s much too slow-paced and doesn’t have enough replay value, so it becomes a horrible, un-fun grind when you want to actually win. I probably missed the 100% ending but I won’t be going back to get it. I have no idea who would want to play this repeatedly. I’m looking forward to the next game from the same studio though! I recommend playing a friend’s copy instead of buying.
  • (2/5) Darkest Dungeon. It was fine but I don’t really remember it.
  • (2/5) Dicey Dungeons. Okay deck-building roguelike gameplay (with an inventory instead of a deck). Really frustrating, unskippably slow difficulty curve at the start. I played it some more this year and liked it better because I had a savegame. I appreciate having several character classes, but they should unlock every difficulty from the start.
  • (2/5) Diner Bros. Basically just a worse Overcooked. I didn’t like the controls, and it felt too repetitive with only one diner.
  • (2/5) Don’t Eat My Mind You Stupid Monster. Okay art and idea, the gameplay wasn’t too fun for me.
  • (2/5) Don’t Starve – I’ve played Don’t Stave maybe 8 different times, and it’s never really gripped me, I always put it back down. It’s slow, a bit grindy, and there’s no bigger goal–all you can do is live.
  • (3/5) Don’t Starve Together – Confusingly, Don’t Starve Together can be played alone. It’s Don’t Starve, plus a couple of the expansions. This really could be much more clearly explained.
  • (1/5) Elemental Abyss – A deck-builder, but this time it’s grid-based tactics. Really not all that fun. Just play Into the Abyss instead or something.
  • (1/5) Else Heart.Break() – I was excited that this might be a version of “Hack N’ Slash” from doublefine that actually delivered and let you goof around with the world. I gave it up in the first ten minutes, because the writing and characters drove me crazy, without getting to hacking the world.
  • (2/5) Everything is Garbage. Pretty good for a game jam game. Not a bad use of 10 minutes. I do think it’s probably possible to make the game unwinnable, and the ending is just nothing.
  • (1/5) Evolve. Idle game, not all that fun. I take issue with the mechanic in Sharks, Kittens, and this where buying your 15th fence takes 10^15 wood for some reason.
  • (4/5) Exapunks. Zachtronics has really been killing it lately, with Exapunks and Opus Magnum. WONDERFUL art and characters during story portions, and much better writing. The gameplay is a little more varied than in TIS-100 or the little I played of ShenZen I/O. My main complaint about Zachtronics games continues to be, that I don’t want to be given a series of resource-limited puzzles (do X, but without using more than 10 programming instructions). Exapunks is the first game where it becomes harder to do something /at all/, rather than with a particular amount of resources, but it’s still not there for me. Like ShenZen, they really go for a variety of hardware, too. Can’t recommend this because it’s really only for programmers.
  • (1/5) Exception. Programming game written by some money machine mobile games company. Awful.
  • (4/5) Factorio. Factorio’s great, but for me it doesn’t have that much replay value, even with mods. I do like their recent updates, which included adding blueprints from the start of the game, improving belt sorting, and adding a research queue. We changed movement speed, made things visually always day, and adding a small number of personal construction robots from the start this run. I’m sure if you’d like factorio you’ve played it already.
  • (3/5) Fall Guys – I got this because it was decently fun to watch. Unfortunately, it’s slightly less fun to play. Overall, there’s WAY too much matchmaking waiting considering the number of players, and the skill ceiling is very low on most of the games, some of which are essentially luck (I’m looking at you, team games).
  • (3/5) Forager – Decent game. A little too much guesswork in picking upgrades–was probably a bit more fun on my second play because of that. Overall, nice graphics and a cute map, but the gameplay could use a bit of work.
  • (3/5) Getting Over It – Funny idea, executed well. Pretty sure my friends and I have only gotten through 10% of the game, and all hit about the same wall (the first tunnel)
  • (3/5) Guild of Dungeoneering – Pretty decent gameplay. I feel like it’s a bit too hard for me, but that’s fine. Overall I think it could use a little more cute/fun art, I never quite felt that motivated.
  • (1/5) Hardspace: Shipbreakers. Okay, I seriously didn’t get to play this one, but I had GAMEBREAKING issues with my controller, which is a microsoft X-box controller for PC–THE development controller.
  • (2/5) Helltaker. All right art, meh gameplay. But eh, it’s free!
  • (3/5) Hot Lava. Decent gameplay. Somehow felt like the place that made this had sucked the souls out of all the devs first–no one cared about the story or characters. It’s a game where the floor is made out of lava, with a saturday morning cartoon open, so that was a really an issue. Admirable lack of bugs, though. I’m a completionist so I played the first world a lot to get all the medals, and didn’t try the later ones.
  • (3/5) House Flipper – Weird, but I had fun. I wish the gameplay was a little more unified–it felt like a bunch of glued-together minigames.
  • (2/5) Hydroneer. Utterly uninspiring. I couldn’t care about making progress at all, looked like a terrible grind to no benefit.
  • (1/5) io. Tiny game, I got it on Steam, also available on phone. Basically a free web flash game, but for money. Not good enough to pay the $1 I paid. Just a bit of a time-killer.
  • (3/5) Islanders – All you do is place buildings and get points. Not particularly challenging, but relaxing. Overall I liked it.
  • (3/5) Jackbox – I played this online with a streamer. Jackbox has always felt a little bit soulless money grab to me, but it’s still all right. I like that I can play without having a copy–we need more games using this purchase model.
  • (3/5) Life is Feudal – Soul-crushingly depressing and grindy, which I knew going in. I thought it was… okay, but I really want an offline play mode (Yes, I know there’s an unsupported single-player game, but it’s buggier and costs money). UI was pretty buggy, and I think hunting might literally be impossible.
  • (2/5) Minecraft – Antimatter Chemistry. Not particularly fun.
  • (3/5) Minecraft – ComputerCraft. I played a pack with just ComputerCraft and really nothing else. Was a little slow, would have been more fun with more of an audience. I love the ComputerCraft mod, I just didn’t have a great experience playing my pack I made.
  • (3/5) Minecraft – Foolcraft 3. Fun, a bit buggy. Honestly I can’t remember it too well.
  • (1/5) Minecraft – Manufactio. Looked potentially fun, but huge bugs and performance issues, couldn’t play.
  • (4/5) Minecraft – Tekkit. Tekkit remains one of my favorite Minecraft modpacks.
  • (3/5) Minecraft – Valhelsia 2. I remember this being fun, but I can’t remember details as much as I’d like. I think it was mostly based around being the latest version of minecraft?
  • (4/5) Minecraft – Volcano Block. Interesting, designed around some weird mods I hadn’t used. I could have used more storage management or bulk dirt/blocks early in the game–felt quite cramped. Probably got a third of the way through the pack. I got novelty value out of it, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it if I had ever used the plant mod before–it’s a very fixed, linear progression.
  • (5/5) Minit. This is a weird, small game. I actually had a lot of fun with it. Then I 100% completed it, which was less fun but I still had a good time overall.
  • (3/5) Monster Box. By Dan-box. One of two Dan-box games I played a lot of. Just visually appealing, the gameplay isn’t amazing. Also, Dan-box does some great programming–this is a game written in 1990 or so, and it can render hundreds of arrows in the air smoothly in a background tab.
  • (3/5) Monster Train. A relatively fun deckbuilding card game. It can’t run well on my computer, which is UNACCEPTABLE–this is a card game with 2D graphics. My MICROWAVE should run this shit in 2020. Ignoring that, the gameplay style (summon monsters, MTG style) just isn’t my cup of tea.
  • (2/5) Moonlighter. Felt like it was missing some inspiration, just didn’t have a sense of “fun”. The art was nice. The credits list is surprisingly long.
  • (2/5) Muse Dash. All right, a basic rhythm game. Not enough variety to the game play, and everything was based around perfect or near-perfect gameplay, which makes things less fun for me.
  • (3/5) NES games – various. Dr Mario, Ice Climbers. Basically, I got some Chinese handheld “gameboy” that has all the NES games preloaded on it. Overall it was a great purchase.
  • (2/5) Noita. “The Powder Game” by Dan-Box, as a procedurally generated platformer with guns. Lets you design your own battle spells. Despite the description, you really still can’t screw around as much as I’d like. I also had major performance issues
  • (3/5) Observation. I haven’t played this one as much as I’d like, I feel like it may get better. Storytelling, 3D game from the point of view of the AI computer on a space station. I think I might have read a book it’s based on, unfortunately.
  • (2/5) One Step From Eden. This is a deck-building combat tactics game. I thought it was turn-based, but it’s actually realtime. I think if it was turn-based I would have liked it. The characters were a bit uninspired.
  • (1/5) Orbt XL. Very dull. I paid $0.50 for it, it was worth that.
  • (4/5) Opus Magnum. Another great game from Zachtronics, along with Exapunks they’re really ramping up. This is the third execution of the same basic concept. I’d like to see Zachtronics treading new ground more as far as gameplay–that said, it is much improved compared to the first two iterations. The art, writing, and story were stellar on the other hand.
  • (3/5) Out of Space. Fun idea, you clean a spaceship. It’s never that challenging, and it has mechanics such that it gets easier the more you clean, rather than harder. Good but not enough replay value. Fun with friends the first few times. The controls are a little wonky.
  • (1/5) Outpost (tower defense game). I hate all tower defense.
  • (3/5) Overcooked. Overcooked is a ton of fun.
  • (4/5) Powder Game – Dan-box. I played this in reaction to not liking Noita. It’s fairly old at this point. Just a fun little toy.
  • (1/5) Prime Mover – Very cool art, the gameplay put me to sleep immediately. A “circuit builder” game but somehow missing any challenge or consistency.
  • (2/5) Quest for Glory I. Older, from 1989. Didn’t really play this much, I couldn’t get into the writing, and the pseudo-photography art was a little jarring.
  • (4/5) Raft. I played this in beta for free on itch.io, and had a lot of fun. Not enough changed that it was really worth a replay, but it has improved, and I got to play with a second player. Not a hard game, which I think was a good thing. The late game they’ve expanded, but it doesn’t really add much. The original was fun and so was this.
  • (3/5) Satisfactory. I honestly don’t know how I like this one–I didn’t get too far into it.
  • (4/5) Scrap Mechanic. I got this on a recommendation from a player who played in creative. I only tried the survival mode–that mode is not well designed, and their focuses for survival are totally wrong. I like the core game, you can actually build stuff. If I play again, I’ll try the creative mode, I think.
  • (3.5/5) Shapez.io. A weird, abstracted simplification of Factorio. If I hadn’t played factorio and half a dozen copies, I imagine this would have been fun, but it’s just more of the same. Too much waiting–blueprints are too far into the game, too.
  • (2.5/5) Simmiland. Okay, but short. Used cards for no reason. For a paid game, I wanted more gameplay out of it?
  • (0.5/5) Snakeybus. The most disappointing game I remember this year. Someone made “Snake” in 3D. There are a million game modes and worlds to play in. I didn’t find anything I tried much fun.
  • (1/5) Soda Dungeon. A “mobile” (read: not fun) style idle game. Patterned after money-grab games, although I don’t remember if paid progress was actually an option. I think so.
  • (4/5) Spelunky. The only procedurally generated platformer I’ve ever seen work. Genuinely very fun.
  • (4/5) Spelunky 2. Fun, more of an upgrade of new content than a new game. Better multiplayer. My computer can’t run later levels at full speed.
  • (1/5) Stick Ranger 2. Dan-box. Not much fun.
  • (3/5) Superliminal. Fun game. A bit short for the pricetag.
  • (3/5) Tabletop Simulator – Aether’s End: Legacy. Interesting, a “campaign” (series of challenge bosses and pre-written encounters) deckbuilding RPG. I like the whole “campaign RPG boardgame” idea. This would have worked better with paper, there were some rough edges in both the game instructions and the port to Tabletop Simulator.
  • (4/5) Tabletop Simulator – The Captain is Dead. Very fun. I’d love to play with more than 2 people. Tabletop simulator was so-so for this one.
  • (2/5) Tabletop Simulator – Tiny Epic Mechs. You give your mech a list of instructions, and it does them in order. Arena fight. Fun, but I think I could whip up something at least as good.
  • (3/5) The Council. One of the only 3D games I finished. It’s a story game, where you investigate what’s going on and make various choices. It’s set in revolutionary france, at the Secret World Council that determines the fate of the world. It had a weak ending, with less choice elements than the rest of the game so far, which was a weird decision. Also, it has an EXCRUTIATINGLY bad opening scene, which was also weird. The middle 95% of the game I enjoyed, although the ending went on a little long. The level of background knowledge expected of the player swung wildly–they seemed to expect me to know who revolutionary French generals were with no explanation, but not Daedalus and the Minotaur. The acting was generally enjoyable–there’s a lot of lying going on in the game and it’s conveyed well. The pricetag is too high to recommend.
  • (0/5) The Grandma’s Recipe (Unus Annus). This game is unplayably bad–it’s just a random pixel hunt. Maybe it would be fun if you had watched the video it’s based on.
  • (3/5) The Room. Pretty fun! I think this is really designed for a touchscreen, but I managed to play it on my PC. Played it stoned, which I think helps with popular puzzle games–it has nice visuals but it’s a little too easy.
  • (3/5) This Call May Be Recorded. Goofy experimental game.
  • (4/5) TIS-100. Zachtronics. A programming game. I finally got done with the first set of puzzles and into the second this year. I had fun, definitely not for everyone.
  • (3/5) Trine. I played this 2-player. I think the difficulty was much better 2-player, but it doesn’t manage 2 players getting separated well. Sadly we skipped the story, which seemed like simple nice low-fantasy. Could have used goofier puzzles, it took itself a little too seriously and the levels were a bit same-y.
  • (2/5) Unrailed. Co-op railroad building game. It was okay but there wasn’t base-building. Overall not my thing. I’d say I would prefer something like Overcooked if it’s going to be timed? Graphics reminded me of autonauts.
  • (2/5) Vampire Night Shift. Art game. Gameplay could have used a bit of polish. Short but interesting.
  • (4/5) Wayward. To date, the best survival crafting system I’ve seen. You can use any pointy object and stick-like object, together with glue or twine, to make an arrow. The UI is not great, and there’s a very counter-intuitive difficulty system. You need to do a little too much tutorial reading, and it could use more goals. Overall very fun. Under constant development, so how it plays a given week is a crapshoot. The steam version finally works for me (last time I played it was worse than the free online alpha, now it’s the same or better). I recomend playing the free online version unless you want to support the author.
  • (1/5) We Need to Go Deeper. Multiplayer exploration game in a sub, with sidescrolling battle. Somehow incredibly unfun, together with high pricetag. Aesthetics reminded me of Don’t Starve somehow.
  • (2/5) We Were Here. Okay 2-player puzzle game. Crashed frequently, and there were some “huh” puzzles and UI. Free.
  • (3/5) Yes, your grace. Gorgeous pixel art graphics. The story is supposed to be very player-dependent, but I started getting the feeling that it wasn’t. I didn’t quite finish the game but I think I was well past halfway. Hard to resume after a save, you forget things. I got the feeling I wouldn’t replay it, which is a shame because it’s fun to see how things go differently in a second play with something like this.

These are not all new to me, and very few came out in 2020. I removed any games I don’t remember and couldn’t google (a fair number, I play a lot of game jam games) as well as any with pornographic content.

Year in Review

Sep, Oct, Nov 2014: Vietnam.

A year ago, I left my job at Streak and moved to Vietnam. I felt like I needed change. Vietnam ended up being wonderful; I was really glad I travelled with my friends Richard and Kathy, which ended up making the experience a hundred times better than it would have been otherwise. The basic environment was: everything is cheap, I newly have endless free time, I was automatically prompted by my friends in the evenings and sometimes during the day to go on small novel adventures involving physical activity, and I had little internet access. This is probably my perfect environment, and I was functioning very well (the vietnamese diet also has small, well-balanced meals which might have helped). For some reason, I was also able to intensely single-task. [I’d like to write more about what Vietnam is like, but this article is quite long enough as it is]

While I was in Vietnam, I made a to-do list. The to-do list had all the burning projects I actually wanted to do. I’ve ended up accomplishing most of them, at a rate of one every week or two, and it’s a decent summary of what I’ve been doing since. Two things made the to-do list a success. First, it had BIG tasks. These are projects like my recent “set up an IRC server” or “start a publishing company”. Because of that, I don’t get bogged down in minutae, and the tasks are always motivating. I find I function better when I try to carefully plan around having any logistics. The second reason, which I realized today, is that I was very careful to only include tasks I was planning to do (subtly different than tasks I wanted to do). The list was descriptive, not normative, although it certainly included some things like doing taxes I wasn’t wild about.

Looking at my journal and it really only starts up again in March, so I’m going to organize this post in terms of the to-do list. There are a couple items that don’t fit:

  • I started dating my wonderful pet, Lealend, while I was in Vietnam. I went to visit them for a month in Puerto Rico where they live. This is very very important to me (the most important thing that happened in the last year), but I don’t usually write about things that personal on my blog so I’m not doing to say much. I’ve been emotionally maturing a lot by being with them.
  • Conventions. I went to DEF CON, which was probably the best single week this year so far. I’m definitely going again next year. I attended a mirix [paper] in the South Bay, which ended up being stressful for transportation-related reasons but really good while I was there. I’m planning on going to Burning Man this year as well.
  • I started contracting, that’s how I’ve been alive for a year. I’ve been doing some work for Zinc and Paul Christiano on a workflowy clone, mostly. I work two hours a day average.
  • I’ve been developing a minecraft modpack [I’ll write more about this when it’s stable], and recently taken an interest in livestreaming.

Now on to the to-do list.

  • Project: Printserver
    Success: Success but obsolete
    Description: I set up a printserver. It’s a little raspberry pi that talks to my printer, because getting printers set up is a pain and I don’t want to do it all the time. It went great, it saved me a ton of hassle to have it automatically print out my daily agenda every morning, and to just be able to transfer documents over with ‘scp’.
    Future plans: Unfortunately, my printer died and we only recently got a new one. I need to set it up with the new server. I could also make printing completely automatic when new files show up with scp (right now it’s manual so I can switch out paper, but my roommates would be happier with scp I think).
  • Project: Set up my phone so dropping/losing it isn’t horrible
    Success: Partial success
    Description: I wanted to root and then automatically backup my phone. I did figure out how to do as much backing up as I can, and it is automatic. Unfortunately it turns out most of the filesystem (including SMS) just isn’t available over Media Transfer Protocol which android uses to display files, so I had to special case the things I desperately needed backed up. I’d prefer the state of the world let me back up everything on the phone, but that’s as much work as I’m willing to do.
  • Project: Get digital copies of all books I own
    Success: Success
    Description: I got digital copies of all books I own via a combination of pirating, buying copies, and getting the books scanned by a service. I did not get rid of the physical books.
  • Project: Switch to private email
    Success: Not done
    Description: I get a little nervous entrusting Google (or any third party) with the ability to read, lose, or add restrictions on what I can do with my email. I want to set up my own email address (za3k@za3k.com) and have it be my main point of contact. My email does work, but I can’t send outgoing email, and I haven’t switched everything over to it for that reason.
  • Project: Download ArXiV
    Success: Done
    Description: As an archive nut, I worry that the ArXiV collection, one of the nicer collections of scientific papers I access regularly, might someday go down or get censored. I downloaded a copy and stashed it away somewhere. Unfortunately ArXiV’s licenses they get papers under doesn’t permit redistribution, so I can’t publicly host it. (This was really cool but I had to decide whether I was going to publicly mention, since it’s a legal gray area)
    Future plans: Someone (not me) should host a torrent. Contact me and I can get you a copy.
  • Project: Pack and unpack storage bins (trip to vietnam)
    Success: Success
    Description: Okay I know this sounds stupid, but I spent about a month packing up to go to Vietnam, and all my physical stuff has stayed organized ever since. That’s a really big change for me.
  • Project: Host an IRC server
    Success: Success
  • Project: Make hibernate work on my laptop
    Success: Success
    Description: This involved switching partitioning around since btrfs doesn’t support swap files. If I recall, my setup is now a swap partition and a root btrfs partition, inside LVM, inside LUKS.
  • Project: Extract bitcoins
    Success: Success
    Description: Extract bitcoins from all my computers and centralize them in one place
  • Project: iPhone
    Success: Success
    Description: Back up all my personal data from my iPhone, clear the contents, and sell it.
  • Project: N-grams
    Success: Obsolete
    Description: The Google N-grams dataset from their book scanning project is freely available, but in a terrible format (split across set-size file chunks, but in random rather than sorted order). My plan was to convert the formatting and offer it as a torrent / s3 bucket. Google has corrected the problem in a revised version of the dataset.
  • Project: NNTP over tor
    Success: Didn’t do
    Description: I run a private newsserver, and I wanted to let people access the newsserver (and anything else on that physical server) over tor. I decided the newsserver was too dead to bother with, and I didn’t feel enthusiastic about setting up tor, so I dropped the project.
    Future plans: I don’t care about the original project, but if there’s a compelling stimulus, I want to set up tor for my server to learn how and leave flexibility.
  • Project: Textmode backup
    Success: Success
    Description: ‘textmode’ is the name of a virtual machine on my OS X machine. The project was to back up contents of the machine once, and then delete the virtual machine
  • Project: Post pdfmailer website
    Success: Success
    Description: I wanted people to be able to get a physical copy of a pdf document they had mailed to them. I think this project was an especial success, because I’d been failing at an over-engineered version of this off and on for a year. I decided to have the website email me instead of trying to do everything automatically, and ended up getting the books to be a factor of 10 cheaper or so by going with a publisher with no API.
    Future plans: I’d like to popularize the website more. I think there are also some small technical improvements to be made. I’m not going to automate things unless it starts using up a lot of my time to process requests myself.
  • [Censored project involving an arbitrage opportunity I haven’t cornered]
  • Project: Back up email
    Success: Success
  • Project: Flatten backups
    Success: Good enough
    Description: Oh just go read the XKCD. Now imagine you’ve been archiving computers onto other computers for 15 years, and buy cheap laptops.
  • Project: QR codes for ebooks
    Success: Success
  • Project: Business cards
    Success: Not done
    Description: Make some personal business cards
  • Project: QR Punchcodes
    Success: Didn’t do
    Description: So you know how QR codes can contain any data? That means you could show them to a camera and the camera could run any code. Like, code to wait for another couple of QR codes, or to print out some more QR codes…
  • [Censored project involving an arbitrage opportunity I haven’t cornered]
  • [Censored project involving a mildly illegal thing]
  • Project: Make a desk out of cardboard
    Success: Ongoing
    Description: I want to make a desk out of cardboard, because it sounds fun. I’m proud of doing the design right here. I’ve finished mocking it out of cardstock, and actually noticed a lot of flaws and fixed the design instead of hoping them away. Now I mostly have to get the cardboard and make it, should be fun.
  • Project: Make a whiteboard partition
    Success: Success
  • Project: Write about paper backups
    Success: Success
  • Project: Sort physical scans
    Success: Success
    Description: As part of packing up all my possessions to go to Vietnam, I scanned every physical document I own (and mostly threw them out). Twenty years of stuff is a lot of stuff, but I eventually sorted it all out. I’ve been increasingly finding that a flat folder structure ends up working out best for me in the long term, so that’s what I used.
  • Project: Two-location backup
    Success: Not done
    Description: My backup server uses RAID-1, but I’d like to have a second copy on an external hard drive somewhere.  Also, I have a bunch of external hard drives which are currently not backed up anywhere (mostly with stuff like movies) which I’d like to have some kind of redundancy
  • Project: Treemap finances
    Success: Not done
    Description: I’ve made my finances public, but my analysis tools aren’t great. I’d like to update some old work I’ve done and add a web interface to see where I spent money during a particular time span, using a treemap display.
  • Project: Archive Github (aka download all the code in the world)
    Success: Not done, on hold
    Description: I’m kind of burnt out on archiving tasks lately, so this doesn’t sound fun to me. I decided to work with archive team on this one. It’ll get done if it sounds low-stress and no one else seems to be doing it, but it’s less likely than the older archiving projects, despite being important for the world.
  • Project: Encrypt backup
    Success: Not done
    Description: I’d like a way to back up my data to untrusted media, like tarsnap does, especially a way that avoids leaking file metadata (like access times and file lengths). Failing that, I should at least encrypt the drive backups are to so I can turn off that computer if needed.
  • Project: Gwernify
    Success: Not done
    Description: Gwern writes about how to protect links against link rot. He does this for all links on his website. I ambitiously plan to automatically save a copy of every site I visit (not just the actual URL I visit ideally, but the whole page).