October and November 2025
Been busy, been tired.
Trip
The latter half of October was spent on a multi-stop trip: Turkiye, Germany, Greece. I don’t think anyone enjoys looking at other people’s holiday snaps, but I’m going to post a few anyway :p.
Turkiye
We stayed a few days in the Faith district of Istanbul, dodging crowds, cats, trams and highly motivated hawkers. Incredible historical architecture and food. The Blue Mosque interior is pretty amazing (and impossible to photograph when you’re in a throng of tourists).
We ducked down into the Basilica Cisterns. Some of the pillars are made of repurposed Roman material, like this Gorgon’s head.
Germany
A quick trip to Leipzig and Halle to visit some good friends. Probably a strange observation but I was really surprised by the intensity of economic activity, there are so many shops and businesses operating. Also some great historical architecture. Leipzig zoo was fun, and a lot of good chocolates were eaten.
Greece
The primary purpose of the trip was to attend a family gathering on the isle of Corfu. I saw relatives I haven’t seen in over ten years, and we had a memorial for my grandmother who died not so long ago.
Listen, I have my interests and old payphones are among them, don’t judge me.
Gamedev
I do love game jams, probably too much. It’s appealing to start afresh, work maniacally for an intense period, and then effectively abandon the game at the end of the jam. But this isn’t conducive to creating quality work, especially not of a commercial standard. As of November I’ve resolved to temporarily retire from jams and focus on a longer term project. It has been difficult. I’ll have a dedicated update later, but so far I’ve managed to force myself to spend time only on gameplay programming and avoid any work on art assets, which has resulted in some very professional looking placeholder textures, like this one for a climbable chainlink fence.
Reading
My trip included plenty of opportunities for reading. Everything I read was great.
- Valor’s Choice - Tanya Huff. Not too ashamed to admit that I’ve read this more than once previously and I didn’t even realise until I got a few chapters in. Solid military scifi.
- Stainless Steel Rat - Harry Harrison. Some classic 50s scifi. Pretty predictable but highly enjoyable cheesy space-rogue adventures.
- Blindness - José Saramago. This one was great. Well outside of my usual reading zone, I really enjoyed the unusual writing and tone. A somewhat hopeful post-apocalyptic survival story.
- The Light Brigade - Kameron Hurley. A time hopping military scifi story that could have come straight from Philip K Dick. Read through it in two solid blocks. A little grim but I couldn’t put it down.
Fails
The TTGO I mentioned previously died an ignoble death and no longer powers up. It seems the usb connector used for power was particularly fragile. Not sure I can salvage it, the connector has inaccessible solder pads underneath, which means heatguns in confined spaces.