Posts

Just another few months for this weeknote, the third one of 2026 Prologue Road Trip, starring Emma Appleton As always, this is an intentionally browseable set of weeknotes regarding things I “beheld” over the previous “week”1. These “weeknotes” support three purposes: mainly recommendations to the handful of people who read it, and also giving me somewhere to look when I’m trying to remember if I watched something or not. But also by putting the first draft of these reviews down soon after I’ve watched something, but only reading them together when it comes time to publish it online, usually a theme or two emerges. ...

Image by Robert DeLaRosa ( https://pixabay.com/users/rdelarosa0-955109/ ) on Pixabay This is the third in a planned series of posts about dead or frozen projects - ideas I’ve had that I’ve consciously decided not to follow up on, rather than just putting them to one side. I’m writing these up for a variety of reasons: To demonstrate how many ideas I have, to help me determine whether that number of ideas is unusual. To get feedback on whether I should have tried to do more with the idea, was there an angle or benefit that I missed? So others can highlight to me whether someone has tried the idea already, and whether it succeeded or not. To encourage others to share their own ideas, especially if they’re similarly incomplete, failed, or half-baked. Also sharing these kinds of “dead projects” has been an idea that’s been rattling around my brain for some time, but I was finally inspired to start writing them up after attending a couple of Stefan Hagar’s Valhalla For Ideas sessions. Valhalla For Ideas is a structured way of working through old plans that we’re hanging onto, to either let them go, or to breathe new life into them. You can read more about Stefan’s services here, and we may be working together in some of those sessions in future. ...

Just another few months for this weeknote, the second one of 2026 Prologue One Piece As always, this is an intentionally browseable set of weeknotes regarding things I “beheld” over the previous “week”1. These “weeknotes” support two purposes - recommendations to the handful of people who read it, and also giving me somewhere to look if I’m trying to remember if I watched something or not. My exploration of Hugo Themes2 is still something I need to properly work through, so there should be a Table of Contents around here somewhere but there probably isn’t. If I fixed that you can use that to navigate to whatever catches your eye. ...

Image by Mike ( https://pixabay.com/users/good_ideas-4105319/ ) on Pixabay This is part of a planned series of posts about dead or frozen projects - ideas I’ve had that I’ve decided not to follow up on. I’ll be writing these up for a variety of reasons: To demonstrate how many ideas I have, to help me determine whether that number of ideas is unusual. To get feedback on whether I should have tried to do more with the idea, was there an angle or benefit that I missed? So others can highlight to me whether someone has tried the idea already, and whether it succeeded or not. To encourage others to share their own ideas, similarly incomplete, failed, or half-baked. Also sharing these kinds of “dead projects” has been an idea that’s been rattling around my brain for some time, but I’ve finally been inspired to start writing them up after attending a couple of Stefan Hagar’s Valhalla For Ideas sessions. Valhalla for Ideas is a structured way of working through old plans that we’re hanging onto, to either let them go, or to breathe new life into them. You can read more about Stefan’s services here, and we may be working together on some of them in future. ...

Image by AstroGraphix_Visuals from Pixabay This is part of a planned series of posts about dead or frozen projects - ideas I’ve had that I’ve decided not to follow up on. I’ll be writing these up for a variety of reasons: To encourage others to share their own ideas. To get feedback on whether I should have tried to do more with the idea, was there an angle or benefit that I missed? To demonstrate how many ideas I have, and to help determine whether the number of ideas I have is unusual. So others can highlight to me whether someone has tried the idea already, and whether it succeeded or not. Also sharing these kind of “dead projects” has been an idea that’s been rattling around my brain for some time, but I’ve finally been inspired to start writing them up after attending one of Stefan Hagar’s Valhalla For Ideas sessions. Valhalla for Ideas is a structured way of working through old plans that we’re hanging onto, to either let them go, or to breathe new life into them. You can read more about Stefan’s services here, and we may be working together on some of them in future. ...

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay I recently attended a seminar about using LLMs in serious game design. Both the presenters and participants shared well-informed experience on what they’d tried, and what had succeeded, and what had failed. This was part of the Game Design Seminars programme, run by Stone Paper Scissors. Overall, I’m not sure that I learnt anything completely new, but as self-driven experimentation with LLMs tends to be a solo activity, it was very useful to see other people’s experience, and to hear how that resonated with my own. ...

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay What’s the minimum requirement for an online community? I’ve been discussing online communities with a couple of people, more so than usual, so wanted to get some of my basic ideas down. I actually run the meetings of the Game Experimentation & Development Group, as much as anyone does, for Stone Paper Scissors, and keep an eye on the server. I wouldn’t say I run this community, but I have been, or am, a member of quite a few, so I’m interested in how they work. ...

This blog has a new theme I was getting errors when trying to build the site using the old theme of Awesome, which hasn’t been updated for a few months, but appeared to use a “.Site.Author” setting in its configuration files that’s not been part of Hugo for a few years. Once I started looking at manually updating parts of that theme… I decided I had to get around to what I’ve been meaning to do for a while, and try something new. ...

Book Review: Ctrl + Alt + Chaos - How Teenage Hackers Hijack The Internet Ctrl+Alt+Chaos I was lucky enough to win a copy of this book from the author when he posted a competition on BlueSky. The very short review of this book is that it’s well written, and an “easy” read that will hold your interest on a complex subject. To go into slightly more detail, meant in the best possible way, I want to emphasise that it’s an easy read. I usually read at night, when I should probably be asleep - but this is well-written, clear, and grabs your attention, so it’s suitable for the beside table or noisy commute; which can’t be said of many non-fiction books. ...

Just a few months this week Prologue More on this later As always, this is an intentionally browseable set of weeknotes regarding things I “beheld” over the previous “week”1. These “weeknotes” support two purposes - recommendations to the handful of people who read it, and also giving me somewhere to look if I’m trying to remember if I watched something or not. My exploration of Hugo Themes2 is still something I need to properly work through, so there will be a Table of Contents around here somewhere, you can use that to navigate to whatever catches your eye. ...