I really, really wanted to do concentrate on my stuff this month. But December thought otherwise. Nonetheless, it turned out to be a pretty decent month. An acquaintance on Mastodon called out for December Adventure and the basic premise is to code every day a little on a chosen project. That fitted perfectly with my plans to concentrate on researching for my second paper, and I wanted to continue learning MOS 6502 Assembly. The problem was, that I said yes to so many otherwise related things that I was mostly busy with those. I did start with December Adventure 2024, but quickly figured I don’t have the energy needed to enjoy it. Kind of failed this, but since it was supposed to be fun, I did the right choice. I still got some valuable insights out of it: Assembly fundamentally changes how I understand a coordinate system. Not only did I need to wrap my head around hexadecimal notation and address modes, but also encoding the coordinate system rather than just attributing an x or y value to a variable. There isn’t a straight line of abstraction with assembly, but several interlocked aspects or layers.
Which brings me to palimpsest, which is not quite the correct term regarding assembly, but it’s as good of a bridge as I can do. I had the pleasure to exchange with Loris Rimaz, who explained to me the importance of this specific term for his research. I was interested in discussing research approaches and interests due to his work Doom. In Serval - Descente aux enfers. La présence et l’influence des récits de catabase dans “Doom” he examined how the ancient literary tradition of catabasis (descent into hell) manifests across multiple dimensions in Doom. Meanwhile, he was showing how the game both adapts and transforms the traditional hellish descent narrative through its gameplay mechanics, level design, and audiovisual elements. Among his approaches, he also inquired Doom on a technical level, going into critical code studies.
He invited me to go bouldering, which I haven’t had done in probably five years. Although I’ve been slightly nervous if I’d be able to do anything at all again, it turned out to be great. Loris is a regular and was able to show me some of his learnings, and I did some routes that I most likely would not have attempted otherwise. We didn’t speak much about our research during bouldering, but made the observation that these climbing wall elements are great examples for Ludemes. Loris mentioned how there is an affinity of programmers or people who enjoy playing video games and climbers. There seems to be something playful, but challenging in bouldering, sometimes even an aspect of grinding a route until a perfect approach was found. The individual wall elements, as individual ludemes, amount to minimal units of climbing that need to be understood by a climber to have conceptual access to the route as a whole. I’ll stop at that (because I’m starting to see ludemes everywhere…). Anyway, something something about the importance of getting the fuck out of the study room and getting that body moving. I hope I can remember this for a moment or two.
Another important takeaway from the exchange with Loris was about what “theory” can indicate. I believed that that aspect of research usually means getting the writers and texts together, to underline/critique/open your hypothesis, methodology, or findings. But for Loris, it was also that he had a metaphor that helped him have a red thread through his work, the descend (into hell). Which reminded me how I was invested in the metaphor of |translation at the beginning of my dissertation. I revisited translation in Blinded by the Light - Map.
Various
I got my first paper published (out the coming days). The review process was a pleasure. The Journal of Open Humanities Data did an impressive job facilitating the process, and the reviews were immensely helpful. On a personal note, my writing process was too long. Basically, I created a dataset, needed to create a second dataset, figure out some methodology, and then so many things changed during writing. That is an important learning and for my second paper I wrote a free-form text on motivation, background, and hypothesis as well as a proto-abstract. I shared and discussed both with some of my peers. I hope this helps me to be more efficient in researching and writing.
To treat myself, I got myself a Switch at the end of November, which I wanted to do for years. I thoroughly enjoyed playing Children of Morta and now TUNIC. CoM was kind of grindy, but the pace was nice, and it was challenging enough, at least for a bit. Tunic, on the other hand, intrigued me for a while, and I’m glad I got into it now. It has Hyper Light Drifter vibes, which is one of my absolute favourite action-adventure games. Tunic is not as balanced as HLD in terms of challenge (often just boiling down to boss-fights that are anger-inducing), but it makes up with fantastic world-exploration. So, that was my December Adventure instead.
I also baked some things this month, among which an incredible poppy cake, peanut-butter cookies, and Weihnachts-Stollen. I slightly changed the Christmas-stollen, since it was a low in winter spices. And, I don’t like juice raisins in cake, so I replaced those with Korinthen (zante currants).
- Au royaume de Pacheco by Megabasse is my new go to meditative music for writing.
- The Party I’d Die At would be my dream line-up at a party.
- Saw E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea which was a great take on a documentary with an important focus. While highlighting Eileen Gray’s remarkable work, and showcasing Le Corbusier’s violence, the film incorporated theatre-like scenes full of tranquillity and insight.