What even is blogging?

I’m not sure why I’m writing here, publicly. I never really feel like I have anything to say anyway. But at this point, acknowledging that I’ve been doing this for four and a half years, I’m not going to stop. I’ve written a lot lately, anyway.

I handed in my dissertation at the end of July. I worked on various drafts and edits before that, then on some vignettes for the Confoederatio Ludens research project afterwards. I’m pretty happy with all of it. The dissertation turned out quite nicely, and I’m really fond of a recently published article, Finding the ‘Magic’ in Programming Games: A Critical Digital Humanities Approach to Studying Video Game Code. While the article took a long time, finishing the dissertation was exhausting. I informed everyone, from family to friends, that I would be unavailable for a while. It was worth it. The final piece missing from my cumulative dissertation was the preamble, and I took the opportunity to finally write all the things and thoughts I couldn’t fit into the individual articles.

I might blog about that experience, but not today. For now, I’d just like to get back into a blogging habit. Maybe figuring out what I’m doing here will actually help.

Some things of late

Freed from my dissertation, I was able to get back into some things.

• Started bouldering again and going on lots of walks
• Refactored pancake.sh to use lowdown and have fewer comfort functions. It’s a work in progress, but it is so much quicker, and I can generate gemtext now as well.
• Started practising uxn again and added new content to literate-uxn. I’m especially pleased with realising a linear feedback shift register algorithm to implement the four coins method for divining I Ching hexagram lines.
• I took on a new role as head of study programme in Digital Humanities at the University of Bern, which connects back to my professional formation as a clerk. Back to the office, after all that time.
• Inspired by the Japanese 候 (kō) microseason calendar, I’m doing my own version of it-a kind of microblogging for observing the land and seasons. It was a bit more descriptive at first but has become a tad more poetic now.