Hi hi.

Brussels

I just got back from FOSDEM. It was my first time attending, and my first time giving a talk which you can find here: Processing: Creative Coding and the Future of Education. I gave the talk with my colleague Raphaël de Courville. This conference was really fun, and I met so many open source contributors, including the guy who wrote curl (IYKYK, sorry). It was really amazing to be around so many nice and passionate people. I did not see any talks though. I did get to see (run into?) bestie Emily. We kept gushing over running into each other in Brussels while sharing a waffle. It really was magical and honestly conferences can be stressful but like…I LOVE being around people who are think deeply about stuff I like to think about. Special interests hello. Open source software is one space that won’t necessarily save the world, but certainly is a place to see how people organize to accomplish big things at the very least, and open knowledge is political. Gosh, yeah.

More talking coming and maybe a month in Berlin?

I’ll also be giving technical presentations at the Libre Graphics Meeting late April and then Rust Week in mid-may. Separately, there is also a games and playful media festival called “A MAZE” in Berlin. So maybe I’ll just stay in Berlin for a month and attend that fest in between? I need to figure out how much I can bear being away for so long. But sounds like fun.

Reading

• https://www.e-flux.com/journal/159/6776809/femmunist-intimations - standout quote of a fantastic article on hegemonic masculinity’s influence on the dance floor (with a comparison of a dance floor without it)

  • “Here’s some useful stuff I learned: Masculinity isn’t reducible to the identity of men. It’s a social phenomenon, and women have a part in shaping it too. There’s no one masculinity. It doesn’t have an essence. It’s best approached as a field of social and cultural forces. There’s three main axes that shape masculinities: power, labor, and sex—all broadly construed.”

• https://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/renderergenerator/yong_he_thesis.pdf

  • I don’t think anyone here is a graphics nerd. But this thesis is really game changing, and I want to incorporate the software architecture principles of SLANG into the Processing work we’re doing.

Watching

• https://www.youtube.com/@sora_sakurai_en

  • Masahiro Sakurai (the creator of Kirby, Super Smash Brothers, and gosh what else?) on game development. He just talks about every aspect of it, in these 2-3.5 minute videos (like hundreds of them) really well categorized. In Japanese with subtitles. I really want to make a game.

Playing

• https://www.gamepoems.com/issue01/

  • These are beautiful poetic and very short games. These are games you wouldn’t really think of when you think of video games unless you’re in the scene here in NYC. It’s worth learning what is in the world outside of AAA games. I really want to make a game

• Celeste on Nintendo Switch

  • I’ve played this before. I love this game, and it’s so fucking hard and twitchy and punishing and that’s the kind of game I’ve always enjoyed the most. But yeah, it’s got a lot of transgender themes in the story telling, and I think it’s really beautiful. Super enjoy.

• Super Mario Wonder on Nintendo Switch

  • Blake was telling me about this game and it surprised me. I am now playing it, and it’s fun. I think the level design is really good. But gosh I want to make a game. It’s very true to what I grew up with, but also very fresh and exciting. I need to make time for making one.

Oh gosh. Games

Okay. So. I’ve always wanted to make a game. I’ve never made a game. But it was why I started getting serious about programming when I was young. Also all my friends are always making them!

Moon