The ChangeLog – March 2025
Welcome to Spring! 🌺 (Even if it doesn't look like it: it is cold and it is raining all the time).
Once again, I am puzzled. Has March been good? Why it felt both very quick and very slow? Why did I feel very upbeat and very bummed? For sure, it has been a fluctuating month. I started restless, then got very energetic, then I got three days of semi-flu that crushed me, then I bounced back, and then I had a very gloomy weekend. I was very effective in the middle, and yet felt really distracted all the time. It is the most March-y March I got.
And yet, it has been a month with a lot of delightful moments. We had a family pizza party. My local volleyball team did a damn good job in his first historical participation at the playoff. I updated two coding projects. I wrote two full articles for this blog. We tried a new sushi place. Celebrated Father's day. And other things, it would be too long to list.
While I flip through my diary, I see a lot of happy moments I almost forgot (so soon!), buried under a pervasive sense of inadequacy. It has been, as I said, a contradictory month. And yet, I am okay with that. I think that embracing contradictions is the only way to advance.
It is a not a new concept. From the ancient Chinese philosophy of wu-wei, to the concept of freedom, from the millenary quest for eudaimonia, to the concept of justice and democracy itself. All these things contain internal contradictions. The wu-wei literally means "to act without acting," to try without trying. Individual freedom is constantly in opposition to the freedom of others. Justice and democracy are always in flux, redefining themselves.
But they are precious, useful, vital concepts. They are the glaring example that everything worth doing has a seed of contradiction inside. So why should I feel bad about my March? Those contradictions made this month feeling alive.
"I am not starting this day in a positive emotional state. I can change that thanks to my mindfulness and philosophical abilities, but the baseline is not great." — from the author's personal journal, March 9th 2025.
Housekeeping
Let's jump in. This month I wrote two new articles for the blog.
In the first, I explain the changes I did in MovingAI-Rust 2, in particular how I rewrote things to avoid needless panic. It feels a billion years ago the time I was working on pathfinding all the time.
The second is a long meditated piece on vibecoding, the practice of generating software through AI prompts. More importantly, though, is an article on the pitfall of "right-Gaussian thinking," that is, the problem of measuring the impact of some new technique and technology focusing on the "right side of the skill distribution" (the most skilled people).
Reading
I am wildly underperforming. I still blame the fact that I am reading six books at the same time and none of them is entrancing enough to co-opt my reading time. Therefore, I am slowly progressing a little on each one of them.
The reality, though, is that I am slightly under-prioritizing reading. After all, I cannot catchup series, write, develop software, watch sport, and reading all with the same level of dedication. Something has to give, and in this first quarter of 2025, reading took the hit.
Still, The Notebook by Roland Allen is a fantastic book. You know that I have a mental-illness level of compulsion for notebooks. If it was for me, I'd constantly buy them. I have three/four notebooks with me for different tasks and in different sizes all the time.
So, when I find out about this book about the history of the use of notebooks through the ages, I could not resist. And it was really interesting. It gets sparse near the end, but I gladly suggest this book to other people with my same issue. :D
Watchlist
Flow (2024)
An indie movie, from Latvia, created and animated with free software (Blender). It looks something niche, and yet he won the Academy Award as the best animation movie of 2024, beating animation behemoths such as Pixar and DreamWorks.
I don't have to explain to you what Flow (Straume, in his original title) is. There are billions of articles on the topic, the lore, the creative workflow, and so on.
What can I say is that is a beautiful movie, with a well-deserved award. The fact there is no dialogue line for 90 minutes (well, they technically speak in animal) may be daunting at first, but at the same it is incredible how much (and how clearly) the movie can communicate using only the character’s animation.
But, oh boy, it is tense and the genre "animals in dangers" always permeates me with a special kind of sadness.
PS: It is not recommended to people with thalassophobia because of the whales and the sheer amount of sunken stuff in the sea. I am now one of those, but it was still pretty unsettling.
42 (2013)
I am continuing my Harrison Ford streak. I've found this movie about Jackie Robinson, the first black American to join the Major League of Baseball in 1947 (at the time, whites only). This movie checks all my boxes: grand stories of sport, historical biopics and racist eating shit.
For this reason, even if I can see it is not the best movie ever made, I had a great time with it.
Shrinking (Season 2)
Speaking of Harrison Ford, Shrinking is one of the gems of Apple TV+ that are not very popular because of one weakness: being on Apple TV+. After watching Season 2, I confirm everything I said on Season 1: it is a comedy full of hilarious moments, but it is also a show dominated by dark feelings: grief, death, illness, mental health, traumas, lack of human connection, and more.
This mix of emotions still goes strong in this season, and you laugh, scream, get enraged and cry all in the span of a 40 minutes episode. The only real flaw I can see is that it may get a bit too caustic and over the line in trying to force some jokes. But it is, in the end, just a matter of tastes.
Ah, and Harrison Ford is really great in it.
All the Rest
Not a lot of movies this month. I kept my "one movie per week" minimum, but it was a busier month on the series side.
Patriot Games (1992). Nice action movie but, like the sequel, it didn't make me particularly excited.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021). Ah, Venom is always walking on the boundaries of cringeness, but... I think I liked it more than the first...?
Asteroid City (2023). I have to admit that I didn't particularly liked it. It is a case of "cinematographic gimmicks take over everything else."
Father of the Bride (1991). Immensely charming film about a bunch of rich people who think they have problems when in fact they do not.
Moana 2 (2024). It looks worse than the first and the songs suck (Lin-Manuel Miranda worked on the first and not in this one, so I can see why). Not terrible, but unnecessary and probably rushed out.
Then I completed the last season of Invincible and watched a bunch of ongoing one like Reacher (Season 3) and Daredevil: Rebirth. But we will talk about them when they end.
Hey! What about Severance? Of course I watched Severance. I frigging love that show. Probably this season has a more inconsistent pace, but it remains the best dystopic sci-fi product in modern cinema and television. However, this is a pretty common opinion, so I preferred to "promote" other great content. :D
Music
March has been a month with many new releases, but only one won my featuring.
I already talked about clipping., the industrial hip-hop project of Daveed Diggs (of Hamilton fame), William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes. What I like about them is that, as explicitly said by Diggs, they dropped the "self-referential," "real life" and introspective part of hip-hop and use the genre to tell a fictional story.
In their previous concept album (Visions of Bodies Being Burned) they tackled the horror genre. In their new album, Dead Channel Sky they switched to sci-fi dystopian cyberpunk. You may have guessed that as "Dead Channel Sky" is a reference to the opening line of Gibson's Neuromancer: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
Dead Channel Sky is another slam dunk, filled with a more electronic and 90s raves-inspired beat (to be in tune with the cyberpunk concept).
And, as usual, my Top 25 for the month of Match 2025.
Gaming
Not a lot of gaming news for me this month.
Other Interesting Things
📝 The Digital Packrat Manifesto - I am a fellow Digital Packrat. I have a maniacal collection of local files. I store all my ebooks in DRM-free ePubs; I maintain a local music library; I save local copies of articles; and I really would like to have movies in physical copies. Why? Read this article.
📹 Why Severance is One of The Best Looking Shows Ever (Spoiler Free) - Thomas Flight (a very recommended channel) made a beautiful video essay about the visual of Severance. I strongly agree with everything he said.
Conclusions
April is already starting with many events and plans. I am moderately optimistic about the first full month of spring. 🌺 There will be family events, the Easter holiday (that is: fancy food), more sport matches, new shops opening and the ability to meet friends. I just hope to have a bit of energy and mental steadiness so that I can advance more in my work and non-working projects. I have a lot to write, read and code in April if I want to keep myself in line with what I (very roughly) planned this year.
And I wish the same for you all! Have a great month, friend. We will catch up at the end. As usual.