2026 May Retro

Projects

Honestly I'm probably just gonna drop this section unless I start working on something consistently again; I haven't felt like working on programming stuff outside work in months. Our current spending tracker is janky but it works fine/costs <1000 yen a month, so no strong motivation to finish the Cloudflare-based replacement.

Games

A pretty huge one this month; I had two weeks off where The Wife was either working or in a different country so I played a LOT. Some absolute bangers as well, both expected and surprising. Since there are so many I'll just list them in loose groups rather than trying to string them together in neat paragraphs; I spent so long playing Mina the Hollower tonight that I only have two hours left to finish this, go for a ride and get to sleep.

Straight into Favourites

Great, but not perfect

Solidly enjoyable

Interesting Ideas, but maybe too interesting

How I learned I don't like puzzle games

Way overhyped

Books

Just We Are Satellites this month, a book to explain why Neuralink is an awful idea. Since The Wife left shortly after I finished it I've just been continuing my long journey through the collected works of Terry Pratchett since then.

General Life Stuff

The Wife is visiting home for the last week of May + the first week of June (sad) but I had one week of unbounded gaming time (happy) in addition to the first week of the month off courtesy of public holidays plus two days paid leave. Between me living inside the steamed egg and The Wife preparing stuff for her trip we didn't do all that much, though one exciting development was The Wife getting surprisingly into a Moomin point n' click adventure called Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth. Not co-op so I'm just watching, but the art is beautiful and watching The Wife play something chill she actually enjoys is entertaining enough for me. Now to continue easing her into becoming a degenerate gamer with me, mwahahaha.

Work

Lots of time off this month, a full week to start then half days for the last 6 of the month. Also ended up writing a lot of investigation documents which is important and useful work but not my favourite thing to do. Once borne from a support ticket finally resulted in some actual code to write and presents some interesting problems though, so that's good going into June.

What Went Badly

No complaints, life's good. The Wife being gone for two weeks (honestly even two days) definitely made me remember having infinite free time for games is less fun that it looks through rose tinted glasses though haha.

Action Items

Review

Enjoy having nearly half the month off to play games

Spectacular success; finished off a bunch of games in my backlog as you can see above and Mina the Hollower came out just as I was getting tired of solid but unspectacular games. Why am I not continuing DS3? Great question; I think it's just too stressful to play for long stretches so it's better suited to times when I can only play during lunch etc. anyway.

Realise it's not too cold to ride anymore and get back into the habit

At least once a week, go shoot around at Shinjuku Chuo Park

That'll be a no to both; just did not have the motivation especially with STS2 still capturing so much of my attention. I think I went on <5 rides the whole month and they were all short. Will need to pick things up in June, especially after spending two weeks with The Wife away just playing games & eating junk.

Actually write a retro on the first of the month

I am starting this on June 1st! Hopefully I finish it.

I did it

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