Words On Wednesday

After a sequence of self-improvement and management books, I wanted a breather book; something that didn't take a lot of thought or attention to process, and ESPECIALLY something that didn't require input or response from me. I didn't really want to jump into a new series that would require me to continue with another few books for the full picture. In fact, I didn't want fiction at all. I looked into my library's catalogue of audiobooks for titles related to video games, just as a starting point. "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels" came up, and it seemed to fit all those conditions. The general formula of the book is that each chapter picks a video game, most of which are extremely well known and had significant market presence, and talk through some of the struggles the team went through during the planning and development process. On the tail end of the process, it's easy to think that creators KNEW what a success their game would be from beginning to end. H...

The best selling video game of all time got another sale: me. I mostly avoided the first wave of Minecraft popularity after it came out. I played a bit of some online hosted version around 2011-2012. After that, I played the PS4 version that I checked out from the public library around November 2016. Beyond that? Minecraft was basically just that game that everyone else plays. It seemed fine, but it never pulled me in. That changed when my kids watched A Minecraft Movie (2025). They watched it first at a friend's house, then again when our local library hosted a showing of the audience participation version. They were throwing popcorn and screaming when the chicken jockey popped up, but I just dismissed it as kids being kids. On the way home after the movie, my oldest asked if we could get Minecraft. My youngest had already played it some from our family library on Android . I figured we could pick up the PC release and play it together. In particular, I wanted to see if I could ...

I'm not a weeb , but I think everybody should keep a bottle of sake on hand. Name: Sake Gekkeikan Source: Gekkeikan Style: Sake ABV: "15% to 16%" Price: $5.99 Volume: 750ml Price per oz: $0.24 Sake is a very... specific drink, for lack of a better term. I'm not opening up the liquor cabinet and arbitrarily landing on sake. And honestly, I don't ever get a craving out of the blue for sake. However, if I'm at a ramen shop? Sake hits the spot. Getting hibachi with the family? Sake would be great right now. It is very much associated specifically with Japanese cuisine for me. Truthfully, I don't even really like sake all that much. As a rice wine, it sits with most other wine in my opinion: below most beer and FAR below most distilled spirits. I couldn't tell you why, but wine isn't really my bag. But something about the combination of sake AND Japanese food is just appropriate. I listed $5.99 for a fifth because that's what Total Wine had availab...

Leaks are starting to come out about the Steam Deck 2, but there are also theories about a potential home console running SteamOS. As much as this was tried in a similar way in 2015 with the Steam Machines , I think now is a perfect time to give it another shot with the widespread adoption of SteamOS and the compatibility that Proton offers. I love my Steam Deck . I maintain that it is probably the best gaming-related purchase that I've ever made. It is the most powerful gaming hardware that I own, and I have played SO many games since I bought it. It's just an incredible device and an EASY recommend for anyone who wants to get into PC gaming. I bought the Steam Deck KNOWING that it was slightly outdated. When I bought my 512 GB Steam Deck LCD, it was already three years old. That's ancient in computing hardware. A lot of people recommended getting another PC handheld, either a Windows machine or another SteamOS device, with better specs and newer hardware. That was an opt...

I've been going through manager training at work and for our next training session, we were asked to read 1 book from a list of options prepare three takeaways. I ended up reading "The First 90 Days," and it seemed like the best way to really internalize the content would be to write a book report about it. The list was standard fare management topics from well-known authors. Any one would have been adequate, and I could probably even have suggested " The Five Dysfunctions of a Team " or " Extreme Ownership " if I didn't want to read a new book, but I figured it would be more true to the spirit of the assignment to read something unfamiliar to me and try to gain new skills and understanding. From Bud to Boss: Secrets to a Successful Transition to Remarkable Leadership – Kevin Eikenberry The First Time Manager – Jim McCormick Leadership is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say and What You Don’t – L. David Marquet Primed to Perform: How to Buil...

“ Axiom Verge ” is a Metroidvania released on the most platforms in 2015. Frequently listed on the best Metroidvania games ever, and especially lists of those released this century, it certainly has a following among indie fans and more mainstream gamers alike. I love a good Metroidvania and I was looking for something short to play after finishing Oblivion Remastered and Wind Waker HD . The last Metroidvania I played was Astalon: Tears of the Earth , and I really enjoyed it. Maybe it was worth checking out a few more of these indie favorites on Steam. Axiom Verge was on sale for $3.99 at 80% off. I figured at such a low price for such a well-received game, it was worth a shot. It's very clear from the beginning that Axiom Verge is a love letter to the original Metroid and other games of the era. Even beyond retro graphics and gameplay loop, there are references that most people would only get if they physically played a Metroid cartridge on original hardware. In particular, the ...

I'm not big on tequila, but I do like to have some on hand for the occasional margarita or for my cousin who would never be caught dead without a bottle. Hence, cheap tequila from Costco is obviously the perfect solution. Name: Tequila Blanco Source: Kirkland Signature Style: Tequila ABV: 40% Price: $25.99 Volume: 1.75 Price per oz: $0.44 I've tried to do a better job about keeping a wide variety of distilled spirits on hand recently. I'd personally be set with just bourbon and spiced rum the vast majority of the time, but obviously not everyone likes those specific styles. Add a little tequila, some vodka, and a few other styles, and I have a pretty decently stocked bar that could appeal to most guests. The mango tequila was good, but it isn't exactly made for mixing. Unless you're making a mango margarita, it's a very particular flavor profile that isn't going to go with everything. Plus, it was a good enough spirit to stand up on its own. Most of the bot...

I'm a HUGE fan of trophies and achievements in video games and RetroAchievements has made it where I can get that same experience with games that were made well before achievements became commonplace in the industry. Don't ask my why I like achievements and trophies so much. I genuinely don't know, I just get a little dopamine hit every time I see one pop up. And I realize that a lot of people don't really like achievements, some even go so far as to hate them, so systems that allow you to turn them on or off really are the best of both worlds.  Furthermore, I do want to explicitly say that these games were not incomplete or inferior WITHOUT achievements. I'm not going to tell you that Super Mario World became a better game with achievements. It's just a neat thing for me to be able to see individual accomplishments listed together in a single place across all my games on that platform. So what IS RetroAchievements? It's a site that tracks tasks for older...

I recently discovered a project that allows Nintendo 64 games to be recompiled and personally got The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask running on my Steam Deck natively. It is absolutely insane, and I think it could breathe new life into playing N64 games on modern hardware. Back in May, I came across a reddit post in the r/SteamDeck subreddit about Majora's Mask Recomp. The post mentioned mod support (for an N64 game???), so I was both puzzled and intrigued. I decided to do a little research. It turns out, there has been a project running over the past year or so that allows  the user to "recompile N64 binaries into C code that can be compiled for any platform." To flex the Computer Science degree a bit here, a binary (file) is a program that has been converted into the necessary 0s and 1s to run on a particular computer architecture. Computer architectures vary wildly between different processors and platforms, so a binary for one chipset is unlikely or even impossi...