I’m writing this one on Monday instead of the usual Sunday. Yesterday was just a little too jam-packed to fit writing a retro in. It’s my week to plan meals and grocery shop, plus I had some additional chores in the rotation, as well as a Peloton ride to get in.
Speaking of Peloton, I crossed the 450 ride milestone this week, and kept my daily activity streak alive; I’m up to 52 days. I did that through a combination of rides and meditation this week. According to the app, my average power rose by 11% in the past two weeks so the more intense rides are paying off. In April I plan to retake my Functional Threshold Power (FTP) test. The result of that test determines your individualized power zones, and I’m hoping to see some improvement.
On a related note, I’ll be looking into the Peloton API at some point to see if I can pull my activity data directly and share it here. Mostly because I want to keep adding little features to this site.
I did start working on a game log feature for the site. I’ve set it up so that I can record the results of individual sessions, as well as pages for challenges like the 4 x 10 challenge I’m doing this year. It’s coming along nicely; I’m mostly in the tweaking the UI phase now. Most of the logic is in place. Hopefully by next week I’ll have that feature live on the site.
I did manage to play one session of a game in my 4 x 10 challenge this week. Monday was President’s Day in the U.S. and I had the day off, which made it easy. I got in a session of Dragons of Etchinstone, the newest game in my collection. It’s a “handheld” game, meaning you can play the entire thing from your palm. It was only my second full time playing so I’m still getting to grips (ha!) with the rule set, but I do enjoy it.
On Saturday I met a friend at a local gaming store for about four hours. We played Sorcery: Contested Realm using a draft cube he put together. It was great fun. Sorcery itself is a wonderful game for creating an immersive experience at the table. The number of interactions and the loose ruleset help. It’s a game made more for casual play and less so for deeply competitive play, and frankly that’s the experience I want in gaming. Tabletop and video games are both burdened with the desire to min/max, and while that’s possible—and happening—with Sorcery, the designers don’t intend it to be played that way and it shows in each and every decision they’ve made.
ICE is still active in Minnesota, though it seems like they’ve moved out of the cities into more suburban areas, where there are still plenty of people observing, but less over all. Here in Minneapolis we’re focused on helping people who’ve been unable to work pay their rent as well as other ways to undo some of the financial damage the occupation has done.
Things I enjoyed this week
- The movie “Blue Moon” starring Ethan Hawke. It’s a charming movie, that feels almost play-like in its limited setting, and one of Hawke’s best performances.
- The one-two punch of Aria Stewart’s “Hater’s Guide to code with LLMs” (Part One, Part Two.)
- In a similar vein, Robin Sloan is writing a pop-up newsletter on AI, and in the latest issue tries to figure out the edge of generative AI’s reach and see what’s beyond it.