Late Summer Miscellania
Oct 14, 2026 - digitalily
Mid-October already, and not a ton of sanding work completed to show for it ^^;
So it goes.
VCFMW 2026
Earlier last month I ended up attending Vintage Computer Festival Midwest for the first time. I had some awareness of it previously, but it wasn't until I saw the youtuber LGR's vlog of his trip to it last year (which, doesn't feature VCFMW itself a ton, but still) that I became really interested.
I'm really no expert when it comes to the vast majority of what was on display, but it was a very cool experience getting to see what people are doing with older tech, and the way in which these devices were impactful back in the day. A lot of things don't have such an important history, though, and the sheer number of frankly bizarre devices of the early 00s demonstrates that well enough. I ended up quite tempted by this small yet wide little netbook despite the fact that it has a horrendous battery and terrible ergonomics, but it looked very interesting so what can I say? And being tempted is something you really have to watch out for, as most tables were selling certain pieces. VCFMW is the kind of event where participants are constantly on the look out for some white whale or the other, as one man's trash may very well be someone's treasure. I was glad to catch a couple of booths with PC-98 Touhou games on display and for passers by to try their hand at, which was definitely a contributing factor to attending.
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outer wilds
Sep 22, 2026 - digitalily
A few months ago, I was reading some random post on reddit on the subject of 'games you wish you could play for the first time again,' and while I think a lot of the times this question is asked, people will respond more out of a sense of nostalgia, i.e., 'I wish I could experience X like I did as a kid again' or something like that (of which I am certainly no stranger), in this particular thread I found a lot of responses that leaned more towards the kind of game where, there is before knowing, and there is after knowing. Games that don't necessarily have replay value, as once you understand the game enough to be able to tackle it again, it's almost like you know too much, so all you can really do is move on. In particular, a reply was calling out Blue Prince, Return of the Obra Dinn, and Chants of Sennaar as being at the top of their own list, games I was familiar with and for which I easily understood the user's reasoning (although of these, Blue Prince certainly has more gameplay variation). They also had Outer Wilds on this list, and that was new information to me.
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site management & compromises
Sep 16, 2026 - digitalily
I was not anticipating completely rewriting most of the site, ripping out jekyll, and changing host providers... but here we are 🙃.
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the adventures of elliot
Sep 3, 2026 - digitalily
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anime magic 2026
Aug 25, 2026 - digitalily
This marks the second year of attending Anime Magic, and try though those of us who attended last year might, we weren't able to pull anyone else along this time, firmly cementing us as the Anime Magic squad I guess? Something which I mind a lot less as I had a much nicer time this year compared to last.
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gen con 2026
Aug 3, 2026 - digitalily
At some point last year, not more than a few weeks prior to Gen Con 2025, a friend posed the question (paraphrasing) 'do we want to try going to Gen Con even though it is imminent?' And we definitely tried, but the exorbitant hotel cost, lack of hotel space nearby in general, and dubious ideas of transportation meant that it wasn't to be, almost certainly for the better. This year however, with others also interested, we chose one day to attend the con, booked an AirBnB a couple months in advance, and after a bit of a whirlwind of a couple days, have successfully completed Gen Con 2026 with an eye for a full Gen Con 2027 weekend.
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