Streaming My City
Had a walk, found a nice route.
Jachère Journal
Posts on studying code, video game studies, digital tinkering, moss and other cute things, suburban homesteading, and my personal thoughts.
Latest posts
The Designer as Guest, Visiting Their Design
Some thoughts and summaries about my recent grounded theory analysis of my MDM archive.
Where Has The Time Gone?
In this journal entry I attempt to capture the path I've taken so far with my dissertation, as well as prepare for the defense upcoming in a few month.
My MTL August 2025
I'm in Montréal for six weeks by now, but it feels definitely longer. That might be just my experience of time, filled by all the things I participated in.
A Rather Privileged Perspective on my Post-Doc
Or how I'm slowly coming to my senses.
Ludus—Ludeme
Last month I mapped a working definition of game (ludus) and ludeme (conceptual units of a game and play) in preparation for an upcoming article on ludemes and programming video games. I went through many of better know attempts for a definition and asked myself where my own perspective differs and what my approach needs to express.
Historical Code Hermeneutics
In the past few months I have been engaging in the exegesis of source code from the 1980ies and -90ies. Serendipity towards the end of last year brought me in closer contact with the concept of ludemes, in which I found a fitting perspective on these magic moments of translation. David M. Berry outlines this processes through the computational image, Hartmut Rosa approaches it through his theories…
Reconsidering Publishing to the Internet
I was increasingly unhappy with mypublishing strategy (or the lack thereof), but also increasingly worriedabout the state of the internet, especially the aggressive scrapping ofcontent by AI bots. So, I reconsidered my approach.
Scraps and Scrapping
I have finally found the time to produce two (extremely dense) abstracts for the next paper (on Source Code and Ludemes).
Critical Code Studies from Afar
In which I'm reflecting on critical code studies, distant reading source code and my recent workshop at the DHd 2025.
Axes of Translation
A few notes on the moment of translation between epistemologies and ontologies in software.
Playing Alba the Relational Way
Inspired by the silly inquiries of Any Austin and the concept of relational playworld by Melos Han-Tani I figured I'm going to spend some more time in Alba, after I finished it for the second time.
Metaphors and Theory
A few quick notes on thinking theory through metaphors.
December Adventure, but different
I tried to learn assembly, but didn't find the energy. But I had a inspired times anyways.
Embodying Player Phenomenologies in Code. Also, Ludemes and Routines.
I was chewing on the concept of ludemes lately and needed to map it out, conceptionally. Especially from the perspective of code and programming, there are terms that overlap and differ.
Grinding that paper
Writing this first paper felt grindy. But I enjoyed working on something for that long of a time. I also learned a lot, again.
Frustration, Conferences and Ludemes
Inspired by the silly inquiries of Any Austin and the concept of relational playworld by Melos Han-Tani I figured I'm going to spend some more time in Alba, after I finished it for the second time.
Everyday Life and Research
This summer I got the feeling, that I'm getting used to do researcherly things as a job
More embeddings and roasting my CPU
Writing this first paper felt grindy. But I enjoyed working on something for that long of a time. I also learned a lot, again.
I'm a Mediocre Minigolf Player
Another sketch for a dissertation proposal…
NIFFF, Let's Plays and Cluster Visualizations
Some thoughts on watching genre movies and observing visual clusters.
Thinking through Metadata
A few quick notes on thinking theory through metaphors.
ReAnimate, Montréal, Multidisciplinarity, and Method
In which I'm reflecting on critical code studies, distant reading source code and my recent workshop at the DHd 2025.
Five month later, more or less
Right now I do feel a bit lost with my dissertation. But I'm sure that's how it has to be right now. I had a meeting with my supervisor last week that was very giving in terms on how to go forwards. The most important take-away was, that I should speak to all my disciplines.
What is the video game image?
I finished readingy The philosophy of software last week and went half through Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality this week. The two books, on with a philosophical approach and one with a focus on everyday programming practices, are a great match and sparked some fruitful insights.
Thinking about Images and Software
I've been left with quite some material to think through after the Leisure Electronics conference. My current reading, The Philosophy of Software, is expanding on that. Which leads me to an attempt of capturing the current state of that reflection.
When did tinkering become programming?
The title is a direct quote from Pierre-Yves Hurrel, one of the organizers of the Leisure electronics Conference in Lausanne conference, which I attended this week. It is also one of my key takeaways from the conference, as well as my own presentation, Programming and Becoming. The conference concentrated on the emergence of video games, that pivotal moment when video game culture started to…
Preserving 5.25 inch floppies and audio cassettes
Next to intensively preparing for a conference talk, I had the chance to attend a preservation-session with people from the Swiss Video Game Archivists association.
Why would someone want to do that, voluntarily?
I'm interested in video game graphics programming practices. One aspect of that interest is the motivation and intention that these programmers had, back then, when they went about their programming business. Why did they do, what they did? The slightly sarcastic reframing of the question for the proposal comes about from my own experience. It's not a scientific question, but an honest wondering.…
29 Days Later
Although we have a leap year, and were gifted an additional day in February, that month went by rather quickly. I spent the time mostly by either being with friends, or working on my dissertation project. I still try not to engage with any projects or topics that don't fit (can't be made fit) into my thesis, and I believe it pays off.
Wikidata, SPARQL queries, and Gephi
Dealt with Wikidata import, SPARQL queries, and Gephi visualisations.
Further reflecting metadata (and ontologies)
In the last two weeks, I had the opportunity to speak with some people I trust a lot in terms of metadata and ontologies.
(Swiss) Programming Languages
I added programmed in to our Wikidata corpus, but found only 31 games where this statement could be made with some certainty.
Reflecting Metadata
This week was important to finalize a second phase of gathering and importing metadata on our video game corpus into Wikidata.
Perfect Days
Today was sunny, and it felt like Spring.
Bold statements
I had the chance to talk about my expose with my supervisor. He gave me some valuable inputs regarding formal aspects and in terms of writing styles. We also looked at the overall plan of my dissertation project.
Some notes on organisation and journaling
In which I once more try to organize my life.
End of year, semester and work package 0
Although we have a leap year, and were gifted an additional day in February, that month went by rather quickly. I spent the time mostly by either being with friends, or working on my dissertation project. I still try not to engage with any projects or topics that don't fit (can't be made fit) into my thesis, and I believe it pays off.
Working and Maintaining the Wiki
I was adding thoughts from my paper notebook to the wiki and engaged with a bit of maintenance, making connections, adding bits here and there. I see that I already have a lot of material and some things that I actually forgot already.
From despair to relieve – Dealing with an ADHD meds fallout
Right now I do feel a bit lost with my dissertation. But I'm sure that's how it has to be right now. I had a meeting with my supervisor last week that was very giving in terms on how to go forwards. The most important take-away was, that I should speak to all my disciplines.
Necronom and visual layouts as methodology
Some notes on a first round of doing a formal analysis on Necronom.
Case studies
I had the chance to discuss my exposé within the context of the IDR colloquium, which is a format where all PhD students of the institute can hand their things. Since I had plenty of opportunities to discuss my project with people from the digital humanities and video games studies, I needed to have feedback from the design research crowd. In the following I clustered some takeaways from the…
ChatGPT for expanding and compressing text
I talked with Moritz Mähr about how to approach treating a code base as a text corpus, and he recommended to give Voyant Tools a shot.
Journaling, Tasks, and Sourdough Rye Crispbread
As the title implies this will be a larger entry. I'd love to briefly cover my participation at the DHCH 2023, the summer school/conference of the Swiss Digital Humanities.
IDR Colloquium Feedback on Exposé
I had the chance to discuss my exposé within the context of the IDR colloquium, which is a format where all PhD students of the institute can hand their things. Since I had plenty of opportunities to discuss my project with people from the digital humanities and video games studies, I needed to have feedback from the design research crowd. In the following I clustered some takeaways from the…
Autumn – Mid-Semester
As expected, the study semester is taking a toll on time, energy and focus. It seems easier, and more relevant, than last semester. Besides that, I feel that the productivity from the summer came to a halt.
Fermenting fish, fermenting nuts
I tried to learn assembly, but didn't find the energy. But I had a inspired times anyways.
Post-Summer – Pre-semester
I was on a two weeks vacation in August and didn't care much about my journal. Still, a lot of things continued to become and manifest.
A post at the end of summer vacation
Some thoughts and summaries about my recent grounded theory analysis of my MDM archive.
It's summer time: readings, corpora and other updates
It's summer and I can finally concentrate on all things related to my dissertation project. On the agenda is playing video games, working on a representation of masculinity in old games' subproject, working on my Image Corpus, and, of course, getting some reading is done.