Recent content on Pensive Ibex
I see everyone doing weeknotes or monthly recaps, and I want in. Except, I don’t want to tie myself down to a weekly or monthly format, so instead, these kind of posts will just appear randomly whenever I feel I have something to say. This will just be some sort of freeform rambling. I want to lower the bar as much as I can for myself, to just write these things and talk about stuff…
You might have heard of Size Five Games, they’re the creators of other silly entertaining point-and-click games like Ben There, Dan That! , Time Gentlemen, Please! and Lair of the Clockwork God . I played the first two ages ago, and the last one is still on my to-do list. We’ll see when I get round to playing that one. Even though I knew the developer of Earth Must Die (even though…
What do you get when you cross a dungeon crawler with a typing game? It’s Cryptmaster! The premise is simple, you play as a party of four heroes that get resurrected by a powerful necromancer, the Cryptmaster. Your party is down in the depths of the earth and aims to reach the top. The visuals of this game are truly stunning. I love the sketchy black-and-white art style. Every character…
A friend of mine hit me with a question a couple of days ago. I don’t quite remember how it came up, but the question was: “Do you know how the stuff that happened in your childhood influenced how you became the person you are today?” This is such an important question that tells so much about who you are and what your stance in life is. It explains your struggles, your triumphs,…
Brush strokes in the sky The Paintress calls for gommage When tomorrow comes I try very hard not to write any spoilers about the games I played when writing a review for them. As a player I like to know as little about the story of a game as possible before going in, I like going in blind and being completely enraptured by the game. The following two paragraphs contain some very minor spoilers…
As a preamble to this post, let me start off by saying, I agree. Yes, this is first-world problem. I realize how lucky I am, for this to even be a thing in my life. So generally there are two things that motivate my choices in life. Time and interest. The former is the finite resource of our existence. I’m 37, and for some years now I have come to value time a lot more than I used to. A…
Shifting halls unfold Looking for Room 46 Steps gone, dawn resets Ever since it was announced, I was really excited for Blue Prince. In Blue Prince you play as Simon, a young adolescent boy (I’m not sure if his age is mentioned in the game) who just inherited the manor estate of his uncle. However, Simon’s uncle has laid out a challenge for Simon. In order for Simon to become the new…
Shadows of the past Justice sought in truth untold Secrets now revealed I backed this game on Kickstarter a while back, something I haven’t done a lot for videogames. But this one caught my eye, because I love playing detective and it’s roots in true history really resonated with me. At the time I thought this would be my very first video game credit. Little did I know at the time, how…
Hidden by the veil The Unavowed stand strong Protecting mundanes It’s the game of the month over at the Adventure Game Club . Since Avowed (which I’ve also played and probably will write a review for somewhere next week) came out this month, it seems only fitting to play Unavowed as well. As the game starts you’re immediately pulled into the action, the story never misses a beat…
His whip cracks the air Indiana seeks the path Fedora secured I’ve always had a soft spot for Indiana Jones. The Indiana Jones franchise is (along with Star Wars) one I’ve been introduced to by my parents. They named me after Luke Skywalker and named our second dog Indy. Just goes to show how much of a fan we all are. After first hearing about the Indy game a while back, I was…
It’s been a bit quiet around here. That has mostly to do with two things. First, the Belgian deparment of defense releases its end-of-year puzzle (kind of like GCHQ does for the UK). This is the 7th year of the puzzle, and the 7th year I’m competing. What started is a fun thing I did with my dad, has turned into a group of 4 people that I got to know through doing the puzzle, with each…
I just got down here and now my feet are wet! I sure hope I won't die of a cold in this place. Not only am I wet, now I'm also poisoned! Stupid thorny plants. I'm still puzzled why my arms are exposed. Shouldn't this mail shirt cover everything? What piece of gear am I missing? What luck! I tried a code and as luck would have it, the gate just opened! Not sure what I would've done if it failed,…
We've dallied enough in the mountainmen's base. Time to earn our keep. Let's enter the mine and slay the creature that haunts its halls. Nice to know there's so much gold in abundance in this place. Too bad nothing I have on me lets me harvest it. I've tried the rock hammer several times in vein. Even after equipping it, it won't even register as a weapon I can swing at the vein. Damned rats. Bit…
Warning: I did a kernel update this weekend, since then any fullscreen application displays major stuttering. I’ve since downgraded my system again and everything’s working as it should be, but this session was played in windowed mode. Hence, why some screenshots may look different from the ones before. What's on the other side? Just a bunch of leeches... Yuck! Just boring platform…
Warning: I’ve gone back into the game to take some screenshots that I found noteworthy to mention but forgot to take at the time. So you might see me with more advanced gear than what I actually had at the time… Meet PensiveIbex! The greatest Tinker of his time! Should I die, this is where I'll come back to life. Or so the game suggests. Better not put it to the test, right? Ah, one…
Wouter roped me into playing Ultima Underworld. It’s the DOS Game Club of the months december, january and february. I haven’t played any Ultima game before. So now, here I am, playing a DOS game on a Linux machine. Oh how turns have tabled. I had to do a little tweaking, I installed the hack for easier movement in the game. Then PCGamingWiki helped me fix my sound in-game (by…
It's just test code. -Anonymous Have you ever heard this phrase? I can’t wrap my head around the reason why test code should be treated with any less respect and care as production code. Our test code ensures production code keeps working as expected, thus it’s our duty to maintain the test code as meticulously as the production code it guards. Here are the 5 most common test code…
I don't understand Please repeat and make gestures Now I understand So I’ve had this interest for constructed languages ever since I’ve read Project Hail Mary . Chants of Sennaar was one of the games that came up in my search of games that also did something with learning and discovering new languages. The other two I’m still interested in, but will have to be looked at later are…
As part of the move to the new house, there was still one little project that needed finishing. We decided instead of being regular closets and cabinets that we’d turn a room into a walk-in closet. About a month ago we started the drawing out plans and schematics of what it might look like. We went through three or four drafts before settling on the current configuration. It’s a mix of…
Private life I’m finally moving into the new house in about a week or so. Just finishing up building the walk-in closet and after that my girlfriend, our dogs and I will be moving into the new house! Exciting times! I’ll be happy to have my own little room to myself again. Apart from that I’ve been dabbling with Godot a bit recently. Currently remaking the classic breakout from…
Here’s a new post category I’ve dubbed “Here’s a thought” . These are posts that originated as an idea, which I found fun to think about and research. So… Here’s a thought , what if the gas pedal of your car worked differently? I drive a Tesla Model Y since I started my career as a freelance IT consultant. One of the mechanics I had to get used to at…
First of all, apologies for the lack of content here. I’ve been to Canada in September and have had some projects I’ve been working on ever since (including all the prep work for moving house). I’ll do a more detailed post on what I’ve been up to exactly sometime later. For now, I’d like to take a minute to talk about fringe science 1 . I remember my dad telling me…
A couple of weeks ago, my girlfriend had the idea to spruce up her doors. “Great!” I said, “sounds like a fun project!” At first it was just going to be a paint job, then it evolved into something more. The doors were going to be adorned with some frames. She googled 1 around a bit and found some sets that were pre-made on Amazon. Problem was, that not all doors had the…
My Framework 16 laptop arrived earlier this week and I finally had the time to put it together! I bought the DIY edition, and to be honest, I expected more DIY. The installation process was extremely smooth. I’ve setup desktop towers before and installing a PC like that took me way longer than it did for this laptop. Some things do come preinstalled. For example, the motherboard and CPU are…
Series Sherlock FINISHED Absolutely lovely. I love the universe, I love the characters, and Benedict Cumberbatch’s and Martin Freeman’s representation of those characters are phenomenal. I guess if I had to give a point of criticism, it’s that visualization of Sherlock’s deduction throughout the series isn’t consistent. It’s a very minor gripe in an otherwise…
I recently started a new job and found myself in the Go ecosystem. To be honest, it has been a bit of a shock. I’ve written .NET code for the past 15 years and know its ins and outs pretty well. As a language, I don’t mind writing Go code. About the only thing that still bothers me is the if err != nil { return err } boilerplate code ad nauseam. But that’s a topic for a whole…
I grew up surrounded by computers. My father is an unbelievable Amiga fanboy. We must have owned over 5 or 6 Amiga’s, The Amiga 1200 being my very own home computer and my beast of choice when it came to gaming at a young age. Everyone talks about DOS gaming in their childhood. I had this gem whenever I booted my machine, with its accompaning clicking sounds. I had cases full of floppy disks…
Series The Gentlemen - FINISHED - My girlfriend recommended this to me. When I saw it was directed by Guy Ritchie I knew I was on board. It’s an entertaining show with a good premise. Eric - FINISHED - About a couple that loses their child. The main focus is on the father (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) who has some mental health issues. It’s a mini-series and very well put together.…
I told myself I wanted to replay the Monkey Island games, so that I could then finish Return to Monkey Island, the 6th instalment in the series. Written by the original creator Ron Gilbert. I have played the first two games multiple times and know them by heart. All the others I have only played once. Curse of Monkey Island, the third game in the series. was actually better than I remembered. The…
I like the goto conference. Talks are more on an architectural level, and less about the new silver bullet out there. Companies also come talk about the pitfalls and talk about the mistakes they made along the way. Above all, I love Amsterdam. It’s a city that shouldn’t be able to exist. When you look around, many of the houses are just barely holding on. Floors of buildings just…
I listened to the latest episode of We Can Be Weirdos where Rob Auton mentions how nice it would be when sitting on the train if you could just talk to the person next to you, get a load off your chest and just carry on with your day. It reminded me of how many times I was in public and someone random started talking to me and I just wasn’t open to the experience. It’s something I grew…
A friend of mine was celebrating his birthday the other day. And in preparation for it, I designed this little puzzle challenge. Basically, it’s just a closed box with a numeric lock holding its contents hidden. On the bottom of the box I printed a QR code, leading to a website where I edited the logos of boardgames (in his collection) to just show the first letter. Behind every logo sits…
I received a new laptop at work the other day. So begins the cycle again of having to tweak every little thing to the way I like it. I’m a tinkerer and I love to play around in settings and customization screens. Heck, I’ll even hop in regedit willingly to get the specific behaviour I want. But I never properly document all the steps I take to get there. I do a lot of tweaking in my…
About a year and a half ago ChatGPT 3.5 was let loose, and it took the world by storm. Since then we’ve seen tremendous improvements in performance and reliability with ChatGPT 4. Not only that, but all other Generative AI tools have made major leaps. I remember way back when Dall-E 2 was released, I tried to create some images, some worked but others flopped. You really had to know what…
So I joined the Adventure Game Club last month and decided to join in for the month of April. The game of the month? The Dark Eye . It’s a game which I hadn’t heard of and would never have played if it weren’t for this club of enthusiastic gamers with an immense knowledge of the scene. Which is exactly what I was looking for, those gems of the genre that didn’t get the…
Colour me interested That’s it. That’s all you get. If you think you’ve found the solution. You can mail it to me by following the link at the bottom of the page. Good luck! Reply to this post by email Did you spot a mistake? You can help me fix it by opening a Pull Request .
I’ve been using Github Copilot for a couple of months now. It was an experiment in our company to test its use and see what benefits it might provide to developers. I have to say I was blown away when I saw what it could do. I was happily writing some tests in our code base, calling Builder objects to create the necessary setup data. Out of nowhere I get this suggestion of Copilot for the…
The first ten words of Kelesce Last week I was tipped off to a puzzle hosted by Alperen Keles . I opened the link and was immediately intrigued. Any puzzle with visual elements where you aren’t given any information except for the simple task of deciphering what you see is a delight. If you want to give it a go for yourself, the puzzle is still up and accepting answers. In this post…
Bear with me. I am under the impression that I write Clean Code. You might be too. And you’re right. But you’re also wrong. I had a discussion at work the other week about a design decision in our codebase. I’ll try to sketch the situation as simply as possible. Basically we have temporal objects called Snapshots . To give an example, imagine a Person that looks something like…
Be the best, stay small, and don't lose any money. -George Lucas I recently finished reading The Mysteries of Monkey Island by Nicolas Deneschau . The Monkey Island game series remains with me after all these years. It’s one of those games that has earned a cult following over the years, that has baffled the original creators ( Ron Gilbert , Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer ). In the book…
Why start this blog? When the idea was first brought to me, I was a young developer working for a consulting company. We were asked to write blog posts about technical topics. At the time I read blogs by Scott Hanselmann , Phil Haack and Scott Guthrie (aka the red shirt guy). Now some of you that are familiar with the .NET environment might know these names, they’re big league. The kind of…