I am typing this from the teachers’ lounge: the preparations for the new academic year have officially begun, and with it, the summer holiday is gone. Time is a weird concept: on the one hand, two months of school holidays felt endless in various good and bad ways, and on the other hand, I can’t even remember what we did to pass the time. A couple of bike rides, visits to the family, swimming, or something like that? When people tell us “it’ll get better”—referring to the challenges of being a young parent—that’s not very helpful as “better” is firmly placed in a distant future. Yet without fully realising it, the months fly by. How? Previous month: July 2026. Games I’ve played Nothing? The kids have kept us busy and during the evenings I preferred grabbing a book instead of a screen. We did buy and play a few board games: Cozy Stickerville: a very simple game in which you gradually fill the board (the terrain) with stickers that starts out as a tiny village but hopefully evolves into a bustling town. It feels a bit like an offline Sim City game with some elements of Animal Crossing? I do have a problem with the term “cozy” here: often, a card instructs you to do either A or B resulting in sticker X or Y. The problem is that you never know what the (dis)advantages are, resulting in a lot of stress to do the right thing for our city! I also wonder whether it can be replayed on the other side of the board. Pirates of Maracaibo: I’ve been (dead-)eyeing on a cool pirate-themed board game for a while and it came down to either this or Dead Reckoning which is a much heavier game with 4X vibes. In other words: something I won’t ever be able to bring to the table that often. Pirates is a hidden race game in which you speed along the Caribbean Islands to reach the port of Maracaibo (three times). Along the way you’ve got plenty of options to plunder, explore the island, and dig up and hide all kids of treasure. X marks the spot! Board games too are getting expensive. We paid €50 for Pirates, a standard box with mostly cardboard and paper (cards) materials. It was in a brick & mortar store—one of the few ones left—so you might be able to get a slightly better deal online. Selected (blog) posts I don’t have too many links to share this time as the holiday business didn’t allow for much casual surfing. I almost forgot how to even run a command in a shell. Mary at From the Pen Cup stated Don’t Toss It! Mail It!; a lovely way to upcycle cardboard boxes from various food supplies. Just turn them into postcards! I don’t remember where this came from but this YouTube short shows how to cross-write in a journal. I’ve never tried that before and it certainly makes re-reading sections challenging. A The Fountain Pen Network thread discloses how to use and take care of flex nibs. Some links include .pdf guides to Copperplate writing. Adam Le Doux open sourced two GBA game engines. April from Ink Flexibilities maintains a Best Modern Flex Fountain Pen Nibs guide. Conclusion: just get yourself a Pilot Custom Heritage 912 with the FA nib. Jim P. agrees with the above pen selection. I especially like his wording of “reaching the bottom of the rabbit hole”: I do believe this may be the bottom of the rabbit hole for me for quite some time. I now have a wide variety of makes, models, nibs, and materials. More than enough to do pretty much anything I’d want. Enough to keep me writing for several years no matter what might happen. I hope I too reach that bottom soon. It’s getting a bit silly (and expensive). On that same site: how to practice calligraphy with flex nibs. There’s a lot of controversy surrounding the use of agentic AI in open source projects. The Linux Kernel is no exception, unfortunately. Is that too turning into slop? What on earth are we doing? Renzo Thönen, who still develops Commodore 64 games, wrote about his complicated relationshiop with EGA colours. I liked Frank’s solution to the annoying LED problem in hotel rooms: put a black sticker on it! (in Dutch) Retro Junk goes back to the 90s with a look at typical board games from then. Damion Schubert wrote a series of posts to discuss his top 100 board games of all time. You know I’m a sucker for these kinds of lists. Kimberly from The Pen Addict reflects on her five years there. The post links to a lot of good other pen-related resources if you’re into that kind of thing. Ruben Schade asks: will there be another one?. My answer is always a resounding yes. Regret, here I come! I discovered Melanie Richard’s blog. She has a the cool idea of the subdomain making where she puts photos of drawings or sewing/crochet projects. Cheryl Jones shows off her Pilot Capless. Wait, that thing has a stacked nib? That’s just crazy! Miss Booleana writes not just about the work-life balance but the child-work-life balance. (in German) If you ever wondered how the Internet Archive digitises books: now you know. Another blog recommendation: The Typewriter Revolution by Richard Polt. You can even write him a letter, but I reckon he expects them to be typed, not written. Michael Gisiger philosophises on the freedom not to give up on the old. (in German) Rachel’s experience report of the 2026 DC Pen show taught me wax seals can be multi-layered. Divya over at The Monadic Sheep introduces us to the wonderful world of Canves in GNU Emacs. The trend line in that popular “my nine games that I grew up with” side is depressing. Minecraft, Splatoon, and Apex Legends, is that all you think made you you? Time to dive into the indie world, I guess. While trying to create my own list, half of the games I want to enter don’t even appear in the list. That might explain a thing or two. Ruben’s retro motherboard rack on shelves is a neat way to store a lot of old hardware builds. In a more recent post, he also explains how he powers them (with a picoPSU). To close of with video games, Syl posted her favourite game screenshots. I think I’ll steal that idea for the near future. Other random links Van Dieman’s puts out amazing shimmering ink. I’ve got to try one of those. For the hardcore pen nerds out there: Kyuseido Tokyo creates stacked nibs. Okay so maybe I lied. Apparently, I did stock up on links. Related topics: / metapost / By Wouter Groeneveld on 4 September 2026.  Reply via email.