Brain Baking 2 days ago

My (Retro) Desk Setup in 2025

A lot has happened since the desk setup post from March 2024 —that being I got kicked out of my usual cosy home office upstairs as it was being rebranded into our son’s bedroom. We’ve been trying to fit the office space into the rest of the house by exploring different alternatives: clear a corner of our bedroom and shove everything in there, cut on stuff and integrate it into the living room, … None of the options felt particularly appealing to me. I grew attached to the upstairs place and didn’t want to lose the skylight. And then we renovated our home resulting in more shuffling around of room designations: the living room migrated to the new section with high glass windows to better connect with the back garden. That logically meant I could claim the vacant living room space. Which I did: My home office setup since May 2025. Compared to the old setup, quite a few things changed. First, it’s clear that the new space is much more roomy. But that doesn’t automatically mean I’m able to fit more stuff into it. After comparing both setups, you’ll probably wonder where most of my retro hardware went off to: only the 486 made it into the corder on the left. I first experimented with replicating the same setup downstairs resulting in a very long desk shoved under the window containing the PC towers and screens. That worked, as again there’s enough space, but at the same time, it didn’t at all: putting a lot of stuff in front of the window not only blocks the view, it also makes the office feel cramped and cluttered. That is why the desk is now split into two. The WinXP and Win98 machines have been temporarily stashed away in a closet as I still have to find a way to fit the third desk somewhere at the back (not pictured). Currently, a cupboard stray from the old living room is refusing to let go. We have some ideas to better organize the space but at the moment I can’t find the energy to make it happen. I haven’t even properly reconnected the 486 tower. The messy cables on the photo have been neatly tucked away by now, at least that’s something. Next, since I also have more wall space, I moved all board games into a new Kallax in the new space (pictured on the left). There’s still ample space left to welcome new board games which was becoming a big problem in the old shelf in the hallway that now holds the games of the kids. On the opposite side of the wall (not pictured), I’ve mounted the Billy bookcases from upstairs that now bleed into the back wall (pictured on the right). These two components are new: the small one is currently holding Switch games and audio CDs and the one on the far right is still mostly empty except for fountain pen ink on the top shelf. The problem with filling all that wall space is that there’s almost none left to decorate with a piece of art. Fortunately, the Monkey Island posters survived the move, but I was hoping to be able to put up something else. The big window doesn’t help here: the old space’s skylight allowed me to optimize the wall space. The window is both a blessing and a curse. Admittedly, it’s very nice to be able to stare outside in-between the blue screen sessions, especially if it’s spring/summer when everything is bright green. The new space is far from finished. I intend to put a table down there next to the board game shelf so that noisy gaming sessions don’t bother the people in the living room. The retro hardware pieces deserve a permanent spot and I’m bummed out that some of them had to be (hopefully temporality) stowed away. A KVM switch won’t help here as I already optimized the monitor usage (see the setup of previous years ). My wife suggested to throw a TV in there to connect the SNES and GameCube but the books are eating up all the wall space and I don’t want the office to degrade into a cluttered mess. I’m not even sure whether the metre long desk is worth it for just a laptop and a second screen compared to the one I used before. The relax chair how used for nightly baby feeds still needs to find its way back here as well. I imagine that in a year things will look differently yet again. Hopefully, by then, it will feature more retroness . Related topics: / setup / By Wouter Groeneveld on 12 October 2025.  Reply via email .

Java Programming

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Brain Baking 6 days ago

I Made My Own Fountain Pen!

Those of you who know me also know that I love writing with a fountain pen . My late father-in-law had been pushing me for years to buy a small lathe and try my hand at some simple shapes—including a fountain pen barrel, of course. Being quite the capable woodworking autodidact, he taught me how to construct a few rudimentary things. Together, we created my stone oven cabinet on wheels I still use on a weekly basis. To this day, I regret not buying a lathe to create more things together. The idea of following a woodworking workshop or a pen creation workshop stuck on the back of my mind but never quite managed to materialize. In May 2024 , when I visited the Dutch Pen Show, a few artisans that presented their home-made pens there also offered workshops but lived more than away in the northern part of Germany, being out of reach for a quick “let’s go there and do that” excursion. Until last month, when my wife somehow found out about Eddy Nijsen’s Wood Blanks & Penkits company and neglected to tell me. Instead, she organized a secret birthday present, invited two more friends over to accompany me, and booked a “mystery event” in the calendar. That morning, when I heard one of my friend’s voices coming to pick me up, I expected us to go to some kind of board game convention. An hour later, we pulled over in a rather anonymous looking street in Weert, The Netherlands, and I had no clue what we were doing there. Boy, was I in for a pleasant surprise! We spent the entire day doing this: Me working on a lathe carefully shaving off wooden clippings to create a pen barrel from a blank. Note the enormously varied amount of available wooden pen blanks on the shelves in the back. It was quite possibly the best day I’ve had in months. The hours flew by and at the end of the day we all made two pens: one regular ball pen with a typical Parker filling that twists to open, and one fountain pen. Both pens turned out to be remarkable for different reasons. The ball pen is not one I will be using regularly but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth creating it. The wooden blank we used for this pen is unique to say the least. The black splintery wood almost smelled and felt like charcoal. Eddy, our instructor, managed to salvage it during a local archaeological dig that excavated a medieval oak water well shaft. Experts estimate that the ancient oak was felled in around 1250. Decades of exposure to ground water penetrating the oak cells permanently deformed and coloured the wood. After years of drying in Eddy’s workspace, it was sawn into smaller rectangular blocks called “pen blanks” where we proceeded to drill a hole in, attach to the lathe, and rework into a cylindrical shape that can be pressed onto other components called a “pen kit”. The metal components we worked with that day were high quality Beaufort Ink pen kits . After sanding, multiple waxing steps, the involvement of glue and a dedicated pen press, it was ready to write with! The pen has a mechanical twist mechanism on top that’s part of the kit. Therefore, we only needed to finish one pen blank. For the fountain pen that has a screw cap, we’d need to up our game, as not only we have to work two barrels, but the dimensions and particular shapes differ: the pen is thinner on the bottom and thicker near the grip. A blurry photo of the result: walnut fountain pen (left) and medieval oak ball pen (right). For the fountain pen, we could choose whatever wood we wanted. My friends chose different kinds of bright looking exotic wood while I went for the dark brown-grey walnut. My parents had multiple walnut trees when we were kids and I loved climbing in them and helping with the harvest. Selecting a type of wood closer to home seemed like the obvious choice for me. I carefully recorded all specific steps we took that day—with the home-made pen, of course—in case I accidentally buy a lathe and want to get in some more exercise. It felt amazing to work with my hands instead of staring at a screen all day long. Eddy’s mastery over his woodworking felt magical. He said that there’s only one way to achieve this: practice, fail, practice, fail, practice, fail some more. I doubt I’ll be able to finish one pen on my own without his guidance. I wish my father-in-law was still alive. It gradually dawned to me that I wasn’t really making a fountain pen. I was just creating a beautiful hull. Woodworking is not enough: you also need to be an expert jeweller to craft a great nib that writes like a dream. The stock nib that came with the Beaufort Ink pen kit unfortunately didn’t: it felt scratchy and dry. I anticipated this and have since replaced it with a fine platinum Bock nib that writes great although I’m still struggling with the ink flow going from the converter to the feed. The platinum nib was expensive ( excluding shipping) but it would be a shame never to use the pen. While the Beaufort Ink material indeed is of very high quality, this particular pen kit model is not the most well-balanced: posting the cap is entirely useless as it’s much too heavy. Also, the metal grip is much thinner than the wooden body that we created. Compared to a Lamy 2000 or a kit-less pen, searching for the right grip and writing takes a while to get used to. But who cares, I made my own fountain pen! The second mod I’m planning to do is to laser the Brain Baking logo on top of the cap. I love the way the pen and walnut wood feels and the subtle colour differences that neatly line up when you screw on the cap again is beautiful (but difficult to catch on camera). I do wonder what else you can do with a lathe if you do not limit yourself to just using a pen kit… Related topics: / fountain pens / activity / By Wouter Groeneveld on 8 October 2025.  Reply via email .

Hardware Writing

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Brain Baking 1 weeks ago

I'm Sorry RSS Subscribers, Ooh I Am For Real

Never meant to make your reader cry, I apologize a trillion times. My baby a drama Hugo don’t like me; she be doin’ things like duplicatin’ them RSS entries. Come from her release page to my server tryna fight me, bringing her breaking changes along; messing up quite wrong. That’s as far as I can take that Outkast song. I upgraded to Hugo and thought I fixed all the breaking changes but I was wrong and noticed the biggest one too late. Some dangling atom file once used to generate Gemini news feeds suddenly went back online causing all items to be duplicated. Aren’t new releases with shady notes documenting the changes great. Apologies dear RSS readers. The issue has been fixed for a few days now but it seems that most readers like to cache results so if you’re still seeing double please press that Purge Cache Now button. And thanks for reading Brain Baking ! By Wouter Groeneveld on 4 October 2025.  Reply via email .

Web Development DevOps

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Brain Baking 1 weeks ago

Favourites of September 2025

Hi again autumn, how have you been? Not well? Well me neither but I’ve been told that’s part of life and we’ve got to accept it and move on. Last month I ran a feature on card games on this blog, producing nine lovely articles ranging from Flemish trick taking traditions to card game mini games and how to properly play patience—both old and new. I don’t know about you but I thoroughly enjoyed myself writing these and might do something similar again in the future. As for the solutions to the last Name Those Card Games Quiz , here you go: Previous month: August 2025 . Still almost nothing. I’m struggling to steal a few minutes of time here and there to do so. The intentions are there: I bought six books last month. So far, these efforts resulted in finishing a few chapters in Sebastiaan Chabot’s Olifantenpaadjes : a weird Dutch novel about a divorced family reliving their happy memories during summer holidays in France. I don’t think it’s been translated yet and I can’t yet judge whether it should be. Next month, perhaps. See the codex logbook : as part of the card game feature I dove into Sierra On-Line’s rich Hoyle Card Games history and tried my hand (ha!) at a few handheld card games but couldn’t quite find anything that matches my favourite version: the 2002 PC edition. Clubhouse Games proved to be all right but cumbersome, 18 Classic Card Games remarkably includes Klaverjassen but its execution is below sub-par, Ultimate Card Games is all right for a change, which cannot be said for the 2000 Hoyle Card Games Game Boy Color version. I think I’m finished with digital trick taking for now. CodeWeavers finally allows me to play PC-only games on my MacBook and Wizordum runs wonderfully on it so far. The demo was good so now I’m halfway through episode 2 and feeling the boomer shooter (or throwback retro shooter or whatever you want to call the subgenre) itch again. The result is more frantic research on the best pistol and rocket launcher types, the weirdest GZDoom ports, and the coolest Nightdive Studios remasters. Did you know they’re remastering both Outlaws and Blood ? Nightdive are my new heroes. If you want to dive into the genre then let KIRK COLLECTS guide you. He releases monthly FPS news overview videos called “State of the Boom” and the last one revealed more exciting stuff is coming our way ( Boltgun 2 , Darkenstein 3D , …) next to an already awesome release month ( Forgive Me Father 2 , Beyond Sunset , …): The Blood part is at . But yeah, that Deus Ex remaster is looking ridiculously bad. I feel zero urge to play anything else besides the GOTY version in the original Unreal engine. What a shame. Related topics: / metapost / By Wouter Groeneveld on 4 October 2025.  Reply via email . French Quarter Ticket To Ride Railroad Ink Kurt Katala from Hardcore Gaming 101 completely destroys Bubsy: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind . I needed that to avoid buying the recent Limited Run collection. Lothar Serra Mari over at fabulous.systems explains how 86Box now supports SafeDisc copy protection for CUE/BIN image files. Dave Rupert answers why anybody would start a website in 2025. Because of that creative urge, perhaps? There are still ample corners in the vast space of the internet left for you to carve out. Matthew M. Conroy creates weird noisy videos involving pixel-to-noise algorithms on self-portraits. Weird, but in a good way? Mike Green creates stunning kitless fountain pens . I especially love the green dragon variant. Someone made a website categorizing all moai appearances in video games . I have no idea why developers keep on modelling these. Moby Games keeps a list of games with Dopefish appearances . The Dopefish is more dope than moai statues. Alexander Petros challenges website designers who are afraid of hard page reloads . Chris Borge 3D-printed his own woodworking lathe (YouTube video)! Rockwell Schrock shared a very cool discovery on , a Westwood chat client that came with the 1995 Monopoly CD-ROM. Simon Vandevelde created bladofpapier.be ; a site visualizing Flemish regions that prefer to say scissors-stone-paper or paper-stone-scissors. Isn’t the English expression rock-paper-scissors? I’m confused. Robert Lützner is getting into retro gaming . Welcome to the family! It’s never too late to join the party. There’s yet another list over at ResetEra: the essential RPGs list . Joel will be relieved to hear that Chrono Trigger takes the first spot. Chris Were shares 50 games that influenced him . The list starts of very strong with Deus Ex and Duke Nukem 3D . Same here! Emojis Are Shit . Drew hit the nail on the head here. Hidde de Vries shared the slides of his Creativity cannot be computed talk. Laura shares why she buys physical media —and media in general (YouTube video). Rakhim’s idea of Benjamin Button reviewing macOS is just amazing. Rock Paper Shotgun published an interview with the creators of Dread Delusion that convinced me to put the game on my radar. There seem to be popping up more and more AI protection alternatives inspired by Anubis such as Nepenthes . I’m still a bit hesitant to install yet another complex software layer though. I’ve been thinking about relying on anonymous email forward services such as https://addy.io/ . It’s on the list. https://nerdvpn.de/ offers hosted alternative frontends to corporate social media sites such as Reddit. You can self-host these as well. I thoroughly enjoyed flipping through the 2025 proceedings of the Association of Computational Heresy . Finally an academic treatise done right. This one is worth a second mention: PCjs machines emulates original IBM PCs right in your browser! https://solosleuth.com/rankings contains rankings for solo board games. Unsurprisingly, Mage Knight is still number one. I’ve been told that I need to dig through the official Against the Storm wiki if I want to survive the more challenging storms. So far I’ve only played 30 minutes so we’ll take that into future consideration. Romm is a powerful self-hosted video game ROM manager that enables easy browsing of your game collection.

Gaming

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Brain Baking 2 weeks ago

Name Those Card Games Quiz Three

I couldn’t resist creating a third quiz to complete the trilogy. Did you manage to identify all the card from quiz one and quiz two ? Again, congrats! Here’s the solution for quiz two in case you were wondering: The final Puzzling Photo is waiting for you, yet again upping the ante except for the obvious few: Name those card games quiz three. You know what to do. The rules remained the same: each of the seven cards belong to another card game. Try to identify them all! The first hint from quiz one remains relevant: all cards have the same dimensions as a standard deck of cards. This time, I’ve included two red herrings that come from a game that doesn’t really include card play but merely uses the cards to support the core mechanics. Have fun! As always, the solutions will appear in the next post. I’d love it if others would continue to create these quizzes. That way, I can be the one guessing. This article is part nine—the last part for now—in a series on trick taking and card games . Be sure to dip a toe in the other posts! Related topics: / card games / By Wouter Groeneveld on 30 September 2025.  Reply via email .

Entertainment Gaming

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Brain Baking 2 weeks ago

What Philosophy Tells Us About Card Play

Given the extensive history behind a simple pack of standard playing cards, it should not surprise you that cards can be seen as a mirror of society: that’s essentially why the court cards have kings, queens, and jacks in them. In as early as 1377 , Johannes of Rheinfelden wrote De moribus et disciplina humanae conversationis, id est ludus cartularum ; a treatise on card play in Europe. It is the oldest surviving description of medieval card play. In essence, when you play a game of Whist, you’re playing with the remains of the medieval European feudal system. That sounds a bit ominous so let’s skip the grim history lesson and instead focus on what philosophy can tell us about card play. Would they be able to offer interesting insights on why humans like to play and why we should (not) keep on doing it? Arthur Schopenhauer detested card games or any form of leisure activity. According to him, the clear lack of an intellectual deed would distract us from pondering the real questions of life. Schopenhauer thinks that by playing cards, you’re merely fulfilling a basic instinct-level need instead of enjoying higher intellectual pleasures (from Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life ): Dancing, the theatre, society, card‑playing, games of chance, horses, women, drinking, travelling, and so on… are not enough to ward off boredom where intellectual pleasures are rendered impossible by lack of intellectual needs. […] Thus a peculiar characteristic of the Philistine is a dull, dry seriousness akin to that of animals. In The Wisdom of Life, and Other Essays , he scoffs at us players, declaring us “bankrupt of thought”: Hence, in all countries the chief occupation of society is card‑playing, and it is the gauge of its value, and an outward sign that it is bankrupt in thought. Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another’s money. Idiots! That’s certainly an original way of putting it. Schopenhauer is well-known for being the grumpy old depressive philosopher who bashes on anything he can think of, except for music and walking with his dog. Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal in cards, and try to win another’s money. Idiots! I guess he failed to see that just having fun is what makes living bearable. Criticising play in general is a common recurring theme in philosophy: play is said to distract from the very essence of thinking. In On Consolation , Seneca the Younger criticises Gaius Caesar for gambling to distract his grief after losing his sister Drusilla. According to Seneca, that’s evidence of moral failure. Speaking of which, Michel de Montaigne also seems to categorize card play as a stern morality exercise. In Of the Art of Conference , he notes that even in casual play sessions together with his wife and daughter, one has to stay honest by treating these small actions of integrity—by not cheating and following suit, I guess?—the same as the bigger stakes in life. In another of his essays, Of Drunkenness , he directly compares life to a game of chance where chance can easily mess up any plans we prepared. We, just like the card drawn from the deck, are at the mercy of Lady Luck. Maybe many philosophers dislike games of chance because they do not want to admit that much of our life’s experiences is left to chance 1 . Perhaps that’s why you gotta roll with the cards you’re dealt . Fifty years later, Blaise Pascal acknowledged Montaigne’s idea. He wrote extensively on wagering and views the human condition as one of uncertainty. We must make decisions with incomplete information—and live with the consequences that come with them. Doesn’t that sound like making a move in any game? On the very other end of the spectrum, we find Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens directly opposing Schopenhauer’s negative opinion on play. In the thick tome, Huizinga explores the very nature of play as a fundamental element of our human culture. Play is essential to keep our sanity/ Play is what makes us human. Huizinga briefly mentions card gaming as an example of a game with a clear set of rules defining boundaries and structure. Within that boundary, players can foster their skills. Huizinga seems to discard Schopenhauer’s bankruptcy idea completely. Play—including card play—is an essential part that embodies order, freedom, creativity, and even has a social and psychological function. Culture develops through play. Of course, Huizinga extensively studied play as part of his academic research meaning it would be a bit silly if he were to discard the subject as superfluous. In 1958, Roger Caillois built on top of Huizinga’s ideas in Les jeux et les hommes , investigating and categorizing games into different systems. Card games fall under games of chance but also contain a competitive aspect. The interesting Caillois notes is that some cultures handle dealing with chance differently: some celebrate it and embrace their fate, while others desperately try to master it (and usually fail). Guess which category our Western society falls under. It doesn’t take a big stretch to connect Caillois’ card play with the art of living. How do we live in relation to chance? Do we embrace it or try to resist and shape it? Life, just like card games, is not about winning, but about playing well. The act of playing cards can embody the act of living: we must navigate uncertainty, play and work within a set of constraints, read others and try to adapt to their moves, and perhaps above all find meaning in playing the game for the sake of playing the game. In the end, everybody wins, right? Or was it the house that always wins? I forgot. This article is part eight in a series on trick taking and card games . Stay tuned for more! Note that I’m interchanging the words luck and chance here even though depending on your interpretation, they are not the same.  ↩︎ Related topics: / card games / philosophy / By Wouter Groeneveld on 29 September 2025.  Reply via email .

Gaming Philosophy Culture

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Brain Baking 2 weeks ago

Name Those Card Games Quiz Two

Did you manage to identify all the card from quiz one ? Congratulations—in that case you won’t mind me revealing the solution. Click on the spoiler text below to reveal the answer: That was (mostly) easy enough, wasn’t it? The next Puzzling Photo, waiting for you below, won’t be a walk in the park, unless of course you’ve played most of these games recently: Name those card games quiz two. You know what to do. The rules remained the same: each card belongs to another card game. Try to identify them all! The first hint from quiz one remains relevant: all cards have the same dimensions as a standard deck of cards. This time, most of the games do come with a board and other components besides cards. As always, the solutions will appear in one of the upcoming posts on trick taking and card games ! This article is part seven in a series on trick taking and card games . Stay tuned for the next part! Related topics: / card games / By Wouter Groeneveld on 26 September 2025.  Reply via email .

Gaming

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Brain Baking 3 weeks ago

Modern Trick Taking Games: Beyond Whist

If you’re not in the mood for a traditional trick taking session , don’t worry: card and board games have evolved greatly since seventeenth century Whist. After both Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan —two board game pioneers that helped reinvigorate interest in tabletop gaming—the industry slowly but surely exploded, with over seven thousand yearly new releases in 2024, making it almost impossible to play them all. Trick taking morphed from a set of rules played with a standard deck of cards into a gaming mechanic incorporated by sprawling board games. It might not be as often employed as worker placement or set collection but there’s more than enough stuff waiting to be played for us trick taking enthusiasts. I’ve only begun to dip a toe into these modern variants myself. The wanted list keeps on growing. In this post, I’d like to categorize and highlight a few standouts. Pick a category below and explore the recommendations to get a sense of what modern trick taking games can do: Solo trick taking —as mentioned in the article on patience card games , For Northwood! is a popular trick taker that’s designed to be played only by yourself. Although Park Life: People can be played with more people, according to the community reviews, on Board Game Geek, its solo mode is better. And then there are trick takers such as the Lord of the Rings trick taking games that do include a solo and two-player variant but are still best played with three or more. Two-player only — Sail is another refreshing take on the genre. In the pirate-themed game, you’re navigating the boat together, avoiding obstacles as you try to race to the finish. The diagonal direction of the boat is dictated by the person winning the trick. The upcoming Legacy variant is of course pre-ordered here. Claim is another two-player focused trick taking game that has at least one edition for sale in a store near you. Cooperative trick taking —this category was ruled by The Crew before The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game rushed for the crown (or ring?). In The Fellowship , each participant plays as a character trying to fulfil specific goals: Frodo has to win at least four of the five ring cards with The One Ring card being the only trump in the game, Sam has to win the least amount of tricks, and so forth. It feels like a small campaign game and the artwork is immaculate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Two Towers is due to release soon. Asymmetric gameplay – TRICKTAKERs takes the genre for a unique spin. Characters have unique abilities that can turn a typical trick taking session on its head pretty quickly. This is probably the most involved trick taker that I wouldn’t recommend to newcomers of the genre; coming in at a weight of out of 5 on BGG. Trumps that trump the trump suit — Skull King can technically be played with two to eight players but as always it’s best enjoyed with four (or five). The pirate-themed game introduced bidding as well as trick taking: each round, you’re dealt one, two, three, … cards, and you’ll have to predict how many tricks you’ll win. The black flag suit is your usual trump here but then there are pirates that mess up this formula, trumping the trump unless it’s the Skull King himself—who himself can’t be beaten except with a mermaid? It’s a fun and chaotic take on the classic formula without completely altering it. Dice tricks — Nosoku Dice proves dice and cards can be combined to provide a challenging trick-taking experience where just enough drafting and bidding is sprinkled on top to keep things interesting. This is one of those games that’s still on my wish list. Polynomial puzzling —In case you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Uwe Rosenberg would create a trick taker, there’s The Kakapo that combines Patchwork-like polynomial puzzling with classic trick taking action. On top of that, The Kakapo is a cooperative puzzle. If only it wouldn’t be so damn difficult to acquire. Heavier board gaming — Arcs is a tactical space area control board game that manages to incorporate some light trick taking as a cool way to win action spaces. Partially thanks to that aspect, Arcs has managed to stay in BGG’s The Hotness list ever since it was released in 2024. If you’re a heavy board gamer that wants to dip just a tiny toe into trick taking, this is the one for you. Hearts but different — Rebel Princess is a fun alteration on the classic Hearts in which you’re avoiding marriage proposals instead. Special rules in each of the five rounds keep you on your toes. On top of that, each player representing another princess wields unique abilities that can be triggered once per round. For instance, Mulan’s card reads “After the last card has been played in a trick, swap the card you played for another of the same suit, except the Frog”. The rules should guarantee freshness and enough differentiation from its progenitor. Treacherousness and fun — Power Vacuum cannot be won without a minimum of manipulation, deceit, and treacherousness. Everyone is trying to raise to power as the “Supreme Appliance” is dead (yes, the vacuuming machine, really) with any means necessary, including backstabbing. It reminds me a bit of our frantic Bohnanza sessions were cheating allowed as long as nobody sees it was a much-loved house rule. I have yet to get my hands on this one but it looks very promising. This article is part six in a series on trick taking and card games . Stay tuned for the next part! Related topics: / card games / boardgames / trick taking / By Wouter Groeneveld on 23 September 2025.  Reply via email .

Entertainment Gaming

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Brain Baking 3 weeks ago

Card Game Mini Games In Video Games

That’s a lot of games in one sentence. Tell me, what is better than a card game or a video game? Why yes, a card game inside a video game! These so-called mini games—a game within a game that acts as a gatekeeper or an amusing way to win a buck or two—are becoming more and more common in sprawling RPGs. From card-based betting in casinos popularized by the Dragon Quest series to full-blown card games playable in taverns and even card-game mechanics baked into the core of the game, the options are virtually endless. Let’s explore a few of them. As part of this trick taking and card game series, I only consider true card games as part of a mini game: this rules out Baten Kaitos , Slay The Spire , or even Blizzard’s Magic the Gathering -esque Hearthstone that have card play baked into their core. Also, in part two of our lovely card gaming adventure, we’ve already discussed Sierra On-Line’s Hoyle games : these are pure card games, not mini games inside another game. New Super Mario Bros. is an edge case: Luigi dealing cards at a casino is certainly fun to watch but that’s accessible in a separate game mode, not inside the main game. And no, Mario Bros 3’s memory “card game” does not count either. Let’s start by briefly mentioning the most popular examples: The Witcher 3’s Gwent and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic’s Pazaak . The former is even getting its own physical card game released later this year. CD Projekt Red admitted they underestimated the popularity of Gwent . Some players spend even more hours chasing down NPCs that can be battled with to upgrade complete their Gwent deck than spending time on the main quest line. Who came up with the genius idea of putting a game inside a game anyway? One of the earliest examples I could find is Dragon Quest III (1988) where the player can engage in very simple “monster betting”. Its successor Dragon Quest IV (1990) introduced various playable mini games in casinos such as Poker as seen in the video still below. Since then, casinos have become a Dragon Quest —or even general JRPG—staple. Earning a quick casino buck sure sounds like a way to buy expensive equipment earlier provided you manage to crack the game’s RNG rules. There are endless examples of JRPG mini games, but not that much good card game implementations. I guess they lost their appeal once developers started putting in more complex and visually appealing alternatives. If you’re interested in an overview of mini games in JRPGs I, highly recommend the above retrospective from Gaming Broductions, although they do not focus exclusively on card games. Some more examples of later card game mini games are Final Fantasy VIII’s Triple Triad and IX’s Tetra Master . Another often overlooked yet noteworthy game is Bug Fables ’s Spy Cards . And then there’s Xenosaga Episode I that even featured a full-fledged collectible card game including boosters and promo cards! But really, this post is just an excuse to gush about New World Computing’s Arcomage , a playable mini game in Might & Magic VII: For Blood and Honor (1999), and my favourite one, Might & Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer (2000). The card game was even released as a standalone game. Fortunately for us, Tom Chen built a clone playable right in your browser called ArcoMage HD . In Arcomage, you build a tower, destroy your opponent’s tower, or collect enough resources to meet a certain goal. The victory conditions vary from tavern to tavern, and there’s even a side quest requiring you to win at least once in every tavern. The three resources are bricks (red), gems (blue), and recruits (green). Playing a card costs resources, but each round they refill depending on the amount of production you have. To defend against player’s attacks, you can also build a wall in front of your tower to absorb most of the damage. Arcomage is easy to get into: give it a try using the above link. An ongoing game of Arcomage played at the Dagger Wound Island tavern in Might & Magic VIII. When I discovered Migh & Magic VIII in 2000, I couldn’t grasp the intricate details of what made a cRPG tick—but I certainly could hire a vampire and a dragon, wreak havoc in the countryside, and then rest my weary ass by playing a few rounds of Arcomage in the nearest tavern. Provided I was still allowed in after accidentally killing all the villages by casting Armageddon —whoopsie (see my 2023 playthrough report of the game). Even though later RPGs come with more complex mini games where you have to win or buy new cards in order to gradually progress, Arcomage for me defines this post tile: Card Game Mini Game In Video Game . Gwent or Pazaak never really held my interest for longer than fifteen minutes while I could keep endlessly replaying Arcomage . It has to end someday, though: the people of Enroth are apparently waiting for me to destroy some kind of crystal tower and save their world. Oh well, one more round can’t hurt. Tavern-based card play is often added as a fan-based mod in PC RPGs. These are simple enough to find via . My favourite is Morrowind’s Thirteen Telvanni that of course includes betting as a way to built up a nice stash. Other examples include Fallout: New Vegas , Oblivion and Skyrim , and even Neverwinter Nights 2 based on Triple Triad . Mini games are not limited to the RPG genre: even Wario Land on the good old Game Boy had you play a timed memory game to win treasure or whack enemies in a simplified 2D golf game in order to unlock a passage guarding treasure. This was Wario before Wario became synonymous for wacky mini games. Card game mini games, however, are few and far between. The only occurrence I remember—my second favourite card-based mini game besides Arcomage—appears in Humongous Entertainment’s Spy Fox In Dry Cereal (1997), in the form of a one-on-one Go Fish competition in order to win a required trinket from Mr. Big Pig: Spy Fox playing Go Fish against Mr. Big Pig in the casino. Do you have any... sixes? Aha, you do! Hand them over! Screenshot taken from the Nintendo Switch port. In order to start the game, you have to shake the Jar-o-Trinkets and put one on the table. The winner takes them all, of course. You can revisit the mini game any time after you’ve procured the needed item which is a nice diversion from the main storyline. I usually don’t like required mini games, but the jazzy background music and Mr Big Pig’s funny voice acting keeps us coming back for more. He starts to sweat once he realizes we’re winning and the look on his face when handing over a card is golden. It is worth noting that I could not find a single mini game—fan mod or official—that is a trick taking game. Presumably because most trick takers require more than two opponents? Please let me know if you did encounter a digital in-game variant somewhere. This article is part five in a series on trick taking and card games . Stay tuned for the next part! Related topics: / card games / screenshots / By Wouter Groeneveld on 20 September 2025.  Reply via email .

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Brain Baking 4 weeks ago

Name Those Card Games Quiz One

Akin to many (retro) (partial) screenshot guessing quizzes out there, here’s my own. The photo below depicts my right hand holding seven mystery cards, each from another card game, and a joker as an aid to partially cover the last mystery card. Can you guess which card belongs to which game? Name those card games quiz one. Here’s a hint: all cards have the same dimensions as a standard deck of cards. All cards from this quiz are card game exclusives meaning there is no central board involved. I’ll post the solutions when the next quiz is due! This article is part four in a series on trick taking and card games . Stay tuned for the next part! Related topics: / card games / By Wouter Groeneveld on 17 September 2025.  Reply via email .

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Brain Baking 1 months ago

On Having the Patience To Solitaire

Traditionally, the magical realm of trick taking and card gaming in general could only be experienced after gathering three other contestants willing to sit together. In part one of this series on card games, we explored some traditional Flemish variants always played with four—although Jokeren is an exception. Games that require a team such as Kwajongen or Spades simply cannot be played without inviting others to the table. And yet, that doesn’t mean that that deck of playing cards has to stay inside the cupboard if you happen to be alone. There’s only one requirement besides the deck itself: Patience . It only recently dawned to me that Patience and Solitaire mean the same thing: the former is the common name for solo tile-laying card games in Europe while the latter seems to be used the most in the USA and Canada. For me, Patience will always equal Klondike , as in 1990 a digital variant of that particular card game shipped with Windows 3.0: Playing Solitaire on Windows 3.1 with the spooky castle card backs. You can relive those nostalgic moments right here in your browser using PCjs . As visible in the Windows title bar in the above screenshot, PCjs boots an American English version of Windows 3(.1), so if you’re in Europe, you’ll have to imagine it reads Patience instead. Susan Kare designed the card faces. Her webshop at kareprints.com even has some prints still available. I urgently need to convince my wife that we have to hang a Kare Queen of Hearts prominently in the hallway, because reasons. While exploring the patience realm, I discovered that there are endless variations of the individual systematic card arranging exercise, of which undoubtedly Klondike is the most popular. The 42nd edition of Hoyle’s Offical Rules published in 1943 mentions an impressive 19 and includes classics ( Cribbage , Klondike , Forty Thieves ) as well as to me obscure ones ( Idiot’s Delight , Streets and Alleys , Rainbow ). When I was little, the neighbour of my grandparents—the same ones introducing me to card gaming—learned me how to lay down a “clock”. In The Clock , lay down twelve stacks of four cards each, and a thirteenth start pile in the centre. After flipping and removing a card from the start, you can flip the pile laying at one of the twelve hours of the same value. The objective is to simply get rid of all cards without encountering all four kings. I forgot about this game for nearly two decades. Back then, preparing The Clock tableau felt special: would I be able to make it this time? I think it felt special because I was enamoured with card games thanks to my grandparents. Thinking about The Clock now leaves me very much unimpressed: it’s not even a game. You have zero input on it, it’s a pure game of chance. Flip a card, move to the next value. Oh, tough luck, a king. Even implementing a condensed The Clock solver in Python takes less than twenty lines of code: Where are the Dutch abbreviations for the suits ( Schuppen , Klaveren , Harten , Ruiten ). Running this simply results in or . Yay, I won. Oh no, I lost. Luckily, not all Patience games are as depressingly deterministic as The Clock . While Klondike is all right, alternatives like Spider Solitaire and FreeCell have a much higher skill level meaning your decisions in placing the cards do matter. The Nintendo DS card game collection Ultimate Card Games —a quite decent one worth your time—even contains some stats for each Patience type, informing the player if it’s a more skill or more luck based game they’re engaging in. A session of Spider Solitaire in Cosmigo's Ultimate Card Games. Note the 3D-rendered table space on the top screen where the card tableau is faithfully mimicked. If you’re the kind of person that exclusively rolls on Patience, you can alternatively check out Cosmigo’s Solitaire Overload DS game boasting more than thirty tableau laying challenges. I much prefer Ultimate Card Games ’s 3D effort and trick taking inclusions but Overload is there in case you just can’t get enough. After all, who loves playing these Patience games except for bored teenagers attending computer classes that stumbled upon after aimlessly wandering through the Windows start menu 1 ? Even that is a thing of the past as Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the game should no longer be shipped with the OS. Patience card games are making a comeback thanks to the rising interest in board gaming in general. For instance, Isaludo is a free document describing ten engaging modern Patience alternatives to the worn-out Hoyle era variants. One of those, The Emissary , is the precursor to For Northwood! , a solo trick taking card game independently released and available at your local game store—once they finally manage to reprint it, that is. Yes, you’ve read that right: it’s not a tableau laying game but a trick taking one for just one person! That alone should be enough to check it out. For Northwood! is not the only “modern” solo card game originating in the standard 52-deck space. Another big hitter is the recent Regicide . You don’t need to buy anything to play the game: just parse the official rules and get going. The remarkable thing here is, again, that it is not a dry tableau lying game. In Regicide , you’re fighting back against the ancient regime, trying to overthrow the jacks, queens, and kings, by recruiting other cards acting as your army in the “tavern” (the drawing deck). Regicide ’s mechanics are as simple as they are clever, but don’t expect a walk in the park: by the time you face the first few kings, you’ll be scrambling to do enough damage and defend from incoming attacks. It’s amazing to see how much creativity sparks from a simple deck of classic playing cards. Do yourself a favour and dust off that old pack you have laying around. Skip that stupid Clock and pick up a(n imaginative) sword instead. If you find yourself wanting more, the upcoming Regicide Legacy variant will be sure to keep you busy. And then there’s the print-and-play realm where all you need is a printer, a standard deck of cards, and a pen to either make your way through a dungeon ( 52 Realms: Adventures ) or shoot your way out of a saloon ( Fliptown ). The latter, also sold as a boxed game, recently went through yet another successful Kickstarter announcing a standalone expansion called Fliptown: New Frontier . Of course I took out my wallet and pressed that pledge button. I’ll let you know in a few months if it was worth it. This article is part three in a series on trick taking and card games . Stay tuned for the next part! Smarter kids will secretly install or find and start a local multiplayer session using the Microsoft Hearts Network . Windows for Workgroups 3.11 was the first “network-ready” Windows where Hearts was used to showcase simultaneous network play.  ↩︎ Related topics: / card games / trick taking / screenshots / By Wouter Groeneveld on 14 September 2025.  Reply via email .

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Brain Baking 1 months ago

A Tribute To Hoyle's Official Book Of Games

In 1989, Sierra On-Line released Volume 1 of their Hoyle: Official Book of Games on MS-DOS, a card game collection where you could play Crazy Eights, Old Maid, Hearts, Gin Rummy, Cribbage, and Klondike Solitaire according to Edmond Hoyle’s rules as recorded in his foundational work Hoyle’s Rules Of Games . Hoyle meticulously recorded and explained all games “of skill and chance” he encountered from as early as 1672, including expert advice on strategies and even how to settle disputes. Sierra managed to procure a license boasting the name Hoyle not only in the title but also in some of the card faces that USA manufacturers Brown & Bigelow branded Hoyle —hence the addition of “official”. The most remarkable aspect of this game is that you can play not only against typical Sierra characters such as Larry Laffer and King Graham, but also against Sierra employees from that time and their children! Your opponents are quick to quip and laugh at the one swallowing the queen of spades in the game of Hearts, with their animated faces showcasing that grin or unpleasant surprise. Hoyle: Official Book of Games is a typical Sierra game from that time that oozes CGA charm. Gerald Moore, one of the artists, would go on and work for various Police Quest and Quest For Glory Sierra games. The screenshot below also shows the typical Sierra menu bar on top, proving that Sierra indeed repurposed their Sierra Creative Interpreter engine for these volumes. A Hearts session in play with off-topic banter going on trigged by my inactivity. This can be turned off, but why would you want to strip out the personality? As for the gameplay itself, it was a bit bare-bones. The card game mechanics do not differ from the later Hearts implementations, but the absence of quality of life features such as the ability to auto-sort your cards or to inspect the last trick make it a bit harder to enjoy these days. Clicking and dragging those cards around in your hand to sort them by hand is painful, and I have a lot of difficulties discerning the differences between spades and clubs. Luckily, the friendly AI player will remind me to follow suit. Hearts is also the only trick taking game present. In 1990 and 1991, Sierra released Volume 2 and 3 of their Hoyle: Official Book of Games , this time focusing on solitaire card games and simple board games using the same engine and characters as seen and loved in the first volume. The characters would go on to be a key feature in future release and would set them apart from competing card game collections on the PC. After all, implementing Hearts is trivial, but injecting a doze of charm and fun is what makes the difference. In 1993, Sierra completely revamped Volume 1 to account for the VGA evolution, resulting in more shiny colours, Adlib-compatible musical tones, and a few more characters/games in Hoyle Classic Card Games . Let’s call this Hoyle 4 . This time, we’re finally treated with two more trick taking games: Contract Bridge and Euchre. A Hoyle 4 session in play showcasing the VGA upgrade. The card faces and table backdrop is customizable. Sierra yet again put in effort to up the charm ante by digitizing some of the compliments and taunts, and having characters making fun of each other during loading screens. Hoyle 4 would be the last one featuring the Sierra characters though, as the subsequent versions culled them in favour of more general but equally goofy ones. Maybe to appeal to a new audience or maybe because of license issues as Sierra prepared to shed their On-Line past during the major reorganization that shut down multiple studios resulting in layoffs and focus shifts. The Hoyle branding would never make it back on the top priority list, even though they happily kept on churning out repackages. All the older DOS versions are playable right in your browser at Classics Reloaded with a little bit of help from the embedded DOSBox version, in case you’re curious to see how Larry pulls of his tricks instead of pants. I changed the card faces of the above screenshot to something more curvy just for him. That smile on his face says it all. In 1997, the game got yet another reskin when everybody insisted on running Windows programs ( Hoyle 5 ), and yet another in 2002 ( Hoyle 6 ) that added a fresh lick of paint to the UI. Even though these later releases might feel like quick cash grabs, Hoyle 5 did come with quite a lot of new card game variants including solitaire options such as Klondike that was popularized by Windows 3’s Solitaire . You do remember the spooky dark castle card backs designed by Susan Kare in 1990, do you? Hoyle 6 , rebranded as Hoyle Card Games (2002) , is the game I probably played the most, and you can too: the is available on , and using CrossOver, it even runs on macOS: Playing a round of Spades in Hoyle Card Games 2002 on a Brain Baking website background. If you keep the mounted, the atrocious background music that thankfully can be turned off will play, but more importantly, the characters’ voices that lend them their charm will be present as well. That old crow Ethel can be a particularly sore loser at Spades if Elayne and I are on a roll. Later releases beyond version six introduced very little new games and/or changes. The series went downhill pretty fast after a questionable series of Sierra restructurings and layoffs, but it’s still alive: there’s a Steam version with butt-ugly static 3D renders of boring characters while the ones we grew attached to were kicked out. Unsurprisingly, the game got review-hammered on Valve’s platform. Sierra tried to dip a toe in handheld card game releases exactly once. Developed by Sandbox Studios in 2000, Hoyle Card Games was released on the Game Boy Color but never made it to Europe. With 8 card games and 6 solitaire variants, the game is decent enough, even supporting multiplayer link cable mode. Even though Edmond Hoyle’s paper rulebook contains a chapter called Klaberjass —I have no idea why so many foreigners think German is the same as Dutch—due to its relative obscurity outside of Belgium and The Netherlands, the card game variant never made it into the video game. In fact, the Nintendo DS game 18 Classic Card Games made by a German studio is the only one I could get my hands on that includes Klaverjassen , but I would strongly advice against playing that game. It is surprisingly difficult to find out which edition contained the Klaberjass addition as Hoyle’s Official Rules saw more than fifty editions and even more re-releases throughout the last few centuries. No mention of Wiezen either, but the first booklet Hoyle ever published in 1742 was called A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist, Containing the Laws of the Game, and Some Rules Whereby a Beginner May, with Due Attention to Them, Attain to the Playing It Well. What a great and informative title. Hoyle’s books would go on to be all-time best-sellers in the eighteenth century—not bad for a lawyer’s side hustle. This article is part two in a series on trick taking and card games . See also: part one on The Flemish Trick Taking Tradition . Stay tuned for the next part! Related topics: / card games / trick taking / screenshots / By Wouter Groeneveld on 11 September 2025.  Reply via email .

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Brain Baking 1 months ago

The Flemish Trick Taking Tradition

Did you know that card games are part of the official intangible heritage list of Flanders ( Immaterieel Erfgoed in Vlaanderen )? I didn’t either! A special place on that list is reserved for Wiezen , a variant of Whist , the classic English trick taking game played with a standard deck of 52 cards. The Wikipedia article I linked to here even acknowledges the most popular variant, Colour Whist or Kleurenwiezen , as “a more complex form of Wiezen with bidding that is popular in Flemish regions”. When I was younger I witnessed countless of trick taking sessions at my grandparents’ place or at their friends’ place when we were allowed to tag along. Even though I initially didn’t understand the mechanics behind slamming a certain coloured card on the table and then grabbing all the other three only to proceed with yet another one, the laughter accompanied by these sessions triggered my interest. Playing cards looked like so much fun ! For some reason, that interest seemed to have skipped a generation, as I cannot remember my parents participating in even a single session. I always thought my late grandfather was the one that played the most, but as I tried to recount the memories by looking for photos and asking my grandmother and parents how they experienced it, it gradually dawned to me that my foggy memory must have misled me. The card deck shuffle grandmaster was in fact my grandmother. When my grandparents visited my grandfather’s sister’s place, my grandmother would stay as the fourth person to play cards while my grandfather would make his next stop at a friend living nearby. But that wasn’t Wiezen . Instead, they mostly played Jokeren or Kwajongen . Wiezen and Kleurenwiezen was left to the boys: my grandmother explained recently that she found holding thirteen cards in hand and sorting them was too much of a hassle for her. Jokeren required only seven and Kwajongen only four. The following photo is the only one I could dig up that comes close to capturing these wonderful moments that formed the basis for my later board gaming hobby. It was taken in my grandparents’ living room during a family get-together where the “Sunday table”—the good one reserved for special occasions—was put to good use across the room to accommodate for more folks. The people pictured are my grandfather’s sister and her late husband. I suspect that the one behind the camera is either grandpa or ma, and the fourth player revealing that spade is another sibling. Card play during a family party at my grandparent's place, somewhere in 1995. Way less than 13 cards but more than 4 probably indicates they were playing Jokeren. Which trick taking games using a classic deck of cards are traditionally played the most here in Flanders? We’ve already briefly touched on four variants but there are a few more worth mentioning. Let’s quickly inspect all variants. That way, if you ever visit us, you won’t be left in the dark when we suddenly decide to pull out a deck of cards. Wiezen is the quintessential trick taking game where one deals thirteen cards and flips over the last one to reveal the trump suit. Then, a round of bidding follows where players try to guess how many tricks they’ll be able to take—or entirely avoid in case of miserie (misery). With the bidding process it is possible to hitch-hike on a good hand of someone else ( meegaan or playing along) or to play alone. You can ignore the turned trump suit if you play abondance —but then you’ll have to win at least nine tricks. If someone was dealt three aces ( troel ), they have to team up with the one holding the fourth. Oh, and it’s verboten to over-shuffle the deck as that’s a sure way to have everyone say pass . Kleurenwiezen is undoubtedly the most popular local trick taking game around. Kleurenwiezen is a variant of Wiezen where instead of flipping the last card, players can suggest trump suits instead of having to follow the last one flipped. The other rules remain more or less the same. Another very interesting aspect of the local card gaming tradition is the custom house rules unique to each café/family. The manuals I find on the internet cause more confusion than anything else as I’m used to our own local rules. Kingen is probably my favourite. In Kingen , each round is unique: the first round(s), you’re avoiding winning any trick. Then you don’t want any hearts (see below), or not the seventh and last trick, and the last four rounds you’re back to playing a more traditional Wiezen match where you have to claim the most tricks to rack up points. I even once designed a trophy for our daily lunch break Kingen sessions. I really miss those days. Hartenjagen or Hearts is much more well-known outside of Belgium. It’s the game you see popping up in any serious digital card game collection in which you actively try to avoid taking any trick—unless you take them all, of course. I like Hartenjagen , but I like the above games more. It’s not commonly played in local card clubs and I’ve never seen my grandparents play a session. Jokeren is our local Gin Rummy variant in which you try to place a collection of cards down on the shared tableau: the first person to be empty-handed wins—or in our house rule variant, the one holding an ace (hence the Dutch saying aas is uit ). For example, having three of the same jacks allows you to place them onto the table, but also having just one and being able to add that one to an existing set, just like in Rummikub/Rummy. This simple definitely-not-a-trick-taking game is the one my grandmother played the most, and we as young kids got into the first. Kwajongen or just troeven (“trumping”) is very popular here. It’s played with just 24 cards, everything higher than 8. In Kwajongen , you always play in teams. The last card is flipped, again determining the trump suit. If your partner says they’re playing, you better have a good hand. The interesting twist here is that even though you have to follow suit, you can throw a trump on there at any time. The scoring is very visual by the boompje leggen (“laying a tree”) drawing. The amount of won tricks determines how many lines in the tree you can cross out. Kwajongen feels like a simpler version of Euchre . Klaverjassen is probably the most complex game I didn’t come across until my PhD days when a colleague introduced me to it. It’s more popular in The Netherlands. Klaverjassen is a Dutch/Flemish version of the French Belote in which you play with cards from 7 and up and win tricks with unusual trumps: the jack has the highest value, for some reason followed by the nine, ace, ten, followed by the usual suspects. But that’s just the trump order: for non-trump cards, it’s ace, ten, king, and so forth, so you really have to be on your toes. On top of that, you can earn roem (bonus points) by playing special card combinations. As always, there are multiple variants of this game. This article is part one in a series on trick taking and card games . Stay tuned for the next part! Related topics: / card games / trick taking / By Wouter Groeneveld on 8 September 2025.  Reply via email .

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Brain Baking 1 months ago

Favourites of August 2025

August 2025 was one of those big life-altering and quite stressful months. We welcomed a second baby and had to keep the eldest busy as daycare was closed the entire month. Not exactly a combination I’d heartily recommend. I tried to keep on writing as a way to cope resulting in a steady flow of posts. Never shut down your creative outlet if you find yourself into trouble: then is the exact time to fuel it even more. Previous month: August 2025 . Does staring at our bookcase at night whilst trying to calm down the baby count? No? Nothing then. I’ve been thinking a lot about the classic Hoyle Card Games noughties PC game lately and got it to run on macOS with the help of CrossOver. Exploring that collection and playing a few Lord of The Rings: The Trick Taking Game scenario sessions together with a friend rekindled my interested in trick taking games. My very limited free time just about allowed clicking and dragging a few cards around. Hoyle triggered a dive into the Nintendo DS library, digging for decent trick taking collections—there are a surprisingly amount of crappy ones out there. I’ll share my history and experiences with trick taking card games in the following weeks. This video on indie city builder games on the PC does make me want to reinstall Settlers III/IV: As for board gaming, I bought Reforest , a tiny card game that packs a big punch in which you build a tableau filled with ferns, shrubs, and trees of the Pacific North-West at three different levels (seaside, hills, and upper mountains). The nature theme feels a lot like Forest Shuffle but it’s more meaty and I think I even like it more. It also happens to be an excellent solitaire game. Managing to actually finish a game was a bit more difficult this month. Also, where are there so many great Lord of the Rings board games? Now I also need to chase after The Fate Of The Fellowship (currently BoardGameGeek’s number one in the Hotness list)… For the moment I’ll content myself by staring at the box once it’s on my shelf. Perhaps in 10 months I’ll be able to pull it out. Related topics: / metapost / By Wouter Groeneveld on 4 September 2025.  Reply via email .

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Brain Baking 1 months ago

Joel's Top 25 Games Of All Time

My friend Joel finally published his GOAT list (and the honourable mentions ). Finally! I’ve only been pushing him for nearly two years to stop procrastinating and get the thing out there. Funnily enough, recency bias made sure 1000xRESIST , a game from May 2024, claimed a top 5 spot out of nowhere—a game that wouldn’t be there without a revision if Joel published the list sooner. Not that I should be the one judging: my own list was compiled just after I finished 2023’s Pizza Tower and guess what’s in it. I’ve since rethought the whole thing and expanded it into a Top 100 . That got me thinking: is there a generational, platforming, or other kind of gap present in both of our lists? Let’s do a quick comparison. Remasters are a bit problematic to quantify though: do you take their initial publication data into account or the remastered one? For instance, Tactics Ogre first appeared in 1995 on the SNES but nowadays I vastly prefer 2022’s Tactics Ogre: Reborn on the Switch. I went with the latter in case of Tactics Ogre and the former in case of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door as the differences there are not really gameplay-oriented. And what about multiplatform releases? I played Pizza Tower on PC but it has been ported to the Switch by now and I would prefer it there. I went with the former as that was the platform I played it on. Here are some stats from my list: Publication year frequency colour codes 1 : 4+ 3 2 1 Here are the same stats for Joel’s list: I also took the liberty of guesstimating the platforms for multiplatform releases (you did play the GBA FFVI version, right Joel?). Joel loves emulating games and playing them on various retro handhelds so SNES/N64/GBA aren’t really SNES/N64/GBA. Not that it matters much; it’s just to see the biggest differences which are obvious: he’s clearly a huge console/handheld gamer with a clear love for the PSP while my distribution is heavily skewered towards PC gaming of yore. It surprises me that only one DS game made the list ( Animal Crossing Wild World ). Maybe Joel should discover, the DS’s library as well. The generation gap is clearly visible when looking at the median and frequency distribution of the publication years. My two adventure entries are old DOS games and I included SNES classics such as A Link To The Past and Super Metroid instead of Joel’s fancier and more recent Metroid Dread (which was very good but not worth it to be on this list in my opinion). A few more interesting loose thoughts: Now, which entries do we have in common? The crossovers: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga , Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow , Hollow Knight . I think The Sacred Stones is better than Fire Emblem’s Blazing Blades but they’re very similar, and as mentioned Metroid Dread really should be Super Metroid . I also prefer Wind Waker over Ocarina of Time for subjective nostalgia reasons so let’s be generous and say in total we share 6 entries in our Top 25. That’s quite a lot; ! Entries in Joel’s list that are in my Top 100 but didn’t break through A tier: Metroid Fusion (B), Celeste (C), Chrono Trigger (C). I completely forgot about Minish Cap , it’s a great game but A Link To The Past is so much better. I’m super glad Ocarina of Time is placed higher than Breath of the Wild . Jeanne D'Arc, a cult sRPG hit on the PSP made by Level-5. Entries in Joel’s list that I should really play and could be candidates for my own list: Jeanne D’Arc (wow that’s in spot 8; higher than any other strategy RPG? I really need to push this to the front of my backlog), Final Fantasy VI & Dragon Quest XI (maybe), Hades (very maybe?). Entries in my list I think Joel should play based on his picks: FE The Sacred Stones (GBA) or Awakening (3DS), Super Metroid (SNES), Tactics Ogre: Reborn (Switch), Final Fantasy Tactics (wait for the Switch release in September?) If anything, this silly comparison has taught me that most of my own picks are the result of happy childhood memories. Of those 12 PC entries, I touched at most five of them in the last five years. Maybe I should create Yet Another List, this time a Top 25 of games I played in the last decade, to counter nostalgia? I won’t attempt a Top 25 of games released in the last decade; I don’t think I’d be able to fill that list. Thank you for finally publishing that list Joel! These numbers should have a coloured background, RSS readers might get tripped up on this.  ↩︎ Related topics: / lists / games / By Wouter Groeneveld on 31 August 2025.  Reply via email .

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Brain Baking 1 months ago

Forty

When I turned thirty-nine , I was exhausted because daycare closed all summer and the house renovations constrained our ability to keep the toddler busy. Now that it’s time for the big four-oh , I’m even more exhausted thanks to our three weeks old latest family addition who doesn’t know anything else besides pooping, eating, and crying. Mostly the latter. Happy birthday me. I always told my wife that I never wanted to have another kid once I hit that four. And we’ve met that deadline 21 whole days earlier! I suppose a son is the biggest and most gratifying birthday present a father of a daughter could wish for, except that right now I wish I kind of didn’t open that present. All beginnings are challenging. The crying and sore back accompanying the many sleepless nights will stop eventually. It feels weird to write about having another kid when two years ago I wrote about never wanting a second one because the first year of the firstborn was that tough. The mind plays tricks on you and conveniently forgets the most stressful experiences. It also feels weird to write about being a dad again in the same post that announces my fortieth birthday. We’re ten years too late to the family party. I think about this every single day and have a very difficult time getting that nagging thought out of my head. That they probably are not going to have enough support from us when they eventually have their own kids because of our age. That they probably will not be able to ask their grandparents philosophical questions about life once they’re grown up because by then most of them will be passed away. That stupid voice keeps on spewing out these depressing thoughts that my sleep-deprived brain tries to fend off but sometimes fails to do so. In the next few years, I will have to come to terms with the fact that yes, we’re older than usual, but we do have two beautiful kids that have already greatly enriched our lives (and made it more miserable). Even though having them “too late” might be my “biggest regret in life” (besides becoming a software engineer), in the next forty years—fingers crossed—my hope is that together as a family, we’re going to have so much fun. Anyway, some unknown perpetrator that has yet to come clean dumped this large piece of cardboard in our front yard early this morning: Skill Test: Wouter Groeneveld (Jefklak). Baking -> Automatic success. Coding -> Advantage. Parenting -> Roll D20... Free Time -> Critical Fail. Midlife Crisis -> Not triggered. Result: Great success. Level up to 40. Campaign continues. None of The Usual Suspects claim to have anything to do with it. I hope that parenting D20 lands enough critical successes to yet again drag us through the first year. As for that midlife crisis, I think it already happened last year internally. I picked up a few quotes from Carl Jung on the second part of life as the Awakening : the sudden realization past all that career and success gunning that suddenly you are standing in the future you once imagined, feeling that things you once thought would make you happy won’t matter as much. According to Jung, a midlife crisis isn’t a crisis, it’s an initiation. I still need to digest what exactly this would mean to me, but it’s a very interesting viewing angle. Once things settle down, I hope to finally start writing that own philosophical work . Meanwhile, I keep feeding my notebooks information to jump-start future creative sparks. Related topics: / birthday / By Wouter Groeneveld on 26 August 2025.  Reply via email .

Writing AI Career

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Brain Baking 1 months ago

Festival Noise Pollution Reach

Summer music festivals can be a great way to blow off some much needed steam. Unfortunately, sweat and steam aren’t the only things that will be let loose into the atmosphere: ever-increasing volumes and deeper basses tend to result into more and more noise pollution in and around the venue. We live approximately in direct distance from the meadows where Pukkelpop is held, one of the largest outdoor festivals in Belgium. I’m not a festival fan: I personally think you’re crazy if you want to be squished together in a small space with thousands of others. I personally think you’re even crazier if you also want to do that whilst the boxes pump out more than a hundred dB up to the point of having to buy earplugs to actually hear something and enjoy the music. If you’re that kind of person: I’m happy for you! I don’t mind the occasional yearly noise that inevitably comes with the organisation of such a huge multi-day show. But I can’t ignore the fact that each year the noise pollution becomes more and more apparent up to the point where we don’t sleep well those days, even with all windows closed. And if there’s one thing we desperately need right now, it’s sleep. Yes, you’ve guessed it right! My rant on crappy hospital software contained subtle hints: my wife was recovering from a Cesarean section— the second one —and the paperwork that caused a racket at the town hall was the official registration of our son. I hate crying babies so somehow we decided to get another one. But let’s not get sidetracked here. During one of my night shifts, the thumping bass got so loud that I got angry, downloaded a simple decibel meter that’s likely to be very inaccurate on my phone, went outside and pressed the record button. This is the result: Measured noise pollution at 01:40 in the night. Left: inside. Right: outside. Note that the needle is inaccurate at the time of the screenshot because of the constant variation. Inside, I could easily measure which is not exactly silent when you want to sleep, but not really irritating or loud. What is irritating, however, is very frequent but unpredictable fluctuations in loudness as visible in the graphs. Oomph oomph oomph —silence, anxiously waiting for the built-up— oomph oomph OOMPHHHH . Outside, that becomes , the equivalent of a vacuum cleaner turned on-off-on-off-on-… What blew my mind, however, was the fact that the noise was coming from more than three kilometres away. That very night, according to Meteo.be , it was twenty degrees, partially cloudy, and the wind was coming from the NW at 11 km/h. The Pukkelpop venue is located at the NE in an angle of 22.5 degrees. That’s not even a very strong wind. The first day, the wind came from another direction, and we could barely hear anything. Is there any law regulating decibel levels at musical venues? Of course there is, but most laws and texts elaborate at length on what’s (dis)allowed on the location itself—not how to mitigate noise leakage into the surrounding residential areas. Here’s one for outdoor activities in Flanders that groups venues into three categories: (1) local gig, no special application needed, max 85 dB; (2) bigger life performance, max 95 dB, Requires reporting or admission to the mayor and aldermen; (3) big venue, max 100 dB, requires extra permit(s) and measures. This being Belgium, that can be overridden by local municipality regulations, and there can be exceptions to the rule. What about the biggest gig in Belgium that brings in a huge amount of cash for instance. But again, that’s the limit on the venue, not around it. Then there’s a VLAREM II law claiming that after 22h there shouldn’t be any pollution above 35 dB but the official report says something about 50 dB and gives me a headache. The official website of the local police has this to say about night time noise (own translation): It is prohibited to make noise or make noise at night between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., which may disturb the peace of residents, as stipulated in Article 561.1 of the Criminal Code. What exactly is “making noise” here? The more I try to look for a clear definition and rules for environmental noise pollution, the less satisfied my search results are, leaving plenty of gaps open for politicians to do whatever. I am not the only sorry bastard whining about Pukkelpop’s noise pollution: there are too many articles to list here claiming the exact same thing dating back to 2016, and then there’s Folterpop.be ( Torture Pop ) that tries to boycott the whole thing. Again, I don’t mind people having fun—as long as I can catch that one hour of sleep. The site does state something I tend to agree with: Hasselt has a “neighborhood-oriented approach” to night-time noise and the GAS policy [ Gemeentelijke Administratieve Sanctie , Violations in the event of public nuisance]. Article 561 of the Criminal Code makes night-time noise prosecutable, but in practice, the response is often that complaints are not possible because the festival is licensed. So much for Article 561.1. To thank the neighbours—for their… patience? sleepless nights? willingness to turn the blind eye?—the organizers throw a free party for 5k folks living nearby . Nobody there claims they were impacted by the vacuum cleaner turned off-on-off-on-off-on, I wonder why. I realize that complaining about inside is never going to fly but I do find the difficulty of finding easily digestible information about laws and regulations on noise pollution boundaries for specific area(s) to be very remarkable. You’d think that governmental websites are supposed to convey these kinds of things. If Pukkelpop has special permits then they are allowed to occasionally breach that mark on-site . But what about off-site? And what about three kilometres away off-site? I can’t imagine what it must be like for people living right next to the festival that’s conveniently placed in a residential area. If you can’t beat them, join them? I also realize that complaining about outside might also come across as elitist as people living in noisy cities regularly get exposed to noise levels above . In fact, there are World Health Organization studies on this very subject. In Belgium, only fall within that noisy border, while in Spain, that’s for some reason more than . Quietness outside and inside—both out there and in my own mind—is the reason why we don’t want to live in a big city. Quietness should be a basic right for everyone. Oh well. That night, I did not get bored angrily typing a draft for this post, and sleep-deprivation was already on the table anyway. Related topics: / pollution / hasselt / By Wouter Groeneveld on 24 August 2025.  Reply via email .

Music Culture

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Brain Baking 1 months ago

Indispensable Cloud It Yourself Software: 2025 Edition

It’s been too long since this blog published a meaningless click-bait list article so here you go. Instead of simply enumerating frequently used apps such as app defaults from late 2023 , I thought it might be fun to zoom in on the popular self-hosted branch and summarize what we are running to be able to say Fuck You to the Big Guys. Below is a list of software that we depend on categorized by usage. I’m sure you can figure out for yourself how to run these in a container on your NAS. We still have a Synology, and while I strongly dislike the custom Linux distribution’s tendency to misplace configuration files, the DSM software that comes with it is good enough to cover a lot of topics. The list excludes typical Linux sysadmin stuff such as fail2ban, ssh key setup, Samba, … Photos : PhotoPrism . It comes with WebDAV support to easily sync photos from your phone. My wife’s iPhone uses PhotoSync which works flawlessly. I’d rather also use SyncThing on iOS like I do on Android (or the latest Android client fork). SyncThing is amazing and I use it for much more than photo syncing. Streaming videos : Synology’s built-in Video Station . It’s got a lot of flaws and Jellyfin is clearly the better choice here. As for how to get the videos on there: rip & tear using good old DVDShrink on the WinXP Retro Machine! We still use the old DS Video Android app on our smart box to connect to the NAS as we don’t have a smart TV. Streaming music : Navidrome —see How To Stream Your Own Music: Reprise for more info on which clients we use and why caching some albums locally is good enough. As for how to get the music on there: rip & tear using A Better CD Encoder ; or for Win98 lovers; WinGrab. Backups : Restic —see Verify Your Backup Strategy to see how this automatically works from multiple machines. Smart Home : Home Assistant with a HomeWizard P1 meter that monitors our gas/electricity usage locally instead of sending it god knows where. We only use the bare minimum features, I’m not a big Smart Home fan. I suppose WireGuard should also be in this category but for now I refuse to enable the possibility to dial home . Ads/DHCP : Pi-Hole . That wonderful piece of software blocks almost 15% of our daily traffic—see Six Months With A Pi-Hole . We also use it as a DHCP server to have more control over DNS. Wi-Fi : TP-Link Omada Controller that provisions and secures our access points locally instead of poking through the real cloud for no reason at all. Git : Gitea although I should really migrate to Forgejo. The NAS hosts my private projects, I have another instance on the VPS for public ones. RSS : FreshRSS . Until recently, just NetNewsWire as an RSS client did just fine but I sometimes caught myself doomscrolling on my phone so figured instead I’d scroll on other people’s blogs. NetNewsWire supports it so my reading behaviour doesn’t change on the computer. Pair with Readrops on Android that also caches entries so if I’m disconnected from the home network I can still read interesting stuff. I do not see the appeal of cloud-based office software so simply rely on LibreOffice to do its thing locally—no need for NextCloud, but it’s there if you want to. Speaking of which, I still use DEVONthink and of course Obsidian to manage my personal files/databases that hook into the above using SyncThing and Restic. Abandoned software: RSS Bridge (no longer needed), Watchtower (too complex for my simple setup), some kind of PHP-based accounting software I already forgot about. Software running publicly on the VPS: Radicale CardDAV/CalDAV server (I want this to be accessible outside of the NAS), another Gitea instance, Nginx (I really need to migrate to Caddy) et al. Related topics: / self-hosted / NAS / lists / By Wouter Groeneveld on 21 August 2025.  Reply via email .

Php Cloud Open Source

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Brain Baking 1 months ago

An Ode To The PlayStation Portable

This year, the folks from the Into the Aether video gaming podcast put all their eggs in an older basket labelled Sony: the PlayStation Portable or PSP. The previous years were dominated by Nintendo and now Sony can try to fight their way to the handheld gaming top. Did they succeed? The following graph containing total lifetime hardware sales 1 in million clearly indicates they didn’t even get close: Hardware sales of popular game consoles. Light green: TV consoles (PS2 wins first place at 155M). Dark green: handhelds (DS wins first place at 154M. Source: Wikipedia. Of course that depends on your definition of getting close —The PSP did end up selling almost as much as the GBA and a tad bit more than the 3DS. That’s very impressive for a first-time handheld console that was (and still is) dominated by Nintendo for decades! Until Sony decided to focus all effort on the PlayStation 4, completely abandoning the PSP Vita that sold almost as low as SEGA’s Game Gear . Ouch. My decision tree for buying retro handhelds will tell you you need to get yourself a PSP if your budget is tight, if you like to emulate a few things, and if you care for PS1/PSP support. The PSP is still going strong in the second hand market and in both the homebrew and emulation community precisely because of this: it’s a very hackable device with an excellent screen that can effortlessly run a lot of other systems. Even though I used to own a silver PSP Slim, I do not feel entitled to write a proper ode to the PSP as I was and always will be a Game Boy/DS fanboy (see my Ode To The Game Boy Advance ). I don’t share the same warm fuzzy feelings Joel has when thinking about the silver thing: I think about how loud and slow the stupid UMD discs were, how hot the thing got after a while, how annoying it was from Sony to force a proprietary memory stick system down our throats, and how slow the damn thing booted. In fact, the only way you will get even a tiny portion of joy out of your PSP is if you root & hack it ! That finally enables backing up the disks and the snappy booting of ISOs from memory. It also enables a huge amount of customizability: from functionality to UI and of course GB(C)(A) emulators. See what I did there? The best use of a PSP is to have it act like a GBA, ha! The only reason why the PSP is so high up there on the above sales chart is because of its hackability. So what about native PSP games then? Well… Are you perhaps referring to the influx of inferior PS1/2 ports? Sure, the GBA also saw a lot of SNES ports, and the PSP’s two 333 MHz processors easily outclassed any DS game attempting and embarrassing themselves with rendering 3D graphics. But this is exactly why I never was a Sony fanboy: I don’t care about power—I care about gameplay. So for the sake of this ode that looks like it’s derailing into a destructive rant, let us skip these games. I never owned a lot of PSP games, but the games I did own, I really enjoyed: the best Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT) version, the best Tactics Ogre (TO) version, a great GTA Vice City spin-off—whoops, am I talking ports again? It’s surprisingly difficult not to! To be fair, these games differentiated themselves enough from their bigger brother to justify the buy. Yet at the same time, I think it’s a bit sad to see so many Top 25 articles listing nothing but games like that (another God of War , another Metal Gear Solid , another GTA , another Kingdom Hearts , another Tekken , …) Yet the PSP brought us weird stuff like Patapon and Loco Roco . I played and liked both games but wouldn’t rush to put them in my Top 100. The FFT and TO adaptations however did make it in there until TO: Reborn kicked out the endless grinding PSP variant and it remains to be seen if the upcoming re-release of the re-release of FFT—that’s not a typo—will kick out FFT PSP as well. Jeanne d’Arc , another turn-based sleeper hit by Level 5, is a blind spot for me unfortunately. I might as well confess it here. The only reason I bought a PSP was for the remake of Rondo of Blood in Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles . It even included Symphony of the Night if you knew how to unlock it. Having a legal portable version of one of the best Metroidvania games ever played is nothing to sneeze at. As for Dracula X , it’s a bloody difficult Classicvania that’s not the best but deserves more love. Sadly, as a platform exclusive, the game currently remains locked behind the PSP library. Beyond that… I have been combing through my personal archive of screenshots, guides, savegames, ISOs, FAQs, photos and came back empty-handed. There was no mention of any PSP game in any of my notes and I didn’t keep create and/or keep any material related to that silver PSP slim. The only thing I found a scan of a receipt of Loco Roco ( ) and a Hori case ( ) bought at 24/11/2007—that’s it. As further proof for my pledged alliance to the PSP’s adversaries, here’s an 18 year old picture of my gaming shelf dominated by PC big boxes, GameCube games, a few Wii ones, and GBA/DS games: A snapshot of this gamer's shelf almost twenty years ago: a lot of GameCube games, a few Wii ones, DS/GBA, and the entire lower shelf dominated by PC games. I’ll leave it up to you to spot the hidden and good stuff, including a variant of Tactics Ogre that was really good but not as good as the PSP one. For me, the PSP was a mediocre platform that I had to buy into as a Castlevania fan. Perhaps that was just a tad later than the above photo ( Dracula X Chronicles released half February 2008 in Europe). So much for a true eulogy. What a bust. Sorry for the clickbait. That does beg the question: would it be worth it for me to install the PPSSPP emulator and see if I can give Sony’s console another chance? Games I would be interested in (re)discovering besides Jeanne d’Arc : Metal Gear Acid (why does nobody mention this?), and… Valkyria Chronicles II ? That’s it? Of all the games mentioned in the six plus hours long Into The Aether episode on the PSP (that fails to mention Acid by the way), only Jeanne genuinely triggers my interest. I compiled this graph in 2020 when the Nintendo Switch 2 didn’t exist and the older brother didn’t yet reach 150M in sales . The PS2 number should be 160+ by now. That means the Switch actually beat the Game Boy!  ↩︎ Related topics: / psp / By Wouter Groeneveld on 17 August 2025.  Reply via email .

Gaming Entertainment Hardware

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