Artemis' Bog

Oops!... I Did It Again

Unknown — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I did it again. I changed blogging engines again. I was running Astro, got tired of it and wanted to use something else. So here we are, with this fully statically generated blog, using Zola. And I guess a few more surprises.

Moonlight

Unknown — Sun, 11 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Late at night, in the dreamlike darkness, the stifling silence of slumber was but a canvas for the delicate glow of the moon. That lunar luminescence was slashing through the solemn respite of the night.

From the bird to the worm, the predator to the prey, all of life was still, a picture of perfect peace. As of life so was the water, undisturbed despite its fullness.

Unmoving were two silhouettes, fixed on each other as if not breathing, deeply entranced. It was as if the forest itself was stopped in contemplation. Droplets defying gravity were married to their lilies as if a single splash would rupture this moment. No wind would push the vines, falling from the trees. No wolf would howl.

Fixed, as if time itself was meaningless, silent as if sound itself was meaningless, no force could move them. Stopped in contemplation of each other, none but them could interrupt this moment.

Then, awakening from torpor, her dark piercing eyes still transfixed, she moved her hand, caressing skin like an alabaster sky sprinkled with countless stars. As she felt the touch, she bashfully averted her eyes which shined like the sea, her sky burning like the ocean. As she trembled, it was as if wind was floating her hair, like dancing flames of a candle.

Suddenly, she pounced, a trail of flames reflecting the moonlight as she embraced her partner, like a whirlwind, mixing straight lines of fire amidst swirling darkness.

Laughter turned into kissing as the peacefulness of the night was broken by the slashing sounds of excitement. Bodies intertwined as waves came rushing to the shore, as owls fled through the moonlit sky.

At last, in place of chirping was only whisperings of sweet nothings, reminiscing and dreams.

An Ode to the fun episode

Unknown — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I've been rewatching Stargate: SG1 (that will be abbreviated as Stargate from now on) lately. It's a show that, despite its many problems, accidentally offered an amazing accidental metaphor for the Iraq war. But on top of that metaphor I will not mention again in this article, it's also a very fun show. Even if substance is often lacking, it succeeded in many very important ways, entertainment-wise:

Mirages of the past

Unknown — Sun, 28 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

About 7 to 10 years ago, I heard about Welcome to Night Vale on a now-defunct podcast. Welcome to Night Vale is an audio drama in the format of a local news show from the fictional town of Night Vale. As of 25 episodes listened (in less than a week, I am ok, please don't send help), it's a strong recommendation if that's your cup of tea. One of the sections of the show is "The Weather", where an indie artist's song is showcased, and this is what I'd like to expand upon.

In defense of scope

Unknown — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today (bear with me, I know it's pretty much the dark and stormy nights of essays), I felt like writing. As I begin writing this article, my very own country once again stands on the edge of the abyss. As a result, I decided to come back to the familiarity of my video game rants.

I do not hope to convince, only to express yet another yearning within me. As I have been experimenting with many formats, and touched a bit about this on my Why I write article, I open a window into myself, and wish that this piece is a seed from which more may grow.

What I crave, what I desire, what I long for is better scoped games.

Structure is a lie. Linearity is for weaklings. So I will say the big bad phrase and then immediately proceed to ignore it: I have never once in my life played an open world game that was good because it was an open world game, only in spite of it.

I miss the web

Unknown — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I promised. It's here. Spoiler alert, it's just going to be the usual but it is a direct sequel to an article intended as such from the start. So it's a new thing I'm doing.

That's probably better than most series I'm waiting for, so you have that going for you

-- Alfredo, about the previous article

Why I write

Unknown — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I love writing. That's not the only thing I love in life. I also love my wife, our cats, or pizza. Writing is not the only activity. I love playing video games, I write about that quite a lot. I love having interesting conversation with nice people. I love complaining too, which brings me back to writing. I wanted to be an author when I was a child, amongst other dreams, some realized, some in progress, and others lost.

Running in the nineties

Unknown — Fri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

On a whim, I decided to give a rewatch a show I sporadically watched on the TV when I was young, Dark Angel. It is not a transcendental show that will deeply alter your life, watch DS9 for that. And you might tell me that it's not a 90's show. Well, you should note that being released in 2000, it is according to the archaic calendar we use, it's indeed a 90's show, and that makes that unrelated reference of a title valid. If you weep at this absurdity, please know that we tried but we can't have nice things, as any passing interest in history can prove.

Necrophile

Unknown — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Oh Necrophile, you who seek such poisonous outcomes, how can you persist?

You, who would cast Socrates' crime onto the living, only to commit it yourself?

Oh Necrophile, how can you cling to such a hollow existence?

Your speech, a maelstrom of ire and anguish.

Oh Necrophile, how can you?

You, scared of the cacophony of the chaos of the cosmos.

Oh Necrophile, why are you so afraid?

You, who drapes shadows into a majestic life giving light, only for it to truly be the flames of hatred.

Oh Necrophile, why must you deceive that reality that you so nervously deny?

You, who venerates that which you fear the most.

Oh Necrophile, why must you?

You, who in beauty, only see sinful demons.

Oh Necrophile, how dare you?

You, who would seize the origin of the world, only to spawn your macabre legion?

Oh Necrophile, how can you be?

You, who lust after our darkest hours, wishing only to repeat them.

Oh Necrophile, why are you, still?

George

Unknown — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Too slow. How far had George come? How far was George going? The road had been long and without end, it seemed. He didn't reminisce on the past often, instead, he always looked forward. He couldn't, he mustn't, sit still – he had to go forwards, always. That was his only option.

On Inventory Mistakes

Unknown — Sun, 17 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The first real article that I wrote on that blag was about game saves in video games. A piece of information that you don't have if you discovered this article in 2023 is that each and every one of my articles has tags, for when one day, I decide to implement a meaningful tag system on my blag. The two tags of that 2013 article were the following: "videogames", and "rant". The latter of which should be indicative of the content that is to come in this article.

And get ready because ranting is what I do best.

Futures Lost

Unknown — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I've just watched a small retrospective on the HTC Advantage, running on Windows Mobile, precursor to Windows Phone, released just a year before the iPhone.

From 2023, it looks like a Phone/PDA hybrid. Watching the retrospective, the enthusiastic explanations of the presenter, along with the stylus-powered demonstration, it was hard not to get lost in the fervor. Nevertheless, I was genuinely impressed by everything that could be achieved on this device, including tasks at which modern smartphones greatly struggle.

Chasing useless blag optimization

Unknown — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Is all I'm talking on this blag is my blag!?

Last Sunday, I had a bit of time so I decided to work a bit on my blag. Let's see what I did and whether it's interesting:

Added a favicon
Updated the delivery of the CSS
Added one media query
Server updates

Three commits later let's see how it went.

So, I re-did my blag

Unknown — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Wasn't this blag dead?

No, not really. Around the time I stopped publishing here, my life started going faster. Things happen, you face adversity, you overcome hardships, you get rewarded for your efforts, you get setbacks, you repeat the cycle, and suddenly, it's been nearly 10 years. I didn't stop writing entirely, I dropped a few articles into my gemlog (HTTPS mirror), I had other, more personal creative outlets but this blag laid dormant.

Will it fully come back to from its slumber? That is left to be seen. I have however one article, albeit pertaining to the blag itself.

Simple Wine Workflow

Unknown — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

For a little while, I've been wanting to write an introduction to Wine. Wine is not an emulator, so do not call it one. Or else, terrible things will happen. Wine is "a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, Mac OSX, & BSD". It isn't perfect but it works often. You might still have to boot under Windows from time to time but it will help to minimize these. Of course, Wine is free software (as in free speech). Let's see how to use it.

The Half-Life 2 Cinematic Mod

Unknown — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Half Life… There is so much to say about these games that I'll almost don't know where to begin. I love Half-Life. I discovered this game years ago, sometime during my (pre)-adolescence and I was astonished: it was awesome! Still, there are people considering it the best FPS ever made, even, the best game ever made. I, personally, wouldn't be able to say whether it or Duke Nukem 3D should be granted the title of best FPS ever: that's how good it is.

Half-Life 2 was a worthy sequel. A game like Half-Life having a worthy sequel is so rare that it could be considered a miracle, but after all, has Gaben ever disappointed any of us? After that, Valve released two standalone expansions continuing the series: Half-Life2: Episode One and Two. They were once again worthy sequels and for years, we have been waiting for the final conclusion of these magnificent games.

This article isn't dedicated to those masterpieces. Instead it focuses on the Half-Life 2 Cinematic Mod. A mod that supposedly "Raises the outdated graphical appearance of the Half-Life 2 trilogy to a state-of-the-art level, while giving it a more stressed, darker and minatory look.".

Does it? To answer this question, we'll have to deconstruct it piece by piece.

Arch i686 container

Unknown — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, I've been wanting to build package for my not very powerful eee-pc laptop. I just have one problem: all my computers except this one are use a 64bit architecture instead of a 32bit one. So I needed to make a chroot. So, instead of doing that I decided to play a little with systemd containers. Here is what I did.

The No-Bullshit Approach

Unknown — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Life is short, life is complicated, life is exciting yet sometimes boring. But why is that? What can possibly make your life boring and complicated? Bullshit. So here is some advice : avoid bullshit whenever you can, you don't have time for it. How? Let me present you the No-bullshit approach!

Batch Document Conversions with Libreoffice

Unknown — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A few days ago, I was having trouble with some powerpoint documents I was given. I needed to read them on my netbook while traveling. The problem was that my netbook is a magnificent Asus eeePC 701 which, of course, isn't powerful enough to run libreoffice. So I had to convert them, but with what ? I didn't want to use Libreoffice to open each documents and export them to pdf : there was a dozen of them ! And then, I discovered libreoffice headless mode.

Alan Wake: a case study about game saves

Unknown — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A few days ago, I started replaying Alan Wake. Why ? Because it's a really good game; I enjoyed it and I wanted to replay it, but mostly because I hadn't played it in Nightmare mode, which is the real way to play this game. Of course, this point is subject to debate but I consider that if you do not have access to the whole content of the game, then you're playing a limited mode. I will not spoil the game in this article, I will merely describe gameplay mechanics and its saving system. For those who have never played the game, its main character Alan Wake is a writer and you will find some of his manuscript pages in the game. In Nightmare Mode, the game is harder and you can find more pages. I played the normal mode during my first play-through and I was disappointed when I noticed what I missed. Since enough time passed, I decided to replay the game in Nightmare mode.

I had forgotten about how horrendous the saving system was: there is none! The game is only composed of checkpoints! It's also divided in narrative arcs called Episodes that you can replay at-will but even if this is a nice idea, it is not relevant to this article. Don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoyed this game. Sam Lake is an amazing writer and Alan Wake's story is a prime example of a perfect structure and captivating narrative. The gameplay and its rhythm are well balanced and renewed enough that it doesn't become boring. Alan Wake is a great game that deserves to be played. You should probably go buy it. Anyway, it's good but its checkpoint system is terrible.

On ebooks

Unknown — Sat, 21 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

EDIT 2014-08-25: I added a few links.

I love books. I love books a lot. I've loved them since I was a little kid. My parents read me books before I went to bed. They read books for pleasure. So naturally, as a kid I wanted to read books. I was really happy to learn to read. Because guess what, books are awesome. And with a few francs you could get a library card that would grant you an unlimited amount of stories, adventures and fun. Then I grew up and added blood, sex and philosophy into the mix and books were awesome and mature. So yeah, I love books, but how is that interesting?

On game saves

Unknown — Wed, 14 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The option to save in video games is an important feature to gamers everywhere. Without it, your progression in a game is limited within your gaming session. When you play Super Mario Bros or Prince of Persia, you have to beat the game in one sitting. There's nothing else you can do ! You have to finish this game or to fail. But nowadays, games are longer. Unless you're playing Call of Duty Ghostly Modern Ops 27, you can't beat a modern game in one sitting.

But before I begin to explain the implications of every saving method that I can think of and which one is the best, I shall warn you that I am a PC gamer and that my opinion will be focused on that aspect even though, I'll try to think about good console implementations.

Blag Intro

Unknown — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,