Latest blog posts

Despite being short on time, I really wanted to participate in the Adventure Jam again, just like last year. In 2019, this ran from 8 to 22 June and once again the challenge was to make an adventure game basically from scratch in 14 days. This year, my entry "Escape from DIMANSION" should have a LucasArts vibe to it, at least from the interface and from having it impossible for the player to die or experience a dead-man-walking situation where they are unable to finish the game.
Read more

Enough time has now passed that I can write this without endangering somebody. A while ago, I met somebody who'd fled to the Netherlands. This man had to leave everything behind... his home, family and friends, everything that he ever knew. Why? Because he's not straight. And where he comes from that means not just being discriminated against, but experiencing physical violence, with police looking the other way. So, this person took what little he could fit in a small backpack, left everything else behind, and came to the Netherlands. That's how I met this young man: his few remaining worldly possessions in the tiny backpack and, heart-wrenchingly, the scars on his arms betraying he had tried to find "another way" out of his living nightmare... yet there was a sheepish grin on his face, hoping he'd finally be free here.
Read more

Even though I'm a big adventure game lover, I hadn't known of AdvJam before. The jam is about creating an adventure game in a mere 14 days. This year, it ran from 4 to 18 May and I learned about it in time and was able to create an entry for it. "Spy Quest 1 - Mission: SPECTRUM" is my tribute to the older text parser adventure games as made in the 1980s by Sierra. Not actual Sierra AGI, but with the same kind of blocky low-res style of artwork in all the 16 glorious EGA colours. Party like it's 1988!
Read more

Firefox can be virtually endlessly extended through all manner of extensions. But even without extensions, the browser has a plethora of settings that are not exposed through the Preferences panel and hidden away in the about:config system. When using Firefox, enter about:config (no "http://" or "www" in there) into the address bar, take heed of the sensible warning and take a look around. Many of the settings are there by default, or changed through preferences (anything that isn't at default value is displayed in bold) and still others have to be added manually. Most of these settings won't be very useful to the average user, but there are some hidden gems. Here's a few of my favourite ones.
Read more

And then Windows 10 Creators Update came out. Along with all kinds of improvements came the reset of all customisation to default settings (ugh!). This included resetting the MIDI output to Microsoft's default and underwhelming "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth". I found my MIDI Selector tool was no longer completely effective on Windows 10 x64 and had a minor bug as well as some slight inefficiencies. Fixed version 1.0.1 has been posted on the tools page.
Read more