Like many folks, I tend to lose sight of the tools I use most frequently and most tacitly. It’s a shame, though, because for the very same reason, these are the tools for which I’m the most grateful! I have plenty to be thankful for, but I figured some reflections on software could be helpful to the folks who might visit this website. So here you go! It’s no coincidence that everything mentioned here is free and open source software; software freedom is essential to my personal computing philosophy.

The receipt stuck in my copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes tells me that I first read the book almost exactly fourteen years ago. I’d forgotten the plot entirely, so I figured it was a good way to get into the mood of the season. I remembered the wistful prose that characterizes much of Bradbury’s work, and that’s definitely there 1. As I recalled, though, this novel was somewhat darker than Dandelion Wine or Farewell Summer.

In The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks, world-famous game player Jernau Morat Gurgeh competes in an alien civilization’s tournament. The game is central to the functioning of the society, so much so that they share the same name–Azad. While the novel has its moments, they fail under the weight of a passe story. For one thing, the setting makes Gurgeh almost unrelatable. His language, culture and life history are barely explained (and contain inconsistencies 1).

I’ve lately been enjoying short, story-driven games like Gone Home, Virginia, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Firewatch. Subsurface Circular fits that bill, although it’s no walking simulator, either. Just the opposite: the protagonist is seated for the duration of the two-hour experience. I was going to make a joke about the nascent “sitting simulator” genre of games, but it turns out that Chair Simulator is blazing trails here. (Careful, though: you die if you sit for too long in that one.

Growing up, I didn’t gave much thought to the lack of diversity among my favorite science fiction authors. That’s become much more important to me in recent years, so I’ve been branching out from Asimov, Bradbury, and Heinlein with more contemporary and diverse voices like Martha Wells, Anne Leckie, and Ada Palmer. Naturally, a friend’s recommendation of Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler shot to the top of my reading list.

Friend Off is a web-based multiplayer game I made over the past year. In it, you ask your friends a question, receive all of their answers without their names attached, and then try to guess who said what. It’s free and open source software, so anyone is welcome to play any time by visiting friendoff.net. Why? During the COVID-19 pandemic, my friends occasionally hosted trivia games over teleconferencing services. This was charming but labor-intensive.

Firewatch may be the most popular video game in the “walking simulator” genre. I played three other walking simulators before checking it out because I wanted a solid basis for understanding its success. While most folks will be able to appreciate the game on its own merit, this context certainly helped me understand its particular strengths. Like Virginia, Firewatch uses a cell-shaded visual style, rendering objects in hyper-simplified form. That’s probably easier to do in Virginia’s urban setting, but Firewatch makes it work for a natural environment.

For kids raised on 90’s-era Saturday Night Live, the name “Jack Handey” is synonymous with “Deep Thoughts”–absurd observations read by Phil Hartman and sprinkled throughout many episodes. I learned that the name belongs to a living, breathing comedy writer (and not just a character for the bit) when he started publishing essays in “The New Yorker.” These were like long-form Deep Thoughts: completely random and hopelessly naive. I couldn’t get enough.

Years ago, Michal Zalewski wrote a widely-circulated essay titled “Disaster planning for regular folks”. I read it because I was a fan of his 2011 book, “The Tangled Web” and because I retained an interest in emergency preparedness from my scouting days. It was entertaining and informative, and it inspired me to make some substantial improvements to my own emergency plans. When Zalewski announced Practical Doomsday last year, I pre-ordered it immediately.

Much like Tenth of December, George Saunders’ Pastoralia is a collection of fascinating yet cynical character studies. Whether portraying a troubled kid, a self-absorbed barber, or a hack writer, he’s consistently focused on the flaws of his subjects. And here again, Saunders often provides characterization by fusing a subject’s tone with a third-person perspective. The narrative trick is fun on its own, but it also makes the stream-of-conscious writing feel surprisingly authentic.