No, I am not talking about literally diving into Alaska in the dead of winter. That would be foolhardy at best, and frostbite-inducing at worst. I’m talking about one of the best bands you’ve likely never heard of, Alaska in Winter – one of my favorites for close to 15 years now. (CW: mental health, suicide mentioned within, caveat lector)

Prolegomena

First of all, what is Alaska in Winter? Alaska in Winter is a solo project by the elusive Brandon Bethancourt, who, as far as I know, has spent most of his time making music in Albuquerque, New Mexico (with a detour to Alaska and even Berlin). As far as the legend goes, the name stems from a winter he spent in, you guessed it, Alaska, making music in an isolated cabin. That music, The Cabin Sessions, has thus far never been released (what a shame!). Brandon’s music is synthy, poppy, vocoder-drenched, and full of energy and meaning at the same time.

It’s been a pensive weekend in many ways. We have a 3-day weekend, for which I am very grateful, and I’ve rested up a lot and recuperated from the barrage of work lately. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my job, but neither me nor my wife have had a vacation in way too long. We have a week-long vacation coming up soon to see my family in Oregon, and I’m super, super excited about it as a chance to recharge. I haven’t seen my mom since 2018, and haven’t seen my dad for almost as long, and haven’t seen my sister since 2018 either.

So I was writing my favorite podcasts entry, and I put in a little aside about the podcast Nocturne and some of the more melancholy aspects of it. When I posted it on Mastodon, I put it under a CW (content warning) due to mentions of death, and realized I’d rather excise it from the entry and have more people read the entry. So I just removed it and then reposted it on Mastodon, as I planned on putting it in another entry. Here is the text below:

Last updated 07 Nov 2024

Since I’ve mentioned my favorite music and videogames, I thought I’d share a list of my favorite podcasts with you all and some thoughts on why I love each of them. I’ll try to figure out some categories as well; this is a work-in-progress as so many of the other features on this site. That’s OK, flux is OK, growth is OK, stasis is death.

I’m adding a little bit more to the prolegomena, since for some reason Hugo is pulling in nearly the whole entry for the summary, and we don’t want that. So let’s engage in some circumlocution and run out the clock before we jump in.

Last updated 26 May 2024

This particular idea has been knocking around in my head for awhile now. Let me first say that I am not a qualified security or IT professional, nor a security researcher. I’ve just been using computers for a hell of a long time, and spent a lot of time on the Internet (I’ve been online in some form or another since I was 9 years old, starting with the DOS AOL client [!]).

A list in progress

Last updated: Sat 28 Jan 2023

• Added Chicory, Moonglow Bay, Sable, and Eastshade, and deleted a number of entries throughout.

TODO: Alphabetize list of games? Tweak formatting? Not sure. I’ll have to work on it. Especially with the switch to Hugo and Markdown. I have a few things to add to this list and I’m sorry it’s not been updated in a while.

Prolegomena

Just as it sounds like, this is a list of “chill” or relaxing games, focusing on PC gaming in particular. Special thanks to my friend @pixouls for suggesting I write this post and curate this list, and for providing a ton of the recommendations!

Dear Reader: this is the first in what I hope will be an ongoing series of posts on etymology, philology, and just fun with words. I used to blog about strictly Classics stuff, as I was trying to blog professionally and pursue a tenure-track career. Now it’s just fun and I like geeking out about words. So here’s the first of, dis volentibus, many. Enjoy.

Have you ever heard of the digamma? I won’t blame you if you haven’t; it’s kind of an esoteric, and easily forgettable, little letter. It’s found in some of the oldest Greek words, and even though it disappeared from most dialects of even ancient Greek, its absence is felt, and it somehow even lives on in Latin. First of all, what does it look like?

So I was thinking recently of the marvelous shields throughout Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes (aka Septem Contra Thebas, aka ἑπτὰ ἐπὶ Θήβας). The Septem was part of the prolegomena to my dissertation, where I looked at Polyneikes’ homecoming to Thebes, which only truly happens at his death. I spent a lot of time with the play, mostly with Polyneikes’ shield, but the other shields are also really fascinating. I was talking to a friend about all this recently, and found that I was interested in exploring the rest of the shields in the play.

Last updated 29 Oct 2024

Here is a list, as updated as it can be, of music I would recommend to y’all, friends. I’ll split things up by genre, which is probably the easiest way, although my idea of genre for some bands may differ from yours (sometimes mine is a little too expansive at times). I’m trying to make this a little more select, rather than dumping every artist in here like I did previously.

Last updated 28 Jan 2023: added/removed some games here and there, added PS2 and Wii sections

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• 0.0. FOREWORD
  • 0.1. LICENSE
  • 0.2. CONTACT
• 1.0. TOOLS
• 2.0. NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM (NES) GAMES
  • 2.1. OFFICIAL ENGLISH LOCALIZATIONS
  • 2.2. FAN-TRANSLATIONS
• 3.0. SUPER NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM (SNES) GAMES
  • 3.1. OFFICIAL ENGLISH LOCALIZATIONS
  • 3.2. FAN-TRANSLATIONS
• 4.0. GAME BOY (ORIGINAL) (GB) GAMES
  • 4.1. OFFICIAL ENGLISH LOCALIZATIONS
  • 4.2. FAN-TRANSLATIONS
• 5.0. GAME BOY COLOR (GBC) GAMES
  • 5.1. OFFICIAL ENGLISH LOCALIZATIONS
  • 5.2. FAN-TRANSLATIONS
• 6.0. GAME BOY ADVANCE (GBA) GAMES
  • 6.1. OFFICIAL ENGLISH LOCALIZATIONS
  • 6.2. FAN-TRANSLATIONS
• 7.0. PLAYSTATION (PSX) GAMES
  • 7.1. OFFICIAL ENGLISH LOCALIZATIONS
  • 7.2. FAN-TRANSLATIONS
• 8.0. PLAYSTATION 2 (PS2) GAMES
  • 8.1. OFFICIAL ENGLISH LOCALIZATIONS
• 9.0. WII GAMES
  • 9.1. OFFICIAL ENGLISH LOCALIZATIONS
  • 9.2. FAN-TRANSLATIONS

0.0. FOREWORD

N.B. & DISCLAIMER: Many of these are JRPGs or Japanese-only games, and will require a translation patch to make them playable in English. ROMHacking.net links are included, but you’ll have to find the ROMs yourself; no links are provided here for that.