Random

European granularity

6 years living in Europe and the only thing I didn’t get used to yet is the granularity of everything. If I drive for 2h, I’m in Spain, and then if I go for more 8h, I’m in France. All fine and good, and different languages aren’t an issue. Services, on the other hand, can…

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Localization

To be a good translator, you need to be a good writer

It’s fundamental to grasp your native language at a deeper level than any other so you can effectively communicate what the original text says Video game localization isn’t an easy job, be it due to the nature of the job itself —translating something without seeing the whole picture, because it doesn’t exist yet — or…

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Rambling

I guess I don’t hate coding

Messing around with Decker and Twine is making me realize I don’t necessarily hate coding, I hate dealing with tables, arrays, matrices, and things like that. 20 years ago I got into a Computer Engineering major in a local college and, to be honest, it was quite alright. I was a good student and got good grades, but hated…

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Rambling

Visual creativity

Over the last few months, I’ve started to realize that I’m a very visual person, which is funny for someone who’s nearsighted, has a bit of facial blindness, and probably has aphantasia or something similar. When I started making music as a hobby, years ago, I trialed many different DAWs. Almost all of them have…

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Video Games

Monster Hunter is a post-collapse society

The Monster Hunter series isn’t an epic waiting to be told, but society rebuilding itself I’m not going over the detailed history of the Monster Hunter world, because it doesn’t exist. Some wikis have a sort of synopsis about what events happened in what order but, as far as I know, there was never an…

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Rambling

I miss my Mazda 323

It was not a great car. I mean, it’s a Mazda, so it’s pretty good overall, but it was a vehicle from 2003. That’s the last year Mazda made the 323 before switching to the Mazda3. So, great car all around, except for this particular one, which had gone around more than 200,000 kilometers before…

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Music

Changing music services is a miserable experience

Why does changing streaming services, or even music player software, have to be an experience so hostile? The first time I moved from one “music service” to another was when I moved from Winamp to iTunes. Heresy, I know, but my music collection was growing fast and I wanted an easy way to manage all…

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Music

I made some chiptune music

Well, I finally released my chiptune/fakebit album, made in Renoise and with sounds synthesized on Plogue Chipsynth C64. If the sounds don’t seem too much videogame-y, it’s because I was driving the filter with resonance while trying to create more “realistic” sounds. I was trying to push the chip emulation to its limits rather than bending the tracker…

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Localization

How to criticize a translation

Or: how to critically appraise any kind of creative endeavor without acting like a fool or an asshole This is an old post that’s been sitting for a while in my drafts, and I ruminate about what to write in it for some time after reading the article below. There’s actually nothing I could add…

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Random

Well, would you look at that

It is sad that, while being in a country with more than one café on each corner, it’s hard to find good coffee, to the point where Starbucks is an acceptable substitute. Even more because Starbucks over-roast their coffee, so much so that this “blonde roast” is more like a medium roast everywhere else. On…

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