I’ve been working through more Dostoyevsky- currently ending the year reading The Brothers Karamazov (Constance Garnett translation).

It’s topping The Idiot for me- and a fitting way to end the year. I have spent most of 2025 stuck in a 19th Century reading cycle which started when reading Murakamis “After the quake” short story collection, specifically Super-Frog saves Tokyo where he mentions Anna K.

Anna Karenina-> Crime and Punishment-> The Idiot and some various Kafka in the mix too.

Hoping to visit some modern stuff again next year

If you are looking for some modern stuff that would go nicely with Dostoyevsky/Kafka, I can warmly recommend Krasznahorkai, especially his first book, Satantango.

Really well written and well structured novel, and although he uses long sentences and no paragraph breaks, the writing is surprisingly accessible and incredibly immersive.

It was my first fiction book in a long time and it made me love fiction again.

Thank you adamors, I’ll be sure to give Satantango a go next- I’ve been struggling to find a modern substitute for the Russian classics and haven’t been able to put my finger on why- there is a quality to it that keeps me engrossed.

I followed this exact same path. Started with HTML for guilds, learning to slice PSDs and ended with learning VB6 to develop auto buyers / adopters :D Slopdog forums was my inspiration for using VB I think?

Just went through this today for my daughter- struggled to find an i5 not on pre-order, and the RAM was crippling- ended up going Ryzen 7 for a first time and 2x8Gb DDR5 6000 @ £119 - looking forward to building it with her!

Ryzen is the better choice anyway :)

Props on building a PC with your kid, I have very fond memories of doing that with my dad. Have fun!

Thanks :) very much looking forward to it! Maybe I’ll be a AMD convert after this!

Whats stopping people selling their gift cards and using them before the buyers? Or am I missing something?

The author briefly touches upon this under the section 'Word and character frequency analysis', but I'm not sure this would really help with writing style?

Thank you for sharing this, I am in a similar situation and often think this, however always fall back to the "I'm just being lazy train of thought".

I didn't actually make it through the exams that would allow me to study Computer Science, after studying hard I just couldn't concentrate when it came to the exam, I had plenty of time and knew it was important however couldn't focus. (I was like this throughout most of my education, good in class - failed the exams)

Perhaps this is just more excuses in a modern world full of distractions, either way I think I'll seek some professional advice.

Wow, thanks for the great responses!

I will definitely head up to the public library near the civic center and checkout the POPOS guide.. great information :)

As for the hackerdojo, I already plan on heading there but wont be down that way for a couple of weaks yet..

Can't look at the listing in the same way after seeing that haha

Life: Quitting my my full time dev job to go freelance (less money, but I've always got a smile on my face now)

Programming: Putting aside spending all my time learning best practices and paradigms and just creating something I have in my head.

Not only does it look great it's actually quite challenging, in a nice way.. Well done!

Some controls on intro would be nice, had to look in source to make sure there wasn't some magical way to jump.

Thanks! I'm gonna try to add some instructions before deadline! Did you notice that you can control the camera with the mouse? Maybe that should be noted as well?

Yep picked that up, might be worth noting however..

A couple other tricks I picked up also, but that's game play wise so I wont drop any spoilers here.

I think I'll try making some levels later on tonight, just complete the game!

Nice! New levels as pull requests are highly welcome! I guess you figured out they are all just json files?