When I practically lost a summer vacation

(last edited )

Well folks, the summer vacation is practically over. I didn’t get to watch, play and read as much as I wanted to, but things happen. Somewhat excited for studying to start, to be honest!

Reading
Bringing Columbia Home
by Michael D. Leinbach, Jonathan H. Ward
  • A book about the search & recovery of the Space Shuttle Columbia and her last crew
More things underway
Paused
A Scanner Darkly
by Philip K. Dick
  • Drugs and undercover agents, in a depressive way. Paused mainly because it didn’t fit in my bag when packing…

(Slowly) Playing
Celeste
by Maddy Makes Games Inc., Extremely OK Games, Ltd.
  • Playtime: 17.6h
  • A young woman gets an urge to climb a mountain. Little does she know, the mountain got hands.

(Slowly) Playing
Spiritfarer®: Farewell Edition
by Thunder Lotus
  • Playtime: 15.7h
  • Cute and fun game about caring for the souls of the dead. Find it interesting from game design perspective, too. Getting a bit tedious though, so slowing down.

Still playing the guitar, though ever since coming from the vacation don’t have as much time to play. But soldiering on!

Had to take a break from learning German almost immediately due to circumstances beyond my control (pinky promise), but now that I’m back, researching classes to get me back on track properly.

Thinking of beginning the search for a first proper job, however volunteering at my university fills the niche for now.

This is my now page. You can see previous ones here.

Later in the day on 2025-07-14 added ability to only show last-updated date, and showcased progress indicators for books and games for the first time.

On 2025-07-15 added another game and a book I’m doing in the background. The book is a bit of a lie, I haven’t touched it in months…. In other news, also made small edits to make the sentences flow better.

On 2025-07-17 added the very archive of old pages you’re reading this in :)

On 2025-07-31 I finished reading Challenger:

Challenger
by Adam Higginbotham
  • Rating: ★★★★★
  • A book about the years leading up to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and its aftermath.

On 2025-08-31 I added Bringing Columbia Home, doing 2 back-to-back Shuttle disaster books… also, updated the page for summer’s end and removed the internet notice since I’ve been doing some strides and it’s not as big of a focus now:

Trying to cut down on time wasted on devices since December 2024. So far failing, but I didn’t hear no bell. Add a mark for every “now” update this notice has survived: III

As of July 2025, I have cut down my average phone screen time to 30 minutes. Consistent over almost a month, achieved mainly via deletion of mobile browser. However, my average desktop screen time is 12 hours right now, and I can’t say all of it is positive. I installed some extensions to help with that in the near future, but I’d call chatting on Discord and tinkering with side projects biggest time stealers, will need to figure something out in that regard.