On the writing front (book content is French-only) #
Le Cabinet des Mauvais Souvenirs :
« Merle s’arrête sous l’abri des larges branches à la chevelure d’algues sèches d’un arbre couché. Elle pose sa longue-vue face au lac, en direction des vasières visibles en cette saison. Après un rapide balayage de la zone, elle choisit de régler l’objectif sur un groupe de limicoles qui farfouille près des souches de bois mort. Elle invite alors ses clients à se pencher sur l’oculaire.
— Le plus grand, c’est un courlis, la forme du bec est caractéristique. Les trois petits, autour, ce sont des chevaliers gambettes.
— Ils ressemblent drôlement à ceux de tout à l’heure, relève monsieur.
— Oui, les limicoles peuvent être difficiles à identifier, c’est une habitude à prendre.
Derrière les vasières le long desquelles quelques grands échassiers se reposent, de nombreux canards et autres foulques préfèrent se nourrir à la surface de l’eau. Après avoir fixé son objectif à divers endroits pour présenter les différentes espèces, Merle repère enfin un invité intéressant, un peu plus loin sur le lac. »
On the web front #
I’m continuing my exploration of the Hugo static site generator by building this blog. I’ve struggled a lot with multilingual support, especially when I realized that there are about forty different ways to achieve the same thing, only to find that simple things that should just work don’t, while my more complex expectations, which I assumed would fail, somehow do. The idea of creating a new theme based on the one I’m using has been on my mind, since I had to override so many elements to work around hardcoded text and overly limited configuration options.
In the garden #
Last weekend, it snowed in my town, that’s rare enough to be worth mentioning. The ground is frozen, so planting anything is out of the question for now. Fun fact: my thuja hedge was removed in mid-December, which is why I couldn’t plant a new hedge at the very start of winter. Now, the space is clear, but I still don’t have my new plants, they should arrive soon. That said, I might have to wait until later in the season to plant, once the frost has passed.
With this new hedge, I’m hoping to provide more shelter for birds in my garden. They’ve been fewer in number this year compared to last, though I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because my neighbors keep adopting cats and then letting them roam outside unattended. I didn’t have any issues with cats last year, but my neighbor troubles started this year.
On the culture front #
Mixed Forest might just become one of my favorites alongside Wingspan, meaning one of the rare games I enjoy playing even without cooperative mechanics. The gameplay is relatively similar, except here you build a forest with various species of flora and fauna instead of placing birds in habitats. The setup is both simpler and, in a way, less engaging because it only involves cards and the game board (no accessories, tokens, or dice).
I gave Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 a try, even though I’m not usually a fan of turn-based games, that was my main hesitation. But after a few hours of playing, I’m actually enjoying it: the character-building mechanics and the way you can combine their skills by ordering their actions are fun enough to keep me engaged, unlike other turn-based games that bored me. The parry mechanic, based on enemy attack patterns, adds some dynamism during enemy turns. Combined with the stunning art direction, I don’t regret giving it a shot.