“Short Olaf” is the coloquial name inhabitants of Hamburg gave to the abandoned construction project of the Elbtower high-rise, which was a pet project of German Chancellor Olaf Schulz when he was mayor of the city of Hamburg.
Nikon Z fc, Nikkor Z 40 mm ƒ/2 (ISO 400 • 1/125 s • ƒ/5)
I love things that age gracefully. This was a tweet from 9 October 2018:
Got these great vegetable tanned leather gloves from Ondura. I love the pocket knife from them which my parents gave me as a birthday present. Can’t wait how these gloves evolve. They feel absolutely lovely!
This is what these gloves and the knife look like now. I’ve used the knife almost daily and the gloves probably 150 days each year since then.
Needless to say, I can recommend these products. The gloves are called Rider Gloves (tan) and the knife is the Ondura Pocketknife (olive).
I just watched Road House. That’s a fun little movie! It’s nice to see some realistic fighting in a Hollywood production for a change. Gyllenhaal is amazingly ripped and quite charismatic, too. I had no idea. And, of course, Connor McGregor absolutely fucking slaps! This gets a definite recommendation from me. 
Pixel Dailies for March 2024; 8x8 pixels in the PICO-8 palette
Released on Thursday:
→ The Private Citizen 166: The Twitter Files, Part 6
Revisiting the idiotic decision to ban Donald Trump off Twitter and what it means for the future of democracy that private companies started to influence public discourse like that and got away with it.
After finishing Mystic Quest on the Game Boy, I started Secret of Mana on the SNES this weekend. So far, I have earned 10% of its Retro Achievements.
It has been way too long since I’ve recorded a podcast episode. So here’s an episode of The Private Citizen explaining why this has happened. Here’s to hoping I can get back to regular releases!
It has taken me 23 hours and 50 minutes, but I have just beaten Mystic Quest for the Game Boy. This was my second playthrough. I first finished it 32 years ago when the game came out (that playthrough probably took me a lot longer). I did not simply finish the story, though, I also got all 50 achievements for it that are listed on RetroAchievements.org.
My little shmup is coming along! I did a lot of improvements to it over the last few days: Dynamic enemy waves, enemy attack patterns, several quality-of-life tweaks. It’s almost a game now. My next task is to implement enemy shooting…
I’m continuing to make my way through Mystic Quest on the Game Boy. I’ve moved past level 50 and I’m now approaching the end game.
I updated the code of my PICO-8 clock to make it so that the clock and stopwatch displays refresh at the same time. This was a request from Jonathan M.H. and it brings the version number up to 0.02.
In other news, I am now also hosting a web version of the clock here on the website. You can also use it on mobile phones!
As a long-overdue follow-up to my first PICO-8 game recommendation, I want to recommend one of the most impressive games ever to be made for the platform: Paul Nicholas' remake of the classic RTS game Dune II (which famously started the RTS craze in the ’90s). It is called UnDUNE II and it’s a so-called multi-cart game, meaning it utilises several cartridges that are daisy-chained and together make up the whole program. When you start playing, you’ll quickly figure out why this is needed. It is amazing that Paul managed to fit a full RTS game into PICO-8’s stringent limitations, even with this trick.
UnDUNE II is a faithful recreation of the original and includes almost all of its features. I’ve included a copy of the initial cart here, but to play the full game, you need all of the carts. You can get PICO-8 carts as well as stand-alone versions of the game on itch.io for free. But I would advise you to donate something to honour Paul’s efforts. He worked on this game for years and it is truly a monumental achievement of the PICO-8 world!
Today marks ten years of war in Ukraine and I thought I’d write a commentary piece about that:
→ Eye on The Press: Ten Years of War
Reflecting on ten years of war in Ukraine and our reaction to it in the West
