I decided to go through five and a half year's worth of blog posts for the Blocks Edit site, nearly 90 in total, and pick out the best ones, about 15, to collect on a new Resources page. I'm happy to have found that there was actually some good stuff among all of my ramblings!

This week I finished playing Firmament, the latest game from Cyan, the creators of the original Myst series. I've grown up playing Cyan's games, and this is the first game I played all the way through without using hints and solutions for its puzzles (okay, actually one small hint in one particular area I really could not understand how to go about making progress on).

This is credit to its great game design. The puzzles are so embedded in the environment that it feels like they are a logical extension of it and hardly puzzles at all! And its story is also told very well through the environment. It's a nicely interwoven combination of great visuals and environmental design, interesting puzzles, a clever interaction mechanic that works with any type of system (currently available on PC, Mac, VR, and the Steam Deck handheld), and a decent story that keeps you engaged until the end.

I recently went to concerts for a couple of artists I've been listening to for quite a few years, helping shape my taste for electronic music: The Chemical Brothers and The Crystal Method. I'm not sure how I missed seeing them in concert for so long, but happy to have been able to catch them both within a few weeks of each other!

The Chemical Brothers were at a beautiful venue surrounded by mountains in southern California, with awesome stage visuals that really went well with the music. The Crystal Method were part of a smaller local venue EDM show lineup of three artists. One of the artists, Hyper has become my new recent electronic music favorite!