Souls Like Strings

Girlfailure makes friends

Why

• Focused, intriguing plot
• Small cast of characters you'll get very familiar with
• Visuals and music add a lot to the atmosphere
• Lots of personality jammed into the limited character illustrations

Why Not

• Essentially 'just' a book with pictures and music
• No choices if that's something you need in a Visual Novel

Impressions

Our POV character is Asya, a Russian high school girl with many friends who like to play pranks on her and a very strong grip on reality. One day a girl (sometimes) in her class is nice to...

The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison.

There's a point at which humility ceases to be a virtue

A satisfying end to Thara's saga, assuming it continues to be that. The stakes are raised yet again, this time resulting in the animosity of a Shell-level corporation and providing an even scarier dead thing for Thara to send off into the ether. All the characters we've come to know and love (or be annoyed by) make appearances in addition to a dashing goblin principate guard, a bumbling prelate and the kafka-esque bureaucracy of the Catacombs Guild.

It's essentially...

• Having a two person team is challenging when one of you is out and the other is blocked by PR review
• You can't read Rails' encrypted cookies in a test (at least by default)
  • Since the test cookie object doesn't implement encrypted
• Someone once decided to make a 'Link' component which can be a button, link or just plain text
  • but the button can have a to attribute
  • the text can have an onClick which can navigate, effectively making it back into a link
  • something intended to be an actual a tag can become a...

I could hardly bear the despair

Why

• Wacky cast of characters you might actually end up attached to
• Ensures you have enough knowledge to solve mysteries while letting you make the connections
• Interesting minigames to make points during the class trials

Why Not

• Dialogue is often painful/repetitive
• Some of the mysteries are ridiculously convoluted/probably don't stand up to scrutiny
• Sometimes leans too hard on shock value/anime tropes

Impressions

Danganronpa has a lot of problems. The dialogue is generally so poorly written I skim-read 80% after the first chapter, it leans on shock value/edginess a...

• Argon2id is the state of the art in hashing
  • But for short-lived OTPs, probably overkill

Links

• Brand New Layouts with CSS Subgrid - Josh Comeau

After being reminded subgrid exists & is useful in October, Josh comes swooping in with a typically high quality article about the possibilities it unlocks. Siblings being aware of each-other's size & layout is a very valuable thing in CSS, as is a layout being able to 'penetrate' containers like cards.

• Building a Good Download… Button? - Eric Bailey

I did not...