STEAM NEXT FEST - FEBRUARY 2026 🎮

Though I have more than enough on my plate to play (I need to write up a full blog post on our rotating gaming weekend focus), I couldn’t help but take note of the newest Steam Next Fest that just dropped. I do try to stay away from downloading demos as I saw they’re included in the end of the year statistics, and I’d rather they not be.

However, this time, several games that are on my wishlist are featured in the Next Fest. I’ve learned from the past that it’s quite helpful to try out wishlisted demos because this helps me firmly place a game in an “I’m very interested in this” camp. I’ve removed wishlisted games in the past because their demos showed me all I needed to know.

Current three demos I’m focusing on:

• House Flipper Remastered
• Let’s Build a Dungeon
• Slowly Sliding Ducks

Seeing that I’ve already paid for most of the DLC for the original House Flipper, this demo is going to have to really wow me over to consider paying for it all again. Improved visuals will not be enough.

I loved Let’s Build a Zoo, so I have high hopes for Let’s Build a Dungeon.

I have no clue what I’ll think of Slowly Sliding Ducks, but I enjoy Placid Plastic Duck Simulator so… might as well give it a spin!

Are you trying out any demos this time around?

A RETURN TO MICRO.BLOG

It was three years ago when I first gave micro.blog a spin. I used it for a number of months and enjoyed the platform quite a bit.

I did end up folding my original posts that I wrote here into posts on my main blog at Aywren.com in the end, however. You might wonder - if I enjoyed it so much, why did I leave for a while?

There were a few reasons including trying to consolidate the cost of subscriptions. I also wanted (and still want) to keep all of my content in one place if possible. I don’t want anything on the side taking away from the focus of my main blog - sometimes it’s hard enough for me to spin up a post there as it is.

So why am I back then? Those are two issues that haven’t gone away.

First, I noticed there is a lower cost tier of Micro.one now. Given my financial situation, $50 a year isn’t terrible, but not desirable. However, $10 for a year of hosting - and a host that has reliably kept my blog online (for free) even though I’ve been away from it for several years - is feasible.

When I saw the affordable cost, I reconsidered.

What of distracting me from my main blog, however? How will having another outlet to post build the blog I already have?

I hope that by giving myself a more free-form place to write, I can reestablish my habit of blogging.

As much as I do not regret moving to a hand-coded HTML format on my main blog, writing each post is only a fraction of the work that has to be done to actually publish the post. Everything has to be coded and linked and… it’s a long process.

Allowing me a place where I can just write without having to worry about the coding aspect of it will hopefully encourage me to write more often. I’ve gotten out of the habit of daily writing due to many reasons - writing was part of my professional job, posting on my blog takes a lot of effort, there’s a bit of a restriction on what I feel I can and cannot post on my blog - those sorts of things.

I also want to test out this format again and see how the cross-posting works with it.

So all that being said, I’ve now reupped my account here and am considering what all I’ll do with this blog going forward. Hope to meet more folks at Micro.blog as well!

Things I achieved today - just small things:

• Fixed Disqus showing on non-post pages
• Added a Pages page - which includes a category list
• Tweaked some minor CSS

Things I achieved in tweaking this blog today:

• Customized a layout to my liking
• Added search
• Added stats
• Added Disqus
• Added analytics 🔧

Played around with pulling in a theme and customizing it. Happy with the results so far. Have much more to add to it, but got Disqus replies working and messed with the CSS layout.

HELLO WORLD - MICRO.BLOG

Thanks to encouragement from my pal Jason, I’ve decided to dip my toe into seeing what the world of micro.blog could mean for me.

I find it fascinating that it’s both a long and short form blog platform as well as a part of the Fediverse. It can be used as a supplement to something like Mastodon. Or it can stand in for Mastodon and be your full-on gateway to the Fediverse.

How I wish this had existed before I spent so much time in WordPress! This is far more my speed, I think.

I’m not quite sure how I’m going to use this tool just yet, and I’m exploring on the free trial - I’m happy with my Mastodon instance, and don’t mean to replace it. I also have far too much HTML content and time put into moving my blog Aywren.com over to pivot at this point.

I have been aching for a more side-blog platform since I haven’t been using my Tumblr much anymore (though I have this set to crosspost there just out of curiosity). So let me poke around and see what comes of it.

I’ll keep you updated! 📝