** The Bulletin ** – December 30, 2023
Sorry this is late! Had a bit of a technical issue with the new section that delayed getting this out the door on time. We’re back, though, and everything works perfectly! Enjoy!
Hello you,
It has been a long week with a bit of good chaos mixed in—and honestly, putting this all together like I usually do has been the least of my priorities—but I hope EVERYONE had a very Merry Christmas and is planning to spend New Year’s enjoying themselves, no matter what they plan to get up to. As for me, I’m spending New Year’s partying with my best friend and his family—who have seriously become mi segunda familia (my second family) this year. I love them all so much!
Now what did I do this week, you ask? Well—this was my week off, so I decided to play some games and plan my playthrough of Pokémon HeartGold with my friend Kolin’s help. Kolin has been guiding me through the Pokémon series, without spoiling anything too, and I couldn’t ask for a better friend and teacher. I’ve learned a lot of useful things from him, and I’m told we’ve barely scratched the surface.
I also set up a new-old Xbox for the house, installed Super Mario Bros. Wonder (still haven’t played it yet), and started cataloging some of the games our household got for Christmas. Basically a lot of administrative stuff that I need to do to make sure things are tracked and set. I’m back to work in the new year with a couple entirely new projects, though, and as we get closer to them becoming reality—I’d love to tell you about them!
OH, and before I forget, I’m set up on my friend ChiefGyk3D’s Mastodon server now, too. If you were following me on mastodon.social, don’t worry, you still are! You can now find me as @[email protected] on the fediverse (which will soon include Meta’s Threads!)
Now that introductions are settled, let’s hop into the final 2023 edition of everybody’s least favorite newsletter: The Bulletin!
This week’s question
We’re starting a new section of the newsletter—the question of the week! Each week, I’ll ask a question, and you’ll vote. (In the email, just tap on your answer!) In the following week’s Bulletin, I’ll ask another AND reveal my answer to the previous week’s question along with rough tallies from all of you~!
Sound like fun? I thought so. Please consider participating!
These polls are available to both free and paid subscribers to vote in.
This week’s soundtrack
I’m kind of a Spotify/Apple Music addict, so I happen to listen to a lot of music. Here’s what I’m currently listening to—usually on repeat. Here’s what I’ve got for you, for the week of December 30, 2023…
The Universe – Róisín Murphy
BITE – Troye Sivan
Supercut – Lorde
Valerie – Amy Winehouse, Mark Ronson
bellyache – Billie Eilish
Is There Somewhere – Halsey
Eat Your Young – Hozier
Body Weak – Diamond Cafe
clementine – Halsey
Satellite – Harry Styles
Thanks to Songlink for making all these streaming platform-agnostic!
Things I found across the net
See you in hell, Mr. Kotick.
Bobby Kotick steps down from Activision-Blizzard-King: Kotick publicly announced he’d be leaving the company at the end of this month, and as of my sending of this Bulletin to you, he is no longer the head of Activision Blizzard. Oh, and if you think his tenure couldn’t be any more soured—the devs of Overwatch have come out and said he “sabotaged” the game’s launch on Steam.
I’m working on a rewrite of AC Helper: Thomas Ricouard has given me the green light to fork and work on a rewrite of AC Helper, a Swift app for Apple platforms that is meant as a companion for Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It’s open source on GitHub, so if you’d like to help contribute, please consider doing so in the sladewatkins/ACNHBrowserUI repository! (We’re calling this rewrite version 3.0, and it will require iOS 17 or later.)
On YouTube this week…: Just a couple things I think you’d all enjoy watching.
Disney will be losing its copyright to the original Mickey Mouse (Steamboat Willie cartoon) in 2024, as reported on by CBS News.
Somebody remastered the Super Mario Bros. 3 OST and it sounds so freaking fantastic. Please give it a listen, especially if you grew up during the time where game music was very basic!
And also entirely randomly in my recommendations relating to video game music OSTs, an extremely low quality version of the Super Mario 64 OST. Enjoy… I guess…?
https://instagram.com/p/C1TzTG_OCuS/
As ever, please feel free to chime in by emailing [email protected]. I can’t answer everything—but I do try my best! I hope you have a wonderful weekend and start to your New Year! 🙂
Best wishes,
Slade