Hello, world!

I’ve been thinking about the virtue of patience. It’s important to be brave about determining what a particular moment calls for. One could fearfully justify inaction by deciding to do nothing. Good things come to those who do what they must and then wait patiently for the results to take root.

I marked twelve years of playing Ingress this week. I recursed back in May 2024 and am currently on track to be back to LVL15 in 2026.

After last week’s post, I published a tiny version of my weeknotes as an experiment on Mastodon. Writing out the full version makes the tiny version quite a bit easier. This was a fun experiment that I’ll likely continue this week.

🌟 My Favorite Stuff from the Internet This Week

• An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Shamblog
• Are We Decentralized Yet?
• Introducing Markdown for Agents - CloudFlare blog
• Marxists Internet Archive
• ‘On your left’ is cycling’s worst habit - Canadian Cycling Magazine
  • In some ways, this is the article I had been waiting for. While some people understand and appreciate “on your left”, it’s nowhere near common enough to feel like a good approach. I’d stuck with it for want of a better approach or a bell that fits on my bike.
• OpenApps - Discover. Compare. Deploy.
• Stop generating, start thinking - localghost

🧩 Web Games and Puzzles

I found a few online games and puzzles that really caught my attention this week:

• 45x45 Connections
  • I first heard about this game a few weeks ago but finally gave it a go this weekend. I got to 1756 points over the weekend. I think I’ll time-box my efforts.
  • https://vessenes.github.io/2025is45x45/
• CityQuiz.io
  • I am much more likely to play this game into next week and beyond.

✍️ Media Notes

🎬 Movies

I watched more movies than usual this week — and both of these were in theaters:

• Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, 2026 - ★★★★ (Watched: 2026-02-13)
• Crime 101, 2026 - ★★★★ (Watched: 2026-02-09)

Both movies were super enjoyable watches that I would recommend.

📖 Reading

I finished my review of “There There” this week. I am making very slow progress through the current book club selection, “Water Knife”.

📕 New E-Reader

My new mini e-reader, the Xteink X4, arrived earlier this week so I spent a bit of time setting it up. I initially thought that this $69 device would be a novelty and I was OK with that. With CrossPoint Reader, I am more optimistic about the possibilities. The UI is much better and it even looks like I should be able to sync it with KOReader:

• Adds KOReader Sync support by itsthisjustin · Pull Request #232

The fact that Xteink X4 is Pixelsnap-compatible is cool but not practical for me. The X4 fits in the folder I use for my Field Notes. My biggest concern is that I’ll lose the X4. Beyond that, I am more excited for my planned follow-up to OK, Reader every day.

🔗 Social Reading

I keep track of my reading in various places across the Internet:

• /books on brie.dev — this is on a delay, at the present moment
• Read books for @bbrie | Hardcover
• Read books for 🐈‍⬛ brie.dev | Rambling Readers

🎧 Music

I responded to a Crucial Tracks prompt this week:

• What was the first album you ever bought? Pick your favorite song off that album.

🆕 New Releases

I didn’t find much of note in this week’s batch of new releases. I explored a lot of new-to-me jazz artists and particularly enjoyed Albert Hunter and Bessie Smith.

📊 Scrobbling Stats

This week’s visualization is from LastWave. I really like the look of this though the granularity available is not always great for the 7 day timeframe for weeknotes.

Top Artists

• Bad Bunny (82 plays)
• Bessie Smith (23 plays)
• Girl Talk (22 plays)
• The White Buffalo (19 plays)
• Daft Punk (19 plays)

🔗 Social Listening

I scrobble my music:

• bbbbbbbbrie on last.fm
• bbrie on libre.fm
• briealeida on ListenBrainz

Sporadically, I write song reviews:

• Brie Carranza’s Crucial Tracks

🏆 Steam Achievements

Steam Achievements - bbbbbbbbrie at achieved.by.brie.lol

This was another great week for me on Steam. Between Epistory and Mini Motorways, I got 11 achievements.

• Epistory
  • The quick brown fox…
  • 1% Muse: Frankenstein
  • Typist
  • Forgotten Forest
  • 1% Muse: Gargantua
  • Hunter
• Mini Motorways
  • Cairns Commuter
  • Cairns Tourist
  • Reykjavík Commuter
  • Vancouver Commuter
  • Vancouver Tourist

I haven’t played Mini Motorways in quite some time so it was super exciting to get so many achievements. In the past, I spent some time focusing on the strategy behind the game. I think some of it sank in and really paid off during this session. I earned the Commuter and Tourist achievements for both “Cairns” and “Vancouver” in one game.

📸 Photos

These cats are made of bird seed. In that way, they are cat toys. Plop will watch the birds that come to enjoy these seed cats.

Take care!

— Brie