Galaxy Garden

Weekly Recap: 14 June 2026

2026-06-14T11:52:44Z

Happy Pride Month! 🏳️‍🌈

Cassette Beasts 2002 Announced

Cassette Beasts, my favourite video game ever, is officially becoming a series, with a new follow-up game coming — Cassette Beasts 2002!

An announcement trailer for Cassette Beasts 2002 was revealed during the PC Gaming Show 2026, which was presented by PC Gamer, one of the largest news outlet for PC gaming. I found it a pleasant surprise that Bytten Studio, the developer of Cassette Beasts got the opportunity to book a slot in an event presented by such a major gaming news outlet, since Cassette Beasts rarely got covered by major gaming news outlets.

After Bytten Sudio announced Cassette Beasts 2002, Jay Baylis, the Art Director of Bytten Sudio, posted on Bluesky:

To get to make your own RPG is one thing, but to get to make your own RPG series is something else.

To every kind word, helping hand, and word of mouth recommendation - thank you all, sincerely. This has been a true privilege to get to work on.

Can't wait for you to see what we've been cooking!

I would look forward to whatever Bytten Studio does next even if it has nothing to do with Cassette Beasts, but it is indeed no small feat that an indie studio managed to make a game successful enough to develop into a series.

I cannot wait for Cassette Beasts 2002!

Sent Old Books for Recycling

As part of our ongoing preparation to move to a different residential area, my mother and I had been organising the old books in our current house, and clearing out the old books we no longer want. We gave some of our old books away to relatives, then on Monday, my parents and I visited a recycle centre and sold the rest of our discarded old books for recycling.

Briefly Tried Out Nintendo Switch 2 and Pokémon Pokopia Demo

After sending our discarded old books for recycling, we visited a shopping mall, which contains a branch of the Popular Bookstores, the largest bookstore chain in Malaysia. Aside from books and stationery, that particular branch also sells Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, along with some video games for the Nintendo Switch family.

I own a Nintendo Switch, but not Switch 2, so this was a good opportunity to try out Switch 2 myself. The Switch 2 display there also included demos of various games, including the one I am most interested in getting a Switch 2 for, Pokémon Pokopia. My immediate impression on Switch 2 was that its Joy Sticks are more sensitive than those of Switch 1. I am in no rush to get a Switch 2, however, so I have yet to purchase one.

Web Browsing Highlights

Interesting things I have discovered on the web this week:

Every Pokémon is someone's favourite — A collective Pokédex to declare your favourite Pokémon, and why the Pokémon is your favourite. You can also browse the Pokémon and see other people's reasons for why their favourite Pokémon is their favourite. I had heard the statement "every Pokémon is someone's favourite" before, and I agree with it, so I am glad that there is actually a website to execute that concept.
"The Gaming Time Loop" by Inner Spiral — I discovered this article through Aftermath's recent article "I Don't Know If We Need All These Remakes, Guys". I agree with both articles about the issues with the mainstream video game industry's remakes trend.
Scoped Commits — a loose standard for formatting commit messages in the version control system Git. If you use Git a lot, especially if you have also contributed to open source software projects, you might have at least heard of the Conventional Commits specification, if not using it yourself. I came across Conventional Commits in some open-source projects before learning and adopting the specification myself. However, very recently, I discovered Sumner Evans' article, "Stop Using Conventional Commits", which managed to convince me and led me to find the Scoped Commits web page created by Evans, so I have started to adopt Scoped Commits in my own Git commit logs.

Weekly Recap: 24 May 2026

2026-05-24T13:05:47Z

Maternal Uncle's Funeral

On 21 May 2026, we received the news that my maternal uncle, who had cancer, passed away on May 20th evening. While I was not very close to my maternal uncle because I typically only saw him during Lunar New Year — the last time I saw him alive was indeed during this year's Lunar New Year — his passing made him the first relative from my parents' generation I knew who died (all my grandparents are already dead).

To attend my maternal uncle's funeral, my parents and I went to my parents' hometown on May 18th, and stayed in one of my paternal uncles' house for one night. The cremation of my maternal uncle took place on May 19th afternoon, though my parents and I did not follow my maternal uncle's immediate family to the crematorium.

Rambutan Tree in Family Durian Plantation

On 18 May 2026, when my parents and I returned to my parents' hometown to attend my maternal uncle's funeral, my father and I visited our family durian plantation.

One of the puppies from Bak Baan's second litter had been given for adoption.

During this visit to the plantation, I got to see the only rambutan tree in our durian plantation.

The lone rambutan tree in our family's durian plantation, featuring a white stick-like irrigation device, and Musang King the dog.

Farewell Potluck at My Local Campus of 42

On 20 May 2026, the staff of my local campus of 42 the computer science school announced that this specific campus will transition to a satellite campus. This means my local campus of 42 will pause its student programme and curriculum indefinitely.

To have one last chance for students and staff of my 42 campus to gather together before the campus transition, we had a potluck dinner at the campus on May 21st. I brought pizza, which unsurprisingly became the first food to be finished during the potluck.

Coincidentally, the announcement of my 42 campus' transition to a satellite campus took place on the same day my maternal uncle passed away, which we then learned of on the next day. In other words, I had to bid two major farewells in the same week — first to my 42 campus and to my journey at 42, then to my maternal uncle.

Kitchen Cabinets for New House

Since my parents and I planned to move to a different residential area in our city, we have been window shopping for new furniture for our new house. We intend to carry some of the furniture we currently have, new house also necessitates at last some new furniture.

Our window shopping for new furniture typically involves us visiting furniture fairs in a shopping mall near our current home. On Friday, we went window shopping at the furniture fair in that shopping mall again. This time, we ended up spending four hours there. We anticipate that kitchen cabinets will be our most expensive investment in a new furniture, so we ended up spending much of our time there in enquiring about kitchen cabinets.

Today on Sunday, we finally ordered new kitchen cabinets for our new house.

So Long, 42 the School, and Thanks for All the Fish

2026-05-21T05:17:14Z

My journey at 42 the computer science school is coming to an end.

On 14 May 2026, the staff of my local campus of 42 made a major announcement: Starting from 29 May 2026, my local campus of 42 will transition to a satellite campus. This means that from this date onwards, us students will no longer have access to the campus and its facilities, and our student progress will be paused on 42's intranet. If we want to continue our student progress, our option is submitting a request to transfer to another 42 campus, which could be another 42 campus in Malaysia, by the end of June.

Since 42 only provides physical courses and no online courses to encourage its peer-to-peer learning model, transferring to another 42 campus would require me to either take an hours long trip to attend the school, or relocate to a different place to live, neither of which is practical for my living condition, especially since 42 will only consider our request for campus transfer if we submit it before the end of June, and my parents and I are already preparing to move to a different residential area in our city this year. Therefore, on my part, the only practical choice for me is to drop out from 42 entirely.

To be honest, I was not entirely surprised by 42 Malaysia's decision to pause the student programme of this specific campus indefinitely. Not having enough students to sustain this campus was cited as the reason for its transition to a satellite campus, which I can attest, as I attended the campus frequently and noticed the lack of active students. The campus staff have tried to attract more people to attend this campus through open days and bite-size bootcamps (named Discovery Piscine), but a new intake of official bootcamp (named Piscine) that was originally planned for April failed to come to fruition, which already made me worried about the future of my local campus of 42.

Due to 42's peer-to-peer learning model, not enough students also meant slow progress for those of us who were active, as there were not enough students to help with evaluating each other's projects to progress our curriculum. The slow progress of my curriculum due to the lack of active students was actually why I have not been updating my curriculum progress on this blog for a while. No one knows for sure why our campus failed to attract many students, so we could only speculate: maybe the people in our city are not ready for a computer science school with non-traditional learning model, or maybe it was because there was a lack of public transport route around the campus ares, etc.

By the time the campus staff announced the transition to a satellite campus, I was in Milestone 2, which was the third out of the seven milestones in 42's core curriculum, so I was not even able to complete half of the core curriculum before having to drop out. Before attending 42, I had already taught myself computer science and programming for two years through various online resources, so I intend to continue to do so even as I have to drop out from 42. Still, a major reason I attended 42 was because physical schools for computer science were a rarity in my city, let alone one that you can attend without paying tuition fees, so I find it unfortunate that my journey at 42 has to end prematurely.

Despite the unfortunate premature end to my 42 journey, I do not regret having attended 42. Attending 42 had encouraged me learn to use Vim, which led to me switching to Neovim as my go-to code editor, learn more about Linux, which led to me running my own virtual private server (VPS) and switching to using Linux desktop full-time, and refreshed my knowledge and skill in the C programming language. My 42 campus had also hosted the first WordCamp conference in my city, which I had the privilege to attend after winning a ticket giveaway hosted by the staff of my 42 campus. I will not trade these invaluable experiences for the world.

Furthermore, I am grateful of the staff of my 42 campus for their hard work in managing and organising the campus. Shout-out to the staff member who accommodate my request to add a screen brightness setting in the campus computers, since retinitis pigmentosa makes my eyes sensitive to bright lights, including bright screens of digital devices.

Since the name of the school, 42, is a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it would be fitting for me to bid my farewell to the school with another reference to the series:

So long, 42, and thanks for all the fish!

My 2026 Qingming Festival

2026-04-13T15:08:45Z

Grandmother's Death Anniversary and Tomb Sweeping

We had two busy weekends in a row, due to Qingming Festival and my paternal grandmother's death anniversary.

Qingming Festival 2026 took place on April 5, but it coincided with my grandmother's death anniversary, so my father's side of the family decided to observe the death anniversary first, then on the next weekend, sweep the tombs of my great uncle and paternal grandparents per family tradition.

My parents and I set off on April 10, Friday morning, to my parents' hometown, and stayed at a homestay for one night, then we swept tombs on the next day. Like last year's Qingming Festival, I did not join my parents and relatives to visit my great uncle's tomb, because the road at that graveyard was too difficult for me to traverse due to my visual impairment, but I joined them to visit my paternal grandparents' tomb.

After completing the tomb sweeping and having lunch with relatives, my parents and I returned home.

Family Durian Plantation, Bak Baan and Her Children

When we travelled back to my parents' hometown on April 10, Friday, in preparation for tomb sweeping tomorrow, we visited our family's durian plantation and by extension, my uncle's dogs Bak Baan and her children.

This marked the second time I saw Bak Baan's second litter of puppies, and the first time my mother did so since she did not join us in our previous visit during Lunar New Year. I am glad my mother was finally able to witness the black-and-white two-toned puppy of Bak Baan that we called "dairy cow".

Unfortunately, just like Bak Baan lost two of her children from her first litter, Bak Baan lost another two children from her second litter — one of the new puppies died of blood loss after being attacked by another dog, and another was killed by a vehicle. Poor things...

On a more positive note, I managed to snap new photos of our family durian plantation and my uncle's dogs.

A part of my family's durian plantation. The photo has one durian tree front and centre, with a white stick-like irrigation device beside it.

Bak Baan is now a mum who had given birth to two litter of puppies.

Aside from the coat colour, Musang King, who is about one year old at this point, looks a lot like his mum.

Bak Baan's second litter of puppies, all four months old at this point, are enjoying their dog food meal.

Weekly Recap: 22 March 2026

2026-03-22T11:06:25Z

Eid al-Fitr 2026

Happy Eid al-Fitr to those who celebrate!

While I am not a Muslim, I live in a majorly-Muslim country, so Eid al-Fitr is an official holiday, though here in Malaysia, Eid Mubarak is more commonly referred to by its Malay name, Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Hari Raya Puasa, or Hari Raya for short, even by English speakers.

On the first day of Eid al-Fitr on March 21, my parents and I visited an open house for Eid al-Fitr hosted by the Chief Minister of our state, and took our lunch there.

Our current home is only around five minutes away from the open house when travelling by car, but once we move to our new home, estimated to carry out this year, we will live too far away to be convenient to visit the Chief Minister's open house any more. Therefore, this may be our last time visiting the Chief Minister's open house.

Started Playing Beastieball

The Steam Spring Sale 2026 started on March 19. I took the opportunity to purchase Beastieball when I saw it in a bundle with Cassette Beasts, my favourite video game ever.

I was already interested in checking out Beastieball after hearing good things from other Cassette Beasts fans. As soon as I started playing Beastieball for the first time, I could immediately see why there's a fair amount of overlap between fans of Beastieball and fans of Cassette Beasts: both are refreshing takes on the monster collecting game, and it helps that both game have pronouns options, including they/them, in the character creator.

Web Browsing Highlights

Interesting things I have discovered on the web this week:

"In Favor of Enjoying Things on Purpose" by Raptitude — I am in favour of paying attention to and appreciating the little things that bring us joy in life, as I have found it a good way to practice gratitude.

Officially Entered Advanced Stage of Retinitis Pigmentosa

2026-03-14T11:57:53Z

I was officially diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa (RP) on 30 November 2024 when seeing an eye doctor, then I wrote a post about living with RP in December.

On 12 March 2026, 15 months after my initial RP diagnosis, I went to see another eye doctor for more thorough eye examinations, after a relative who also has RP recommended the doctor. After a series of eye examinations, my new eye doctor further confirmed that I not only have RP, but have also entered the advanced stage of RP. During my initial diagnosis, my previous eye doctor did not clarify how far my RP condition has progressed.

I was not particularly surprised by the news, since RP is a condition that advances with age, although how fast the progress goes varies from individual to individual. Not to mention, I was aware that my peripheral vision has gone weaker to the extent of not being able to see things that are not directly in front of my eyes, and the vision field test performed at my new eye clinic confirmed it.

My new eye doctor was also upfront about the possibility of RP leading to blindness, and thus I may need low vision aids in the future, which I have come to expect since my initial diagnosis.

My sentiment expressed in my previous post about living with retinitis pigmentosa still stands, in that I have already accepted that I have genetic eye disorders that currently has no cure, especially after learning that eye problems run in my family.

Weekly Recap: 8 March 2026

2026-03-08T12:47:01Z

International Women's Day and Women's March Malaysia 2026

Happy International Women's Day!

International Women's Day also means the day the annual Women's March Malaysia will take place. You can read the march's 2026 demands on its official website.

Lantern Festival and Total Lunar Eclipse

March 3 was the Lantern Festival, also known as Chap Goh Mei in Malaysia. Coincidentally, a total lunar eclipse was visible in Malaysia on that day. The lunar eclipse also coincided with the month of Ramadan.

Unfortunately there was a rain at where I live, so I could not enjoy the special occasion of observing a total lunar eclipse.

Car Accident on My Way to School

On Friday, when my father was driving me in our family car to school, we got into a car accident. Our front car plate was damaged as a result.

Luckily, the accident was not serious, as our car was still operational, and I managed to arrived at my school campus without any injuries, though my father's right hand was sprained due to the impact happening while his hand was pressing the car horn.

This means this car of ours need to be sent for repair — again. Just two weeks ago, on the day we were about to travel back home after celebrating Lunar New Year in my parents' hometown, our very same car's front plate was damaged by the car of another villager, so we needed to send our car to a car repair shop.

Fortunately, we still have another car at home, but we had no way to expect we had to send the same car for repair twice within two weeks due to damage to the front plate.

Eleventy is Becoming Build Awesome

On March 3, Eleventy, the static site generator that I use to build this very website, officially started to get rebranded to Build Awesome, with Font Awesome, which Eleventy has joined since September 2024, launching a Kickstarter campaign for Build Awesome.

While the Build Awesome campaign reached its funding goal in a day, there are a fair amount of Eleventy users expressing concerns about the rebrand. Eleventy's official blog post about the rebranding attempted to address some of the concerns, but unfortunately, on March 6, Font Awesome announced that they are pausing the Build Awesome Kickstarter campaign, citing email delivery issues, and planning to relaunch the campaign.

Personally, I am taking a wait-and-see approach; I have been using Eleventy to build my websites since April 2024, and it has become my favourite tool to build websites, to the extent that I gave two talks at THE Eleventy Meetup, so I am not ready to abandon Eleventy just yet. Furthermore, my hope is that Eleventy as a static site generator will remain free and open-source, and my process of rebuilding my websites with Eleventy should not be impacted.

That said, if you want to learn more about why there are Eleventy users worried about the rebrand, I recommend reading Brennan Kenneth Brown's blog posts on the subject:

Weekly Recap: 1 March 2026

2026-03-01T11:37:59Z

It is March now, and today being March 1 also means it is Zero Discrimination Day.

Returning to School After Lunar New Year Break

After taking one week off to celebrate Lunar New Year, I have returned to school on last Monday, February 23. Aside from that, not much was going on at school last week.

Pokémon 30th Anniversary

The Pokémon franchise was celebrating its 30-year anniversary on February 27, as 27 February 1996 saw the release of Pokémon Red Version and Pokémon Green Version, the very first Pokémon games.

On February 27, I tuned in to watch Pokémon Presents live on YouTube. Among the announcements made during the presentation, Pokémon Pokopia, a new spin-off game, and Pokémon Winds and Waves, the first games of the tenth generation of Pokémon, piqued my interest the most. However, both are exclusive to Nintendo Switch 2, which I do not have yet, and will not be getting any time soon due to it being too expensive to me, and there is no Switch 2-exclusive games that make me actually want to buy the console for yet.

That said, I am very glad that there is finally a Pokémon based on Pomeranian dogs — Pombon, the Fire-type starter Pokémon in Winds and Waves. Pomeranian dogs are one of my favourite dog breeds, so even though I typically pick the Water-type starter Pokémon when starting to play a main series Pokémon game for the first time, but if I get to play Winds and Waves, I'll make an exception for Pombon.

Naturally, as a huge fan of Cassette Beasts, Pombon immediately reminded me of Pombomb, another Fire-type creature based on Pomeranian dogs in a monster collecting game.

Aside from everything that was announced in Pokémon Presents, logos featuring every Pokémon species to commemorate the 30-year anniversary of the franchise were released. The Pokémon fan wiki Bulbapedia has an article for the Pokémon 30th Anniversary logos.

Games I Was Playing

Scarlet Hollow, an episodic horror visual novel developed by Black Tabby Games, recently released Episode 5, after a hiatus since Episode 4 was released in December 2022 due Black Tabby Games focusing on their other horror visual novel Slay the Princess.

I was immediately hooked again after returning to Scarlet Hollow. There are still two more episodes to be released for the game to be officially completed, but Episode 5 has started to reveal the overarching narrative to the forefront, raising the stakes even higher.

If you are a fan of horror, visual novels, choice-based narrative games, or any combination of the above, I cannot recommend Black Tabby Games' works enough.

Web Browsing Highlights

Interesting things I have discovered on the web this week:

Stardew Valley celebrated the 10-year anniversary of its launch on February 26, and Update 1.7 is in the works.
"Mike Little: the British co-founder of WordPress you’ve probably never heard of (but should)…" — an interview by Nicol Wistreich of Netribution.

Bak Baan's Second Litter of Puppies

2026-02-20T14:23:33Z

One of my uncles is taking care of our family durian plantation, with a dog he rescued as a stray a year ago and named Bak Baan after the mahjong tile 白板.

My parents and I met Bak Baan for the first time in 2025's Lunar New Year. When we saw Bak Baan the next time in 2025's Qingming Festival in early April, Bak Ban was pregnant with her first litter of puppies, then she gave birth in late April. We got the opportunity to see Bak Baan's children ourselves in August 2025.

Months later in December 2025, we learned that Bak Baan gave birth again on December 16 in the evening. Like her first litter, Bak Baan's second litter consisted of seven puppies.

Meanwhile, Bak Baan's first litter of puppies had been given to other people for adoption, except one puppy who was named Musang King after a durian cultivar.

Our chance of seeing Bak Baan's new children came with 2026's Lunar New Year. Specifically, on Lunar New Year Eve on February 16, when my uncle and his girlfriend went to our family durian plantation to feed their dogs, after a reunion lunch in my uncle's house with other relatives from my father's side of the family.

A number of Bak Baan's second litter of puppies have black coats, which reminds me of our own dog, Yat Tong (一筒), who like Bak Baan was named after a mahjong tile. One other puppy has a black-and-white dual-tone coat, so we nicknamed it "dairy cow".

On the other hand, Musang King already grew so big that he has become taller than his mum, despite only being ten months old. Aside from the coat colour, Musang King looks a lot like his mum.

While I was unable to take a picture of Bak Baan and all her children together, since the dogs moved around often, but I did manage to capture the moments of them enjoying their lunch and then resting.

Bak Baan's second litter of puppies are enjoying their lunch.

One of Bak Baan's new puppies that have black coats.

The legendary "dairy cow" from Bak Baan's second litter of puppies. 😄

Musang King, the only one from Bak Baan's first litter of puppies who still lives in our family durian plantation.

Bak Baan and her puppies were relaxing after their lunch.

Three of Bak Baan's puppies sleeping together after enjoying their lunch.

Three of Bak Baan's puppies sleeping together under an iron frame after enjoying their lunch.

Weekly Recap: 15 February 2026

2026-02-15T12:40:07Z

Preparing to Celebrate Lunar New Year

This was the final week before Lunar New Year!

As per tradition, my family and I have been preparing to celebrate Lunar New Year, by shopping, cleaning our house, putting up decorations, and so on. We have planned to travel to my parents' hometown tomorrow on Monday, which will be Lunar New Year Eve, to celebrate Lunar New Year with our relatives, after my brother, who is living and working in Singapore, returned to Malaysia today on Sunday.

I also intend to take the opportunity to take a one-week break from school.

(Mis)Adventures with Limeide Mechanical Gaming Keyboards

On the past Sunday, the RGB backlight of my Limeide GTX300 USB mechanical gaming keyboard that is plugged in to my main computer, which is a gaming laptop, suddenly stopped working.

When I ordered and received Limeide GTX300 from a Malaysian store through Shopee back in September 2025, I did not expect that the RGB backlight did not work out-of-the-box on my Arch Linux operating system, so I had to configure my Linux system manually to get the RGB backlight working after searching the web for solutions.

My configuration worked until the last Sunday. After investigating it myself, I realised that a system update I recently performed somehow caused my system to "reset" the device ID of my Limeide GTX300 keyboard, thus unable to properly detect the keyboard to turn on the RGB backlight.

To be honest, I had been kind of regretting buying this keyboard, because not only that the RGB backlight did not work on Linux out-of-the-box, but also the design of the keys made it difficult to read the key characters without the backlight. Therefore, I decided to look for a new USB keyboard.

After searching Shopee, I chose a different model of Limeide's USB mechanical gaming keyboard — Limeide K21 Mechanical Storm, which also has RGB backlight, but one where the key characters can still be read even without the backlight. After placing my order on last Sunday, my Limeide K21 Mechanical Storm arrived at my house two days later on Tuesday.

When I tested my brand new Limeide K21 Mechanical Storm, I was pleased to find out that unlike GTX300, K21's RGB backlight worked on my Linux system out-of-the-gate, and I could freely turn the backlight on and off with the designated backlight key.

While waiting for Limeide K21 to arrive at my house, the backlight of my Limeide GTX300 worked again after I performed a new system update on my computer. Therefore, for now I am still using Limeide GTX300, but I am glad I at least have an extra mechanical gaming keyboard in case I actually need to replace my current USB keyboard one day.

Games I Was Playing

I continued to play Pokémon Legends: Z-A and its Mega Dimension DLC. I have defeated the final boss of the main story of the DLC, but not the post-credits DLC story yet.

Web Browsing Highlights

Interesting things I have discovered on the web this week:

Adam Newbold, creator of omg.lol, published a beginner guide for setting up an IRC server.
- Coincidentally, just a day after Adam's guide was published, Discord announced that starting from March, users who want to keep accessing age-restricted chat groups and channels will be required to verify that they are an adult via face scan or ID, which prompts backlash along with conversations about possible Discord alternatives, with IRC brought up as an alternative for text-based group chats, including by major gaming news platforms like PC Gamer.
- Back in September 2025, omg.lol shut down its Discord group, and moved its group chat network to IRC fully. I have been active in omg.lol's IRC network both before and after the shutdown of its Discord group, and I would like to see more people giving IRC a shot.