New Musical Finds of the Week

May 11th, 2025 - Sunday afternoon coffee time

Found some really fun new music this week trawling the internet.

Welly: "Big in the Suburbs" (2024)

First up is the band Welly; a bunch of thrashy lads from Southampton, UK making fun thrashy music. Kind of punk, kind of Talking Heads... Their album "Big in the Suburbs" from last year is great and has been on rotation for me quite a bit this week. I particularly like their single "Shopping":

Eli Winter: "A Trick of the Light"

The other album I've been listening to a bunch is Eli Winter with his new album "A Trick of the Light." Kind of hard to describe this one other than its jazz but with strong Americana vibes; think freewheeling jazz but with banjos and slide guitar. It's really cool and makes great atmosphere when writing.

-e

Personality of Pour-Over Coffee

April 25th, 2025 - Third morning coffee.

In Seoul I picked up the novel "Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop," which was an incredibly charming little slice of life read about a woman who leaves her old life behind to start a bookshop. She accumlates a cast of characters including employees, regular customers, suppliers, who create a wonderful little community.

One of my favorite characters was the barista, who takes the job at first just because he needs the work, but who then becomes incredibly invested in learning how to make the perfect cup of coffee. He learns from an experienced roaster this notion that pour-over coffee "reflects the personality and mood of the barista.

It's an idea that sounds metaphorical and New Age-y at first, but the more I've thought about it the more I'm absolutely obsessed. A pour-over coffee is most affected by timing and precision; amount of grounds, speed of pouring, time to wait between pours, staying focused and concentrated... These are all things that do, in fact, reflect mood (were you feeling impatient? angry? peaceful?) and personality (are you patient? precise? careless?). Pouring inconsistently can make the coffee bitter. Too quickly makes a cup that's far too dark. Letting the grounds sit out too long makes a weak cup. Now I find myself paying more attention to making my own coffee.

If a cup of coffee reflects who you are and how you interact with the world, I would like all my cups I make to be nothing but delicious.

-e

Back from Seoul

April 22nd, 2025 - 10am on the dot.

First day back at the office and I am definitely having trouble locking in. The trip to Seoul was absolutely incredible; great food, wonderful sights, amazing wedding... We went to a Buddhist temple for a guided meditation session and - corny as it may sound - it was kind of a transformative experience for me? First time (possibly in my life) that I've reached that level of peace and stillness. Incredible. Also spent WAY too much money between clothes, gifts for people, etc... but how often do you go to Seoul?

Hopefully it won't be my last trip there, because I loved it. Definitely want to go back someday.

-e

Heading to Seoul on Wednesday!

April 8th, 2025 - Mid Afternoon Snacktime

Spending some time today planning our trip to Seoul on Wednesday - Very excited. Been to Japan twice, but never to South Korea. We're going for a friend's wedding, but there's also going to be plenty of time for shopping, food, sightseeing... It's been a while since I've done a proper trip, and I'm really looking forward to this one.

Just need to get a ton of work done between now and then - Eeeesh.

-e

What I'm Listening To:
"Bittersweet Memories" by Takashico Music

April 3rd, 2025 - A little after 11am

Busy and weird week at work, but I'm still trying to keep up my New Year's Resolution of spending a little time every day researching new music. Today's fun find was Takashico Music's Bittersweet Memories. He's a musician working in a genre I'm seeing some called "Japanese Neo-Technopop;" basically a revival of the Yellow Magic Orchestra synthpop/technopop of the post-Bubble 80s and 90s. Really fun little album; give it a listen!

Does that embed work? I hope so!

Tinkering Tinkering

March 24th 2025 - Pre-Lunchtime

Started tinkering with Godot this morning and trying to set discrete goals for myself in making a game.

I loosely want to adapt my Short Circuit Sleuth characters and story into a side-scrolling adventure game, but I'm also not locking myself into that - for now I just want to get the Sleuth working as a basic template I can use to make lots of games.

I'm starting simply for now, trying to make something that can do the following:

• Run and jump
• Pick up items in an inventory
• Talk to characters, make dialogue options
• Have VO
• Track basic world logic

If I can do that, I think I could make about 75% of the game ideas I have in my head; especially when combined with finding a simple enough art style that I can just make stuff.

So first things first, getting that platformer controller working...

-e

Spring is Finally Coming

March 20th 2025 - A bit before lunch

Finally starting to get some sunshine here in Helsinki - Sun coming up around 6:15a or so, and it's amazing how good it's been for my mental state. I don't feel quite as terrible all the time, I'm feeling more positive about life and work in general, and I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about the futre.

I managed to resurrect my beloved 2012 Retina Macbook Pro as a machine running Ubuntu and it's made me incredibly happy - that's what I'm typing on now! I love this computer and it's amazing how much I now enjoy working on a computer again. It's got its quirks and problems, obviously, but I'm trying to work around that.

I'm trying to embrace the idea of taking control of my tech life again - going open source, moving away from big Silicon Valley social media companies, etc.

More to come...

-e

DEATH STRANDING 2!!!!!!!!

March 10th, 2025 - Mid-Afternoon Coffee

The new Death Stranding 2 trailer dropped last night at like 11:30pm, right as I was going to bed, and it is absolutely all I've been able to think about since. 10 minutes of absolute madness, stunningly strange visuals, wild story implications, new characters... God I'm excited for that game.

In a very funny move, it seems that there's a new character named Neil who is obviously meant to be Solid Snake - He's played by Luca Marinelli, who Kojima has previously stated he would want to play Solid Snake in a movie, he's got the iconic headband, he's got the military stylings... Now granted, this could just be some wild bait and switch, but more likely it's Kojima pulling a Sam Lake and making the Alex Casey to his Max Payne.

What a wild thing. Can't wait to see where this goes. Can't wait to play it. I'm sure it'll be hundreds of hours long and take me literal months to get through but I'm so excited to have a big weird world to dive into.

What's my takeaway from this regarding the kinds of games I'd like to be making? I want to work on something that feels like it has a big world full of layers and connections to dig into; characters that are connected in unusual ways, or that evolve in ways you never saw coming. When I look at what I love about the Metal Gear Solid series, it's the way characters and relationships evolve over time, and slowly, so that by the time a character has been transformed into a cyborg ninja - for example - you're just like "Yeah. I suppose that makes sense."

Anyway. I think what that means is I need to start small and then build from there. Interesting.

-e

"The Electric State: Kid Cosmo"

March 3rd, 2025 - After dinnertime

Hey so here's a fun thing - A new game that I worked on was announced today: The Electric State: Kid Cosmo; a sort of canonical prequel to the upcoming Russo Bros. adaptation of Simon Stålenhag's graphic novel.

I got to help write this really sweet and interesting game last year; mostly the meta layer of things with the siblings who are playing the game within a game. Really fun and interesting challenge, and super fun to get to contribute to a part of this new universe and IP.

Buck Games are super talented and I can't wait to see how the final product turned out. If you're interested in learning more you can check it out here:

Bye for now. Be good to each other.

-e

Bye, Bye February

February 26th, 2025 - Somewhere between cups 2 and 3 of coffee

This year is maybe shaping up to be busier than I thought it would be. Working on untangling some thorny plot stuff for work this morning as I fight through insomnia-induced exhaustion. Ended up not getting much recharge time last night as I was working on some freelance stuff that took longer than I thought; it's a new project and so I'm in what I consider the "calibration" phase of the writing process. When you're starting with a new client or on a new project you need to feel out what the style and tone they want is, and it can be a little tricky. Starting from the vast open plains of the blank page you can strike out in any direction you please; which is exciting, but when you're not the one calling the shots on where you go (or how) it means that you need to pretty quickly find the constraints that fit what the client is looking for. Luckily that's something I'm pretty good at by this point, ha.

Apparently something I worked on last year is getting announced tomorrow, which is fun. When I worked on it the art and everything was all in really early days so I'm excited to see how it turned and see what of my work actually stuck around. Stay tuned and watch this space I suppose.

As much fun as I'm having simply editing the index.html file for this site every time I update the blog, I do wonder whether I should get some sort of formal CMS system installed on here. Sounds like a lot of work. Maybe something with a newsletter though? or at least a way of notifying people when I've put something new up. Not that I really care - This is largely just for me.

Here's a little doodle of Max I did during a meeting last week that I don't hate.

hang on can't figure out how to post images without breaking everything

-e

Back to It

February 11th, 2025 - 3:15 or so

Can't believe that February is almost half over. I've been staying busy so far this year at work; lot of exciting stuff going on that I'm excited to get to share with people someday. Also got some interesting side project/freelance stuff brewing that I'm cautiously optimistic about. Freelancing is such a funny thing, because you'll contribute to these projects and sometimes have no idea what will ever come of them. Some projects fizzle out and never go anywhere, others take years to come out and reveal that your contributions didn't really stick, and still others can actually be pretty satisfying. I've seen the whole gamut and am curious to see how these projects go

Supposedly there's a Playstation State of Play happening sometime this week which, unless the world is unspeakably cruel, is when Death Stranding 2 should be announced! Good lord I'm excited for that one. I've been craving something strange and deep to sink my teeth into; not "deep" in the sense of "Hey man that's really deep," but "deep" meaning there's just a lot to dig into and think about. I have no fathomably clue what DS2 will really be like in the end, but I feel quite confident that it will be thought-provoking at least. And that sounds nice.

(Also, since I'm working on gritty-n-grounded Max Payne instead of super weird Control these days, it means that I don't even have to feel insecure about DS2 being weirder and more compelling than what I'm working on. Ha.)

UPDATE: lol, shortly after I posted this it was announced that there will be a big Death Stranding 2 panel at SXSW soooo it seems more likely that I will have to wait until then for DS2 news.

-e

I did it!

January 24th, 2025 - 2:45pm Helsinki Time

Holy cow, I've actually managed to get a working website with all the sections I wanted. Clunky and lo-fi as hell, but it's exactly what I wanted. That feels nice. At some point I'll need to figure out a cleaner solution for the blog than just putting one post on top of another but that's a problem for a later time.

Now to see if I can remember how to redirect "www.ericstirpe.com" to come here...

-e

A Fresh Start

January 24th, 2025 - 2:00pm(ish) Helsinki Time

I got my first website as a junior in high school, which I made and uploaded using Apple's "iWeb" software. It was great, it was easy, and it let me mess around with it doing pretty much whatever I wanted to use it for. I'd use it to just host pictures, sometimes I'd put up little comics or blog posts, and then when I got to college I started using it in a more professional capacity as a means of hosting my storyboarding and art portfolio.

Eventually, Apple stopped supporting iWeb and I had to find other means. I used Squarespace for about a decade, but it kept getting more expensive and complicated even as I found myself using a website less and less. Instagram and Twitter had replaced my blogging and image sharing. I pivoted away from storyboarding fully into writing, meaning I didn't need a big fancy portfolio full of image galleries and whatnot anymore... So this past year I finally cancelled my Squarespace subscription and took some time to figure out what I wanted to do.

What I wanted was to have a website that felt like mine; not part of a bigger social network or other nonsense. I wanted just my own little corner of the internet again where I could scratch around and do whatever the hell I wanted with it. So that's how we ended up here, with me kludging together .html on neocities. Is that what they call "old school?" I think that's what I'll call it.

So however the hell you ended up here, thanks for dropping by. It's nice to see you

-e