Many of my friends and acquaintances work in metropolitan areas. They have side jobs while working full time and attend conferences and events on their days off. Seeing them also make time for hobbies and friendships, it seems as though both their work and personal lives are fulfilling. Meanwhile, I live with my family and work as a staff member at a local university. I take pride in my work, and this area is not an unpleasant place to live. Even so, whenever I hear about the lives of those around me, I feel as though I am the only one staying in the same place. Is life in a metropolitan area really what I envy? ...

Engineering can sometimes help in places that seem far removed from my own field. That thought led me to create textlint-rule-ja-grade-kanji , a textlint rule that flags kanji not yet taught by a specified elementary school grade. It started with a post on X about proofreading self-published books . The post pointed out that if a passage is supposed to have been written by an elementary school student, limiting it to kanji taught by that grade can help make the character feel authentic. What caught my attention was not merely a way to portray a particular character. Honestly, the character was beside the point. Could textlint bring an engineer’s perspective to proofreading novels and collaborative anthologies, and in doing so support cultures such as self-publishing? That curiosity made me start building. ...

The party wipes on the same mechanic for the third time. In FFXIV, a total party defeat that forces everyone to restart a fight is called a wipe. The cause should be clear, but nobody speaks. Eventually, someone says, “Let’s go again,” and all eight players begin the countdown with the same uncertainty unresolved. At a moment like this, is player skill really what is missing? Even when everyone understands their own movement, the group will get stuck in the same place if they use different reference points for their positions or cannot admit a mistake. In FFXIV, a static is a group that tackles high-end content such as Savage and Ultimate fights with, in principle, the same members over time. Difficult mechanics are not the only thing that stops a static’s progress. Small gaps in understanding among eight players can cause repeated wipes too. How can a group find those gaps early and correct them on the next pull? This article looks at situations that commonly arise in statics. ...

“Click here” was not enough. Not everyone who attends an esports experience event regularly plays games. Some children are unfamiliar with a mouse and keyboard, while some older participants are playing a game for the first time. With children, the explanation may have to begin with how to drag. At one event featuring Taiko no Tatsujin, we first had to explain the difference between “Don” and “Ka.” When we presented GeoGuessr at the Tsubata Town Esports Festa , participants needed to learn how to move the map and place a pin before they could begin looking for a location from the scenery. For students who knew the games, none of these actions seemed to require an explanation. The event participants saw them differently. If the students simply passed on what they took for granted, the participants could not even begin to play. Before teaching the game, the students had to observe where each person was having trouble. ...

There is an old piece of advice that says you should keep a notebook by your bed. It is there to catch an idea that appears just before sleep and keep it from disappearing by morning. But are the words written in that notebook really the same as the thought that first appeared? I once wrote an article called The Superposition of Thoughts and People Who Can’t Write Technical Articles . When I pull one idea out and turn it into prose, other thoughts that surrounded it fall away. They were connected in my head, yet the moment I put them into words, they become something slightly different. Even so, I cannot leave them without words. Unless I record them, they cannot reach anyone else, and they may disappear without even being recognized by my future self. If that is the case, perhaps I do not need to begin with polished prose. I can simply talk, leaving in the filler words and detours. Today, voice AI can take the place of the notebook beside my bed. ...

“So it is okay for working adults to be like that too. That is a bit of a relief.” A student once said that to me while we were talking about how we spend our days off. On my days off, I sometimes spend half the day dozing in bed or play games until late at night. I do not go out somewhere every week, nor do I use all my free time for a side job or studying for qualifications. When I tell students this, several of them have seemed relieved to hear that adults with jobs have days off like that too. When I look at the people around me, I see some who spend their days off working a side job. Some work their regular job during the day and a side job at night, while others use their days off to attend conferences or prepare presentations. I also see friends going on trips together. When I see them, I end up comparing their days off with mine. It feels as though I am the only one doing nothing and wasting my time. ...

Lately, I have been playing Splatoon Raiders. Before its release, I thought it would be like a Splatoon Hero Mode with loot-driven action RPG elements. I also enjoyed playing ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN, so a game where I could grow stronger while picking up weapons and gear sounded like something I would enjoy. That expectation was not wrong. But once I actually started playing, I found that growing stronger was not the only fun part. Combining weapons and gadgets lets me do things that were never possible in previous Splatoon games. ...

A student asked me about using AI code review in team development training for an existing project. Tools such as Gemini Code Assist and CodeRabbit may find problems that people miss and reduce the burden of review. They may also give newcomers a chance to discover problems they would not notice on their own. But does it count as training if they simply run the commands and apply the changes suggested by AI? AI review can improve the code. Does the person who wrote it improve as well? ...

Introduction On July 12, 2026, I took part in the Tsubata Town Esports Festa 2026 . The KIT eSports Project, for which I serve as an advisor, had a booth at the event, and I attended with the students. We exhibited GeoGuessr, a game in which players use Google Street View scenery to work out where they are. We expected that many visitors would be from Tsubata. With that in mind, we created a custom map featuring only locations within the town. ...

When I was a student, I often learned from moments that made me think, “What even is this?” If I had to name it, I might call it question-driven learning. I remember investigating things more intensely when I ran into systems that were a little hard to understand, environments that did not work properly, or paths that existed but were not clearly explained by official documentation, rather than when I was given neatly prepared materials and procedures. ...