Posts from August 2024
One Year
Somehow, despite running a blog (sometimes quite intermittently) for the past twenty years, I never knew August 31st was World Blog Day. So it seemed as good a day as any to finally write a long-overdue post looking back on this break I’ve been on, and looking forward to what comes next.
Folks who know me, or who have been following my posts here or on social media, know that, after a lot of years of hard work, good planning, and truly monumental luck, last year I found myself in a position to take an extended break from my career. As a decision it was probably one of the most significant ones I’ve ever made, and it was far from an easy one, as I knew I’d be walking away from a lucrative career working with some of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. But after twenty years at the same company, and a lot of soul searching, I knew that it was time for a change, and rather than immediately jump into a new opportunity, I decided it was better to take some personal time to unwind, reflect, and eventually re-enter the work force with more purpose and intention.
Now, well over a year in, it feels like I made that decision only yesterday. Certainly, fairly early on I noticed just how quickly time can fly, but even then I don’t think I appreciated how short this break would feel fourteen months in. And while, yes, I went in with a lofty list of goals and only achieved a few, I can honestly say there’s little I would do differently.
At the beginning I genuinely assumed I’d eventually get so bored that going back to work would feel like a relief. Certainly, during past extended periods of time off (e.g. over Christmas), that was my experience.
And yet, rather than boredom, I discovered how freeing it is to spend time doing things both meaningful and yet outside any traditional definition of work, and how our western sense of self as being inherently tied to the work we do prevents us from seeing the many other ways that we can build and create and have a positive impact on others outside that narrow perspective.
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First few jars of Haskap (and a bit of blueberry) jam! I’m a bit concerned it’ll end up too stuff (the candy thermometer read 220 but… I dunno…) but we shall see. It sure looks pretty, though!
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First batch of fermented pickles are done (well, almost, left one jar on for a bit longer)! These are 10% vinegar and a 3% brine, fermented for 10 days, and they came out just perfect.
They’ll now go into the fridge for long term storage, but will not be heat processed as that kills off all those lovely lactobacilli that I worked so hard to cultivate!
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First pair of Tour socks completed, shipped, and received, and the second pair is started! I haven’t done colour work in a long time and you can tell (or, at least, I can)…
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Well, six of twenty hours of manual driving lessons done (plus a bit of in-between practice) and the instructor has only had to use the “uhoh” break once, and only because I almost blew through a yield sign that was hidden behind a tree. Progress!
On Sonic 2 Compression
Over twenty years ago, now, I played a small role in the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 hacking community by reverse engineering the level data compression algorithm used in the game. I figured it was about time I wrote my side of that story, so, here it is!
Obviously I do a Google search for my own name from time to time because, admit it, everyone does it. Yeah, you too. Don’t give me that look. We both know it’s true.
So it was that a while back I was perusing those search results, and I came across something that honestly left me incredibly chagrined: a page about something called “Kosinski” compression. Clicking the link, I realized the page was about a project I worked on way back in the early aughts to reverse engineer the algorithm used to compress level data in the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ROM.
And somewhere along the way, apparently that format got named after me.
Now I want to be extremely clear about something: I did not invent this algorithm or the in-ROM data storage layout, and I certainly didn’t name it after myself. All I did was uncover what was already there and write it down in my own weird way. But, once you put something out in the world, it can take on a life of it’s own, and so now this algorithm has my name on it. Oops!
So naturally I shared this little factoid with some friends, and we all had a laugh. And that was that.
But then, in 2022, a gentleman by the name of Damian Grove reached out. Way back in the day, Damian created a site called the Sonic Hacking Community (SHaC), where he collected a whole raft of information about the Sonic 2 ROM layout in a site he called the Sonic 2 Hacking Guide. In reaching out, Damian was hoping I might answer some questions about the reverse engineering work I did, and so I did what I often do: forgot to reply until months later. Meanwhile, Damian himself didn’t see that reply when it was eventually sent, and so we never connected.
Fast forward, finally, to 2024 and Damian finally spots my email and a) responds with a couple of questions, while also b) including a link to a video from the 2023 Retro World Expo of a panel discussion of the history of Sonic 2 hacking. A video in which I come up as a bit of a topic of conversation.
Now, just to get this out of the way: while I was certainly a bit bemused by the conversation in that video, it was nothing but curious and respectful and I had absolutely no issues being talked about. But I gotta admit, it was more than a little weird to see people speculating about me on stage!
In that conversation I noticed a few misapprehensions about my own background and history and the approach I took to reverse engineer the algorithm, so I figured I’d set the record straight and provide my own vague recollections about how it all went down!
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