Pixel Renaissance Dad
I’m a thirty-something husband and father of two, writing anonymously from somewhere in the middle of too many obsessions and not enough evenings. I lift, I track protein, I self-host everything on Linux, and I’m slowly — embarrassingly slowly — making a top-down pixel art game in Godot. I have no artistic talent and I refuse to make music for it. We’ll see how that goes.
I also tinker with DeFi and crypto, fight migraines, and spend too much time thinking about what it means to be a decent man, husband, and father in a world that seems increasingly determined to make all three harder than they should be.
This blog is where I think out loud. No agenda, no brand, no slick content strategy — just honest notes from the work in progress.
I am not a crypto expert. I just can't stop finding it interesting.
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Tech
- 15 Apr, 2026
I can't stop finding crypto interesting, even now. The charts crowd, the fundamentals debate, the mechanics underneath — and yes, the scams are fascinating too.
read moreHeroes: Olden Era — they finally did it
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Gaming
- 05 May, 2026
24 years after Heroes III, Olden Era arrived and it's everything I didn't dare hope for — from a kid who was always bad at strategy games.
read moreI named the VM. This is what passes for commitment around here.
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Game Dev
- 22 Apr, 2026
Eleven months since the last commit. I spun up a fresh VM, named it, and couldn't quite bring myself to walk away again. A Papniskin devlog.
read moreI did a 3-day water fast. My body had thoughts.
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Life , Fitness
- 12 Apr, 2026
A dad with chronic migraines seizes a rare prepared window to try a 72-hour water fast and sees what his body actually does when left to its own devices.
read moreI'm not mad at Valve for the Steam Deck price hike
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Gaming , Tech
- 04 Jun, 2026
Valve raised Steam Deck prices and the internet is loud about it. I don't think it's a Valve story — it's a memory market story, and cheap tech is ending.
read moreMaking a game is not like building software. I know this now.
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Game Dev
- 16 Apr, 2026
I'm a developer. I thought that would help. Six things about solo game dev that turn out to be genuinely hard, even when you know how to code.
read moreI don't even know how to start writing about this game
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Game Dev
- 11 Apr, 2026
Six years of notes, and it finally has a design document. Two extinct civilizations, a hybrid creature, a soul-devouring false god — this is Papniskin.
read moreSetting up a home server: the rough guide
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Tech
- 24 Apr, 2026
The key commands and decisions in the order you'd actually need them. Debian, SSH hardening, Samba, Jellyfin, Tailscale — a skeleton, not a manual.
read moreSix weeks, zero pixels
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Game Dev
- 04 Jun, 2026
A follow-up to the post where I swore I'd finally get back to Papniskin. Six weeks later: nothing. And I'm strangely fine with that.
read moreSlow weight loss sucks – and I keep falling for the quick fix anyway
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Fitness , Health
- 10 Apr, 2026
The biology is working against you, the quick fix is a lie, and I know all of this — yet here I am on attempt five. Why slow fat loss is so hard.
read moreThe accidental reader
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Life
- 13 Apr, 2026
I was never a bookworm — too much energy, not enough stillness. Then two kids arrived, gaming got complicated, and my wife's bookshelves happened to be right there.
read moreAt some point, gaming to relax became something I had to learn
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Gaming , Life
- 14 Apr, 2026
Gaming to relax sounds automatic. It isn't — and it took me embarrassingly long to figure out why I kept standing up feeling worse than before.
read moreThe quiet flatness — something I keep noticing in men who used to love their hobbies
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Life
- 05 May, 2026
A pattern I keep seeing in regular guys in their thirties and forties: the hobbies they used to love have gone silent. Here's what I think is actually going on.
read moreThe Steam Deck as a dad purchase, not a gamer purchase
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Gaming , Life
- 14 Apr, 2026
Parenting didn't kill gaming — it made the old way structurally impossible. The Steam Deck didn't fix the schedule. It fixed the structure.
read moreTurtle WoW's last days, and my own quiet server
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Gaming
- 05 May, 2026
Turtle WoW — the most ambitious vanilla WoW project ever built — shuts down in nine days. It's also the reason I need to get back into my own server project.
read moreNobody reads blogs anymore. So I started one.
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Meta
- 09 Apr, 2026
A blog in 2026, of all years. An anonymous dad in his 30s with too many obsessions and not enough evenings — and an honest answer to why.
read moreWhat's running on my home server
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Tech
- 24 Apr, 2026
Samba, Jellyfin, Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, Tailscale, Ollama — all running quietly at home, keeping the family's data where it belongs.
read moreWhy I built a home server
- Pixel Renaissance Dad
- Tech
- 24 Apr, 2026
Subscription fatigue, a cheap mini PC, and a weekend with Debian. How I stopped renting my digital life and started owning it again.
read more