Get Info: #popular

My most popular posts of 2025

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 22:12:00 +0000

2025, eh? What a blast.

This year saw an incredible burst of creativity and exploration. I started the year shipping a multi-player arcade racing game for Sega Dreamcast, coded in bed making games on iOS using Love2D, made a little game that won at a PC gamejam thanks to Atari & Jeff Minter, and created everything from browser games to number one DJ mixes. One big milestone was my Macintosh Magazine Media project surpassed 1 million files (that’s over 30 million uncompressed files). Nerd alert!

The year also brought significant challenges—navigating community harassment led me to step back from the Playdate scene after nearly six years of creative work there. I decided to bang a drum about that and I now donate all of my Playdate earnings to charity. This year also opened new doors: I landed my dream job to build a game studio and my dream game. Pretty cool.

Through it all, I kept creating, kept learning, and kept sharing. Still trying to launch some apps and games that have been finished for months or years, and that I use myself every day. Maybe in 2026.

How many posts?

43 posts (up from 32 in 2024)

According to Google Analytics, my 5 most popular posts in 2025 were (most popular first):

How to tame a user interface using a spreadsheet (11 Oct)
Slugs on a Cube: interactive animation (16 Jan)
When Playdate Stopped Being Fun (15 Apr)
Intelligent Agent Technology: Open Sesame! (1993) (31 May)
Wormhole for Perplexity Comet (21 Aug)

Best of the rest

My personal favourites from the year (most recent first):

Music recommendations (2025) (12 Dec)
Donating my Playdate earnings to The Cybersmile Foundation (02 Aug)
Amazfit activity tracker and watch face asset generation (11 Apr)
Station: Travel Through the Four Seasons (1994) (30 Mar)
DREAM RIDE for Sega Dreamcast (and emulators) (05 Jan)

Still going strong

The following posts keep on truckin’ (most popular first):

Turning an iPad Pro into the Ultimate Classic Macintosh (17 Apr 2021)
Going back to the old (pre-X) Twitter iOS app (17 Aug 2023)
Pairing a Wii remote on macOS (21 Mar 2023)
Pixel-Perfect retro gaming on LCD 480p EDTVs (06 May 2021)
YOYOZO (or, how I made a Playdate game in 39KB) (21 Nov 2023)

Blog changelog

Improved replacement of “nouns” which are automatically-emphasised words (6 Mar, 11 May)
Improved sitemap and feed XML (14 Apr)
Added support for comments links to Bluesky and Mastodon (23 Apr)
Added wishlist of hard-to-find stuff (8 Aug)

Previous years

My most popular posts of 2024

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 23:59:00 +0000

2024 was a bit of meh year for me. A lot of time away from working, which was necessary but a process that I find difficult as I’m at my best when I’m creating. Here’s to 2025!

Two viral blog posts dwarfed all other writing: Emoji history: the missing years (10 May, 15K views) and Stapler: I remade a 32 year old classic Macintosh app (10 Aug, 14K views) which heralded the start of me trying other things development-wise. I’ve created macOS and iOS apps using Swift and SwiftUI, tools using Python and Qt, blog extensions using Ruby, text editor extensions using JavaScript, games in Lua for Playdate and PC, and I ended the year writing a game for the Sega Dreamcast.

How many posts?

32 posts (down from 40 in 2023)

According to Google Analytics, my 10 most popular posts in 2024 were (most popular first):

Emoji history: the missing years (10 May)
Stapler: I remade a 32 year old classic Macintosh app (10 Aug)
Taking command of the Context Menu in macOS (30 Jul)
PSA: Internet Archive “glitch” deletes years of user data & accounts (1 Aug)
Mouse Support for Playdate (11 May)
This behavior is by design (28 Aug)
Automating the most annoying aspects of blogging (11 Oct)
Emigre typography and graphic design magazine (1984–2005) (24 May)
Interview: Kenta Cho (Japanese indie game developer) (10 Feb)
A year in the life of a Playdate game developer (7 Mar)

Best of the rest

My personal favourites from the year (most recent first):

Music recommendations (2024) (31 Dec)
New 3D Golf Simulation (video game series) (9 Nov)
Extensions for Nova editor (17 Oct)
Shibuya Pixel Art Contest 2024 (14 July)
Adding your own multi-channel audio to Music app (9 May)
Per-game skins in the Delta classic video game emulator for iOS (18 Apr)
Barbara Nessim at The Ginza Art Space (1986) (15 Feb)
JINZO Paint: vintage mobile drawing app (22 Jan)

Blog changelog

Optimise SASS compile once in plugin rather than header of every page (23 Feb)
Added about and support pages (28 May)
Multi-carousel support (14 Jul)
Rewrote the main page of my non-blog website (3 Aug)
Optimised all includes and templates to reduce build time (19 Aug)
Automatic transformation of local images urls to CDN urls (19 Aug)
Automatic smart quotes in post titles (19 Aug)
Improved replacement of “nouns” which are automatically-emphasised words (3 Sep)
Better YouTube embeds using lite-yt-embed (11 Sep)
Added OpenSearch to allow searching blog from address bar (15 Sep)
Created Markdown File Linker to make linking easier (8 Oct)
Created YAML Tag Picker to make tagging easier (8 Oct)
Embed Gists using custom gist tag plugin (12 Oct)
Improved noscript experience (12 Oct)
Auto-migrate SASS to use its module system (17 Oct)
Migrate from EasyEngine to Caddy server (1 Dec)

Previous years

My most popular posts of 2023

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 19:41:00 +0000

2023 was a year where I feel my blogging really hit its stride.

I’ve spent most of the year trying to comprehend 2022’s traumatic events, the lingering impact of which continues to affect me daily. Positive outcomes are that it gave me a little more time to write, and I developed some small games that might not have existed otherwise. And one of those, YOYOZO, has received a Game Of The Year accolade!

How many posts?

40 posts (up from 18 in 2022)

According to Google Analytics, my 10 most popular posts in 2023 were (most popular first):

“The Famous F40” vector illustration by David Rumfelt (15 Jul)
YOYOZO (or, how I made a Playdate game in 39KB) (21 Nov)
Going back to the old (pre-X) Twitter iOS app (17 Aug)
Early computer art by Barbara Nessim (1984) (9 Nov)
Back In Time: Vintage Maps of Akihabara (1976–2001) (1 Jul, updated old post)
Dynamic music and sound techniques for video games (9 Dec)
Casio CALEID XM-700 Mobile Navigator (1997) (25 Aug)
Ball und Panzer Golf: making a Playdate game in a week (26 Jun)
Kenichi Shinohara’s pixel art Ukiyo-e (13 Oct)
Ordering photocopies from Japan’s National Library (24 May)

Best of the rest

My personal favourites from the year (most recent first):

List of vintage Japanese pixel/dot art software the one where I list 200 old apps
Tom Moulton, Father of the Disco Mix (1976) the one a student copy-pasted for me
Fake Steve Jobs & Letters from BILL G the one that nobody read
Review: GTi Club Supermini Festa! the one about an amazing Wii game
Where can I see Hokusai’s Great Wave today? the one about The Great Wave

Blog changelog

Added tag cloud to improve discoverability (12 Aug)
Added site search to further improve discoverability (27 Aug)
Added Google search link if there are no site search results (1 Dec)
Fixed site search issue which meant some blog posts were being skipped (22 Dec)

Previous years

My most popular posts of 2022

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

2022 was a mixed year for me.

I secured my own studio and continued to be hugely productive, creating some of my best ever work. Unfortunately, I experienced multiple traumatic events, and their lingering effects knocked out the last third of the year and beyond. Life-changing, and not in a good way.

How many posts?

18 posts (down from 55 in 2021)

According to Google Analytics, my 5 most popular posts in 2022 were (most popular first):

Accessing Yahoo! Japan from Europe (7 Apr)
Kawase Hasui’s Imaginary World Tour (29 Dec)
Displaying Full Referrer URL in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) (17 Jan)
Accessing Yahoo! Japan from Europe (7 Apr)
Bender for Playdate (20 May)

Best of the rest

My personal favourites from the year (most recent first):

Gaming Advent Calendar the one where I mention games I’ve played
Fixing bugs using Bird on Palm OS the one where I nerd out
Sparrow Solitaire for Playdate (Early Access) the one where I launch a game too early

Most enduring posts

According to Google Analytics, my 5 most popular posts from previous years (most popular first):

Building BasiliskII for iOS (21 Apr 2021)
Recovered: Forgotten SEGA Exclusives on Palm OS (24 Apr 2019)
Turning an iPad Pro into the Ultimate Classic Macintosh (17 Apr 2021)
Pixel-Perfect retro gaming on LCD 480p EDTVs (6 May 2021)
Playing old 32-bit iOS games in 2021 (14 Sep 2021)

Previous years

My most popular posts of 2021

My most popular posts of 2021

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 31 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

2021 was the year I got serious about blogging.

Thanks to friends for the encouragement to do so! I set up this current incarnation of my blog on a software stack I dislike (ruby & jekyll), but I probably won’t change things until it breaks beyond repair. Anyway, I (re)launched the blog filled with my collected writings spanning the past ~20 years.

How many posts?

55 blog posts (up from 42 in 2020)

According to Google Analytics, my 5 most popular posts in 2021 were (most popular first):

Tomoya Ikeda - Macintosh Artist (16 Dec)
Turning an iPad Pro into the Ultimate Classic Macintosh (17 Apr)
Daily Driver: Channelling RGB into 1-bit (5 Jun)
Aquaplus P/ECE (vs Panic Playdate) (19 Aug)
Pixel-Perfect retro gaming on LCD 480p EDTVs (6 May)

Looking back

My personal faves from the year 2021 (most recent first):

Band-kun バンドくん (1990, KOEI) the one where I discovered a cool old game
Electric Brain, et al. the one where I scanned a load of magazines/fanzines
The BeOS Bible the one where I scanned an absolutely massive book
Daily Driver: Showreel the one where I showed off a game
Iwata Asks: Downloader the one where I scraped the web

Get Info: #popular

My most popular posts of 2025

How many posts?

Most popular posts

Best of the rest

Still going strong

Blog changelog

Previous years

My most popular posts of 2024

How many posts?

Most popular posts

Best of the rest

Blog changelog

Previous years

My most popular posts of 2023

How many posts?

Most popular posts

Best of the rest

Blog changelog

Previous years

My most popular posts of 2022

How many posts?

Most popular posts

Best of the rest

Most enduring posts

Previous years

My most popular posts of 2021

How many posts?

Most popular posts

Looking back