Desert Bus For Hope 2026! – EyeSpark Weekly (October 23, 2026)

I alluded to this happening in the last weekly, but today is a Friday so it's weekly update day, but also Desert Bus For Hope 2026 begins today! I always write about it when it happens (or at least the two times it has during this blog's existence so far) but I still have to do my weekly, so you can look at this as a sort of hybrid post!

Desert Bus For Hope is an annual charity fundraiser marathon where a group of people do a bunch of fun things to entertain themselves while playing the "worst video game of all time", Desert Bus, made by Penn and Teller. They raise money for Child's Play charity, which provides toys and games for hospitalized children all over the world!

Every year when it happens I tune in for as much as I can, and it always makes me very happy, as it's like a beacon of positivity during many tough moments for me — and I'm sure a lot of other people too.

You can tune in to the livestream on Twitch, and they constantly upload clips on their YouTube channel! You can donate directly on their official website, and you can also donate indirectly by buying their shirts from Fangamer and other merchandise at DFTBA. (Incredible designs this year by the way, as usual!)

Once again, the event starts at 4 PM Pacific time, exactly an hour after I post this, and I highly suggest you tune in, it's one of my favourite things on the internet! Also I'm super excited and curious about what the intro will be.

Now onto the usual update! The biggest thing I did this week was go to the Jardín Botánico again, which I would usually briefly write about here, but I ended up taking so many cool photos I wanted to share that I ended up writing a whole post about it! I'm still really happy with these.

Also yesterday I took some of my old devices to a tech repair shop to get them checked and hopefully fixed, including the iPhone 5 and my dad's old iPhone SE which have damaged batteries. I also picked up some packages, which included the physical Protagonist Object Show book which I got from the Kickstarter, so that's very nice! This is actually my first time reading it again after all the chapters released, and I still really really like it, and I really enjoyed the bonus chapter! Here is my cat Pluto next to it.

Now onto the recommendations and other stuff I've engaged with! Aside from the two things I already recommended, of course.

Natalie Gray made a video about how she 3D printed a space helmet prop for a music video by Noah Finnce, which I found very fun! I love seeing cool 3D printed stuff, and I really hope I can get into making some myself some day.

For some reason I found two separate channels about music trends that I watched quite a bit of during the week. The first is blustre, who I found from his video on great songs ruined by one part, and second is mattysquared, who I found from his video on songs with terrible clean versions. I find discussion videos about tropes like these quite fun!

Odyssey Central released a new video about remnants of cut features in Mario Maker 2's files. I subscribed to him from his original Mario Maker 2 videos, but it seems we've both been out of it for a few years now, however this video made me get back into it as well! Speaking of, I watched CarlSagan42's newest Mario Maker 2 troll video after not watching his stuff for a while, and I've kept watching more! I missed this game.

I also have to bring up this incredible live-action Half-Life 2 short by Calvin Romeyn, one of the VFX artists behind the incredible Backrooms movie! This is super well made, and although I'm usually hesitant when people discuss Portal or Half-Life film adaptations, I am quite excited to see what else they have in store! (Btw please Kane, stop teasing that you went to Valve's offices, we know. /lh)

Lastly, and on topic for both of these, my usuals for this week are Yahtzee's Semi Ramblomatic on reloading guns, which is a feature I've never really thought about before that much but I've always found super satisfying, and the new Kill Count episode on Backrooms! I also wanna check out Fresh Meat soon.

And that's it! Well, one more thing actually, today is also the 25th anniversary of the iPod, and it seems Apple have changed the 404 page of Apple Music to something very fun to celebrate!

Okay, now that's it! I hope you've had a good week, and that your next one is good too. I'm sure mine will be, especially as I tune in to Desert Bus, but regardless on if you do too or not, I hope you have a great one!