Thanks, I’ll let him know. And yes, they’re a bit of a more niche animal compared to the kittens and puppies his school friends draw, but he absolutely adores them and drags around a specialty plush of a capybara we bought from Japan for him. I’m delighted he’s kept up the trend of “very carefully naming every single stuffed animal” and amused he’s given them all quite human names. The pictures of capybaras in hot springs are very cute!
5 Likes
Spoke to some friends and acquaintances today. The “oh, they’re like lichen to me” (in the context of a composite organism composed of two different but similar little guys that enhance their experience and could exist separate, but would be changed for it) mention was a hit. Saw a cool OC and gushed about Philip Marlowe with one of them. Love that detective.
I have plans to meet up with some people on the first day of school (need to double check wheelchair accessibility routes in advance) to grab drinks and snacks, which is really exciting. (This is indeed plans to meet up with the friend I couldn’t see because of the major storm and then getting heinously ill for several weeks after.)
4 Likes
Please ask your current therapist to watch this. I have seen it, loved it, and hope you will too.
2 Likes
Honestly in the honeymoon state of a new relationship right now and I forget how absolutely amazing it is to feel puppylove for someone! I love love!! I am going to enjoy every second of the honeymoon phase to it’s fullest!
6 Likes
Figured out the particular issue that’s been haunting me when it comes to writing as of late. (The answer is that I’ve bored myself to tears with writing dialog, even if the dialog was dressed up in interesting shapes like articles and blog posts and chatlogs. A girl cannot subsist off of dialog alone… I’m in dire need of some (admittedly purple) prose.)
Thinking through these things out loud while babbling to someone else always helps with sorting it out. I’ve been turning over another Gothic story concept that I’d kind of abandoned in the wake of a really gnarly breakup earlier this year, and buffing out the scratches and dents and recasting faces in it to rotate the new shiny toy around after recognizing the issue.
Also, I got to chat with a friend earlier about Ghost shrimp care and fun tips and tricks for maintaining the tank and critters, which was a blast. Recently I’d had the chance to chatter on about the contaminated blood crisis (an area I’ve written a number of assignments and a paper on) and it was briefly brought up when we were all joking about Powerpoint night with the gals and ghouls and what topics we could bring to the table (cold war history, the contaminated blood crisis, European geography, warrior cats). It brings me a lot of joy to be able to share and engage with someone about a topic I’m deeply passionate about.
A friendly face also updated me on the status of a stationery shipment and was very happy with an order of a fountain pen I had helped them pick out, (both model and nib size, after some discussion of other pens they had enjoyed in the past and also the intent behind the pen’s use/the sort of lineweight they were angling after) and that made me really happy. I love being helpful! And I love sharing things I love with other people.
6 Likes
Found an excellent let’s-play of Subnautica!
I do own the game myself, but I got severe anxiety with a freeze response. I don’t really have a fear of the ocean, but I do have a fear of the some of the bigger fish in the game.
So the issue is I can only play maybe a fifth of the game and then my freeze-ups makes it impossible to continue. I’m talking like forgetting-to-breathe didnt-realize-fifteen-minutes-passed-and-I-have-been-frozen.
So I rely on watching others play the game to experience the rest of it!
6 Likes
Feeling sentimental, as New Years looms. Maybe that has something to do with listening to an album I loved as a teenager. Admiring the people that I care for is nothing new- ‘I love you’ is thrown around quite casually. But it’s nice to take a moment to pause and reflect, on not only those that I hold nearest and dearest- but also the small, casual acquaintances and friendly exchanges that’ve been a bright spot in a year that was rather dismal.
To be thought of when someone is packing little treats into carry on luggage. Someone coming to you specifically to ask for advice on something they know you’re passionate about, and coming back to cheerfully share that they’ve fallen in love with the recommendation. Being able to help someone with knowledge and practical experience in a vaguely obscure area and help their pet. Appreciating someone’s consistency and dedication to saying ‘good morning’ and ‘good night’ to the crowd. Stumbling into playing an ongoing game with a group of really cool people. Accidentally reminding someone to take care of themselves. The fact that several people have shared that they really love my silly kitty pictures I send on Discord!
And of course, there are the people I love. Being encouraged to monologue passionately about something that I’ve loved for years. The way that even though his voice has changed significantly over the years- I still recognize it, would turn to it in a crowd. Being able to be vulnerable and ask for what I’d like, not just what I need. Having my creative input valued and sought out- being able to inspire and help them in turn. Writing and drawing and playing together. Just existing in proximity.
I think a lot about my best friend. How we’ve known each other for essentially half of our lives- how we’ve grown up together, and how funny it is looking back at the people we were when we met, the people that we’ve become. I think about how wonderful it is to love someone, and to be loved in turn. To know that no matter what, we’ve been there for one another: reflexively, instinctively, without needing to fret. Of course I’ll text you back in the horribly early hours. Of course I’ll call. ‘I’ll be there for you if I can.’
How it’s always like picking up right where we left off- no matter how long it’s been, or what’s happened. ‘I love you in the way you could walk in through my front door years from now and I would say welcome home.’ The consistent acceptance and love. The security in knowing that he’s there- even that he exists at all in the world is a comfort. I’m so happy that other people love him, too. We’ve gone through awful things, together and apart- and we’ve muddled through it, in the end. It’s so comfortable being around him. I feel at ease. And for someone fraught with shot nerves and adrenaline, that’s a rarity. (We aren’t, and have never been romantically involved. I love him platonically.)
I’m grateful that we’ve remained friends. New Years is always a hopeful time of year for me- a happy time, seeing the joy from other people, the sparkly hopefulness of another chance- all the new potential ahead, pristine. I’m looking forward to another year- with all of my friends, and acquaintances, and everyone I think gently of. I’m curious about who I’ll meet, too!
9 Likes
One of my favourite silly things to do is to try to make predictive text spit out coherent sentences when it’s prompted with a name, or an event.
For example, after typing in ‘Hephchat’ and letting it finish itself: “Hephchat is a good friend to me and my friend who is so cute and funny and so adorable and so much fun and i love you so much and love you too” which I thought was cute.
If I put in the forums: “The interactive fiction forums are a good idea and it’s a very fun game and it’s a lovely little thing that makes sense and it’s a precious little gem.”
It’s sort of funny seeing how different people’s phones will fill in stuff- a friendly face tried inputting peoples names and kept getting the sort of text that’d spit out as a automatic courtesy email after a job interview because she mostly uses her phone for work. Mine has a propensity for “little” and “cute” and “good” and “love you so much/love you too” which I find endearing.
4 Likes
The Internet and what people save continues to amaze me. This may not have meaning for other people, but I still enjoyed that something I dimly remembered was out there. It involves college sports, but trust me, there’s an interesting image and story that make it worthwhile. I couldn’t think where else to post it.
Back in the 80s, a cup company in New Orleans produced plastic cups for Big Ten games. This was back when the Big Ten had ten teams. They mass-produced a bunch of cups with mascots for each team … BUT … they messed up the lettering of one of the mascots. And in a way, the “GO BIG TEN!” on them was a bit insouciant, as these cups were almost exclusively sold at games between two of the teams whose mascots were on the cup. This doesn’t matter, though. They were a great memory.
But they were only a memory. Then after hearing Weird Al’s song eBay, I thought, “you know what’d be on eBay? Those cups!”
And what do you know, I was right. Link to auction:
Note, Illinois’s mascot is not the image below, because – well, it could be potentially offensive, and I’d like to respect that.
Mods, I don’t think a patch-up of eBay pictures is a copyright infringement problem? But if it is, let me know. I just wanted to capture some nostalgia.
Oh, the wrong mascot? ISU should be UI. They wrote in Iowa State instead of Iowa. They didn’t have the Internet back then! And yes, Iowa vs Iowa State is a big rivalry, though some college sports writer-comedians dubbed the annual game between them as “El Assico,” a riff on Real Madrid vs. Barcelona, because there’s always a hilariously unwatchable part. But it’s almost always close!
3 Likes
So many years later and we’re still trying to fix that mess. One of my colleagues has spent the last half a decade pushing for a new mascot with lots of support from the students…but lots of wealthy alumni don’t see what’s wrong with the previous one and think changing it is letting the antifa SJWs win.
(Our previous mascot was a Native American called “Chief Illiniwek” who would do a “rain dance” during halftime. Actual Native Americans generally considered this extremely racist and it was becoming a PR problem, so for the past decade and a half we’ve had no mascot at all while the university tries to find a compromise between Native Americans saying “that’s extremely racist” and wealthy donors saying “actually no it’s our heritage”.)
4 Likes
One of my friends - well, I suppose they’re an acquaintance who I often see, more like; anyways, one of my acquaintances mentioned Pratchett (the author) and another one of my acquaintances at a party earlier this week also was reading Pratchett, and so I dug out my old books from my parents’ storage while I was there tonight and sent a picture of them to them, telling them to tell me what from them that they wanted for their reading pleasure, and they (the first one) said that they would take all of them, which presented logistical issues, since they’re carless and they’re quite heavy alltogether, numbering nearly twenty, so transporting them to them presented a minor problem, but in the end it’ll be little issue, I think, and my parents are happy to have them out of the house.
e: Also, like, holy shit I left so many books at my parents’ house.
7 Likes
In fairness, these two statements are in no way in conflict! Though this is a hell of a fight to still be having in soon-to-be-space-year-2023 – props to your colleague for their work.
EDIT: Oh, I should add a positive! It is for-real raining in Southern California right now, and not only is that good because our drought-stricken state needs the water, but more parochially, I remain an east-coaster at heart and I really miss rain most of the time.
4 Likes
Listened to the usual song I do to kick off New Years. The uploader of the video (is now apparently 30!) has a yearly habit of adding a nice comment updating and congratulating everyone for making it through to another year and has for the last like, twelve years. It’s lovely.
5 Likes
Two positive things today. I finished doing a bug-fixed version of an Italian type-in text adventure called ‘Atzeco Adventure’ for the VZ200/300. This was originally published in Laser Computer Club, vol. 3, no. 4, August 1988, pp. 10-25. This game was only recently discovered and wasn’t in any of the online archives. I also did an English translation. (Actually, I did that first, as I don’t speak Italian.) The game is really, really tough by today’s standards: sudden-death, guess-the-verb, three mazes(!), random events, one-item inventory limit and very few in-game hints. I finished all this, together with maps and solutions for CASA in the wee hours of New Year’s Day after watching the New Year’s Eve fireworks on the telly.
A CASA regular was having an issue with a German game called ‘Alptraum’ for the Atari 8-bit. I was able to fix the issue and do a couple of new disk images that should allow him to finish the game. This required a bit of detective work and old-school hacking with a sector editor. Great fun!
6 Likes
It rained buckets, and is raining still- no fireworks. I have noise cancelling earbuds I wear beneath headphones and isolate myself the best I can (often squirrelling into the walk in closet and sitting amongst the clothing with a blanket and the door shut) but it was a relief to not have to be constantly on high alert. Technically, you aren’t allowed to shoot fireworks in the residential areas. It doesn’t stop people- but the weather sure did!
4 Likes
I finally worked my way through The Gostak, instead of just going “that’s cool, but it seems like too much work” and it was fun once I got going! Didn’t even need to resort to the hints!
6 Likes
Gold Machine made the Year in Video Game Blogging over at Critical Distance.
It was actually the one about empathy and the need for a broad definition of IF, which might be controversial to some. It’s one of my faves. A few other IF or IF-adjacent pieces mentioned too. Feels pretty good!
11 Likes
I sat down and banged out the skeleton for a SeedComp game. It’s only missing the interactive part, so right now it’s mostly just F without the I, but surely some interactive elements will occur to me.
10 Likes