just yesterday, completed the porting of my WIP from adv3 to adv3Lite, in an unexpected quickly (4 or 5 actual sessions) porting…
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Americans might not be able to relate to this, but in Europe it’s not uncommon for Beech Martens to go around chewing up hoses and cables on cars. Had that happen just a few weeks ago, so when my car refused to start on Friday evening I was convinced that I’d been hit again.
But no, the battery had simply given out (still the factory original one from when the car was built in 2015 — so well past the usual expected lifespan of 5-6 years). Still not cheap to fix, but at least I didn’t have to get the thing towed!
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The kid drew his OC, it’s a cat named Seekie with double tails in the shape of a heart, since he ‘thought it would be very cute.’ The tail has ‘like, a bazillion centipede legs’ on it, which are the little spikes. He’s quite proud of it!
ETA: Apparently Seekie is named that because he loves to play hide and seek. And, he “wraps his tails around people to give them a hug like when you hug me! Like this!” followed by a hug, which was so stinking adorable.
It’s especially sweet because my younger brother had recently admired a sketch of one of my Fae OCs, The Algid, who has an unglamoured form of a giant centipede. He had thought his bow tie was cute, and admired his ‘tail with millions of trillions of billions of legs,’ which is apparently the inspiration for Seekie’s tail.
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Yeah, there was a while in the US (maybe late 80s or early 90s?) where a bunch of cars had fusible links (like fuses, but usually not in a fuse box: basically just smaller wires made so that they’d burn out before the main wire) made with high-temperature insulation that rodents really liked the taste of, so it wasn’t unusual to have field mice or deer mice or chipmunks or even squirrels get under the hood of your car and chew them. They figured out better materials eventually, but I remember that being a thing for quite a while.
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No more trips to the dentist! 
I am so numb though…
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For the Single Choice Jam, I’ve been reading a lot about imperial Chinese history and wondering once more why I never became a medievalist or at least, a historian. This stuff has always fascinated me.
I suppose I’m expressing those desires and wants in a more productive way: by turning them into games…
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It’s struck me a few times in the process of creating my current game that I’m putting far more work and enthusiasm into reading academic/historical papers than ever before - including college, a period of time where (to paraphrase John Mulaney) I paid someone tens of thousands of dollars to tell me to read something that I subsequently didn’t read.
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While I’ve read far more during my time doing my Master’s, I do think doing this for a game gives the research a purpose. My dissertation on how Australian politicians viewed international students, which I’m proud of, is locked in the archives of my university and I think it’s a shame when people might’ve found it interesting to read…
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I’m an actual mil/Nav historian, but this can’t be disjointed with general history; personally, I think that is wrong attacking the “communist” leadership of China, because is in reality the old Mandarinate, that is, the Imperial chinese bureocracy, without Emperor and Imperial trapping, but with a sound East asian ethics. The very best from a Paretian standpoint, and a very fundamental difference with USSR.
So, I appreciate and encourage your reading about Imperial China.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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Been making this lightweight visual-novel-esque Ink/web runner for @AdventureSnack and we discovered last night that we’d both been wondering if the other would be fine with making it available as a template for people to use so… that’ll probably be a thing at some point. Really happy with how it turned out. It’s a pet peeve that web games only save/load to browser storage so I added saving/loading files, yay. SugarCube does this, but a lot of web things don’t. And I played through the placeholder text blindfolded with NVDA a few times and I think I smoothed over the trouble spots so it’s comfortable with a screenreader (though of course I already know how it works so there may be assumptions that aren’t obvious).
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@JoshGrams building the incredible UI for my upcoming game – as a prize for my Spring Thing entry (!) – was the most positive thing that happened to me as an indie game dev all year. It’s going to open up a world of possibilities for me, and as a template, I hope it’ll do the same for others. Thank you, Josh!
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The kid and I were playing Stardew Valley together and made a new farm after he decorated a wacky guest bedroom in my main save file. We also did some drawing, and he liked the Seekie fan art I doodled for him. He added the little heart bubble!
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I’ve been struggling a bit to muddle out a plot from a nebulous concept I’ve been batting around for most of the month, and after a night of blearily laying in bed because of anti-histamines knocking me off of my feet, I managed to bash out notes just this side of coherent enough for morning me to understand, before passing out with the laptop resting on top of my chest.
I slept so soundly it was actually still squishing me, which is wild, because normally I kick and toss and turn and fall out of bed from moving around in my sleep, but I guess the medication really hit snooze. The notes are a bit silly, as is to be expected from communications with sleepy night me, but I’m excited! It feels good to have found a sense of direction.
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Had a rough night and laid in bed for a bit to sort of come to terms with the aftermath of a night terror. Took a nice, long cold shower, and felt a little calmer and much more refreshed after. Futzed about with some household tasks (stripping sheets and snapping new ones on, taking laundry down to the washing room), and set about making lunch for the kid. Ate a belated brunch myself, and whipped up two mini chocolate mug cakes- baking is very grounding and cathartic, especially when you’ve settled into the rhythm of dissolving, sifting, beating, mixing, tapping, and so on. They turned out deliciously, and the house smells like vanilla and chocolate and clean linens. Feeling better.
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I think so, too, although I’ve been struggling to get my key lime pie right. I think key lime pie should be more tart than sweet, and since the main ingredient besides key limes is condensed sweetened milk, I’m having trouble finding a replacement for some of the milk that isn’t so sweet. Evaporated milk is too liquid. My pastry cream doesn’t bind well with the lime juice. Gelatin won’t work with the evaporated milk because I bake the thing (yes, you purists, I know hardliners don’t believe in baking key lime pies, but I no longer feel comfortable eating raw egg yolks, and I believe it improves the firmness and texture). It’s a conundrum.
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That’s a tricky one. Any dairy product can replace the dairy-ness of the condensed milk, but you’re trying to replicate the thickening power also. Not much behaves like thick sugar syrup except some other thick sugar syrup.
Cornstarch in evaporated milk maybe?
Or if you whipped some of the leftover egg whites and folded them in?
Maybe think in terms of making a lime curd to your taste and then getting that into a pie shell.
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You can try xanthan gum, but the stuff is a really potent thickener. You might have to trial and error the amounts with an actual kitchen scale to get it right.
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This is my next experiment, although I’m hoping it doesn’t turn out too meringue-y because I love the silky custard texture of my current recipe-- I just don’t love how sweet it is. I only want to replace about a quarter of the condensed milk, so this might be just the trick. If that isn’t just right, I’m going to try Greek yogurt. It’ll change the flavor and I don’t know how it’ll bake in a custard pie, but I shall surely see and report back in the recipes thread.
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