Ink for October 23rd, 2020

I've been both busy with work and lazy in getting these out. I spent most of my free time last week writing a thank you letter to Louis Rossmann, briefly catching up on e-mails and messages that I needed to make, and replaying through Undertale.

The first time I played it was two years ago—on the very MacBook that I'm writing this post on along with the first chapter of Deltarune slightly over a month later. Unfortunately, I went in knowing Undertale's unique style of gameplay in which every encounter matters and has an impact on everything hereafter. Instead of being freaked out by particular spoilers, I was left impressed with how Toby Fox made those scenes happen both in narrative and execution—or rather, the whole thing flows rather brilliantly. Goes without saying that the soundtrack is a wonderful  thing, both knowing it beforehand and while actually playing the game. 

It ran well on the MacBook aside from motherboard getting hot and I couldn't heard the fan spin. They spun when I booted up the other game I played on it, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, which I bought off of Good Old Games during a sale. I remember playing that one growing up alongside Civilization II and Civilization II: The Test of Time for hours at a time. My dad was, and still is, big on the Civilization games and has been known to play the fifth iteration quite often. 

Most of my gaming has been relegated over to the Switch for reasons that go without saying. I also don't like to risk playing games more exciting than DOS emulations or Undertale on my MacBook—or least for a lengthy duration. I always had this fear, even before Louis Rossmann did surgery on Apple computers, that any sort of extreme heat would kill the entire laptop. When I was fourteen, the desktop HP that I had wasn't powering on. When my Dad took it apart and tried to turn it on, the power supply made this crackling sound and there was a brief flash of blue from it. The sound I clearly remember, but the visual details are slightly blurry—I'm uncertain that there was smoke involved—but it freaked me out enough that I worried about any future laptops getting hot for an extended period of time. I also worried about dust as the power supply's interior was caked in it. 

There's a series in the weekly zine, 1324: Out of Order, where Ivenne talks about her experience in getting Fall Guys to successfully run on an old laptop—starting in the second issue and ending in the fourth. I'm also going to link the zine's Twitter page, which where I would recommend following them for updates on future issues. If you're coming from Twitter, you'll know that I'm biased towards the zine and its creator and if you do like what you read there, please consider supporting Ivenne over on Patreon. 

I know I said on Twitter that this entry would be more political, but the muse wasn't having any of that. In fairness, most of how I feel with regards to the current climate is summarized in this tweet...

Been waiting for these two pins all week—a set that compliments one another perfectly. (The Ice Cream pin’s out of shot. Also, pardon the glare.)#RidinWithBiden pic.twitter.com/bioJ1MriZu

— Bryan Mitchell (B.M. Mitchell)🧢 (@PromptedInk) October 23, 2020

I didn't expect the pins to be huge, but I made a space for them nonetheless. I'm trying to save space in the case for the pin from Strictly Limited's Turrican Anthology—the collector's edition—for the day it arrives in the post. 

Ink for October 12th, 2020

Decided to write this one out much earlier than I usual do. As I'm writing this, I'm nearing three hours after my work shift ended. I have not done a session on the Switch yet, but decided to watch an Ashens video while drinking a mug of yerba mate. Sadly, I don't yet have a proper gourd nor bombilla. The yerba mate is also wrapped up in a tea bag instead of being properly loose leaf.   

I blame MsMadLemon for getting me hooked on it, partly because she mentioned it during one of her Chillout streams but more so because of her walkthrough on how to properly brew it...

I've working through the other teas that I bought on impulse so that I can make room for the proper stuff in the family pantry. Thankfully, I also still have room for a gourd and bombilla in the kitchen cupboards. I feel like the only trouble I'll run into will be ensuring that the water doesn't boil. Right now, any time that I decide to brew my Americanized batch of yerba mate, I use my Keurig machine because the water's not as hot as it would be coming from the kettle. 

I actually remember writing this letter to The Day while drinking a cup of yerba mate. It also helped that I was spurred by Lee Elci, who actually read a part of it on his show* the week after the newspaper published it. In fairness, I was not aware that Elci did have left-leaning guests. However, he took issue with the fact that I said that Bill Maher had conservative guests saying that it would be a three-on-one affair [sic]. I was pleasantly surprised that some regulars—who used to frequent the cafe at my workplace—recognized that I wrote it. One of them still talks politics with me when he sees me. (In retrospect, I do chat about politics with my close friend there so its more likely that he overheard it. Either way, I appreciated it.) 

I wrote that letter a few months after the grievance studies affair, when I had a lot more respect for James Lindsay and Peter Bogohossian. I feel that now is not the time to have an in-depth discussion on what it hath wrought until after the US election. If you're in the states, make sure that you're registered to vote and then VOTE! Early? Absentee? On Election Day? Doesn't matter how you do it, what matters is that you do.

That digression aside, the other thing is that I actually stopped reading Quillette in November of 2018 because of the podcast they had with Meghan Murphy. Even if I linked it, what I'll tell you is this: it became a soapbox in which Murphy justified her stance against Trans people. 

Also, both that publication, and even myself at the time, forgot that Twitter is a private corporation so the speech banned was not covered by 1st Amendment. 

I felt that what I was trying to do in that letter was to reach Elci where he was. There were a few people at work that I also tried to do this with, but ultimately failed when I was the last to know about our breakfast hangouts. In fairness, they were not worth the trouble and I'm much better off for distancing myself from them.  

It's past 4 o'clock now so I'll wrap it up before I get carried away. I feel like yerba mate is going to be a writing companion as I slowly move into my 30s.  

*Initially leads to my tweet where I link the episode in question along with the time-stamps.  

   

Ink for October 8th, 2020

I cheated for the past couple days with Goodreads reviews—one for Stim: An Autistic Anthology and the other for an academic reading of Red Dead Redemption and how the American Western influenced its creation. I have never played the source material for the latter book. I might if it comes to Switch. Even without having that hands-on experience, I came out of it respecting what the game did. There's also a point early on in which Margini talks about how developers design open-world games like Red Dead Redemption in which the world is designed around and for the player, including the storyline. The first open world game I played was Breath of the Wild and, much like Margini's book, it is a beautiful thing.

I actually owe it to DJ Slope over at Slope's Game Room where, after his Kickstarter news bulletin, he recommended a Boss Fight Books campaign. I have a couple of other books I received from said campaign, but I have other books I need to get through first.

I still need to finish Rachel Maddow's Blowout, but there are other comfort reads that I want to get through first. Starting with Logospilgrim's Masterful. There's also the first volume of Mobile Suit Gundam Origin. Manga is something I don't usually review on Goodreads since there are so many volumes that are a part of the same story. I can personally recommend Fullmetal Alchemist, Cross Game, Hunter x Hunter (still ongoing, possibly indefinitely), and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure if you're interested in giving manga a try.

I decided to get this year's flu vaccine. I hope that once this pandemic abates itself, the anti-vaccination movement will also head in the same direction. The stigma placed on autistic people through the demonization of vaccines is bad enough, but to resist something—ideally in a Biden presidency where science is taken seriously—that could potentially nix the coronavirus pandemic outright is problematic in its own right. I should not be drawing parallels between the current anti-mask outcries and the anti-vaccination movement, but I believe that it also cannot be denied.

I mentioned politics, so I should also share this article from Areo about the difference in a piece telling you how to think as opposed to showing you the complexities of the modern world in a narrative. As in, art versus lobbying and persuasion. 

(I know that the article titles uses propaganda, but the whole "get your politics out of my media" thing from what I notice gets mostly used when a piece of entertainment has a woman as lead protagonist, has many characters who have a non-heterormative sexual orientation, or identify as trans or non-binary, etc. Same thing when a character who is not white takes a lead role and, yes, the scenarios listed above could or will intersect. As in things that should be non-issues.

On that note, Max Curtis makes an interesting observation about Jodie Whittaker's Doctor, noting that she deals with more religious themes than previous Doctors who were more logical and agnostic in their thinking. 

I personally feel that writing what you know will produce political, religious, or philosophical themes in some form. Goes without saying that their appearance is natural and far from a bad thing. The major difference is showing versus telling. I should probably print that Areo article out...)  

Ink for October 5th, 2020

Not saying much about the 45th's recovery. Much of Twitter's said what I would be repeating. Regardless of what they administered, there is certainty—at least I'm sure anyway—the virus is not through with him. There's a reason why I don't use his full name and title. In professional documents and reports, I would use them, but I feel that the 45th is poison to the United States' body politic in personality, political persuasion, and actions. It's a feeble way to distance a deplorable human being from his position and role in the nation's ongoing legacy, but said person is also antithetical to the Constitution. 

This piece from FiveThirtyEight is promising.

In non-political news, I made a playlist consisting of music composed by Chris Huelsbeck. I was more or less prompted after purchasing the first volume of his royalty-free tunes. All of my Huelsbeck purchases up to that point consisted of Commodore SIDs, Amiga and video game soundtracks, and of course anything Turrican. 

I'm thinking of doing a post in future talking about how I discovered the Commodore 64, its SID chip, and the Amiga. It will probably take place of an entry and it expands on a presentation I did for my technical writing class last year. 

I love being able to create playlists for my iPhone. I need to get through my podcast backlog before I put my full music library on it though. I tried Spotify in 2014 when one of my college friends suggested it during one of our study sessions. Ended up deleting it a year later because I found that I prefer owning the music that I like. Also, I take issue with how much musicians, composers, bands, and rappers get with each stream compared a purchase on iTunes, or more importantly, Bandcamp.      

Not exactly fond of this weird thing in iOS 13 (and 14 by proxy) where more than half of the thumbnails are wrongly associated with random songs and albums. It feels like a simple thing since iTunes has the metadata in the right place—as in, the right thumbnails with the right music—but maybe I'm missing something. On the iPhone, playing from an album is fine, but shuffling from a playlist is where the miss-association hits real bad.      

Ink for October 3rd & October 4th, 2020

Apologies for missing yesterday. Didn't get a chance to write during laundry and when I usually would write one of these, I felt like going to sleep. Sunday mornings are my early days at work so it was for the best.

I've done something like this before. That too, was an attempt at me trying to get back into blogging. I failed at consistency though.

Might keep this one brief too.

I'm a little sad that I missed Pocket Vinyl's listening party for "Winter Person" yesterday. They funded the album via Kickstarter in July and the money from that would also go towards a vinyl release along with a book to accompany the album.  I was once co-workers with the brother of Pocket Vinyl's artist and found her Facebook fan page through him. (This was around 2011-2012 when I was still in college so Facebook was a necessity.) I remember that she had a blog where she talked about her art and her time touring before the Touring Test comic. I'm not sure if it's still online. I'll need to check my old .opml files to see if I was still subscribed when I started exporting them.

On that note, Winds no longer seems to function and I'm not the only one to notice. I started using it after Jane Friedman recommended it in her e-newsletter, especially since they had a dedicated section for podcasts. The other thing I liked about Winds was how it did not display how many unread articles there were in a single RSS feed. It did not make you feel like you had to read all of them and felt more like opening up a news website where you read particular stories. Some of feeds that were automatically in the Winds reader were actually solid since they allowed you select to specific interests to tailor feeds you would like. In my case Hackernoon was one of them.

What's happening with my instance of Winds is the same as the Github issues I linked. Started out with either the podcast or RSS feeds disappearing from my homepage. I click the section with the issue, feeds show up, but then any feed takes forever to load. Literally. So I sign out of my session on my laptop and try to log back in. Doesn't load. I may try again from the website. Might end up heading back to Feedly or a similar RSS alternative. 

I know this entry sounds a bit sad, but the former part was more or less me going, "Ack! I can't believe I forgot about it!" I have no doubt that the album is going to be awesome. I'm going to sign off by sharing a music video from them that started it all. One that I shared on Twitter a couple years ago...

If you ever get the opportunity when you're in the States, go to one of their shows. One of my favorite moments from last year was going to see them play at the Hygienic Art building. We were just outside the gates with the evening traffic moving behind us and there was a good crowd. I thought it was an amazing show. 

Ink for October 2nd, 2020

I take back what I said about Super Mario 3D All-Stars, even if I think having some extra content to showcase the history of the games would sweeten the deal*. Galaxy is just as incredible on the Switch as it was on the Wii—if not better. I haven't played enough through Super Mario 64 yet, but I feel like it will be as good as I remember it. 

Sunshine on the other hand, is a mixed bag. The idea behind the multi-purpose watering device (FLUDD) is really cool in terms of game design, allowing Professor E. Gadd to sneak his way into the Mario canon. The music that plays in Delfino Plaza is a beautiful thing, inspiring quite a few covers like this one from the Game Brass and this other one from BGO. For the most part, the locales look really nice. 

There are three things that dim the rays a bit:

1. The sections where FLUDD gets taken away, leaving Mario to make his way across moving platforms and sand cubes to claim his prize. I remember getting angry at the game when I was 12 because these segments were really difficult. It's kind of a shame because there's a nice, a cappella version of the Super Mario Brothers theme that plays as you navigate through it.
2. The musical score. Some of the tunes, like Delfino Plaza and what I just mentioned, are incredible gems. Some are just "meh". The there are some that, I believe, are a major miss, like...
3. The roller coaster ride and what ensues the first time you arrive at the amusement park. Apologies in advance for the spoiler, but the what you end up doing ends up being a janky and frustrating affair. The song that plays here does not help.

I don't think there is much I can react to personally, regarding the 45th testing positive for the Coronavirus. It was more or less inevitable considering his blatant disregard for safeguards. In some way, it's karma. Even so, I'm with Sarah Haider on this one...

I hope he recovers in good health, and then loses in a landslide.

— Sarah Haider 🚀 (@SarahTheHaider) October 2, 2020

Tomorrow, as is tradition for Saturday, is laundry day. I want to see if I can sneak an entry earlier—as in, a few hours after I get off work as opposed to right before bed.       

*Aside from the inclusion of Galaxy 2

Ink for October 1st, 2020

As mentioned in my most recent check-in, I'm going to do something slightly different. As in, I'm taking a leaf out of Dave Winer's book and will try to blog everyday. I've also been inspired a few other things—Banjo Guy Ollie's foray into vlogging, MsMadLemon's approach to her YouTube channel as she writes on her blog, Ivenne's (CheapShow Magazine and 1324: Out of Order) blogging on her Patreon, Logospilgrim doing the same thing while getting back into drawing, Louis Rossmann on his Bafang (or on his armchair), etc.

In short, awesome people doing awesome things. I thought about going the vlogging route, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to properly do one. I'm not exactly photogenic and being anal retentive (read: a perfectionist) would probably be the thing that scares me from doing one. It sometimes intimidates me from properly doing a blog without repeating similar things over and over.     

It goes without saying that there's no structure to this. It'll all be freehand. I'll do some editing to add hyperlinks and make some sentences make more sense. Outside of that, it's like how I tweet but with no limits. I recall Winer saying something similar in one of his posts, where he takes his tweets and places them into said posts. Unfortunately, I can't find the link for that one. Not sure what keywords would bring it up.

Yesterday went really well, all things (at large) considered. One of my co-workers bought me a chocolate and peanut butter cupcake and breaded spaghetti (or spaghetti and sand) was on the menu. The latter was my favorite childhood meal so it was a nice, personal journey into nostalgia. I always preferred small celebrations with immediate family over big gatherings. 

Kickstarter rewards also came in coincidentally—the first half of 8-Bit Symphony Pro on CD with the bonus "Just the Chips" album, and Amiga Rocks from Fastloaders in digital. More importantly though, the second episode of Liana Kerzner's Bossfight aired on YouTube.

If you remember the posts that I scrapped, or just scoured the Wayback Machine. I mentioned Liana in relation to me being frustrated at how reactionary the web—at large or in small sectors—was to particular issues. Looking back, I feel like my big issue was with the presumed "culture wars", or rather the art of feeling obligated to take a side on a thing you have no investment in for the sake of advocacy at large, or face outrage. There's something I remember from my university days that relates to this and what I would call superficial advocacy, but I'll save that for tomorrow. It's getting late for me.

I would say that Liana's one of the reasons why I've been able to enjoy playing video games again as games. Aside from this year's usual suspects that you may see me retweeting, liking (if the timeline isn't chronological), or recommending in the case of podcasters—Geekade's Stone Age Gamer being one of them. 

On that note, this tweet thread has aged poorly. Personally anyway. The physical copy was the big gift. I played Sunshine first.