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. 

Nearing Thirty...

At the end on September (read: in mere hours), I'll be turning 30 and there's still a lot I need to do. I initially wanted to do a check-in post with regards to the Coronavirus pandemic, more or less letting everyone know that I'm still safe and as healthy as I can be. I still do essential work in grocery retail, but still haven't been tested, and so on.

I procrastinated as I often do, but to the point that I kept moving the reminder date forward on my smartphone. Much of that in more recent months is a result of the mental exhaustion of the day job—I also had another job until recently by means of resignation. I would go home, shower like usual, check-up on my social networks (usually just Twitter and sometimes Goodreads), then I would just end up booting up the Switch to play a couple games.

The Switch is also the reason I've been mostly mute online for the past year. It was an unexpected Christmas gift and I have not been into gaming like this since when I lived in Washington state—or more accurately, when I was a kid. It goes without saying that the console has been my way of escaping from the present state—the pandemic, the US (45th's) Administration's continued mismanagement of both it and the country, the day job in general (both pre-pandemic and now), etc.

I'm still working through many of my Friday Reads that I mentioned on Twitter many weeks ago, but most of my time with books has been with Audible (mostly). Listening again to the Hitchhikers' Guide series has brought me great comfort and, out of sheer spontaneity, I'm also revisiting Yahtzee Croshaw's literary backlog—started with Jam, currently on Mogworld.  

The stranger, if not inevitable, thing is that I had to unfollow a few of the noteworthy figures who I respected two years ago—people like Peter Bogohossian and James Lindsay—during these uneasy times. If you're here via Twitter, one of my replies may have snuck into the main timeline where I expressed dismay at how both Peter and James view the Black Lives Matter protests and marches that occurred and are still ongoing after the murder of George Floyd. Same thing with Bret Weinstein after I briefly listened to his recent appearance on Joe Rogan* where he expressed similar concerns as Peter and James.

To make a long story short, I cut them out of the timeline for my own sake and mental health. I still follow Iona Italia—who does excellent work with the Two for Tea podcast—along with Helen Pluckrose, Cathy Young, and the Heterodox Academy along side a few other accounts that advocate for viewpoint diversity, but don't dismiss cultural diversity or view it as "the world gone mad". (Or put simply, if they're a guest on Two for Tea, or someone like Cathy mentions them on Twitter, I'll consider them.) 

Ironically though, without discovering Bret via Popehat retweets, James and Peter through a conference Bret appeared in, I don't think I would have that "a-ha" moment, in which a personal bubble popped. Or rather, the conference reminded me of those moments in college during my time with the writing club and what was going on with the social group I was a part of. I felt like it took months for that moment to sink in, but I'm glad that I took away from it that I should have been more assertive. I'm glad I realized this right before I turn 30.

I started my twentieth decade on a good stride academic-wise—getting my Associates in Liberal Arts & Sciences, then graduating magna cum laude with Bachelors in English. I'm still employed with the same people eleven years, but I'm also still living with the family. 

All things considered, I'm grateful. I feel like I could have done much better, though.

I feel like if I actually left the writing club the moment I wanted to that I would've been more motivated to find work in my field. This blog would be more well-maintained, at least between 2012 and 2014—I used to blog under a different Blogspot URL, titled the Dirty Fishtank, where I mentioned that I would be blogging about my experience going for my BA. I probably would be finding places to submit articles, and would be less afraid of getting outside my comfort zone.

At the same time though, I don't think I would have ever re-discovered my love of being a geek and of humor in general. As in, the things that inspired me to write in the first place. That's the short of it. 

What I may do after tomorrow is try to do a sort of daily journal-esque posts a la Dave Winer over at Scripting News. More or less to get back into the thick of things and so I'm not as focused on trying to be too formal. As long as I don't let writing get rusty, I feel like there's still a chance I can put my talents, and my degree, to use somewhere.   

Here's to ten more years, and many more! 

*If you're interested in listening to the specific bit, listen to it for around 30 minutes. Otherwise, other podcasts are available.

 

This Blog is Woefully Out of Date...

Hello! It's been awhile since I've blogged here and I should've made an update post much sooner than now. If you're coming here from Twitter, where I also have Goodreads auto-post my reviews, this post's title will make a lot more sense than if you arrived here via the RSS feed or by e-mail.

(If you arrived by the latter means, hope you all have been safe and well!)

I feel that my posts in 2018 gave the impression that I was going down some sort of ideological rabbit hole. Especially since I was going to conceive a series of self-censorship stories that, when I actually thought about it, really boiled down to two points:

• My first year of being in the English Club/Writers' Guild, as I previously wrote about in a post where I suggested an idea of a blog for the club only to have it shot down with the club president initially asking, "Are you stupid?" The overall club attitude bugged me to the point where I e-mailed the advisor asking to meet with him regarding my concerns. Unfortunately, my ride couldn't make it the day we were supposed to meet—I would arrive past the time we agreed on—but he never replied to reschedule. 
• The coffeehouse preceding the e-mail exchange had the club president start out declaring that we were taking donations for Hurricane Sandy—something that was never mentioned in the previous week's meeting minutes—and that if anyone did not donate that, "they were going to hell". I remember mentioning this to their secretary months later—when we were both in the same creative nonfiction class—who claimed that the reason being was due to some hecklers in the student cafe. This was something I thought should have been handled by the Student Center staff, but I didn't mention that to her. 
• There was also a matter of a poem submitted by a student—who was also the club's treasurer at the time—that we all voted unanimously for approval. Unfortunately, we had to later reject it because of the content as it dealt with "ass" and "weed". If the club president informed the club of this news verbatim—without exaggeration—I believe that the aftermath would've been better. Instead, he read out every line of the poem to note how we couldn't submit it then threw the paper that it was printed on across the room. She ended up not coming back after that meeting, even when they expected her to bring the coffee to the next coffeehouse. I don't blame her in the slightest, both in hindsight and in the semester after that one where any coffeehouse posters near  the university's primary computer lab were taken down from the bulletin boards mere days after we pinned them on. I'm glad that those events did not stop her from writing. She wrote couple of articles on Elephant Journal and did a few pieces over at Pucker Mob if you'd like to give them a read. 
• I ended up wanting to leave the club after these events, but only ended up staying after I covered a later coffeehouse. That and they considered me for the position of secretary because of my attendance. With the shoddy attendance we had, it was hard to say "no" and, well, I didn't.         
• The president who came after (the then-secretary) took issue with a student who was also a self-published author. Said student was very enthusiastic about the club and wanted to help out in anyway she could. I'm not exactly certain about specific instances here, but I always remembered her (the president) not holding this student in high regard for said enthusiasm. Like the former treasurer, this student still writes.     
• The campus newspaper meeting in which the candidates for specific positions made their case to a room full of staff writers. The particular department I was in, Arts and Entertainment, had two people vying for the head position. One person was a freshman who did well-written game reviews that loved working for the paper, but advocated for better communication between editors and staff, along with overall transparency. The other was a soon-to-be senior who specialized in public relations and essentially praised every person on the editorial board in an overly extravagant manner with little to no criticism of the organization—at least from what I can recall. 
• I voted for the former, who the editorial board thought was rude when we got together to plan out the fall semester. I do remember his word choice being slightly brash, but felt that anyone who endorsed the paper by asking them to work out any issues would allow both editors and writers to create a better product. Goes without saying, I said nothing.    

In short, I don't have a self-censorship problem. I have a problem being assertive. It's an issue that I understand better now than in 2012. 

This is also the reason why many of the posts from 2018 have been deleted. This decision is something I wasn't initially fond of, but when I thought about it further, I feel like it is the best course of action. Many of those posts were written when I had all those pent up emotions surrounding those events. I felt bad for not taking action when those issues happened and chose to maintain the group dynamic even when I wanted to leave. Not to mention letting it affect me to the point where I made irrational choices. Five years is and was way too long to let things linger.

There was also things that were happening in a group that I was a part of for 13 years—since its inception. Without going into detail, I worried that the group would run parallel to the English Club/Writers' Guild in terms of leadership. I mentioned something, but unfortunately ended up backing away after I realized that there was barely any change in the way they operated.  

I have been working to be a better person to myself with regards to issues that happen at work and home for the past two years. Anyone on Twitter will recognize that I ended last year on a cynical note. There was a work situation that I won't go into for reasons that go without saying. I will mention that I was almost manipulated out of a friendship. I'm glad that never occurred because other people at the site informed me about the possibility I was being played at. I am glad that I have the support system that I do now and my friendship with the person in question is stronger than ever.  

I also finished up a technical writing course after applying for a full-time, local writing gig early into 2019. I really did enjoy being back at community college where, even when I was there during my undergrad, I felt that the student body was far more open-minded with regards to academic and philosophical discussion that at the four-year one. In hindsight, I felt the same way when I first went there, but I digress.

There was also that patch in which I praised the people who I patronized through Patreon non-stop—I still do so on Twitter for CheapShow and Two for Tea when an account asks for good podcast recommendations. There's a reason for that, especially with regards to video games and the geek zeitgeist—with an emphasis on discourse. As in, they enjoy games and geeky things for the sake of enjoying them, but that's a blog post for another day.  

Right now, I feel comfortable blogging. I feel better about being myself than I did years ago. Hopefully, I'll keep this blog up-to-date instead of being out-of-date.