October 25, 2024

Backup Thoughts

This started as a little document to get down my thoughts, but I figured I’d Markdownize it and make it into a blog post, where it can be not only a reference for me, but also for everyone else!

I like to think I have a pretty decent backup system in place. I have a 2Tb USB-C HDD that hangs out in my office and effectively mirrors my laptop. I also have a lot of older material on it; my previous laptop, as well as my desktop from years past, makes up a stratum or two on there. And I try to remember to do a full backup once a month or so, but I don’t always remember, which is not great. I like to know my files are safe, just in case my laptop blows up or something. Putting /home on its own partition is always a good practice, so then / (your system files, the OS, &c.) can be wiped and reinstalled without touching your important files. But that’s not enough, and that’s where backups come into play.

October 11, 2024

Darkest Atmosphere

CWs: Nazi mentions, suicide mention (not personal), death mentions, horror movies

I’ve mentioned my love for dark ambient music elsewhere on here, I’m sure, but I wanted to write a post about when I first got into it, and I guess explain what I love about it. First, I am thinking back to arond 2008, which is when I first got into what is commonly called “dark ambient” music. At its core, dark ambient is just that, a darker version of ambient music, with unsettling noises, like something out of a horror movie soundtrack. I personally have a pretty expansive definition of the genre, which others may disagree with, however. It’s a genre which also defies genre, arguably. Note: I’ll try to provide Discogs, or perhaps YT, links for the albums I mention, wherever possible.

September 28, 2024

Phasmata

CWs: ableist nomenclature, religion, politics, ghosts, death

If y’all know me, y’all know that I love just about everything Watcher does (y’know, Ryan Bergara & Shane Madej, formerly of Buzzfeed Unsolved, and now with their own company and their own streaming service). It’s been fun watching them start their own network and just have fun with content, do whatever they want. But I absolutely love their ghost hunting show, Ghost Files, which is a big nod to their original claim to fame, Buzzfeed Unsolved. We got into their stuff a few years ago and just went down the rabbit hole, and are now subscribed to WatcherTV to watch their stuff (it comes out on YouTube, too, just with a long delay, but there is some stuff that is exclusive to the paid streaming service).

September 25, 2024

Wind Post

CWs: death, grief, food

OK, I admit I’m being a little cheeky with my title here, which is a nod to the wind phone, where a disconnected phone is set up so that loved ones can have “conversations” with the departed. But I’m going for sort of the same concept here. I haven’t lost that many people in my life, thankfully, but those I have lost have left sizable holes, and I thought I’d write something in their honor, and have a conversation, as it were, with them. I don’t know if I’ve ever use a wind phone itself, but I love the idea of it, and I’m sure it helps a lot of people process grief, especially when it’s very fresh. The people I am thinking of in particular are my great-grandma, who passed in 1996, and my maternal grandparents; my grandma passed in 2016, a few months before we moved to Colorado, and my grandpa passed in 2021 very suddenly. These three people were some of my favorites in the entire world, and I miss them dearly, although I don’t always show it.

September 20, 2024

Retro Radiance

I found out about the game UFO 50 earlier this week and it is really lovely. The premise is that 50 retro games for an obscure system were unearthed, and now they’re available to play. All games are complete, nothing half-finished, and the verisimilitude is staggering. Also, no nonsense with unlocking games, everything is available. As others have said more eloquently, it’s like digging through the past and discovering retro-soaked wonders. I’ve played through maybe 12 of the games so far, and I gotta say, most of them are excellent. Some approximate “shovelware,” but hey, that’s the luck of the draw. They’re “NES hard,” in that most of them are inscrutable with weird controls, but that’s also part of the charm. And the games I would consider shovelware, others might love, so there really is something for everyone. I bought the game a few days ago and I do not regret it! Highly recommend. It reminds me of the DS game Retro Game Challenge which I’ve never played myself, but others have apparently drawn the comparison too. Anyways, it’s great, if you like retro games, or even the idea of playing them, check it out!

September 17, 2024

Momentary Pause

CW: brief COVID mention, food, drink, alcohol

I have been remiss and haven’t written for awhile. During the throes of COVID back in June, we had a wild idea of taking a trip. My spouse thought of looking for tickets for Oogie Boogie Bash, a Halloween party at Disney California Adventure, for sometime in the autumn. They usually sell out quickly, so we didn’t think we’d actually get the tickets. However, we were in luck, and were able to score tickets for mid-September! From there, we planned the trip, booking airfare and hotels and such, and of course the tickets for other park days. We haven’t been to Disneyland since 2019, so it was definitely nice to get to go back.

August 24, 2024

Timestreams

CWs: sexual assault (indirectly mentioned in links), racism and racist violence

I finally got around to watching the Watchmen limited TV series (2019), and wow, what a ride. Back in 2009, I remember seeing the Watchmen movie trailer and being immediately enthralled. I think I’d heard of the graphic novel before, but really didn’t know anything about it. I was living in San Francisco at the time, and think I was watching a movie in the theatre in a mall I frequented. That mall happened to have a Borders in it (remember those?), and IIRC I went straightway to Borders and bought a copy of Watchmen to read. Loved the book, thought it was fun and fascinating, really trippy stuff. I couldn’t wait for the actual movie to come out.

August 9, 2024

Hebdomadi Finem Imponens

CWs: wildfires, mental health, food

hebdomadi finem imponens, or

“putting an end to the week”

I am just happy the weekend is here and I thought of a fun way to express that in Latin, sorta. finem imponere means “to put an end to” something (cf. also manum imponere, “to put the [finishing] touch on” something), so it’s a fun phrase in general. When I was doing spoken Latin, I learned a lot of conversational Latin that one might find in more conversational genres like comedy (Plautus, Terence, &c.), and I honestly would like to see more in the wild in literature. I really haven’t read any Roman comedies, aside from Terence’s Andria at the start of my MA, and a tiny bit of Plautus during the PhD. It just was not at all my focus.

August 2, 2024

Godspeed RHDN

I checked my feed on Mastodon, of all places, and found that my beloved Romhacking.net is closing. Ars Technica has a nice writeup on it as well. It is a real bummer, a real shame. I consulted the site multiple times a week, sometimes multiple times a day, looking for new translations of retro games (mostly NES/SNES, but some PSX as well). And going forward it will stay up, for a while, but eventually become read-only, per the post. This is the end of an era.

July 27, 2024

Sunny Saturday

CWs: food, alcohol, errands

We usually do errands on Saturday, but thankfully didn’t need to get up for anything. We were going to see Inside Out 2 today, but ended up pushing it back to tomorrow, since the timing didn’t entirely work out with the other stuff we needed to do. We actually didn’t need to do that much today, compared with normal Saturdays. I did a couple of hours of Latin this morning before we got going, which was good, since I have a total of 7 to get done this weekend, and 5 left for tomorrow (Sunday).