(Updated 04 Dec 2023 with some more info about connections between both games)

So I’ve spent some time away from Sea of Stars, and been playing a lot of The Messenger lately. I basically started and finished the latter over the course of last week’s long weekend, and now I’m working on the DLC, Picnic Panic. If you haven’t played it before, The Messenger came out in 2018 and is a really fun “Metroidvania” platformer with tons to do and find, and ridiculously difficult platforming, requiring near-perfect timing in some areas. Many compare it to Celeste, which is another stellar platformer requiring precise timing and control. Both have fabulous soundtracks and are generally very well-regarded, as far as I know.

So a friend on Mastodon was posting here and there about a game called Sea of Stars, and of course I was immediately hooked by the title alone. What a lovely image! Sounds like something pulled right out of classical antiquity (hence mare stellarum, Latin for “sea of stars”). I eventually looked it up and found that it’s an RPG available on Steam, and, without knowing much about it at all, I bought it and fired it up. Supports gamepads (check!), supposedly supports vibration (but I haven’t gotten it to work), very cool. I’m in. Just so y’all know, I’d like to keep this a mostly spoiler-free post, so I’m doing my best on that and just giving mostly basic info about the game.

In the course of having a website, and running my own server, I’ve largely eschewed Google. In fact, aside from my Pixel 5a (love it) and running Android variants, I’d rather not have anything to do with Google, so I try to limit my usage of anything Google as much as possible. I had a Gmail account for years, from roughly 2005-2019, in fact, IIRC. A friend gave me a Gmail invite back in the day and it was useful for quite a while, for personal as well as professional pursuits. But I eventually started paying for a FastMail subscription (maybe ~2015? can’t remember) and it’s been much better overall. Now this is not an ad for FastMail, just giving my personal thoughts on it, and what I’m about to go through with you, you should be able to do on a number of other non-Gmail email providers. To what extent, I don’t know, however, as it depends on the provider.

I finally finished (the main story of) Death Stranding a couple of days ago. I’ll really try not to be spoilery within, more to give my impressions of the game and such, in a bit of a sketch. Not spoiling anything, but the epilogue of the game is wide-open and indefinite, allowing you to tie up loose ends and seek out things you may have missed in the (c)rush of the rest of the game, which is totally cool with me. I don’t think I’ll do any of that right away, which is fine. It’ll be there, waiting for me, like Amelie for Sam on the Beach.

(Updated 11 Jun 2024 with corrections on calling LibreTranslate)

Now if you’ve spent any time on my site, or you know me at all, you know I like playing around with computers, installing stuff, whatever the case may be. I’ve particularly enjoyed running a server the past nearly 3 (!) years, since I can install things that I, and in turn others (friends, loved ones, the world at large), will find useful. I am happy to run this server on my own dime and pay for the VPS and hosting, because it is not only a private but a public good, and that is how it should be. I have not only myself but family and friends set up on Vaultwarden and NextCloud, and it’s just really nice.

I was talking with a friend back and forth recently about gaming and accessibility in gaming, and it inspired me to write my thoughts on gaming in general. My thoughts, my relationship with it, praise as well as criticism (to the extent I can do it justice). Accessibility is not my strong suit and I’m trying to learn more about it all the time, and of course I’d like to make anything I produce as accessible as possible. I just don’t always know how. I think switching the blog to Hugo helps; with an almost-plaintext blog, it should be readable by all sorts of tools (dis volentibus!). As I’ve mentioned before, please let me know if there’s anything I can do that would improve your experience of reading my work here. That said, pergamus.

I’ve been reading as others discuss their grad school experiences, struggles as well as successes, and thought I’d write some about my own experience in higher ed. Although I’m no longer in the field or really in academia at all, I did enjoy my time there for the most part, although it was exhausting and draining and stressful. And it doesn’t have to be, in an ideal world. Anyone should be able to pursue a post-graduate degree if they desire, for whatever reason, and not have it adversely affect their life, finances, whatever. People should be allowed to pursue education for its own sake, disciplinae gratia disciplina (scientiae gratia scientia? whatever works).

So I’ve had my theme set to Ananke so far and it’s been nice, but I think I’d like to check out some other themes and try them on. So if the site looks a little weird lately, I’m trying out new themes. We’ll see how it goes.

Hope y’all are well, friends.

I’ve been playing a lot of videogames during the break(s) from work over the past couple of weeks. I started Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core a little while back, as well as Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, and PSP emulation works pretty well on the laptop, so that’s been fun. But I’ve hit kind of a brick wall on the former, and just haven’t revisited the latter yet. I’ve mentioned this recently on Mastodon, but honestly, I keep coming back to the notion that the Super Nintendo is probably my favorite system of all time. NES is a close second, but I’ve had trouble reconnecting with the NES; it is difficult to get invested in those games any more, but a SNES game I can really dive into. Zelda and Zelda II are notable exceptions, as they’re really quite rich. But NES RPGs are somewhat inscrutable and inaccessible to me; I’ve tried quite a few of them and they just aren’t entirely my thing. I would much rather play the Origins port of Final Fantasy than the original, and I really couldn’t get into II (Japanese), and III was also really just not my thing.

82 … ac uenti uelut agmine facto

qua data porta, ruunt et terras turbine perflant.

incubuere mari totumque a sedibus imis

una Eurusque Notusque ruunt creberque procellis

85 Africus, et uastos uoluunt ad litora fluctus.

(Vergil, Aeneid 1.82-85)

… and the winds, as if a column came about,

where passage was given, they rush down and blow through the lands in a storm.

They brooded over the sea and, together, from its lowest foundations,