February 11, 2024

Underwhelmed by Snow

So all week, we were told that we’d be getting quite a bit of snow here, and there were a lot of winter storm advisories &c. We had plans to see a movie Friday night, which I’d gotten tickets to a week or two ago, but by the time we got to Friday, we were both too tired to go out again, and ended up staying home. The tickets weren’t too expensive (it was going to be a nice cheap date), and the venue is owned by the city, so I figure it’s keeping that space running. Snow was supposed to pick up overnight and into Saturday, so we thought we’d probably be staying home Saturday as well, rather than going to the festival put on by the city downtown.

February 9, 2024

Safe Moorage

It has been A Week, that’s for sure. Just a lot going on at work (the norm, but it hit especially hard this week), and Thursday was an especially rough day at work for various reasons. I had some phone calls that went south and left me very frazzled and burnt out. Trying not to linger or dwell upon it, since it’s over and I’m OK and life goes on, but sometimes these things stick with you. I’m writing this after playing some Final Fantasy V; I’ve maxed out my characters’ jobs and might have to level up some more, I dunno. FFV seems especially inscrutable for one of the older RPGs I’ve played, and I honestly think this will be my last playthrough in a long time. It’s very fun and has been enjoyable, but grinding towards the end of the game has been an absolute slog, more so than for any other game I’ve played. Who knows, though, I might put FFV aside for a bit and return to Stardew Valley vel sim. I am still waiting for the Final Fantasy VII (“Reunion”) retranslation to be completed, though; the retranslation for PC is nearly complete and needs to be ported to the PSX original. I can’t wait. All the buzz around the “Rebirth” (part 2 of the Remake) has got me excited about the original!

February 2, 2024

See The Shadow

I just realized today is Groundhog Day, that time-honored celebration of a diminutive animal weather prognosticator, celebrated at least in the US and Canada. I never really understood all the fuss about it. If he sees his shadow, more winter; if not, early spring. Please, no early spring, I want more cold. See the shadow. But according to a random search I did, “Punxsutawney Phil” didn’t see his shadow in 2024, so an early spring it is. ὡς φάτο; sic effatus.

December 1, 2023

Sea of Shattered Stars

(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.

November 18, 2023

Sea of Stars, Mare Stellarum

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.

July 30, 2023

Google without Gmail

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.

July 21, 2023

Stranded on the Much-Billowing Beach

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.

April 25, 2023

Adventures with LibreTranslate

(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.

March 14, 2023

Some Thoughts on Gaming and Gamers

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.

February 18, 2023

Grad School Memories

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).