Tech Week

This late Saturday evening brings to an end another Tech week. I should explain the term: for a long while my interests have vacillated between technology and art. This has been going on for most of my life by I noticed about a year ago that I will usually get into one for week long chunks. So I have artistic weeks and I have tech weeks.

This week was most decidedly a tech week. I switched out my router for a brand new on and rebuilt my entire home network, which because I’m me, meant more than just replacing the router. It was about as big of a pain as it sounds, but now I get download speeds from my laptop that are seven times as fast as when I started, so I’d say it’s worth it.

Now I just have to start on rebuilding the home server and lab. Issues for another week.

Blogging about Blogging. Yeah, I know.

I was looking at my old blog a little bit ago, and I noticed that I have made over 75 posts to this site, which is 4 more than I did on the old blog in the 7 years I ran it (2012 – 2018). For contrast, I started this blog in February of this year.

So why have I posted so much more on this site than the last one? Been thinking about that I lot lately, and – as near as there is a reason for such things – I think is has to do with the kind of content I post on here and who my intended reader is.

On the last site I was writing article-like posts for some techie reader who I didn’t have a clear image in head of. There was no real theme. I jumped from bitching about the current state of the web to hyper detailed accounts of my own writing output, with total disregard for who would be reading it.

This site is slightly different. This is much more like a journal of whatever I’m currently doing or thinking about. I’ve intended it to be a throw-back to blogs of the 90’s and 00’s. My audience is different as well. My ideal reader is myself from the future, and maybe my friends who would like to know what the hell I’m up to right now.

That shift has meant that the posts are usually MUCH shorter on here but are more numerous. I care less about things being perfect because I’m only capturing what’s going on in the last few hours of my life.

I like this format much better. I’ve always been a fan of the Gonzo style and I’ve always thought that the web was the best resting place for it. So here is to another 75 posts, if I can manage it.

Writing Jag

So I’ve been on a writing jag all last week and I hope it moves into this one. I run a wiki for my D&D world that has been languishing over the last few months. But I’ve picked up working on it again and I’m trying to get some good content out before my game on Saturday. One can only hope…

The Board has been reset. Time to get moving. Good morning, Soda!

Disco Elysium first impressions

I’m about three hours into the RPG Disco Elysium, and it’s pretty good so far. The game feels so complex that I don’t know if three hours is even enough for an accurate first impress, but here we are.

The game is thankfully as weird as I hoped it would be. (The fear with games that sell themselves on their strangeness is that they just come off as quirky. In that freshman roommate kind of way.) The system of your skills being voices in your head with their own agency is actually smoother than I would have expected. It just sort of feels like you’re playing a table top RPG and the GM is feeding you information as they do.

But I knew I was going to like the game when it opened with me having to talk my lizard brain in to letting me out of an alcohol induced coma.

I’ll keep you posted as I play more with the game, but it’s memorable so far.

New Video Game Day

So I’m currently downloading a new game to my computer: Disco Elysium. Which students of obscure indie games will know as that game where you play as a drunk detective and the skills are all weird.

That’s about all I know too because I haven’t played it yet, but it’s about done being downloaded. So if I drop off the world for a while, you know why.

I’ve been trying to give computer games another shot because I actually have a computer that will run them, and they used to be my favorite part of video games. They were always more deep and stranger than anything I could get on console.

I feel I may have stacked the deck in my PC’s favor with Disco Elysium.

It’s about that time

So I may be becoming an old man. I was scrolling Facebook and the algorithm and figured out that I will always stop whenever there’s a video of someone making a craft, or building a table, or something. I never told it this. I never shared anything like this, or clicked the like button on a video. It just figured it out from my scrolling behavior.

It figured out that I have turned into the millennial equivalent of an old man watching This Old House.

Rainy Day

It’s rained all day and that caused me to sleep in today. Sometimes you need a rainy day. It’s been ringing all day and I can still hear the last drops out the windows.

The city always looks nice when it rains.

Shoemakers kids now have shoes

I finally finished backing up my config files for my dev tools and syncing them across all my computers. I have be putting it off for a while because I always feel like I could brick something when I’m working on stuff like that.

And yes, I did almost lose my terminal interface, but you know, I fixed it at the last second.

Now that I have a syncing solution I can start really getting into customizing my dev environment. Which probably won’t end with me bricking my rig again.