Leaderboard

Happy belated birthday! I've seen my parents 3 times total in the last six months, my oldest brother and his family twice, and my other brother and his family just once. No other family beyond that. All of our days are very much the same, we don't have a car and are avoiding public transport so we've barely left the city. It's a drag, but it'd be more of a drag to get seriously ill...

Terror bird!

Last Sunday was my birthday, though I invited only my parents, as the COVID rules capacity for our flat is only 4 people. Will see how I celebrate with others, as the weather starts to turn into autumn and spending long periods outside becomes more complicated.

Dreamt that there was a big old-school WGB meetup, I think it was San Francisco? but maybe not, there was a subway. There were all these old board Wigbers, many of whom were real people, but many of whom I think my imagination invented...or maybe were characters from WG books? I was having a hard time keeping everyone and their names and board handles straight. It was in maybe the 2000s, but felt even longer ago than that. Just another excuse for an anxiety dream, between remembering people's names and worrying I'd get on the wrong subway train.

Well, my plan is to play Cyberpunk on a 2012 Mac Pro with a 1080TI duct taped onto it, so we'll see how that goes. 😹

THPS 1 and 2 for PS4. It is what it is: Best video game ever.

I've seen reviews along the lines of this article going around: https://www.themarysue.com/racism-vs-representation-the-missteps-of-naomi-noviks-a-deadly-education/ So there are definitely corners of the internet responding, how much of it is a bubble I don't know.

I ran the library out of books, so just a lot of re-reading. I did purchas a copy of Stealing Worlds by Karl Schroeder for my home library though, because it's that good. Would still highly recommend it for the ideas, if nothing else (the story is decently written too).

How Music Works by David Byrne. I've had this on my wishlist for forever and it was well past time I actually read the thing. It's a really enjoyable set of essays about various aspects of music, some of which I'd read in a more abbreviated form elsewhere (the one about how architecture shapes music first appeared on BoingBoing, IIRC.) Byrne has an interesting (and very well-informed) way of looking at things, and there are some striking insights about creativity and the business of art. The Blade Artist by Irvine Welsh. Even explaining the plot could be considered spoilery, so I

So I went ahead and bought Art of Rally for $25 on Steam. It's actually really gorgeous, runs on Mac, Windows or Linux and is just kind of relaxing to drive through and admire the scenery in. This guy talks about what a hard-core sim it is under the hood, but TBH, there were only about 4 tracks over the course of the entire Class 2 series that I ever had to repeat (and I was repeating because I would get 4th not 1st) on Normal Difficulty).

Rules keep morphing here, at moment pretty much not allowed to have anyone in anyone elses's home, with £1000 fine per person if rules broken. Can meet one other household in bar/restaurant, can't car share. So social stuff is difficult. Caught up with friends for coffee/dinner on Sunday. Which remains odd, and mixed feelings about it, but... Dad's birthday today. As I say, I have mixed feelings, but folks have been going out for lunch a couple of times a week. Partly it is a mental health thing. A difficult balance, between safety and breaking. So I took day off work, too par

Dwarf Fortress is probably still a bit more complicated I've played quite a bit of Crusader Kings 2. I will probably pick up CK3 at some point. It's true that it is a very complex game, but once you've learned a bit about the interface most of the complexity becomes self-evident. From then on it's just a matter of experimenting to see how different systems work with each other, and really that's half the fun of it. CK2 is actually much more complex, because it has years of DLC piling on more and more features. So even though CK2 is free to play now, I wouldn't recommend it to new

I tried drawing some living birds this morning (went to the waterfront), but the little bastards wouldn't stand still and let me get close enough to draw. Rude! Only got a gull from a distance, and part of a pigeon

Yeah, I'm down. Downloading the Quick Start rules as I type, will look them over this weekend. Let me know.

So far I've spent like 10 hours in the actual office this week. With maybe 2 more to go on Friday. Probably had contact with about 8 different students, a couple ed techs and various and assorted AF personnel, but I just keep washing my hands after we share computer keyboards or mice and I go back to my desk. So far, so good apparently. My COVID antibodies test came back negative from a week ago. Tucson now officially had the second driest monsoon season on record sine 1895. And we're 10 degrees over usual temps for this time of year too. Luckily, I did spring for AC 2 years ago, s

Of course, one of the problems I have at moment is: what happened today? I got up. Ate breakfast at desk. Worked. Had lunch. Worked. Ate dinner. Read. Went to bed. Same as yesterday. Same as tomorrow. Some days are tough. Some days I sleep badly. Some days are fine. The days are much of a muchness.

as you say, twitter is hell. it is easy, you get sucked in, there is some cool stuff, but then there are the days of the doom scroll, wishing it would end. certainly during current events i have taken a couple of social media, primarily twitter breaks, even went off for three weeks. which was actually great. at moment, i am making a more concentrated effort to read more, as part of spending less time online, of engaging with something palpable rather than so ephemeral. i am on one other forum at the moment. it is a closed, limited group, glasgow based, for the purposes of running

Darrows art is always great, but as you suggest, his writing is a a little...sparse. I read one of the Shaolin Cowboy books, it was OK, but frustrated me with that spareseness. Been reading a lot of comics over the last few months. Sometimes between work and the world burning it is the level my brain can cope with. This weekend I am re-reading the Aaron/Bachalo run on Dr. Strange, which redefines magic, kills magic, and goes strange places - it is a lot of fun. Also read Doom Patrol: Weight of the World and Shade the Changing Woman - which appear to be supplementary volumes from th

Fuckit. I'm doing "Eclipse Phase". Here's my wiki with the elevator pitch: https://boomzilla.io/wiki/index.php/Main_Page It can be a kinda weird/hard-to-wrap-your-mind-around setting in some ways, but I love it. I'm mostly hitting up friends on Facebook, but @s.smigiel (or anyone else interested), feel free to hit me up here, or wherever else on the net

Grandmother diagnosed with dementia. Fuck 2020.... In half.