Archive for the ‘gaming’ Category
I once again find myself regretting that I can’t seem to commit to writing anything full length. Yet another nanowrimo gone with just a couple chapters completed. Or at least attempted. So I’m back to just trying to do some writing as often as I can, even if it is an open format and not specifically fiction or whatever. Read more
I’ve had so many people ask me if these pixelart images I’ve made are “legit” or really made block by block, or what have you. So to save myself from having to type in this explanation yet another time, I’ll put it all down here in one place to set the record straight. Read more
Nomnomnom… food for the mind.
I read, you read, we all read for…. ok, that didn’t work as well as I might have liked. Here are some links:
Some new links for the week. Let James Brown be your guide!
This week’s links, courtesy of yo momma’s tasty fried chicken…
And here we go again with another week’s worth of fun reading…
Aaaannnnddd…. another week of links!
This week’s links!
I should mention, though perhaps for some it goes without saying, that I don’t necessarily agree with all of the things I’m pointing to here. In fact, I’d go so far as to say some of them are just blatantly wrong. However, I point them out because they are interesting reading. Your own brain is going to have to reach its own conclusions about the veracity of the article, its source(s) and whether what they purport should influence your own thinking or opinions. I’m not an expert on (ok, most of) these topics. You may be. If you want heated debate, we can take that up over a beer. In the meantime, I’m just going to throw stuff out there for your amusement, and leave it up to you whether you elect to consume this fare or not. Enjoy…
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Links from this week:
Enjoy!
I started this post nearly two years ago, and it has been sitting in my “Drafts” folder since then, untouched.
I recently came up against a need for which Amazon’s cloud was once against the hand’s down most cost effective way to meet my needs, and I figured it was worth documenting the use case. If you don’t know already, I play minecraft. I have a realm. I’ve hosted my own server in the past, and have done a whole mess of stuff with it over the years, including some pixelart (which I will link once I’m not at work anymore). Realms don’t support any kind of mods or plugins, or maps, etc. And so I’ve had to do some manual work to get a map of our realm available online. When I was using fragnet (had great experience with them, btw … our use case just changed is all), they had basically one click install options for using dynmap, a popular dynamic mapping system for minecraft, and it basically auto-magically maintained the map for me, no maintenance or anything necessary. It would update reasonably quickly after you explored more of your world, and all was well in the world.
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So for … basically ever, I’ve been playing a simple logic “solitaire” game called Sherlock. Its pretty simple, has only a few rules to understand, and it is in a class of game that I have just basically always had in my life in one form or another. I have read a few studies over the years that indicate that keeping your brain engaged and active can either prevent or delay the onset of some of the cognitive disoders, like Alzheimer’s. Not that I originally considered that in my choice to play these sorts of things, I just liked them. And still do… but it has certainly reinforced my decision to continue playing them. They are a sort of litmus test for whether or not I’m “slipping” mentally, or losing my ability to solve those sorts of problems. There are certainly lots of arguments that I’m not doing a very scientific test. Yes, sure… granted. But that also isn’t my primary goal. Its just a happy side effect.
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So I have a peculiar brain. I say this because it has managed to take four completely unrelated, seemingly innocent facts about the current state of my life, and turn this into insomnia. Note the time of the post. I’ve been up for about an hour now, and here is the reason:
Ok, I’m going pause here briefly to give you a chance to read stuff at those links if needed, and maybe think about how these things might all play in concert with one another. Go ahead, I’ve got all night. Take a few minutes…
Alright, so here’s what my brain has done with all of that. I end up dreaming about Sherlock Holmes crime scenes and gunfights. Except that those gunfights and crime scene investigations end up playing out like XCOM combat sequences, with each character getting to move in little time-sliced chunks, after each move, taking a moment to have a soliloquy in Sherlockian dialog, with exactingly long sequences of observations about what is going on and with whom. If you’ve seen the recent couple of movies with Robert Downey, Jr, you might recall the sequences where you can see him planning out a method of attacking an opponent, in each moment observing how to best disable them, and then seeing it play out in real time exactly as he had surmised. That is how it happens in the dream. Now add to this the fact that I begin lucid dreaming, and I can, in fact, influence the course of the action, and it becomes exactly like playing XCOM-style in a Sherlockian novel. And then, of course, becoming aware of the sounds of my CPAP machine, adding that into my dream, and then slowly falling out of the dream state because moving through Sherlockian combat scenes in slow motion while listening to the augmented sounds of your own machine-assisted breathing is, in fact, quite disturbing and mind-numbingly boring.
So yeah, thanks brain! I owe you one. I’m going to just go in to work early and try and get some work done.
Brain? By the way? Pull this shit again, and I’m pulling out the ambien and taking your ass down. Just sayin’.
If you’re not participating in the fantasy hockey league, feel free to ignore this… Read more
Howdy folks. I’m not sure who all reads this with any regularity, but I’m cross posting this everywhere to drum up interest, so there you have it. Read more
