August 2021

There were 31 posts published in August 2021 (this is page 2 of 4).

Weekend Plans

filled glass on shore

Getting around to head into the city to see humans. I know these humans so it’s okay. For me. I don’t know about the humans.

Never know about humans.

There’s a few more posts I want to make over the weekend, so we’ll see if I get to them. I’ve also found out that WordPress as a CLI which is very exiting to me as I can use it to script things. Scripting things brings me joy. Might get into that as well. Also, I want to do some more reading. Also also, I need to stand up a server to host all my code because GitHub has changed its login procedures in a way that makes uploading code to a remote repository a slight pain in the ass.

Busy weekend coming up, which means I’ll get to none of it. Shut up.

The Books Love Me Back

Didn’t check my phone for a few hours only to look at my notifications and see that there was a tornado warning in my area. My area being Massachusetts and has never had a tornado in the 10+ years I’ve lived here.

This has done nothing good for my phone addiction.

That’s how my day’s been going. Finished a few books last evening so that might be the direction this evening takes as well.

I’ve alluded to this in past post, but I think a new phase is starting and it is something darkly academic.

Evening Sorted

silhouette of trees

Github has changed how it’s passwords work and now I have to create tokens when I want to upload my code to a private repository. I know the real answer to this is to run a repository on my own servers and cut Github out of the loop entirety, but I just don’t feel like setting that up at the moment. For some damn fool reason, I want to work on my own projects and not my tooling.

But enough of that for now.

As I said a few posts back, I took a week off from reading and just now finished a book. Now I’m looking for something new. Probably should finish one of the seven or so books I’m currently in the middle of, but I’ll most likely start a new one and then nod off to bed.

That’s most likely my evening sorted.

Start Of The Week

Been puttering around the house for the last few hours, had the other half of a sandwich, and now I’m about ready to go for a walk. I’d like to clear my head before I sit down and take care of a few things.

While today is shaping up to be a very technical day, it has dawned on me that I haven’t read anything in almost a week. That’s something else I’m going to have to look into.

Dark Academia

books filed on bookshelf

It was recently brought to my attention that there’s a new(ish) genera of aesthetic called Dark Academia, and that makes me very happy. The idea that there are people curating art that celebrities both intellectualism and dark weirdness gives me hope for the future.

The nuanced discussion of genera and concept of aesthetic play are things that could only come out of Tumblr’s constant content churn. Thank goodness that thing is saying relevant and justifying its continued existence. Somehow the bulk of that community has figured out how to center around the curation of pre-existing materials without sucomming to curations’ cudgel: gatekeeping.

Because they’ve been able to avoid this – on the whole – they’ve been able to use the act of curation to create new contexts with which see that which already exists.

I still operate a Tumblr account and it’s been one of the bright spots for me during the pandemic. I’ve been using it exclusively to collect inspiration for future stories. That has been stuck a little tightly to the cyberpunk and retro 80’s aesthetics, so I’ve been looking for ways to branch out.

I will be resetting my sensors to cast a much wider and darker net.

Into The West

green plastic dice on white surface

No updates yesterday because I was running the last session for my long running D&D campaign. We started in December of 2017, so It’s been a while.

Everybody seemed to enjoy the ending that I made, but I underestimated how finishing a campaign that long would make me feel. The longest continuous campaign I’d run before this was only about three months and that petered out instead of having an official ending. About five minutes after ending this one I have a serious head-rush that lasted for a few hours. In fact, I still feel pretty good, where as I usually feel sort of drained after a session.

Been slowly knocking about the house today, picking things up. Running D&D as an adult means basically running a dinner party so there’s a lot of clean up afterwards. I also have a lot of online accounts that I need to shut down. I’ve been a subscriber to roll20, which we used during the hight of the pandemic, and I was making maps over at Inkcarnate. Also I had a wiki of my campaign world over at World Anvil.

All of these services were great but a lot of them were more tool for me, so I’ll have to pull my data out and close down any paid subscriptions. That’s pretty much the tenor of the next few days: archiving the old campaign materials and thinking about the future.

Probably won’t be going with D&D for the next game. I found it to be a little restrictive for the way I like to run games right now. So I’m going to be looking at what else is out there, and most likely publishing my thoughts on here.

Quiet Night In Witch Town

mountains with trees under white star at night

Just finished prepping for Dungeons and Dragons tomorrow. Been working on it for the last two days and it feels good to have it done. I’m not one of those DM’s that likes to go insane with prep. I just like to have what I need for when I’m at the table. (Knowing what that will be is the trick, you see.)

I am however, a little fried and trying to take the next few hours to relax. Which for the last week or two has meant working on this site – either by tweaking settings or writing posts. Was talking with my wife earlier and I came to realization that my sites are the equivalent to working on muscle cars in the front yard.

So if you ever need me, I’ll be out here tightening bolts and making sure the engine’s running. (Or, you know, trying to keep the fires out.)

Goodbye For Now, Night City

Just beat Cyberpunk 2077. Been playing it off and on for the better part of this year. I’ve sort of been savoring it like a fine wine. As anyone who knows me will attest, I’m pretty big fan of the cyberpunk genera.

So now I have a that hangover that you only get after good novel or long TV show binge. At some point, I’m going to have to finish prepping for the last session of my D&D campaign, but I’ve sort of had enough of endings right now. Going to chill for a little bit and refresh.