This one always stuck with me:
in time of daffodils(who know the goal of living is to grow) forgetting why,remember how
in time of lilacs who proclaim the aim of waking is to dream, remember so(forgetting seem)
in time of roses(who amaze our now and here with paradise) forgetting if,remember yes
in time of all sweet things beyond whatever mind may comprehend, remember seek(forgetting find)
and in a mystery to be (when time from time shall set us free) forgetting me,remember me
EE Cummings
Ah yes the ghost of WMDs past, the ghost of WMDs present, and the ghost of WMDs to come. A classic Charles Dickens story. Thank you for the content and god help us, every one.
That looks great! That takes a lot of patience to pull off.
I’d reckon the hard starts may have something to do with the cap and/or ink. I’ve heard it’s better to use period friendly ink with vintage pens. Modern Japanese inks are particularly ill suited to them due to basic pH levels.
Is the hard start with every letter or word? Or just each cap/uncap? If you fill the cap with some water do you see any dripping through the clip or elsewhere? If so the ink will dry up in the nib between uses and cause that hard start. Or it could simply be a threading issue. A lot of modern metal pens have an o-ring to help seal the pen when capped.
Does that say it’s a 10 hour video?!
From a different article:
"Green Valley Democratic Sen. Rosanna Gabaldón said the proposal bypasses the normal process — one set up by the Legislature itself — that assigns the task of reviewing name changes to the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names.
“SB1010 politicizes the state highway naming process,” she said, with the board designed to pursue a process “that’s supposed to be neutral (and) reflective.”
“Our transportation system should unite Arizonans, not be used for political statements,” Gabaldón said.
Sen. Lauren Kuby pointed out that the board policy — the one lawmakers are overriding — is not to name anything after someone until at least five years after they have died. That, said the Tempe Democrat, “both avoids political controversy and allows historical perspective.”"
I’ve come to think of the process of GMing more like stage production than storytelling. You litterally set the stage for your players and you just need to control what’s on that stage at any given moment. So instead of writing out entire cities, towns, dungeons, and deep descriptions I’ll come up with a unique shop or NPC and drop it in when the situation calls for it. Even with a map and set locations, if the players haven’t visited yet then they don’t know what’s there. You can wheel in the set pieces and backdrops as needed. The party doesn’t see the stagehands moving the scenery they just need to enjoy themselves onstage.
It works for me because I might have a fun idea for an NPC or location randomly and write it down. Then I have a catalog of people, places, quests/treasures to pull from as I plan sessions. And if the party doesn’t interact with it that session it goes back on the shelf.
Otherwise I have a loose plan for the overarching main quest but I spend a lot of my time thinking about how the world will look based on the characters choices. Like right now the group failed to stop an assassination of a lord. This also got an ambassador to another nation killed. With tensions already high between the two kingdoms, how will this effect everything else? I found that so much can change in the world based on their choices that planning so far ahead can be detrimental and I’d end up trying to railroad them early on.
Random fun fact, the dude dunking the Dude in the toilet bowl is Mark Pellegrino. He also played Lucifer in Supernatural.
If you want something right now, you can swap that CPU out with a ryzen 7 5600x. It lolls like Amazon has it listed for $220. According to User Benchmarks you could see a 30-40% performance increase over what you have. Unfortunately with the smaller board you can’t really add more ram. Any upgrade to DDR5 is going to be way too expensive.
You could save and wait for things to cool down but who knows when that will be. Once it does happen you should swap the processor, board, and ram. You can also keep an eye on the secondhand market to see if something pops up at a decent price.
Ya the first season reminded me a lot of Berserk. You’re following along with a character whose sole purpose is to kill and survive.
But you see his father in the first few episodes, a man who moved his family far away from the Danes, a man who runs a village and is beloved, a man who despite being a master with a sword is shown trying to lean new skills and grow. He was a man who couldve led the Vikings and lived in luxury but wanted his kids to grow up away from the battlefield. The story is the unfortunate journey of Thorfinn having to realize what his father was trying to teach him but the hard way. Even though the first season is a lot of fighting, there is very little in the second.
Vinland Saga
“I have no enemies.” It’s an anime with two seasons so far. The manga is getting close to complete. Takes place around 1000 ad with the wars between the Vikings and the English. Basically the first season is about revenge while the second pivots hard to redemption. It’s ultimately a story about pacifism.
After seeing the keynotes at CES this year I am convinced every tech CEO desperately sees themselves as the next Steve Jobs on this one. “Hype” of the iPhone But with none of the innovation. The iPhone was something tangible and useful to people. It actually enhanced something we all used. So many things that were talked about this year were met with crickets from the audience. AI in GPUs you can’t afford and frame generation, AI in CPUs, AI in your coffee maker. The audience was skeptical and uninterested because the technology hasn’t proven itself yet. But here we are going all-in.
I literally just had a conversation with a coworker where he said we need more AI to auto generate and populate forms and save us the hassle. He gave a bunch of examples and I said, never touching copilot, “It sounds like you should just be able to ask it to do these extremely basic tasks and it would complete them.” And he replied that he tried a number of ways but it could never get them right. It’s a half baked technology at best.
All that is happening is geared towards data centers and the tech companies themselves. All we get to do is ask a fancy search engine things and it spits out things that may or my not be true or plagiarized. Its not an original thought but just a smashed together search. We can ask it to complete tasks with a 30% success rate. They want to feed it so much information it will destroy your basic privacy as well as the ecosystem. Oh but we get the privilege of renting comupting power to play games on their servers. Don’t worry about the hastle of a home PC anymore.
Nothing tangible, nothing better than what we already have.
Before my current setup I had an older sff Dell Optiplex with a bunch of drives plugged in through various ports. It worked for Jellyfin and some file storage but that was about it. As another person said, you kind of just use what’s around at first. You could potentially get one of those external hard drives and just call it good. It’s quick and dirty but it works. You might even be able to find one second hand which would be great costwise.
Alternatively, you could get an older full sized PC with a lot of drive racks and sata ports on the motherboard for drives. I know an old PC I had had at least 6 sata ports on the board. Then put Truenas, Proxmox, or Open Media Vault on one drive and use the rest of the slots for storage drives.
Theres a lot of options but at the end of the day its a PC with drives either way. In my opinion its more cost effective to get a used PC with potential to upgrade as needed than a premade NAS with a shelf life. But I understand not everyone has the room for that.
Could be fun. I just desperately want an animated adaptation of the Stormlight Archives. Mistborn would be a killer three season animated show too.
I just beat Outer Wilds a few months ago and the DLC last week. It’s easily one of my favorite games but once you know the secrets there’s no going back. I’m so glad I never had anything spoiled and went in on a random recommendation.
Even though I loved the base game the DLC doesn’t have quite the same feel. I got legitimately frustrated at certain parts too. But it’s also more outer wilds and is nearly it’s own game so can’t really complain.
This sounds almost like the build I’m upgrading from now. I have an i5-4690 4 core 3.5ghz with 16GB DDR3, and an MSI GTX 970. I picked up a radeon 5600xt and it’s been able to handle a number of newer games with lower settings. That got me to pull the trigger on a full upgrade this week. But I was playing BG3 on medium settings and even Expedition 33. It’s not great but it runs fine.
Your CPU is better than that and I’d see if you can get more ram in there, you can probably find DDR3 for a decent price. I’d also check for used equipment. I got that gpu for ~$100 from someone who just upgraded to something newer.
As someone that’s a big CR fan and watched all the campaigns, the Mighty Nein is my favorite. So I was really excited to see it animated.
Unfortunately, while I still enjoyed it quite a bit, the pacing seemed off and a lot of the later game reveals/secrets are being pit out there early. Honestly C2 has a slow start with the whole circus and devil toad arc. They also threw in session zero story to help establish the characters to the audience but that took like 2 episodes of the 8 total for the season.
Then, they made a lot of changes to the overall story that don’t break the continuity but I think alters the emotional journey. In comparison, Vox Machina was quick at first to establish the characters but didn’t deviant too far from the overall story until later seasons.
I also thought they needed a few more episodes. It’s the first season so there’s a lot of intro work to do but a few more episodes to tackle “not high level stuff with low level characters” would have been nice.
As far as the characters go for me:
Fjord is always kind of a mid character. He has some shining moments in the campaign but he gets outshined by everyone around him.
Molly was written literally as a blank slate. The player had a short outline for who Molly was that he pitched to the GM and said the backstory is a total mystery. But Molly is a fan favorite for multiple reasons and is a well meaning heathen. He has some really good moments but I’m afraid they cut a lot of his best bits from the show.
Everybody loves Jester. She’s sweet, cute, crude, and positive. Lots of dick jokes. She has some of the best moments in the campaign.
Nott, amazing character. She got a lot of screen time and it’s deserved. Great representation.
Beau, another good character and a 180 in attitude from Keyleth. She’s a what you see is what you get kind of person.
Caleb was one of my favorites but the focus on the academy and his friends happens way later in the game and I think that really messed with the pacing. They moved the whole academy to Zadash just for the show. If they left brief flashbacks and minimal hints about his past I think it would’ve given them time to focus on other things.
Like Yasha. It was criminal that they just had a few, albeit great, scenes with her. Granted that Ashley Johnson was sin and out of the game the first two campaigns due to work. But they wrote Pike into a lot of Vox Machina she wasn’t in originally. She has some good story ahead though.
Essek was another odd addition. It’s good that they showed the Kryn Dynasty to show what it’s like but it’s another time suck from the main cast. And another very early twist reveal makes me wonder how things will play out in the future. He’s a good character but the focus really should’ve been on the main cast for the first season.
Overall I liked it and I know things need to change for TV but some of the choices they made robbed the audience of big reveals and mysteries later on. I’ll have to rewatch it again now that they are all out. If you enjoyed this season I’d highly recommended starting campaign 2 on YouTube. It’s like the book vs the movie debate, it’s the same characters you love/hate but much more fleshed out. Plus you get all the banter and dice rolling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg1ckCkm8YI
I randomly remembered the Will it Blend? videos the other day. Such a simple premise. Also “Don’t breathe this.”
I’ve never heard of the Rapid Pro. I’ll have to check that out. I was always hesitant of the Rotrings for some reason.
I’m very interested to try the Lamy Safari mechanical pencil with the Kura Toga mechanism whenever it becomes widely available.