Microblogging Journal through 8/5/2024

Nineteen microblogging bits from ActivityPub. #Blaugust2024

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Dispatches from @ultrviolet@gts.endgameviable.com:

Monday 07/29

  • 09:28 # I keep forgetting to run my microblog archival script on Mondays. So once again there will be two new entries in the RSS feed, one of which is a week old. Someday I should really think about automating that.

  • 10:58 # Over the weekend I made the terrible mistake of trying to do some cleanup work in the front yard getting rid of weeds and stuff. The mistake was not covering my arms in long sleeves. There’s poison ivy out there and I knew there was poison ivy out there, and even though I stayed away from the places I knew there was poison ivy, I still got poison ivy on my arm and now I’m going to have a rash for weeks. All it takes is the barest touch of poison ivy and that’s three weeks of an itchy rash for me.

    • 16:54 # I’m trying a new thing of using cold compresses to help with poison ivy rashes. It does technically work but it doesn’t work that great so far.

  • 18:41 # I saw today that VLDL is yet another creative video content group taking the plunge into “premium subscription video service.” Not sure what I think of these efforts. It seems like 2024 is The Year Of Content-Based Video Subscription Services. On the one hand, it’s like, heck yeah, get away from YouTube and do your own thing, that’s awesome, you’re content is definitely good enough to do that. On the other hand, it’s like, ugh another service I have to manage. Can’t they all just use the same non-YouTube video distribution service so I don’t have to have 50,000 different accounts. :)

Tuesday 07/30

  • 14:46 # Last night in the Elden Ring DLC, I got past the four cheating NPC invader fight in Enir-Ilim (on the second try, amaziningly enough). Luck was on my side. Then, I reached what I assume/hope is the final boss in the DLC. It’s a monster. It’s probably going to be like the end of Lords of the Fallen, where I don’t particularly feel like going through the ordeal, and it’ll probably be a month or so before I work up the motivation to throw myself at it. Initial efforts have … not gone well. But at least I got to the second phase once. Knowing Elden Ring’s boss fight design philosophy (make it as soul-crushing, painful and not-fun as possible), it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a third phase afterward.

    • 14:48 # On the plus side, Elden Ring boss fights are good opportunity to listen to an audiobook.

Thursday 08/01

Friday 08/02

  • 10:45 # Endgame Viable Reads Old Writing E1 - From my NaNoWriMo 2009 draft called 2029 AG 7 https://endgameviable.com/talking/2024/0801-s01e01-2029ag7-1/ #Blaugust2024

  • 10:48 # I’m already tired of posting blog post notifications manually. I really need to figure out how to automate that from a static site. There’s a bunch of RSS- feed-to-Mastodon-posters but I’m never sure if anything is going to work with my non-Mastodon GoToSocial instance.

  • 15:33 # CommentBox doesn’t seem to be a very active project anymore so I’m trying two new third-party comment systems on the blog: Emote and GraphComment. It occurred to me that, because of the way my site is built now, I don’t actually have to limit myself to one comment system, so now there’s three on there. Pick the one that works for you. :) My personal first impression is that I think I like Emote more than GraphComment.

  • 19:02 # New on the blog: Reading Old Writing S1 E2 - 2029 AG 7 Pt 2 https://endgameviable.com/talking/2024/0802-s01e02-2029ag7-2/ #Blaugust2024

  • 21:59 # So Fall Guy. I’m going to guess a number in my head and look up the Rotten Tomatoes score. Okay. Once again we see I’m completely out of step with the modern movie-going audience. Not quite as out of step as The Beekeeper but fairly close. I kind of expected an action movie full of stunts and what I got was a romcom without many stunts, or at least stunts that were filmed in a way that didn’t look very interesting. I mean it was kind of funny at times but I got bored and walked away from the screen quite a lot.

Saturday 08/03

  • 11:32 # New on the blog: Saturday Musing About Blaugust Systems <https://endgameviable.com/post/2024/08/saturday-musing-about-blaugust- systems/> #Blaugust2024

  • 13:48 # I just watched Land of Bad on Netflix. Review scores weren’t great but I thought it was a decent movie. Had a bit of an 80s Joel Silver action movie vibe at times (a la Predator). A perspective of modern warfare that I haven’t really seen in movie form before. Sort of vaguely resembled that Gene Hackman movie Bat*21 where he got lost in Vietnam.

Sunday 08/04

  • 09:19 # I finished listening to the A Game of Thrones audiobook yesterday, and I thought it would be interesting to have a list of the chapters with a couple sentences on what each chapter was, and a brief search later I arrived at the Wiki of Ice and Fire, which has chapter lists for each book along with extremely comprehensive chapter summaries. One might even say ridiculously comprehensive summaries, almost to the point that one need not really bother reading the book. The only thing I wish I could do is re-sort the chapter list by the POV character.

    • 09:32 # Ah, the Wiki of Ice and Fire actually does have navigation links to move between POV chapters by character, which is good enough. So you can e.g. browse through just the Bran chapters.

  • 10:26 # Hey, the outdoor cat has decided to stay and sleep inside after getting his breakfast for the first time since winter. Must be the drizzly overcast weather. The indoor cat is also sleeping and hasn’t noticed yet, otherwise she usually stalks and chases the outdoor cat around the house until he leaves again.

  • 15:47 # New on the blog: Reading Old Writing S1 E3 - Neofuel (2010) https://endgameviable.com/talking/2024/s01e03-neofuel-1/ #Blaugust2024

  • 22:16 # Dragon Show hot take: Did they like forget they were making the season finale episode? Did anything even happen in this entire season? At least in the first season, something started toward the end. At the end of the second season, we’re left in almost exactly the same place as the end of the first season. Have screenwriters just plain forgotten what a plot is in this age of streaming? I guess it was probably the writer’s/actor’s strike. They had to put something out even though it was obviously just randomly shuffled scenes that make no sense together. “Just put people in wigs and costumes in front of cameras, and then add some dragons in the background, people won’t notice,” I imagine the producers saying. Anyway, cool music at the end.

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