oldobsidianox

[oldobsidianox]

25 Days of Demos

Greetings everyone, I hope you're all doing well.

You've probably read the title of this post & are wondering about that title. Well, I wanted to do something "digitally festive" this season & to that effect the December 25 Days of Demos (DoD for short) was born. (A play on the 25 Days of Christmas thing.)

The goal is simple, experience more video games from December 1st all the way to the 25th. But how to achieve it? Well, this is the personal guidelines I'm pulling from:

#1. The Game must have some form of demo that can be accessed by the general public. If you can acquire or play a game for free because of an existing subscription, you're free to use it like a demo. (Just make sure to limit yourself to under 4 hours, treat a full game like it's a first impression.)

#2. The Game must be free to purchase or accessed publicly. Let's face the facts, there is a reasonable chance that some of us don't have the money to go out & buy every game we want this season. As such, the barrier for entry must be $0 (or regional equivalent).

#3. Each day, you must find a new demo to play & delete the demo for the prior day with the exception of the first day. The goal is to experience a wide variety of games, not to try just one game.

#4. (Optional) Write/type up anything you want about it. Give it a first impression rating if you like, good and awful.

#5. Have fun. This may sound slightly dumb, but this list is not a law office. If you want to do it for all 25 days because it makes you happy, go for it. You can decide after 15 days that Baldur's Gate 3 is just the thing you're going to commit to for the rest of December. Use these guidelines to find something that brings you joy, not more work.

And, that's it.

After Christmas you can look back at the 25 days & decide for yourself if any titles piqued your interest. Perhaps you can purchase or seek them out again in the new year (I'm ultimately a wall of text, I can't say what you can or can not do).

And before anyone says that is late and should've come out in November, let me just say this:

"You're right."

I had an idea, but it took me until today & attempting to explain to a friend of mine just what I was doing that I figured out the guidelines So sorry about that, maybe next year. (Or you could also see this as a challenge and attempt to do multiple short demos in a single day to make up for the fact that this is coming out a few days into December.)

Anyways, I have got back to 25 DoD (Remnant II is giving me a funny look). Have a lovely winter season, & enjoy the rest of your day.

Respectfully,

--ObsidianOx

[oldobsidianox]

I mean, he got orders to C the Major.

[oldobsidianox]

My heart, it is filled with happy.

[oldobsidianox]

You can see why they came back.

[oldobsidianox]

SPREAD THIS LIKE WILDFIRE

 The “Save Net Neutrality” bill was just introduced to Congress. You know what this means? WE HAVE THE BIGGEST CHANCE TO GET OUR INTERNET BACK.

We can only have a chance if you contact your reps NOW and SUPPORT THE BILL. The Bill has been assigned to the House Energy & Commerce Committee.

Here is the link to the bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4585

Check these images to see if your GOP MoC or Dem MoC is a member:

[oldobsidianox]

Net Neutrality is in DEEP Trouble

Reposted from Facebook’s PBS Newshour.

Now that I got your attention with this video…

The FCC decided to go ahead with the vote to remove the Net Neutrality rules that the Obama administration set up. 

As you can see, this is what the major ISPs wants to do if they have their way. This can do a few things:

Stiff new innovations, making it harder for smaller companies to compete.

Silence independent voices. 

Potentially putting up a “walled garden” on a wide scale.

Make distribution of information harder for low-income people.

Imagine this website, if you will, only working on Verizon networks while AT&T customers are charged a little extra, or have slower access to the same information.

Remember, your ISP owns content providers and may give top-shelf, VIP treatment to their own things while stiffing everyone else. We need to address this.

Now, some of you may recall earlier this year that John Oliver and a lot of other people, companies (and yours truly) did a rallying cry to tell the FCC to back off the Net Neutrality rules, which resulted in millions of comments on their proposal. 

However, there’s been a few problems… in short, it seems that the FCC chose to not listen due to “inconsistancies”.

Sidenote: Tumblr isn’t the best place to talk “long-form” so if you’re interested in looking at these notes, here are some places to go to.

https://medium.com/@AGSchneiderman/an-open-letter-to-the-fcc-b867a763850a - “ Specifically, for six months my office has been investigating who perpetrated a massive scheme to corrupt the FCC’s notice and comment process through the misuse of enormous numbers of real New Yorkers’ and other Americans’ identities. Such conduct likely violates state law — yet the FCC has refused multiple requests for crucial evidence in its sole possession that is vital to permit that law enforcement investigation to proceed.”

https://twitter.com/BanditRandom/status/933066570741383169 - A twitter thread about how the Wall Street Journal collected someone’s information to sign in FAVOR of Net Neutrality. 

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/fake-net-neutrality-comments-at-heart-of-lawsuit-filed-against-fcc/ - “Fake” net neutrality comments at heart of lawsuit filed against FCC

So, what can we do about this?

There are a few things you can do to help slow down this nightmare situation.

You can’t just “like” this note, you have to reblog to spread, but more importantly, you have to TAKE action!

1) Make calls to your representatives - https://5calls.org/issue/defend-fcc-net-neutrality - this website will tell you who to call and an easy-to-follow script so that you know exactly what to say.

2) You can support groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU and Free Press who are fighting to keep Net Neutrality:

https://www.eff.org/

https://www.aclu.org/

https://www.freepress.net/

https://www.fightforthefuture.org/

https://www.publicknowledge.org/

https://www.demandprogress.org/

3) You can add a comment to the proposal using John Oliver’s URL at http://www.gofccyourself.com

4) Write a letter to your representative. Not an email, an actual, snail mail letter. 

Let’s all band together and do something about this. Our future of sharing information, building innovation, nurturing voices and creativity depends on your actions now! 

I know it may sound hopeless. Look at when they announced this (you probably didn’t know they announced this on Monday when you’re busy getting ready to for the holiday!). But if we say it with one voice to BACK OFF THE NET, we maybe able to make a difference.

[oldobsidianox]

Surreal Digital Illustrations Portray Fairy Tale Worlds Luisa Azevedo

Keep reading

[oldobsidianox]

20 Images Of Norwegian Architecture Plucked Straight From A Fairytale

The Norwegian countryside is strewn with architecture that looks better suited to crown the pages of a fairytale book. More commonly known for its Vikings heritage and fjords, these photographs display a wide variety of architectural styles that have been used throughout the Middle Ages to the 19th century in Norway. Check out the stunning collection below.

Crooked and towering wooden churches beckoning like an old crone’s fingers, winding stone path weaving through a forest, hidden waterfalls and lonely wooden cabins overlooking a vast valley at its base are some of the outlandish homes and architectural designs we have featured in this series. Teetering Stave churches, eerie waterfalls cascading down like a creature with its own mind, wooden homes made in the typical Norwegian indigenous style called byggeskikk have none of the linearity or conformity that modern buildings do, and have whimsical elements that heighten its sense of magic.  

Each of these structures below have a particular way of being set into its own environment, standing out from the elements without obstructing nature. Most of the buildings and bridges and pathways have been built with stone and wood balance the scene it has been engineered upon.

Barn In Valldal

Renndølsetra

Ancient Road Vindhellavegen

Bridge Over Låtefossen Waterfall

Kvednafossen Waterfall In Norway

Old Farmhouses

At The End Of The World, Tjome

Natural Swimming Pool In The Forest

Old House

House In Norway

Fjord Houses

Old Village

Fisherman Hut, Undredal

Bridge In Norway

Rogaland, Gullingen

Lake Bondhus

Small House In Norway

Fairy House In Hunderfossen, Lillehammer

Under The Aurora

h/t: boredpanda

[oldobsidianox]

Ok, that’s kind of cool.

Scientists have figured out how to use nuclear waste as an energy source, converting radioactive gas into artificial diamonds that could be used as batteries.

These diamonds, which are able to generate their own electrical current, could potentially provide a power source for thousands of years, due to the longstanding half-life of the radioactive substances they’re made from.

“There are no moving parts involved, no emissions generated, and no maintenance required, just direct electricity generation,” says geochemist Tom Scott from the University of Bristol in the UK.

“By encapsulating radioactive material inside diamonds, we turn a long-term problem of nuclear waste into a nuclear-powered battery and a long-term supply of clean energy.”

Continue Reading.

[oldobsidianox]

I would play a good deal of money to see an ice hockey game with a double sided stick like that, played seriously.

[oldobsidianox]

How on earth would you feed a city of over 200,000 people when the land around you was a swampy lake? Seems like an impossible task, but the Aztec managed it by creating floating gardens known as chinampas, then they farmed them intensively.

These ingenious creations were built up from the lake bed by piling layers of mud, decaying vegetation and reeds. This was a great way of recycling waste from the capital city Tenochtitlan. Each garden was framed and held together by wooden poles bound by reeds and then anchored to the lake floor with finely pruned willow trees. The Aztecs also dredged mud from the base of the canals which both kept the waterways clear and rejuvenate the nutrient levels in the gardens.

A variety of crops were grown, most commonly maize or corn, beans, chillies, squash, tomatoes, edible greens such as quelite and amaranth. Colourful flowers were also grown, essential produce for religious festivals and ceremonies. Each plot was systematically planned, the effective use of seedbeds allowed continuous planting and harvesting of crops.

Between each garden was a canal which enabled canoe transport. Fish and birds populated the water and were an additional source of food. [x]

(Fact Source) For more facts, follow Ultrafacts

[oldobsidianox]

Let me pull up a chair..

Unbelievable Places That Look Like They’re From Another Planet

[oldobsidianox]

I don’t know what I love about this the most...

And so, the war ended.

Scene redrawn from Nichijou

[oldobsidianox]

Cool, I didn’t even know this existed.

KAMUI CUSTOMIZER 2.0 LAUNCH

Github Link | Appspot Link

Please don’t crash my Appspot server this time :P Github should theoretically be able to handle the traffic better, though.

I’ve received quite a few reports about the hair color not working on the computers a small but significant subset of users, most reports coming from Windows 10 + Chrome (I had 1 report of Windows 7, but all else are W10). I figured something might have broken some implementation of HTML5 built in blend modes, so I figured I’d just, write the Overlay blend mode myself. I’ve thus removed Hard Light, because while there was a minor difference in the way it’s handled by built in HTML5 blend modes (visually, i don’t know their implementation), there would be no difference in my implementation. If this does not fix the issue on your system, please let me know. 

However, I added a few new features as well, from feedback I’ve gotten. First, I added expressions, by popular demand. If you get slightly higher loading times, that’s because I’m pre-loading a little over 100 more images to account for each expression per build per face. I also added a blush button. I am also planning to add sweat, but I don’t know the placement of sweatdrops very well and I want to push this out now. If any of you have the screenshots of sweat drop location on each face, please send me screenshots! They would be of immense help.

There’s also the newer, faster, color picker. I kept the regular options block in for visual coherency (and to mimic the in-game selection boxes), but if you click on the box that says Hair Color __, a palette containing all 30 possible hair colors will pop out and you can select the hair color from that. 

RobinCustomizer also received the new palette menu update and the new Overlay algorithm that should hopefully fix things. If anyone wants to get me Robin’s expression/blush/sweat assets ripped and in a neat zip folder (I’m way too lazy to rip them myself off a site or something), I’m also willing to add expressions to Robin.

[oldobsidianox]

What, are, the odds.

so I’m playing the new fire emblem fates DLC right? and hinata says:

which is hilarious in its own right, because he pretty much just straight up left someone to die because he’s a lovable idiot, BUT THEN takumi says:

hinata nearly let takumi die confirmed, what a dummy i love him