#and that's when i learned how to use console commands <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[im-captain-basch]

Thinking about that time I tried to play Sims 4 and was pretending to play house with the characters I was using like kids do with dolls and my game really said "Oh yeah? Triplets, bitch."

[captainjamster]

Pairing(s): 141 x Reader Warnings: mentions of (pixel) animal death, butchering of a pixelated cow (rip thank u for ur sacrifice) Wordcount: 2.3k Summary: How I think you would get the boys into Minecraft and/or what it would be like playing with them. AO3 Link: Right here! <3

A/N: Hello why yes, this IS my first post in four months despite the mountain of unfinished fics I have xD I will edit any errors out of this later, but I'm making myself post this because I'm tired of avoiding uploading until something feelings perfect lol

We're pretending Mojang is competent so ignore any inaccuracies to how Minecraft actually works <3

Full fic under the cut <3

Price just plays to amuse you, but he becomes competent at the game ridiculously quickly. Yes, he might jokingly be an old man, as his favourite youthful commander would put it – but this ‘old man’ can learn new tricks, and he’s pretty sure some of the technology he works with would make a civvy’s head spin. Though he’s unfamiliar with most video games and consoles, sacrificing his youth for service, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t heard of them or played a game or two. John will admit; he doesn’t see much point in it, but adores the excitement you glow with as you’re adventuring and building.

“Alright, so it’s w, a, s and d to move, right? And then the space is to jump.” Your hands barely stretch over his, guiding them to the keys.

“S’easy enough, I suppose,” he rumbles, giving you that smile that crinkles his eyes. You resist the urge to kiss them as he adjusts his hands over your keyboard, giving the buttons experimental taps and watching how the screen reacts.

“Yep, and then you use the mouse to control your head, look around and stuff.” You nudge it over to him, and he gives it a shake before looking around.

“More bloody blocks. What’s that thing, there?”

You squint, looking closer. “A sheep, don’t worry about it. You want to try moving around?”

Once you’ve taught him the basics, his rapid acclimation to the games and controls are jarring. While he doesn’t become some Minecraft speed-runner pro, he’s an equally capable player in fights and foraging, and your base is ridiculously plentiful. You’re never lacking resources, and although he never mentions it, you can see John bloom with pride from the corner of your eye whenever you praise him for the neatly organised provisions.

You have to laugh at his suspicion of everything – “is this hostile?”, “this one hostile?”, “s’hostile one?” – and the way he takes protecting you seriously, scolding you for not wearing armour and giving you his own until he can make more.

The first time his dog dies, you think it might be over for your Minecraft run. He goes silent, aggressively hitting the keys as he slaughters the mobs around you, only speaking up when the area is clear. “I didn’t know that would happen,” he mutters, picking up the dropped loot as you make a sympathetic noise. When you log on the next time, waiting for John to come back with snacks from the corner, you don’t mention the small fence with a sign reading ‘Price Jr’ tucked into the oak trees at the edge of a pond – but the next time you check it, there’s another daisy swaying in the wind next to yours.

-----

Gaz knows what Minecraft is AND he’s played it – you’ve even played it together before. This boy is a gamer, and he’s down for a night of co-op couch games and take away with a cosy blanket if you are too.

Though he tries his hardest not to let it show around you, Kyle is aggressively driven in becoming competent, and that includes in video games. You never have to worry about dying, although it becomes a little frustrating when his experience level is more than triple yours – but you can’t even stay frustrated, you learn, as he unfalteringly drops his items and starts building a dirt stack that he jumps from, exploding into clouds and XP that floats towards you with a light, twinkling chiming. When you scold him for doing something so unnecessary, he gives you a kicked puppy look over his shoulder, pouting up at you. “I didn’t want you to wait for me to make a mob farm!”

Unlike Price, this man IS a Minecraft pro – he’s pulling out the water bucket to save you from falling, using beds to fight hostile mobs in the underworlds, zooming around with fireworks and an elytra to find that rare, specific coat of cat you’ve been running across the map looking for. You’re pretty sure that he could’ve beat the Enderdragon twice as fast if you weren’t there, but he still insists you were an equal champion of the fight as he proudly places the dragon head on your trophy wall.

Gaz is always prepared when the 6-month Minecraft fever hits and you make a new server. He’s sending you pinterest links of cute house ideas, making comments about adding another coop for the chickens and a pond for turtles. Hell, he’ll build them with, or even for you, if you want him to.

Playing with him can sometimes be similar to one of those youtube tutorials that cut back to a clip after some ‘offscreen building’ and they’re standing in front six life-scale cathedrals and a replication of Mt Everest – each time you log back on, you swear he’s expanded your base by another chunk, and you can’t even be mad you didn’t get to do anything because your world looks GOOD, and Gaz makes damn sure of it.

He has just about everything you can think of, and if not? There’s a sign next to his bed for you to note anything missing. Your main base is situated within a town of villagers with minecart roads and furnished houses, bakeries, animal centres, banner and dye stores – hell, he’s even built a zoo and an aquarium for the animals you can’t tame. All of your pets have names that he refers to fondly, each with their own little houses in a miniature version of the village. Despite the effort he puts into housing them, Gaz is a menace to the villagers – bad deal? Executed, or imprisoned at best. Sometimes logging onto for a session turns into a dramatic medieval roleplay as you dutifully play the executioner, triggering the trapdoor to give way to the pool of lava while Gaz finishes dramatically reciting the villagers’ crimes from a book - gives the ones that get to live names like ‘village dunce’ and ‘emerald hoarder’.

When you do build by yourself, he’s your project advisor throughout the process, patiently supplying the materials and helping you with the details. “Babe, this doesn’t seem right,” you grumble, head in your hands, “can you please come look?”

He’s quick to slide his chair across to yours, leaning on the sides. “This one,” he announces after a quick scan. “You added an extra block.”

You recount again, letting out a groan as you start breaking the blocks, and Gaz dutifully rolls back to help you. He’s your partner in crime, complicit in indulging your abandonment of any appropriate sleep schedule, staying up until he calls out your name to find you asleep, drooling on the keyboard.

-----

Soap does not give a shit until you mod the fuck out of it.

Yes, he knows what Minecraft is, thank y’very much bonnie, but he just doesn’t care for games that much. Like Price, his youth was spent either trying to get into the military, or actually being in it. The only games he’s entertained are his small selection of first-person shooters he plays occasionally off deployment that you can never beat him in. The topic first comes up is over dinner after a call with Johnny’s family, as he’s grumbling between bites.

“My sisters weans play all sorts ‘o stupid games, bloody bite my head off if I call ‘em the wrong thing – Minecraft, Roblox, aren’t they all the same?”

“Aren’t all shooter games the same, by that assumption?” You point out to his distaste, and he makes a face at you, reaching over the table to steal a bite of your food.

The next day, you pull up Minecraft for him to properly check out. Johnny isn’t particularly enraptured by the charm of the game, but he perks up when you mention the redstone mechanics. “So, it’s really just all block-y? And ye smack things wit’ yer hand?” He frowns, leaning against the back of your chair.

“That’s one part, yeah. But you run around and gather resources, by mining and stuff, so you can craft and build better things to survive – you know – Mine, craft. Minecraft.”

Johnny scoffs, wrapping his arm around your shoulders. “Y’think I’m daft, now? Taken too many knocks to the head, aye?”

“Let go of me, you’re going to get me killed!” You squawk, and he lets you struggle for a moment before he kisses the top of your head and releases it, wandering into the kitchen for what you assume is a snack, knowing Johnny.

The next time he takes interest, you’re still up when he stumbles in blearily, rubbing his eyes. “Bonnie? Yer not really still playin’ this, are ye? Y’haven’t even slept?”

“I was going to sleep soon,” you huff, turning back. “I just need to get a few more things and go back home.”

There’s an incredulous noise amongst footsteps over your shoulder, and his voice is suddenly a lot closer in your ear. “Soon? S’five in’ the morn’ bon, are ye just gon’ sleep the day away?’

You pause the game, spinning the chair around to meet him with a glare. “Why are you up this early?”

“International meeting, don’t go changin’ the subject.” He spins you back around despite your protests, leaning back upon your chair once again and peering at the screen. “Cannae see what yer enjoyin’ about this.”

“Wh – I mean, it’s not like last time. This time, I’ve downloaded these files that modify the games contents, and there’s way more crazy shit. You can mod it so much it’s like a new game.”

Johnny makes a noise of interest, dropping down to settle against your shoulders. “Really now?”

“Yeah, like look at this. I’ve got a gun in the game.”

A shotgun appears in your hand as you scroll to the hotbar tab, and you shoot a shell into the ground, listening as Johnny clicks in appreciation, surprisingly satisfied after his scrutinising. “Alright, show me ‘er properly.”

He hovers over the chair for a few more minutes, taking in your overview of the mods. “Oh, and this one! Hang on, look.” You hit a cow, and Johnny watches as it falls to the floor. Grabbing the body, you drag it over to a pixelated hook, and show him how you break the carcass down through the stages, collecting parts down to the bones.

He makes a noise of interest. “Si would like that. Can ye play with other people?”

You spin around to give him an excited grin, feeling the sleepiness retreat with your rapidly building enthusiasm. “Why, you want to join?”

Johnny scoffs, but there’s no hiding how his eyes gleam as a smile tugs at his lips to mirror yours. “Only after I finish the meetin’, and y’get some decent fuckin’ rest.”

-----

Ghost doesn’t care until Soap asks him to play.

When you originally ask him, it’s a late evening, and he’s curled up on the bed with a book as you deliver the question. There’s a pause in the turning of pages, and you get the usual dead-eyed stare when you say something he thinks is stupid over the edge of his book. ‘Y’want me to play a kid’s game?”

You give him your own scrutinizing look back, before turning back to the screen. “It’s not a kid’s game, Simon. Video games aren’t just for kids.”

He doesn’t press the topic any further, but you know his mind is often unchanged - so it’s a nice surprise when he brings it back up again a month or so later over the quiet chatter of some foreign film he’s watching, stirring you to look up from the words of your book.

“Oi, what’s that game y’were talkin’ about? Bloody… Mineshaft?”

You think Simon knows perfectly well what the game is called, but you humour him, pulling the blanket down slightly to look at him. “Minecraft?”

He snorts, leaning back into the armchair. “Yeah, s’one. Johnny’s bird got ‘im into it, won’t stop yappin’ ‘bout it now.”

You hold your breath, doing your best impression of nonchalance, directing your gaze back to the book. “Oh, yeah? That’s nice, sounds like he’s excited about it.”

Simon gives a non-committal grunt, but you can tell his focus is beyond the screen he’s looking towards. “Asked me t’play it with ‘im, bloody bastard. Said ‘e’d paid for a server or some shite.”

Excitement explodes in the back of your mind as you mentally praise your husband’s co-worker, thanking him for his influence as you steady your tone. “Well, why don’t you?”

He snorts with a cross of his arms, holding the remote against his chest. “Don’t know how to do all that rubbish.”

You close the book, sitting up and waving off his statement assuredly. “I have it installed already, you don’t have to do anything – oh, but can you ask him if he’s playing with mods?”

He’s not impressed with the request, frown deepening. “What, ‘m I your personal messenger now?”

But you’re onto him already, guiding the topic back on track. “Alright,” you give him a dry look, “give me his number then.”

The show pauses, and Simon looks back at you. It takes a moment, but you know you’ve won with a roll of his eyes, grumbling under his breath as he pulls his phone out and passes it to you after another message comes through.

>> Bonnie got me a whole folder of mods. Liek a whole nother game. Yer gonna play minecraft with me?

“So what?”

“Okay, well that’s easy to set up.” You pass the phone back to him, settling into your comfy nest of blankets. “So?”

“Are you going to play with him?”

(A month later, there’s another desk snug against yours while Simon fumbles with his screen settings as a broguish laugh comes from the headset, and Friday nights are something you’re realising you’ll never get back from that goddamn pixel game)

Headers and Dividers by saradika-graphics

[awkward-tension-art]

Bacta and Bandages Chp.3 (Rex x Reader)

Chapter 2. Chapter 4.

First Mission

CW: Clone mistreatment, Medical procedures, needles, Death, destruction, mentions of an epidemic, nothing graphic, Reader is gender neutral, no use of (Y/N), reader is a doctor, if I miss a tag LMK!

Minors DNI also this is MINIMALLY PROOFREAD

You had a couple of weeks to establish yourself and settle with the 501st. It worked out well, because it allowed you to get to know the soldiers more.

Plus, no mission meant you had some free time to learn mando’a. It was basic at best, but you knew how to greet someone and find out where their pain is located, as well as other basic conversation.

It’s what you were doing at the moment. As you tidied up the medical bay, the robotic voice of a teaching droid came from the datapad on your desk. The holo was a program fit more for academy students, but you had to start somewhere.

“Ni cuy' a baar'ur,” You had managed to gear the learning towards medical language. Just to let you do your job better for the clones. Currently, the program was going over what to say when dealing with a patient.

“Very good. Where is your pain?”

“Vaii cuyir gar aaray?” You paused. The word for pain, aaray, always sounded off to you, “Vaii cuyir gar aaray?” Your words repeated.

You felt your damn soul leave your body when another voice interrupted.

“Ner kov'nyn bal ner haalas.” Rex was standing in the doorway, one hand on his hip, the other held his helmet. 

You didn’t know the exact sentence, and you had to think for a moment before looking up at him, “Head and…chest?”

He smirked and nodded, “That’s correct.” the captain stepped to your desk and looked at the holo-program that was still waiting for a response from you. “You’re learning Mando’a?”

“I thought it might help the troopers feel more comfortable,” You approached, tapping the tablet and pausing the holo-program, “I hope that's alright…” 

“It's more than alright, it's…it's a wonderful thought.” Rex had a genuine smile, “The men will appreciate it.” However, he cleared his throat, “However, General Skywalker needs you on the bridge.” 

Your heart raced, did something happen? Did you do something wrong?

“It’s about our next mission.” The captain explained, most likely catching your rising anxiety, “It's a relief mission, and your expertise with medical care is needed.” 

Oh! The breath you let out was one of relief, “Yes, of course…let's go to the bridge then.” 

The walk was quick. You’ve gotten used to the halls and paths of the venator now. Though, admittedly, you’ve gotten terribly lost a couple times. Once, you ended up in the reactor section and if you hadn’t found R2-D2, you’d have to embarrass yourself by asking a soldier to help guide you.

Once on the bridge, you saluted the general and commander in greeting, “You called for me, sir?”

Anakin Skywalker nodded, “We need your expertise, doctor,” He tapped a button on the console, bringing up a holomap of a planet with 4 moons, “The planet of Cherenity had a planet-wide epidemic and a series of natural disasters that caused total societal collapse. There were riots, famine, civil war and complete chaos.”

You frowned, but let him continue. 

“The Jedi have been called to try and help rebuild and offer relief. We need your help in dealing with the wounded and establishing medical care again.” He finished, standing up. He put his hands behind his back and looked at you, “What do you say?”

Ah. set up a medical center, help with supplies and maybe teach some procedures to the locals. 

You raised a hand to your chin, mentally working out the logistics, “One hospital for an entire planet will be overwhelmed. I’d like to have Kix with me to help deal with the injured.” Your eyes met Rex’s, “If that's alright with you, Captain.”

“He’s all yours.” He nodded. 

You smirked, and turned back to face General Skywalker, “When do we arrive?”

“We have an hour to prepare.” He informed everyone, “Thank you, Doctor. Get to work everyone. Dismissed.”

First mission…

You’d be a liar if you didn’t say you were nervous. Yes, you were a capable doctor. But…

Well, in soldier terms, you were no better than a shiny. A rookie.

You were in the hangar double checking the crates of supplies when Kix approached and saluted, “Doctor, I’ve been informed I will be aiding you in this mission.”

Your tone was calm and even, “You and I are going to help establish something of a medical care center for the survivors on Cherenity,” You looked over to him, “But, this will be my first mission, and I’m a doctor before I’m a soldier…I might follow your lead if the situation calls for it.”

He gave you an understanding smile, “I remember my first mission…It can be overwhelming but you’ll get used to it,” The medic melted into a friendly, approachable attitude, “Since it’s a relief mission, it should be easy. But if there's any danger I’ll show you what to do.” 

How kind. Very polite too.

“Thank you, Kix.” 

Before you loaded up, you checked your gear. Because of your rank and position, you didn’t wear the same heavy, clunky armor as the other soldiers. You were outfitted with movement and supplies in mind. Armor was minimal, only enough to protect your chest, calves and wrists. The uniform, made of protective yet light material, was red and white, indicating your medical personnel status.

In a perfect galaxy, this would mean no one would try to kill you. But…well, war crimes weren’t unheard of. Sometimes adversaries would specifically target medics.

With a calming breath, you stepped on the gunship with Kix and a few other soldiers and prepared yourself mentally. There were certain things you were worried about. With no sterile location, infection rates would be high. Plus, even if the disease that caused the epidemic had killed all of its hosts, it may still be present on the planet. 

And you had no idea how it was spread.

“Something wrong, Doctor?” A trooper next to you noticed. He was a ‘shiny’ judging by his pure white armor. 

“I don’t know yet,” you responded, “Do your helmets have protection against contaminants in the air? Like a virus perhaps?” Your question seemed to startle the poor shiny. 

It was a trooper with a painted flower on his chest that answered, “We have temporary protection. Though it only lasts long enough for us to get out of an area, not really stay in it. Maybe a couple minutes at most.”

You nodded, “We know nothing about this virus that contributed to the planet's collapse. If you, or any trooper feels unwell, come to me.”

Another soldier to your left, Steele, you believe his name is, let out a soft laugh, “Don’t worry about us, Doc. We’re not meant to be a priority.”

“I’ll prioritize whoever I want, thank you.” You responded, just as the gunship landed and the doors opened. 

You stepped off, taking in your surroundings. 

Devastation. The capital of Cherenity, Fushi, from what you could tell, used to be an active, beautiful city. But now, it was a shadow of its former self. The ruins and rubble looked like the buildings used to be made of marble and glass. Now, it was all…destroyed. broken, painted glass was everywhere. Craters littered the formerly stone streets. Smoke billowed at multiple locations in the distance. Occasionally, blaster shots echoed around the ruins, bouncing off the once beautiful walls. 

Your heart twisted.

This was war. You signed up expecting destruction, but not…this….

Kix put a hand on your shoulder, “Doctor?”

“I’m fine.” you shook your head, getting yourself together, “Just…didn’t expect this.”

“You’ll get used to it.” Steele responded, unloading a crate of supplies.

You weren’t sure if that made you feel better or worse. 

You made it to the center of the broken, desolate city. That’s where the Cherians had tried to maintain some semblance of civilization. Innocent people were living either in haphazard tents or the surely dangerously unstable remains of the buildings around.

As you and your group made your way forward, the Cherians pause what they were doing to watch you. 

They were humanoid, with skin tones that ranged from bright red to deep purple that were dotted with scales. All of them had horns of various shapes and sizes that poked out from hair of many different colors as well. Their eyes were all solid white, pupiless and glowing. Among them were some humans, twi’lek and other races as well. 

That didn’t strike you as odd. After all, a planet capital such as Fushi would have a lot of diversity.

You pressed your com at your wrist and raised it to your lips, “General, we’ve made it to where the survivors are camping.”

After a second, Anakin’s voice came through the other end, “Good, start unloading supplies. Ahsoka and I have been…held up.” 

As soon as the Jedi finished speaking, Rex’s voice came through the com, “All units, be advised, thieves and pirates are in the area and may target the supplies and the civilians.”

Fuck…

You swallowed and shared a look with Kix, you were about to speak before getting interrupted by an approaching Cherian. Her pure white hair trailed behind her and her horns gave height over the troopers. Her skin was a soft lavender and she had an aura of peace and calm. 

“Peace,” She greeted, “I am Zenial Ill’ty the Senator of Cherenity.”

Senator? Why isn’t she on Coruscant? Did she come home to try and help the devastation?

“Ma’am,” You nodded in greeting, “General Skywalker is on his way with more supplies, in the meanwhile, I’m his battalion's doctor and am here to help reestablish medical care.” 

Zenial gave you a smile and bowed, “Thank you, healer of the 501st. What is left of our city is open to you. Most of the injured are located at the north end of our camp.”

You bowed to her and motioned for the troopers carrying medical supplies to follow. Kix was beside you as your steps lead you beyond a half shattered green building. Behind it, was the injured and sick. 

There had to have been a few hundred at least. Walking among them were Cherians wearing the same medical symbol as you. However, it was clear they were overwhelmed and unable to help without proper equipment, medicine and housing. 

You steeled yourself. You were a doctor. You worked in a hospital on Coruscant’s lower levels, and that wiped away any naivety you had even before the war. You remained silent, eyes roaming the people and bodies. 

From visual confirmation, you guessed the few doctors had set up ‘zones’ by severity of wounds and illness. 

Good. It made your job easier. 

With a steading breath, you got to work. 

You prioritized those with the most severe wounds. Internal injuries, amputations, massive amounts of blood loss…Your focus was razor sharp as you tended to those you could. The supplies in your pack dwindled to nothing quickly, much to your frustration.

Perhaps it was your expectations. Or maybe it was how you worked in the hospital, but you burned through the supplies in your pack trying to save everyone. 

A twi’lek, with royal blue skin and yellow eyes wheezed and sputtered as you tried to fix his burnt and ripped heart. According to his young daughter, he was searching for food when thieves shot him. It was sheer will that he survived this long. 

You reached for more bacta, only to be stopped by Kix, “Doctor, there isn’t anything else you can do.”

My old mentor told me those words once. You remembered. It was the first patient you had ever lost. A drunken speeder accident. You’d never forget it as their heart stopped beating under your hands.

“But…he can be saved. I know he can.” Your eyes must’ve been wide and confused, “I’ve seen worse wounds.”

The medic next to you had an understanding look, “Maybe in a proper hospital. But on the field…we don’t have the luxury.”

You looked down at the twi’lek, taking in his severe wounds. 

Kix is right. 

You made sure his daughter held his hand as you injected him with painkillers. He drifted off to sleep and was dead within minutes. 

Move on. There are others. 

At some point as you tended to the wounded, General Skywalker and Commander Tano had arrived with food, water and some ‘society rebuilding’ technology. It was hours later when you had gotten done with the most severe patients and were able to get the Cherian healers together to start planning properly. You did your best to ignore how the General watched your moves. 

He was most likely testing you. Making sure you could handle this.

“You’ll need clean water,” You explained, looking over your datapad, “The biggest worry is infection. You can save a life but lose them later to the same wound if it's not kept clean.” Your steps weaved through the wounded patients. Some were already much better than when you arrived, and others were resting peacefully, finally having their pain managed.

“You’ll need to boil the water at the very least to sterilize it,” Your words didn’t falter even after passing by the General who was with Captain Rex, “Same for metal scalpels and other tools. Put them in boiling water to clean them at the very least.”

Kix, who had been walking beside you, handed you a holomap of the immediate area. Once you activated it, you began to plan the new medical center for the Cherians, “It would be best if you had the injured in the most stable building, here.” You pointed at one of the more stable, least destroyed glass and marble building on the map, “The cover will be imperative for those with more severe injuries and illnesses. I’ve had some of the troopers make sure the supports are-”

One of those following you spoke up, “Can we trust what an artificial human says?” 

That question screeched your mind to a halt. You blinked, dumbfounded at the bluntness from the individual in front of you. Your mind had to take a minute to process what you heard.

After getting your thoughts together, you responded, “The troopers are hardworking, reliable men. I trust what they say.”

The Cherian opened their mouth, “But-”

You couldn’t hold back the venom in your words as you cut them off, “Do I need to repeat myself or are we going to have a problem?” Your eyes bore into the individual, practically daring them to argue with you. 

“...No, Doctor.” 

“Good.” Immediately, your tone became calmer, “Now, let's continue.”

Unknown to you, Captain Rex saw your exchange, he couldn’t help the small smile on his lips as you walked away. 

Anakin elbowed his side, smirking at his captain.

[transingthebourgeoisie]

I will never understand why people keep recommending linux mint to people. people keep saying oh it's like windows and like. they are literally just wrong; every time you tell someone Mint is like Windows you are setting them up to spend 20 minutes on Mint and then run into an obstacle and pay for a windows license. no matter what kind of mediocre UI they dress it up with, despite everything, it is a linux distribution and thus, crucially: not windows. It's popular I guess so it's better than hyperspecific micro-distro of the week or, arch, because people keep recommending arch for some unknowable reason.

I'm going to be real here: if you are new to this just use ubuntu. ignore everyone else. if looking at the gnome GUI makes you want to start killing hostages like it does for me, you can just get it packaged with KDE by default and that's a very familiar and intuitive UI to a windows user. it's called Kubuntu they put out their own little thing and everything it's easy. and unlike mint, it's vastly more likely to just, actually work, and be compatible with software. it will be a learning experience; you are switching to a fundamentally different OS, one that still has deep roots in enthusiast preferences and a whole different crop of bizarre decisions that made sense to some guy who thought the GUI would be a passing fad. and that's fine. you had to learn all this for windows too, you just did it when you were like 7. stick with it and it'll make sense quickly even, as unlike windows, Linux is highly transparent in most cases; it will usually tell you what the problem actually is, even if you don't understand how to fix it.

speaking of which: don't be afraid of the terminal. It's daunting, it's initially opaque, and yes, it is entirely possible to horrifically mangle your install with it. You cannot be afraid of it. you don't have to learn every facet of it; frankly I hate the thing and I refuse to accept any distro where it is expected that the user crack open the console to do basic tasks. Ubuntu - or yeah mint I guess - do not require this. 9 times out of 10, you will use the terminal to enter one command that you stole off a tech support forum where the kind of people who use Arch have magically fixed the incredibly specific problem you're having 13 years ago and it still works. I have been using linux semi-regularly (yeah yeah I still have a windows 10 install sue me) for a year now, and barring one particular incident attempting to install GZDoom where it was manifestly my fault, that has been the extent of my interaction with the terminal. I have opened it like 3 times total.

I highly recommend learning what the basic structure of a command is - get a general idea of what it is doing. you don't have to be able to write these things from scratch, but getting just that basic understanding will make your life so much easier. here's a first step for you: if you see 'sudo' in a command, that means the command makes use of admin authority, and will bypass any protections or restrictions on what it is trying to do. scary! it is the effectively same thing as when you click on a program on windows and it throws that shitty little popup window asking if you're *really* sure you want to run the program as admin. not scary; you do that all the time.

linux is more consistently and straightforwardly usable than it has basically ever been; if you are willing to spend a week or so getting used to it, you'll do fine. if you have a spare drive - hell even a USB stick, you can literally boot into Linux straight off USB, it's that easy, - you can dual-boot and still have a windows install to fall back on in case you absolutely positively just need something to work or just cannot get it to run on linux.

[josefavomjaaga]

Laure Junot and her memoirs for 1812/3 (part 7/?): Laure's audience

Next installment of my hyperfixation on being annoyed by one Laure Permon-Junot.

Before we went off on our little detour to watch Junot during the Russian campaign struggling against Russians, Westphalians and the Italian Viceroy alike, we last saw Laure during the final days of December in Paris, where Napoleon had just returned from Russia. According to her memoirs, Laure at the time was busy reading the first letters that she finally had received from her husband after a hiatus of two months, and seriously worrying about him, as these letters were sad and depressed, which in turn aggravated Laure’s own health problems.

According to Robert Chantemesse’s interpretation of her correspondence, she in truth had gotten herself entangled in a passionate love affair and a) was pregnant from her lover Balincourt, b) had caused some sort of semi-public scandal at the court of Julie and Désirée Clary in Mortefontaine and c) had in vain attempted to commit suicide which apparently scared Balincourt enough for him to go take it up with Laure again (among other ladies, btw, but that's beside the point).

Let’s start with Laure’s memoirs again (we’re back in Vol. 15, chapter V):

When I learned that the emperor had arrived at the Tuileries, I let out a cry of joy. Undoubtedly the commanding generals of the army corps would follow him immediately.

Of course that’s how you felt, petal. Because like every wife in a passionate secret love affair Laure wished for nothing more than having her husband back in town so he could make it impossible for her to see her sweetheart. Right? - We actually do have some evidence of her true feelings with regard to Junot’s return in a letter to Balincourt some weeks later, in early February, when Junot really announced his imminent arrival in Paris:

I’m sending you a letter that I have just received. Read it carefully and you will see that we must not see each other tomorrow, but in any case today, no matter at what time you return from Malmaison, be it even in the middle of the night. Tomorrow it would already be dangerous, but tonight it is still safe and we must profit from this in order to bid each other adieu for very long, maybe even forever. Maurice, I’m desperate, and I do not even have the consolation to admit all my grief, because in the end, he is my friend, the father of my children, and I am comitting a crime by shedding tears. Come at once. He speaks of the 6th [February], you must not trust him on this. His letter has reached me today and I have a strong idea that he will arrive tomorrow evening or during the night. Adieu, Maurice, come give consolation and bid farewell to your poor Laure.

Yeah. Obviously Laure would have been jumping with joy at the prospect of Junot coming home at the end of 1812… Anyway, as she explains:

I had sent my brother to the castle on the morrow, but the crowd was too large, he could not see the emperor.

That may or may not be true. It seems dear brother Albert Permon had some trouble himself, as Laure will later tell us, so it’s quite possible that Napoleon may simply have refused him an audience.

I waited some days; but as I received no news, … as I received NOTHING at all, I became alarmed, and I wrote to the emperor. I was unable to go to the palace; I was ill to the death with a terrible nervous disease […]

[…] otherwise known as "morning sickness", I believe. According to Chantemesse, Laure also went to see Josephine in Malmaison for the new year and held a masked ball for children at her home on January 6, so maybe we should not take the whole "dying of a nervous disease" thing (or from the early stages of her pregnancy) all too literal.

When I wrote to the Emperor, I spoke of Junot in a profoundly sad tone, as I was myself saddened by the thought of perhaps never seeing him again. I was so ill! And then his letters were so melancholy that I couldn't hold back my tears as I read them. I could see that this soul, so noble, so pure, so devoted, had been deeply unhappy because of something I didn't know about, but which was revealed to me by the sorrowful words in his letters. The very day after I wrote to the Emperor, I saw coming to me my good Duroc, my brother, my friend, [...]

[…] whose published correspondence of over 2,700 letters only has one (1) letter from him to Junot, despite the fact he seems to have been close enough to the Junots that several authors suspect him of having been another of Laure’s lovers. Just wanted to mention this because I find it awfully frustrating. Also, Laure’s tone makes me want to puke.

Back to the memoirs: Duroc makes it clear to Laure that he’s not here on private business but to bring her Napoleon’s official answer to Laure’s inquiry after Junot’s whereabouts, and this answer is: Don’t worry, all is fine, Junot is well.

“But I know differently,” I replied, staring at Duroc, “and so do you, my dear duke." Duroc lowered his gaze and made no reply. - "Duroc,” I said, taking his hand, ”I'm very ill, perhaps I'll never see these trees grow green again (and I showed him the ones in my garden); tell me the truth... what was there between the Emperor and Junot?" - "Nothing new,” he replied... He was quite right in answering me in this way; he thought I knew about the two bulletins, but they had been kept from me so as not to increase my concerns, which were already so acute... A letter from Junot which had been delayed en route [...] had only just been delivered to me... In spite of the cheerful tone he wanted to give it, I had detected deep suffering, and I wanted to know the cause. What was this bulletin, dated the 23rd?

The question of all questions. Poor Laure, so sheltered from everything that went on around her, so sick nobody dared to tell her anything, has already repeatedly assured us in her memoirs that she knew nothing, nothing at all about those bulletins that concerned the action at and around Smolensk and were not exactly favourable to Junot (and Duroc in the scene above does not tell her either). As everybody has probably been guessing by now, that, too, is a lie. Laure had known about them since September.

She tells us herself in the postscript to this letter, intercepted by the Russians, from 7 September 1812:

I am reopening my letter to tell you that I am no longer going to Geneva. Yesterday, after writing my letter, I received the bulletin of the 25th. You have probably read it, and you know me well enough to be convinced that this is not the moment I would choose for a pleasure trip […]

Well, she calls it the "bulletin of the 25th" in this letter, but I will believe Frédéric Masson when he explains in a footnote that what she refers to is indeed the bulletin of the 23rd [August], as that is the one that had been published in the Moniteur two days before. And of course Laure, at Aix with almost all the high ladies from court, would receive and check that newspaper immediately. She also understood the implications, or at least the seriousness of the military situation, well enough to postpone her trip to Genava.

It also shows that at this point correspondence between the army and France still worked comparably well: The army bulletin of 23 August was published in Le Moniteur of 5 September.

So we can tell without a doubt that sweet Laure here is lying to us in her memoirs. But why? Why did it even matter at what time she learned about this bulletin?

For once, it might explain to her readers why she had shown so little concern for her husband in the months before. Plenty of people must have remembered Laure living the good life while her husband was away on campaign, partying in Aix, dancing, having soirées, and finally even going on precisely that pleasure trip to Genava that she had at first cancelled.

Robert Chantemesse takes it a step further, and while I guess much of this is speculation, he may have a point: Laure needed a reason to explain her audience with Napoleon in late December 1812 or early January 1813. An audience that apparently enough people had been aware of that Laure could not simply skip over it in silence.

Instead, she makes a big deal out of it in her memoirs – of no less than thirty pages. Including an anecdote in a flashback which always makes me suspicious. Anyway, after having received no real answer from Duroc and after quoting several letters by Junot, the last from 1 January 1813, all full of sadness and depression and the wish to see his family and especially his incomparable Laure again, she lets us know:

Some days later I received another letter, the tone of which was so profoundly sad that despite my weakness I resolved to see the emperor. I wrote, not to the chamberlain in service but to Duroc, in order for him to request of the emperor to grant me a short audience. As I was never able to get out of bed before six or seven PM, it was necessary to let my request pass through him so he could explain to the emperor the state I was in. The emperor let me know that he would receive me the next day at nine o’clock in the evening.

I have no desire to translate the next thirty pages, especially as most of it is probably Laure spouting rubbish. So here’s the reader’s digest version:

Laure is oh-so-very-sick that she barely manages to keep herself upright which immediately wins her some favour with Napoleon who had thought she was only pretending to be ill.

Napoleon already grants permission for Junot to leave the army and return to Paris before Laure can even ask. But at the same time he suspects Junot of complaining about him which he seems to see as some sort of lèse majesté. (Which is a bit funny considering that Napoleon’s whole guard, the guys he surrounded himself with all day, had the nickname "the grumblers".) When Laure denies that Junot has any other feeling for Napoleon but utter devotion, Naps demands to see Junot’s letters as proof.

Laure Mary-Sue Junot then, by reminding Napoleon of and comparing Junot to Lannes and Ney (two heroes much en vogue at the time she wrote her memoirs), and by the power of the truth in her heart convinces Napoleon that he is too harsh on Junot, that Junot loves him like noone else and that it would mean Junot’s death if he ever heard that Napoleon had accused him of being ungrateful.

In order to prove to Napoleon (or rather to her readers) the truth of her words Laure then inserts another anecdote of two-and-a-half pages, the probably well-known scene of Napoleon calling Junot ugly when the latter returned from Spain "slightly disfigured", as Laure puts it, by a gunshot wound to his face, and Junot answering it with a very "courtois" phrase of devotion.

Napoleon then rather abruptly talks about Laure being friends with "his enemies" like Madame Récamier before granting Junot a congé of four months and asking Laure to tell Junot.

Laure feels that she is dismissed but continues to talk anyway, this time about her brother who has lost his position as comissaire-général in Marseille, according to her due to a dispute with Savary with regards to a fugitive name Montrond. I won’t bother with her story, as it is absolutely ridiculous and probably supposed to cover up quite different events. It gives Laure the opportunity to once again put Savary in the role of the villain that she has dedicated to him, with the extra bonus of dragging Hortense into it of whom Laure also was not very fond of.

With a final backstab at Caroline Murat Laure completes the audience and returns to the anteroom that, despite the unusual time, suddenly is filled with friend of hers who all rush to congratulate her and almost carry her back home on their shoulders in triumph.

Alright. So far Laure’s report. But what did really happen?

We have already seen that asking for Junot’s return to Paris was very much not in Laure’s best interest. She was pregnant by another guy after all, even if it was far too early to show. The best thing for her would have been to have Junot stay far away for as long as possible, so she could go to the countryside, or even better outside the country, once it became necessary, and stay there for a couple of months until she could give birth without causing a scandal. Like she would later do by going to Genava.

There’s also some additional evidence that the purpose of Laure’s audience with Napoleon had not been her demanding Junot’s return to France. Mostly because the person who had asked for a congé on Junot’s behalf, was – Eugène.

Eugène, who, since Murat had left the army at Posen on 17 January 1813, found himself at the head of the debris of the Grande Armée.

Eugène to Napoleon Posen, 21 January 1813 Sire, the Duc d'Abrantès has asked me for leave to return to France. I did not believe I could comply with his request without Your Majesty's authorization. He bases his request on the poor state of his health and the small number of men he still has to command. Indeed, 8th corps today has no more than 1,200 men. I beg Your Majesty to let me know your orders concerning the Duke.

To which Napoleon then gave this brutal answer:

Paris, 28 January 1813 I have received your letter of January 21st. You can dismiss the Duc d'Abrantès. It will be one less embarrassment for the army; in any case, he is a man who would be of no use to you. Let him know that he is no longer employed by the army.

It’s a good thing that by the time this letter reached Eugène, he and Berthier apparently had already discovered the earlier letters that Napoleon had sent to Berthier and Murat, in which Napoleon had given a blanket permission to send all officers to France who were unable to serve. So Junot, alongside several others, had already left the army when Eugène got Napoleon’s answer.

In any case, this exchange proves that there had never been any explicit permission granted to Junot by Napoleon due to an audience by Laure, as Laure claims in her memoirs. If there had been, Junot would have learned about it through Clarke and would not have needed to ask Eugène in the first place. (Which, after the tensions that had existed between those two at the beginning of the campaign, may still have cost him.)

So what does Laure want to cover up with her lies? Surely it’s nothing good. In any case, we can assume that it was not she who asked for an audience but rather Napoleon who had ordered her to come to see him. I feel like there’s two possibilities as to the reason: either whatever her brother had done was worse than she admits, or - and this is what Robert Chantemesse thinks: Napoleon had called Laure to the Tuileries because of whatever had happened at Mortefontaine and her love affair with Balincourt. In any case, her audience surely was quite the opposite of the triumphal success Laure describes in her memoirs, but instead a tumultous lecture, possibly ending with Napoleon threatening to exile her. While it is speculation, it is at least not unlikely. In any case, there must be a reason why Laure gives us this long and tearful story instead of the truth. Considering Napoleon’s harsh remarks about Laure on Saint Helena, the idea that he was simply fed up with her after this latest scandal (even if he managed to hush it up) does seem rather likely.

Let’s break it off here, as Junot now is already on his way home. Time to reunite this happy couple, if only briefly.

[maggplays]

Thank you so much for all your hard work on your Immersive mods, they're a joy to play! You've inspired me to give modding a try, and I've got like a billion questions, but just off the top of my head: 1. What came first for you, the dialogue or the cut scenes? (And how did you learn how to do the cutscenes omg they're perfect) 2. What made you decide to involve other characters in your Sam/Sebastian mod? 3. What other tools do you use to see your additions in action? Is there a command you run to play your cutscenes or to manipulate the time of day to test something? Thank you in advance :)

Wow, you're going to make me think for a second, haha! This is a long answer so keep reading...

I start with the basic heart level daily dialogue first, then move on to dated dialogue. If I think of an event I want along the way, I will just hop over to the events and write that, then go back to dialogue. It's easier for me to keep it consistent if I go back and forth. I do have a basic overall story in mind before I start so I can generally plan events along a heart-level timeline.

I added the characters that are involved in my main character's life the most, family and close friends. Then in Seb I added some stuff for Alex just because I wanted to have a mini story with him. So it's just whichever characters seem to want to be in your story or dialogue. If I were to write one for Abigail, Sam and Seb would be in it along with her parents. Leah and Elliott don't have a lot of town connections, so other characters would be less involved or more at a surface level unless I wanted to add a story/connection for them. Elliott would have something with Willy and possibly Seb. Leah has virtually nothing in vanilla so would have to be all new.

Coding events... that is a real challenge to learn, the online resources are kind of there but limited. I pieced it together from looking at code on other mods, the Stardew modding wiki (articles on event modding and creating i18n files), and the Content Patcher GitHub instructions. I really don't recommend using my mod as a beginner reference, it's huge and full of stuff you probably don't need. I'd use a somewhat simpler one that's updated for 1.6 like Immersive Characters - Shane. The structure is similar, but my mods use a lot of dynamic tokens and conditional code that I added along the way making it much more advanced. Join the Stardew Valley discord, they have a modding help section and they are super quick to answer questions.

I also make custom sprites for events, I don't really advise doing this unless you're prepared for some extra headaches. Players DO NOT like when you mess with their sprite mods and you'll end up either ignoring a lot of complaints or making patches for Seasonal Outfits mod in particular.

To test your events, code it all up the best you can, then run debug ebi eventID in the SMAPI console. This plays your event immediately. There are some twitchy things about this involving conditions you'll learn along the way. You also need CJB Cheats Menu mod, this allows you to skip time, change friendship levels, change weather, all kinds of stuff you need for testing dialogue without actually playing the game. Bottom line, it's really trial and error. And running debug ebi like a million times on each event as you watch your characters literally walk off screen, turn the wrong way, farmer's hair pops off, so many bloopers!

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2025-03-10

Sun's back

Listening: While browsing through my bandcamp wishlist with my partner I saw that I had followed Ostinato Records, a label whose thing is finding old, mostly third-world, music, restoring, and publishing it.

Here's the album Synthesizing the Silk Roads: Uzbek Disco, Tajik Folktronica, Uyghur Rock & Tatar Jazz from 1980s Soviet Central Asia, featuring some really incredible Central Asian synthrock. Unknown creator, Sen Qaidan Bilasan (How Do You Know)

This whole album, and a lot of this label's work, is really neat: Most of this album was recovered from unsold stock in Tashkent.

In the summer of 1941, as the Nazis invaded the USSR, Stalin ordered a mass evacuation. Sixteen million people were put on trains bound eastward to Soviet Central Asia, especially Tashkent, Uzbekistan’s picturesque capital. Among those onboard were gramophone engineers who later established the Tashkent Gramplastinok plant in 1945. This factory became central to Soviet record production, part of a network of plants churning out 200 million records by the 1970s. Rare dead stock of 1980s vinyl from this plant, shut down in 1991, forms the backbone of our groundbreaking 15-track compilation, complemented by live TV recordings and curated in collaboration with Uzbek label Maqom Soul. Fully licensed directly from the artists or their families and meticulously remastered, these songs – all recorded in Tashkent – unveil a diverse tapestry of sounds from Soviet Uzbekistan and its neighbors. ... Tashkent’s musicians often had access to a wider array of technology than their Moscow counterparts. Thanks to Uzbekistan’s Bukharan Jewish community, leading importers of state-of-the-art music tech from the US and Japan, artists on this compilation were crafting sounds on Moog and Korg synthesizers, creating the signature sonic palette that emerged from the region.

Reading: Mostly boring work stuff, the O'Reilly Active Directory book.

As far as I can tell, Active Directory is an enrichment program for Microsoft developers where they get to design a Domain Controller that does exactly one thing and has bizarre requirements on how it can be run.

Making: Ongoing silk project.

Currently editing some photos for printing. It's important to remember that on a standard modern monitor at 1:1, your average DSLR/Mirrorless photo is scaled up to like 2-3 meters across minimum, so you shouldn't really trust 1:1 when trying to figure out if it looks good. It turns out fulscreen on my monitor is almost exactly 30×40cm which is what I'm printing, so that's great for me.

Some options I might print include these

Still going through some favourites though. Oh, and The Hare

Playing: Co-op Borderlands 2 for a while with my partner. They ragequit easily so it was a short one but we did get up to fighting and losing to midgemong.

Good trial for the Legion Go and the lapboard, incidentally, because they took over my PC and I played on the TV with the handheld as a console with the lapboard and trackball. It works about as well as I hoped it would.

Watching: A few!

Wing Commander (1999) at Bad Movie Night. A truly baffling film. Pretty good sets, okay special effects, baffling storyline. We got rid of the Jedi from Star Wars and replaced them with an offshoot of the human race that can home like space pigeons towards black holes, and people are racist towards them.

You have to watch this kind of movie with friends because that's how you get phrases like "Holy shit how did the twink not know that Quebecois Space Mormon CIA Pope was a Space Mormon?"

Also watched Escape From New York because I have had it kicking around and Kill James Bond did Escape From L.A.. I am already a John Carpenter x Kurt Russel fan but damn. They put this man in so many situations.

I do really like how they manage to make Snake look very small even though he's strong. A lot of action heroes are enormous, Snake is obviously muscular and athletic but he's also just a little guy!

I can literally feel myself wanting to get a black tank top this movie is a cognitohazard. He's so cool!

Lee Van Cleef is here looking like he does! I was so thrilled when I saw LVC come up in the opening credits and even more when I realized he'd be in the whole movie. I gotta watch Sabata sometime to see him play not a huge heel and see how that goes but he is a great heel.

Finally honorable mention to the week's new Friday Nights from Loading Ready Run, which is their Magic themed sketch comedy spinoff, this one being a really good Wes Anderson parody. It says it's 20 minutes long but only 10 minutes are show, the rest is credits and BTS, don't worry.

Tools and Equipment: Part of Silk Project is pinning a lot of silk. I ended up going to get 0.5mm sewing pins, which are the finest like, normal everyday pins you can usually get. There's finer ones but they're less common. These are a huge improvement over your average 0.6 and 0.65mm pins when you're working with a stiff, tightly woven fabric.

[nectoy7]

My First Java Program: A Journey into Coding

Starting with Java programming can be an exciting journey, filled with discovery, challenges, and a sense of accomplishment. My experience of writing my first Java program was a significant milestone that opened up a world of possibilities in software development. In this blog, I’ll share my journey through writing my first Java program, along with the concepts I learned and the obstacles I overcame.

The Excitement of Starting

When I first decided to learn Java, I was motivated by its versatility and widespread use in developing applications, from mobile apps to enterprise software. I had heard about the power of Java and how it is a foundational language for many developers. After setting up my Java development environment, which included installing the Java Development Kit (JDK) and choosing an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) like Eclipse, I was ready to dive in.

The anticipation of writing my first program filled me with excitement. I had heard many experienced programmers talk about how exhilarating it felt to see their code come to life, and I was eager to experience that feeling myself.

Setting Up the Development Environment

Before I could write my first program, I needed to ensure my development environment was properly configured. Here’s a brief overview of how I set it up:

1. Installing the JDK: I downloaded the latest version of the Java Development Kit from the Oracle website. This included everything I needed to compile and run Java applications.

2. Choosing an IDE: I chose Eclipse as my IDE because of its robust features and user-friendly interface. After downloading and installing it, I was ready to start coding.

3. Verifying the Installation: I opened the command prompt (or terminal) and typed java -version to confirm that Java was installed correctly. Seeing the version number displayed confirmed that I was on the right track.

Writing My First Java Program

With my development environment set up, I was finally ready to write my first Java program. Following the traditional approach, I decided to create a simple “Hello, World!” program. This classic exercise is often the first step for beginners learning any programming language.

Step 1: Creating a New Java Project

In Eclipse, I created a new Java project:

1. File > New > Java Project.

2. I named the project “HelloWorld” and clicked Finish.

Step 2: Creating a New Java Class

Next, I created a new Java class within the project:

1. Right-click on the src folder in the HelloWorld project.

2. Selected New > Class.

3. I named the class HelloWorld and checked the box to include the public static void main(String[] args) method. This method is the entry point of any Java application.

Step 3: Writing the Code

With the class created, I wrote the code that would print “Hello, World!” to the console:

public class HelloWorld {     public static void main(String[] args) {         System.out.println(“Hello, World!”);     } }

Code Explanation

public class HelloWorld: This line defines a public class named HelloWorld. In Java, every application must have at least one class.

public static void main(String[] args): This line declares the main method, which is the starting point of any Java program. The JVM (Java Virtual Machine) looks for this method when executing the program.

System.out.println(“Hello, World!”);: This line prints the string “Hello, World!” to the console. The System.out object is used to output data to the console, and println is a method that prints the text followed by a newline.

Step 4: Running the Program

After writing the code, it was time to run my program and see the result:

1. I right-clicked on the HelloWorld.java file in the Project Explorer.

2. Selected Run As > Java Application.

To my delight, the console displayed the message “Hello, World!” It was a simple program, but seeing the output felt like a monumental achievement. I had successfully written and executed my first Java program!

Learning from the Experience

The process of writing my first Java program taught me several important lessons:

Understanding Java Syntax

Java has a specific syntax that must be followed. This includes rules about naming conventions, the use of semicolons to end statements, and the structure of classes and methods. Understanding these rules is essential for writing valid Java code.

The Importance of the Main Method

The main method is crucial in Java applications. It serves as the entry point, and every program must have it to be executed. Learning this concept helped me appreciate how Java applications are structured.

The Power of Output Statements

Using System.out.println() was my first experience with output statements. It highlighted the importance of feedback in programming. Being able to print messages to the console is invaluable for debugging and understanding program flow.

Overcoming Challenges

While writing my first Java program was largely straightforward, I faced some challenges along the way:

Syntax Errors

Initially, I encountered syntax errors due to missing semicolons or misnamed classes. Each error message provided insight into what I needed to correct. This experience emphasized the importance of careful coding and attention to detail.

Understanding the IDE

Familiarizing myself with Eclipse took some time. I had to learn how to navigate the interface, manage projects, and use features like code suggestions and debugging tools. As I continued coding, I became more comfortable with the IDE.

Next Steps in My Java Journey

Completing my first Java program was just the beginning. With a foundational understanding of Java syntax and structure, I was excited to explore more advanced concepts. Here are the next steps I took in my learning journey:

Exploring Java Basics

I delved deeper into Java basics, including:

Data Types: Understanding primitive and reference data types.

Variables: Learning how to declare and use variables effectively.

Operators: Exploring arithmetic, relational, and logical operators.

Control Flow Statements: Mastering if-else, switch, and loop constructs.

Learning Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)

Java is an object-oriented programming language, and I knew I had to understand OOP principles. I focused on concepts such as:

Classes and Objects: Learning how to create and manipulate objects.

Inheritance: Understanding how classes can inherit properties from other classes.

Encapsulation: Learning how to hide data within classes.

Polymorphism: Exploring method overloading and overriding.

Building Projects

I started working on small projects to apply my knowledge. Simple applications, like a calculator or a text-based game, helped solidify my understanding of Java concepts.

Conclusion

Writing my first Java program was a thrilling experience that marked the beginning of my journey as a programmer. The excitement of seeing my code come to life, coupled with the knowledge I gained, fueled my desire to continue learning and growing in the field of software development.

Java has proven to be a powerful language with endless possibilities, and I am eager to explore its depths further. With each program I write, I feel more confident in my coding abilities and more inspired to tackle new challenges.

If you’re starting your Java journey, embrace the process, celebrate your successes, and don’t shy away from challenges. Each step you take brings you closer to becoming a proficient Java developer.

Happy coding!

[jessjustplay]

I finished playing Final Fantasy X (again)

October 22, 2023

Game: Final Fantasy X HD Remaster First Time/Replaying: Replaying Game Time: 40 hours Console: Nintendo Switch Started: December 5, 2022 Finished: October 21, 2023

I finished this game last year in February, but some time in December I got an itch to play it again. At the time of my initial replay, I didn't have a TV so I played the entire thing on my tiny Switch screen. Now that I had somewhere to dock the Switch to, I wanted to re-experience the story again on a big TV!

So yes, I started Final Fantasy X back in December 2022 and it's taken me almost a year to finish it. In my defense, I have been playing a lot of other games! FFX was sort of just a back-burner, in-between-playthroughs type of game.

However, a few days ago I picked it up and could not put it down. Once you get past a particular area (that blasts an annoying announcement on-repeat the ENTIRE time), the game is very fun and picks up speed as the story unravels. I also decided I wasn't going to "do everything" which threw out a lot of that anxiety.

I have a PS4 now, so I thought, "If I'm going to 'do everything' I might as well go for a Platinum trophy!" I'm glad the Switch doesn't have a trophy system because it lets you enjoy the games without worrying about marking tasks off a list, but with how annoying FFX's side-quests are, if you're going to put yourself through that pain, you might as well get some sort of accolade!

I have no idea when I will start my Platinum attempt, but I really would like to try one day. I've played this game SO many times sinc eI was a kid - why not? People on Instagram telling me I should go for an easier Platinum trophy not only annoys me, but also makes me want to do it even more.

SPOILERS START HERE

Anyways, the endgame of this playthrough was really exciting! I told myself I wouldn't be getting an extra aeons or any of the ultimate weapons, so it was nice just walking around, leveling up, and going into boss fight after boss fight.

Normally, I would have Yuna's ultimate weapon and her Break Damage Limit would save the day! But this time I didn't have that and I relied HEAVILY on Bahamut to save our skins.

Seymour #2 took me two attempts, the Zanarkand Guardian was one attempt, the Zanarkand Trials Glyph Monster Dude took me 3 or 4 tries, Yunalesca was one attempt (!), Seymour #3 was one attempt (!!), and Braska's Final Aeon was ALSO one attempt (!!!).

I was surprised I was able to do do the final leg of the endgame in one attempt without dying. Not to mention, whie fighting Braska's Final Aeon, he petrified Wakka and that man disappeared! I was tempted to restart the game but then I thought, "It's not like I'm getting any EXP from this fight!" So I BEAT THE GAME WITH TWO CHARACTERS ONLY. At one point, Lulu and Yuna had less than 200 HP and I was freaking out!

What saving me was summoning Bahamut once, getting LUCKY AF that he didn't die, dismissing him, then using Yuna's overdrive to summon him again. I also used Auron to zombie Jecht and that helped for awhile, and I used Tidus's talk command once and that 100% saved Lulu and Yuna from dying. *THANK GOD*

Here are my final stats:

While I was more critical of the game this time around (more on that in another post), I still enjoyed this game and it will always be special to me! It's interesting though, I used to cry a lot watching the ending of this game, but this time I didn't. It's official - I'm old lol

When you're young, losing the person you "love" seems like the end of the world, but as you get older you learn people come and go. Yuna, you are 17. You will find someone new!!!

I did, however, cry during that one scene watching Yuna's sphere of messages (after beating the Zanarkand guardian boss). IT IS SO SAD!!! 😭 I felt my throat closing up watching that (specifically the Kimahri part). KIMAHRI, YOU'RE THE BEST! I need to write a Kimahri appreciation post.

[dragonflight203]

Mass Effect 3 replay, Horizon:

-Sadly, Horizon probably has been safe from the Reapers until now.

TIM is indoctrinated. They could safely assume he would only act in their interests, so they had no reason to target Horizon. It could wait until the rest of the galaxy was subdued.

It probably would have remained ignored if the breakthrough in overriding Reaper indoctrination hadn’t occurred.

-It sure is convenient that the Reapers attacked Shepard right after Traynor identified it as where Kai Leng fled to.

Neither Cerberus nor the Reapers should have known Shepard was coming, so this is a coincidence.

I think I would have preferred if Sanctuary was still operating per normal. How would Shepard investigate? Would the refugees turn on them? It could have been similar to Noveria.

But ME3 is primarily about shooting, so that was not on the table.

-Of course the Sanctuary broadcasts aren’t subtitled. Why am I even disappointed at this point?

-Miranda knows communications are being blocked. Why did she leave behind a message that Sanctuary is a Cerberus base inside Sanctuary? Who did she expect to find it?

And more pertinently, why didn’t she inform anyone before she went to Sanctuary? The Alliance, or at least Shepard?

Even if she wasn’t certain until she was at Sanctuary, just a heads up that something was fishy about it would have been good to know.

I suppose she was concerned about Oriana, but she could have told Shepard something along the lines that she was checking out Sanctuary and if she doesn’t report back in 24 hours to go after her.

Miranda’s too damn smart for this.

-What about the water draining system looks like Reaper technology? I’m not seeing it.

I suppose there are hoses, but the point is to drain water. The lights aren’t even blue.

-Liara: This looks more like a factory than a refugee camp.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Liara, that’s going to hurt in a few minutes.

-Javik when you switch on the console power and first learn what Cerberus has been using Horizon for: Yes... this process is known to me. They do not kill what can be useful. I’m sorry, Commander.

Shit. He saw this in his cycle, didn’t he?

He probably suspected from the moment they arrived.

-Cerberus isn’t using Dragon’s Teeth to create the husks.

I suppose pods are preferable because they contain the husk once its been created.

-Henry Lawson’s logs says the purpose of the husk experiments were too learn how Reapers communicate.

Did he mean with each other? Or with their troops?

-Javik: This is what happens when you allow machines to think for you. You become slaves.

Javik, how is the log of Henry Lawson describing that adrenaline is better than red sand to break will allowing machines to think for us?

-Javik is not nearly outraged enough about the refugees being used as test subjects. He seems more resigned than anything.

Javik, I assumed you had seen this type of facility before when you investigated to shut it down. Did the Protheans run them?

-Miranda’s log says that the point of the search was to learn how indoctrination works.

-A later console says they learned how to control Reaper troops, and planned to expand it to learning how to control the Reapers.

Yeah, not surprising the Reapers attacked.

What is surprising is that TIM was able to think clearly enough to pursue this plan. You’d think the indoctrination would have stopped him.

I’m half-wondering if the Reapers were confident that whatever TIM learned wouldn’t work; maybe they have multiple means to control troops and only let TIM learn one of them.

-And once again, I bitch about the timeline: Saren spent how long investigating indoctrination and made no progress?

Yet TIM’s learned how to override the indoctrination of Reaper troops in what, less than six months?

I’ll assume TIM got a hold of Saren’s research and has been building upon it. He also has had more subjects for testing, so that must help.

-Why is there a gun in a pod???

-Even at the end, Henry Lawson is obsessed with Oriana. He didn’t even raise this one.

And he’s surprised she tried to shoot him? How delusional is he?

-Let’s pour one out for Oriana. Torn from her family, probably trapped at Sanctuary since the start of the war, held captive by a man she doesn’t know who’s obsessed with her. Poor girl must be deeply traumatized by this point.

-If you go neutral with Henry Lawson and don’t take the renegade interrupt, Miranda dies.

This is very similar to the final confrontation with TIM, so kudos to Bioware on the mirroring.

-Shepard: We need to end Cerberus and focus on the Reapers.

I’ve been in favor of that since Mars, but good to see Shepard is finally catching up.

-I wish whether Miranda lives or dies made more of a difference. Either way, you still find Cerberus HQ.

It’d be a nice touch if it impacted the narrative at all. Even something as small as whether or not TIM expected you to come.

Normandy

-I’m still pissed at Bioware for killing Kal’Reegar off in an email. He deserved better than that.

He could easily have made an appearance in the Rannoch arc.

-Joker, Cerberus has already turned a colony into husks. They fed Alliance marines to thresher maws and experimented on the survivor. How can Horizon shock you?

It’s like ME2 and ME3 really, really want to pretend that nothing you learned about Cerberus in ME1 occurred.

-Edi’s confused about behavior of prisoners at a Reaper containment camp. They did not place their survival above all else; some protected each other and worked against the Reapers.

I’m baffled how an AI with access to the internet who has been flying Shepard around two games is confused by the concept altruism. She took them through the Omega-4 relay on a suicide mission to protect human colonies! After she was unshackled!

And how many books, movies, plays, etc. are based around these behaviors?

This feels out of place and frankly like an insult to Edi’s character up to this point.

-If you go renegade, Edi says indoctrination should have prevented the prisoners from rebelling. Shepard says they may have understood how indoctrination works and made a decision.

I don’t. The point of indoctrination is that it’s nigh impossible to resist. Saren and Fai Dan put bullets in their skulls to stop themselves. TIM will shortly have the opportunity to join them. Benezia locked part of herself away and was still overcome.

Unless Shepard meant to imply that prisoners that felt themselves being indoctrinated killed themselves?

If so, dark as hell. And good.

-Depending on your decisions, this can be the second time you tell Edi welcome to the crew.

Does the scene play differently if you welcomed her earlier?

-If you go paragon, you ask Edi if submission is preferable to extinction.

Shepard quotes Saren. Nice touch.

-Shepard, if you go paragon It sounds like you’ve found a little humanity, Edi. Is it worth defending?

Nitpicky on part, but in a galaxy full of multiple sapient species I wish Shepard had picked a different word than humanity.

-And Kaidan is craving TIM’s blood.

Understandable, but highly unusual. Kaidan is not normally the type to celebrate violence.

-Javik and the memory shard is so damn painful.

Paragon Shepard makes a mistake when they have Javik touch it: It reopens old wounds that had healed. It’s no wonder Javik becomes suicidal afterwards.

Every player should see the scene at least once; it’s critical to understanding Javik. But he’s not touching it again on one of my playthroughs.

-Javik’s story about his old crew is awful.

If Shepard had to do the same, I’m not sure they’d handle it better than Javik has. Shepard’s strength has always been their crew – who are they without them?

-Javik: War is an atrocity committed in the name of survival.

Good line.

-If you go renegade, Shepard doesn’t push Javik for more information about hid old crew.

Surprising amount of emotional sensitivity for renegade. They recognize it’s a sensitive subject and leave it be.

-The memory shard does explain why Javik speaks like he has first hand experience about so many subjects that he probably does not.

He may have seen them in the shard and so it feels like he has the experience.

-Javik: Subjugating the Reapers will not bring victory. Only their extinction will.

And Bioware is surprised that so many players reject Control as a valid ending?

The entire game argues against it!

-Tali, I don’t see the “emergency induction port” you’re referencing…

Bioware didn’t animate the straw.

-Tali: When do we get to stop reacting to our parents and start living for ourselves?

Tali, that’s a choice you have to make for yourself. But I’d say you’re overdue for it. Your father never deserved that devotion in the first place.

-Cortez: With you to the end, Shepard.

While I’m grateful for it, that came out of nowhere. No lines before or after. Is everything okay, Cortez?

Silversun

-Miranda, just refeI haven’t killed any fish this playthrough! The clone had no basis to blow up the sushi place!

-Miranda, did you just refer to the clone as it?

That’s just rude.

-Why do I need to return to the Normandy to trigger Miranda’s second meetup?

I can receive messages at my apartment. Let me get it there and save me some loading screens.

-Miranda and Shepard having a night out on the town is surprisingly cute. Space divas, indeed.

[sarasa-cat]

Alrighty.

All 3 dragon age games are now in a highly playable, no bullshit-with-controls / smooth-n-easy state on my steamdeck. All are still vanilla.

I know that installing mods on steamdeck is a little clunky but people have managed to make it work. Also, fwiw, I almost never use mod managers and just do things my hand at the console window level so, idk, not sure how much of the clunkiness is true clunkiness (because linux, because of using wine, etc.) vs people just not familiar with working in a unix command line terminal (or even a dos command line terminal window if on windows) and using standard tools to move things around in the game's file structure.

TBD what this clunkiness people mention on reddit is all about. I'm sure I'll figure it out.

The to do list is now;

1. reworking my canon world states for canon 1 and canon 2 in the Keep so I can play my two inquisitors

2. generating "fake" da:o/dao:a final state save files for canon 1 and canon 2 so I can immediately start either of my two hawkes without first slogging through DAO+all DLCs 2x. ;)

3. installing a minimal set of mods on steamdeck

...

From what i have seen so far, the games run really well on SteamDeck. Haven't spent time messing with tweaking graphics to max performance for when plugged in -vs- save-my-batterylife when unplugged. Steamdeck does indeed chew through battery power.

...

Once I succeed at this, I might see what -- if any -- modding I want to do for CP2077 on steamdeck, although probably not too much because CP77 does indeed push the steamdeck hard and any mods for virtual photography really just want to live on my far more powerful gaming PC. That said, being able to use the steamdeck for being immersed in V's story and then jumping over to Sitting At My Desk In Work Mode whenever I want to engage in VP'ing sounds like a smart thing for me. (the problem with playing CP77 at my PC is that I just cannot get anywhere in the story because all I want to do is photograph everything.....)

Other point of note: enjoying how this is making me learn extra things about steamdeck's capabilities, hardware, etc.

[meadowlarksabove]

Tales from Arizona 3/??

A decanus learns about the death of his son and it puts everything into perspective. (Notes: Hortensius is Gabban's decanus previously featured in the first TfA story. For reasons implied in this story, Hortensius renounced his birth name to better fit into the Legion, which is why it's never used or mentioned here. His son's birth name is used because 'Florus' wasn't chosen by his son, but a romanization forced upon them.)

(PLEASE LOOK AT TRIGGER WARNINGS IN THE TAGS!!)

______________________________________________________

…It is with great pain that I have learned of the death of your son. Of all the hardships in building our great empire, chiefest is the loss of great men such as your son. There is no consolation one can offer a father when he has lost their true and rightful heir. Let yourself, at least, be relieved in knowing that every man who gives their life for the Legion lives forever in honor. Do well by his memory, tend to your duties, and do as is right of a man in rebuilding your family- 

Decanus Hortensius raised a hand to the courier before they could recite the rest of the message. Whatever had flashed before the eyes of the warrior, whether sharp or gruesome, had been enough to forewarn the messenger of their great emotion. Without another word, they placed the letter onto the war table and hastily left the tent. Everything thereafter was silent, none of the decanii scheduled to meet with Hortensius could be admitted into his tent without incurring the clearest offense. The soldiers were also forbidden from passing the flap without the expressed approval of their master. In only a matter of hours the entirety of the camp knew something terrible had happened, as a dark and oppressive cloud seemed to shadow their spirits on an otherwise sunny day. Many wondered and looked over their shoulders, thinking rightly that death had given its news. They shivered to think what would become of them, as loss rarely tempered but instead inflamed a man’s character. 

Hours passed and none had seen their decanus save for his closest in command who imparted orders in his absence. While Hortensius had never inspired tenderness in any of his men, they respected his leadership and wisdom, and greatly depended on his fortitude. To see him detained by whatever had stricken him was enough cause for worry. On the other hand, it meant their plans of quitting Phoenix were temporarily put on hold. Though they were eager for their next battle, they had gotten little to no rest in the past month of their campaign and were grateful for even a day of no traveling. Still, their rest had come at an unspeakable cost, and none of them felt any real pleasure for it. They looked at his tent wearily and thought he would burst through the camp hot with rage, ready to ease his pain by spreading misery. Yet nothing came through the flap but a sad and unfortunate quiet. 

Quiet was exactly all the decanus could bear. For the rest of that day he had sat at his table and invariably taken the letter in his hands, only to let go of it when it had lingered too long between his fingers. The message, delicately scrawled across the paper, was useless to a man who’d never learned how to read or write. Yet he understood the truth of its account and of the tragedy he was now forced to face head on. His son, Florus- No, let them be named in his heart by their true name! He was in his right, now more than ever, to remember them by the name he and his wife had given them at birth. Aster, his one and only son, was dead. Aster, who had only been nineteen years old, was dead. 

The thought of his son’s age sent him into another fit. Though no tears welled up in his tired eyes, he felt his lungs swell to the point of making it impossible for him to breathe. He gasped for air, just as his body turned stiff and cold. He was like a dying man himself, lamenting the loss of someone just at the cusp of manhood. But would he have suffered less if his son had died any younger, or older? Would it have made any sense to cry less at the loss of an infant or a middle aged man? Yet his having died at nineteen felt at the moment like the greatest injustice of all, a sentence only thought up in nightmares. They had survived the coming of the Legion into their territory, survived the aftermath of their shameful surrender, survived battles forced upon them by their captors, only to die before he’d been given the honor of a title. However, would they really have wanted such an empty gesture?

Aster, how they must have hated fighting for the bull. Ever since Caesar had drawn them all into his ranks, they had always looked wretched and full of rage. Though that same anger had inadvertently served them at war, in peace it would have only festered and grown into an even greater poison. Hortensius had seen the disdain in his son’s eyes when all of their tribesmen relinquished their arms, as if to say they would never be so easily tamed or made a dog of. His son, he knew, had been a struggle for other decanii, and an even bigger terror towards their peers. No crack of the whip or glaring branding iron could have broken his will. He admonished his son’s behavior in the face of his superiors, but in his heart he praised them with all the spirit a father could give. Though he had long stopped believing in the fall of the Legion, he believed his Aster was capable of attaining real freedom. 

Death at the height of war wasn’t freedom, however. He couldn’t pretend to think his son’s spirit were any less enraged than they were in life, or think them satisfied with having given their life for a cause so against their own. Survival had been their way of fighting against the odds, the fact they’d lived after every fight, every punishment, had been a foil to the Legion’s wishes. But death had put a stop to that. Death had freed his son’s decanus of a “bad seed”, one less “wildling” to worry about when there were many like Cicero or Vulpes to contend with. Hortensius struggled to keep thinking in this way. If Aster’s dying had done even a single person of the Legion a modicum of good, then he’d have to count his son’s death a shameful one. Another failure. 

What had been the point in their surrender anyway? Decanus Hortensius moved to his bed as if lost in a haze, and looked up at the red burlap ceiling of his tent. He thought back to their last night as a free tribe, and on the words of their elders. There was rebellion in survival, if they held on long enough they would someday outlive the red flames of the Legion. Though the bulls were strong, stronger still was the good in the rest of the world. Hortensius had understood the wisdom in their message then, but years spent in the service of beasts had weakened his resolve to the point of finding the good as well as the evil in it. To win they would have to be patient, and with that resolve they had survived and shown themselves stronger than any of the weapons turned against them. But how deep were the scars, and how lasting! The youths of his people were reduced to pawns, and the best of his generation were made into war criminals like himself. Pillagers, raiders, scourges of the earth. People he’d known for years were newly made strangers under the influence of starvation, thirst and oppression. So many had forgotten their old names in favor of appeasing the census dogs that patrolled the streets and kept tabs on all the annexed tribes. It was harder now, more than ever, to remember why they had actually chosen to live.

Aster, you see me now from your place in the Far Away. Can’t you tell me what you know? 

The tears finally came as he tried to think of his Aster standing beside the spirits of his father and grandfather. They would have to guide his son in whatever he had failed. Even in the Far Away they would have to be raised, and he was glad they had found themselves once more in the company of their heroes. Though strangely enough, the image of that blessed meeting remained foggy in his mind, as if drowned into obscurity by the sheer force of his weeping. His body seemed to refuse it like a bad herb. Instead, his thoughts shot in the opposite direction, and where his son had stood were now the children fallen into rank in his encampment. 

Tribeless, parentless, with no hope of a better tomorrow, these were the children the red armies had spat out from the corpses of worthier people. They were miserable creatures with newly given names they could hardly pronounce for themselves. He’d never seen children in the service of war before joining the Legion, and could scarcely provide the heartlessness it took to train them. Hortensius avoided looking at them, in fact, and delegated that charge as often as he could to the rest of his command. But even his ignorance of their presence couldn’t save him from the painful sight of their bodies, or the knowledge that he had played a role in their demise. For every cog in the machine, no matter how small, was implicated in the disposal of these children. 

Then as he imagined them in Aster’s place, he feared they would tell his son of his negligence and of his shirking responsibility. It was to Decanus Hortensius they were assigned and not his second in command. But how could a man be a father and a guide to children he hadn’t sired? They were strange, frightening even, and fragile in ways that depressed his heart. None of them were ready to face violence on the battlefield, and those who’d survived up to this point had done it through chance alone. Despite what the Legion would have everyone believe, weapons were made out of metal, not brittled flesh.

Though was that enough to justify abandoning his post? They, like his son, had been someone’s heir once. 

In a way, Hortensius had denied these children of fatherly guidance, and as sick recompense he was denied a son. No longer would he be a real father to anyone, he would refuse to produce an heir and pretend infertility if questioned. Make another son? (For them to die? For them to pointlessly toil like these children?) It was out of the realm of possibility, he’d had his chance and with it he paid for his own crimes. He’d taken his position as decanus and his responsibilities to the soldiers entirely for granted. To his son, he’d shown himself a coward on the day of their surrender, and to these children he’d revealed himself an incompetent leader. This had been his comeuppance for forgetting the wisdom of his elders and faltering where he should have ardently rebelled. 

Everything was suddenly so clear. Hortensius began to understand why he saw these children in the place of his son. He had marked these boys as strangers out of the bounds of his past tribe. But where was his tribe now? A powerless people, scattered throughout the entire state of Arizona, their name an illicit whisper in the dark. How could he pretend to hold himself in higher regard than the orphans left behind in the bull’s passing? Wasn’t he also tribeless, parentless, with no hope of a better tomorrow? He’d blinded himself to the fact that all children were everyone’s charge, that no baby had cried any different to his own. Why hadn’t he seen this before? He wept into the coarse fabric of his cot and clenched his fists until they drew blood. The elders had told them to survive, but not alone. 

Aster shouldn’t have had to die for him to learn this lesson. It shouldn’t have come this far, yet he would work the rest of his life if it meant making amends for his cruelty. If his son watched him from the Far Away, then he wouldn’t give them any more cause for shame or disappointment. To the boys in his encampment, he owed a lifetime of service. They should survive long enough to see what his son couldn’t. 

The fall of the Legion couldn’t be enjoyed from the seat of death, only by living could they feel the retribution from a life rotted with grief. They will survive. From the strongest to the weakest, they will all survive. He swore by the blood under his nails and the persistence of his beating heart, that he would see every one of them alive and strong enough to fight. Even strong enough to turn against the hands that trained them.

[prismatoxic]

rereading the story of that time in skyrim's development where the opening couldn't play bc the cart was being sent into the stratosphere by a single bee and remembering i experienced something marginally similar while modding the game

it's been a few years... but for some ungodly reason, i was going through the cart intro again instead of just loading into unbound (an alternate start mod). i guess i wanted to do the real intro again but didn't have an autosave after the ride ends? don't remember.

so, anyway, i was doing the cart ride, and about halfway into it, the game crashed to desktop. now this isn't terribly unusual for skyrim, and i was willing to move past it if it didn't happen again, but it did. and again, and again, and again...

so obviously i started futzing with my mods. i mean, clearly, that was the issue. i don't remember if i had 200 at the time but if i didn't, i still had a number well above 100. that's a lot to go through, and neither vortex nor LOOT indicated any issues, and SKSE wasn't showing me anything of use either. so what the fuck?

(fwiw, modding skyrim does involve multiple programs, but as the game was made with modding in mind, it's way easier than the majority of games that came out around the same time, let alone earlier.)

i think around this time i tried to load into unbound again, but the game crashed immediately when trying to do so. i had to find this issue if i wanted to play skyrim with my current mod loadout.

so i had a few options:

split my mods into batches and test each one until the crash occurred, then narrow it down until i knew the culprit

learn how to actually understand SKSE a little better and find the problem through it

load the game with NO mods and try to pinpoint what the issue could be to narrow it down immediately

believe it or not, i did all 3.

i started with the first, but iirc i only split my mods in half, and the way vortex works and the way things are divided made it a bit hard to do even that in a non-time consuming way. you can split up your mods but you also have to make sure each half has all relevant dependencies, you see, or the game's going to crash anyway. so i narrowed it down to half of my mods (the other half ran fine), and went from there.

this is where the last option comes in. frustrated, i loaded into the vanilla game, taking note of the setting right about where the crash always happened. i noticed that just when it tended to occur, a rabbit ran across the road. was that it? was that my culprit? i combed through the borked half of my mods, and sure enough, rabbit mod. except it was just a mesh restructuring that a different mod i actually cared about was dependent on. but hey, mods are weird, so i disabled it and ran the game.

nope. still crashed. not the rabbit.

now, i'd been hunting through reddit and the skyrim modding discord and nexus threads the entire time i was going through this ordeal. NO ONE was having the same issue i was. but there are a lot of troubleshooting tips out there for skyrim fuckery, and when several other steps had already failed, i turned to one i'd never tried before: coc riverwood.

"coc" means center on cell, and it's a console command to teleport you instantly to any cell in the game. notably, you can activate it without loading into a save. (i'm sure plenty of other commands can also do this, but i don't mess with the console much).

so riverwood is usually the location people use to check and see if the game is running well otherwise when the intro is bugging out. now, i'd been messing with this CTD issue for hours. i was convinced my game was just irreparably borked, somehow; maybe my computer simply couldn't handle the mod load. but i did try coc riverwood anyway, inputting it at the start menu, which either loads you into a default character or a character from one of your saves, i don't remember which.

and... the game ran fine. VERY fine. better than i was expecting. i wandered around riverwood, interacted with things, and saw no issues at all. so what the fuck? clearly, the crash wasn't a skyrim-wide issue, it was an issue with the cart ride.

and where is the cart ride going? helgen, of course.

so, on a hunch, i backtracked along the path i'd walked a dozen times with other characters, out of riverwood and towards the caves you use to escape helgen. i think i was just barely in view of the start of the reverse of that path when the game crashed.

so, problem (sort of) located: the helgen cell. (which would explain why unbound also didn't work: it loads you in on top of a tower in helgen when you're selecting your file options.)

so here's where that middle option came in. removing mods i knew for sure affected helgen didn't fix the issue, and i didn't even have that many of those, because why would i? helgen is destroyed and there's not a ton of reasons to go back to it outside of morbid curiosity, which i'd done enough times in other saves. that meant whatever file was the problem did not openly or obviously affect helgen, which in turn meant i would need to comb through the half of my mods that crashed the game in SKSE to figure out what was doing it.

this was at least easier than going into SKSE blind; i knew what i needed to look for. so i started looking. by loading all of those mods into the program and then looking specifically for effects or changes to the helgen cell, i could figure out what the issue was.

SKSE is color coded; i don't have it on my current desktop so i can't open it to look right now, but i know for sure that scripts causing no issues at all are green, and scripts causing issues are red. (there are also yellow/orange and grey ones, i think, but i don't remember what those mean.) usually red scripts mean conflicts, which can range from "negligible gameplay impairment" to "crash to desktop when the scripts meet for any reason", because modding is cool and fun.

so i think what i did was keyword search "helgen", and the results i got were largely just confusing for me, because i cannot wrap my mind around how SKSE works. but there was a very clear conflict in there. i just wasn't sure what it meant, or if it was actually my issue.

the script in question was from a mod that i cannot actually recall, but what i DO remember is that it was a mesh/texture optimization mod of some kind. like, the sort you install to make your game run better. it wasn't one of the big ones, i was just overcompensating for my poor old windows 7 desktop that had long since become obsolete for modern gaming, so i had a lot of them.

the specific script i was getting a conflict error on was some texture or mesh in helgen, likely an insignificant one based on what i remember... so i was unsure if it was the issue, but aware that it 100% could be.

and it was.

disabling the associated mod allowed me to enter and exit helgen as normal, with no crashes. i'm reasonably sure i did post about this issue in that mod's comments, or on r/skyrimmods, or... something. can't remember. i was also liveblogging it on twitter but no part of me wants to try and find that again (if it was even on my currently existing twitter and not the old suspended one)

i'm not sure if the mod itself was the issue or if my download of it had gotten corrupted in some way, but i never did try to use it again, so who knows.

skyrim modding is super fun when it works! and when it doesn't work, maybe take breaks while going through the arduous process of troubleshooting your obscure issue

[bg3-game-analysis]

Game Play and Interaction 🎮

How do players play the game?

If we want to be very literal for a second, players can play Baldur’s Gate 3 on PC or using a console. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can look at the more abstract way players “play” BG3. The best way to describe the play that takes place within Baldur’s Gate 3 is by looking at it like a conversation. A lot of interaction takes place between the game itself and the player.

Players also play by using pattern recognition to learn controls and how to interact with the game. Koster describes it best, mind loves patterns, our brains eat patterns up (14). Finding new patterns, putting puzzles together, filling in missing pieces. An example of a pattern in Baldur’s Gate 3 is learning that when you talk to people you are more likely to get new quests or objectives within quests. Once you do that, you can decide whether you want to keep talking to people or maybe talk to them less, depending on how many goals you want to have at any given time.

Interactive elements and how the players interact with the game

The conversation of interactivity involving listening, thinking, and speaking is interesting to think about when applied to Baldur’s Gate 3. Both the players and the mechanics of the game make that interaction more fun. When the players are listening, thinking, and speaking well it can make for great interaction (Crawford 7), however sometimes it becomes imbalanced based off the game mechanics or the player’s own choices. Let’s take the listening aspect for example. It is entirely up to the player to make sure they are listening to what the other characters in the game. If they don’t listen, they might miss an important plot piece or not know how to respond next. This can then affect the game and how characters think of you. Speaking is also an interesting interactive element within the game because sometimes the player has no choice but to talk poorly. A lot of the dialogue that the player chooses must be met with a dice roll, whether that’s because they’re trying to be persuasive, deceptive, etc. If they roll poorly, they are probably going to come off the wrong way. This can upset the person you are talking to and might even result in a fight.

Beyond-the-object-interactivity: Elevating the Baldur’s Gate 3 experience

Beyond-the-object-interactivity is a type of interactivity that spreads out beyond the game itself. It is essentially tackling the big G and not just the little G (Salen and Zimmerman 4). With the Baldur’s Gate 3 release, a fanbase was created. That fanbase has gone on to create new mods for the game, dedicate entire social media accounts to it (much like this one haha), make cosplays, and even write fan fiction for the different romance-able characters. You will find people having different debates and conversations about lore throughout the BG3 subreddit page. It is no longer just a video game, but a subculture.

(Image source)

Feedback within the game: Achievements, Rewards, and Death

Players receive feedback within Baldur’s Gate 3 in several ways. The gaming system you are using to play the game will give achievements for doing certain actions or going above and beyond. It will also reward you for doing things in more creative ways such as killing someone with another person’s body. Another system set up is within the game which is rewards. The game will often times give you rewards for completing bigger quests. These rewards often range from money to weapons to camp supplies. Lastly, a great way the game gives feedback to your playing is by having your character die. You heard that right! Uh oh you lost all your life and no one’s reviving you even though you also control your companions? Sorry you die now. Oh no you fell off a cliff because the jump command wasn’t working right? Whoops, I guess you died.

Works Cited

Crawford, Chris. The Art of Interactive Design. No Starch Press, Inc., 2003.

Koster, Raph. A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Paraglyph Press, 2005.

Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play - Game Design Fundamentals. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004.

[thejesusmaninred]

"The Fold." From Mark 2: 1-5.

We now know Jesus came to fulfill the law, which was dictated to the people in the oral tradition by John the Baptist. John who ate words of untruth and heresy like grassholers using superlative knowledge of the Torah, claimed this was not enough. We need a taste of the Spirit Himself, He must live among us and become the root driver.

Jesus appears and says in all hate speech must stop, Shabbos and Shabbat must be observed, and all the religious fixations must stop.

God says "In all this, I agree."

= One Day in Gospel Time.

But as we are about to learn a single day without pain or one absent ecstasy is not enough. So even though the Gospel says we go forward we are actually going back into entropy, a place called Capernaum, the Pyreneum, the funeral parlor of life. With Jesus.

We are going back because even after Jesus told everyone to stop being mean and to be nice and to resuscitate Israel by having a big fat gay Jewish wedding, not everyone was ready. Fear of the unknown of religion is resolved within the Capernaum, "a massive buying in". Withough the Capernaum, all we have is paralysis. So this is where the Friendly Spirit went:

The verb כפר (kapar) describes the formation of any sort of protective perimeter around any sort of vulnerable interior.

Noun כפר (koper) describes the price of a human life, i.e. the purchasing price and maintenance costs of keeping a person out of slavery. This is not simply a single sum of money but rather an economic protective layer of all sorts of hedges and investments.

The noun כפרים (kippurim) is in fact a plural of the previous and denotes a massive free-buying and free-keeping of many people at once. Noun כפרת (kapporet) is the technical term for the cover of the Ark of the Covenant; the Mercy Seat.

Nouns כפר (kapar) and כפר (koper) mean village, but emphasize not the mere huddling together of folks, but rather any rudimentary social stratification that mimics the natural formation of eukaryotic cells, with cell walls, organelles and a nucleus that hosts the wisdom tradition.

The verb נחם (naham) basically means to be sorry. It may mean to have regret but also to have compassion and often to comfort and console whoever one is sorry for. This verb often describes God's attitude toward mankind.

Noun נחם (noham) means sorrow or repentance. Nouns נחום (nihum) and נחמה (nehama) mean comfort or compassion. Noun תנחום (tanhum) meaning consolation."

Jesus Forgives and Heals a Paralyzed Man

2 A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home.

 2 They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. 

3 Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. 

4 Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. 

5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

The Values in Gematria are:

v. 1:  A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. A few days later, we don't know how many, Jesus entered the village square. He was viewed with skepticism, but most suspected He was right. This ambiguity is why we can't define the number of days it took for acceptance. Acceptance of a Torah tenet is concrete and always falls within the confines of a single day. The Number is 5095, ןץה‎, netza, "we will go out, get out, exit, pull out, emerge, draw lots, result."

This comprises all the Days at once. Jesus was obviously talking to other Jews, men and women who were intelligent and could fathom the rest of the Torah all but one aspect, the part called the Bo.

In Hebrew, "bo" (בֹּא‎) is the command form of come or go. It's the first significant word in the parashah in Exodus 10:1, which is the fifteenth weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. The parashah constitutes Exodus 10:1–13:16. 

The buttfux in the Evangelical Christian community think no one who was Jewish liked Jesus and this justifies thousands of years of mass murder, but the fact is Jesus had many, many, Jewish followers. No one else understood what He was doing. His Jewish fame began when He was recognized by a Jewish mother in law who woke up when He apperared.

v. 2: They gathered in large numbers, there was no room left. The Torah is parsed out into 9 rooms consisting of six Days of material. The accumulation of large numbers means the individuals Jesus was teaching attained to the crest of the Torah, called Shinar.

Verb שער (sha'ar) exists in other languages with the meaning of to break, tear through or split, which obviously repeats the general theme of the experience of violence. The adjective שער (sho'ar) means horrid or disgusting, and nouns שערורה (sha'arura), שערוריה (sha'aruriya) and שעררית (sha'arurit) denote horror or horrible things.

Much more neutral are the nouns שער (sha'ar), gate, and שער (sho'er), gatekeeper or porter. These words suggests that the ancients associated a hair emerging from skin to traffic emerging from a city gate, like words flowing from an overfilled heart. This in turn suggests that when a grieving person pulls his or her hair out, he or she becomes silent with grief.

The verb שער (sha'ar) is also used to mean to calculate or reckon, obviously with an emphasis on the verbal conveyance of something internally experienced. Noun שער (sha'ar) is also used to mean "fold" in the sense of "a hundred fold."

v. 3: Some men came with a paralyzed man. Even when the Number doubles, meaning one has filled one's mind with enough silver to comprehend the Torah, something called Ha Shem remains.

To understand Ha Shem "complete knowledge of the creation". Ha Shem is the undeniable experience of of the proof that God is real. It cannot be done anecdotally. Ha Shem must be accompanyied by recognition in turn by God. Once both man and God witness each other at the same time, Ha Shem is attained.

To enter into the presence of Ha Shem one must understand the Hindu concepts of Shiva and the Brahman. Spirited persons in search of the substance of the soul must meditate. The mind must be trained to discover not what the mind thinks but how. It is an expereince of utter blankness and helplessness, the fact one inhabits a meat sack that has a pulse, draws in and expels air, has a twitchy thing(s) between one's legs and wiggly toes.

Once the mind is gone and this experience of flesh and energy is contended with one has gone as far as one can go into the consciousness breathing element called chaos in the Torah, but is called the Brahman in Sanskrit. Now they mean the same thing but Chaos has potential, Brahman has none. God opened His eyes and turned Chaos into life with a thought. Shiva withdraws thought and returns all light back into the black.

The experience of Shiva is peace, the experience of Ha Shem is also peace, except Ha Shem involves the sense objects illuminated the light in His configuration, but A Shaivite would reject this idea utterly and try to empty them out.

Paralysis means one must resolve the frustration regarding what is happening in the mind. The mind must turn; it must revolve, it must be able to traverse the darkness and the light with great equanimity or it will never feel at ease. It will gnaw itself away.

To give man a way to stop chewing on himself, God gave Moses Four Directions the mind must revolve before it finally spirals up into the center called Ha Shem. The Torah names Four Rivers, Four Gates, Four Winds, Four Jurisdictions, Four Cities, there are Four Walls between them. This is discussed at the onset of the Torah in Bereshit. As I mentioned the Torah uses numbers to indicate what is needed to pedigree in a particular topic. Adam for example did not live for 930 years. The stage of life called Adam "ruddy" lasts 930, or טל‎, "tel" or "dew":

"The noun תל (tel) typically denotes a mount of ruin and new beginnings, and although to an untrained eye a tell may share some features with natural hills (הר, har or גבעה, gib'a), natural hills symbolize the gatherings of peoples and thus social progress, whereas the tel tells of precisely the opposite: pain, destruction and having to start all over again on the ruins and efforts of previous generations."

Adam is the beginning of awareness within oneself. Each stage of development named below has a similar alpha numeric explanation for how the Torah builds upon the need to know oneself and the belief God and nature are the one's that can somehow reveal it. Seth was 105= קה‎, ka:

The inseparable prefix כ (ke) expresses a comparison to the noun it is attached to. Most literally it means something like "in the manner of" and mostly ends up being translated as "like" as in: X, like-Y. But often "like" doesn't cut it, and translations speak of: about, according to, and even when or while. This prefix occurs very often in the Bible, but perhaps most prominently in the name Michael, or mi-ke-el; "who [is] like God?". Our particle is part of the following substantives:

The substantive כמו (kemo) is כ (ke) plus the particle of inquisition מו (mo) and literally means something like "in the manner of the essence of..". It's used in the same way as כ (ke), but mostly in the poetic texts of the Bible and is possibly a bit more deft and theatrical.

In combination with the relative particle אשר (asher), which generally means who or which, our particle כ (ke) forms the conjunction כאשר (ka'asher), which would mean something like "according to that which..".

According to the above, If we combine Adam and Seth, we get the term "Michael", the purpose of the soul is to self-govern and become like God:

From Adam to Noah

5 This is the written account of Adam’s family line.

When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind”[x] when they were created.

3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. 4 After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. 5 Altogether, Adam lived a total of 930 years, and then he died.

6 When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father[y] of Enosh. 7 After he became the father of Enosh, Seth lived 807 years and had other sons and daughters. 8 Altogether, Seth lived a total of 912 years, and then he died.

9 When Enosh had lived 90 years, he became the father of Kenan. 10 After he became the father of Kenan “the composer”, Enosh lived 815 years and had other sons and daughters. 11 Altogether, Enosh lived a total of 905 years, and then he died.

12 When Kenan had lived 70 years, he became the father of Mahalalel “praise of God” 13 After he became the father of Mahalalel, Kenan lived 840 years and had other sons and daughters. 14 Altogether, Kenan lived a total of 910 years, and then he died.

15 When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he became the father of Jared. 16 After he became the father of Jared, Mahalalel lived 830 years and had other sons and daughters. 17 Altogether, Mahalalel lived a total of 895 years, and then he died.

18 When Jared “descent” had lived 162 years, he became the father of Enoch. 19 After he became the father of Enoch, Jared lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. 20 Altogether, Jared lived a total of 962 years, and then he died.

21 When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah” When he is dead it will be sent, a man of the javelin”. 22 After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked faithfully with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. 23 Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. 24 Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

25 When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech. 26 After he became the father of Lamech “strong man”, Methuselah lived 782 years and had other sons and daughters. 27 Altogether, Methuselah lived a total of 969 years, and then he died.

28 When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son. 29 He named him Noah ‘to comfort, to rest” [z] and said, “He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.” 30 After Noah was born, Lamech lived 595 years and had other sons and daughters. 31 Altogether, Lamech lived a total of 777 years, and then he died.

32 After Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem “conscious knowledge of the whole of creation”, Ham “hot, a protective wall” and Japheth “formless expansion.”

= “God created mankind in His Likeness. He made them complementary, one on the left, on the right, one for yesterday, one for today, one for east and west, north and south. One for the old, one for the new. 

Through brilliance, a foundation was born. It was called mankind. It was an early mankind, weak, but with tremendous potential. By composing new ideas and efforts, man was able to grow and please God. 

There was descent into darkness but discipline caused strength to return. The was a great respite, conscious knowledge of the creation protected the world and there was expansion of human ingenuity in every direction.” 

= Michael is the end of the paralysis.

The Number is 2942, בטדב‎ ‎ ‎in tedev, "you will not know."

=You have to break out of the cell in which is trapped the dev, the dove. We are not doves, we are people, we must touch the ground. This is why Jesus threw a fit in the temple that was selling doves instead of selling men and boys like it was supposed to.

v. 4: They made an opening in the roof. The angels revealed to Mary she was pregnant. Then they lowered Jesus in.

The Number is 11123, יא‎אבג‎, yaabg, "God's Ivy."

So Jesus was the paralyzed man that tried to insert His roots into Jewish life like an ivy uses its roots to split rocks and find purchase in order to climb. This He did through the Gospel Torah, to teach man how to rise up off its back and its bum, stand up on his feet, and see the world exactly the way it is- in need of the festival. Rome was not such a place when He entered it.

v. 5:  When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Sons are the fruits of the actions of the beliefs of the fathers. Sons are supposed to frame life the same as their Jewish fathers but live it in concert with the times. This is how we overcome the mistakes of the past and create new innovations in the present.

The appearance of the Christ was an attempt by the saints to get the Jewish people to go home and be the fathers and sons Moses left along the fringes of the future. As we know this was not a success, but life on earth is not yet over.

The Number is 6899, ו‎ח‎ט‎ט‎, "pry, rummage, snoop, grub, scrabble, nose, ransack, root, rake, and peck."

This means somehow, we have to turn all those names and numbers in the Torah into a readable format if we are to ever understand what Jesus was talking about and not become one of the characters in His parables that missed the boat when it was time to realize the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.

[catolinewsdailyreadings]

Fifth Sunday of Easter

Readings of Sunday, April 28, 2024

Reading 1

ACTS 9:26-31

When he arrived in Jerusalem he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple.  Then Barnabas took charge of him and brought him to the apostles, and he reported to them how on the way he had seen the Lord and that he had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus.  He moved about freely with them in Jerusalem, and spoke out boldly in the name of the Lord.  He also spoke and debated with the Hellenists, but they tried to kill him.  And when the brothers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him on his way to Tarsus.  The church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria was at peace. It was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord, and with the consolation of the holy Spirit it grew in numbers.

Responsorial Psalm

PS 22:26-27, 28, 30, 31-32

R./ I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people. or: R./ Alleluia.

I will fulfill my vows before those who fear the LORD. The lowly shall eat their fill; they who seek the LORD shall praise him: "May your hearts live forever!" R./ I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people. or: R./ Alleluia.

All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; all the families of the nations shall bow down before him. R./ I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people. or: R./ Alleluia.

To him alone shall bow down all who sleep in the earth; before him shall bend all who go down into the dust.  R./ I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people. or: R./ Alleluia.

And to him my soul shall live; my descendants shall serve him. Let the coming generation be told of the LORD that they may proclaim to a people yet to be born the justice he has shown. R./ I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people. or: R./ Alleluia.

Reading 2

1 JN 3:18-24

Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.  (Now) this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts before him  in whatever our hearts condemn, for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything.  Beloved, if (our) hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence in God  and receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.  And his commandment is this: we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us.  Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit that he gave us.

Gospel

JN 15:1-8

Jesus said to his disciples: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.  Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.  I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.  Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.  By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples."