azureamalgam3301

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🌍✨ A Voice from Gaza: Fighting for Hope ❤️‍🩹

Hi, my name is Mosab , and I’m from Gaza. Life here has been harder than I could ever imagine, but today I’m sharing my story with hope in my heart, because your kindness has already given us so much strength.

This journey hasn’t been easy. The war has taken 25 family members from us—25 beautiful souls we loved deeply. Their laughter, their presence, their love… all of it is gone, leaving behind memories that are both precious and painful. Every day, I carry the weight of their loss, but I also carry their spirit, which gives me the strength to keep going.

Our Journey So Far

When I first reached out, I couldn’t have imagined we’d make it this far. Your support has been a light in these difficult times, and we are so deeply grateful for every single contribution.

But the road ahead is still challenging. Every day, we’re reminded of how much we’ve lost and how much we still need to rebuild.

Here’s what life in Gaza looks like for my family right now:

🏠 Safety: The uncertainty of tomorrow weighs heavily on us.

😢 Loss: The absence of the 25 family members we’ve lost is a pain we carry every moment.

💔 Dreams on Hold: The future feels so far away when survival takes all our strength.

How You Can Help Us Cross the Finish Line Even the smallest act of kindness can make a difference:

$5 may seem small, but for us, it’s a little relief, a moment of comfort, and a reminder that kindness still exists. ❤️

Can’t donate? Reblog this post to help us reach someone who can. Every share matters more than you know.

✅️ Vetted by @gazavetters ( #309 ) ✅️

Why Your Support Matters Your kindness isn’t just about helping us meet our goal—it’s about reminding us that we’re not alone in this fight. It’s about hope. It’s about survival. And it’s about giving my family a chance to rebuild our lives, even in the face of unimaginable loss.

Thank you for helping us get this far. Your generosity and compassion have already brought us closer to a better tomorrow, and for that, I’m endlessly grateful.

With all my love and gratitude,

Mosab and Family ❤️

[azureamalgam3301]

The Snore Ring - A Deliberately Bad Circuit

(Apologies if the name was already in use, AFAIK it isn't but I could always be wrong)

Sometimes, I wonder what Formula 1 would look like if all the tracks were bad, and with a reignited interest in motorsport, I began to wonder again. Well, I grew bored of wondering and decided to do it myself.

Behold, the Snore Ring.

An anti-clockwise, DRS-free snore-fest that might just be tolerable for solo driving, but (if I've understood track design well enough) will fully discourage racing.

For the sake of helping you get a picture of this monstrosity, let's assume that the track is 6km in length, 9m in width, and is about as flat as Silverstone.

Track Guide

Starting on the pit straight, cars will be barreling down this (almost) perfectly straight line of tarmac until the absolute whiplash-inducing hellscape that is turn 1. Here, you might go for an overtake - but whoops! It's another small radius corner that forces you to slow down and risk losing your place.

We arrive at yet another straight, but don't count on any chases or overtakes down here. There are no DRS zones on the Snore Ring so all that will happen is the widening of the gap between fast and slow cars. As the hairpin of turn 4 approaches, you might have the narrowest chance of an overtake, but that's only if you were lucky enough to follow the car ahead.

You'd best hope you got your overtake in turn 4, because turn 5 is too big to out-brake your rival, and the section from turns 6 to 12 was designed with the express intent to kill any momentum and create dirty air.

Assuming you've somehow made it through all that, you have a dirty air generator in the form of turn 13 before turns 14 and 15 force you to slam the brakes. As drivers race down the two final straights - provided that nothing happens at the chicane, it's onto turn 18, a nightmare of a final corner with inspiration taken from Indianapolis.

Design Philosophy (or lack thereof)

In addition to making a snore-fest, I also wanted the track to feel artificial in all the wrong ways, so I exclusively used straight lines and circles. I'd draw a straight where I wanted, and to link it to another straight, I'd trace the outside of a roughly-perfect circle.

[azureamalgam3301]

Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" (2010)

[azureamalgam3301]

Snow Day

Photos originally taken 20/11/2024

[azureamalgam3301]

Linux - Why didn't I do this sooner?

Recently, I decided that Windows 11 was a bit of a slog. I'd grown tired of the GUI, was facing performance issues, and ultimately just wanted a change. So I flashed a USB with Ubuntu, created a 1TB partition, and installed it.

Why didn't I do this sooner? My computer feels brand new now. I click on things and they just work, no excessive wait times in sight. For all the shit Linux gets, I've found that it's a surprisingly comprehensive and out-of-the-box experience with minimal setup required. And gaming ain't even half bad, either. There's a shocking amount of Linux-compatible games that perform just as well as they did on Windows.

This is changed how I look at my computer, and that sounds cliche but it's the truth. I'm now thinking about making this my primary OS and keeping a smaller Windows partition solely for anything I can't get running on Ubuntu.

[azureamalgam3301]

🌟 A Plea from Gaza: Rola’s Story 🌟

Hello, my name is Rola, and I am a mother of two children living in the Gaza Strip. Our lives were once filled with love, laughter, and dreams for the future. But everything changed on October 7th, when the war shattered not only our home but our entire world.

That morning, my family and I were enjoying coffee together on the balcony. Out of nowhere, an explosion erupted, shaking our home violently. My husband and son ran for cover, falling over each other in panic, while I stood frozen, still holding my cup, unable to process the chaos around me. When I looked out the window, I saw that our neighbor’s house, once filled with life, had been reduced to rubble. Ambulances rushed to the scene as people scrambled to rescue the injured and pull bodies from the debris.

The bombings didn’t stop. At night, the rain poured heavily, and the cold seeped into our bones. I stayed awake, covering my children to keep them warm and praying for their safety. But safety is an illusion here. Another explosion shattered the night, and our neighbors’ home was destroyed. Their children, who had been sleeping peacefully under a blanket, were found lifeless, their cover soaked in blood.

I looked at my children with tears in my eyes and thought, How can I protect you? We had to flee our home with nothing but the clothes on our backs. We left behind my children’s toys, their clothes, and their beautiful bedroom. Everything we had worked so hard to build is gone.

Our Current Reality Now, we are displaced and living in a nightmare. Food is scarce, and prices are unimaginably high—$10 for a kilo of sugar! The fear of death hangs over us constantly. My children deserve a life of joy and hope, not one defined by fear and loss. Why can’t we live like everyone else—go to work, visit family, and watch our children play in safety? Why do our children have to grow up surrounded by death and destruction?

How You Can Help I am pleading for your kindness to help us rebuild our lives. We need your support to: 💔 Rebuild our home, so my children can feel safe again. 🌍 Evacuate from Gaza, seeking a future where my family can live with dignity. 🩺 Provide urgent medical care for my children, who need protection from this nightmare.

Even the smallest donation can make a difference. If you can’t donate, please share my story. Every share brings us closer to hope.

What Your Support Means Your kindness is not just about helping us survive; it’s about giving us a chance to dream again. To rebuild what we’ve lost and to ensure my children have a future filled with possibilities, not fear.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. Your support means the world to us. Let’s work together to rebuild hope, one step at a time.

🌸 Please share our story and consider donating today. 🌸

Together, we can create a better tomorrow. 🌍❤️

[azureamalgam3301]

Something I've been working on. I'm not quite done with this piece, but I feel that I have nothing to lose in sharing this version.

Addendum 24/12/2024: It's just occurred to me that there isn't actually a download from here. So, click here on the off chance you want to download this.

[azureamalgam3301]

The "Nobody" Hour

Song can be downloaded at https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1369680

[azureamalgam3301]

Scout Adrift

I don't animate very often. Thought I'd try something simple.

[azureamalgam3301]

Fall Dawn

[azureamalgam3301]

Outmatched - Take Two

Decided to make a couple of adjustments, and hopefully those paid off. I figured that it'd be better to swap Soundwave and Shockwave around for this version and to try and fill the image a little more.

Yes, there's a continuity error in the image. I made do with the models I could find on the workshop.

[azureamalgam3301]

Low-Flying Osprey

I was of two minds as to whether or not I should post this, but I figure that I might as well.

A few days ago, at about 14:30, I spotted this Osprey flying over me. It was extremely low, such that the photograph does not do it justice. It was also considerably loud. Not deafeningly so, but louder than the average overhead aircraft.

[azureamalgam3301]

Outmatched

Some Fall Of Cybertron fanart that I made in SFM. I figured it was about time that I got back into the groove of making 3D images.

Why the moon? Why not?

I'll probably make some changes later but I feel proud of this considering I've not used the software in quite some time.

[azureamalgam3301]

September Moon Phases

A small sample of photographs I took of the moon during late September.

Waxing Gibbous

Full Moon

Waning Gibbous

Quarter

Waning Crescent

Miscellaneous Edits

A little collective of edits I made using my photographs

[azureamalgam3301]

Colliery Expedition

Today, I made a journey by bicycle to an area where the remains of a colliery can be found out in the open.

I've been looking for places to actually take the bicycle since I got it. A car park is all fun and games until you've covered every square inch of it and have nothing to do but go back and forth. I wanted a change, and after finding some coordinates online for the open pit of a disused colliery, I settled on my target.

I encountered a few difficulties, namely disparity between my GPS and the actual route, some unexpected uphill sections, and a portion of the route that was reduced to mud, but I finally got to the colliery, and this is what I saw.

The coordinates were right on, and the location was exactly as I expected. It was cool. And it was also shockingly close to the exit of the park it was in.

It seemed that the pit itself wasn't the only subject of floodwaters. The tunnels in the walls also appeared to hold water, despite being higher than ground level. I'm guessing there was some unseen blockage keeping the water trapped.

I'm guessing these statues represent the average person back when the colliery would've been active. The clothes they were given definitely seem to be from an earlier time.

I sat down on a nearby bench (off-screen, opposite the statues) and let the moment soak in. There were some passing trains nearby, and their noise was shockingly fitting. It wasn't abrasive but instead calming.

There was, however, something off when I got there. It was still.

I was only a two minute walk from both the main path of the park and the car park, but I only saw four people in the time I was there, all passing by rather than looking at the pit, and all on the high path rather than at my level. For some time, the only noise was rainwater running into the entrance.

It gets weirder, though. I get my phone out to upload the pictures I took, but the signal in that area is so abysmal that I can't even place a phone call, so I give up. Then I hear what sounds like a music box. It was incredibly brief, and faint, but it didn't come from my phone and there wasn't anybody I could see when I was there. Needless to say that I took this oddity as my cue to get back on my bike and leave.

But anyway, I successfully journeyed to the colliery and took some photos that I'm reasonably proud of.

[azureamalgam3301]

Dream - Bad Doctor

So, since I'm at a loss for things to write here but also very much want to start blogging, and I recently discussed a dream, I figured I might as well divulge some more dreams that I find noteworthy. Today's dream is Bad Doctor, or the tale of that time my mind tried to piece together a sitcom.

The dream picks up with the end of a television show and a segue into advertising. I'm not really paying attention until this one show comes up; the titular Bad Doctor. As the name implies, it was a medical sitcom that focused on a doctor, but he wasn't incompetent like the title would have you think.

The protagonist's name was Francis Bad, and the whole shtick was that Francis would be really good at his job, but his colleagues would mock or even gaslight him purely because his surname was Bad. That was the whole premise; people laughing at a random dude because he had an unfortunate surname. And in the dream's world, this actually had a lot of hype. Worse yet, that advert segued into a documentary about the real Francis Bad. Yes, this sitcom was literally a recounting of somebody's life but with comedy injected into its horrible moments.

How does the mind even put something like this together?

[azureamalgam3301]

Dream - Mars In The Sky

I guess I've been too focused on prepping my camera and waiting for the moon to show up because nighttime photography is now permeating my dreams. At least the dream offered something cooler than I'd hope to see normally.

So the dream starts off unassuming. I leave when the sky is dark to try and set up my photo gear and take shots of the moon. But as I'm walking out, my mother follows me out the door and points towards something in the sky. I turn around and it's Mars, hovering in the sky and visible without any equipment. It looked like it was closer to Earth than the moon was, and with nothing more than my camera, I could zoom in with enough clarity to make out craters and the ice caps.

I do wonder what the physical repercussions would be if Mars actually took the moon's place in the sky. Would it be catastrophe? Would we just learn to live with a red "moon"?

Normally I don't know how the elements of my dream come together, but this one was self evident. I kept getting recommendations pertaining to the temporary mini-moon we have on account of me searching things about space, so that's likely the culprit. I reckon Mars was just the first object that came to mind.