#Can't log in though so I can't source edit

[humanmorph]

I don't remember my fatt.wiki password........ : (

[catt-nuevenor]

The Future

Time to establish what's going to happen from this point forwards.

The vast majority of you have been exceptionally patient this last year, and for that you have my deepest thanks. You've given me the time to not only write a book, but edit it, and send it off to literary agents, something I would have long given up on doing without the continued support of those who enjoy my writing.

Now that the book is off doing the rounds independently, it's time I got back to Myrk Mire.

Originally Myrk Mire was built in ChoiceScript, a scripting language created by the Choice of Games company. Choice of Games control what is done with their script, understandably, they own it. This does pose some restrictions. I can't, for example, release any paid material built using ChoiceScript unless it is directly through their publishing label. If I do publish under their label, I maintain IP or Intellectual Property Rights, however I also grant them the exclusive rights under perpetual license to publish the multiple choice game 'electronically'.

Source: Choice of Games.com

As you can see from the outline above, they do make exceptions for stories published in non-competing formats, and for sequels, prequels, and spin-offs. However, traditional publishing houses might require stricter control over IP, distribution, and exclusivity. It will only become more and more complicated as things progress, and being locked into a perpetual license agreement of any nature is not a decision to make lightly.

As some of you may be sensing from the tone of all this so far, I'm going to be moving Myrk Mire away from Choice of Games and ChoiceScript, and into a new medium/format.

After tinkering, and trialling with a few alternatives, I've decided to go with Renpy. Renpy, while largely used for visual novel style games and stories, provides a very workable framework for interactive fiction, and is an Open Source script, it isn't beholden to publishing contracts, licence cost, or exclusivity.

I'm not going to be diving into transferring Myrk Mire right away, it's a huge piece of writing, in an entirely different scripting language, and as previously stated, there are a lot of changes I want to implement with the cast. Instead, I'm creating a trial story: One Háḟest Day. My Patrons have been aware of all this for about a month or so, and have already seen some previews.

One Háḟest Day takes place in Aldmirham before the events of Myrk Mire, around the time the Main Character and the Wanderers first arrived in town. The reader will have the choice to follow one of the romanceable characters through a single day, with opportunities to explore their lives and relationships before the Main Character and Child come along. I hope it will provide a proving ground for the changes that previously caused debate, and an opportunity for people to try out the new format and interface.

My plan is to distribute One Háḟest Day through Itch.io, working with their early access framework and voluntary payments for such as soon as one of the character routes is ready to play from beginning to end, updating regularly with the other characters as they too are completed, and with additional features as required. Once the full game is complete, I will release a separate full build with a set minimum price that can be discussed with the community as we move forwards.

At the second, I'm aiming for a web hosted format and a desktop/laptop downloadable format, with phone compatibility to come later down the line once things are stable.

I will post production updates and info when I can to tumblr, though a lot of what I'm doing now is very python coding heavy, so perhaps not that interesting?

I've included some screenshots below of very early development, featuring a Character Log and Word Log that I hope will allow readers to more easily navigate the story. I'm toying with the idea of having a Mysteries Log as well that will keep track of snippets of information gleaned from each character's route, but that can be a tinkering feature for now.

Let me know your thoughts, concerns, or excitement, though do keep all messages objective and polite.

[calyxmanta]

You know sometimes shit will suck. Sometimes you're gonna have to thug it out at 4:15 am watching literally me edits to try to stoke the daydream fire that's been slowly getting dimmer since your main source of fuel was ripped from you with the speed of a knife and with the power of a punch, and now it's real dark out but it never really hurt to throw some more sticks in, so you continue scrolling. Sometimes things will suck badly but you're powerless, and you'll need to stare off into space for a few weeks on end until things slightly change and then when they stagnate again you just have to push through and find time to write little stories and read about all sorts of people in all sorts of events and that keeps the furnace going even though you've listened to these tracks a hundred thousand times and you've played these games a few orders of magnitude more than that.

And sometimes you get a few hours to kill and shoot the shit with your friends online and it's sort of like a generator I guess. What it provides is great but you know you can't keep that going 24/7 they'll get bored of the bit or have to log off for the night or or or whatever else.

And sometimes when all of this has happened to you and things are getting better too slowly for you and your brain's taste you have to. Um.

sorry. i don't know where I'm going with this. we love eridan ampora

[erigold13261]

Dream from 7/9/2024

After my Mahito dream I just posted about, my dream turned into a setting where I was like a pre-teen girl who was an older sibling to another girl. My younger sister was much more appreciated and basically the golden child where I couldn't do anything right because if I had anything less than 100 then I was seen as a failure.

It was a clear sign of favoritism which broke me when I got a 96 on a test and told my sister not to tell our parents so I could explain first there were trick questions, but she didn't listen, told them and they told me how disappointed they are and lectured me even though my sister was shit at school.

I put my all into my schooling and had no friends to the point I felt so isolated that this issue was what broke the camel's back and I had gone into the gun safe my father had and took out a gun to contemplate giving my parents their perfect family without their problem child.

But then I put the gun back and instead packed up a secret bag full of clothes and other stuff I would need like money I stole from my parents' room, some pans and tarps, a knife, things that would allow me to survive in the woods for months since apparently I knew how to live in the outdoors from camping trips or something.

I also took one of my mom's unused perfumes that was way in the back so if my parent's used scent dogs I could mask my scent with perfume to stay out longer.

Anyway, I went to school by walking but instead of going into school I actually just turned around and started walking with some of these younger kids who were going home for some reason? I don't know why, it was the morning so it's not like they were half-day students, plus they were younger and shouldn't have been walking alone but they were and I tried using them as cover.

Unfortunately my father had told the school I was being punished or something and so the guards took note of me leaving and started to follow me from a distance. I realized they were doing this and was able to break eyesight by turning the corner and going down an alleyway. Then I hid my bag somewhere and jumped into this weird ass pool that looked like a minecraft house was built on it so that I could stay under water as the security walked by.

For some reason the security officer went in the pool too to look for me. He didn't find me but it was very nerve wracking and I was struggling to hold my breath. He ended up leaving to go look for me somewhere else.

Afterwards, I went home to change my clothes and get my bag as well as some other essentials I couldn't grab with my parents home. Some pots and pans, a matchbook, probably some other stuff I can't remember at this moment.

Then I went and walked to the shopping center, went to a sports area and bought a small but good tent and played off being alone to the employees by saying my dad let me pick my own tent and stuff to be a big girl while he was in the store next door (and pretended to be a rich kid or something like "do you know my father" so that they wouldn't be wondering why my dad just gave me so much money to go into a store alone).

And from there I went and got a bus ticket or a train ticket and just rode it to the outside of the city. During the ride I took a few stops off, changed my clothes while in a bathroom. Once I got to one that had a window I could get out of, I cut my hair with either the knife I had or some scissors I brought.

Pretty sure I just went out the window at this point, but I did have a reverse memory (meaning later in the dream I revisiting this part) and went into the janitor's closet to hide for the night. Though that was a later edition to the dream and so I don't count it as canon. I just went out the window to leave.

I walked to the forest and made sure to find a dense area that still had a relatively close water source near by and started to set up my area.

I made sure I had a tarp for wood, set that on a small hill so that any wood I get wouldn't get water logged. Also covered the top in leaves and branches so it wasn't seen easily.

I dug a big pit and put leaves and other insulation into it then set up my tent on top so it was kinda below the ground so I had less to cover with leaves and branches when hiding the tent from others (it was also a green color instead of the blue like the tarp).

And I basically set up camp, making sure I had two seasonal outfits that stayed clean so when I needed to go back to the city/civilization to get some supplies with the rest of the cash I had, I wouldn't look like a homeless kid.

I did also get some hair bleach and bleached my hair using the river (I made sure to do this downstream so that I wouldn't contaminate the water I was drinking from, but I still put bleach in the water so that probably wasn't the best for the wildlife).

And yea, I had my whole area set up and changed my appearance. I made a bow from some twine and branches that I peeled and dried over my fire (which I made a version of that was in the ground. Just looked it up and it was like the Dakota Hole Fire if you look up scout fire pits. I wanted to make sure my fire wasn't going to be seen by others easily, especially at night when I was cooking).

I made sure my food was away from my base in case there were bears. I had a filter for water plus some extra cheese cloth and storage containers in case my filter broke (I made sure to also boil the water before putting it into the filter).

Whenever I met someone on the trail I told them I was camping with my family and just taking a walk. Though that lie got less and less believable as time went on as I looked less and less presentable.

I was actually able to live like this for a while. A couple of months, up until I was found by a couple that noticed I looked like the girl that went missing a while ago because my hair had grown and the roots of my hair were now showing.

But going back to when I left. The security guards continued to pursue me for a bit before giving up and radioing back to the school I was missing (you know, instead of immediately radioing that I left while they looked for me so the school could inform my parents right away and someone could have possibly gone home and caught me before I left, but that's the school system for you).

I was gone by the time my parents got home, and they were so upset with themselves because I left a note saying they can finally have their perfect family or something like that. I think it was like "Now you can have your wanted daughter only." No, it wasn't that, but it was along those lines. It was shorter I think, but same vibe.

Anyway, they did actually try to use scent dogs as well as surveillance video, but the perfume plus me going in and out of restrooms and changing my appearance, as well as only using cash, not cards, really threw everyone off.

I don't know exactly what happened with my family because my dream didn't really focus on them as it was focusing on me in the woods. But it did show me that my English teacher did have a diary project going on for the year (it was late in the school year) and my family wanted to see if I wrote anything in there.

Funnily enough, my teacher never looked in the diary because she literally told us she wouldn't. This was supposed to be a diary for us and she was just going to keep it safe. I didn't believe her, so when you read my diary it was stuff like "I know you're gonna read this, but I'll be truthful anyway" or things like being super vague like "I had THAT dream again" so that the teacher wouldn't be able to tell my parents things I wrote down (I even apologized to the teacher in my diary for being vague and explained that my parents don't like me so I don't want them knowing some of the dreams I had).

Because of how I wrote things, they couldn't figure out where I would go, but they did realize just how much they fucked me up by giving my sister preferential treatment while always pushing me to be better and better (I think they had the idea that I was the older sibling and so I needed to be a good role model, but it just broke me in the end).

So yea, I was alone for months, from the like late spring to late fall/early winter. I had actually planned to be out this long and had brought a seasonal change of clothes, along with a jacket, and by this time had figured out how to use hide from the animals I killed (mainly small animals like rabbits, birds, and squirrels) so I had warm insulation and make-shift clothes for the colder months.

I was only found because, like I said, my hair had grown and my roots were starting to show, so a couple found me in the woods, a couple that I have met before on multiple occasions as they frequent the woods and they no longer believed my story that I was just camping with my family, and they called the police.

When the police got me, I was taken from my little hovel and brought to the police station. I don't think I was immediately reunited with my parents, but by this time in the dream I was starting to wake up IRL so I was gaining more control which is usually the end of the fun parts of my dream.

Pretty sure I was just depressed that I was back and continued to say how my parents didn't love me and I was just giving them the life they wanted with their actual wanted child. I don't remember what the CPS person said, or what my parents said, but they were broken by me leaving the way I did.

I don't think I ever got a reaction of what my sister felt. I think my dream was gonna make her mad at me for leaving and fucking up her life. I don't feel like she was going to be sad I was gone or worried about me. So yea, that part of the dream I never really got a resolution for at all.

But by this point I was awake and just trying to keep remembering my dream so I could write it down here.

[collectedoverspread]

Things I Hate About the Internet: When the Internet Archive Can't Archive

When I find something posted on the Web that seems important, one of the first things I do is to check if it's saved in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Fortunately, sometimes it's already there. Unfortunately, sometimes the actual content isn't saved.

The early days of the Web were simple. If you wanted to save a page, all you had to do was download it, find any external resources it needed (like images), and download those as well. This is the kind of page that the Wayback Machine knows best. Nowadays, though, you'll often find that the traditional method only gets you so far. Instead of the actual content, you might get:

A login page: Of course, websites that require a login aren't new, but there seems to be a trend of "locking down" social-media sites that were previously public. Twitter is a prime example of this: It used to be very easy to archive, but after Musk's takeover it's hit-or-miss at best. Some sites, like Facebook, aren't strictly login-only but will require a login when you submit them to the Internet Archive. Both of these sites are used to publish statements of cultural significance, so it's quite disheartening to think that they can't be archived easily. (Update [5 June 2024]: I'd like to highlight Google Docs as well, because it's another place where people publish culturally significant statements, and also because there's an easy way to make it much easier to archive. Google Docs doesn't require a login when you submit a document to the Internet Archive, but it often shows an error message that prevents you from reading the document. If you share something on Google Docs, consider using the "publish to Web" feature, which will make it much easier to archive. Note that this is not the same as simply sharing a link to a public document. The "publish to Web" URL will end in "/pubhtml" rather than "/edit".)

A blank or partial page with code to load the actual content: I remember when "progressive enhancement" was a thing and "people who turn off JavaScript in their browser" was a demographic that websites actually took into account. This idea seems to be dying off though, and the ability to archive pages is suffering as a result. The Internet Archive says it can run JavaScript to archive pages, but this doesn't always work. Bluesky is a great example of this: You can view posts without logging in, but if you try to archive a public post all you get is a sort of "loading" screen (although the text of the post is in the source code at least). Its blog does this weird thing where you have to click in order for the content to show up. (Incidentally, archive.today handles both of these a lot better, so consider making it your first choice for archiving Bluesky posts.)

A media player without the media: This is actually a specific case of the previous item. If you try to archive the page for a YouTube video, for example, all you'll get is the player which uses JavaScript to load the actual video data. The Wayback Machine actually does have some YouTube videos archived, but those are few and far between and it's clearly some extra process (although the process itself isn't clear to me). I will point out that the Internet Archive's video collections also have some YouTube videos, but these are separate from the Wayback Machine and not quite as simple to search for.

Now, to be fair, a lot of the Web is still the kind that you can archive easily. But it's not a coincidence that all of the examples I gave are from major social-media sites; many of them are particularly unsuitable for archiving. It's frustrating that much of what happens online takes place on these platforms, without any good way to preserve it.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I bought some old Scholastic books from the 90s, and I am tempted to send in the order form

I never got to do this as a kid, my mom always said putting checks in the mail was a scam, but I'm an adult and I REALLY wanna know what'll happen if I send in for 22 Goosebumps books at 1994 prices.

The most likely scenario is they'd return my check uncashed, maybe with a courtesy form letter saying that the offer is no longer valid. There's a remote chance they might send me a couple of books at today's price, using my check to cover however many it can afford, though I wouldn't count on it. I think that if I wrote a funny letter to go along with it, they might honor the whole form as a publicity stunt, like that time Bethesda let a guy buy a Fallout collectors edition with a boxful of recycled bottle caps. It would make a fun PR story, something they could promote on social media, the sort of thing you'd see on some local news station, a fluff piece with a headline like "Please Allow 1006 to 1008 Weeks for Delivery."

I heard a story about a guy who bought a giant bag of m&ms, and he would take two of them and squeeze them together until one broke, and he'd eat the loser. The winner would go on to be squeezed against another one, and then that winner would go on again, through the entire bag until he found the quote-unquote "strongest" m&m. He then sent that one in to the Mars chocolate company like it was a winning racehorse they could use to breed stronger candies in the future, and they sent him a coupon for another huge bag of m&ms as a "consultancy fee," thanking him for his efforts.

Companies love stupid little stunts like this, but they only work once. They can't just let everybody cash in on it, so they let it happen once for the cameras and then never again. I've heard stories of people inviting celebrities to their weddings, and occasionally they'll show up, but they couldn't possibly make it a regular thing. I'm sure this happens to Scholastic all the time; they've produced literally HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of books over the decades! I'm sure every household in America has at least one. There exist more order forms than copies of any given book. The vast majority of them go unused because kids don't want to tear the pages out, but I'm sure it was (until the age of smart phones) a steady source of income for the company. That's why I would need a funny letter to go along with it, something to contextualize it, to let them know that I'm not just some jerk trying to cheat them out of a few bucks, but a long time fan trying to recapture the spark of childhood they instilled in me so many years ago.

I know this is a long shot. For all 22 books on this form, it would cost $66.40 (plus $2.00 to cover shipping and handling), which in today's money would be lucky to fetch half as many; they're all made of pulp, designed to be cheap and mass produceable, but not $3 a pop cheap, not in 2021. I really think the first scenario is most likely, "return to sender," fluff piece be damned. I doubt I'm the first person to ever think of sending in a 30 year old order form, and they probably have a stock letter on hand specifically for this type of scenario; "looks like this offer has expired, but you can feel free to log onto our website and order as many books as you want!" For all I know they don't even have that PO Box in Jefferson City, Missouri anymore.

What do you guys think; is it worth a shot? Dare I send away seventy bucks to parts unknown? I kinda want to see what happens, even if it's nothing special. I'm 24, I've done stupider things, probably will again in the future, so I may as well have some fun with it every now and then.

Certainty of failure. Small chance of success. What am I waiting for?

Maybe I'll date the check to 1995 and blame Bill Clinton's USPS for it getting lost.

[infiniteglitterfall]

Okay, EVERYONE, listen.

This feels like roughly the one hundredth time that I've seen someone on this earth complain about the antisemitism on Wikipedia. And I need us all to understand just one thing:

WE ARE WIKIPEDIA!!!!!!!!

Every single one of us has just as much power to edit that freaking page and put in the information from the Holocaust Encyclopedia as whoever fucked it up did.

You don't even need to make a Wikipedia account.

(But it's easier to keep track of what you change, and discuss changes with people, if you do.)

You can add anything you can back up with a citation.

(You can, in fact, also add things you CAN'T back up with a citation. As I'm sure we've all noticed. And I might as well point out here that you can ALSO add things you can't back up, and put in citations that DO NOT BACK UP WHAT YOU SAID.

You shouldn't. And hopefully, people like me will notice and change it. But you CAN.

My point here is actually that when you're doing research about something important and complicated, you should always click through to see what the source cited really says.

Because frequently, someone will be wrong about either what they're writing, or whether their source backs it up. This happens in academic papers too. Critical thinking is hard.)

You write whatever you want. You type the period. Then you type in your citation.

Under the cut, I'll show you how. It's really easy. Or you can use Wikipedia's guide!

It even lets you preview your changes before you finish, so you know if you're making a mess.

And there's a place where you can briefly explain why you're editing it. Like "adding details about Nazi connections," or "correcting punctuation."

And yes. Not all of us can edit every article on Wikipedia; "controversial" topics are frequently locked so that only "extended-confirmed" editors can change them. (Which just means "people who are logged in and have made at least 500 edits.")

But you can join in the discussions on those articles.

And on Wikipedia, "they're too Zionist!" is not an acceptable argument.

Sometimes people "watch" an article to get notified when it changes. (You can do this too!)

Sometimes they do that so they can revert the exact kind of change you're there to make.

But they have to put in a reason for reverting it. Which means you can also change it back, argue them out of it, or make changes to make it work. (example under the cut!)

The way you add a citation/reference looks like html gibberish salad. But it basically goes:

put in a tag that says "ref," so it automatically gets added to the list of references cited at the bottom of the Wikipedia page;

put in "cite" and what you're citing, like a book, a video, a website, a journal. Getting the type right doesn't really seem to be a big deal. In this case, you want to put "web."

And then there are a fuckton of different things you can add, which get separated by pipes. Pipes are that long vertical line that's probably above your enter key: |

You need the URL. That's... kind of all you need.

pro tip: going back in to add more details to the citation later counts as more edits!

Even though you only NEEEEED the URL, it's really good to add other details like the title of the page (if there is one), the publisher (Holocaust Encyclopedia), the day you looked at it (because websites can change over time), and it's especially nice to go dig up an archived version of the site and the date of the archive. Because links break.

oh yeah and my favorite thing to add: a quote from your source, so that people don't have to click through to verify what it says! this can be a great way to add more information that seems too long for the Wikipedia article.

So, broken up with lots of space for easier reading, it looks like this. We'll pretend we're doing one on Heinrich Himmler, because I have no idea who anon was looking at:

<ref> {{cite web | url = https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/heinrich-himmler | access-date = November 19, 2024}} </ref>

That's a very short "I just found this url, today" version. Here's a more thorough citation:

<ref>{{cite web | url = https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/heinrich-himmler | access-date = November 19, 2024 | publisher = Holocaust Encyclopedia | title = Heinrich Himmler | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20241008214021/https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/heinrich-himmler | archive-date = October 8, 2024 | quote = As Reichsführer SS, Himmler received authority directly from Hitler to carry out ideological policies that the laws of the state might not permit. This ideologically rooted “Führer authority” enabled authorization of indefinite incarceration and mass murder.}}</ref>

I bet someone out there even knows of a website where you can paste in the url you're citing, and get all that code automatically generated for you.

Oh - here's my example of getting into a silly debate about something that should be cut and dried, and changing shit to make it work!

I came across the page for GUPS, the General Union of Palestinian Students. It made the ludicrous statement that the group OFFICIALLY started in the 1950s, but had been around since the 1920s.

I was like: ok, there's no place that says this other than their cited source, a now-gone website for the San Francisco State University chapter of GUPS. There were no universities in Palestine in the 1920s. This is clearly not true.

I took that part out. Someone REVERTED IT, and told me that all I'd proven was that it wasn't logical, not that the citation was wrong!

We argued back and forth a bit. I ended up finding a fuckton of Arabic-language sources with more information, and showing that none of them talked about it starting in the 1920s. This person said, "no, that source says it started in the 1950s, and evolved from this other group that started in the same Egyptian university, which had started in the 1920s! It never said that it had started in PALESTINE in the '20s!"

I haven't even dealt with that one yet lmao. Normally, I would probably just demand a source that showed the original group had started in the 1920s, and then maybe change it to like "it evolved from this other non-palestinian student group that started in 192X."

But the thing is... while I was doing all this digging, I found soooo much information about how GUPS was connected to the PLO. How it had become a part of the PLO when the PLO was an active terrorist organization. All kinds of crap.

And you can fucking bet that all of it is going into the article.

This thing is going to end up being a detailed piece about every terrible thing GUPS and the PLO have ever done.

It's going to be beautiful. And nobody will ever be able to argue that any of it is incorrect. It will go from "this is a normal club that goes sooo far back, it's considered the first Palestinian group ever" to "this is a normal terrorist club that was rooted in the movement to terrorize Jews, like in the 30s when X happened, like in the late 30s when Y happened, like this series of PLO massacres in this decade, like--"

went to wikipedia to fact check somethings about a guy from ww2 era history and it had been edited beyond belief to erase this person's connections with nazi germany. the second google result is the holocaust encyclopedia page all about his horrible crimes in the nazi regime. but on wikipeida, his description is vague and mild and barely mentions it. it's so worrying. I hate it. what happens when gen z only reads wikipedia pages and denounces any sources that are "too zionist" like a holocaust museum's encyclopedia? thank g-d for jewish historians, what would we do without them, but i'm so so scared that our history is going to be rewritten because no one will listen to us on our own history.

.

[rabbivole]

damn i was not expecting to get a bunch of good suggestions at like 2am. you're earth's strongest warriors. here are my reviews

clipchamp but it's an exe: i knew it had some kind of ms integration because i logged into it with my ~microsoft account~ but had no idea there was an downloadable version in the windows store. unfortunately this version also limits framerate. i am mildly annoyed that it limits framerate without even telling you. anyway bummer, i got excited

capcut: this thing evokes like the same heebie-jeebies as clipchamp. dodging prompts to 'start with AI magic' or some shit like i'm in the matrix. managed to find 'just fade these into each other' (they call it 'mix'???) after digging through a bunch of really wild instagram filters and My Movie.wmv-ass transitions. that said it did get the job done: it gave me output with identical framerate and resolution. though the file size is double the file size of the two clips i put together combined, which feels weird, but i don't actually know anything about video compression. it's probably fine but tumblr's video backend is held together with spit and tape and i'm nervous about giving it stuff any larger than i have to.

unfortunately i think web apps are just Like This now. you can't use the internet without getting the Stink on you anymore. going on the computer used to be cool and they ruined it

kapwing: oooohhh my god this ai persona thing is so weird WHAT IS THIIIIISSSSSS

sorry. sorry. i got distracted

the fade in this one is 'cross dissolve'. it's possible i just don't know what this shit is called. anyway it preserves framerate, but unfortunately the free version doesn't give me 1080p and, more critically, it adds a watermark. sorry kapwing that's gonna be a no from me

shotcut: now THIS one has the sauce honestly. i hear 'free and open-source' and my ears perk up. open-source software generally has the most miserable UX you've seen since 1996 but they're the only motherfuckers i trust anymore. and yeah this is a little ugly but it's reasonably intuitive. it's got some helpful text, the features page told me how to fade two clips together, and i was able to blunder my way into what i wanted to do pretty easily. i wish i had known about this when i was editing together shit for that video game course

AND it's well compressed, somehow; i dunno what magic it did but the output is dinky despite not visibly losing any quality. 10/10 no notes, this is Normal Software for Normal People, everybody give it up for FOSS. i'm still never using gimp though

davinci resolve: i was gonna check it out just to see how it was different, because this too seems like Real Software, but it wanted me to register an account and i frowned and decided i'd stick with shotcut. i'm cranky and old and i can't just be creating accounts willy-nilly anymore. i already get two suspicious login attempts on my razer account per week. i haven't used a razer product in 4 years

anyway crisis solved, thank you for the help. i have now used 3 new web apps in one night though so please stay tuned for the 'my identity has been stolen' post

the middle of the night is not the time to ask this so i will probably reblog it tomorrow. this is all predicted on somebody following me who has ideas here which. who knows

i need something very simple to edit video with. when i say very simple i mean i'm not really doing anything any more complicated than 'slam these clips together and fade between them'.

in the past i have used clipchamp because it is a free website and 'slam these clips together and fade between them' takes like 60 seconds to accomplish. unfortunately it seems to cap framerate at 30 or something, and that's kind of a dealbreaker. i don't need anything fancy but i do need to retain source framerate and ideally source resolution. presumably if i gave clipchamp money they'd give me 60fps but I Will Not Be Doing That.

does anybody have a recommendation? actual software tends to be horribly expensive but if it's easy to pirate then that's fine. i'm skeptical of adobe shit being easy to pirate but i'm open to trying.

tyvm

[draconicsplendor]

Oh, hi! I can help!

So many of the game mechanics make no sense (why does digging a 2x2 hole and filling opposite corners with water make an infinite source that won't run dry? Why are sand blocks, gravel blocks, and mobs the only things affected by gravity? WHAT DO YOU MEAN STRING CRAFTS WOOL AND THE COMPASSES DON'T POINT NORTH?)

Unfortunately dropped items disappear after a few minutes, but I've explained some other stuff under the cut:

Minecraft Tutorial from a Very Casual Player

Bed

You've already got a shelter, crafting table, and furnace, which is great!

Your next course of action should be making a bed.

You can use the string you've been gathering to make 3 wool blocks, which can used along with 3 wooden planks to make a white bed. But it's easier to kill sheep for their wool instead, since they drop entire blocks of the stuff. If you had iron, I'd suggest shearing them, but most people can't afford to be humane this early.

[Insert crafting recipe image)

You should target white sheep, since those are the easiest to find, and you need all 3 wool blocks to be the same colour when you make a bed. We can dye it a fun colour later on, but for now, a plain white bed will serve you just fine.

You can right-click the bed at any time of day to respawn near the bed when you die, and skip the night. I'm assuming you know this (Kevin is referring to CallMeKevin, right?), but trust me, new players die A LOT. You'll thank me later.

Lighting

Monsters can spawn in your bases if they aren't well-lit. It used to be light level 7 or below, but now they'll only spawn in complete darkness (level 0). I'm telling you, kids these days have it too easy. No more being chased out of your own strip mines.

Wooden pickaxes can mine coal, and I'm assuming you have one if you've already made a furnace. Combine your coal with a stick (which is crafted with two wooden planks of any type) and you have a few torches that will never ever burn out.

[Insert image]

You can also use wooden planks, sticks, or your old wooden tools to smelt logs into charcoal and craft torches that way, but most players don't, because burning logs feels a lot more tedious than mining (even though it's not). And it's usually better to save wood to use as a building material or emergency fuel at this stage in the game.

Put a couple torches in your base, and a couple scattered around it to avoid morning jumpscares.

Tools

Now it's time to make a wooden pickaxe, shovel, and axe (or 3 of each to be safe, they break quickly). Shovels aren't as necessary, but there's a lot of dirt and gravel underground, your hand is slow, and all tools break faster if they aren't used for their specific purposes.

Gather some stone and wood to make sticks, and make yourself some tools. Stone shovels and axes can break all the same stuff as their wooden counterparts, but they're both faster and more durable, and your shiny new stone pickaxe can mine copper and iron.

Ignore the copper for now, and mine down to anywhere between Y=24-Y=56 for some iron. But Y=16 has the most.

If you're playing Java Edition (Windows, Mac, Linux), you can press F3 to enter the debug menu, which has the XYZ coordinates and the coordinates of the block your feet are mostly in:

The scribbles cover the unimportant info about my computer. I find the block coords easier to read so they're what I highlighted.

If the debug menu doesn't open, try alt+F3, or temporarily switch every function key to its alternate by pressing fn+esc and THEN F3. If you use the last one, it can be switched back by pressing fn+esc again. My computer's function keys double as volume and brightness controls, so I have to switch often.

Complicated? I know. But it's easier on Bedrock Edition (which is on every platform, including Windows, Mac and Linux, but you can play cross-platform with console and mobile players. Just go into the world settings and enable this:

Which is gonna put this beaut on your screen:

This may make you think of Cartesian coordinates, where Y is the north/south coordinate and Z is the up/down coordinate, but you are wrong. Everybody is wrong in the block game. The Y coordinate goes up and down for reasons not even Jeb knows.

Or perhaps he does, but the knowledge would make us too powerful...

Farming

GOD I'm getting tired. Just smelt whatever raw iron you find, make a bucket with 3 of the ingots, dig trenches for the irrigation every 2 rows or so, use the bucket to fill the trenches with water AND now you need a hoe to till the soil. After a while you'll notice the soil has become darker which means it's saturated with water, so it won't dry out as long as the water is there. It should look something like this:

The fences aren't necessary, but helpful if you want to stop animals or monsters from trampling them.

Now plant your wheat until it's mature, then harvest by punching it. And you can use it to make bread, hay bales, and not much else on its own. But the food is nice.

Mature wheat should look like this (unless you're using a texture pack or playing an older version):

I hope this helped! I can't help with any redstone stuff or the ender dragon fight but I do know grow plants, make house, and find rocks.

Started playing Minecraft. I blame Kevin.

I only just found out how to make a shelter to survive the night. I could have made stone tools but i got killed and lost my stuff (didn't want to go back during the night to get them)