#accomplishments documentation

[zigcarnivorous]

FIDAA'S VIDEO OF BOMBS FALLING A SHORT DISTANCE FROM HER TENT WHERE HER CHILDREN CAN'T SLEEP FROM FEAR OF DEATH

HELP HER MEET HER GOAL, SHE IS ONLY HALFWAY AT $36,000! STAND WITH HER!

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-fidaa-and-her-children

[bucky-boychik-barnes]

EVERYTHING IS MOVED TO ELLIPSUS!

157 documents, across 20 folders. One folder for each universe.

I might get a total word count of everything tomorrow, because I am curious. One old fic that I haven't posted anywhere (because it isn't finished >_>) is almost 75k alone.

Even if this doesn't mean I will magically be able to write now, at least everything is off of Gdocs and away from Google's shitty AI.

[icewindandboringhorror]

just a few little bits from the past few days

[therealsophiependragon]

made up a new word today, feeling very proud of myself

[giulolosblackmail]

cn only starr letter, based on the content and the fact that starr's birthday ball references this letter, i think this was possibly a valentines day 2019 letter

斯塔尔来信 埃伦斯坦小姐：落笔前我才结束了一次家族例行考核。时间过得真快。回想起我在大陆游历这几年，去过很多地方，可唯独只有凡瑟尔让我想要留下来。你知道这是为什么，对吗？和老头子们汇报的时候，我总忍不住想，你会不会喜欢我路过过的地方？西极海上随手捏碎一颗珍珠，就能听见海族的歌声；伊格尼斯的熔岩进发，没有任何烟花能与它媲美；被永夜包围的众神安眠地，却拥有世间最瑰丽的极光⋯⋯你想不想和我一起去看看？传送魔法很方便，只需要占用你吃完一颗巧克力的时间⋯⋯

Letter From Starr Miss Ellenstein: I just finished a routine family assessment before I started writing. Time certainly flies. Looking back on the years I have traveled around the continent, I have been to many places, but only Finsel made me want to stay. You know why, right? When reporting to the old geezers, I couldn't help but wonder if you would like the places I've visited? If you crush a pearl in the Western Sea, you can hear the singing of the sirens; the lava of Ignis is so beautiful that no fireworks can compare; the Resting Place of the Gods, surrounded by eternal night, has the most magnificent aurora in the world... Do you want to go with me to see it? Teleportation magic is very convenient, in the time it takes to eat a chocolate...

this letter has been machine translated

i am actually so fucking excited about this one, not only is it the letter referenced in starr's birthday ball that i didn't know existed, it also confirms that starr is still in regular contact with the mayphis family, which looks to be run by a council of elders of some sort, which means the mayphis family is made up of multiple families and likely has several branch families to necessitate having this council of elders to begin with (and i assume it's a council because starr is the current heir and most powerful mage in the family so it makes much more sense if he's reporting to a council), i wasn't sure how far the mayphis family had declined at this point so this is super cool, unfortunately i still have no clue where the fucking western sea is, there are two in game references to a western sea (1) in mandaria illusion there is a western sea close enough to cheng that an hu was in the navy fighting pirates (likely a different sea as 西海 is the MI sea and 西极海 is the siren sea) (2) all 3 diane's remakes of the Mermaid's Song dress reference sirens in a Western Sea (3) if you look at the Helix Horizon world map and that one pre release HW map from the official english facebook

you will see that there is a body of water separate from the (also unnamed) ocean to the west of finsel, which borders mandaria/semieyake (no idea what semieyake is since HH mandaria is midland and HH hondo is essos), which tracks considering how many intel conversations talk about how mermaids are actively involved in mandarian crafts, trade, and shipping

the background Snow Land was used during Starr's Birthday ball to depict the Western Sea, the snowy mountains next to what looks like an inlet could very well be in that body of water to the north of the continent, it would certainly be far enough north and at least in HH there's a mountain range that runs right up to the water

this is, of course, all speculation at this point since HW lore is notoriously vague.... so very very vague.......... speaking of vague! the ignis (i assume is a volcano) and the resting place of the gods mentioned in starr's letter do not show up anywhere else in the english or chinese versions of the game so genuinely i don't even know if starr's life changing dissertation research field trip took place on the stardust continent

[novelconcepts]

Anyone else just hyper-aware of the passage of time lately? Anyone just absolutely haunted by the passage of time and all the shit you aren’t doing fast enough as another season yeets on by? Anybody?

[tazmiilly]

god remembering things so interesting sometimes (when they're good things).

like I just remembering something so interesting and fun....YIPPEE

[shiroganeryo]

A while ago, a little voice inside my head said: 'hey. You want to get True Perfection on Stardew Valley.' And man, what a journey this has been.

I took screenshots of my farms to keep as mementos, I'll leave these under the cut plus some gameplay details!

It all started when I revisited my first save ever that I created back in 2023 when I bought the game and noticed I had a lot done on year 4 (all skills maxed included) so that made me wonder... How much am I actually missing to get it to 100%?

And let me tell you: A LOT. 😂

But today, a month after I decided to go for it, I finally achieved True Perfection!

Since the weather was awful (I had a storm on the following days) I waited until Summer 27. Which was actually perfect since today is the 27th in real life too! Very satisfying.

Here's my main farm, Felis Fields Farm & house! My farmer's name is Eva and her favorite thing is 'cats', so I naturally went and adopted all the cats available in the game 😽

And here's my farm on Ginger Island. There isn't much there since I didn't come to the farm too often, so I kept it mostly to furnishing the beach house nicely.

Credits to this person for the layout inspiration! I honestly had no idea how to decor the interior before seeing theirs.

On Saturday, Summer 27, Year 7, I finally could reach the summit and get my achievement. The credits are super cute, and even all my kitties appeared on it!

The only auxiliary mod I used was Stardew Progress, it's extremely useful, especially because I play SVE which adds A LOT of new characters to befriend and a ton of items and recipes locked behind heart events.

I didn't go for the gold clock and instead bought perfection waivers from Fizz, hence the 90% on my progress check. It's a feature since 1.6, costs half the price and, honestly, if I had to farm any more gold, I'd go insane - it's a very repetitive and tiresome process.

After a month of dedication and ruined sleep schedule (you can only pick two among rest, work and leisure and guess what I picked), I can finally rest and play casually again 😌

Save for the gold rush, this was actually pretty fun! 10/10, would NOT do it again 😂

[sag-dab-sar]

I finished all 4 bookcases! Removing all books, dusting books, dusting & wiping shelves, donating books I no longer want, and reorganizing them. It is so great to have them all properly done after 6 months of disarray.

I am going to do a "library" list. Aka writing down title and author of every book I have, since the last time I did that was like.... high school over 10 years ago.

As of right now, of what I physically own, my reading list cover to cover is: 53 books, 2 holy books, 12 comics, and 4 large-DK books. I'll know better once I've got my library list.

Have I been reading the same single book for multiple months..... yes; am I dyslexic which makes reading difficult, yes; is it hard to read physical books because I have to sit up and I rarely do that, yes. But the fact I'm even making progress on one book is an accomplishment.

(69 tasks on Room Project done, 24 to go)

[jorvikzelda]

I only have one more jorvikpov left to write before it's 90% written

Fuck

[amischiefofmuses]

Zim Starter Call

LIKE for a random starter or REPLY if you want me to jump into DMs to plot!

[frog707]

Release frequency

Yesterday I released v7.7.0 of Minie, my open-source 3-D physics library for JMonkeyEngine. Despite excellent build automation, each release still involves a lot of manual effort:

reviewing all commits since the last release and summarizing them for the release log

updating the version number in 3 places

troubleshooting build failures (TravisCI has issues this week.)

reviewing the 400 files automatically uploaded to SonaType, to ensure nothing's missing

closing the upload

testing the release candidate to make sure it works

promoting the release candidate

creating the release tag at GitHub and uploading 26 files there

updating 7 projects that use or refer to Minie; testing, committing, and pushing those changes

updating all my documentation that refers to the latest release

post-release fixup of the Minie repo

uploading new javadoc to my website

updating the robots.txt and sitemap.xml of my website

announcing the release at the JMonkeyEngine forum

blogging about my experience of the release (you are here!)

updating the JME Library website

All this is one reason I hope to reduce my release frequency to something like 4x per year. (I imagine most developers don't want to deal with more than 4 updates per year anyway.)

On that note, I am eagerly awaiting Apache NetBeans 19, the next quarterly release of the development environment I use. NetBeans 18 was released on 30 May 2023, so 19 should appear any day now.

This summer sure flew by quickly!

[sidewalk-scrawls]

Wow I totally would *love* to be a full stack software developer at the evil Christian fake health insurance company

"Healthshare ministry." lmao. I wanna infiltrate and tank their company soooooo bad. But I won't!

[famewolf]

I really love using Obsidian for D&D notes ... my spider web is growing

[reasonsforhope]

"During an archaeological dig in a desert area north of Jerusalem 40 years ago, a seed was discovered which was determined to be in pristine condition but had obviously seen many a year.

Now, despite falling from its parent 1,000 years ago, it has grown into a mature tree, and botanists examining it believe it may be an extinct species that was used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years—even receiving a nod in the Bible.

Neither Israeli botanists, nor Dr. Sarah Sallon, a physician who founded the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem, could determine what species it was from simply from the seed covering. So they did what nature intended—they planted it.

Using a well-documented technique that saw 2,000-year-old date palm fruit pits germinate, Dr. Sallon soaked the seed in hormones, liquid fertilizer, and water, and then planted it in a pot of sterile seed; then waited.

Despite its genetic code being exposed to environmental stressors for over 1,000 years, the seed sprouted after 5 weeks. The shoot was protected by a caplike feature called an operculum. As the shoot grew, the operculum was shed—leaving something for the team to radiocarbon date. It narrowed down the age of the almost 10-centuries-old seed to between the years 993 an 1202.

Fast forward 14 years and the plant has become a 10-foot-tall tree. Dr. Sallon shared images of the tree, its bark, and its leaves with botanists around the world. One expert suggested it belonged to the genus Commiphora, found across the Arabian Peninsula and parts of Africa. A genetic analysis subsequently revealed this was the case, but a perfect match was lacking.

Pictured: The tree, now 14 years old.

Dr. Sallon and her team thought it was an extinct species known from history as Judean Balsam, but the best way to confirm that suspicion would be to have some aromatic traces similar to the resins of the myrrh tree to which it is related. However, no such fragrant compounds were detected.

Instead, the chemical analysis of the leaves identified a group of phytochemicals known as guggulterols which have been observed in a related species called Commiphora wightii that’s known to possess certain cancer-fighting properties in its resin.

A medicinal balm, the origin of which is not known, is mentioned in multiple historical texts including the Bible as ‘tsori,’ and rather than the fragrant Judean Balsam, it’s this tsori that Dr. Sallon and her team believe they have found.

They must wait until the tree, now 14 years old, produces flower or fruit to know for sure if it’s an extinct species, and if so, how to perhaps keep it alive.

Dr. Louise Colville, senior research leader in seed and stress biology at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London who wasn’t involved in the research, told CNN that it was a major accomplishment to grow a seed that old and possibly lead to a resurrection of this Biblical botanical.

“What’s surprising in this story is it was just a single seed and to be able to have one chance for that to germinate is extremely lucky,” she said.

“Working in a seed bank, seeing the potential for that extreme longevity gives us hope that banking and storing seeds that some at least will survive for very long periods of time.”"

-via Good News Network, October 8, 2024

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Note: This is such a good demonstration of why seed banks are so important!! They give us such real and massive hope for deextinction and the revival of endangered species.