#jenposting | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

miximagic256 · 10 months ago

Text

Points of Interest 4

Hi friends! This POI has been overdue for months I'm so sorry! One thing you may have noticed is there's a number attached to the title now. This titling scheme will follow for every POI post from here on out because it's honestly way more convenient especially with how some months there's little I want to type about while other months have lots I want to type about (although if you're really curious what's below occurred from January - February, I wasn't kidding when I said this was well overdue!)

But enough of the foreword, let's get into it!

Portal 2

So interesting thing, I got Portal 2 around 2013 when I first got my PS3, I never played the first Portal game as I didn’t have Steam and I never played The Orange Box which is where Portal debuted in 2007. Portal 2 was a game I played because I remember at the time hearing about how good the game was and while I did play it I never actually finished it.

Late last year I remembered I never finished the game so I started again from the beginning and finally beat it in January, and I can safely say that over a decade after the game’s release that Portal 2 is a fantastic experience from beginning to end and deserves all the praise people give it.

There is so much I could gush about with the characters, worldbuilding, storytelling, etc. But as a first for this series of mine I won’t go into detail because Portal 2 is one of those games that’s best to be played with as little knowledge as possible (in my case there were some things I knew about prior unfortunately, but luckily a lot of what I experienced was new to me).

One thing I will do though is share a link to this playlist of Portal 2 animations by Harry101UK which look, sound and feel so close to the game that you'd be amazed Valve had nothing to do with them! In particular I absolutely love his remake of his first ever Portal animation based on the song This Is Halloween from The Nightmare Before Christmas, you have no idea how many times I've listened to it! (Don't worry there's no spoilers for the game so if you've not played it you can still watch his videos without worry of that)

If you’re like me and have never played Portal 2 after all this time I highly recommend you do so if you get the chance (in fact you can even skip the first Portal game since outside of some backstory it doesn’t affect the sequel much), you won’t regret it!

The Repair That Never Was

I realise that with all the talk I’ve done about appliances and fixing things that it may give the impression that this is something I normally do, but in reality this is very rare and it’s a big coincidence that two appliance fiascos happened close together (although pre-teen me would have been ecstatic at the knowledge they’d eventually get to do something they always wanted - fixing a broken appliance).

So context, back in 2016 we brought a second-hand tumble dryer, it worked fine but some years ago I started to suspect that something was off because there would be rumbling noises every so often (bear in mind the type of noise a dryer can make can point to different types of faults like bad roller bearings, bad rear bearings, etc.) So after trying to figure out what type of noise it was I thought it was a result of a bad dryer fan (which is what takes the air from the drum through the vent and out the back) As sometimes they can “warp” due to the heat and not spin evenly causing it to be noisy when in use.

I was so confident that this was the issue I brought the part for it in advance for the time where there would be a good opportunity to open the machine up (although buying the part online was tricky as the dryer was made in the late 90s and sometimes machines that old can be hard to find parts for). Cut to January where one day it’s drying as normal only for me to notice that at some point the machine was running but the drum wasn’t turning, which suggested one thing, the belt had snapped (what sits around the motor that causes the drum to turn).

Now that the dryer was broken I took the opportunity I had been waiting for and opened it up, but I discovered that the rumbling noise wasn’t actually caused by a warped dryer fan at all but rather a loose jockey wheel (the part that’s on the end of the motor which the belt fits on) what a plot twist! Honestly considering it was loose for goodness knows how long it’s no wonder that eventually caused the belt to snap, not only that but I have an unopened dryer fan part on my desk I can't do anything with so it makes some pretty unconventional decoration hehe.

Because of this and the fact it was deemed easier to just get a new dryer, the old one was sent to its final resting place in the scrapyard (which considering it was at least 25 years old, I’d say it did its job well). But it doesn’t end there. I felt the best thing to do was to buy a washer dryer (because it would be more convenient for my small kitchen) which meant it would also replace our washing machine at the same time which I wrote about replacing the door seal a year ago, so despite me doing that repair it ended up being too little too late ironically.

One final thing to note: The washer dryer bought was the same manufacture as the one before our machine which I repaired, of which the former machine lasted 13-14 years. No Pressure!

Video Game Museum Trip Feat. @Klonoamiyumi

Video game museums are somewhat uncommon throughout the world but in recent times more and more have been opening up, and a year or two ago I discovered one myself but it was a far away from where I’m located so I never visited it. As my birthday was approaching and there was a holiday I was going to go on soon I decided just before that would happen that I would finally visit the museum alongside two IRL friends (including @klonoamiyumi!).

Due to the distance I decided for us to get there by train which was honestly nerve wracking as I normally don’t take the train (not only that but add on to the fact I was taking the train while organising the trip in the first place), but outside of one slip up (which I’ll get into later) we all got our tickets and away we went!

On the train itself we sat together and talked about our video game history along with some general topics as well, bear in mind the three of us up to this point hadn’t met up much together so it was an interesting experience being able to talk among ourselves. After around an hour on the train we arrived at our destination and stepped out, I had researched directions on where to go to the museum beforehand however actually exploring around the city was tricky because I had never been to that location before, luckily I was able to rely on Google Maps to figure out where to go and after accidentally going in a circle (oops!) We did eventually find the building we were looking for: The National Video Game Museum!

For most of the year this specific museum is only open Thursday – Sunday except for the UK summer holidays where it’s open everyday, there were a wide array of both arcade machines and video game consoles to play on, anecdotes from past and present video game developers (including a small tribute to the late Masayuki Uemura who supported the museum), signs describing various bits of history along with glass cases including important related material, etc. Despite not being the largest of museums for what’s there it should satisfy the curiosity of any video game fan of any era not only because of what’s on display but also because there’s so many things to interact with and discover that there's bound to be something you didn't know of beforehand, plus because it's not that large of a museum there's no worry of getting lost or overwhelmed but it doesn't feel underwhelming either. The place is ideal for a day out even if it was just yourself going there.

There was another thing that happened as well while we were there, by complete chance an online friend of both @klonoamiyumi and I (who has her own Tumblr blog @janeypoodle) was at the event, not only was this meetup not planned at all but they were planning to go to the museum the day before but couldn’t as the train got cancelled. What a plot twist! Janey is someone me and Klonoamiyumi have known about for a long time and while a potential visit did sometimes cross our minds for one reason or another it never took off. So to actually meet them in an unexpected place was such a wonderful surprise and a bonus to add to our day out, we all talked for a while and then we took a photo of us three to remember :>

Throughout the museum for the most part we all split up when going around what video games were available, but just before the museum closed Klonoamiyumi wanted me and our other IRL friend to play a game with him called Buzz! Junior: Jungle Party as it served a particular importance, he recalls this game was one of the only video games he played with family and not just by himself (which I can relate because I myself had Buzz! Junior: Rino Rumble which plays identically to Jungle Party, and that was a game I played with my family as well).

After that session together we quickly looked at the shop section and then left the museum, we decided to have food since it was late in the afternoon by that point (we went to McDonald’s specifically) and then we went back to the train station, however… Remember when I said there was one slip up that happened? Well while we managed to get back to train station, we narrowly missed our train (it was late in the evening as well), so I had to think quick and look up another train to the same destination on my phone and after some wondering around and last minute changes (because the train we needed to take ended up being on a different platform then announced). We got on and despite it being late in the evening we all got home safe and sound!

This trip was notable not just because of where we went but also because I've never organised anything like this before, but now that I have I can arrange a meetup of any kind again because starting something is always the hardest part, after that you start to get the hang of what you're doing and you get better every time! I think I speak for all of us when we all had a great experience!

Topic End: Epilogue

Again I'm really sorry for how overdue this is, I think you can tell the most significant thing included in this post hehe. I will say though this might be the last Points of Interest post for a while due to things that aren't really appropriate for this series, such as:

Events that are too negative to include (I intend this series to be positive and I don't want to bring myself or other people down reading the post)

Events that are positive but are too personal to include, this one is important to mention because truth be told I didn't really want to include topics relating to IRL events with family (like the cruise ship holiday) because while this series is a semi-dairy of sorts at the same time I only want to talk about things I'm comfortable being public online.

With that said, I hope you all enjoyed this POI and I'll see you next time!

#points of interest #jenposting

2 notes · View notes

miximagic256 · 1 year ago

Text

Points of Interest (June - August)

Welcome back friends! This is the last Points of Interest for this year (for reasons I'll explain in the Epilogue section), once again the sketches that were supposed to accompany the topics talked about aren't here yet so I'll leave an update notice for when that's sorted.

So with that said...

Norway Holiday Cruise

What makes this holiday interesting is it was a double bill as not only did I go on a cruise for the first time but I also went to Norway, which is a place I never went before even when considering the times I’ve been to different countries.

As for the cruise I can see why people take them so much, even though they’re expensive you have no responsibilities at all because everything you could want is done by the staff and it’s honestly incredibly weird to get used to that because normally you need to be responsible for yourself, but on a cruise you can just relax and ask for anything you want. That said cruises are very expensive so it’s no wonder the most active people that go on cruises tend to be retired! (Although in recent times advertising has been trying to push for families to go on a cruise as well).

With Norway, what I experienced was like how a lot of people describe the country: there’s a lot of clean energy and it’s full of incredible scenery with its famous mountains and landscapes, the cruise stopped briefly at several points in Norway with all but the last day with them being fjords, they were tiny and a lot of the time compact so it must have been very noticeable when the cruise would stop by and hundreds of people would explore around! However as mentioned on the last day the cruise stopped at an actual town so there was much more to explore for that reason alone.

Overall it was a very memorable holiday!

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse

I was probably one of many that were excited and curious when the trailer for the sequel was released earlier this year, considering the first film was absolutely incredible and raised the bar so high, it makes you wonder how a sequel could possibly top it?

I should mention I haven’t seen this sequel since seeing it in the cinema so my memory of it is a bit hazy, however I can say that it definitely was a worthy sequel with it being so expansive than with the last film which I can understand since with again with the bar so high raised you're limited on options with how you can keep the audience engaged, the subtitle “Across the Spider-Verse” wasn’t joking with the amount of characters, stories and universes that all appear together that you definitely can't catch on one viewing.

…Although the Spider-Verse here is so much bigger than the last film that it can actually be a determent (although I should stress a small one), one of the many good things about the first film was that you didn’t need to be a fan of Spider-Man to enjoy it due to the way it's structured, things are introduced in a way that someone that wouldn't know about the Spider-Man franchise can get a good understanding of what or who the character, location and settings mean but also shows them off in a way that even though the returning fans already know of all of these things they are executed brilliantly, making the film incredibly fun and engaging for both old and new fans. Since the sequel adds so much that ties into deeper Spider-Man knowledge and that again there's no way you can catch everything in one viewing, it can be overwhelming for someone that knows little about the franchise so definitely be sure to watch the first film before this one.

Another issue is according to some anonymous animators, the staff had to constantly rework already finished shots over and over again to the point around 100 animators left and the film was finished in May one month before its premiere in June 2023, now In fairness the film was delayed several times from its planned initial release in November 2021 to its eventual release in June 2023 however while the first few delays can be explained to be a result of the pandemic the last delay the film had makes you wonder if behind the scenes there was development hell going on.

Overall though the film was definitely worth the wait and the 3rd film in the Spider-Verse trilogy has me very curious on what it will be like whether it will end things neatly or blow it all up, be sure to watch both the first and second Spider-Verse films if you haven't yet!

Meeting an online friend

Even though I've been on the internet for a long time I never actually made an account on anything, even on YouTube despite it being the main site I went on growing up as well as the amount of time I spent on it, it was only in 2015 when I finally made my first YouTube account around 7 years after using the platform (with me making accounts on other sites as the months went on).

It was during this time I actually started befriending people online and one thing I really wished was to one day meet them in person, but this seemed like an impossibility because not only was I in education but most of the time said friends lived far away and getting the money to travel there would be really expensive. So I thought the moment I finished education and got a job that I may finally get my chance of seeing an online friend since I wouldn't be held back and would have the money, however I would find the difficulties of distance and money would still be there alongside the fact some simply weren't comfortable with a visit, which combined with so many stories of people actually meeting their online friends made me think that my chances were so slim that I should just give up on the idea even if it really hurt.

So then imagine my surprise when by chance a friend briefly stayed in the UK as a result of his job! I knew this was a golden opportunity so I asked them if we could visit each other at some point and eventually we did! We did walks together, went to town together, had food together and generally just talked away about all sorts of topics.

The visit was only for a few hours but honestly? This has been one of my highlights from 2023, not only because I did something I nearly gave up entirely on but also because the friend in question is one of the best I've made in recent times and I already wish I could see them in person again because I miss them so much! Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity and maybe we'll see each other again one day <3

Topic End: Epilogue

Well that's it! That's the last Points of Interest post this year! I've never written diaries in my life but I have to admit this series has been pretty fun to far and I'll definitely be continuing them in 2024!

If you're wondering why I'm not writing a Points of Interest for September - December, well the honest answer is not much notable has happened but also those months haven't been positive for me unlike the previous months, Points of Interest is supposed to be positive so I've decided this will be my last post for POI this year (I also was planning on writing an end of year post but like with the 4th 2023 addition of POI I decided to not go ahead with that for personal reasons so sorry if anyone would have looked forward to that).

Thank you friends for reading and I hope you all have a great new year!

#points of interest #jenposting

1 note · View note