thomaswinwood - Tumblr blog

[thomaswinwood]

For the love of all that is holy do not bother with a third-party antivirus. Windows has come with Windows Defender for years at this point and it is fine. I am incredibly tired of dealing with people who join a game modding server asking why the thing isn't working and it turns out an overzealous piece of shit is quarantining the modding tool because some goober decided running another application and injecting a DLL is Suspicious Behaviour.

The Very Basics of Not Killing Your Computer

AVOID HEAT STRESS

If you have a laptop DO NOT use it on a soft surface like a pillow or on a blanket, it’ll block the vents on your computer and make it get really fucking hot inside.

If you have a desktop you gotta open it up and blow out the dust sometimes.

If you are moving your laptop in a bag turn the laptop off. Don’t put it to sleep, don’t just shut the screen, turn it off, because otherwise it’s in the bag generating heat and there’s nowhere for the heat to go in the bag. OFF. Not sleep. OFF.

DO NOT DROP

Okay I know that should be obvious but drop damage to your hard drive is bad bad news. Be as careful as you can to set your computer gently on flat surfaces; don’t leave it hanging out on a bed where it can get knocked off, don’t set it on the roof of your car. And yes, just dropping it a couple inches can kill your hard drive or totally shatter your screen.

DON’T PUT SHIT ON YOUR KEYBOARD

Look I’ve seen four people ruin their laptops because they had a pen on the keyboard and closed the laptop and it fucked up the screen and the keyboard and it sucks so much and you feel awful after it happens because it’s so avoidable just don’t put things on your keyboard and always check that your laptop is clear before you close it.

PROTECT YOUR PORTS ON YOUR LAPTOP

You’ve only got one power jack and a limited number of other inputs on your computer and if they detach from the motherboard you’re fucked. USB ports get damaged because people use them a lot and eventually it weakens the connection and then they just stop working and it sucks. You can get around this with USB ports by using a USB hub to connect things like your keyboard and mouse.

For your power plug you just gotta be careful. Avoid tripping over the cord at all costs, don’t yank the plug out of the computer. It will SUCK VERY MUCH A LOT if you have to buy a new computer because the power port lost contact with the motherboard.

Don’t move your computer with things plugged into it. Take the power cord off before you put your laptop in the bag, take out the USB mouse dongle, do not travel with little nubby bits sticking out of your computer that can easily get caught or get tweaked or snap off inside of the thing.

(I really can’t emphasize enough that most of the “it will cost more than it’s worth to fix this” laptops I see are because of USB ports and power jacks. People don’t seem to know that this isn’t something that can be fixed easily; a broken power jack is a “remove the motherboard and resoldier components” job, not a “plug a new one in in fifteen minutes” job and most computer repair shops aren’t going to solder things for you and if they DO it’s going to be very expensive)

RESTART YOUR SHIT AT LEAST ONCE A MONTH AND JUST LET THE FUCKING UPDATES RUN

You should probably restart more than once a month but whatever. This is actually something that I consider part of reducing heat stress because when your processor is straining to keep up with all the background bullshit that’s running from a program you opened three weeks ago it’s going to use up resources and get hot and look just restart it once in a while.

Also the updates are almost always okay and safe and generally running updates is a good and secure thing to do (though maybe follow a blog dedicated to the OS you run because if there IS a problem with the updates that blog will probably talk about it before the update gets forced on your computer)

ANTIVIRUS BULLSHIT

Yes you should probably be running an antivirus.

Sophos is free and it’s fine. But don’t pay for it - if you’re using Sophos use the free version.

If you’re looking for something paid and a little more comprehensive I recommend ESET - get the cheap version, renewals cost less than the initial purchase, and feel free to get a multi-year version, the credentials follow your email not the computer so if your computer dies before your license expires you can install the license on a new computer.

DO NOT INSTALL NORTON OR MCAFEE THEY ARE EXPENSIVE BULLSHIT. Kaspersky is whatever. It’s less bullshit than Norton or McAfee but not as good as ESET for about the same cost.

If you think you’ve got a virus run the free version of Malwarebytes and get your shit cleaned.

KEEP LIQUIDS THE FUCK AWAY FROM YOUR COMPUTER

Again this should be obvious and yet. But seriously, just make a rule for yourself that drinks aren’t allowed on the same table as your computer and you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches.

PLUG YOUR COMPUTER INTO A UPS

Okay I fucking hate amazon but here’s a thing you should be using, just search the rest of the internet for “surge protector/UPS” and you’ll find something that isn’t from amazon - APC is a solid brand for this.

Basically you want a fat surge protector that has a little bit of a battery backup and you want to plug your computer (desktop OR laptop) into that instead of into the wall. The benefit of this is twofold:

1) if there’s a power surge the UPS will prevent your computer’s power supply from getting fried and possibly frying parts of your motherboard

2) if there’s a power outage and you’re *at* your computer you’ll have enough time to save what you’re working on before your computer loses power (like, you’ll maybe only have a minute or two on a small UPS but that’s still time to hit CTRL+S and keep from losing work)

At a bare, bare minimum your computer should be plugged into a surge protector but NOT directly into the wall.

BACK YOUR SHIT UP

[we interrupt this yelling for me to tell you that Western Digital has apparently released their new My Passport line and I’m obligated to inform you that you can get a 2.5″ USB 3.0 backup drive with FIVE FUCKING TERABYTES OF STORAGE for $130. Or you can get 4TB for $93. Or you can get 1TB for $53. basically what I’m saying is that it is not only cheap computer season it is also cheap hard drive season.]

[also if you’re getting a backup drive get western digital not seagate seagate fucking sucks and has a much higher failure rate]

Uh, okay, anyway - Do an image backup of your computer every once in a while so that if you get infected or your hard drive dies or whatever you can just restore from backup and move on like nothing happened.

HERE’S HOW TO DO AN IMAGE BACKUP.

SAVE YOURSELF THE WEAR AND TEAR

You know what is cheap? USB Keyboards and USB mice. You know what is not cheap? Fixing the touchpad on a laptop or replacing a laptop keyboard.

Get yourself a USB hub, a USB Keyboard and a USB Mouse (wired or wireless, doesn’t matter) and if you’re using your laptop at home plug *that* into your computer.

Also if your keyboard on your laptop breaks it’s fine just to use a USB keyboard instead I promise; if the screen breaks it’s also usually cheaper and easier to get a used or inexpensive monitor than it is to replace the screen. Your laptop is basically just a very small version of whatever bullshit is going on inside a desktop, if the peripherals break but the core components are fine you can just use it like a desktop.

Unless it’s a piece of shit that doesn’t have any USB ports or video out in which case you got ripped off, friend, demand functionality in your devices I’m sorry.

/rant

[thomaswinwood]

It's not bringing a physical object out of your own memories, it's remembering picking up a thing that guy would find useful and finding it in your pocket where you'd forgotten about it.

I feel like we all breezed past that one side quest when we were able to bring a physical object out of our past memories to give to that one dude.

I'm having brain damage trying to understand what you mean

Side quest as protagonist vestige? When I think about it, I feel like the reason why we can take things from the vestige is because we don't look back at the memory, but the game is like we're going back in time, at that very moment, so it's not just looking at memories of the past.

Idk how to explain it, we play "past" but in actual story protagonist probably only see it as normal vestige, y'know walk around and see all memories in there, the game made us play inside the vestiges to make it more interesting because it's part of protagonist lore, and if u think about it what if they just made protagonist lore the same as other vestige some player might ended up skipping it, and the character in the vestiges is nor even clear.

[thomaswinwood]

As far as I know the only way is to edit your save to give yourself the NPC-only veils. They're all visually similar to ones the player can obtain (e.g. Eva wears a Suicide Spur variant with rose decorations) but they're statistically different to the player-obtainable versions.

I don't have them written down like I do the NPC-only blood codes (I wanted to know what their gift loadouts are; did you know Louis is the only partner to have more than two passive gifts?) but if I remember I'll go through the blueprints at some point and write things down.

Hm, I wonder if there's a way to see what the drain rating/physical attack of the companion's veils are... I'd assume that Mia's veil drains significantly higher than say, Yakumo's, due to their innate gifts and codes, but I dunno, I could also see their weapons affecting it.

[thomaswinwood]

Goptjaam has been living in my head rent-free since I found out about it, because everything about it is catastrophic to watch. Like, it really wasn't enough to encode the entire utterance by means of modular matrix multiplication, they had to throw in "Sino-Dutch" just to ensure even the linguistic portion of the proceeding was unhinged.

The one thing I'm left wondering is... the result of multiplying the summary vector with the base matrix is an infinitely long vector which is truncated to "the point at which pronouncing more syllables conveys no more information", so what are those infinitely many truncated syllables conveying?

[thomaswinwood]

W3Schools is nobody's friend, they have incorrect information and their explanations are terrible. Use MDN.

I’m noticing an increase in new fic writers on AO3 who…uh…mayy not know how to format their fics correctly..so here is a quick and VERY important tip

Using a random fic of mine as example..

The left example: ✅✅✅

The right example: ❌❌❌

Idk how many times I’ve read a good fic summary and been so excited to read before clicking on it and being met with an ugly wall of text. When I see a huge text brick with zero full line breaks my eyes blur and I just siiiigh bc either I click out immediately or I grin and bear it…it’s insufferable!

If a new character speaks, you need a line break. If you notice a paragraph is becoming too large, go ahead and make a line break and/or maybe reconfigure the paragraph to flow better. I’m not a pro writer or even a huge fic writer but…please…ty…

[thomaswinwood]

he seems far too big for that pony… wonder what the injury rate is for ponies in this sport

That's actually the natural size for a horse! They're steppe animals, and the big destriers and such that we tend to think of can't survive on a diet of raw grass. You can tell because New World mustangs (wild descendants of European, mostly Spanish, horses) are generally smaller even when we know their ancestors were big.

The event in question looks like a descendant of the everyday activities of steppe nomads like the Mongols, who trained in horseback archery from childhood because it was so, so much of what they did, so it makes sense they'd use small horses. Here's a photograph from 1895 (courtesy of Bret Devereaux). Notice how far forward he's sitting; letting the horse carry his weight on its shoulders is better for it than sitting further back.

[thomaswinwood]

I expect Code Vein 2 to try and execute on some of the ideas they had to cut from the original (player invasions, maybe procedurally-generated dungeons) with some backing from Bandai Namco to continue developing a series which has proven to have some legs.

I think it should be about someone other than the former Successor of the Blood rather than being about fighting horrors, since that would basically be tossing out Code Vein's identity in favour of transmogrifying it into God Eater 4. That said, I'd like there to be a boss fight with the Successor of the Blood where you can import your Code Vein save and it'll use their appearance.

Code Vein Ⅱ

Share your thoughts about Code Vein 2

What do you think will happen in Code Vein 2?

What kind of ending(s) do you predict or hope for the sequel?

Main problem or Villain.

When do you think Code Vein 2 will be announced and released.

[free stuff you want to add, anything, like the plot, characters, etc]

[thomaswinwood]

Personally, I feel like the game is gunning for shipping the protagonist with Mia - when they're on screen at the same time they'll share a glance and the camera feels like it lingers for just a fraction of a second longer than it needs to if it's just showing People Thrust Together By Harsh Circumstance. (As much as I think people want Protagonist/Io to be a thing because she's pretty waifu-coded and it's a running gag in soulslikes that there's romance between the Level-Up Woman and the protagonist, including From Software playing with the audience by including the bit about Gehrman in Bloodborne, I don't think there's actually that much chemistry there. I read her as staying with the Successor of the Blood in the bad endings out of devotion in the religious sense, not affection.)

Jack/Eva, on the other hand, is just plain text. You don't need to hunt for evidence of it when you have Eva's own memories telling you she became a Successor i.e. underwent a surgical procedure to be closer to Jack and likes singing for him, however much she tries to paint it as "I'm just thankful to him for saving me".

i need explanation for ru/loumia

Why y'all asking me about ship

Louis x Mia I'll say it once... that cutscene (maybe) idk about this ship dude, their dynamic is... It's like that cup of coffee I forgot in the corner of my room it's calm and basically nearly the same as LouCruz just different (don't ask coffee cup how it looks like it's been there for 3 months now), both are calm... Idk anymore, I'm not a type or person that likes to ship two characters that have the same personality/characteristics, for me it just gonna be too bland, like u eating that edible chalk, but as I said before, ship whoever you want 👍 fanon exist, etc.

I don't know much about this ship, it's pretty rare see someone ship LouMia, just like JacLou, or DavPro. All I can think about this ship is because they look like they care about each other because of the cutscenes where Louis helps Mia when she is almost got frenzy.

[thomaswinwood]

Here is my Valkyria Chronicles headcanon

Despite its official stance of equal rights for Darcsen it seems to me that the Principality of Gallia is ideologically more closely aligned with the East Europan Imperial Alliance than the Atlantic Federation. Gallia isn't overtly racist—it doesn't run concentration camps, and the pogrom which orphaned a young Brigitte "Rosie" Stark seems to have been unusual in happening outside the Empire—but it retains systemic racism in the sense we see in Largo's interactions with Rosie and Isara, where Darcsens chafing against the inequality that remains both legally and culturally are belittled. (I suspect we'd see the same systemic racism in the Atlantic Federation if we ever got a good look at it from the inside, but the closest we get is a specifically Gallian foreign-legion platoon in VC4.) That said, Gallia has enough of the old racist nobility still intact that the revelation about House Randgriz led to a civil war, whereas the Federation, despite having aligned itself with the rebels in an act of Realpolitik—they want Gallia's ragnite deposits as much as the Empire, they just go about trying to get at them differently—nonetheless asked them to please stop committing genocide because it wasn't a vote-winner back home.

My explanation for this is that the Principality of Gallia was originally part of the Imperial Alliance and broke away from it ideologically as the independence movements in western Europa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which formed the Atlantic Federation created a geopolitical bloc which was appealing to House Randgriz. This adds some historical context to the Empire using a military solution to the “Gallia problem”—on some level it's simply reclaiming a wayward territory—and possibly some parallels to Fhirald, which I think is the state bordering Gallia to the northeast and may have undergone the same westward drift and been interrupted due to its proximity to the imperial centre at Schwartzgrad.

[thomaswinwood]

For the R I think I'd try putting two Ds together one on top of the other to get a B, then editing the bottom to make it a leg rather than a bowl.

"Neeb what did you end up doing with your time tonight?"

well you see i got a hair up my ass and decided to photoshop a title card together for my fic using the game's font by copy/pasting bits of the existing font together! It's going great c:

[thomaswinwood]

Beans on toast is good and I refuse to pretend it's not.

What’s a stereotypical food from ur culture that u absolutely love.

[thomaswinwood]

Scythes aren't cool, they're a stupid thing to take to a fight with anything but a meadow. Warscythes are cool. We need more spears and halberds and such in fiction because unless you're landed gentry they're the kind of things our forebears would have used in warfare. The problem is almost nobody pictures the right thing when you say "warscythe".

shadow the hedgehog is cool. gunblades are cool. vampires are cool. scythes are cool. white hair is cool. we need to stop lying about what is not cool

[thomaswinwood]

I'm sick of internet negativity, so let's combat it: reblog this and saying something nice/pay a compliment to the prev in the tags.

[thomaswinwood]

Only on Tumblr can you see a post explaining the origin of a ribald meme and click on the notes to discover a goddamn battlefield about shipping.

Y'all need Jesus. Or to touch grass. Or possibly to touch Jesus' grass.

(subpost)

[thomaswinwood]

Pungent Cheese is found in a cave, at least - it's in the Ridge of Frozen Souls. It's nobody's favourite - it's worth three points to Yakumo, Jack and Davis, and Rin won't accept it.

*finds some weird cheese in a cave* Oh Yakumo will love this :)

I don't know why, but now I think Yakumo is the type of person who would still eat moldy bread or cheese by cutting off the moldy part and eat it thinking with the moldy part gone it would be still good

AND WHY IN A CAVE, WHAT CHEESE

[thomaswinwood]

Assuming for a moment Code Vein and God Eater are a shared universe*, one thing people have observed is that revenants seem to have more in common with Aragami than God Eaters (e.g. the Successor of the Blood's ability to absorb the blood codes of other revenants extends to the Hellfire Knight, Frozen Empress and Lord of Thunder) so it makes sense God Eaters, being designed to be predators of Aragami, would also be fearsome opponents for revenants.

*For the record, I dislike this. The devs said in the behind-the-scenes interview they wanted to make a new IP, and Code Vein left multiple opportunities to explicitly tie itself to the God Eater franchise on the table in favour of vague associations which God Eater fans want to inflate in importance. I feel like a batch of answers to things Code Vein leaves unexplained if you just spend the money on a bunch of preexisting games robs it of potential for future stories because people will be constantly going "where's Gandalf? where's Darth Vader? Where's Shulk?"

kinda wondering cuz I don't play GE and haven't read the lore, which one is actually stronger? cuz I remember you open for lore/theories talk

If I remember this have been discussed on Code Vein subreddit before, and I read that most of them said that God Eater was stronger than Revenant I don't really remember the reasons, I haven't finished GE either, so feel free to talk about this in comments/reblog

[thomaswinwood]

Oh, that's where Reforged got its additional classes from.

character class spreads from the official elden ring tabletop rpg, including a mixture of original art for existing classes and new art for classes exclusive to the rpg. i don't think these have been circulated much in english-speaking fan circles, if at all. i'll post cleaned versions of the character art at a later date.