Blog
BLog!
Back in the Twitter days, every once in a while, someone, out of nowhere, not even a follower, would retweet, resurface something from a non-distant past that you totally forgot about. Well, guess what I had my first resurfacing (I am going to refer to it as resurfacing because I am confused as to whether they are called -re-blogs, re-toots, boosts, or whatever-the-fuck ) on the Mastodons this week.
Like 5 months ago or so I quoted something from this random and fabulous post, I had forgotten about, Take Care of Your Blog. The quote was,
>Blog your heart out! Blog about something you’ve learned, or blog about something you’re interested in.
Of course, I opened it up and read the whole thing again, and good god, is this post so right? It puts in perfect words why I have always wanted to blog, why I write what I write, continue to do so,
>Blog about cameras or HTML or that one browser bug you’ve noticed this morning or blog about the sky above you right this very second. How many clouds are up there? Blog about your annoying kids and your fucked up relationship and blog about that terrifying time when you went to the beach with some people you weren’t really friends with and you got drunk and then it got real dark and you didn’t have a tent so you slept on a sand dune all night long.
And the most important thing, as the article says, is you’ll connect with more people, and make new friends. I would also throw in there, new and interesting discussions but,
>Or maybe they won’t. But you’ll never know unless you write that half-assed thing that’s in your head right now.
Why are they called
Clicking around, I came across this, Get Blogging and I glanced over it, just a quick scan before saving it to my read-it-later thingamabob. One thing, though, did catch my attention,
Why are they called “blogs”?
> Originally blogs were called weblogs: a log of activity that you wrote to the web. Peter Merholz jokingly split the term into two words to make it an activity: we blog. Ev Williams started to use it as a verb and a noun: to blog. And the rest is history.
I will be really honest, it never occurred to me to question why blogs are called blogs, it like, it just is; why would I question it?
Now I know…
A game I have been... re-playing
Shocked? You shouldn't be 😉
This game was originally released on November 10, 2020, and as the massive AC fan that I am, I played the heck out of this game, for a little over 120 hours, on the Xbox One back then. I must say, this is probably my favorite assassins creed game, so far. I mean, you've got Vikings and Norse mythology.
Now, why am I re-playing this game, in 2023? Well, a lot has come out since then and I have been having the itch or playing it for a while. So there are a few DLCs out that I never got to play,
- Dawn of Ragnarök.
- The Siege of Paris.
- Wrath of the Druids.
Not only that, but they [Ubisoft] have continued releasing packs for the game, packs that include new armor, weapons, mounts, etc, and that's how they get me, every time! With a new pack acquired and the DLCs, it kind of feels like a new game. Plus this game looks amazing still. I also noticed a few new options and quality-of-life improvements, but I am not sure if they have always been there and I just don't remember, since it's been so long, either way, I am game.
The thing about this game is it's so massive, that even though I played this game at least twice, in its entirety, I still find new ways to go about it or things I didn't notice before, something I hear a lot from people that replay games like Skyrim, for example. These games are so big in scope that you have free range on how to play them and make your story.
Now, let us see how many hours until I play the main story and every DLC... I may even no longer post here for a while.
Nice knowing you all!
Yikes!
> I don’t generally call for anyone to be fired, but an App Store reviewer who cannot see how Ice Cubes “differ[s] from a mobile web browsing experience” is an embarrassment to the company, and providing fodder for every frustrated developer who thinks Apple has completely lost its way as a company and platform steward that respects the work of independent developers…
Papa-John has spoken!
I have never – and probably never will – been able to understand how things like these happen to developers with Apple. Not the first time I’ve seen something stupid like this happen and probably not the last – sadly.
Source: Daring Fireball: App Store Rejection of the Week: Ice Cubes, a Splendid New Mastodon Client
Cling onto the anger
Cling onto the anger, that’s what I was told.
Every so often, we bottle things up inside of us, until, one day, all hell breaks loose. A long while ago, there was an incident in which all those bottled up feelings and thoughts came out, and things were said. And although those things that were said, needed to be said, I still felt very guilty about the whole situation.
That same week, I had my session with my therapist, and the situation was brought up and talked about. I expressed my guiltiness, and how bad I was feeling about it. And that even though I was feeling guilty, I also had a lot of anger. His advice, cling onto the anger. Guilt and anger are like oil and water, they don’t mix, he said. It may sound almost like bad advice, but you know what, he was right, and I stopped feeling guilty.
All that being said, time has passed, things have healed, and we have all moved on, and there’s no more guilt or anger.
Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Annie and I were in the Cellular and Molecular Biology class together, taking a test. I must admit, for whatever reason, I struggled with that class, most likely the molecular part 🤮
Remember the Lion erasers?
During the exam, Annie throws me her eraser, I caught it, looked at her weirdly, like, “I have my own” and threw it back at her.
Little did I know, she had most of the answers written on it.
I failed that test.
The I don't know in my head
I presume we all have these moments, these moments in which we are confronted by a situation, task, request, or question, and the first thing that pops up is, I don't know. But, do you really, don't know?
I have moments like so many times a day. This is the reason why I am sometimes, well, most of the time, scared of my work email. There are moments in which I would get a question or request, I read it, and at first, I panic, impostor syndrome kicks in, and my first thought is, I don't know.
Then, I have a sip of my coffee, or mate, whichever I am fancying that day, step back, calm myself down, breathe, and try to work my way into figuring it out.
But those moments of self-doubt, and the first thought I have when confronted with a "tough" situation, immediately sort of giving up and saying I don't know, they get me every single time.
Fake it until you make it.
What’s my line - annie mueller
> We don’t know because we’re all such good actors, such good pretenders. We have a picture in our heads of how we are supposed to feel in any given situation. And we act it out, so well, so automatically, that we hardly even know we’re acting.
I very much relate to this, in my own way, I guess. Makes me think of those instances in which depression kicks in, and I am not entirely my “normal” self. And yet I still put up my act, I try my best to not break character – but do I really feel good?
Fake it until you make it, they say.
Lee Peterson on How to blog more from your smartphone.
Lee Peterson, AKA LJPUK on How to blog more from your smartphone.
First thing is remove all of your social media apps to a second home page or the App Library.
Second is put your blogging app on your main Home Screen.
That’s it.
Post your thoughts to your blog first.
Easy peasy!
I have to admit, I do 70% of my blogging, from my Macintosh mobile device, 25% from a computer device and a browser, and 5% from the iPad.
When using my Mac mobile device, Ulysses lives on my home screen, always has, and if, for whatever reason, it isn't, I fire up Drafts put my thoughts down, and then I can either send them to Ulysses or just post straight from Drafts.
Now I'll be taking a little bit of a tangent here. But because of the fact I blog mostly from my Mac mobile device, and not just blogging even editing photos, I often find myself wishing I had a bigger screen...
Love the mini but...
Well, that's another blog-post
I 💖 blogging
Who influenced you to blog?
I have been blogging since, in some way, since 2015. At first, it was just for me in the form of private journaling, using DayOne. I wasn’t a super-avid blog reader, but I followed a few blogs that inspired me or planted the idea of starting my own blog. I very much remember reading Tim Nahumck’s blog and Seth Clifford’s (which sadly, does not exist anymore), Greetings from the Grid! Another blog I was reading at the time was Gabe’s at Macdrifter, I was a huge fan of both his Beer tracking app TapCellar, which crushed my feelings when it was discontinued, and there hasn’t been another good app since, or at least not like it, and of course, Matt Birchler’s. I remember when I was setting up my blog, which was hosted on WordPress at the time, asking Matt for his opinion on building my site, he probably doesn’t remember any of this, but I do.
Anyways, at the time, I wasn’t sure, what I really wanted to blog about. Given the people I was following, I thought tech would be the way to go, but I had a hard time with that. There are a few influences that I still carry with me to this date, Seth called it “Something I liked This Week” and Tim calls it, “Piques of the week”. I always liked those types of blog posts, so much so that today I do Something I Liked and A Game I have been playing.
The thing is that I knew that tech-related posts weren’t my thing. But it wasn’t until I moved my blog to Micro.blog, that I found my voice, which was simply to write about the things that interest me, to share stories and anything and everything that is in my mind. weather is in less than 280 characters or over 1500.
All of that is just to say that personal blogging has become my passion even if just one person reads it.
Now, tell me. Who or Whom, are your influences?
NFS Unbound gaming diary, entry one.
Gabz’s Log, Stardate 2023.01.12
I am in the third week so, 75% of the main story completion, or so I think. In an attempt to get a better S Class car, I spent lots of monies on a new car, some badass-looking Nissan Silvia. Also checked if I could make my current S car, A Mitsubishi Lancer a bit faster, which I did. However, I failed to realize that by doing so, now my Lancer is in S+ class, and there are no S+ class events in the third week, therefore I can only race with my Silvia which is pretty much stock. In short, I cannot use my Evo, and the Nissan is pretty much unusable in its current state. So, I could try to “grind” some money, which it would take some time, or… Or nothing, that is it, I need to grind, ugh!
Commuting tales.
Greetings!
Today was another scary drive to work. Because of the intense dense foggy conditions and the low temperatures, the roads were rather slippery. I must have slipped and slid a bit at least three times. I saw a few cars slightly losing control, and of course, visibility is very limited. I even saw plowers spraying that salty solution on the streets because of how bad the roads are.
In other news,
I did not forget my Yerba Mate today!
Photography Wizardly
This was an interesting thing to have watched.
I have always been aware of the fact that the pictures we take with our phones are highly processed by software. Like some kind of technological wizardly witchcraft. Thus, someone could make the argument that using a “real” camera, is probably the purest form of art, as far as photography goes? I mean, at the end of the day, we use what we have and there’s no right or wrong way to do so. I personally prefer using my “real” camera most of the time but I also admit that I take more pictures with my phone and I am sometimes happy with the results too.
A game I have been playing.
Need For Speed Unbound on The PlayStation5
The most infuriating, tough, super-cool-looking NFS game, I have probably ever played.
The Need For Speed franchise has been around for thousands of years, well, that's an exaggeration, but it's been around. I cannot recall the first NFD I ever played. I want to Say Need For Speed II, on the PS One but I could be wrong. I remember not enjoying that game as much. At the time I was full-on Gran Turismo. I never played another NFS game until 2003, when Need For Speed Underground came out. Remember?
prrrum-dum-dum dun-dah-dum dah-dum dah-dum
3-6-9, damn you fine
Hoping she can sock it to me one more time
Get low, get low (get low), get low (get low), get low (get low) +
😎😜
I still listen to the game's soundtrack to this day. Anyways, that was when I fell in love with the franchise. I have played, if not all of them, at least most of them ever since. With NFS Most Wanted being my favorite, I remember playing that game over and over again, Annie would sit and watch me play and give me tips on what to do during cop chases, so much fun!
Need For Speed Unbound is the latest entry, and I have to confess that when I first saw the trailer for it, I was a bit skeptical. Mainly because of the direction they took with the art style, it seemed too flashy and whimsical. So I was not entirely sure I would necessarily play it. Until around Christmas time. There was (or is) a big sale on the PlayStation store, one game on sale was Gran Turismo 7 and the Deluxe version of NFS Unbound, both almost at the same price point. Long story short, I, spoilers, ended up purchasing Unbound. Why? Well, I knew I had a history with the franchise, I love the unrealism-ish of it, unlike GT7 which is a real-driving-simulator and has no story, NFS games do have a story not just driving around.
The art style is definitely very interesting, it is almost like Spiderman into the Spiderverse type of style. The car look kind of realistic, in contrast to the characters who look more cartoony, and yet it all works out so well. Then you have all these animated effects around the car for whenever you do a long leap and "fly" you get wings, or the smoke when drifting, are all cartoony but it doesn't feel wrong or look bad. It is actually quite fun. The game, like its predecessors, has a very strong soundtrack. My favorite song is definitely Villano Antillano: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 51 by Bizarrap & Villano Antillano 😎
Now, the gameplay. In many ways, this iteration of NFS feels or has a very different approach. This one follows the same formula, you have daylight races and nightly ones. In previous games, you'd make money out of the daily races, lots of it, and at night, street rep, at least on NFS Heat was like that, and you could pick any race or event you wanted. In Unbound, however, you need to buy your way into the races, there are some you don't have to pay to get in but very little money to be made, and this is what makes Unbound a little frustrating at times, particularly at the beginning of the game. It is not like you can get your car maxed out super-quick, and it is a struggle to get there. There were many races in which I would only make it 3rd place. They can be a little frustrating, is like you got to have a perfect run, no mistakes, no hitting other cars, not over drift, and have a perfect take off or you will lose the race. Yes, you can re-start a race if you so wish but keep in mind, you only have 10 re-starts for the whole week. I think the only events that I have mostly excelled in have been take-over events, which are mostly drifting and doing stunts.
The way the story is setup it is a three or four weeks event, you do races day and night, from Monday through Friday, and this is where you race, make money and fix your car, then on Saturday night, is the qualifier. Not only do you need to be making money to buy your way into races and fix your car but also, to buy your way into the qualifier, and the qualifier, ain't cheap. The qualifier is a series of three races, and drivers get eliminated in each one until there are only three of you. You win monies and a car, of course.
Cop Chases! Ugh!!! GRRRR!! Mother@#%
As you complete races, you gain heat, which determines basically the amount of trouble you're in with the cops, and the cops in this game, do not fool around. Well, they do, at levels 1 through 3, I would say. Levels 4 and up, is where things get hairy. You get the regular patrols, Interceptors (those are policemen driving them Corvettes, easy to take out, though), 4WD SUBs, Helicopters, big SWAT pickup trucks, and Undercover cars. And is not just one helicopter, you get two and they are a pain, at least until you find some tunnels or something to hide. There have been times when I have spent more time running from cops and trying to make it to a safe house than racing. Or once I have escaped, I am hiding somewhere with my car turned off just waiting for the opportunity to get out and drive. I don't know, perhaps I just suck at running from the cops, who knows. It adds a level of intensity and stress that I don't remember having from other games in the series.
Even Annie tells me, If it's so draining, why do you keep playing it?
Well, darling, I am a sucker for punishment I guess!
And yes, at times it feels a little draining, which is why I take breaks from playing this game, I go one or two days without playing it. I am in the third week now, racing category S cars, did one race so far and lost.
Fun game, though!
One preset to rule them all (or maybe two).
When it comes to photography, there is always the need to edit our photos and give them a little punch, as they say, at least for me. For years, I have used many tools to accomplish this, including Snapseed, VSCO, and Darkroom. I never ventured too much into tools like Lightroom, I have always found them overwhelming.
My software of choice for the past year or so has been Darkroom, primarily, on iOS/iPadOS. The app has gotten better and better over the years, I’d even dare say comparable to Lightroom. On its most recent update, they added the ability to for users to share their presets which it’s super-cool and all of them are great. I have downloaded just about all of them to my devices. Although having all these remarkable presets and options to edit my pictures is nice, it also presents a problem, the problem of choice.
Whenever I sit down to edit my photos, I find myself “scrolling” and adding all these presets and choosing whichever gives me the results I like. But that also means that all my pictures have different “voices” rather than one voice that defines my style of photography. Perhaps I am severely overthinking it, but I prefer to have fewer choices. That being said, not every photo I take, is taken under the same conditions, so perhaps my go-to preset, might not suit a specific shot, which makes having choices a good thing.
I am definitely overthinking this!
Maybe I just need to pay more attention to which ones I use the most and delete the rest. So far, I find myself using the same two, one of the app’s default ones. For black and white, there are three different ones I go to that have been shared.
Speaking of which, I had set a photography challenge for myself for the month of January. I have been doing it, taking pictures whenever I can, I just haven’t been posting any of them, but I will soon. This will also give me the perfect opportunity to figure out my presets' dilemma.
Making my peace with it
Not to keep beating a dead horse, as the expression says, but, Twitter.
We all know what’s going on there, we are all angry and sad or whatever. Some have stopped using the service entirely, closed accounts and moved to other services. With mastodon being the most popular choice for many people.
I closed my Twitter account, deactivated it, Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo gone!
Weeks went by, I did find myself missing it, no necessarily the service but people, this who haven’t moved to mastodon or whatever. Artists, game developers and pixel artists. Furthermore, there were a few instances in which I wanted to have a screenshot I took from a game I’m playing on the PlayStation 5 and the only way to share it and retrieve it, is through Twitter. So, there was that too. All of that to say that I eventually, reactivated my Twitter account, also didn’t want to lose my handle.
Although the account is open, I am not engaging, I do not reply to tweets, I don’t post, other than sharing those precious video games screenshots, and even then, I save the image and delete the tweet 😅. My last tweet was 44 days ago, according to the thing.
Another thing I noticed is that the timeline is extremely slow, and in many ways, boring. Boring is good sometimes, you know. You can tell many people have left or like me probably not posting anything anymore.
I do have my feelings about what’s going on with. I don’t like the new management, at all! I loathe the man and what he’s doing to my favorite bar, well, what used to be my favorite bar. But there’s still a use case to keep my account active.
There, I’ve said it. 😜
Memories
Back in 2012, Annie and I scheduled a trip to Puerto Rico, it was also around the time I got back into comics (2011) with DC’s reboot, The New 52.
I remember, I was scrolling through my Twitter feed when I saw a post from my favourite artist, Greg Capullo, that he would be in Puerto Rico ComicCon the same weekend that we’d be there. I think this was PR’d first ComicCon, actually. Not only that, but I remember going to my local comic book store and getting a physical copy of one of his Batman books, which he was working on along with Scott Snyder, building up to the Court of Owls story line.
Anyway, he was there, along with Dan Didio. It was a short line, again, it was PR’s first ComicCon, even Tommy Oliver was there, I remember. I did the line, book on had, Batman #2 (because I didn’t have #1) and met my hero.
The pictures are pretty bad, considering today’s standards, I believe these were taken with an iPhone 4S 😅. The thing is, I have thought I had lost these pictures.
A few days ago, I got the infamous message that my camera’s memory card was full. Today I found my external hard drive and was ready to transfer/backup all the pictures to it, when I saw a folder called photo stream. I dived into it, and long and behold, I found these pictures, along with some others, from the same year. Found a couple about my grandpa, who passed away years ago.
Delighted to have found all these, and then some.
Groceries
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, before when the pandemic started, we used to go to our local Winco Foods for our groceries. It is, locally, probably the “cheapest” place to go.
During the pandemic, obviously, we stopped going. We would much prefer to order online at our local Walmart and pick it up. Even after things loosen up a bit, we’d still rather order online and pick it up, in fact, lately, we even get stuff delivered from Walmart. Today, we decided to go back to Winco, after wha, two-three years?
Well, first off, still probably the cheapest place to shop, from what we gathered, on a few things. Second, I also remembered why I hated the place, especially on weekends. Way too many people!!
On the drive back, Annie tried to recreate the same purchase on the Walmart app. The difference? About 10 USD. However, like I’ve mentioned before, Walmart delivers and for free. Well, we paid for the Walmart plus, so deliveries are free.
We can’t still say for certain which one is better, thus far, but if the different between the two places ain’t much, i much rather have my stuff delivered over getting out into a crowded place again.
Savvy?
New look!
No matter which template or theme I’ve used for my Micro.blog hosted blog, it has always been a light and dark theme. For a while now, I have been toying with the idea of having an only dark theme for whichever template/theme I am using.
There were a few color schemes I was definitely considering, Dracula, Nord, and Catppuccin, which I’ve never heard of before. In the end, I went for Catppuccin. My thanks to Zachary for suggesting it.
So, inspired on Catppuccin’s color scheme, well, one of the few it’s got, I went for the Macchiato color pallet.
Though I tend to change setups fairly regularly, I am pleased — so far — how this one came out.
A game I have been playing.
When I used to play SNES, I must confess, I did not play many, or none at all, RPGs. If I did, I do not remember right off the top of my head right now. I remember action games, Megaman games, fighting games, and of course, Super Mario World. Same on the PlayStation One days, I, at the time thought of RPGs, particularly RPGs, as kind of boring. If I wasn't getting any action in the first ten minutes of the game, and instead, lots to read, I was out.
This obviously changed eventually, especially when I started working at the local GameStop, which wasn't entirely local, it was the next town over but the closest one obviously. Then I started revisiting and playing RPGs. I very much remember finally playing Final Fantasy VI, what I don't remember is, if I played it on the Gameboy Advance or in an emulator, I did play a lot of old games like that back in the day.
The thing is, that eventually, I had to catch up with many of the SNES RPGs as well as many from the PS1 eventually giving me a newfound appreciation for these wonderful games.
Fast forward to the present day, and I am a sucker for playing these games on the Nintendo Switch. I find is it the best way to revisit some, and play many I never had the chance to play before, as well, as some new games that are trying to capture that nostalgia of what to many, is the golden era of RPGs.
A game I have been playing these past few days, is Chained Echoes, on the Switch. This was released in early December, of 2022 basically on every main platform., by indie developer Matthias Linda.
I have only put on about three hours into it, maybe four and it has been a delight to play. The combat is the turn-based combat you know and love. Four members of your team get to take turns swinging their weapons or skills at the enemy. Each member has a totally unique moveset and each of them can be paired with another member and you can switch between them in real time without losing a turn. This makes the battles, more strategic, and as my kid would say, much more funner. The combat system has an Overdrive meter that adds an extra layer of complexity to the combat. The meter is displayed at the top of the screen, and it builds up as you attack or use your skills, the more powerful the skills, the faster it builds up. And of course, you want to stay in the green area, rather than go all the way to the red area. While you are on overdrive or green area, you deal more damage vs in the read, you take more damage and enemies get more turns. A few ways to back up the meter, you can just defend, or there are some moves or attacks that may also push it back a bit.
Like in any RPG, there is a lot of exploration to do, and of course, and yes, exploration is rewarded. Random treasure chests, helping someone and in turn, you might get a fancy weapon, sell stands with special deals, etc.
I love the art style of this game, it looks fantastic, with gorgeous environments, and fascinating characters. It pays some homage to games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI, which in fact, it was what sold me to this game. Again, I need to mention the Soundtrack, it is great!
So far it is presenting a very intriguing story and characters, and I am very eager to see where this game goes. Also, did I mention mechs? There are mechs your character can be equipped with, at some point, I am yet to have one but I know they're there!
Either way, I am happy this game is finally out for everyone to play, I am having fun with it, and worth checking out.