New Vlog

I didn't post yesterday because the clock in this room is like 7 minutes behind and it was past midnight so like whatever.

I've possibly told you about this blog before but Dan Wells is watching all of Babylon 5 for the first time and posting about it and I don't know what happened to his old blog but I guess it's gone man and ...? and he's gotten back to it for the first time in months so there's that (because Babylon 5 reasons)

http://discoveringbabylon5.blogspot.com/2019/01/episode-47-epiphanies.html

Brooding on War

I beat StarCraft 1 today, and am now on the Brood War expansion. After this, StarCraft II. But Brood War is a complete game to itself, with as many levels as the first game. It's called an expansion because... reasons, probably.

I'm on the second level, and I've figured out that the zerg are programmed to attack only once you construct a pylon- so I'm just harvesting all the minerals and vespene gas that I can before doing that. Pylons are what allow you to grow your population, so I'm just harvesting all with the four original worker probes that I started the level off with- it's slow going, but I can have the probes chugging away in the background while I watch Girls und Panzer in the foreground. 

It wouldn't be so bad to have the zerg attack or anything of course- but once they do then it's like... you have to be wary of attacks from then on. So this is just a strategy that I'm trying out.

Only the Crunchiest

Alex has a few more days left in his Crunchyroll trial, and so there's still a few days to-- well, okay, first of all, Crunchyroll is a streaming service that has a whole bunch of anime on it-- anime is Japanese cartoons-- Japan is this country in Asia-- dang I'm tired right now.

Even without a subscription you can watch episodes, just not new ones, and there's ads iirc. There's a new season of Mob Pyscho 100 and it is great and new eppies come out on Mondays which means a new episode came out today and it is great and. 

The books I have out weren't due for another couple of days but the library auto-renewed them today, early?, but now there's 0 renews left. I'll get around to those books after this trial thing is over and we can't get fresh anime anymore.

Further Twists in the Library Due Date Saga

Alright so looking at it it turns out that the DVDs WERE due when I thought they were but the library just, automatically renewed them for me. Like, oh dear, the check-out is about to expire, hold on there buddy I got that for ya. Which means that also, looking at it it appears that the library books also really were due when I thought they were, but it auto-renewed those for me as well. There's one more renewal on those books; better get around to actually reading them or whatever.

Further Adventures Brought to You by the Library

Cool so I had some DVDs I thought were due last week that I turned in on Thursday- but it turns out that they were due on Friday so I didn't turn them in late yay.

yeah life is fine how'bout u?

Even More Noteworthy Thing

It's a little early, and also a long ways off relatively, but it's definitely something on my mind, something relevant to today's events. Nothing changes faster than the future, there's nothing definitive and still just a thought, so I'm not sure whether to share... and I've got mixed feelings in other aspects of this too... but...

My brother-in-law won't be living here with us forever; in a few months' time they'll be off to school and stuff, and who knows from there. His work at the optometrist's office will thus leave a job opening, and talking about it today apparently I was brought up as a potential replacement, whether it would be a good fit for me and all.

Alright, let's just go over the mixed feelings. 

• I've never gotten a job through normal off-the-street go-to-a-job-interview processes, but always through nepotism of some form. I've noted this before, not entirely sure what I said about it then, but maybe there was something in there about maybe it's not meant for me to find work experience that way (connections are a huge important part of finding work, though maybe it's been a bit extreme in my case.) If I found a job at say Fox Peak Theatres, I'd probably lean at least some (if not a lot) on my sister as a reference- it would still be me gunning for that job myself.
• Also, with this distance out, and the expense put into it, this anchors me at home for, like, at least another year, this coming just a day after I write a bit about going back to schools somewheres. The only reason I talked about that and was thinking about that, though, is likewise nepotism, or that the subject had come up and tilted my hand.
• Mixed feel no 3: four or five months out still leaves me jobless up till then, and that's an awkward time-frame to gain temporary work for, going to a job knowing you can only be there a few months. Working afternoons/evenings at a movie theater, sort of part-time work that would still allow a day-time job eventually of working at an optometrist? That works.
• Also like I said, mixed feeling over whether to share this or not, because it's just a random tentative thing.

Anyway my fingertip under my nail is a bit tender from where it swelled up a little after petting those animals yesterday, so I don't want to write anymore.

Totally Random! Lulz (plus some genuinely noteworthy stuff)

I got to pet a cat today. Anda a dog. And there was one point where I was petting the cat with one hand AT THE SAME TIME AS I was petting the dog with the other. 

The technology available to us to be able to have like a grajillion tabs open at once, that's just fantabulous.

So anyway I'm looking into going back to school, like specifically film school? I have no money, but I'm also not in debt either, so no better time to become such! Dad informs me that UVU is supposed to have a good program, and I already love those guys, so...???

I wish that I had this energy in my videos, the same energy that I have in my head and am exhibiting now, bouncing from one topic to another. It's high up on my list of, ideal vision of what my videos look like.

Wednesday Jan 23

I'm not 100% sure why, but today felt really productive for some reason. I didn't spend all my time doing any one thing, but sort of spread my activities out over doing many things. I even played Starcraft for the first time this week, but only maybe half an hour of it. Also, prioritized. Didn't shunt my scripture study off till bedtime, but did it when I woke up so that that could be a part of my day. I'm also going to bed relatively early, instead of staying up all night procrastinating sleep!

My phone's probably in my room somewhere. I last thought it was in some pocket, then I went to bed, so, probably in my room somewhere.

Earth 51914

Today I've been doing a bunch of research on weird comic book trivia for no real reason other than to know it- going through a complete list of every designated reality in the Marvel multiverse; there are a lot but most of them only get passing mentions, and there's been a lot of media over the years wherein to make such mentions. You know those old Hostess snack cakes ads where Super Heroes fight criminals by tempting them with the delicious goodness of Hostess snack cakes? Spider-Man is dead in that reality, oh snap.

I'd been going to write more, but, man this is depressing; it really would have been nice to have been able to do more with my day.

I've Been to the Mountaintop

I just want to do God's will. And he has allowed me to go to the top of the mountain. And I have looked over.

And I have seen the promised.

(On) Arbitrary Conversations in my Head

Alright so I had a bunch of thoughts today that I didn't write down, random conversation snippets that came about as conversations because my thoughts were interrupted in the middle of the thing- were those worth writing down? Thinking about the appropriateness of neckbeards, noticing someone: "neckbeards are okay if-- who is that??" which leaves the other person desperately curious with a question of their own, "when are neckbeards ever okay?!" 

On fiddlers. The answer is on fiddlers. By the way.

And these conversations are fun, but so easy to generate they make themselves. And frankly super arbitrary. Is that thus still worth recording? 

There are also thoughts that play out so easily in my head because I go over the ground so frequently, need to express them out loud some time ever, which I can even whisper with great success but am not sure if I'd be able to replicate fully out loud and with a recording device noting my words. That seems a lot of work; do I even need to make note of them if they're so easily thought? Would a place to express them come organically, or would it be easier if they were written out to find places to put them?

So yeah just some more thinks about thoughts.

Not Enough Writing on Not Writing Enough

There's a lot that I don't blog here because I can write about it somewhere else, but then I don't write about it somewhere else either. There's a paradox there where the more locations I have to write down observations, the fewer observations I write down- probably also impacting my YouTubing.

Expect a new video next week I guess.

Although I Didn't Start Thinking in Portals, Tetris Effect Seeps into Reality

More and more frequently I'm thinking of reality in terms of video game graphics and mechanics- like, I only got a couple of hours of sleep last night and so my framerate is super low right now, that's how I think of it, I'm tired and my ping is super high. Playing League with a faulty connection, the game assets coming at you in non-real time and you just guessing the move you want to make based on old information but then the game flashes back to the reality of the situation and you weren't where you thought and you were attacking an enemy who wasn't really there and maybe you're dead but don't realize it, doing that then going back to the real world, time never works quite the same way after that, it's weird  that you can know of your own circumstances with certainty and it doesn't feel certain and at any moment you could actually be five minutes in the past.

And there's no saves in real life, no do overs. Though maybe we should actually act like there are. Maybe we should treat life in the experimental way that we do in games, like you just saved five seconds ago and now want to try something stupid, see if you can survive a frontal attack instead of sneaking around their defenses, it doesn't matter it's not like this is the real playthrough, you're just having fun. We need such boldness in our lives, such honesty.

But anyway yeah I've been playing so much Starcraft that I'm coming down with carpal tunnel and need to take a break. 

Duolingo Streak

Phew, just got my Duolingo for the day in, in the nick of time. I've been keeping it up for 79 days as of today, not missing a day since I started. I'm taking French and Russian: I've had French classes in High School but never really learned the conjugations; during college I did some Russian on Mango but can no longer remember my password for that. Almost plum forgot to do it for the day, but something somebody said on TV triggered a French word in my head, reminding me in time.

Musings on the Acquisition of Narrative Originality

Dan Olson's latest Twitch stream plays Vivendi's The Hobbit, which only a week or so ago I was searching around the web for let's plays of to refresh myself on how the lockpicking minigame went. I found what I was looking for, but there's a surprising dearth of material on the subject. So.

Thinking again about what makes stories original/creative, not in the worldbuilding or anything but in the tales themselves, the ideas they have and how they apply them (that's what reminded me to check in on Foldable Human, the reason he plays bad tie-in games, the unique quality that comes from nobody caring about the finished product.) Still no expert, it's a quest I doubt I'l ever reach the end of, but it seems to me right now: 

Super twisty plots could mean nothing; the only way to get the twists to mean something, when so much of the status quo is constantly being undone, is if the characters are placed in morally compromising situations/forced to choose in moral dilemmas. What they want being put at odds with what they need, is of course one way. 

The reason stories affect us (I think) is as reflections of our own lives, and sometimes, we flash back to those situations the characters are in, wondering what we would do.

Also what's the deal with EXPOSITION I'm trying to study the subject and seriously don't know. As setup for such story moments? But in a sense the story is the exposition itself, so...

The Killers - Land of the Free

Definitely their most political work to date. Getting a strong Jackson Browne Lives in the Balance-era vibe from it. And directed by Spike Lee, who knew. Thought it was worth sharing.

Slippery Slope

Season 3 of Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events has apparently arrived, and I'm most of the way through, and it's the best of the three seasons I think. More dramatic, more funny, better visual effects. I've been meaning to rewatch Pirates 5 also on Netflix, to see if it's like as bad as I remember it or whatever, but Solo is on Netflix now and I love that movie, and it's a much better use of my time, but Piiiraaates... and what's the best use of my time, not just good or better? Probably not Netflix. 

I haven't arted any art in what feels like months. 

There's a lot that I want to change this year. 

Laptop Oofs

Oof. Adobe needs OS X 10.12 or later to run, like I've said, and I'm on OS X 10.10 like I've said, and the current version is 10.14 like I've said, and it's a free upgrade compatible with 10.8 or later like I've said... 2 gigs of memory, that works; 18.5 gigs of storage space, that works... but checking into it, doing a deep dive: hitting the little apple in the upper left corner, the first on the dropdown is "about this Mac..." this MacBook Air is from 2009, and it needs to be from 2012 or later according to the support website.

Oof.

2009!? That can't be right. I mean, I guess it can, but... Airs have been around for that long? 

January 23 2008. How about that.

Also I was expecting a DVD drive, but there's not one here. That's fine... I guess... The Amazon listing mentioned something about an optical drive. But whatever. If I wanted power, I could have went for an old Pro or an old not-Air; this is fine and I've somehow been genuinely calm about all of these disappointments.

Maybe it's still possible to get it to X 10.12, I mean, I don't need 10.14 or anything, just 10.12 but I'm going to have to do a deep dive as only the latest OS version is featured on the App Store...

In the meantime, iMovie is free I guess... FinalCutPro is $300, but that's cheaper than the Adobe suit in the long run...

Actually clicking on iMovie in the App Store, it needs 10.13 or later to run. double oof.

League works on this computer though at least. So there's that.

(The Creative Cloud App on Windows allows you to download and use old versions of the apps; I've been looking into that...)

Spot of Good News

Turns out those books I thought were due a couple of days ago are actually not due until the end of the month. 

Wooo.