Thursday, May 27, 2021

Different (Better?) Prelude Page

 


Wasn't satisfied with the wording earlier and hopefully this is better?? I'm still alive, but fun fact, printer and scanner companies are evil and probably have some nefarious purposes behind why their technology is so difficult to use. You have to install a driver! A different one each per new printer/scanner! It's totally possible to just make it plug and play, but they choose the difficult option!


Thursday, April 29, 2021

Cap'n Patches! April 29 2021

 

Some of this came out well! 

Not sure it's at the point where I'd be impressed enough to consider my own thing worth reading yet, heh, but it feels good to be creating, and finishing something as opposed to not finishing it. Still trying to figure out workflow (ideally I figured I'd draw the artwork out physically, scan, and color from there, but this is just coloring with the drawing also in the computer, isn't that interesting;) maybe I'll have something by next week, maybe not. But gee I hopse-oh. 

Thursday, April 22, 2021

Cap'n Patches April 22 2021: Prelude time!

 This is my third attempt at this gif, the content being the same but the word that fades in having been switched up. At first it was Preface, again, which we'd already seen like three times, and so figure, we're out of that by now with this, this should be different! 

So then I changed it to Prologue, and was going with that for a while... I was debating whether the Act I prologue and the Act 0 prelude should be the same thing... but hey good news, I got a few Eldritch Horror expansions today in the mail, and I'd decided to order them really mostly because I love the Prelude cards introduced in the expansions, and hey I respect Michael Reviewcorner's opinions but he's wrong on this one,  prelude cards rock, and did somebody say Prelude hey that's enough of a sign for me!


Besides there's already a prologue coming up, different from the Preface and the Prelude, (guess I'm gonna have to figure out what's in it now but that's fine, I've got a few ideas) but it's different anyway, and you know what I think I'll do that thing I was talking about and release more than one page today.



Thursday, April 15, 2021

Patches: Next Gif

 


I title this post thus, just "nex gif," because I'm not at this point sure if I really am going for the each-page-is-the-next-week's approach, but three-fourths of the gifs into it I guess I probably am. Which is actually fine! Not as impressive in the archive, when we come to hosting this on its own site, but heck it's just the archive..

Pretty pleased with how this came out! It's something I've been thinking about, that these aren't as good as they could possibly be, but about as good as I can make them with my current skillset; maybe I'll get better ever or maybe not... but these look real swanky actually, reviewing them with freshened eyes.

Thursday, April 8, 2021

Cap'n Patches: April 1st and 8th

 



Instead of one gargantuan gif I'm chunking it out into four smaller ones! Transitioning from one tableau to another, which gives you time to actually stop and study them, which is also much better (the single-gif file would have had to be even more enormous had I timed it out with the lingering tableaux like I'd wanted.) I've got all four gifs already constructed, and kinda want to post them all now and get on with the story, but doing it one at a time gives me more time to work on what comes next (which is not in gif format.) I'll be forced into deeper water soon enough; this gives me comfortable lead time and makes me feel like I'm on top of the ball. Meanwhile I guess I should also be looking for a way to host these on their own dedicated site...

I think there'll be gifs again, perhaps every time April 1st happens to fall on a Thursday. As ambitious as this one? More ambitious? Maybe even a fully animated video file instead...? we'll see i guess.

Friday, April 2, 2021

the gif for real tho??

 

exported this time at LOWEST MAXIMUM QUALITY POSSIBLE like seriously IT SHOULDN'T BE MATHEMATICALLY POSSIBLE but we DID IT ANYWAY. Let's see if it's even gonna work cos it still took a heckuh long time to upload hmm.

I hope it doesn't actually, because I've got a better idea...

Thursday, April 1, 2021

Cap'n Patches Preface Page


It's definitely the same page as last time! Nothing added at all, so if you saw the page last week it's not going to be any different! You may as well click away right now! Are you still reading this? Are you? Are you? Well are you? well you might as well SWEEP JEEPERS WHAT IS THAT

Alright so this experiment's a failure I guess; turns out a 24-second long animated gif file at 618x852 pixels takes... infinity, to load. Joke's on me I guess

(OR MAYBE IT'S JUST A STILL IMAGE I GUESS YOU'LL NEVER KNOW maybe *that's* the April Fool's joke Mwhahaha)

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Cap'n Patches Preface Page

 


This was planned to be a little more elaborate, but we can save that for next week. I had two ideas for this page, I guess we're doing both? Covid vaccine kinda wiping me out right now, too sleepy to finish off the more elaborate tableau this week. We're... just gonna have two preface pages eh.

Looked through quite a few 17th century texts to get historical typography right. AND MAIMING ET CETERA.

Thursday, March 18, 2021

Cap'n Patches Title Page

 


Updates on Thursdays! I'll be hosting it on its own site once I figure out how! I mean like I've got the site designed and laid out and everything but I don't know what the best option is web host-wise! Plus I thought you could publish HTML straight to the internet from InDesign but if that is a real thing I must be doing it wrong! It feels amazing having this out in the world even in this rudimentary form though! I think it turned out well! There's still so much that I need to figure out workflow-wise and everything but I've got a couple of weeks before we get out of the typography-based stuff! Okay I love you and I think you're doing a pretty good job handling the challenges life is throwing at you! See you next time! Bye!

Friday, February 5, 2021

Randomly Guessing Guestings before the Next WandaVision Eppy Comes Out!

 Okey dokey, so this post contains spoilers for The Mandalorian, which I have not seen! But of which I know that

Luke Skywalker shows up at the end of season two there to pick Grogu up. 

Whatever that means!

And so I'm really enjoying WandaVision, and there's supposed to be such a moment coming up, a cameo by, somebody CG Mark Hamill-esque, maybe in episode 5! So I'm getting my guesses in now.

1. My first thought when I heard there would be a surprise star cameo was that it would be... Tom Cruise or something! Playing Agnes's husband Ralph whom we haven't seen yet. Why Tom Cruise specifically? Because this mysterious Ralph is actually the demon Mephisto, and Tom Cruise would do wonderfully to play Satan??


2. It's supposed to be specifically more of a Luke Skywalker-style cameo, which means somebody we know but who's unexpected here. We haven't seen The Leader since the 2008 Incredible Hulk movie! It's gotta be Tim Blake Nelson, hasn't it?


3. Seeing how Skywalker was a CG Mark Hamill, Disney(+) are going to reuse the exact same assets and feature... Bucky Barnes, as portrayed by CG Sebastian Stan! Because Mark Hamill and Sebastian Stan look exactly alike! And they can just... or they can just (4) use the real Sebastian Stan!


5? It's gonna be CG Stan Lee, isn't it? Or maybe he filmed a cameo or two for the upcoming television shows before his death? (???)


So that is my thought.

POST-EPISODE FIVE EDIT: Okay, so I kinda saw that coming..., but I didn't see... *that,* coming.

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Readshorts: A Blogpost with Three Prologues

 1. Dreamed the night before last that Cailin and I were in the pool table room of Grandpa's house, looking down out at the field, down where there may have been a few workers doing something or other. In the dream there's no fence or ditch that separates the field from the road, and there's a cement truck that pulls in hard off of the road, swinging and broadsiding on of the figures down on the field, who collapses. Horrified, Cailin and I drop whatever it was that we were doing and rush out to see if they're still alive. It's a little later, and we're back in the house, and the man who'd been hit turns out to have been my coworker Oscar. If he's dead then I don't know how I'm going to continue working- but thankfully he's still alive.

2. Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi is about a group of future scientists who have strange, impossible-to-explain things happen aboard their starship, where it eventually turns out that the things are happening because they're characters in a Star Trek-like television show that plays fast and loose with its science. It's a pretty funny book, though truth be told there was only one occasion that caused me to laugh out loud. It's still worth reading because of those three codas mentioned in the title. It's worth reading for those three codas alone. They're, among the most raw human honest things I've read in my life, and each is better than the last. And, like, the rest of the book is pretty okay too, worth reading on its own and not that thick so it shouldn't take longer than a few days if you want. Anyway.

3. At lunch yesterday Dad handed me a couple of bags of cookies that he'd made, for me to give to my coworkers. I've got two of those, more or less. Usually it's Oscar who helps me feed calves, but a couple of days a week it's Joaquim. Before feeding the calves their dinner yesterday I found the opportunity to tell Oscar my dream, and hand him one of the two bags of cookies. I think Joaquim was off yesterday so I kept the other bag in my pocket till I could see him.

Work's at 7:00, and I'm usually pretty punctual and sometimes clock in at 6:59, which happened this morning: walking in, a loader had driven up behind me, lowered its bucket for me to get in, to drive me to the barn. It was Brent, and as I clocked in he told me that with both Joaquim and Oscar in today, if everyone scheduled to be in the barn today came in, I can take the day off. (If not, it would be Oscar and me feeding, Joaquim in the parlor helping to milk.) We'd see by around 7:30, but until then, I started getting prepped to fill the calf bottles, because it takes me just about that long. Prepare everything by the calf room (including heating things up, rinsing things off, pouring in hot water to keep the bottles warm and adding formula which will be mixed into their milk when that gets poured in,) swing the tractor around to in front of the milk room, fill up the bottles with milk, put the nipples on them. We can usually leave around 7:50. 

So I finish up there, head back to find Oscar. I'd seen Joaquim, in the parlor, so I'm not sure by this point if he is going to help with breakfast, but when he sees I'm ready he heads into the break room to get better dressed for outside. Brent had disappeared somewhere, not sure where - so, was I supposed to gauge for myself if he'd let me leave early? But he's with Oscar, in the break room, Oscar finishing up telling him the story of me telling him my dream and then giving him cookies. Brent says I can leave if I want, and goes off elsewhere, and Oscar asks me what I want to do and I say I'm here actually to give Joaquim some cookies as well. And it's perfect, and it feels so scripted, and I decide to stay to feed for breakfast, because it goes a lot quicker with three people than with only two.

And then right before feeding the hutches, Joaquim saved my bacon-- so I caught myself in time I didn't dump all the bottles to the ground when I dumped out the hot water from the bottle tray-panel-tub-thing (it's usually closed, bottles held in and locked by the top grate, but the tray had been opened from feeding the group pens before the individual hutches got fed) but he called my name and I caught myself, and everything turned out non-disastrously (maybe the bottles would have gone everywhere, or maybe I would have caught myself in time had he not been there, or maybe I wouldn't have tilted the tray at such a steep angle if Joaquim hadn't been with us in the first place so it'd be fine anyway, who's to say.) And feeding the calves in the hutches I could make sure that the right calves received the right bottles, because the youngest ones get a special mix and I counted it out just right based on how many were born the most recently.

So in Redshirts, they try not to get caught up in The Narrative, because it's where bad things happen and where nothing makes sense... but in my experience of it, this morning felt so perfect, like a Narrative, only my writer is a lot better apparently, and it was humbling and lovely. Kinda working out how to deal with these emotion things, and that feeling, like being caught up in something like a well-crafted story, certainly is one of those.

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Twinning

Feels like something I would write, in a lot of ways (thematic, structural etc) and I quite enjoyed it!, so you can consider this a second Spooky Short Story if you want IDK, half a month later. Maybe I should've waited till next year to link it so I wouldn't have to write one myself but it looks like they (VICE) put up one every year themselves, and this is this year's, and who knows if next year's is going to be as, me, as this year's is.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3vvz3/twinning-halloween-short-fiction

Saturday, October 31, 2020

the rope slackening in your hand

 maybe it comes as a memory. dusk, at the fair with your father, and the late autumn air still warm. a cold front blowing in as the evening sets, a chill finger of wind that tugs at the edges of your sleeves. you two, you're walking together, faster and faster and the crowd seems endless and the fairground seems to stretch on and on and maybe you can't remember arriving in the first place, to be so far lost. you're reaching out to your father and maybe he's reaching back for you and you two are holding tightly as possible (and maybe his hands seem so big and maybe his hands seem so sweaty) and you're in a hurry though you don't know why (maybe he's afraid) and he's so much faster than you, running and running. and you slip and he keeps running and you do too so it's like you're still together, and maybe it's like neither of you are moving at all, if you can stay close to him just the same and if you don't know how far in or out you still are. maybe it's the people around you who are all the ones moving past in an endless procession. but your father keeps running, and you can feel the precise distance between the two of you, and you can feel it grow like a slipping rope slackening in your hand. and maybe you don't cry as you two drift further apart and maybe he doesn't see you get swept up in a line of people lined up so neatly and so eagerly, lined up to go inside the haunted house which you had been so afraid of last time but did not have to enter.

and you can still feel the distance between you grow and grow as he never looks back over his shoulder,  like maybe he trusts you or maybe he doesn't care or maybe he's in too much of a hurry and his mind is on other things, and as it's the queue that's moving and as it's you who's standing still as you run, you're caught up into the building as your father slips away from you. and your voice catches in your throat and you try to turn around and leave out the entrance but the line which stretches endlessly outward pushes endlessly in, the doors of the house open like a maw to accept them. (though maybe there's only a few dozen people, and maybe it's just that you can't see past their legs, though maybe you're taller than that by now, in whatever reality the memory corresponds to.)

and you, still feeling your father slipping away, attuned to his location in the mysterious way that a compass knows where north is, have no choice but to push through the house, race through the house and race out the other side, the neat little line that pours out the back door you know is there. and keep running and following your north and catching up to him. and maybe if you're brave enough and fast enough he'll turn around and never even notice that you had slipped away.

maybe you take a look back out at the sky again, though, blue with orange setting in, before licking your lips and putting your head down and stepping through the doors.

and there's straw everywhere and dust, and fake cobwebs and maybe you remember shrill laughter from another room. and there's arrows on the wooden floor in chalk, and you're hurrying and following the arrows and not looking up and your compass is spinning and you look up too late to realize that it was a maze and that you'd been tricked. and maybe there are employees dressed as monsters and hiding in the walls, and maybe there are other guests around you but in your memory you feel alone and you feel small and you feel like you'll never be more lost in your life.

and your father is there suddenly like a vision before you, though you can still feel him running further and further away, in your compass in your rope, and maybe he pulls you up in his arms and carries you to the car and you two drive home together but maybe the memory ends before that, with the thought, or maybe the knowledge, that whatever had come to rescue you, it was not your father.

but you've known fear and held its hand and talked with it the way that some are said to be able to talk with the dead, and see it all around yourself and everyone in the way that some are said to be able to see the dead. you see it in adults in their loves and lusts and their politics, and you see it in children in their breath and in their heartbeat and in their trembling hands.

and maybe you see it in yoursel

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Video Games Are Cool


 Drifting off to sleep and I remember this out of nowhere. Maybe just the sheer nightmare of reality breaking down around you. (Not what my spooky story is about this year but not a bad idea.) Video games are cool, but they have edges, but this is something that incorporates the edges into other edges. Not anything that could be accomplished in any other medium. Videogames are cool.

 I could not sleep until I'd tracked it down and shared it. Now I can sleep.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Still Counts

 This is from the day after the thing from last post, though it's been a couple of weeks. The thing from last post it took me a while to swing around to and post about as well, but I figured everything in order and posted that before this, I guess reckoning I'd be around to posting today's post the day after, or even later on the day of. Didn't happen obviously. Executive dysfunction SUX.

Alright so after the calves are around 8 weeks old we move them from their individual hutches into group pens, 8 at a time (four fit in the wagon so we make two trips.) Those calves in the pens get fed once a day, until we wean them by simply stopping doing that. Pens two and five weren't getting fed on this particular day. And I realized. Two and five.

Alright I've mentioned before https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTlg0cK-UjE wrong link Deep 6 Eyes here!, I prolly (??) have synesthesia associating colors with numbers- 2  and 6 with blue and orange. Two and five, here I realize, fit together: five is yellow somehow, with two being blue.

When I eat M&Ms I eat them in colored pairs, it's this whole thing, and blue and yellow go together. The two pens here not getting fed, the mathematics of it, reminds me of that, and the rest of it snaps into place.

I mentioned being unsure of any of the other numbered colored connotations, but with blue and yellow in place the remainder snaps in place easily. Or, most of them do. 2 is blue, 3 is green, 4 is ??brown?red?? 5 is yellow 6 is orange 7 is purple 8 might be black and 0 feels white. 1 and 9 are also numbers. They feel like colors imperceivable by humans.

Like I pointed out earlier it's not a literal viewing of those numbers as intrinsically colored, it's more of a vague association. But it still counts.

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

My Favorite Author Wrote Something Just for Me!

(I mean it was in response to a comment I made on a YouTube video he did, about how soothing the fan in the background is, but that's still pretty cool. eh?)

Not always, but it was a very hot day :)


(Dan Wells is a professional GM now and does videos reviewing different roleplaying systems and splatbooks, and his channel is still small enough for him to be able to reply to each comment he gets.)


Legit tho FATE is such a good roleplaying system. 

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Which Reminds Me of This Other Hypnotizingly Good Video Essay


So I watched a few more Errant Signal videos, but like not as many as I'd want to, because video game videos but spoilers? Either I'm interested in the games he talks about but there's spoilers in the videos which I don't want, or I'm not and I don't care about spoilers but I don't care about that? Wavering on whether I should watch his mostly-spoiler-free take on Outer Wilds, the first half of a two-part thing of which the second is the spoilery bit. It's the Fortnite one that I keep on coming back to.

Errant Signal's take on why graphics aren't that important is a pretty good one I think, I mean the video itself is good; Jacob Geller comes to a similar conclusion in his video about the same subject, and of the two I prefer the former, so. 

Yeah so Jacob Geller, also doing video essays about video games (for someone who's so hardcore in how casual I am gaming-wise I sure watch a lot of gaming YouTube; I'm fascinated by the formation of genres and subgenres, and also really into analysis of storytelling within an interactive medium.) Of his videos, the one I keep coming back to is, this:


Speaking of spoilers, this one's got unmarked analysis of Kentucky Route Zero, and the whole thing could be seen as a discussion of that game specifically? (via analysis of other media and games, and other real-life stuff.) And it's like HEY THERE, I'm geTTING AROUND TO IT GEEZ. Warn a fella a little next time.

Friday, July 10, 2020

So This is a Great Video Essay that Blew My Mind Repeatedly

Figuring out Blogger's new interface; got most of it licked but it's reminding me I need to post on Wordpress more. (That's what I'm figuring is going to host my next webcomic, aside from the I-need-to-post-on-any-of-my-blogs-more.) 

This year has been pretty bad for my executive functioning; is it the lack of blogging that's leading to lack of structure, vice versa? It's probably the job; even back when I got things done it was just very very slowly, and I accomplished things at all because I had 8-9 more hours in the day I don't have anymore. 

Video coming ever, though! I should probably chop off a smaller project instead of the huge one, but I'm still down one battery charger, so no way to shoot video; at least with the one I've been working on the past six months, all the footage has been shot and I just need to finish the script and edit film clips together. (I'd be working on it now if I weren't blogging, but that just makes my getting-anything-done seem irresponsible.) I've been working on it *to the best of my ability,* I just have a naturally slow work process as I let ideas percolate.

Waking up early has gotten me this far which is pretty sweet; I read somewhere that executive function for people with executive dysfunction works best at non-daylight hours for some reason. Guess I'll keep doing this then.

even if I were to start taking meds where would I even start with them? It's something I've never done before, so, just spinning blindly in space...

So you watch that essay yet? It's 40 minutes long but probably only 20 minutes if you put it on 2x speed. Watch it again if you want. I've heard of Errant Signal I guess but never really even meant to get around to watching his stuff, even though he's one of the channels subscribed to by Dan Olsen (my favorite YouTuber) but Dan Olsen is mentioned in the video, and linked to it on Twitter, and here we are (and though of course I'd seen Manufactured Discontent and Fortnite several times and knew about the stuff they're (both) talking about here, it still just blows my mind.)



So I've been playing this video game The Outer Wilds, where you're an alien astronaut caught in a time loop as you explore your little solar system and solve mysteries, though it's far more common that you die and restart well before the sun explodes-- and how crazy would it be if there were a Battle Royale just, set in there at the same time as the exploration stuff...