My Favorite Tool

Categories Uncategorized

This is my first post of the type, a little more personal, but it felt like a good way to reflect upon how far I have come. Not quite a journal and not really a guide, and probably better as a toot/tweet, but here it is.

The last handful of years have had a lot of growth for me. In my job I have felt like I have done a lot of good, and in my personal life I felt like I grew a great comfort with boundaries and comfort. That is not to say that things do not get topsy-turvy, but I feel a lot better equipped to frame things in a healthy way. I grew up with a lot of broken people and so what may seem practical to others was foreign to me, but I never really learned how to manage all the information other people spoke my way. I took a lot of what was said to me at face value and that led to a lot of problems.

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Slime Rancher: Final Thoughts

Categories Video Games

I won’t get into too heavy of specifics but there is spoileryness, even while I am as vague as I can be.

In the literal ruins of Hobson’s past, I learned that I can look to his advice but I cannot live in his footsteps. The lesson of the game was that of choice. Hobson imparted knowledge throughout my adventure but, ultimately, taught me that the choices my own through a carefully measured pace of notes that blended with the tasks I found myself choosing to do. There were a lot of decisions to be made as Beatrix, but for every door I chose, another closed. I think we are all choosing doors every single day; what is life if not a series of doors and a mixture of emotions about the ones we did and did not go through?

Slime Rancher let me break convention by allowing me to fly over locked doors, choosing how I approached the world around me. With freedom abound, it is beautiful that they did not take away the culminating final choice. So many games end in a this-or-that scenario masked as decision making that is supposed to be reflective of the person playing. Slime Rancher, while more constrained in overall scope, is so much more. Consequently, Instead, I am now sitting here in my chair, and I am exploring my mixed emotions.

I recommend you play Slime Rancher, or not. The choice is yours.

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Just a Reminder that Crown Crates are Garbage

Categories Video Games

I usually do so well to avoid crates. The last time I bought big into crates was the in 2019 when Xanmeer Crates were available. Well, here I am again, a sucker once more for Xanmeer Crates. I cannot even believe you can get a Craglorn Welwa four times in a row. Meanwhile I have only gotten a single ouchie-plant out of the three available. So there is not much to this post, just a reminder that Crown Crates are a scam. If I could, I would just pay some stupid number annually to know I can get what I want. I am not adverse to paying to support the game, but it would be nice to not feel like I have been fleeced so often. As of now, I only stick my head out every handful of years to learn my lesson again.

Well played, ZoS.

Adding Steam Games to the Menu Editor in KDE Plasma

Categories Tech

I recently made the switch from Linux Mint to Fedora KDE. I loved Mint, but my gaming has gotten a lot better since the move. In my time with Mint, I figured out how to add Steam games to the menu but I forgot to store this information before making the move. After figuring it out all over again, I am saving that knowledge here for myself.

This feels almost too short to be a post but I had a very difficult time finding this information here it is.

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A Friend on the Inside

Categories Video Games

Since 2014, I have played exclusively argonians and have no intention of changing. Khajiiti have come close but, while I respect heir laid back lifestyle and abundance of substances, the marshes and dark places of Murkmire have always felt at home for my light adverse soul.

Elder Scrolls Online just added a new premium home to its shop. Nestled away in Blackwood, Willowpond Haven is stunning for several reasons. Just look at it. The rain, the hanging trees, a central body of water, and in the back is a cave! I love caves!

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The Battle of White Gloves: Super Mario Bros. Wonder Vs. Sonic Superstars

Categories Video Games

Growing up in the 90’s, I was in an exclusive relationship with Sega. The courting was short, as my father brought home the Sega Genesis and it was unexpected but welcomed love. At the time, Nintendo never entered my mind. I spent my evening with Sonic, Hook, and many other adventures. The years however tired my relationship with Sega, and I found myself hoping for the Corporation that I once knew to return to loving form. One can only wait so long though, as I began to look elsewhere, as I began to look at Nintendo.

On October 17th, I invited myself to fall again, I purchased Sonic Superstars and the possibility of renewed interest felt real! I have wanted so badly to fall in love with Sonic again, and this was my chance. Nothing is ever so simple though, and two days later Super Mario Bros. Wonder showed up at my door looking like a delicious dish.

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Linux Mint: Removing Width and Height Minimums for Discord

Categories Tech

Discord software has a minimum width and minimum height that it locks the software to. It can not be resized below these dimensions. For me, this meant that I could not resize the window to fit my one vertical monitor. This is how to fix all of that.

Step 1: Finding the Folder

Navigate to…

“~/.var/app/com.discordapp.Discord/config/discord/”

You can paste the file path into the file explorer and it should take you where you need to get to. If you are using other versions of linux, or different methods of install Discord, then a few google searches said alternative paths could be “~/.config/discord/ ” or “~/snap/discord/current/.config/discord”.

Step 2: Improving the Settings

Inside the folder will be a file called

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The Boring Image Software Post

Categories Tech

There is no fanfare for this post. I have been trying new image software the last few months and I thought I would share a few useful ones.

ScreenToGif

Quickly capture a series of images and turn them into a gif (or webp). Frames can easily be trimmed out and you can play with scaling and time. I had to adjust the settings a few times to get a reasonable file size that was appropriate for my blog posts. Sadly it is Windows only. You can see things in action in my Fauns in Peril post. Download from https://www.screentogif.com/ and visit their subreddit page or discord where the author frequently responds.

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My Tryst with the Queen of Romcom, Meg Ryan

Categories Movie and Series Talk

Meg Ryan has a new romcom out in theaters called, What Happens Later. A purveyor of ideas of romance and lover of the laughs, I decided to take a deep, spoiler-filled, dive into some of her former movies before going to check this new one out. While I have not yet watched Meg’s latest outing, that is for a future post, I am going to look at where we’ve been before we see where we–or Meg Ryan–is going.

You’ve Got Mail

The entire app dating market has based their economy after the charm of this movie. It’s undoubtedly cute and I loved it in middle school. Then I loved it even more in high school when I picked up more references, like Joe, Tom Hanks, being bothered by Joni Mitchell’s lyrics about the illusions of clouds. Now it hits different yet again all these years later. The movie, more like magical realism than realism, sets reality aside and while there is nothing wrong with fantastical love, I just don’t buy it. I could buy When Harry Met Sally, it felt like these were real people with real struggles. Stuff like this is adorable, but it doesn’t really happen. Yes, there’s that familiar trope that the person you love the most is right in front of you. Where When Harry Met Sally captures that perfectly, You’ve Got Mail captures the fever dream of this fantasy, but that will be explained more later. 

The relationship that I could buy into was the relationship between Kathleen, Meg Ryan, and Frank, Greg Kinnear. I do think it ended a little too happily, but maybe that is because I’ve never seen a breakup in which neither person grieved it at all. Frank seemed like a cute and dynamic person. Rather blandly, opposite to Frank was Joe’s partner Patricia, a bland trope. She was self-centered and surface-level and I’m tired of seeing the “wrong person” for a main character be this “Cinderella’s-step-sister” type. If she was that entitled to begin with, would he have actually been with her? Show me a bad relationship for a main character in which the not-right partner has a great deal of strengths and things they bring to the table, but who doesn’t understand the intricacies of their partner the way they need to. That’s so much more true to life than the overwritten story of the wrong lover we get here. Then again, maybe 24 years ago this was a breath of fresh air.

Timeless though I think, is time itself. The movie lingered too long in that middle hour between 30 minutes and the hour and a half mark. Meanwhile, we needed to spend much more than fifteen minutes when Joe and Kathleen started falling in love in each others physical presence. This could have been the best part of the movie.

And here’s the part where I really don’t buy it, when Joe decided to pursue Kathleen, showing up to her apartment, how did he get her address? George, I guess? But would George really give out her address to someone she hates? And honestly, wouldn’t it be kind of creepy for him to show up there? And then make tea at her apartment?! While he’s there, she slips into bed, he tucks her in, touches her lips before she kisses him. It all seems far too intimate for the relationship that they have before this point. If someone who put me out of business showed up at my door with flowers then made me tea, I wouldn’t be okay with that! Nobody makes me tea in my own house unless we have a very special relationship. It’s adorable, but again, magical realism. I’m not the most socially savvy person in the world, but in general, people don’t use people’s house appliances when they’re not really friends.

On a positive note, I loved the way this movie uses music. Pop music and orchestral music mix to great effect. I fell in love with I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City when I was in high school because of this movie, and I got a kick out of the Both Sides Now joke by Joni Mitchell, as mentioned, and Stevie Wonder’s contribution is perfect.

My heart is not without passion, and I confess that the last twelve minutes made me smile the whole time. And for that, it gets two Meg’s to protect each other from one Hanks.

Sleepless in Seattle

Every romcom has some elements of unbelievability, but this is no more realistic than The Princess Bride; it’s just in a different genre. Annie is a stalker who hires a private investigator to sus out the man she heard on the radio, chases him to Seattle, then breaks up with her fiancé to go meet him on the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day. Not only would it not happen, it’s also creepy.

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The Elder Scrolls Online: Fauns in Peril

Categories Video Games

The colorful landscape of Galen and the fauns that fill it brought me joy at first sight. Reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and visiting Ohio has instilled an instinctual desire in me to want to make friends with all fauns.

Fauns dancing in Galen.

Sadly, the fauns until this point had not seemed keen on the idea. They dance, but never extended an invitation. In fact, they were downright hostile. I doubted I would ever meet a faun friend, but then I found two striking individuals.

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