2024

13 May, 2024. 406 words.

Dispatches from @ultrviolet@gts.endgameviable.com:

Monday 05/06

17:37 # I rather miss square monitors for multi-monitor setups. Rectangular monitors don’t work right for anything except the central monitor.
17:41 # I feel like I’m missing an essential cord-organizing life skill. It’s basically impossible to neatly organize the number of electric and connectivity cords that I have surrounding my computers. The cords are never long enough to run at right angles so there’s no choice but to stretch them weird. Or else they’re way too long so it’s impossible to do a short cable run. Either way, the second I tie a cable down, I find that I need to add more cables to it or remove cables from it, because I’m constantly changing things. The whole process of cable management is just generally annoying.

19:04 # Just hearing about Beacon.tv, the new Critical Role service. Sounds like Dropout.tv, home of Dimension 20. I’m oddly fascinated by these sorts of artist-owned business ventures. They’re sticking it to the man by becoming the man, which is absolutely necessary for sticking it to the man. Fighting greedy corporate capitalism by making their own corporation. That sort of thing. An amusing cycle. Anyway I’d love to see the cold hard numbers that drive them to these sorts of decisions. How much does their production cost? How much does Twitch and YouTube cost them? How much more (or less) are they expecting to make with their own service?

17:41 # One thing I find fascinating about remote-recorded actual play shows is how perfectly still everyone is in the camera frame for hours on end. It’s a weird skill the influencer generation has developed.

11:16 # I’ve been an avid RPG player for lo these many years and there’s something that I still find to be a completely alien concept, and here I see it as the very first thing in the character creation process of the new Pathfinder remastered Player Core book: “Step 1. Create a Concept.” I cannot comprehend this thought process. The “concept” of the character at the beginning of character creation is always a blank void of nothing. To me, the RPG character concept is always discovered during the course of the game. The character is never, ever, ever discovered before the game. That makes no sense to me AT ALL. Even in the world of weird nerds, somehow I’m still the weird one.