#(I'm not actually done moving all my files to the desktop where they will be safer in the long run)

[kirby-the-gorb]

[foone]

As the person I follow who does reverse engineering, do you have any suggestions for finding resources on reverse engineering Android apps?

Specifically, there's an app I'm playing with, where after seeing the structure of the "export as Markdown" output I want to know what the internal structure and representation of the data is. The end goal of understanding it is to be able to add certain kinds of data dynamically, rather than up front. That's certainly doable typing in raw markdown, but being able to do it "app style" would be more convenient.

The google Play Store entry does not mention any open source licenses, or looking for the source code and hopefully a git repo or something would have been my first step.

(I'll probably need to bang together a crappy app to do what I really want regardless, but maybe this app's data structure would be more convenient than doing so with markdown.)

So, android stuff:

First you need the APK. You can do some trickery with your phone to pull it over the ADB connection if you install the android SDK, but generally I just google "app name APK" and you'll find some greymarket site that'll give you a copy.

Secondly, APKs are just ZIP files (JAR files, technically, but JAR files are also just ZIP files!). Unzip them and you can find lots of interesting stuff, often.

For disassembling/decompiling them, my go-to program is jadx. It's a java decompiler that's been around a while and can natively open APK files and decompile them. There's some weirder new APKs that it can't handle (something to do with a newer bytecode revision, I think?) but I can't recall the details on how you handle those. Those are rare, in my experience. jadx is pretty good, but you'll occasionally find methods or entire classes that it just can't figure out, and it'll give you a bytecode dump. I don't yet have a good solution for those, other than "get good at reading JVM bytecode".

If you're dealing with games, another useful thing can be UABE and dotPeek. These are unity/C# tools, but you would be surprised how many android games (and non-games!) are actually unity under the hood.

Bluestacks can also be useful, because it'll let you run the app on your desktop and that can be handy for things like running WireShark to log all network traffic.

Speaking of logging, the other handy thing I've done is enabling android developer mode on my phone to get to one specific option: Bluetooth HCI snoop log.

Now, actually getting that log is tricky and varies from phone to phone, because for some reason manufacturers like to move it around, but it's one of the best ways to reverse engineer bluetooth communication stuff. You basically turn on the log and everything your phone does to communicate with your Smart Toothbrush or whatever will be logged to a file, then you can yank that file over and stuff it into Wireshark.

So... hopefully some of that is a helpful start? I've not done a huge amount of Android reversing so I'm not super familiar with the tools used, but these are the ones I've got on hand for when I do.

also sorry for all the horny robotgirl posters who saw "android reverse engineering" in the tags and thought this was gonna be about taking them apart with screwdrivers and rooting around in their insides. Not today!

[cherry-flavoured-thot]

i've got an obey me ask

imagine an mc that's just been plucked for the program being from the complete opposite end of the financial spectrum of our beloved cast of pixelated men.

an mc that grew up/was living paycheck to paycheck, barely able to make ends need and feed themselves. it'd be literally night to day with them. they'd gasp over price tags and shopping totals reading thousands of grimm, still stuck in the mindset of "that'll break the bank." a spreadsheet on their computer of their money spending and gaining (i can't remember the proper terms for that stuff, it's been a hot minute since i learned it all in middle school), a long list of things they think they could never stored somewhere.

sure, it'd be on their student file that that's what their life was back in the human world, but whether anyone knows or not besides them is up to you (id imagine lucifer would probably gloss over it completely in the rush of getting paperwork done so he can get to bed before 5am lol grumpy old man needs sleep). poor thing might break down if anyone knew..

sorry if this seems odd, i just feel that as someone who's right there in the pay-to-pay situation, i'd be in complete shock of being able to actually (and easily) afford things without having to debate whether i really needed it or earned it.

if anything in the text is broke, i blame tumblr desktop version. my phone isn't working the best so i had to move here from mobile ;-;

"You spent how much on....?" Is a question the mc repeats to every brother but with different things. Demonus, designer clothes, figurines, skincare products, food, books, ancient objects, new blankets and pillows etc. But no one really thinks too much of it, despite mc's shock every time.

It's not until Mammon complains one time about how broke he is, and mc turns to him, looking him dead in the face saying. "You could easily survive the week with that much." Then they proceed to write him up a budget with the minimal amount of Grimm in his account.

"...mc how did you do that?"

"Oh I'm a pro, I once lived off of five dollars and spite for a full week." Mammon, is casually bringing this up with Lucifer next time he sees him.

"You didn't mention mc was flat broke before comin' here."

"...that's because I wasn't aware." Lucifer is pulling up mc's student file, and there it is in big bold writing. Lucifer and Mammon both have a lightbulb moment, thinking about different occasions where the topic of money came up and mc was acting strange. "If I were you, I'd minimize mentions of your spending habits around mc."

"...yeah." Mammon feels so guilty. That not only does he stick to mc's budget, he always mentions to them when he's managed to save money rather than spend it. But he'll still be a devil on their shoulder encouraging them to splurge a little on themselves because they deserve it.

Lucifer, Satan and Asmodeus would be using this knowledge to let mc know they are providers. (Mammon would too. He would but his budget skills are bad so he's a sometimes provider!) They will always make sure mc is financially good, so feel free to spend (within reason - Lucifer would argue). (You deserve to be spoilt - Asmodeus, Satan)

Beelzebub and Leviathan, would just buy things for mc instead when the opportunity arises. Beel will always pay when inviting mc out for food, it's his treat. mc was talking about wanting to get a game? well they don't need to get because Levi had it express delivered to the front door. (Mammon would also do this when he has money lmao)

"If you want it just buy it." Belphegor is firmly in the middle ground, because he'll tiredly tell mc those words, when they've been debating aloud to get the thing in question. If they mention it's too expensive and talk themselves out of buying it. He just gets it for them.

[yuffi369]

Co-DM

P03 x GN!Reader

In which P03 realizes that, for as much crap as he's talked about for you not appreciating his game design, you may actually know what you're talking about, sometimes.

Since you'd managed to keep a back-up of Inscryption's files after... everything, P03 had managed to worm his way onto your computer system's drive. At first, he acted a lot more maliciously; accessing permissions to just about everything, your webcam, your microphone, any files... he looked through just about everything, and began to make moves to even take over your computer entirely.

You were smart, though. You'd managed to get to where the backup copy of Inscryption and all of its files were, and upon threat of deletion, he cooperated. He agreed to only hang around your computer and not tamper with any of your files, or compromise your computer's integrity, but he still wanted to hang around. You didn't mind this for two reasons; one, it did seem rather cruel to keep him locked up in the files with nothing to do, and two, you didn't mind the company anyhow, seeing as most of your friends were over long distance.

One evening, you'd decided to get some work done on a campaign you were running for your friends. The game was in two weeks, so you had plenty of prep time, but there were some maps you had to make, encounters to plan, and you had to figure out some plot ahead of where they were going. The next session would be taken up in the first half by traveling, so it was mostly technical things like potential encounters, which was probably your least favorite part of game writing. You didn't hate any part, necessarily, but your strong suit lied in the story parts.

You were so lost in your struggling thoughts, staring at the VTT interface with a stumped expression, you almost forgot P03 was there. "Hey, idiot, you going to move the mouse, or are you going to let the computer screen fall asleep?"

You blinked rapidly, sitting up straight. "Huh?" You looked down at the tiny P03, who was staring at you as he stood on top of your task bar. "No, I was just thinking."

"What're you even doing, anyway?" he asked, looking at the grid on the screen.

"Writing encounters for my next game session," you replied, scrolling through another webpage you had open where you had access to stat blocks available to you.

"You write games?" he said, incredulously.

"Oh, right, I haven't had a session since you've come around and started living rent-free on my desktop."

"What do you want me to do for money, use your graphics card for crypto mining?"

"No," you replied, curtly.

"Anyway, given your criticisms about my game design, I didn't think you knew a thing about game design." He crossed his arm over his body, rolling his eyes.

"This isn't exactly a card game," you replied. "It's a tabletop roleplaying game. It's based on war gaming, with roleplaying added in. So it's a mixture of tactical gaming and story-based gaming. Not quite a card game like Inscryption."

"Interesting," he replied.

He continued to watch you work- or, well, the more accurate words would be struggle to work. You tried, several times, to put down tokens on the map, only to take them back off after a few minutes of deliberation. Sick of watching you struggle, P03 hovered up to your cursor, dragging it around to get your attention. "Hurry up. I'm sick of the ambient work music you've had in the background for the last hour."

"Sorry, P," you sighed, genuinely feeling a bit bad that he'd watched you do basically nothing this entire time. "I'm not exactly the best at planning encounters..."

"Lemme help, then. Pull up the webpage with the stat blocks."

"Fine. But aren't you programmed to write for Inscryption, not this?"

"I'm a fast learner." He scrolled through the webpage, looking through the stat blocks. After looking over a few stat blocks, he pulled up a stat block for an undead creature, that had an interesting mechanic. "Here. This should keep your players from falling asleep."

You took one look at the stat block and shook your head. "No. I can't use that."

He looked at you with exasperation. "Well why the f#%& not?" he said, the little beep censoring his cursing through the speakers.

"Those are undead creatures," you explained, using your cursor to point at the stat block's creature type. "They're just traveling through grasslands. I can't justify a random group of these just showing up out of the blue."

"I dunno what to tell you. This stat block's probably your best bet for an interesting mechanic that's low-level enough to not kill your players. Maybe have them, I dunno, take a shortcut through a graveyard, or whatever."

"Shortcut through a graveyard..." you repeated, under your breath. After a brief moment, you bolted upright in your seat, pulling up your document and beginning to write at an accelerated pace. P03 probably clocked you at about 90 WPM at your fastest. Once you were satisfied with the narrative text you'd written out for yourself to read upon arrival to the location, you pulled up the VTT and began placing things all around the map, taking your time to make sure things were placed in logical, good-looking locations, making sure to add terrain in places for your rogue to hide behind and take advantage of. Finally, you put the group of undead creatures on the hidden layer to pull up later, and then typed out what loot was to be found in the graveyard as well as on the bodies of the creatures.

Once you were satisfied with your work, you leaned back in your chair, gazing upon the zoomed-out map with pride. "Wow," P03 let out a whistle-like beep, looking at the map with you. "Once you got started, that only took, what? An hour? I would've been able to make the fight really easy, but all that other stuff probably would've taken me the better part of an afternoon."

"Well, I mean, it does take me a while to write something good. But when inspiration hits, I sort of just... go, and don't stop. But I don't have those moments often, or at least not enough for my liking."

P03 turned and glared at you. "Take the damn compliment."

You laughed. "Alright, alright, geez. Thank you."

"Now, let's celebrate with a movie." He pulled up a window with a video player, ready to play the file.

You raised an eyebrow. "Where did you get that?"

"Downloaded it off yarhar.net while you were writing."

"P!"

"What? I scanned it for viruses, it's clean. What do you want me to do, pay for Netflix? With what money?"

You just laughed, shaking your head. "Let me go make some popcorn."

"And I'll... pull up a jpeg of popcorn, I guess."

[lacefuneral]

hi!!! i love for custom blog theme,, do you have a link to the code or creator 0:?

ya!

so my theme is actually a heavily modified version of redux edit #1 by lopezhummel (current url: holyaura). i always remind users that most tumblr themes are old and that you'll need to replace all instances of "http://" in the code with "https://" so tumblr will save the theme. i had to do it with this one

these are the modifications i made to the theme. i edited this theme over the course of at least a year or so and don't quite recall how i did all of these things. but to the best of my ability:

i moved the "left side img" to the right side of the screen. i also made this element "responsive" so the image will never get cropped when you resize your screen. this was a bitch and a half to figure out and i truthfully do not remember how i did it

i deleted the text in the drop-down navigation so it appears as a little line that is otherwise not noticeable. this type of theme, the "redux edit," used to be very popular because having a drop-down menu let you cram a bunch of links that lead to sub-pages on your blog. i've done away with my sub-pages, but i still like the format of the "redux style" tumblr theme, for its minimal UI and for its customization options.

i separated my mobile description from my web description for formatting reasons. basically, most elements in tumblr themes are connected to specific text fields and toggles. i simply went to the section that was connected to my blog description and deleted it. the web description has to be manually typed inside of the CSS/HTML editor when i want to change it. whereas my mobile description is whatever i type in the "description" box of the normal tumblr theme editors.

i added code someone else made ("NoPo" by drannex42 on GitHub) which allows you to hide posts with certain tags on them. i did this to hide my pinned post, as it looks bad on desktop.

i replaced the tiny pagination arrows at the bottom with images that literally say "next" and "back" because the arrows were far too small/illegible. i know they aren't centered in the container i'm not sure how to fix that lol

i added a cursor

i installed a working music box ("music player #3" by glenthemes), and then added music by uploading MP3 files to discord and then using the links of those files as the audio sources. iirc i also had to make this element responsive and i aligned it so it would sit on the left side of my screen. i made the "album art" for each one the same strawberry pixel art

the moth is just a PNG i added and then moved around so it was behind my sidebar using the options that came pre-packaged with the theme

if you want something like the strawberry shortcake decoration at the top (called "banner" in the theme) your best bet is to google "pixel divider"

theme didn't support favicon so i added that in so i could have a little heart

ALSO:

this theme is. really weird about backgrounds. any background that i have ever set for it, i've had to do weird shit in photoshop. like making the background HUGE, mirroring it, etc. - because it would crop the image weird, or there would be a gap where there was no image. idk man, it's haunted. i'm sure there's a way to fix this but i am NOT tech savvy enough. anyway, patterns are probably your best friend. and if you DO want something that isn't a pattern, it's going to take a lot of trial and error. but i love this theme so i deal with it 😭

the sidebar image and the floating image do not scale. if your image is 1000 pixels, it will display at 1000 pixels. you'll either have to edit the code so that the theme scales the image for you, or resize any images before you add them

my white whale of theme editing (aside from the Weird Background thing) is that i cannot get infinite scrolling to work. i have tried every code out there. all of them break my theme. it makes me sad because like. i have music there for a reason. the idea is that people would listen to it while they scroll. unfortunately, the way it's set up now, the music will stop every time someone clicks "next" or "back" 💀

anyway sorry for rambling but i hope you enjoy the the theme and customizing it in the way that you want to!

[jamesfalt]

this is a wip i'm posting here and NOT to twitter separately (i'm just gonna link to this post on twitter) but i kinda wanted a place to quickly talk about seacrette's development bc true to her name she really fucking stayed secret for like 13 years. she's not a character i really put emphasis on at all either despite existing as long as my other utaus.

so yeah long ramble bc she's just that old of an oc

her original bank was recorded likely late 2011, if my old deviantarts were still accessible i could get a more exact date bc i remember i kinda tried to hype her up to my like 20 deviantart followers by saying was "working on a secret project" and the joke was that her name WAS secret. i was gonna do a big reveal like HAHA GET IT. SECRET PROJECT?? HER NAME IS SECRET???

but as i mentioned in the comparison post yesterday, i ran into issues with her that i don't quite remember. i believe some notes were really fucked up? and instead of recording into a folder on my desktop i was recording directly into the utau voices folder and it just like Corrupted or s/t to the point where i couldn't salvage that bank at all. today i think some of those problems would be fixed by. redoing the frq files but in my defense i was 11 and barely understood how to use audacity let alone a program that, at the time, didn't have an english translation

design wise, i couldn't tell you why i designed her that way honestly. i think i wanted a character with white hair that wasn't one of my kirikitties at the time? but why she, a blue bird, had no blue on her design i couldn't tell you. i tried to hunt down any form of proper ref of that design but i must've redesigned her quickly bc these are the only pictures i could find of this design

when i went to redo her, i could not for the life of me get it to do the NEW files to show up, it just kept defaulting to that original fucked bank. the only way i could get it to change was by naming the folder differently despite that ORIGINAL BANK NO LONGER BEING IN THERE and so the kirakira "seacrette" came to be and just stuck

seacrette's act2 i never...released? i'm thinking i ran into the problem i ran into with roxy back then where due to the nature of where the utau folder was (on the program files that u need admin perms for), it just refused to zip the sound files no matter what. ok yeah i checked my mediafire and she was in there but yeah, no sounds. just the oto, readme, and character files

OH WAIT MEDIAFIRE TELLS ME WHEN I UPLOADED IT. SHE WAS DONE IN OCTOBER 2011 that's right bc her original concept was super edgy that she was involved in some fucking werebird attack and her bird parts were mutilated. that's why she has the 1 little feather on her tail.

design wise here, i don't think i ever really landed on a design i liked, which could've also explained why i never did a proper voicebank video too.

the quality on her act2 wasn't that bad though so when i got slightly better at utau i simply redid her oto but i just still never released her even after 3 years unless there's somewhere i'm not looking, but i never had a proper voicebank dl video for her so i doubt it.

this redo came with a redesign where i tried to actually incorporate more blue into her design dklsjhdsf and this is where i mainly got her current color scheme

as you may know, when i moved from colorado to california, my childhood computer what kaput on me and i really had to fight salvage files from it, and the idea was always to get a hard drive reader to transfer the rest after i got a new computer the following year, but my dad, in a drunken fit, destroyed his OWN computer and after that fit we came to find that he had also taken to that hard drive. it only had a slight dent in it, but i never did get a chance to see if it would still work bc then we had that emergency move out of california, the hard drive wasn't my top priority anymore, and i left it behind. perhaps it's sitting somewhere around that area still, but everything that was on there that i didn't salvage is gone. that included every single voicebank i couldn't get to zip. i do not have access to seacrette's act2 anymore

i don't know exactly when i decided to scrap the albinism(?) design, it was during revoice when i redesigned her to be an npc for roxy, and then i remember drawing an early design of this current look in 11th grade

this art that i have NO CLUE of when i drew it was probably around 2021ish based on the eye shapes is where we get the first look at the new seacrette design

OFFICIAL SEACRETTE ACT3 DESIGN FINISHED IN 2022 APPARENTLY is where we land now design wise. i incorporated all that green i really liked in her original design while also making it VERY CLEAR she's a blue bird. i got rid of the edgy backstory, she's still blind just blind by natural occurrences now. i think i tried giving her yellow eyes but i just liked the blue more bc it balanced the design more

may of last year is when i sat down and recorded her for the first time in 10 years and i have continued the tradition of not releasing her KLSDFJHKLSDFJ but i recorded her shortly after i started testosterone, did her in one day so i knew that she would be set. and currently she just sits needing me to do her boxart. like that's where we are today. i might go fuck with her oto some bc i learned i was still doing one part wrong but overall, i just need to do her boxart and we'll be set to go, i'm going to use the cover i linked as her release song and then the one i did yesterday as her preview video

tale of the oc i've had for 13 years but jsut never really released bc ?????

[goombasa]

Installing Linux Casually

So, after a few comments that I got back on my post about using linux casually, I got someone who said that they didn't think that installing Linux was easy and that they'd had a difficult time with it in the past.

I realized that I'd done exactly what I was hoping I wouldn't do with that post and that was assume a certainly level of comfort on the part of other people when it came to Linux and how it can be used, and so I thought that this week, I'd do a quick tutorial on how to install Linux. This is going to be aimed at someone who has never done this before, and so will be using the path of least resistance, but I will make multiple recommendations when I can, so if you're interested in at least trying Linux out, I hope that this helps to get you to the point where you can at least explore the new desktop. So let's get started.

Step 1: Prep Your Computer

This step is a lot less intensive than it sounds. Basically you just want to make sure that you have backups of anything you want to keep on your computer. Get yourself an external hard drive or some cloud storage, and put copies of any important documents, photos, videos, etc. on there so that you don't lose something if anything goes wrong. The odds of that happening are slim, but you never want to take any chances when it comes to computers, finnicky little bastards that they are.

Oh, and you should also make sure that any programs you use frequently are either compatible with Linux, or have a linux equivalent that you feel okay with using. Yes, there are ways to install Windows programs on Linux, like Wine and Bottles, but in my experience, while it can work fine for simple programs, it's not going to play nice with most professional software, especially stuff that needs to be always online and updates itself frequently. It won't be a problem if you're used to using open source software or largely use web apps, but just keep in mind that if you need or use something like the Adobe Suite frequently, Linux might be an issue.

Step 2: Choose Your Distribution

Like I mentioned in the ‘using linux casually’ post, Linux comes in a lot of different flavors, and you'll want to do some research into specifically what each distribution offers and how easy it is for a computer layman to use without issue. My personal recommendation on this front is definitely Linux Mintas it has a layout that is decently similar to something like Windows 10, it has a very straightforward installation process, and pretty much anything that Windows can do from a GUI for basic navigation and settings, Mint can do as well, so you shouldn't have to touch the Terminal at all. Hell, I still haven't come across anything in my daily use that requires me to open the terminal.

This tutorial will go forward assuming you're using mint, but most beginner friendly distributions are going to have the exact same installation process, so here are a few others that are often cited as beginner friendly. Please note that I can't speak to if they actually are or not, as I haven't used a ton of them, but I'm putting them here for completeness:

Ubuntu

Zorin OS

Linux Lite

Pop!_OS

MX Linux

Once you've made your decision, download the distribution. ALWAYS be sure to grab the distribution from the official website! Not only are you guaranteed to get the most up to date version of the operating system this way, but you can also be sure that there's nothing nasty put in there as well. It will most likely be an ISO file, which is a format that basically mimics am installation CD. Now that your computer is ready and you have your distro in hand, let's move on to the fun part.

Step 3: Flashing Your Linux Distribution to A Thumb Stick

Don't worry, this step is a lot easier than it sounds. All you have to do is download a program made to flash ISO files onto external hard drives and storage devices to make them bootable, and make sure you have a spare USB stick, of at least about 4 gigs. I'd recommend at least 8 personally, but 4 is fine in most cases. I would recommend Balena Etcher for newbies, as it is about as simple as a program can get. You can also use Rufus if you want, as it does the same, and gives you a few extra options, but for beginners, you aren't going to be using most of those options, so we'll go forward assuming you're using Balena Etcher.

When you open up the program, first click on the Flash from File button and navigate to where you saved the ISO of your distribution. Unless you've gone out of your way to change it, it'll probably be in your Downloads folder. Select it and click open.

Next, choose the target you want to flash the ISO to. Make sure your USB stick is inserted and is being seen by the computer, and make sure you select it from the list. The program will most likely identify it as a generic USB device, and will also tell you how much storage is on the stick. After you select that, just click flash and wait for it to finish flashing. This can take a little while depending on your computer, but it generally shouldn't take too long to finish.

Now we get to the point where some folks start to get tripped up.

Step 4: Boot into Linux Mint

Now we have to make it so our computer will boot into Linux Mint on the USB Stick. To do this, we have to restart our computer with the USB Stick inserted. One it starts up, quickly tap the key at startup that the computer tells you will take you to the boot menu. It's generally one of the Function keys (F1, F2, F11, etch), but can also be ESC or Delete keys as well. This will take you to a boot menu where you can change the order in which the computer looks for bootable devices. Put your USB stick at the very top of the list, save the chances, and hit Escape to exit. Depending on the age of your computer, you might be able to use your mouse for this, but older forms of the menu sometimes require you to navigate by keyboard. From here, the computer will restart and will boot from the USB Stick.

After a few moments, you should see what's called a GNU GRUB menu with a few options on it. You should be able to just choose to start Linux Mint. Don't worry, we're not installing anything yet. It'll take a little while before it starts up, but that's mostly because it's loading off of a small USB Stick. But so long as you're seeing the Linux Mint logo, you're fine.

Step 5: Try It Out!

This is one of the best parts of Linux Mint. When you boot into it from a USB stick, it takes you into what's called a Live Environment. You are essentially running the entire operating system off of the stick, so it's not going to be super fast or anything, but it lets you poke around, check out the default layout, try installing some basic stuff and such. Just be aware that some programs and applications won't work in the live environment, but enough is functional to give you a gentle idea of the layout and navigation. If for whatever reason you change your mind and don't want to install Linux Mint at this point, then you can just shut down your computer from the home menu and remove the USB stick, and it should boot up back into Windows normally the next time you start it up.

Step 6: Install it!

Once you're done poking around and are ready to fully commit to an install, you'll see an icon on your desktop below the Computer and Home folders that looks like a CD, called Install Linux Mint. Double click that to start the install process. From here, it's a very straightforward process, but let's go through each step real quick:

Choose your language. There are a LOT of languages to choose from, but English will be the default.

Connect to the internet. You can skip this if you want to (unlike SOME operating systems), but connecting at the start is recommended because of the next step.

Tic the box for third-party media codecs. This will download all the packages that Linux Mint needs in order to properly play most forms of media. Due to licensing, they can't have this stuff installed by default, but offering the end user the ability to install it now gets around that.

Choose an Install Type. I recommend just erasing the disk and installing Linux Mint as the only OS. If there's another operating system already on the disk, you can choose to install Mint alongside it and Mint will even do the heavy lifting for you and resize the other OS partition and everything, but for simplicity's sake, I prefer to just erase the disk and run Mint as the only game in town.

Select your timezone. This one's pretty self explanatory, just select whichever region of the world you happen to be a part of, or the closest to it.

Select your keyboard layout. Again,s elf explanatory, and a lot like languages, there is an impressive array of keyboards to choose from, but regular US English will be the default. You can also type in the box below the choices to test it, or just click the ‘detect keyboard layout’ button if you don't want to search for it and are using something a bit more exotic.

Enter your personal details. All of these have to be populated, but you can basically put in whatever you want for your name and the computer's name. The computer's name is basically how it will be identified on say, a local network. Your username should be something easy to remember, as you will need to know it, and the password can be anything you want it to be, but if you're concerned about other people getting into your PC, might want to make it something decently strong. You can also choose whether or not you want to log in manually with your password every time you start the computer or wake it up, and can even choose to encrypt your home folder to keep it safe from people trying to get into it locally.

Enjoy the welcome slideshow. It'll show you most of the default programs preinstalled on Mint and give you some idea of how to use the layout while everything is installing in the background. Once it's finished, your computer will ask to restart, and you can either continue testing or start immediately. Once you restart your PC, remove the USB stick when prompted and you should boot into your brand new Linux Mint PC.

Step 7: Poke Around and Start Outfitting It!

At this point, we're basically done, but just to get you started, I thought we'd leave off on exploring how to get stuff on your computer. Rather than hunting down and downloading stuff on web sites for most of your programs, you'll install most stuff from repositories. I know it sounds weird, but if you've ever used a mobile app store, you'll feel right at home.

First, go into your home menu and type in ‘software manager’ When it comes up, click it to go to what is essentially the free software store of Linux Mint.

Now that you're in the software manager, you can browse through the various categories to find programs that you want, or you can just search for specific programs in the search bar. When you find one you want, click on it and then you can either install it right then and there, or, in some cases, choose if you want to install the ‘flatpak’ version or the System Package version. This is a bit beyond the scope of this video, but I will say, if you're just getting into Linux, it doesn't really matter what you choose, as they both have their own positives and negatives, but either way you're going to get the program that you want. For now just think of it this way: If you want the absolute latest stable version of a program, go with Flatpak. If you want something that's a little bit older but is easier to modify, go with System Package. I personally prefer Flatpak, but this is more a personal preference that I only arrived at after like a year of working with Linux. Also, some programs are only going to be available as one or the other, so keep that in mind.

After that, just click install and it will install on your system and you can access it from the home menu like you would on Windows, and of course you can pin it to your task bar or put it on your desktop for easy access later on. Oh, and you can also launch the program from the Software Manager as well after it's installed. This is also where you'll go if you want to uninstall a program as well.

The End

And that's about it for this post. I do hope it helps some people out and makes the installation process for Linux Mint a bit less daunting. It should be noted that the Linux Mint site itself does have extensive documentation on installing the distribution that goes a bit deeper than this does as well, so you might find more information on a topic there, this was basically meant to be as streamlined as possible for new users.

Before signing off, however, I wanted to give a quick, short list of resources for new linux users. Some of these aren't specifically aimed at beginners, but might give you some ideas on what's possible with your shiny, new operating system, and once you find yourself getting a little bit bolder, might help you to learn a bit more about the more advanced features, when you feel comfortable enough to try them. So in no particular order:

Gaming On Linux: An excellent resource for anyone who plays games to keep up with recent developments in that space, as Linux has become more and more compatibe with games over the last few years, ever since Steam introduced their Proton compatibility layer and more tools like Lutris have become available that make it much easier to install and play older games that might not be available on Steam.

Flathub: This is the main repository for Flatpaks, and allows you to browse through the incredibly large selection of different programs by category and see the latest changes to each one.

The Linux Experiment: A youtube channel that focuses mostly on Linux news, but also does a lot of opinionated video essays and tutorials on various topics and is a bit more approachable than other Linux channels that focus on more complex or in-depth parts of the operating system.

[faction-art]

Image credit : Eksovichea Tito Hak

...whilst sat in an unconverted dusty dusty attic... the makeshift desktop setup.

Ableton Live 12 already on the verge of being rolled out?!!

I already dropped a stack on an Ableton 11 activation having used some form of pirated version with each new update and release of it since version 4 of Ableton live, and my Ableton laptop machine has been running infinitely smoother for it since with far less anomalous glitches (such as abnormally high CPU loads, erratic CPU load spikes, and fluctuations, entire project files going missing, at times even entire batches of project files, however, subtle modifications appear to be still happening to my projects when I come back to work on, or review saved projects that I'd made previously, even after only a few minutes to a few hours, which I guess are actually useful more than annoying this time round 🤔...but that's besides the point, since adding pressure variance to a laid down midi drum pattern/sequence is something I could have easily done myself). Thousands of projects later, the past 16 years of constant issues in some form with it has been quite, an ordeal when looking back having just thought about it properly just now.

I'm not running anything fancy hardware-wise, since its a second hand bought Dell Latitude 5491 running on an 8th generation Intel i7 8850H, and 16GB of RAM. Yeah, significantly well behind the 14th generation Intel curve, and most certainly well behind Apple's M1 for performance, let alone the vastly more capable M2, or M3! It's like a constant uphill struggle trying to streamline my Latitude 5491 machine, and keep it running smoothly, and fast, where I have to keep tweaking, and checking it constantly under the hood, which does make me seriously consider considering getting a Macbook Pro for the first time ever, which I've been trying to avoid doing doing to the insane cost of it. Additionally a fair number of the windows updates seem to constantly impact on system performance, and undo a lot of the performance improvement tweaks for my windows laptop DAW, which I don't have anything installed to other than Ableton live 11.

However word has it that version 12 of Ableton Live is imminent (which will no doubt probably be just in time for the release of windows 12 too), not but a month after myself finally personally getting a legit full version of Live 11 suite... Great 😵‍💫. Apparently it's got a bunch of new generative features for creating melodies, as well as some new interface tweaks, and some new colour scheme options. I doubt that I'll be personally moving over to 12, unless someone's willing to send me a copy of it, or I come into money, as it's still a wince inducing 700 to 750 quid for the full suite version when 12 finally lands. Since having used a legit version, of Ableton Live, I can't believe how much better it runs overall than the various pirated versions I've used, with far less project run issues, and at lower CPU loads too, I guess I'll see in the coming months if that remains constant, and hopefully it should fix all the screw ups, and project file anomalies on all my created, and saved projects that I'd encountered during the past 15 years too from here on out.

In any case aside from that, within the interim, anyone with a legit registered copy of version 9, 10, or 11 can sign up for the beta of 12 via the Ableton website, although acceptance for the Ableton live 12 beta testing program is an entirely different matter I guess.

I'd even suggest getting a pirated copy of 12 for testing if you can get a hold of one, although I wouldn't personally recommend doing all your serious work in it at this stage if you do. The only problem with doing that though is that Ableton tend to sneak in features in their new builds versions that do generally become indispensable once you incorporate it into you project/music creation workflow, which is why I won't be using 12 seriously until I have some means of actually running a full legit copy of 12 at this stage.

[ratboysims]

henlo feel free to ignore if this is a dumb ass question but. is it possible to change the trait cas poses correspond to on my own? like i alr got sth that replaces the action for geek but i dl another pose pack under the same trait, is it easy to switch one of them to sth different or does it require sum actual modder skillz??

it is possible, and also really easy!! i'll explain how under the cut since i love to ramble :-)

all you need is sims 4 studio, and possibly blender 2.7 installed (i'm not 100% about this one- i have a vague memory of not being allowed to export blender files without it. you can try without first and install if needed).

i’m going to move my active trait poses over to the creative trait. first i wanna open up the package file in s4s, which i just do by dragging it over to the desktop icon- it’ll open right where i need it to!

once it’s open i like to double check that the file is right just so i don’t have to do it all over again, before i click export. i save my blender file somewhere i can easily find it later!

then i close out of s4s, and open it again normally from my desktop to make a brand new fresh posepack.

i make sure i have override selected before i click animation. (if you have “clip pack” selected it’ll make an in game posepack, “override” is what we want!)

once i click animation it’ll take a second to load in before i see a full list of all the animations in game. since we’re making an adult cas pose, i type “a_cas_trait” in the search bar:

now we’re looking at all the adult cas trait animations! to find any trait you can just add “_(whatever trait you want)” to the end at the search bar. i select the trait i want, in this case creative, and click next- it’ll ask me to name and save my package file, so i do that! this file is the file i'll be putting in my game once it's done.

and now we’re back on this screen! i click import, and find my blender file and select it. now all i have to do is save the package file, put it in my game, and the poses that previously were on the active trait will be on the creative trait!!

if you have any questions please feel free to send another ask, i hope this helped! :-)

[hobo-dragon]

Purple/The Second Coming? For the request thing :)

Ah yes the smallest grape and the orange, my favorite-

SC had been searching up a new prompt for this month's building contest when Alan's email pinged; he quickly jumped down from the search bar, and tapped on the notification, opening up the email to his expected visitor inside, Purple. Quickly jumping up to greet him with a smile, he noticed them carrying a small plastic bag, heavy with something he couldn't see, "Purple! I'm glad you came, we haven't started yet, and I'm still setting up the blocks and first round theme, care to help?" Purple blinked, taking a moment to process before a small grin of their own made its way on their face, "Oh, sure, where's the rest of them?" They asked, climbing down from the email and onto the desktop, looking around for any of the other stickfigures they had grown familiar with.

SC climbed down after them, pointing to the house the gang had built, "Inside, I don't want them cheating by knowing the theme beforehand and getting blocks for it, so before every round we've started moving those playing into the house. Now!" SC paused, looking back up the empty search bar with an annoyed look. "I've been trying to think of a theme we haven't done before all morning but I've had no luck, I was thinking you might have any ideas?" They jumped onto the Google tab, opening the desktop keyboard which also raised up Purple to being just below SC.

Purple thought for a moment racking their brain for something unique, they've heard from SC in a few of their texts some of the themes they've done before, and from that they could tell they've only really been doing basic themes. Foods, logos, animals etc. Suddenly one idea racked their brain and their face lit up. "What about a Minecraft mob? And just spawning it in would count as disqualification?" Purple suggested, idly twisting the plastic bag containing a gift in circles. SC seemed to like the idea, and nodded, quickly jumping down to the keyboard and tapping typing in 'Mimecraft mobs'. Sure it had a spelling error but SC was sure it wouldn't change the results as they clicked 'Enter'. After a few moments of loading, the screen changed to results for 'Mimecraft mobs'. Purple thought it was a little (adorably-) silly they had misspelled a word like that but jumped up to tap the images button and soon enough mobs showed up. Pigs, chickens, zombies, endermen too. "Now let's see here.... Piglin? Naw, too tall. Chicken? We've already done that, and too easy. Hmmm," SC scratched their head as they slowly scrolled through the images.

Suddenly Purple pointed at one, catching both their attention, "What about an ender dragon?" Sure it was a mob Purple associated with one of their first betrayals to the color gang, something they regretted but refused to speak to anyone about, but they couldn't deny it was one of the more cooler and majestic creatures of Minecraft. "SC thought for a moment, thinking over if the difficulty of making an ender dragon and how big it was. They might need to have their own files to build in just to have room. "That's actually, not a bad idea, let's go with it for the first round and decide the next rounds later," He clicked the image, and began grabbing blocks from the Minecraft block and dropping an equal amount in 4 piles on the desktop.

"That should be it, you can take a seat on the floor, sorry, there was heh, an accident with the last chairs last building contest," They nervously chuckled, who knew chairs made great weapons for angry green stickfigures? Purple was curious, but took a seat regardless. SC whistled, and the door opened as Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue sprinted over to the piles, grabbing them without a second thought and looking at the image pulled up. "You all know the rules, but this time will be a bit different, you'll each have to build in your own files because of how big the ender dragon is, you'll have extra time to build, and Purple here, will also be a judge!" SC switched to the tab with a timer on it, adding several more minutes to it before beginning the countdown, swiping their hand down on 0 to initiate the round beginning.

RYGB jump into their own empty files for building in, and came out every now and then, looking back at the image for reference as SC soon retired to sitting down beside Purple, watching the stickfigures argue s couple times over who stole who's blocks. "Hey umm, Purple?" Purple didn't turn from watching the chaotic building process, but let out a hmm in response. Fortunately, them doing this meant they couldn't see the tiny blush SC had as he messed with his hands, glancing back at Purple's empty one. "I'm really glad you're here, it's nice to have you here. I know things might be a little tense at times because of what's happened, but that was the past, we've all done our forgiving and truces, so I want you to feel comfortable here! You're welcome here whenever," SC said, trying to focus on anything else than Purple(and how much he loved them, and how much he wanted to confess their feelings but was too much of a coward to do so-). Purple turned toward him sometime in-between him speaking and smiled, their own tiny blush coating their cheeks. (Internal thoughts of these two: AAAAAAY MY GOSH?? HE'S/THEY'RE SO ADORABLE?? AAAAA-) "Ah, well, I'm definitely comfortable with you, so yeah, definitely welcomed heh," Purple chuckled, awkwardly placing their hand on their neck, and god when did they get this sweaty? Why the hell did they say that? SC opened their mouth to comment but was swiftly interrupted by Purple grabbing the plastic bag they had the entire time but had not opened. "Ah, I nearly forgot! These are for you, well us. Ack, I mean everyone! I made these yesterday and had way too many leftovers, so I thought I'd share them," Purple lied, they had actually made these specifically for them and SC to share, but they couldn't say that! It would sound weird to have them specifically only for them and SC, and a bit selfish not to share so they made enough for everyone last minute.

SC's eyes lit up at the sight of what was inside the bag, cookies, orange and purple frosted cookies. A weird choice of frosting colors but they did kinda make sense with Halloween in a couple months. "Purple these look great! I'm sure everyone else will love these," SC said, grabbing the cookie Purple passed to him and taking a bite of it, letting out a small him at the sweet taste as they paced their eating (not me projecting onto SC by not having self control with cookies-). Purple hadn't tasted theirs yet, too busy trying to control their pounding heart, god was SC always this adorable? God they were going to pass out from how hard their heart was beating. SC had quickly finished their cookie, and the desktop quickly fell into an awkward silence. Where were the rest of the color gang, it had been a while since any of them came down to check the image. A forced cough caught both stickfigures attention as they noticed, weirdly enough, RYGB were in front of them, maybe they all finished? But it was too soon, and all at the same time. Regardless, SC paused the timer and went up into the first file, Red's.

Get.

That's all there was, the word Get. Made out of purple wool blocks. "Ummm, Red, this wasn't the prompt?" "I know! We made a collaborative entry." "Well that means we'll be scoring on a score of 1-10 then," SC closed the file and opened the next, which held a similar creation, this time being made of orange wool and being the word 'together'. Weird. And the next file was just the word 'Already'. So far if the last file was like this then he'd have to give it a 0. What were they doing? SC opened the last file, Green's, and nearly paled at what he saw. Inside was an actual structure, but still made out of orange and purple wool. What was this structure? Two stickfigures, kissing, an orange and purple stickfigure to be exact. SC, now with the full image, out together the first three files and realized what it was, 'Get together already' a message directed at him and Purple. Made more clearly by the four stickfigures saying it in unison. "Get together already, god, the amount of romantic tension between you two is suffocating," Green said, a cheeky and smug grin on his face. SC had an embarrassed blush as he turned to Purple, fearing their reaction. He couldn't tell, but he assumed it was bad, Purple was covering their face as they avoided eye contact with not only SC, but the rest of the stickfigures. A tenser silence followed as SC hesitated to confess or even speak to purple, eventually just clenching their first by their side and closing the file. "...5/10, Purple?" "5/10" The rounds followed like that, tense and in silence, the two flustered stickfigures sat a ways apart from each other.

Eventually, it was declared Green as the (usual-) winner; Purple had needed someone to help with making another email back to their computer and SC had been the unfortunate one left to do so as the rest were cleaning up the blocks and files from the contest. Purple stood behind SC as he typed in the email, neither breaking the silence until SC had finished, "Soooo, umm goodbye, I guess, sorry about earlier today, I didn't know they were planning this I swear, soo umm, yeah," SC stared at anywhere but Purple's face, anxious of looking at them and seeing they might have a look of disgust, anger, or downright hatred. He knew he was probably over exaggerating their reaction but he couldn't help but fret over it. Purple walked by them, towards the email, not making eye-contact either, SC's heart shattered a little, he knew it, they must of hated him. Sagging a little and begining to walk away, he was very surprised when something grabbed his shoulder and pecked his cheek, "I- I've been wanting to do that for a while now, heh. Tell the others thanks for the push I needed to let you know how I felt, "SC stood, gawking and severely confused as he tried to process what had happened.

Purple laughed at their confused expression as a blush of their own began to manifest. They began to walk away, waving at SC, in a stiff-manner so weird he moved like a robot a bit. He hit the send button as his blush that had grown once he realized what had happened, flushed his entire face and he covered his face, a goofy grin spreading across it. Later that night though as SC laid in bed, he pulled his phone out and went to his contacts. Clicking on the one listed 'Purple'. He changed it to 💜Purple💜. A tiny blush adorning his cheeks as he thought of them and where their relationship might go from here, he eventually fell asleep.

Words that made me cringe writing this: blush, goofy grin, cheek, Purple. Bleugh, I've written too much cheesy fluff and now it just feels overly sweet/generic. ): But still, although not my greatest work, it's still y'know, work lol. Now shhshshshshsh, my tea is tea. I hate that I struggled writing one of my favorite ships, my brain is just very not big brain atm.

[materassassino]

For the writer asks, do 1 and/or 22!

1. What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting?

I write in Word (which everyone has said they find weird, "why don't you write directly in Google Docs?" MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS 😤) and it's set to the 11pt Calibri default font. It's probably horrible for me but it's too late to change now, I'm comfortable with it.

22. How organized are you with your writing? Describe to me your organization method, if it exists. What tools do you use? Notebooks? Binders? Apps? The Cloud?

lol

lmao

I am messy af. I have a single fanfic folder with multiple sub folders I've accumulated over years of writing and I have no idea where any stuff from old fandoms has gone. Half of them are corrupted. I have a "posted" folder and a couple of folders from multichapter WIPs because I write all chapters in separate files. It's all only on my desktop so if my laptop croaks and I haven't done a periodic backup on my external hard-drive it's all gone (I actually might do that now out of panic...). I have some shit in my notes app on my phone that's titles and series and I forget it's there. I have like three checklists for WIPs I keep forgetting to update. Every time I change fandoms I just make a new folder and move all the WIPs I've abandoned into it and that will eventually get buried deeper and deeper until it fossilises in the depths of my laptop memory. It's astoundingly inefficient, just like me!

Ask a weird writer question!

[blazehedgehog]

I'm curious if at this point you're good enough at writing and video editing, to get reviews out on time, and the gimmick is just held out of legacy. It feels like you could.

There is no gimmick.

This is going to be very “how the sausage is made,” meaning it’s a long post. A very, very long post. So I’m hiding it behind a “read more” tag.

I mean, I guess there kind of was a gimmick, nine years ago when I first started doing video reviews. And that’s because I originally envisioned my video reviews as the same stuff everyone else was doing at the time: older games. I didn’t have a lot of money, so it wasn’t going to be a show for new games. It was going to be whatever I was thinking of and playing at the time, which was universally going to be old games, and usually old games I’d replayed more than once. Astal, Shenmue, Klonoa, etc. Classics and oddities.

Starting with Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, I started doing video reviews for new games almost exclusively. I’d get a new game at launch, and from the moment it was in my hands, I’d put together a video review for TSSZ. So, it took me six weeks to put together the All-Stars Racing review. Five weeks for the Sonic Lost World review. And so on.  

When I got bold enough to start doing video reviews in HD, things started taking exponentially longer. DKC Tropical Freeze, Mario Kart 8, etc. all took me around 3 months a piece. Part of that was the methods used to create HD reviews, as my crummy Roxio Gamecap HD required huge amounts of time (weeks, sometimes) to transcode footage out of their broken format in to something Sony Vegas would accept. But I also began to incorporate more artwork in to my reviews, because I wanted to utilize a talent of mine that was beginning to atrophy. It was a good excuse to draw again.

The longest video on my channel is my “How Do We Fix Sonic?” video. It’s 30 minutes and 30 seconds long, and took me 14-16 months to put together. It took more than a hundred drawings, and even some animation, something I’d never done before. It was the biggest video project I’d ever undertaken at the time.

For reference, the Sonic Mania video review I published in July is the exact same length – 30 minutes and 30 seconds. Depending on how you count, the Sonic Mania video review was put together in three months – the same amount of time it took for Tropical Freeze, Mario Kart 8, et al.

I say “depending on how you count” because Sonic Mania came out in August of 2017, in a period of time where I was homeless. I technically had a Sonic Mania video review script written by September of 2017, but we did not find an apartment to move in to until November of 2017. And, even then, when we moved in, my desktop PC was damaged – the motherboard and power supply had suffered an electrical surge when I plugged my system in to an unsafe outlet while staying at my brother’s house in the four intervening months. I spent $200+ on replacement parts and had to rebuild the whole system, something I was not keen on doing in the middle of the holiday season in an unfamiliar town, in an unfamiliar state. I’d just left my childhood home, the place I’d spent 24 years of my life in. It was a nightmare. All of this took place a year ago, and I still feel tremendously homesick. I abandoned everyone, everywhere and everything I ever knew.

So I didn’t get my system rebuilt until March of 2018, and didn’t really get to work on the Sonic Mania video until April. April to May, May to June, June to July. Three months. For a video that was the same length as the longest, most difficult video I’d ever put together for my channel.

Tristan wanted to air my video review on the TSSZ Twitch channel on the day Sonic Mania Plus was launching. I was hoping to get it out before then, but in the end, I think I only had maybe a week (or less) between finishing my video and Plus launching. So it goes.

There’s a small lie in there, however, in that Sega offered us an early review copy of Sonic Mania Plus. I recall that I was still putting the finishing touches on the original Sonic Mania video review when I had a copy of Plus sitting here on my desk.

I took a few days to myself, just to rest and recharge, before I dove head first into producing the Sonic Mania Plus video. Except that when Sonic Mania came out in August of 2017, I finished the game once as Sonic & Tails. I started files as Tails and Knuckles, but I hadn’t really played too far with them, knowing I’d need to replay the whole game multiple times for video capture purposes. When Plus came out, I was coming off a stint of having replayed Sonic Mania four times for the capture – as Sonic & Tails (with the emeralds), as Tails, Knuckles, and Sonic alone (without the emeralds). I was not actually in the mood to keep playing it.

So my playthrough of Mania Plus was… sluggish. I think the game had been out for a week by the time I’d finished it as Mighty, Ray, and done a full playthrough of Encore Mode. But, by early August I had a video review script written and production was starting to get underway on the Sonic Mania Plus video review. I had a sketch of what I thought the review would look like in the end (called a “shotlist,” which I have uploaded here) and I was starting to capture the video I needed and whatever else.

There was one problem with this: SAGE 2018. It dropped in the middle of August and upended everything I was doing. It was a tremendous undertaking. I wrote nearly 30 pages of text about 85 games in just six days. I thought I could handle it, and in a lot of ways I did, but it left me absolutely fried. On top of the growing burnout from spending now four and a half months doing two Sonic Mania video reviews back to back.

After SAGE, I was going to take a few days off, maybe a week. It ended up being nearly four weeks. That still didn’t feel like enough. It threw everything off balance.

Getting those gears turning again was a struggle. It was October now, and I had plans to do other videos for October. Halloween videos. I split my time researching potential Halloween videos with capturing the rest of my footage (a week), doing artwork (a week and a half), and getting my voice over in order (another week, as the stress was starting to get to me, and that doesn’t make for a good environment to do voice work).

I actually tried to cut corners on my video capturing. Rather than capture footage from six full-length playthroughs of Sonic Mania, I scaled things way back, hoping I wouldn’t need quite as much b-roll as I usually capture. Instead of playing Sonic Mania to completion six more times, I:

Captured one entire playthrough of Encore Mode, minus collecting the seven emeralds. I already had a completed file with the emeralds, so having two files would let me compare the endings.

Because I wanted footage of Ray and Mighty also in Mania Mode, I split one playthrough in half between them: every three levels, I would trade off. Ray would take Green Hill, Chemical Plant, and Studiopolis, then Mighty would do Flying Battery, Press Garden, and Stardust Speedway before I’d switch back to Ray again for the next three. This gave me half of the game as each character, and one complete playthrough between them.

Similarly, I needed footage of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles in Mania mode, but since I had Sonic Mania Plus on PS4 and my original review was produced using the PC version, my save couldn’t be transferred. Instead, I grinded out Blue Spheres medals until I could unlock Debug Mode, and summarily, stage select. Then I just did the same thing, but every two levels: Sonic would get Green Hill and Chemical Plant, Tails would get Studiopolis and Flying Battery, Knuckles would get Press Garden and Stardust Speedway, etc.

Unfortunately, even with being smart like that, it wasn’t enough, and in the middle of editing everything together, I still had to go back and capture footage of specific moments to fill in the gaps I was missing. The lesson is: though you’ll throw away 99% of it, you’ll never have enough b-roll captured. Never ever.

Which brings us to the end of October, me not getting to do any Halloween videos, and the final, finished Sonic Mania Plus review. This time, 20 minutes of video in four months.

Could I have been faster? I don’t know if that’s for me to say. Even though I took a month off (almost all of September), I was still struggling really hard with burnout on the Sonic Mania Plus video. I work on these videos from home, and I have an incredibly poor work-life balance as a result. Essentially, I wake up every morning, turn on my PC, and work on whatever until I go to bed. The only breaks I take are to eat, go to the bathroom, or run errands (shop for food, help babysit my nephews, etc.)

What this really means is something that’s familiar to people who have struggled with burnout, and that’s days where all you do is sit around and worry about work but not actually do any work. I’m trying to get better about this, to have hard cutoff points in the afternoon where I stop working and let myself relax, but that’s easier said than done when you relax at the same place you also work. It’s a learning process for sure.

So, like, yeah, it could have been done a few weeks earlier, but that’s assuming I wasn’t burnt out from working too hard, which means I wouldn’t have worked super hard to get to that point anyway, so no, maybe it wouldn’t have been done a few weeks earlier. I’m not a robot.

I am, however, incredibly stressed. Still stressed about moving to Nevada, stressed about being so far behind on the videos I promised to put out, stressed out about things I won’t even mention here on tumblr because they’re personal issues.

But I am going as fast as I can. I might even be going faster than is healthy for my body.

You’ll get your videos when I’m actually done with them and not a second sooner.

But for now, I need a lot of rest. It’s time for an extended rest-and-recharge session. I still have the promised Sonic Forces video to figure out, and that’ll get done eventually, but I’m running on fumes, I need to gas back up, and it’s a big, empty tank.