#(the emergency was just Steam not working on my computer anymore so I power played through some backlog)

[thedailyvio]

Yearly recap and future plans

I don't believe I missed any days this year, but I still need to figure out why my day count was 1 off at some point.

I had a lot less time this year to dedicate to art, and there was a lot of stagnation because of it.

I'm picking a little at beginning to do some studies and style exploration, so I hope I can get more into that in '24

I didn't get a chance to do Any of last years goals very much, so here's to hoping '24 will pan out better.

As per the poll listed earlier this year (I was told there was 1 misclick) it looks like the plan for future posting will be:

Post days for the week will be on.... tentatively? Friday.

I will queue them across the length of the day.

Hopefully I can get back to a position where daily posting is possible, but for now I want to commit to something I can at least do consistently

(Not even sure yet if I will be able to be consistent with this, but will see)

[ageless-aislynn]

@authortobenamedlater no way, I learned data entry on good ol' WordPerfect! It's the reason why I always turn Word dark blue with the pale blue text, lol! 😉Anyway, thank you for the link for Editpad, I'll definitely look into that. Also am not sure about Notepad, I think I've seen it pop up on this one but didn't realize that Win11 got rid of WordPad. I'm not surprised, honestly. They seem to want to make 11 as lousy as possible, at least when it comes to me personally! 🤷‍♀️😉 Thanks again for all of your brainstorming and suggestions, very appreciated!

@shannon-foraker Hi and thank you so much for replying, I appreciate it so much. This has been the weirdest computer issue I've ever had in my 20 some odd years (some of them very odd 😉) of having computers.

I'll try to keep this short because it's a lot. Update: I did not keep this short, sorry. But I tried. 😉 I just wanted to see if there's anything in here that maybe a tech-savvy person has heard of before? Never know what might be a clue.

In Oct, 2023, my Win 10 computer blue screened after 5 years of being rock solid, able to play Halo and other Steam games, could use Vegas to make vids and GIFs, had Word 2003 for writing. I eventually reset it because the BSODs got more and more frequent and that solved the BSODs but caused me to lose the Game Bar that's made into Win10 so I could no longer capture games like before. I could still launch Halo but not other games like Mass Effect: Andromeda that uses the EA launcher. Vegas would not launch. After researching and trying useless fixes, I eventually figured it was just its age and would need to be replaced. We were right at prime Black Friday sales times so that's what I did.

Also in Oct, 2023, though, my dad's less than a year old Win 11 computer ALSO began blue screening for no discernible reason. It was not networked with my Win10 computer, though they share a router. Mine was Ethernet, his Wifi. I scanned them both with everything I could, ruling out malware or viruses. They never share files, USB sticks, anything. Both are Dell, mine an XPS, his an Inspiron. I reset his, fully updated everything, but the BSODs continued a few days later, though for different reasons than before. This remains unsolved. His will work for a few hours, then BSOD. As that he's a very casual user, that's sustainable for him for now (he wants me to focus on fixing my new computer, which I use a lot more than he does his).

The new computer arrived for Christmas. It blue screened after being on for a few hours. I cried like a baby. I feel cursed, honestly. In the roughly a month since then (very roughly indeed), I've reset it 3 times, I've fully updated both Windows and Dell, which caused it to BSOD 8 times in an hour. I reset after that and did NOT update anything, pausing Windows updates which I've now learned doesn't actually pause the updates since this is the Home edition.

A few weeks ago, Dell issued an emergency BIOS update, along with fresh Nvidia and Intel driver updates. Installing those calmed the BSODs but didn't stop them entirely until I realized that using the Chrome broswer was causing Nvidia to lockup. Stopped using Chrome. Can't use Google docs anymore because that froze Firefox (and Nvidia began wailing like a banshee, I'm not afraid to say that I'm literally afraid of this computer nowadays, I would not be shocked if it just exploded in my face one day).

Dell's customer service advice is "apply all updates and if that fails, reset Windows" despite the fact I've done all of that A LOT. The most help I've actually found is from a Dell forum where there are literally dozens of reports of issues like mine. Changing Nvidia's power performance to maximum has helped the issue where the computer would be sitting idle, nothing running, and Nvidia would come on and attempt to make the PC achieve orbit. My God, was that fun to experience. /s

Dell insists there's nothing wrong with the computer and I'm beyond the time period where I could've returned it. So this little ticking time bomb is all mine for however long it has.

Interesting tidbits: Dell no longer sells this particular configuration of XPS. Windows 12 is about to launch in June 2024, not even 3 years after Win11's launch. That seems super soon to me, kinda like the ol' Win8 disaster but with them trying not to SAY it's a disaster. But I could just be projecting conspiracy theories nowadays. It comes from feeling like your PC is just going to freakin' blow your face off one day, I think. 👀

Answering your questions: I've considered putting my Win10 computer back up in place of this one even though it's hampered by a lot of issues. At least I can go back to playing Halo, which I miss tremendously. It irks me, though, to just mothball a brand new computer that was not cheap and was given to me by my dad. It makes me so sad because he wanted me to get something super awesome for gaming and vidding. He's always bragging about his "gamer daughter," lol, and this computer should've been a powerful rig: 64GBs RAM, i-9 chip, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 and other stuff that's escaping me at the moment, lol. The couple of times I did get to play Halo on it, my gracious, it looks STUNNING. Played like a dream, every blade of grass visible, just gorgeous.

Then it blue screened. 😑

I've heard of both Linux and Ubuntu but haven't ever seen them in person or know how to work with them. I'm not sure if Steam, Vegas and Word would work with them or if there are some sort of equivalent programs that would? I just looked and there are some games on Steam that will work on Linux.

Honestly, I just want this computer to work, like it's supposed to. I'm just not sure how to get it there. Or maybe there's no way that I can.

PS - Several other people with this issue had Dell send them new parts, one at a time, until they finally completely rebuilt the PC. The BSOD and freezing continued. I really don't think this is a hardware issue, it feels like a driver/software incompatibility instead but I dunno. I'm not tech-savvy at all, I've just done a ton of research while feeling like I'm surfing on a nuclear missile.

At least I was able to write all of this without the Nvidia light (visible through the vent) coming on. That looked so cool at first, now I just freeze in fear when it comes on, waiting to see if we're going to BSOD, freeze or if it's just going to growl loudly at me. Or try to achieve orbit. That was so lousy, I don't want to do that again. 😭

Okay, apparently my Fire tablet and PC are not syncing together, which resulted in me making a high-pitched pterodactyl noise a little while ago when I thought EVERYTHING I HAD WRITTEN IN MY EMAIL DRAFT YESTERDAY HAD DISAPPEARED.

Thankfully, it's still there on my tablet so I emailed it to myself and now I can see it on the PC but DANG is this a clunky, slow and painful way to try to do this. I have a SYSTEM when it comes to writing, frens. Anything messing with MY SYSTEM makes me feel a bit

and even more

Do I dare try installing Word 2003 (my beloved) again? Is it worth it to potentially go back to Blue Screen of Death City, population MEEEEEE or is there something else I'm missing?

Can't use Google docs as my computer already proved. I don't want anything I have to install on the computer *points to fears of returning to BSoD City* but I want something that I can somehow save at the same time. I dunno. I was hoping to get this in really good shape today and instead I'm stuck where I left off and feeling like I'm trying to excavate a hole the size of Mt. Everest with a teaspoon.

I thought about writing in a Tumblr draft or in AO3 itself but either of those has their own perils (Tumblr in accidentally POSTING IT and AO3 warns not to keep your only copy there). Maybe writing in AO3 and email it back to myself when I'm done for the day/writing session?

I just want to be able to use my computer like a COMPUTER again and not have to be so cautious and careful with everything. This is honestly stupid stressful. UGH.

*more angry moth noises, just 'cause*

Update: I'm going to try writing in AO3 for now and saving as a draft/emailing that back to myself. It's better than nothing and feels a little more familiar since I usually do my final editing in AO3 since I can often catch errors in AO3's preview that I missed in Word for some reason.

Still, if you have any recommendations for apps/sites/programs etc you like to write in, I'd like to hear them.

[fenfyre]

It's been so cold this week. Can we get the EJM boys cuddling with lots of blankets and hot chocolate? Thank you!

Well this took a while. It might not be that cold anymore but please still take this offering of cute boys being cute and my personal writing soundtrack for this fill

It was days like these that Jean was eternally grateful for being able to work from home a few times a week. Where his boyfriends had to climb out of bed in the dark hours of the morning, cursing and shivering as they took turns in the bathroom and warming their hands on heavenly smelling, hot cups of coffee, he was free to bundle up in the sheets that were still warm with the heat of three bodies nestled close together, slowly moving to sit up against the headboard as he watched Marco wiggle into several shirts and sweaters.

“You’re looking comfy”, his boyfriend grumbled, throwing a wide hoodie an assessing glance before grabbing it and stuffing his head inside as well. Jean had counted four layers so far.

“I am.”

As if to prove his point he only pulled the heap of blankets closer around his body, slowly blinking into the dim light of the room.

“You’re gonna fall back asleep again if you don’t get up.”

It didn’t sound as scolding as it might have if Marco hadn’t stepped close to the bed and pressed a kiss to the part of Jean’s face not obscured by blankets.

“I’ll take my chances…”

“No you won’t!”, came Eren’s voice from the hall and the next moment he stepped into the doorway, lazily twirling his car keys around a finger. “You have that deadline today so get your ass out of bed. I’m not listening to you whining to your editor about an extension again.”

A low chuckle from Marco as he grabbed the blanket and slowly peeled it away from Jean’s face, squeezing his warm cheeks with cool fingers.

“He is right, you know”, he grinned. “If we can get out of the house in this weather, you can get out of bed!”

As much as Jean didn’t like to admit it, they did have a point. He only grumbled and cursed mildly when he pushed the blankets away and wiggled his way out into the cold freedom of their bedroom.

“I am, I am … you two better go before the chaos breaks loose. And drive carefully.”

“I will”, Eren chirped, blowing him a kiss before disappearing down the hall again, closely followed by Marco. When he heard the door to their apartment fall closed Jean waited a moment, two moments … then dove straight into bed again.

~

Getting up around noon when on a deadline was never a good idea, especially when he had so much work that still needed to be done. But Jean liked to live dangerously, still rubbing at his eyes when he shuffled into their office hours later, blankets still wrapped around his body with only a hand holding a cup of coffee protruding from his heavy cape. Grateful that the office was rather small and heated up quickly he powered up his computer and buckled down to get to work.

~

It was late at night when Jean emerged from the office again, considerably more tired and weary even though the blanket around his shoulders still kept him warm. He could see lights flickering in the living room, the quiet sounds of a movie playing drifting out into the hallway.

When he pushed the door open to peak into the living room he just had to smile though, no matter how long and tedious his work day had been. The room was dark, even though a handful of scattered candles flickered warmly. Eren and Marco were cuddled up on the couch, fluffy blankets around their shoulders and in their laps, steaming mugs clutched between their fingers. They looked tired as well but so very comfortable and happy.

Without even having to consider it Jean slipped into the room and wordlessly joined them, eyes only flicking to the TV for a moment to find out which movie they were watching - The Hobbit - before he wiggled under the blankets, adding his own to the warm, fluffy pile.

A few minutes passed while he got comfortable, curling up and resting his head on Eren’s lap, someone’s fingers coming down to lovingly tousle his hair. He sighed deeply.

“So, did you keep your deadline?”, Marco asked, voice light and teasing as the fingers flicked against Jean ear. He smirked but buried it into the soft blanket.

“Yes…”

“And when did you start to be only done by…” A pause. “Ten thirty?”

The answer to that question wasn’t even audible anymore, Jean laughing it into the blanket when another hand wiggled down to poke his side.

“Bad Jean”, Eren hummed. “Did you at least eat?”

Mumbling something about granola bars Jean peeked up at Marco, who frowned down at him but very obviously couldn’t be too angry with him.

“There’s curry in the kitchen. I’ll heat some up for you if you promise to be better tomorrow.”

A quick nod, as if there was anything at all Jean wouldn’t promise for a big plate of Eren’s curry. Or at least he hoped it was Eren’s curry and not Marco’s. As much as he loved the man, nobody should ever let him into a kitchen. Which was something they, tragically, had in common.

“And if you’re really good I might even share my hot chocolate with you”, Eren added and poked his side again. That was another deal Jean didn’t even consider declining.

Commissions | Kofi | AO3 | twitter | pillowfort

[chibipika]

Oh my god, I’m digging through old files on my backup harddrive and I found this dream from 2011 in which me, @antialiasis, and a baby dragon are on the run from The King of Everything.  It is absolutely batshit and I love it:

Okay, so for some reason I was hanging out with Dragonfree.  What the hell, subconscious?  Why do you always stick my online acquaintances into my dreams?  (I think it’s a side effect of that time in my life where all I had were online friends and the fanfic forum was pretty much my entire life, even though that was like 6 years ago.)  But at least this time it sort of makes sense—I’ve been working on an off on the Ouen dragons piece a lot lately, adding little touches here and there when I’m bored, so people often ask me what it is, so I frequently launch into explanations of, “Oh hey there’s this writer with a cool fanfic, and I’m doing fanart of it.”  “Hey what’s it about?”  “Well, it’s kind of hard to explain the plot because it’s basically an awesome reworking of silly ideas from when she was 12.” “ROFL THAT SOUNDS LIKE YOU.” “Erm….yeah.  -_-“

Okay then, random tangent aside I was hanging out with Dragonfree I guess.  No explanation given.  At least my dream self wanted an explanation, though never actually got one.  I was at my home house instead of my school house which makes slightly more sense (If I were European I’d sooner visit the US East coast/NY area than the friggin Midwest.)

Kay, I swear the plot was awesomely detailed and amazing but now it is starting to sound really silly and I’m not sure why I’m writing it down. Dangit.  It started out like...pretty mediocre at my house (or what was supposed to be my house but looked nothing like it, what.)  I think there was some subplot involving something going wrong with her website (some of the layouts weren’t working which was apparently a sign of someone currently stealing things from it?  What??? Also one of the styles was really cool and best described as a matrix Articuno.  YES.)  I dunno. And then there was a hilarious part where my sister walked though the kitchen into the computer room and said something like “When did Beth get here?”  And I’m like “Wtf, that’s not Beth.”  But then I walked into the room and it was. (So now Beth was somehow at my house too?  How did all these people get here?)  Dragonfree was in fact back in the kitchen on the computer that was for some reason there (no, not my laptop…a random desktop in the kitchen), and Beth did not appear for the entire rest of the dream. *shrug*  Though amusingly at this point I wondered, “Hey since this isn’t the internet, should I call you Dragonfree or by your real name?”  but never actually asked it.  So I went the whole dream without addressing her by any name (not as weird as it sounds—I don’t use people’s names often.)

But all of this random crap quickly derailed into something involving DRAGONS HOLY CRAP.  Okay, so I actually can’t remember how the dragons plotline started dang.  I think there were like, different types of dragons (one for each element?  This was completely unrelated to Pokémon, however. In fact, I don’t think anything Pokémon ever came up, other than that random bit about her site.  I don’t have Pokémon dreams often.  What the hell, subconscious.)  I think we had the earth dragon or something except I guess it was a baby.  And then like, the queen of the world ordered the dragons (she had a lot of them I think) to kill people, except each dragon’s power was only effective on certain people, and the Earth dragon was supposed to kill us.  I think I ran and hid in a bush (yeah…because that would save me from the elemental dragon…) but since the Earth dragon was just a baby its power didn’t kill us (and I was confused about why the other dragons’ attacks didn’t hurt because I didn’t know about the whole only-effective-on-certain-people thing).  So then I emerged from my hiding place and I think a lot of time had gone by because I saw the events in a slow, limited-animation cutscene type thing (hey…sorta like that game concept art my group’s been planning.)  Well the earth dragon was now an adult.  I met up with Dragonfree at some sort of dessert table where a servant was putting together sweets for the king.  Things like chocolate covered pretzels and bananas. I guess I felt like trolling the king or something, so I stole one of the chocolate bananas, and then we ended up having the guards sent after us (yeah, way to go dream self.)  We hopped on a train (like an old style steam engine) except it was rather small, and intended for little kids.  Well lo and behold my youngest sister was there.  We rode on the train for a bit until my sister climbed on top to check something and was doing it all very not-carefully like someone who has totally climbed on top of a train and started opening hatches a hundred times in their life.  Well something went wrong and then she fell off and got tangled in some vines and then the train tried to go through an insanely small tunnel and started shrinking, so we had to get off.  And then we found the earth dragon!  Except he was a baby again OKAY THEN.

(Thus far there hasn’t been much dialogue only because I can’t remember it.  Everyone was actually talking a lot more than this implies. They weren’t all just standing there.) Also I think I spent most of the dream wondering when Dragonfree was going to go back home.  Because “oh yeah we’re on adventure and running for our lives, but hey please don’t leave in the middle of all this I wanna hang out some more.” Uh huh.  This makes even less sense when you consider that there are no countries and the king of everything is after us.

Well this time the queen was there with the guards so we ran away into this sort of maze of stairs vaguely like a kids’ play area except kind of more serious business.  Some of the stairs were in fact escalators that were broken down, and others were so small that we had to slide down then and we were doing pretty good at avoiding the guards.  We all regrouped and figured out a way onto the third floor, at which point we were feeling pretty clever, but then WE RAN INTO THE QUEEN OH SNAP.  But she was actually on our side the whole time! I think this made more sense in the dream (maybe she knew the earth dragon wouldn’t kill us with its attack? But what about all the people killed by the king’s fire dragon?)  Well she did something to the stair area to prevent the guards from getting through while she made a deal with us.  So then we had the queen with us, yay?

We were now heading up a mountain!  I have no idea what we were looking for at the top.  Except first we had to go though some sort of summer-camp type area, where they made us go though inspection (okay?)  This involved pushing us under streams of water which I thought were going to be freezing but were actually kind of warm.  Kay then.  During the next part we were all in a building (at the camp I guess) and a bunch of the campers were watching tv. At this point I thought to myself “Hey it’s weird how this dream is still continuing even though I’m awake.” WHAT?  So I thought this part was real, but I was still dreaming it…even though it was real?  Now, there have been times I’ve been able to continue a dream while awake and have it actually fit in the dream, as opposed to the lame crap you usually try to add to a dream shortly after awakening until you realize “wait my logic works now and this is stupid.”  But anyways…I think around this point was I finally going to ask Dragonfree, “Hey we’ve been running all over a crazy kingdom all day and I’m still not sure what to call you since this isn’t the internet and all.”  But at that point I woke up.  Well…damn.  I mean, it’s better than when you have a dream end at a super-suspenseful point (since we were kind of just wasting time at a camp and I don’t even think the earth dragon was with us anymore).  But still I felt the need to go run and grab my laptop and start writing all this down and highly confusing my roommates in the process.

And holy crap LOOK HOW MUCH I WROTE IN HALF AN HOUR.  Why can’t I write my fic this fast?

[sending-the-message]

The Price of My Morning Coffee by TimelessMeow

When I was 25 and finishing up my Master’s degree, I moved in with a boy for the first time. We’d been together for over a year and got along well. He’d seen my apartment enough to know that I was obsessive about my coffee and incapable of cleaning; I’d spent the night enough to know that he talked to himself while getting ready in the morning, and generally we just liked each other.

There were bumps to learning to live together, of course. I was an only child and had always picked studios over living with a roommate in the past, so having someone always one step behind me, always touching my things, took some adjustment. I stepped on more shoes, bumped into more chairs and glasses, and sat on more ice-cold toilet bowls in those first few months than I ever had, or probably ever will again in my life. I was a hoarder who had suddenly found herself in possession of twice the amount of belongings, so our guest room became more like a small bed next to storage filled with giant boxes of random crap that I knew I didn’t need but was not allowed to be touched. He was a fidgeter and couldn’t keep his leg still as we watched moves on the couch, and the number of ways I imagined killing him with his own damn dirty socks that he always, always, always took off and left in our bed should probably give me a disturbing insight into the dark recesses of my psyche.

Eventually, despite all of these, we found something of a rhythm that worked. I am… whatever the opposite of a morning person would be, so he would get up first in the morning and shower. Then, he would make my coffee for me, since I’d never figured out how to set the timer on the pot, and have his breakfast. Pour my coffee, and then bring me the cat as an adorable meat shield. I would grumble and get up, look before I peed, and drink the coffee. Then we’d go about our days and reconvene in the evenings to watch movies or play video games. It worked so well that after six months, he asked me to marry him and I said yes . Of course, as soon as we’d planned everything, he got the fellowship offer.

As an artist hoping to live off of his paintings, the art scene in our small college town couldn’t exactly be considered booming. He’d looked around for a long time for an opportunity to move elsewhere, but then he’d met me and we’d hit it off. But now, here was an amazing chance to go to Chicago and work with establish painters and make all kinds of connections he couldn’t even dream of here. So now, with two months to go till the wedding, and a year left in my program keeping me tied here, we started considering spending our first year of marriage separated by hundreds and hundreds of miles.

I wanted to say no. I really did. But I didn’t have the heart to ask him to give up his dream, the same way he didn’t ask me to come with him. Instead, he asked the program head for permission to miss the first week for our honeymoon, and moved away two weeks after the wedding.

That first night was soul-crushing. He sent me snapchats of the cute little brownstone he had a room in, video chatted to show me view from his window and how tiny the shower in his bathroom was. But deep down, there was hollowness to the interactions, something to indicate that for the next year, neither his little brownstone nor my beat-up two bedroom apartment on the edge of campus would really be home.

The cat probably had the hardest time adjusting. Apparently, I played with her wrong and so any time I’d try to dangle her favorite toy, a bird attached to a long stick by a string, in front of her, she’d stare at me until I gave up and set it down. Immediately after, she’d snatch it up into her mouth by the bird and drag it around the apartment, meowing at every door to coax my husband out to play. That night, I sat next to the door of the spare room with her and cried while she stared at the white wooden frame expectantly.

The next morning, I woke up to the blaring of my new alarm, feeling drained. I got out of bed with eyes swollen from both tears and sleep, put down the seat and peed while brushing my teeth at the same time because I was just out of fucks to give. The process of washing my face seemed a little more like slapping water onto it, but I felt marginally more human by the time I emerged from the bathroom, only to hear the sound of the coffee pot from the kitchen.

I smiled. He’d figured out how to set the timer for me. I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to say I love you and poured myself a steaming mug.

Even still, I fell into a depression for the first few weeks until slowly coming around to my new reality. Despite the distance, or maybe because of it, my husband was as affectionate and attentive as I could have asked for, and I fell asleep most nights while he chatted about his day on the phone. It was nice not to feel alone, and the intimacy kept the marriage from wilting. We made sure to carve out time daily, texting on breaks and having at least a quick call before bed every night.

Since suddenly we were a two-household marriage, I’d taken on extra hours on top of my schooling and began coming home less and less that fall. Unfortunately for kitty, what time I was home was generally spent studying or attempting to tidy up, and she seemed totally disgusted with me. Despite being a needy cat, I rarely ever woke up to find her at my feet anymore, and she almost never demanded pets like she used to. But she’d still carry around that stupid bird, meowing at every door she saw before falling asleep in front of the guest room door. I tried letting them skype to pull her out of it, and even considered getting another cat, but decided that really she seemed content enough, just distant, and let it be.

By the time my husband had been gone for three months, I think life was as good as could be considering the circumstances. I’d been making sure to see my friends often, he had gotten close with his roommates, and even though we couldn’t see each other we stayed involved as much as possible. So when we missed our first nightly call, I brushed it off. I’d stayed out later than I’d meant to, so I couldn’t be angry that I’d gotten his voicemail. Besides, he called me as soon as he got up the next morning, and we chatted while I put bruise cream on the stupid mark on my hip from the kitchen stool that never seemed to be where I expected it to. Like every other morning, I poured my coffee, told him I loved him, and went on my way.

A week later, he didn’t answer again. This time I was a bit more annoyed, I’d made sure to come home on time. I scratched at a new spot on the sofa while I took calming breaths through his voicemail message and managed to have my tone sound light and pleasant as I let him know I was going to bed but could be reached in the morning, and I loved him.

Despite what I’d said, I spent the night seething. A storm outside my window kept me awake, and the chill leaking in made me acutely aware of how large and cold the bed really was. As I flopped around restlessly, I could hear the cat scratching at the guest room door and it frustrated me until I threw a pillow in her direction and the sound of little claws skittering against hard wood replaced it. After a giant clap of thunder startled me and cut the power, I finally resigned myself to knocking back a sleeping pill and burying my face under the blankets until I drifted into a fitful sleep.

Instead of calming me, the slumber seemed to have energized my anger, so when I woke up the next morning to an unsatisfying apology text and a cold coffee pot, I gave up on hiding my irritation. Pressing the power button on the coffee pot, I dialed his number and lifted the phone to my ear.

“Hello?” His voice was groggy, I hadn’t considered the time difference.

“How do I set the coffee pot?” I snapped, bypassing the small talk.

“W-what?” The confusion bled through, grating on my nerves even more.

“The timer on the coffee. My power went out last night so I need to reset it.”

“We never figured it out,” he mumbled quietly. “There wasn’t a way to set anything but the clock.”

“Okay yes, but it’s been working fine for the last three months, so what the hell happened?” We both knew I was talking about more than the coffee pot, and the silence hung awkwardly over the line.

“Hun,” he started, but I decided I didn’t want to do this right now and cut him off.

“It’s fine. I’ll figure it out myself. Go back to sleep.” I hung up and turned my phone off, poured myself a cup of coffee and watched shit shows on cable for a few hours instead of doing the homework I’d sworn to myself would get done on my only day off this week.

I stayed there most of the day, only letting myself turn on my phone every few hours to check to see if he’d said anything. A few more apologies, some terse requests to stop ignoring him, a missed call. Finally, around six pm, I checked again and found one a little over an hour old.

It’s the TX600, right? That model doesn’t even have a timer

I scoffed and stood up, walking over to the coffee pot. Of course it had a timer, I’d bought it specifically because of the timer. The whole point was having coffee waiting for me, just like it had been every day.

Yeah, I sent back after checking TX600. I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve had coffee every morning since you left. You must have looked up the wrong one.

Some old, black and white movie was on, and when he hadn’t gotten back to me by the time the credits were rolling, I grabbed my computer and pulled up the manual myself. Sure enough, no timer. The clock was just that, a random clock on the side of the coffee pot. Several reviews noted the redundancy of yet another clock in the digital age, but that it worked just fine otherwise.

So how had the coffee been ready for me every morning?

Deciding I must just be going crazy, I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth for an early bedtime tonight. I’d slept poorly the night before and it was clearly messing with my head. After rinsing and spitting, I turned around to use the toilet and it wasn’t until my hand met the lid instead of the seat that I noticed that the seat was down.

The seat was down.

Wait. Why was that weird? I lived alone and had no reason to change the toilet from a sitting position. It had taken me months to get used to the seat ever not being down.

And then once I’d gotten used to it, I didn’t notice when it never stopped.

There had to be a logical explanation for it though. Maybe without thinking, I’d gotten into the habit of lifting it? What else was it, a toilet ghost? And clearly, I just wasn’t as much of a coffee connoisseur as I’d thought, and not noticing that the pot had been brewing it the night before when I put the water and beans in, rather than just before I woke up.

It made sense. At least, more sense than anything else, so I held to it and took another pill and went to bed.

I didn’t wake up the next morning until the cat nudged my face for food at nearly eleven. I must have been exhausted to sleep that long, but I still felt groggy and weighted down. I rolled my eyes at my lack of texts and scooped her some food. I drank some water as she ate happily, then grabbed her toy again and walked over to the guest room door to meow at it.

“There’s no one in there!” I cried, walking over and grabbing the stick. “I’ll play with you, jeez!”

She meowed again and scratched at the door.

“Holy shit!” I snapped, grabbing the handle roughly and shoving the door open. “He’s not there! Look—” I trailed off once I looked in the room myself, seeing the boxes neatly stacked in a way I had never bothered to do. Maybe he’d… but no, the guest bed was slept in, too. I wandered over toward it cautiously as kitty happily sniffed around the boxes and immediately hopped into one as if she did it daily.

A tablet sat, charging, at the foot of the bed. It had no lock, and as soon as I hit the power button, the screen filled with the image of my bedroom. The outfit I’d taken off the night before lay crumpled at the foot of the bed. I reached out in horror and touched the screen, and the image changed to inside my car. I swiped again, my office. Finally, a brownstone I’d only ever seen in pictures. But this, this was clearly not a picture. Red and blue lights flashed against the face of it and people crowded outside craning their necks for a view of what was going on. I couldn’t hear the gasps or cries, but the fear and shock was plain on some faces, while morbid curiosity shined on others. An officer stood out front, keeping the crowd out front.

And then, at that moment, my phone rang.

[dukeofriven]

Frisk on the Road to Damascus: A Pseudo-Essay on Converting to Undertale

So 664 days after it was released, and 382 days after I purchased it, I finally, finally, finally beat Undertale.

And... I loved it. Controversial opinion: it’s really good.

But it took me a while to love it. Let me explain, because I’m sure y’all are super interested in me doing so.

I had about five false starts playing Undertale, and all five of those false starts was how fucking irritating I found the sound of Flowey and Toriel’s dialogue. I have a hypersensitivity to sound, especially frequencies, and the sound of Flowey and Toriel’s dialogue is... not pleasant, especially at first aural blush. I got used to it when it when I finally powered through it, but if there were any major changes I would make to Undertale it would be better sound controls - being able to cut the audio down on the dialogue by even 25% would make a big difference to it on an accessibility ability level* ** It was Undertale that first ‘inspired’ me to get Tumblr Saviour - first because I didn’t want to be spoiled by a game I heard was good and wanted to play relatively unspoiled, and later because  I didn’t want to be reminded of the game I was having so much trouble with.

What was it that made me pick up Undertale long enough to get through it? As usual, it was podcasts (there’s a small paper to be written on how podcasts got me interested in pro wrestling, but that’s a whole other story.) The superlatively good Let Me Tell You About Homestuck podcast relaunched a little over a year back (shoutout to excellent co-hosts @yuri-librarian and @betgirl ), and when I found out I dived back in, and in the process rediscovered my love of Homestuck. Homestuck and I had a falling out during the gigapause and Homosuck - at the time it felt like the webcomic’s author was pissed at his own comic and actively self-sabotaging it, and even though I caught up with the comic before the ending I was still disgruntled with it and not willing to engage with it much.

But listening to LMTYAH re-ignited fandom joy within me - a euphoric Road-To-Damascus re-conversion I can only describe as ‘George Bailey coming back to existence at the end of It’s A Wonderful Life.' I gleefully snatched-up the pesterlogs and clutched them to my chest. I waved cheerfully at [S] Descend and [S] Cascade. “Merry Christmas you old mspaintadventures!” I shouted at the top of my lungs as I pelted through the snow to hug my beloved Beta Kid family again.***

You can’t discuss Homestuck anymore without discussing Undertale, which was so clearly fed by Homestuck, which was in turn fed by Undertale, because media is an incestuous slurry. Part of the issues with coming back to the Homestuck dialectic table is that you can’t ignore that big ol’ bowl of Undertale sitting between the roasted trans-media experiments and the mashed potatoes. If, every time that bowl gets passed around, you put your hands over your ears and and scram ‘LA LA LA LA LA I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT’ then the other guests are going to look at you funny and your nearest neighbour is going to conclude that they’d rather sit through that pompous lecture by the vegan on the other side of them after all.

It’s not a great dining experience, is what I am trying to explain with this increasingly overcooked analogy. I wanted to eat with the rest of the guests - I wanted to watch @revolutionaryduelist’s video on Undertale themes and Homesick themes. I want to suck it up, be an adult, and eat like a goddamn grown-up.

So I grit my teeth, grabbed the bowl, and started shovelling large spoonfuls down my throat. I think this is how grown-ups eat right?

I didn’t like the taste at first. What brought me to Undertax more than anything was the idea of the pacifist run. The games that have this as a legit option are few and far between, and some of them (e.g. Dishonoured) get downright nasty about it. Undertake wasn’t nasty about being helpful, but it didn’t make it easy, either.

Some of you may  feel the need to note that ‘the pacifist route isn’t supposed to be easy,’ to which my response would be ‘shove it up your bum you git-gud wankeroos.’ There are two types of ‘hard’ in video games - one of challenge, and one of ability. The excellent puzzle game The Witness doesn’t greatly challenge ability (for sighted people, at least) - by and large almost all of its puzzles just involve drawing a line. The Witness is hard because the puzzle are so tortuously, mind-bindingly challenging. By contrast, a platform like VVVVVV doesn’t preset much mental challenge - it barely has anything like a puzzle that I can remember, but in terms of ability it requires lightening-fast reflexes and great timing (Somehow I beat that game -I still don’t know how).

Undertale is not a hard-challenge game, it is a hard-ability game, and I flat-out suck at its bullet hell mechanics. All my frustrations with the game were met at the bullet board - if I could make one other major change to the game it would be slightly improving the speed of the heart cursor. Time and time again I violently cursed because I had just missed getting out of the way of something with a cursor I found sluggish and unresponsive, as though my keyboard was laggy. A poor skill level coupled with what felt like hardware problems made for an increasingly difficult experience, one in which I felt like the game was almost taunting me: “oh, you want to be a good person, huh? Too bad - you lack the skills to be a good person. You’re not going to get through this without resorting to killing, you intrinsically violent, terrible person."

Staying alive through the confrontation with Undyne drained me, and by the time I was on my second iteration of Mettaton being a shitheel I just felt burned-out. The story still felt pretty flat, and wasn’t really drawing me in. The hardest decision I had had to make was at the very beginning of the game - Toriel’s home, and Toriel herself, were so lovely and sweet that I still resented the game for making me have to break her heart. I didn’t want to leave her house, I just wanted to stay and live a nice life with her in the Underground. But no - the game wanted me to have  heroic destiny and shit so fine, guess i’ll go back to the surface I don’t have much interest in seeing. Since leaving Toriel’s house all I had wanted to do was return to that tranquility and warmth, and instead I just got more monsters trying to kill me. The stuff with Papyrus had been very funny, but the game still wasn’t sinking its claws into me - it was a quirky but light RPG, funny, but not funny or deep enough for me to understand why a big bowl of it was sitting at the Homestuck dialectic table other that Toby Fox had worked on both things - which seemed like a weak reason to include it. (Remember the Homestuck dialectic table? That didn’t stop being a thing or anything)

So I walked away again and did other things over several weeks, possibly months. I finally came to terms with the fact that my vision is permanently damaged and got myself a Kindle so I could read again. I read a book on the Apollo programme and took another crack at Bleak House. I watched an episode or two of Lucha Underground, got caught up on The Adventure Zone, and went through every post ever posted on @revolutionaryduelist’s Tumblr. I fantasized about buying a new computer. I told myself to watch the Little Witch Academia TV series and forgot every single time - and so on.

And then I watched Car Boys.

Car Boys is one hell of a ride, no pun intended, a strange mishmash of video game fault testing and emergent meta narrative that ends up surprisingly emotional and affecting - and as the credits rolled I made the always unwise decision to wander down into the Youtube comments, where I discovered the fun ‘Car Boys is just like Homestuck’ argument which, natch, led me back to thinking about Homesick and Video Games - and, ultimately, Undertale.

“Fine,” I told myself, “I guess I’ll beat it, at least to finally have one thing in my over-glutted Steam Library I have actually seen-through to completion.”

So last night I booted up my Steam, made the conscious decision to stop trying to get my just-bought 360 controller to work with Sonic Adventures DX via wine (it keeps crashing), and booted up Undertale.

For a while it was just fine again. I don’t like Alphys, even after beating the game: she reminds me of a lot of shitty people I’ve known in my life, and the story uses her lack of self-confidence as sort of a moé defence - ah, look at how cute she is, isn’t that adorable, she feels bad about what she’s done - without ever actually examining that behaviour in any critical detail. Alphys being an adorkable anime fan and her relationship with Undyne are all great character traits - but it doesn’t make her a good person, and the game never truly calls her to the mat in much the same way that it sort of glosses over Asgore having condoned the murder of six other humans (but he comes into the story so late I find him less of a character and more of a symbol.) Alphys gets a whole ‘trip to the dump/romance role-play’ subplot after being revealed to have deliberately ordered a bunch of monsters to at least make a pretence of killing you in order to make herself look like a hero - and that's before you get to go into her basement and learn the really shitty shit she did with dying monsters' souls. I mean Jesus Christ Alphys how come nobody calls you on this!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I helped Mettaton’s ratings, left him to be patched upped by Alphys, and made my way to the castle walls - and the writing started to get really good. I loved meeting with Sans and his talk about the true nature of EXP and LOVE, loved walking into the throne room for the first time, loved the moment when I realized Toriel was the Queen-in-Exile - coming upon the New House was genuinely moving… but then I reached Ashore, and it wouldn’t let me TALK to him, and I didn’t like having to fight him after a full pacifist run, and also he was really hard.

So I swallowed my pride a little and googled vague hints for ways to make the fight easier. I learned that yeah, I absolutely had to fight him, and then I went and ground Cloud Glasses back and forth to the Temmie Store to unlock the Temmie Armor and earn the cash to stock-up on my beloved Bisicles. So equipped, I went and fought Asgore for the final time, thus beating this game that everyone raved about for reasons I could not understand.

Then the game ended and suddenly started to get really, really, really good. Much like Homestuck in Act 6, Undertale’s starts pushing the boundaries of games themselves, using save files against you and deliberately crashing the game. Omega Flowey is a goddamn nightmare, a visual headache who rails against you and the concept of friendship, and while he was a frustrating fight for the first time I felt like this was less a reflection of my shitty skills and more a deliberate choice of the part of the game to show what monstrous power he wielded.

As I was sent back into the world, I was eager to go find Undyne. I had to look-up where she lived because I had totally forgotten that her house existed - in fact, I had forgotten Papyrus had ever said anything about meeting up at Undyne’s house, so I never befriended her in my original run. The moment Undertale moved from a game I was starting to enjoy to one I knew I loved was the moment Papyrus leapt out Undyne’s window - late in the process to fall in love with a game? Perhaps, but so it was.

Missing Undone the first time through felt so narratively satisfying to me that it wasn’t until writing this that it occurred to me that it was something that didn’t have to have been missed - the run-in with Undone hardly ends on a high-note: after a miserable shield-fight and a whole lot of fleeing you give her a cup of water and she slinks-off into the night. It wasn’t something that exactly screamed ‘She’s Ready For A Friendship Lesson.’ I kept expecting her to show back up somewhere in New Home Castle for Round 2: Redemption Boogaloo, but it never happened. Then Sans got Anubis on my ass, the King of All Monsters got murdered by a flower and my game crashed on purpose - sort of forgot about her no-show appearance.

So there we were: breaking windows, sipping tea, making the worst goddamn spaghetti it’s ever been my misfortune to make**** and having a wonderful time. Other than my general misgivings about Alphys being let-off way too lightly by the narrative*****, after that first reset Undertale was practically a perfect game for me. The ending made me feel mushy and sappy, the epilogue where you get to pace around and talk to just about everyone felt so unbelievably RIGHT - if you want to head out and make one last personal connection with everyone you’ve ever met, you can pretty-much do that. Ben Croshaw wrote quite elegantly that Undertale represents “the triumph of kindness, reminding people of who they were before tragedy twisted them.”****** That kindness is what makes the game so compelling - what makes reading-up on the Genocide route feel so legitimately horrific and transgressive. It’s going to stick in the back of my mind every time I am needlessly rude to someone, overly sarcastic, or just my usual ‘less kind than I wish I was’ self. Homestuck wallets just went on sale today and I immediately bought one and then felt bad for all the Tumblr posts I saw for worthy causes - I SHOULD GIVE UP ALL MY WORLDLY POSSESSIONS TO THE POOR AND GO PREACH THE GOSPEL OF ACTING WITH MERCY as Undertale teaches.

It’s the kindness that will stick with me - and dear God, reading about the Genocide routes makes me nauseated. I’m the guy who claims that this time his Mass Effect play through will be Renegade and then goes 100% paragon again except for being rude to Anderson (because screw that dill weed - oh, geeze, I have failed Undertale again.)

Anyways, long, convoluted, not-very-coherent opinion: Undertale is a good game. Sorry it took me so long to learn that.

*but if we’re going to talk about accessibility in video games we’ll be here all year: an especially big fuck you to all those games who don’t let you change the font size for all of us with really poor eyesight (which is to say essentially all games).

** And what is it with games being embarrassed to have their text dialogue scroll past without some kind of irritating sounds? Undertale at least uses the noise as a form of expanding character identity, but the world is littered with sprite JRPGs who think dialogue is best accompanied by a garbled, repeating beep.

*** Re-experiencing the comic multiple times gave me so many more insights I never used to have. Revisiting Act Six and Homosuck, especially through @betgirl‘s eyes, I found so much to love. Which there is some serious problems in it (The Dancestors and Abuser Gamzee), there’s so much more joy, depth, and thought then I remember. I don’t know if, at the time, with the broken pacing, it was possible to see the shape of the narrative arc that Andrew Hussie was trying to tell - the deconstruction of the nature of storytelling, video games, and the ‘Problem of Mario.’ It’s really good, you guys, and you do yourself a disservice if you have never read it.

**** Undyne is right, by the way: homemade pasta is unquestionably the best and super easy; its only major flaw is that it’s just time-consuming, especially if you’ve got to hand-crank an antique pasta machine to roll it out. KitchenAid sells a pasta roller attachment for their mixer for an amount that justifies a class uprising all on its own.

***** I’m not some weirdo going ALPHYS MUST BE PUNISHED but Alphys should really, you know, actually apologize for the shit she pulled. Yeah, she says ‘I got scared of my amagalgamtions and cowardly didn’t tell their families about it,’ but not being honest about it is the most insignificant issue here. Much more pressing and things like Experimenting On A Human Soul, Actually Making the Amalgams In The First Place, Setting Up A Bunch Of Death Traps So She Could Insert Herself Into Your Life As A Hero. I can forgive Alphys - I think she is a genuinely good person who made misguided and out-right foolish mistakes and should never have had the job she had (I hear Toriel fires her in one ending which fuck yeah Toriel, only one with sense.) Undertake doesn’t need to re-write a damn thing about Alphys - I would just like one more scene in which Alphys admits culpability for the original problem rather than just an aspect of the fallout.

****** And it should be stressed: Alphys deserves kindness (and a good therapist). I don’t want a kangaroo court or anything like that - my issue is with the narrative, not Alphys personally.

Asgore, though… dude kinda murdered six children? Do people talk about that, because they ought to.

[sinkingcanoe]

Hunk Headcanons (+gen Garrison Trio)

(1.) He’s an only child That’s part of why Hunk’s so quick to adopt Keith and Lance as his brothers, honestly, he always wanted a sibling and other kids could be jerks sometimes. Being the chubby kid is bad enough without also being The Smart One. So he just wants people to hug and share his food with and have that brotherly stuff he’s seen on tv. It’s also why he’s so terrible about privacy, he didn’t grow up with siblings fighting for their own space and stuff, so he’s just like… what do you mean I shouldn’t read your diary Pidge… it was right there… Pidge why can’t I play with your computer it’s so cool… I bet I could make it even better if you just let me take a look… why is this a big deal?? please let me play with the cool robot too??

(2.) He hates soda. Like, listen, if you have to have caffeine to exist (Pidge and Shiro tbh), at least drink coffee? Or tea? Hunk is a big herbal tea dude, but black tea is great for when he’s tired. It depends on his mood and what he’s eating. His favorite flavor is pomegranate rose. It just has this lovely aroma when the steam rises, like potpourri.

(3.) He was on master chef junior as a small child. Hunk took second place, which kills him to this day, but he got no less than three Gordon Ramsey hugs. Lance doesn’t believe him, even with photographic evidence. Keith totally watched that season in one of the better foster homes, so he gives Hunk weird looks for a bit at the beginning before he recognizes him. Then, as usual, Keith’s mind is blown. Lance refuses to accept Keith’s word as additional evidence. Hunk is smug tho.

(4.) Hunk wants to help Pidge with more stuff, she’s just a jealous brat (ha, green eyed monster) who never learned to share. Mostly out of spite bc Matt was terrible about taking things and then breaking them. Pidge has trust issues with letting ppl touch her stuff thanks to him. They’re working on it. In the end she gives in bc Hunk fixes everything he breaks. Pidge breaks more stuff than he does, so he’s kinda like… ha. Told you so.

(5.) Hunk is still kinda uneasy over Pidge’s whole “I don’t have time for you” thing from when they first met? And he gets it now, she’s trying to find her family, which is SUPER important. I mean he was on her side about leaving at first, his family is small but they’re all he has and he wants to go back to them. But just bc he understands doesn’t make him comfortable? In some ways it’s worse, bc now he feels bad about it, like every time he wants to hang out with Pidge he’s just wasting her time or getting in the way. Then one day he’s got this software problem, and honestly, Hunk is fine with the basics but he IS NOT a software guy. Just let him at the moving parts and they’re fine. Intricate code where forgetting one freaking parenthesis will fuck the whole thing up? No. Anyway so he finally gives up and goes to Pidge. Says he knows she’s really busy but he’s stuck, and if she has a minute to take a look he’d really appreciate it? And Pidge is just like, for you? Always. And Hunk doesn’t say anything but his heart… just… grows three sizes, he’s just really touched tbh. He bothers her more often after that, and she gets impatient easily but she never turns him away.

(6.) Pidge, unlike Keith and Lance, isn’t really on his sibling-wavelength. Hunk kinda sees her as his partner in crime. His fellow evil genius. He insists that since they pilot a giant robot together through the power of their minds they’re drift compatible. She’s basically his platonic life partner.

(7.) Lance gets kinda jealous of Pidge unintentionally stealing his best friend, until Hunk reminds him they’re brothers. Then Lance holds that over Pidge’s head (sometimes literally) like, ha, you’re not sibling material. Her response basically sums up to, listen my one sibling experience was objectively terrible, I don’t need another one. But he’s MY terrible, so I have to go get him back.

(8.) Despite having been ON a cooking show, Hunk can’t watch cooking shows anymore. He gets sympathetic nerves. He questions every decision they make. He once LITERALLY TORE HIS HAIR OUT over their bad decisions, like, WHY would you DO THAT, ugh. It’s like hardcore sports fans watching the game on tv. There’s screaming and judging and groaning and cheering. It is An Experience to witness.

(9.) He loves Kaltenecker, really. Hunk is a kind and gentle soul who is good to animals. But he’s SO TIRED of space goo that sometimes he just stares at the cow… thinking of all the food he could make from the cow… Burgers, obv. But French dip sandwiches. Meatloaf. Tri-tip. Beef stroganoff. Ribs, he would die for honey-bbq ribs. And he knows he’d need not just a dead cow but also a bunch of other earth ingredients for this stuff, but a man can DREAM, OKAY??

(10.) His favorite NASA robot is the Opportunity. Hunk is embarrassingly parentally proud of this determined little robot. First teenager in space. He calls her Oppy, and tbh he did not want to be a flight crew engineer. His scores were too good so they pressured him onto that track, Hunk really wanted to help design the ships and the rovers. Just let him play with electronics all day, stop making him ride the terrible zero-g sims.

(11.) Hunk can fly the Green lion in an emergency, and he feels really honored about it. Like, he loves Yellow, Yellow is the best, he would not trade his lion for Green. But he likes knowing he can pilot two lions, and Green is so salty and blunt that being in her head is almost like hanging out with Pidge. But it only ever happens when Pidge is unable to pilot her own lion, usually on stealth missions gone wrong, so it comes with some bad associations. Hunk’s never had time to just sit and enjoy it; always gogogo, run, gotta get Pidge to a healing pod, gotta help the others. Pidge can’t pilot Yellow, but very very rarely Lance can. Pidge can pilot Red sometimes, though. She has a lot of rage and rebelliousness packed into a very tiny body. It’s heavily concentrated. Hunk knows this, and wishes that she and Lance had at least one iota of chill between them. They do not.

Anyway add your own if you want!

[thecloudlight-blog]

New Post has been published on Cloudlight

New Post has been published on https://cloudlight.biz/facebooks-messenger-games-are-now-available-to-everyone/

Facebook’s Messenger games are now available to everyone

Facebook announced nowadays that its new Messenger sport-playing functions at the moment are available to the complete 1.2 billion those who use the app every month. Immediate Video games, because the platform is called, first launched in closed beta closing November with arcade titles like Percent-Man and Galaga. The platform also reintroduced Facebook browser hallmarks like Zynga’s Words with Friends, in a bid to revitalize, to a small quantity, the sort of meteoric engagement the one’s organizations enjoyed again the early days of cellular gaming. Facebook says that in certain territories it now has greater than 50 Games to be had.

As part of the extended rollout of Instant Video games,

Facebook is also introducing turn-primarily based play, first introduced returned at its F8 developer convention closing month, with the capability for recreation makers to combine leaderboards and tournaments. Words with Pals is one of the first titles to utilize those features, as Zynga attempts to regain some have an effect on within the cellular gaming quarter after failing to make the jump from Fb to iOS and Android. To assist tie the complete strategy together with Facebook’s investment in boats — it launched a Messenger bot store ultimate month, too — the organization will use the automatic software program to inspire gamers to attempt new Games and to compete for better rankings.

Introduction to Facebook Live

With regards to a way to put it on the market on Fb, we are used to the apparent techniques with Fb Ads and the usage of pixels. If you haven’t heard of stay streaming but, then you definitively must be residing beneath a rock.

This lets you speak to that target market in a stay fashion and even reply to remarks and that during flip makes this shape of verbal exchange especially engaging and intimate.

For an internet marketer, this is the closest you may ever come to being able to knock on someone’s door and inform them precisely why they can purchase your product.

In case you’re constructing a personal brand, then it is an exquisite manner to construct agree with and familiarity. And In case you’re creative, then you can do all varieties of amazing things like taking your target audience with you on hikes or bringing them to live occasions.

Imagine being able to make a seminar in your sales funnel where your students may want to surely ask questions? And wherein they knew you that you had been speak to them without delay at that very moment! One extra thing that makes stay video so interesting for marketers is the easy truth that it is so new and so exciting.

If you’re a marketer seeking to make a huge splash on-line, then this device can help to present you a massive head begin. Human beings want live content and they’re especially excited for it.

For an internet marketer, that is the nearest you will ever come to being capable of the knock on a person’s door and inform them precisely why they should buy your product. In case you’re constructing a non-public emblem, then it is a tremendous way to build trust and familiarity.

If you’re a marketer trying to make a big splash on the line

Thn this tool can assist to offer you a large head begin. Human beings want live content and they are fairly excited for it.

In the end, there is tons of insurance of live content material in the media and everybody is speaking approximately it. But right now, not that many marketers or bloggers are developing a stay video.

To apply Fb live, you will need the Facebook cell app. From here, you definitely want to click in the field you’ll tap to submit new content. you can do this out of your personal account or from your Facebook web page.

From there, you could then clearly select the ‘live’ icon at the lowest. that is a small photo of someone with radio waves emanating from their head. Whilst you click this, you’ll be taken to every other display in which you may see your digicam in the background and some options. One crucial alternative is the capability to feature an outline.

Yes, they Shoot the Messenger in Child Custody/Access Cases

discern called me inquiring for me to offer an assessment. I defined I do no longer provide courtroom involved services anymore and defined why. The caller requested for a referral to someone who did. I provided the call of a reputable colleague.

The caller emailed thereafter and included inside the email messages that had been posted about the colleague on the Net. The postings portrayed my colleague quite extraordinarily. The caller wanted to apprehend how I should talk over with such someone. My respond was this:

In our career, we all paintings with disappointed human beings in difficult situations. Our paintings impacts or determines the final results for their family.

At times some humans take splendid exception to the outcome and turn they are disillusioned upon the carrier provider.

Custody and get entry to paintings money owed for the best variety of complaints to professional licensing bodies. I and all my skilled colleagues have treated those troubles as part of our expert exercise.

I will provide you different names, but each person will also have had court cases in opposition to them, a few with the aid of Internet postings and a few by court cases to the licensing frame and some by means of both. But, all are reputable inside their career by colleagues, courts, and attorneys even though all have also been complained about by means of former clients.

On every occasion a 3rd party (assessor, judge or arbitrator) impacts or makes a decision your fate

Tere is usually the threat of adverse final results. That is why to the diploma viable, we endorse humans discover a negotiated answer.

All my colleagues and I’ve all been vilified with the aid of dad and mom unhappy with the final results of their dispute. That is an extraordinarily unspoken professional danger.

there’s a lesson on this although for most of the people. Regardless of the expert’s credentials and credibility, you can now not just like the final results of our involvement.

Do assume two times when given selection making authority away.

inside the alternative, in case you hold manipulate of choice making authority, you can arrive at final results you may at the least live with, even supposing now not completely happy. This frequently is higher than rolling the cube. through maintaining manipulate the outcome, you may realize what you have. Give it away, there’s continually hazard.

The Future of Android Games, Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality

Mobile gaming has come a completely lengthy way since the creation of crude & simple video games like Snake and Pong which had been to be had on early Nokia phones. Cellular processors and pictures at the moment are as powerful as laptop computer systems had been just a few years ago. Older generations nevertheless don’t forget lugging around a Game Boy or Recreation equipment and begging their parents for some other Game. New generations actually have access to 100’s of heaps of games on their Cell device.

In brief, Mobile gaming has exploded in only a few years time.

Inside the month of July 2016, there had been sixty-three.1 million arcade games downloaded & video games In the “strategy” class generated $195M sales. In the latest study over 37% of Cell app customers with 30 minutes of free time pick out to play games over some other hobby. We’ve got all seen it and We have all finished it ourselves, whether it’s waiting for an appointment or sitting at the airport, we pull out our Mobile device and bounce into a short Sport to kill the time.

So what does all of this imply for the destiny of android gaming? For starters, the big quantities of revenue and person interest in android gaming has reinforced non-stop innovation and fierce competition Within the worldwide market. For instance, simply 365 days ago, top executives were announcing they did not see any essential advantage to augmented fact. With the release of Pokemon Go and estimates citing as tons as $500 million in revenue in just 60 days, I think we will all agree augmented reality is here to live.

The digital fact is any other area that has been selecting up steam in current months. You can now buy Digital truth headsets at local gasoline stations for an insignificant $30. Or in case you’re in a price range, you can purchase Google Cardboard for as low as $7.00. There is nonetheless simplest a confined quantity of VR enabled video games however that quantity is increasing each day. Not simplest that, as an increasing number of human beings revel in VR we’re sure to look a blockbuster launch ultimately.

Allow’s test a few real lifestyles examples of new Sport releases

Dawn of Titans which changed into recently launched on Google Play became in development for over 2 years. That is corresponding to the development cycle of a mid-level Pc Game launch on Steam. The game features mass controlled troops, global constructing factors, and wonderful photographs. A few years ago this would be taken into consideration a primary launch for the Android platform. Nowadays That is just any other drop Inside the massive pond. With over 2.4 million apps and video games presently listed on Google Play, it is emerging as tougher and harder to stand out. This is truly exact news for game enthusiasts as builders are working tougher and faster to create new revolutionary titles to attract users.

  Originally posted 2016-08-28 04:08:16.