#and still Novid

[dicapiito]

Took the updated Covid vaccine shot and the flu shot

Now to pass out until November 😭

[jbluphin]

Skyping with my bf between rooms of the apartment so I don't give him covid.

Thought I was done with this shit when he moved in with me. Long-distance relationship flashbacks...

[typingtess]

Bad cold this week. Head full of junk, coughing up a lung. First real bad cold since COVID started (still NOVID right now). Planned on writing something Thursday morning. Woke up at 11:30AM so no real Thursday morning (and I'm not a sleep-in sort of person). Feeling better but no story today. Lots of used tissues but no story.

[musashi]

genuine question, how do you manage still taking covid seriously and not catastrophize? recently i've been in a state where i keep being scared of getting covid to the point i'm scared of leaving the house because of the prospect that i would need to open my mask to eat or drink. but staying inside all the time is doing extreme harm to my mental state too. but i don't know anyone irl who also takes covid seriously so it's also kinda unsafe to just ask people to hang out. i guess going out for a short amount of time is possible since i can still use mask, but if i wanna hang out with people long enough then taking off my mask to eat and drink is something that has to happen. i don't know how to strike a balance. (also, yes, i'm currently unemployed and still live with family, hence why i can simply not leave the house because of my fear)

i don't believe in catastrophizing.

i simply do all the necessary things to keep myself and others safe. this lowers my chances of COVID to the lowest possible odds they can be at. the last small percentage of that is luck. i cannot control luck or fate, so to worry about it is pointless. i focus on what i can control and do not bother myself with what i cannot. that is just my personal take on how to live a happy life.

to answer your question on how i combat all these things in 2024 when most of the world has given up on protecting themselves & their fellows from the deadly fucking brain plague:

airtight sipvalve for drinking

KN100 mask

up to date vaccination

walking outdoors (i go on 40+ minute walks 3 times a week)

i hang out with people online & am direct with my boundaries that i do not wish to attend in-person outings with people who aren't covid safe

a lot of the things i do for mental health or pleasure are things that boost the immune system. IE, a healthy sleep schedule and dedicated stress management/listening to my emotional needs. i also fucking love cayenne pepper and put it in... everything.

i guess yeah like sometimes i miss concerts and conventions and mall crawls and shit but like... not enough to give myself brain damage or die.

but i also work a retail job where i see hundreds of people every day and, like, i don't even catch colds, so. i'm pretty confident that what i'm doing works and that makes it a lot easier.

i'm not going to say that people catching covid is their own fault cause like i said a huge portion of it is just luck but also the majority of people i know who have caught covid more than once are people who stopped giving a shit and the people who are novids or have had it less than twice are people doing the same shit i do. so. that also helps lol.

idk man i just don't believe in like. living my life in a state of perpetual fear over shit i can't control. i'd rather just hope everything turns out well and take charge over what i can directly impact. and not catching a preventable disease seems easier than ever.

[vickiabelson]

Toto’s Joseph Williams Live on Game Changers with Vicki Abelson

Hold the line! What a way to reenter this arena - with arena rockstar Joseph Williams of Toto! I had the best time - can’t stop smiling. Joseph could not have been more accessible, personable, humble, willing, thoughtful, informative… entertaining, and warm––like a fuzzy blanket on a cool summer night. Just loved every minute. 

I watched quite a few interviews with Joseph to get to know him a bit before sitting down with him. All that I saw were centered around the music of Toto and Joseph’s solo work––the songs, the musicians, the concerts. Fascinating!  I wanted to know about the kid, the son, the man, the artist, the vocalist, the composer, who thrived, who struggled, who acted out, who cleaned up, and that’s exactly what generous Joseph gave us, no holds barred, no lines held, as it were. From his earliest days with his dad, John Williams, making genius in the other room, his actress-singer mother, Barbara Ruick, turning life into songs, he and his siblings performing on cue for their parents’ esteemed party guests, and forming their first band, together, picking up his first drink, finding mischief, getting busted, breaking bones, boarding school leading to his first gig… jingles, Vegas, Star Search - one story better than the last - to auditioning for Toto - how he got it, what it meant - how he lost it - what he did to ensure that it would never happen again - composing, scoring- working with a guy named Snuffy, guesting with Toto and Bobby Kimball, rejoining the band in 2010, now he and Lukather the two remaining old guard… full circle - still touring - and miraculously still a Novid! 

I easily could have chatted with Joseph for hours more. Can’t wait till September to see Toto at The Hollywood Bowl and to celebrate Joseph’s 64th birthday. He’s sober, a grandpa, a good son, making great music, and living his dream. He’s honored his legacy. Bravo! Standing O! 

Joseph Williams Live on Game Changers with Vicki Abelson

Wednesday, June 5, 5 PM PT, 8 PM ET 

Streamed Live on my Facebook

Replay here:

[satellitefish]

I got Covid and so I’m no longer a Novid and my dreams to become the only human being ever to not get Covid have been squashed. Add it to the list, Jeeves.

Also what’s at the centre of two opposites? I’m beginning to think there’s nothing there. Except for… ~dimensional analysis time!~ add as many new mirror dimensions to existing opposites as you like, like, add a z axis to the x and y and BAM a new dimension sideways to before. Now sideways is another opposite just kind of sideways and we still don’t know what’s at the centre.

I bet biology knows. It’ll be somewhere in the brain, probably a little ball shaped cave and a little brain clerk carefully writing a word on one side of the wall and the opposite word directly opposite. The opposites processing centre! Sounds pretty wild.

Meanwhile, please fill out our quick survey:

1. Covid

2. All of the above

Does this mean I’m part bat now? Oooh.

*

No portraits update this week. Instead, here is a peek into the prep work for my next project. It will be a landscape and I wanted to see what different gradients of blue would look like with a brown or black gradient behind it. Yep. Looks like blue.

(Image below: painting gradients, an experiment. Results: I think the blue on brown looks brighter. I think??)

*

[Interview with the opposites brain clerk]

-What’s the opposite of right?

-Do you mean right, correct, or right and left right, or something else like “write” or “rite?”

-Ooh got anything for “wright?”

-“wleft”

-Bahaha nice.

*

A definition of “worth” that doesn’t rely on qualitative supposition or abstract thought? Also if it’s maths I hope it doesn’t converge to zero. Like one of them logs. Gotta watch out for them logs.

[misterjt]

Good Good

We ain’t good good, but we still good. Usher Photo by visuals on Unsplash I’m currently in Bedroom Jail. I can no longer count myself among the NOVID crowd as I tested positive for COVID-19 Wednesday evening. I probably contracted it on January 1st. Happy New Year! I’m not alone. My case has been mild so far, with two rough nights of sleep (last night was better) and a fever for about 36 hours…

[dicapiito]

I hope my Novid streak continues because holy hell… I still feel gross.

Well…I am current with my Covid shots at least. Jeez…

I will never understand how one can be that unhygienic and think she wouldn’t be reported for being so fucking disgusting. What an asshole.

[nerdgirljen]

At present, I’m still a NoVid;

I still mask up in indoor places and crowded outdoor spaces. I still social distance when and where I can. I still do grocery/Target pickup and shopping online instead of going into stores. And I try to refrain from being in indoor locations for longer than 10-20 minutes. (And I use hand sanitizer religiously.) I am vaxxed and boosted.

I live and work for individuals who would probably die if I happened to give it to them, and it’s not worth the risk. I haven’t fully given up everything: there’s a drive-in movie theater near me I frequently visit, I’ve been to Disney World and DragonCon twice 2021 and 2022, and I still hang with my friends when I can.

I had H1N1 when it went around in 2009, and almost died from it. I definitely don’t want to catch a virus that’s worse than that and can have harsher repercussions.

People who caught it put in the tags what year it was and how bad it was and if you had any side effects

[mumblelard]

i got my bivalent booster today or the contagiously fun game that never ever ever ends

i am still novid, but there is a creepy news article that has been following me around the internet. it asserts that people who think they haven't had covid are fooling themselves and are most likely asymptomatic superspreaders. since there is no practical way to find out which is true, i guess i will have to continue to live in a world where both are correct?

[lickingyellowpaint]

Today's a short workday, then a friend's scooping me afterward to take me shoe shopping, which I do so sorely need when everything's either falling apart or just plain uncomfy. May end up tossing some beloved kicks as a result of having new, but that's life. Just grateful she's willing to take me on a little spree.

Then home, work out, curling hair for overnight, and tomorrow is another dance event I plan to attend if I'm not sniffly. So far so good on that front - still a NOVID as far as I can tell (though I'm sure it's just a matter of time.)

But. Indigestion like a motherfucker from pizza last night. Body is NOT happy I broke my good semi-healthy streak. Ugggghhhh. Hoping the long walk to work helps sort me back out.

Hope everyone has a chill Saturday! Love to my pocket friends. ❤️

[maximelebled]

How to launch a symlinked Source 2 addon in the tools & commands to improve the SFM

I like to store a lot of my 3D work in Dropbox, for many reasons. I get an instant backup, synchronization to my laptop if my desktop computer were to suddenly die, and most importantly, a simple 30-day rollback “revision” system. It’s not source control, but it’s the closest convenience to it, with zero effort involved.

This also includes, for example, my Dota SFM addon. I have copied over the /content and /game folder hierarchies inside my Dropbox. On top of the benefits mentioned above, this allows me to launch renders of different shots in the same session easily! With some of my recent work needing to be rendered in resolutions close to 4K, it definitely isn’t a luxury.

So now, of course, I can’t just launch my addon from my Dropbox. I have to create two symbolic links first — basically, “ghost folders” that pretend to be the real ones, but are pointing to where I moved them! Using these commands:

mklink /J "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\dota 2 beta\content\dota_addons\usermod" "D:\path\to\new\location\content"

and

mklink /J "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\dota 2 beta\game\dota_addons\usermod" "D:\ path\to\new\location\game"

Now, there’s a problem though; somehow, symlinked addons don’t show up in the tools startup manager (dota2cfg.exe, steamtourscfg.exe, etc)

It’s my understanding that symbolic links are supposed to be transparent to these apps, so maybe they actually aren’t, or Source 2 is doing something weird... I wouldn’t know! But it’s not actually a problem.

Make a .bat file wherever you’d like, and drop this in there:

start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\dota 2 beta\game\bin\win64\dota2.exe" -addon usermod -vconsole -tools -steam -windowed -noborder -width 1920 -height 1080 -novid -d3d11 -high +r_dashboard_render_quality 0 +snd_musicvolume 0.0 +r_texturefilteringquality 5 +engine_no_focus_sleep 0 +dota_use_heightmap 0 -tools_sun_shadow_size 8192 EXIT

Of course, you’ll have replace the paths in these lines (and the previous ones) by the paths that match what you have on your own machine.

Let me go through what each of these commands do. These tend to be very relevant to Dota 2 and may not be useful for SteamVR Home or Half-Life: Alyx.

-addon usermod is what solves our core issue. We’re not going through the launcher (dota2cfg.exe, etc.) anymore. We’re directly telling the engine to look for this addon and load it. In this case, “usermod” is my addon’s name... most people who have used the original Source 1 SFM have probably created their addon under this name 😉

-vconsole enables the nice separate console right away.

-windowed -noborder makes the game window “not a window”.

-width 1920 -height 1080 for its resolution. (I recommend half or 2/3rds.)

-novid disables any startup videos (the Dota 2 trailer, etc.)

-d3d11 is a requirement of the tools (no other APIs are supported AFAIK)

-high ensures that the process gets upgraded to high priority!

+r_dashboard_render_quality 0 disables the fancier Dota dashboard, which could theoretically by a bit of a background drain on resources.

+snd_musicvolume 0.0 disables any music coming from the Dota menu, which would otherwise come back on at random while you click thru tools.

+r_texturefilteringquality 5 forces x16 Anisotropic Filtering.

+engine_no_focus_sleep 0 prevents the engine from “artificially sleeping” for X milliseconds every frame, which would lower framerate, saving power, but also potentially hindering rendering in the SFM. I’m not sure if it still can, but better safe than sorry.

+dota_use_heightmap 0 is a particle bugfix that prevents certain particles from only using the heightmap baked at compile time, instead falling back on full collision. You may wish to experiment with both 0 and 1 when investigating particle behaviours.

-tools_sun_shadow_size 8192 sets the Global Light Shadow res to 8192 instead of 1024 (on High) or 2048 (on Ultra). This is AFAIK the maximum.

And don’t forget that “EXIT” on a new line! It will make sure the batch file automatically closes itself after executing, so it’ll work like a real shortcut.

Speaking of, how about we make it even nicer, and like an actual shortcut? Right-click on your .bat and select Create Shortcut. Unfortunately, it won’t work as-is. We need to make a few changes in its properties.

Make sure that Target is set to:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C "D:\Path\To\Your\BatchFile\Goes\Here\launch_tools.bat"

And for bonus points, you can click Change Icon and browse to dota2cfg.exe (in \SteamApps\common\dota 2 beta\game\bin\win64) to steal its nice icon! And now you’ve got a shortcut that will launch the tools in just one click, and that you can pin directly to your task bar!

Enjoy! 🙂

[mubashirnews]

These 11 People Still Haven't Had COVID. We Asked Them To Share Their Secrets.

Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of Americans have had COVID at least once, with the new immune-evasive XBB.1.5 subvariant driving up the numbers of new cases and reinfections. Even the lucky few who still haven’t gotten the novel coronavirus may have actually had it before; in many cases, “never COVIDers” (or “Novids,” if you prefer) have contracted the virus but weren’t…

[dearvicme]

These 11 People Still Haven't Had COVID. We Asked Them To Share Their Secrets.

Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of Americans have had COVID at least once, with the new immune-evasive XBB.1.5 subvariant driving up the numbers of new cases and reinfections. Even the lucky few who still haven’t gotten the novel coronavirus may have actually had it before; in many cases, “never COVIDers” (or “Novids,” if you prefer) have contracted the virus but weren’t…

[vickiabelson]

Jason Alexander Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson

Wow! Just wow! I’ve loved Jason Alexander since Pretty Woman, and in everything, I’ve seen him in since. He somehow managed to exceed my high hopes and great expectations as a human, a storyteller… a mensch! Such a huge fan, I was anxious that I’d muck it up being in awe. His smile as soon as he entered the Zoom room set me at ease, and his open willingness allowed the conversation to never cease flowing. 

It would be impossible to cite a favorite “part.” Each story a gem. From his family of NOVIDS (love it!) how they coped, continue to, how he met his wife, adorable story, the secret of their 40-year martial success as Jason has come to see it––magnificent, I’ve replayed that part thrice already, his parents, how he shifted his dream from magic to show biz, fabulous story there, landing his first Broadway show at 19, Sondheim and Hal Prince, please! The Rink with Liza and Chita, an inspiring tale to take forward, a terrific story about scoring Pretty Woman with a little help from a movie star new friend, and getting Seinfeld, amidst fierce competition. Creating George, changing George, Larry David, Jerry, Julia, and Michael, the group dynamic, Curb, and then we jumped to Jason’s upcoming podcast, Really No Really, with Peter Tilden, dropping in February on iHeart and then available wherever you get your podcasts. There was so much more to discuss but the time was flying. Jason agreed to come back and offered to in February to coincide with the drop. Gonna hold him to it. 

Hours later, I still haven’t stopped smiling. I got so much out of this time with Jason, much food for thought, and takeaways all over the place. The topper is that it was such exuberant fun. As much as I admired and adored Jason before, it’s that much more having spent this time in his great company. 

This is a gift to us. Happy Festivus! 

Jason Alexander Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson

Wednesday, 12/14/22, 5 pm PT, 8 pm ET

Streamed Live on my Facebook

Replay here:

[marcymassura]

A play in two acts. Still never had it. Official #Novid!!! But I am 4x vaxxed because I know I CAN still get it. By the way- I’ve never had the flu either. Weird or related? 😬😬😬 But I am still sick. Doc thinks it’s moving into pneumonia. So that’s super fun. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cjk8mQOrpIh/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=