Gaming

Spoilers probably. You have been warned. I originally wrote the following at the beginning of October 2023. It is now the end of November. I’ve been hesitant to post it because, pretty much immediately after writing it, I finally spent some time in the underground after spending 20+ hours solely on the surface. If you’ve played the game, you’ll know that means I unlocked an ability that I probably should have unlocked much earlier, which means some of my observations are a little… off.

My girlfriend and I went to Ohayocon this weekend. It was great! Really good to be back at a con after so much time. This was our first con since the lockdown. We decided to ease our way in and did Saturday only. We attended panels on zine making, slice of life anime, and traveling to Japan. The slice of life anime panel gave me a kick in the pants to start watching Super Cub and reconsider Kaguya-sama (although calling this slice of life is a stretch).

I got sick on December 19th and didn’t stop. I’m now on my final dose of some antibiotic I’ve never heard of following shock wave lithotripsy. I’m incredibly lucky it was just a kidney stone (and food poisoning before that). But it did pretty much destroy any plans I had for the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. During my sick time I did a lot of vegging. I had filed vacation for the final two weeks of the year anyway.

So I got another phone. Because of this I’ve updated and added to my articles about phone setup: Termux and git hugo rsync I’ve also purchased a few peripherals to try to make up for the sad state of modern phone features. I got a case, a usb-c u-bend, a headphone jack usb-c splitter, and a small bluetooth keyboard. So far I have only tested the keyboard, which failed spectacularly. Whenever it times out to save battery, it fails to reconnect and has to be setup from scratch.

Haibane Renmei is an anime I return to again and again. There’s an idea introduced in the first few episodes that resonates with me far outside the bounds of the show: The main characters are restricted to only own items that are used. I never finished the show. So I never learned why this limitation is placed on the Haibane. The more important thing for me is that this limitation sounds like an interesting guideline for myself.

I got my covid vaccine booster on Friday. Pretty much lost Saturday due to side effects, but as of today I’m feeling much better! Destiny 2 I’ve been playing catch up on the season content and a lot of Crucible (the PVP mode). I definitely think the new skill based matchmaking has helped make the experience better for me. I’m pretty bad, but I’m no longer consistently getting blown out every game.

Following my Dominaria United prerelease attendance for Magic the Gathering, I wasn’t quite feeling like MtG was right for me. Star City Games also had Flesh and Blood at the Con in Columbus. So I had the game on my radar, but, to be honest, I was looking at every trading card game in print in the hopes to cure the itch. Options After watching a lot of videos, I had ruled out Yugioh and Pokemon from my current interests.

Lately my YouTube feed has been flooded with Tiago Forte and his book, Building a Second Brain, which I might get soon but I haven’t read yet.* I’ve been interested in the idea of creating a knowledge base for a long time but I never found quite what I was looking for in terms of software. I really wanted a non-hierarchical system like MediaWiki, but with a more easily maintainable storage mechanism than a relational database.

After more than 5 years of playing off and on, my best friend and I finally finished Final Fantasy XII! I’ve been playing FFXII off and on since its release in 2006. So when we committed to play the game together I was hopeful we would actually complete it. I had no idea it would take this long. We only played on Fridays for a few hours and only in person.

I’m in a bit of a holding pattern here. My freshly rekindled Magic hyperfixation is simmering along. Other than spending money and watching YouTube, I haven’t done much with it. My new plan is to put together a commander deck for Friday Night Magic, go once, and then re-evaluate my priorities. Gaming As expected, I’m finished Destiny 2’s Season of the Haunted seal! Trying to figure out how much time I’m willing to put into Solstice.