2020-03-06 17:54:10 (edited by Patrick 2020-03-06 17:54:53)

I am honored to start the second page. big_smile
Anyway, march is going to be interesting. Spring break is going to be fun; I think I'm going to Los Vegas for the first time; I am only 14 so going to see what there is to do, but will probably just enjoy the weather.
Other than that my life is going good so far. I am enjoying making random little programs, but other than that it's fun.
Monday I went to a area public school and showed a Freshman PE class what Goal Ball is, though I am a freshman myself, so that's that lol. I think it's safe to say they were interested.
Anyway that's about it for me.

2020-03-07 21:30:22

I only got into audio gaming in like 2018, and I feel like I'm way behind.. I now have an iPad and hope to try and find more fun stuff than is available for Mac.. I've got a few music projects lined up, but I need something fun to do when I'm not going to one doctor or another, or playing drums with my homie.

2020-03-08 17:22:46

@26: Going to Las Vegas for the first time at 14? I did that once. When I got back, I couldn't play Mario anymore. But millions of people hit Las Vegas all the time, and all they tend to lose is money, so I'm sure it'll be more fun than that. wink

So 2020 hit, and people at work started quitting faster than they could be replaced, and my wrist is getting messed up and yikes I'm sure I'll get a raise within the month or two, and that it will be a measly $1.00 or something nominal like that. Yet by the time I get home, I'm immediately falling asleep, so when I finally have the opportunity to ... IDK, make a github page or something ... the motivation's gone. Really missing Mario 3 right about now.

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2020-03-08 19:52:46

I'm rather nervous because exams are next term. Anyways, I have great memory. My brother's birthday is Tuesday, so another excuse to eat loads of Roti. Whoopee!

You ain't done nothin' if you ain't been cancelled
_____
I'm working on a playthrough series of the space 4X game Aurora4x. Find it here

2020-03-09 18:41:42

Hi,
@Jaidon: What is roti?

Greetings and happy gaming, Julian

If you say you never lie, you're a liar.
Oh, and #freeGCW

2020-03-10 00:54:19

Roti, is a food originating from India, but when Indian workers came to Trinidad from 1845, it was changed to include the spicies of the carribean isles. Its a flower wrap, which contain Potatoes,  [umpkin, garbanzo beans, locally known as chana, bhodo and shattine. its a [arty food, nainly eaten for celebrations, or as a normal ,=meal. i take it you dont have much inian caribbean  food in austria.

You ain't done nothin' if you ain't been cancelled
_____
I'm working on a playthrough series of the space 4X game Aurora4x. Find it here

2020-03-10 01:48:49

Well, I'm back.

I've had an eventful passed week or so. For those interested, I picked the right ram, surprisingly, but my motherboard decided to fail. So, I now have another new computer, that I actually really like. It's a gaming designed desktop and its kind of nice because it's a bigger tower so its easier to work on if it needs that.
For games, I've been borrowing my boyfriend's old laptop, so i've mainly been playing survive the wild. I'm hoping to be able to get back into second life now that I have more ram and hopefully also a better internet connection since this desktop has two wifi antennas, not sure if that even matters, but in my head it does.
As an odd thing, I was trying to use my focus display with my computer, but I installed the drivers, and they looked like they did, but the display wouldn't show up in nvda until I also installed JAWS, which isn't a big deal since I honestly like both for different things.

I'm feeling better for now, but so far, March hasn't been my month, at all.

"900 years in time and space and I have never met someone who wasn't important." The Doctor.
Come say hi on Twitter

2020-03-10 16:01:55

Hi,
@Jaidon: No, we don't. We of course have Indian Restaurants and stuff, but not really Indian Food.

Greetings and happy gaming, Julian

If you say you never lie, you're a liar.
Oh, and #freeGCW

2020-03-10 18:12:35

Jaiden, mmmmm! Roti. They aren't common over here, or rather unfortunately they aren't sold in supermarkets or restaurants as much as say Indian or chinese food, however you can find them if you know where to look, and of course with a comparatively large West Indian population in the Uk I'd imagine lots of people make them.
fortunately, my brother and I know a very nice westindian place called Turtle bay who  do very good Roti, as well as some awesome curried goat, red snapper and indeed a rum cake I'm rather fond of, then again I'm a fan of rum in general big_smile.

Btw, didn't know Roti originated in India.
@WEST HOLLOW SORRY ABOUT THE HEALTH PROBLEMS, ALSO SYMPATHY TO EVERYONE TAKING EXAMS.
Mrs. Dark is still not feeling great, although she's better than she was, not having to go and be zapped by x rays each day does sort of help big_smile.

For me, recently I've been playing a lot of planet life and Erion, and really enjoying the bit about not having to go to hospital, since yee gods we're both tired!
On the plus side, my new trampoline has turned up so this week I should be able to start back in with zombies run which should help me wake up a bit.

We're also planning to go and see the film onwards this week, assuming the cinema's audio description headsets don't go bust on us as they did last time we tried to watch a film.

In terms of reading matter, we're continuing with memory sorrow and thorn, Tad Williams amazingly awesome fantasy series as our cooperative reading project, though I did just finish a collection of adult fairy tales called snow white blood red, which was pretty good, everything from Niel Gaiman's troll bridge, to a very bizarre commic retelling of Rapunzel set in Itally where she uses extra long pasta to get down from her balcony (yes it was weird), to a really disturbing and actually unpleasant version of puss in boots where puss is a shape changing vampire! big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2020-03-10 18:53:21

Hey, @Dark, just curious, how is zombies run still doing on IOS? I haven't played around with that version of it in around five years or so now. I really like the android version actually. It felt a lot easier to see what I wanted and change the settings because I wouldn't forget what I was doing. Glad to hear Mrs. Dark is doing well. Hopefully that keeps up.

"900 years in time and space and I have never met someone who wasn't important." The Doctor.
Come say hi on Twitter

2020-03-10 19:06:38

@Dark, thank you. I'm glad to hear your lady is doing better. I can lay here and suffer for a couple days, and have a good one here and there. I realize most people don't have even that. I'm frustrated, as I do believe somebody my age shouldn't feel this bad, and it overwhelms me and my loved ones, but I get reminded almost daily that it could always be worse.. One day, some doctor will be able to tell me more than "I don't know.." My friends and family see these things happen to me, and they're bad. Thing is we live in the country, so by the time we get to the hospital, things have calmed down to the point that the doctors can't see anything.. So complicated.
God bless you all, and I hope this is a good month for you guys.

2020-03-14 11:27:09

Australia has roti too, delicious stuff it is, eh Jaidon? My father prepared a curry pie this evening, too of my favourites mixed into one! And we had a similar bread on the side to what you describe.

2020-03-14 12:06:05

thanks for the good wishes. Unfortunately my lady is not doing as well as might be expected due to new symptoms cropping up, nothing too dire or worse than we would be expecting, but still a pain to deal with, in some cases literally. Especially annoying when she goes to the local GP to see about symptom relief to be told they're doing phone consultation only. This of course makes sense given the Korona virus and so on, but it's still not exactly convenient.

Yesterday, we did go to the cinema to see Onward, the new pixar film. Actually it was really good, a fantasy kingdom moved into the modern day with magic and science and some really likable characters. Actually it's really nice to see a film that didn't have to do the axe grinding of current issue of the day and just told a good story.
The only irritating part was that the bloody cinema's audio description headsets failed to work, ----- yet again! this after they did so last time when we went to see rise of skywalker in January.

Disappointing to say the least, especially for my lady. Whilst the film was possible to follow for the most part, obviously there was a lot we missed, in particular, I'm sorry to miss  the background details of the world and other magical creatures, so we're going to have to get hold of an audio described version somewhere.

I was going to go and see sonic the hedgehog next week, accept that if audio description isn't working I might save my cash.

In other news I've started nos4atu by Jo hill, which is frankly bloody awesome! Jo Hill is the son of Stephen King, indeed I@m tempted to resurrect the books by stephen King topic and add thoughts, though I think I'll wait until I've finished the book first.

Hope everyone else is having a vaguely decent march despite gloom, doom and viruses big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2020-03-14 19:05:33

God bless you and her, Dark..
Sorry to hear about the headsets not working.. I've only seen headsets for the deff at theaters I've been to. I do wish all who read this a good month as well.

2020-03-15 14:37:49

So, despite not trying to pick up the codex alera, I simply got so board of studying, that I simply needed something nice to read, which did not have to do with the authors of the previous centuries, or has to do with falsities of business, etc. etc.

Now, codex alera is also set within the fantasy world. but the difference between this and spellmonger is, that it didn't focused so much on the medieval side of the story.

Also, surprisingly this is the first book which I have read which is on third person. since laundry files, spellmonger, dresden files, all have been in first person view.

@Dark:
I wanted to ask, why exactly audio description is so important? I mean some blind folks did tried to get me in to that, with audio books, and movies. but it simply just did not clicked for me.

Though I suppose it could also be like that, because I like to watch a lot of anime, and as far as I know, it does not come in the audio description variety.

But what I want to know is that, what is so great about it, that almost all the blind people I know are so into it, that they refuse to watch anything without audio description, while I being myself completely blind, simply am unable to understand what is so great about it.

2020-03-17 06:38:56

Mmmm, Dark eagle, I'm a little confused by your question about audio description and wonder if we mean the same thing.

When I say "audio description", I mean having a voice (usually human), describe what is going on in the visual scenes of a film or tv series since, yes, films and tv are visual media, and yes, you miss things, from small background details such as the number, type and appearance of aliens in scifi films or small background elements, to describing large amounts of action, from combat, to chases to explosions.

I can see slightly, but even for me, there is a lot I tend to miss out onn.

With anime, the situation is similar, though depending upon the style or genre of the anime there may be more or less dialogue about the action that let you get ideas of what is happening, EG characters in Shonan anime like Dragonball commenting on the fights whilst they happen, though equally in anime, since it is a visual medium not restricted by film, there are often moments, motifs or ideas that are conveyed only through the visuals.

For example, in the anime Madoka, one character Kyoko is always depicted as eating something during every conversation. When you realise her motivation, this makes a lot of sense. But nobody illudes to her eating, nobody mentions it, neither does the actress make lots of disgusting eating sounds, it's just always there, even when she's fighting, she's got a pastry or the like in one hand.

Furthermore, the things she eats are always representations of living creatures, fish, little cakes with faeries on etc. Again, this makes perfect sense when you understand Kyoko, but when you first meet her and she just seems all business, it's simply an odity.

This apart from the fact, that often anime goes into weird visual tricks or ideas to display certain things. For instance, in welcome to the NHk, you could probably work out fairly easily that at the start the main character is talking to voices in his head. What is less easy however, is realising that the things speaking are actually faces on his tv, fridge, desk and all around his apartment considering that he's agoraphobic.

so, bottom line, audio description is a really good thing, particularly for my lady who has no vision at all.
Would I watch stuff without audio description? Yes, I certainly have and often do, although even then I have to sit in a specific place to get the most out of my remaining vision, and occasionally need to look at a script or wiki article to get what happened.

However, if the audio description is there, and indeed if (as was the case at the cinema), the audio description is supposed to be there, then I'd certainly want it, particularly for my lady who as I said has no vision at all.

Hope all that makes sense.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2020-03-18 01:57:02

@Dark:
Yes, it does clear a lot of things for me. but I still would disagree with those people who absolutely refuse to watch anything unless they have the audio description for it. expecting something like that is unreasonable to say the least, since a lot of the sighted people themselves don't know about such things existing, and considering that we have to go through them to for such things, it is best to get where you can get it.

Of course I understand that if the theater provides such facility, there is no excuse for them to not work properly. after all, you did bought the ticket, didn't you? you are at least supposed to get what you've payed for.

2020-03-24 20:04:28

Ugh. its so hot. I miss the cool, rainy days of Febrary. February is the best month here. Nice and cool, and as an added bonus, it doesn't flood in Debe where my school is, so, yay.
Today I lived the Trinidadian dream though. I went in my backyard, sat under my coconut tree which I planted when I was like 5? Drank peanut punch, and ate veggie roti. ahhhh. You can't do that in America. Its a wonderful life. We may visit family over in Union Hall today. Uncle Sheldon says he's making homemade Ice Cream, so that's an added bonus.

You ain't done nothin' if you ain't been cancelled
_____
I'm working on a playthrough series of the space 4X game Aurora4x. Find it here

2020-03-24 20:16:14

@Rory and Dark, intresting. Didn't know you had a West Indian Restauurant in England. A good chunk of my famly live over there. Some in Peckem, Brexton, London it self, and all over. Back in the late 2000's, my mom almost moved over there, but she didn't because things were nice here, plus she didn't want to move with a 2 month baby, me. Rory, never had curry pie. We have something called aloo pie, pronounced al lue pie. Its basically curried patato with garlic, onion and nice erbs, in a fried flower roll basically. But you guys gotta come to Trinidad for the best in those kinds of things. Even our twin island, Tobago doesn't do Indian stuff as good as us here, because Trinidad and Guyana have the highest Indian population. Maybe one day when I go over to the U K I'll try your West Indian faire and review it. According to my grandmother though, its not up to scratch. The curry, the pepper is weak, even the strongest ones, etc.
Also dark, eating grocery roti is disgusting. Just filthy. And if I here any of you eating roti with a knife and fork I'll come over there and destroy you. For some reason I have my eye on you, Rory.

You ain't done nothin' if you ain't been cancelled
_____
I'm working on a playthrough series of the space 4X game Aurora4x. Find it here

2020-03-25 05:54:26

@Jaidon:
The spices most likely are not up to par, because from what I have heard, the people in the European countries can't handle the mouth burning taste of the Indian spices.

That, or there might be trouble in supplies and such.

Also, I actually got kind of confused when I read about Roti, since there is this thing which is the part of the daily north Indian food also called Roti. it does not have any stuffing, instead you eat it with vegetable dishes.

2020-03-25 08:23:46

well nothing much in this months to do, because of corona my school got closed and we have slight holidays

Yours kindly

2020-03-25 14:26:40

@Jaiden, wow, peanut punch under a coconut tree? To me that sounds hugely exotic, though I suppose we could go outside and have a glass of wine under our apple tree in the back garden, or at least we could if the weather decides to behave ;D.

You don't usually see Roti in supermarkets. I don't imagine Turtle Bay's are as good as anyone's individual recipe, but they were nice enough.

@Dark eagle,Whilst your slightly true about English people not handling spices, at the same time it depends upon where you go. With such a large Indian and Pakistani influence in the country, and a lot of younger people growing up with more multinational food available, things are changing rather from say my grandparents' generation who couldn't handle even a small amount of spice, especially if you can find indian food cooked by actual Indian chefs, or those who've trained under Indian chefs.

Things over here are a bit crazy, but oddly enough my lady and I are doing okay, making sure not to leave the house and doing a lot of things like shopping online, albeit we did stock up on tins and frozen stuff. a few weeks ago.
Actually, in a lot of ways we're coping pretty well since if anyone can stand being inside for months on end, it's a pair of introverts like us, and with my lady on the at risk list due to her cancer, we don't want to take chances.

Ironically, I'm personally feeling pretty good about things. I've got work done on the db, there's some of my own writing to work on (I'm also looking at becoming a builder for Erion which would be cool). My lady and I are continuing with Tad Williams' memory sorrow and thorn, taking the odd time out to watch an audio described film or two along the way. I'm watching a couple of episodes of Picard now I've got Amazon video working, and I'm liking so far, I've also started up zombies run again, which is actually doiing some great things for keeping people fit during the corona crisis (see new releases), also I'm glad the new mini trampoline I bought is working out.

Books wise, I'm doing the graphic audio white sands by brandon sanderson. This is something I've been looking forward to for a while, since with white sands being a graphic novel, it's a part of the cosmir universe that I haven't been able to explore.
the problem though, is that it's just not grabbing me.
The male character has less powers than everyone else, but oh look, he's trained himself to be an awesome warrior and take charge when needed.
The female character is a scholar who is interested in everything, who has a mission concerned with her family, and bickers constantly with the male character and with old fuddy duddy other schollars.

The problem is, that all of this just feels like stuff we've seen before. The male character is like a meld of Kaladin from Stormlight, with the protagonists of both the reckoners and the rhythmetist, whilst the female character is yet again another nosy schollarly type a little like Shalon.

There's nothing wrong with them as characters, but at this point, I've read so much sanderson that I'm just used to what he writes and these characters just aren't interesting me. Heck, even the plot is slightly predictable, since of course we are introduced to the magic system (this time using sand), and of course, all of the other mages who don't like the main character get themselves slaughtered in a mysterious attack.

Again, there's nothing wrong with it, and had I not read Sanderson previously I probably would love the idea, but as it is it just feels recycled.

Then again, I'll admit graphic audio's way of doing things has always seemed a bit odd to me, since being not quite an audio drama and not quite a book always feels slightly wrong footed. Heck, even the companion chronicles from big finish, which told doctor who stories from the perspective of the companion read like audio drama monologues.

It also doesn't help that some of the accents used in the story are just plane strange! I mean, I get that the  people from the dark side of the planet are supposed to speak a different language from the light siders, but why they should hthen have these sort of vaguely russian, vaguely Italian, vaguely arobic accents even when they're talking to each other in their native language!

Hopefully though, things will pick up as I get more into the story, though i confess at the moment when I've wanted to sit down and read by myself, I've usually ended up watching Picard instead, which I'm definitely liking, although I'll wait to discuss that until I've caught up to speed with the latest episodes since the last thing I want is spoilers.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2020-03-26 20:32:46

So, apparently, I'll have no school until September, in which case I won't be in Form 2 anymore. Form fricking 3 already! I fell like I'm getting so old so fast! awwww! Understandable Dark. A long time ago, my grandparents didn't know about KFC, and those things. They were less open to the idea of fast food. Now? Its like people in my generation or my parents love KFC. My mom doesn't really fancy it, but my stepdad loves it. It really does amaze me how people in the U S turn doubles into big restaurants, when here doubles is a street food. Mostly found in front of people's busness places, or in the parks. I'm going all in in Python development, trying to learn, and trying to get something on the market to keep people occupied. I've also promised my mom a story every week until school reopens to prove I'm not on my computer all day playing audiogames. I've also agreed to help out my dad with his construction job nextdoor. So, I'll have a lot of stuff to keep me busy, and lots of great stuff to eat and keep me fat lol. Funny thing is I'm only 95 pounds and I eat so bloody much lol.

You ain't done nothin' if you ain't been cancelled
_____
I'm working on a playthrough series of the space 4X game Aurora4x. Find it here

2020-03-26 22:59:28 (edited by The Dwarfer 2020-03-26 23:02:37)

Well, it's officially day 4 of quarantine, where I've only left my mom's apartment for 30 minutes on Tuesday night to go to the dog park. I elected to go home from my apartment across the state because (A) just in case something happens close to home, and (B) there was nothing I could do in Austin anyway, so I could just elect to be locked up there instead. Much rather be here with my mom who is an LND nurse than across the state trapped and worrying she'll catch the virus.

It's also my 21st birthday today, and man the plans changed for that so much. First, I thought I'd be in Austin, going to school, then going to work, then getting drinks with friends. That changed to not having school, so I'd be spending it hanging out and doing something with friends, again still in Austin. Then I thought a few of my really good out of state friends were going to come and spend the week with me down in Austin at my apartment. Now though it turns out I'm with my mom, on indefinite lock down, playing games, and coding, and sleeping to keep sane. Mom's also working today, but luckily she ordered me a bunch of doughnuts for breakfast and we'll be having steaks and hopefully drinks when she gets home.
Still this doesn't feel like a birthday, and I don't say that in a winy ungrateful sort of way, just that with everything going on, the quarantine, and today mirroring the last several days, it's hard to wake up into virtually the same routine and go hey, it's my birthday! Cool! big_smile
As for my job though, I had only just started working there this month. (Remember, on March 3 or thereabouts we still didn't see things getting so bad). I earned my first paycheck on March 20. That also happened to be the same week I found out that work would be suspended indefinitely due to Covid19.
I hope all of you are staying well as possible and getting through this madness while still able to keep your brains. smile

If you have issues with Scramble, please contact support at the link below. I check here at least once a day, so this is the best avenue for submitting your issues and bug reports.
https://stevend.net/scramble/support

2020-03-27 08:09:54

As I said, right now my lady and I are looking at a full 12 week lockdown inside with her on the at risk register, so yeah, I get it. On the other hand, our general crappiness of situation in our local town is actually working to our advantage, since you can't miss socialising if you haven't found any to do, neither is keeping up with my friends via phone etc too unusual, since it's what I've mostly been doing anyhow.

@Jaiden, what are doubles? I don't think we have those over here as a food stuff. I wasn't so much speaking of the big chain places like KFc or pizza hut, as of just general types of food which previously weren't available. For example, kebabs over here were comparatively unknown before the nineties, now you find them everywhere. Admitedly, some kebab places are dodgy as hell and only tend to be frequented by people under the influence of too much alcohol, but find a good place, and they can be awesome!

Our local kebab place is fantastic, and does amazing kofta, as well as fantastically nice pizza, they also deliver which is very handy at the moment.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)