@Boo15mario,
https://www.toastsoft.net/connect.html

It's both odd, and somewhat disturbing that with with the corona virus currently rampent in several parts of the world, quite a lot of people seem to have got less major, but still very annoying bouts of virus around now too.

I have just finished a six week stint, and my brother and father both now seem to have it, as well as a couple of my mum's friends, and it's apparently now in Americanland as well.

Glad your daughter had a good birthday irrespective though Nocturnus.

As of yesterday, we managed to get back home for the weekend, and yee gods, it's so nice to have a couple of days where we don't! need to go to hospital, and yes, when we're out of my parents house, since whilst it's both highly convenient to stay with them for travel purposes, and they're being as nice as humanly possible, at the same time, it's good to just be at home!

We're both really looking forward to just being finished and having a solid week or so off!

We did do something rather interesting on thursday though.
As it's apparently science and curiosity week at Nottingham university, they were hosting an event called flight.

This was a very disturbing mockup of a plane flight in total darkness, all told by bynoral sound and occasional hydraulic floor movements. The idea was to demonstrate the quantom physics Schrodinger's cat principle, with the entire audience being the cats, the box being a plane flight in total darkness, and the survival being whether the plane crashed or not.
The audio was frankly amazing, to the point that you could literally hear people walking up and down the isle, and talking in your ear, which was very disturbing when for example you heard the stewardess whisper "your other half has already died, don't worry it'll be your turn soon," (not a thing you want to hear when holding your wife's hand).

Actually the realism really was quite worrying, especially for my lady who is not keen on plane flights at the best of times, albeit once she realised it was intended as a surrealist horror, she relaxed and enjoyed it, though of course the total darkness aspect didn't make any difference to her, whilst to me it was atmospheric, but not especially disturbing the way I imagine it would be for most people.

Still, the audio and the surreal horror of it, combined with the feeling of really being on a plane really did make for something quite awesome, if very disturbing.

See A youtube trailor here, though I don't think that will quite give the full effect.

Other than that, as I said, it's really nice to just be back, and plans for the weekend include reading, perhaps a bit of cosmic rage, maybe some light db editing, perhaps starting Picard on Amazon prime, and in general not a lot else.

Heck I do want to start bulwark and the city of flesh for the db, but I'm feeling so shattered today I don't know if if I'm quite up for inervative control methods at this stage.

@Boo15mario hope your linux install went well.
I confess I've never really understood the point of linux myself, but then again I my relationship with computers has always been based on the question of what they do rather than how they do it, and that isn't the same for everyone.

I did do a bit of cosmic rage, though at the moment I've hit a dry spell where the newest activity, asteroid mining is a total waste of time and I need to level up through previous activities like volcano harvesting and pollution cleaning until I can try something else, still nearly there I think.

What I have been doing today (other than continuing the very awesome Tad williams memory sorrow and thorn series with my lady), is playing worldsmith. I tried it this morning to check a few details for the db entry, got suckered in to reading the lore, then got suckered in to playing  the strategy part of the game to see if I could build worlds, then got suckered into trying the story that went with it, ---- which I'm guessing makes me a total sucker .

Actually this is one I would highly recommend , and that from someone who largely fell out of love with classic parser based If.

The world, the strategy game of world building, heck just a lot of the locations and the story are just so unique and well written, also thanks to hyperlinks play is a good bit faster, even if I do slightly wish NVDA's incoming reading of text on Chrome was a  more workable, or that the game was playable as a Blorb file, indeed I am tempted to ask the devs if there might be one kicking around, though I suspect not.

I've dropped the developers a donation on Itch.io, since it seemed only fare given the quality of the game, and indeed of the strategy spinoff game of worlds card game, which is also worth a play.

Less happily, whilst Mrs. Dark is coming to the end of the radio therapy (only another 7 days to go), the effects are building up and she's not feeling great, that is another reason I'll be glad when all this is finally finished.

You know, for all the reading I've done in the past it really is kind of odd that I don't read many new titles anymore.  I don't think I've read a new book since roughly all of the twilight vampire teen stuff came out.  That's not to say I don't read  anymore, and that I haven't picked up a book that is new to me, simply that today's works of art don't seem to entice me.  I'm not exactly sure what happened or why that has discouraged my reading so drastically.  Today, most of the reading I do consists of research rather than pleasure, if I'm reading anything at all.  ON the occasion that I do pick something up for pleasure though, it's generally something I know I'm going to be hooked on, as was the case with the shadow children series not too, too long ago.
I can think of hundreds of titles I read from about 1995 until 2009 or 2010 or there abouts, and then reading kind of sort of somewhat took a backseat for me for a few reasons.
1.  If I start reading a good book, be it a new title or one I haven't read in awhile and have forgotten finer details about I have a ton of trouble putting it down.
2.  That includes falling asleep, which is not good as I already have trouble sleeping when I should.
3.  Far too many new authors make me mad with their predictability.
4.  Of those that are not, far too many of them are exceptionally flowery and take forever just to get a single point across, burying it in descriptions that border on the abstractly philosophical.  I feel like if I want to philosophize I can do so on my own time without having to read a book to do it.
And no, lest you think I'm some sort of hatemonger and whatnot, I do appreciate that today's authors are who they are and are pushing forth works for others to read.  Reading is absolutely important in the development of the mind.  I just can't get into much of what's being produced today, much like I can't really get into much of today's music.

Just so you all know I really like reading Ready Player One, and other books like it. I have read Ready Player One for maby five times.

As I have noted before, I write book reviews which can be found Here.

@Boo15mario, if you liked ready player one, I can suggest otherland by tad williams, far more of an epic than ready player one, and one with characters who are flawed and complex, plus some of the most evil takes on classic locations from wizard of oz to ancient egypt you've ever seen.

I personally read constantly, and whilst I don't read the next big thing just  because it is! the next big thing, occasionally a recent publication will just grab my attention for one reason or another, not the least because I still write reviews, indeed I always try to maintain a good balance of reading books published more recently, and older books too.
Most recently for example, I was well impressed with Becky Chambers wayfarers sf series, especially because she managed to do some interesting things in terms of gender and racial inclusion without getting all in your face preachy, or still worse, actively hating anyone who isn't that minority.

The one issue I do have with a lot of modern books in contrast to nocturnus, is I really don't like books that read like screen plays with zero description at all.
if your an author, remember your characters have five senses, and your not going to have a costume department fill everything in.

then again, you can pretty much find out a lot of my thoughts by looking at the reviews I've done .

Over here, the saga of the radio therapy continues. One thing that is a bit worrying, is the hospital where my lady is going for therapy each day is apparently going to be a corona virus testing centre.
Yes, obviously they have to test people to see if they have it, but if people will permit me a bit of selfishness, why the hell do they have to do this in the same hospital where my decidedly unwell wife happens to be having her canser treated?

We've already got some anticeptic hand jell by the door and will use it each time we come in just in case, but especially when coming back from hospital where you could potentially be touching the same surfaces as people who may have the virus.

luckily, this is the final week and we'll be done next Tuesday, which we're both looking forward to, and now more than ever.

@Nocturnus, maybe post about that one in new releases, it looks potentially interesting, though I wish there was a bit more text in describing the stuff you build, though the expantion looks fun.

We've got two more radio therapy appointments next week before my lady can ring the bell, a point we're looking forward to, though tomorrow I'm going to go and get some tinned emergency supplies just in case a 2-3 week quarantine is necessary. Remarkably I'm not worried about the quarantine thing, since having had to go to hospital every week day for the past six weeks  we were sort of looking forward to a week or two of doing our own thing anyway, and it's not as if in the 21st century not being able to go out is so bad, heck as my brother pointed out last night, half of the population do that anyhow since society is so crappy .

I am however extremely worried about my lady for obvious reasons, hence the hand washing and willingness to quarantine if it becomes necessary rather than take risks.

On the plus side, I have now ordered a new mini trampoline which should be arriving today. It's actually sad, I've not outrun any zombies since late December, first because of that bloody cold I got for a month, then because my lady was having radio therapy, and it's high time I got back to things, Zombies run even now has a db entry too :d.

I'd also like to start picard, assuming I can sort out Amazon's video interface and audio description, though hopefully that shouldn't be too much of a problem. Doing without audio description wouldn't be too bad provided I can get the thing in full screen, though as Amazon has the option why not?
I really wish I could get tng described, since I think my lady would love quite a few bits of it and several characters. Ds9 might be less her thing since she is less keen on super dark stuff and the less said about voyager the better, but she really would enjoy quite a few bits of tng I think.

Games wise, I'm continuing with cosmic rage and a bit of erion, though I've also got my worldsmith save on my pc and am looking forward to getting back to that today.
Actually, that's one I'd highly recommend, and that from someone who isn't crazy about parser based if, heck it's worth playing for the strategy game alone.

You guys, your wives and children are in my prayers..
I enjoy books by the author John Sandford.