roadrunnertwice | Entries tagged with stop posting

There was a link in one of my Discords to a list of supposedly in-development video game movies, nearly all of which seem like terrible ideas. (Call of Duty?! Come on!!! 😩)

Mega Man was on there, of all the fuckin things. Here’s what I had to say about that.

Mega Man has potential but only if you turn the wheels 90° and go hard off-road, which seems unlikely

Imo the mega man legends series had dense enough lore and flexible enough structure that you could do something really interesting with it!! But that one wasn’t popular enough to get the crowds showing up 🤷🏽

And anyway if you’re gonna go that far off the critical path the REAL move is to do an animated Tron Bonne heist flick.

Her Servbots were the original minions and everyone loves those guys, and “wacky heist” has plenty of quality movie-format prior art to draw on, unlike other kinds of game adapts

Anyway probably time for yours truly to finally replay the MML games

Beating a C-side in Celeste shows the same victory screen as the A-side, and that's totally fine, except it starts to get deliriously absurd if you make the mistake of thinking about it for too long.

Earlier today I knocked over the C-side for Old Site, where the win screen is Madeline calling her mom... and I've been imagining that her mom picks up and Madeline just screams “I’M GOD” into the receiver at the top of her lungs.

I'm brushing up on my Ember this weekend (for reasons), which is something like 50% re-learning syntax and standard library stuff, and 50% just stabilizing my mental models for how stuff fits together.

So since I'm thinking about the experiences I had when learning this stuff the first time around, here's the thing I most wish I'd been told basically before doing anything else:

Ember-style Handlebars isn't a text-processing language.

Every* other templating language I've met is content-agnostic and only does naïve text transformations, and if you go into Ember expecting that, shit like this looks absolutely, comprehensively haunted:

<button 
  {{on "click" this.saveProfile}}
>
  save
</button>

First time I encountered that I felt physically queasy, bc it looks like that on call will be replaced by some run of text that causes the element to get a click handler, and there's z e r o imaginable safe-and-sane way to implement that.

But in fact it's fine — that template directive doesn't get replaced by text at all, because .hbs fucking cheats! It's fully aware of the semantic, structural, and runtime rules of its HTML content, and it gets compiled into live JavaScript instead of a static HTML fragment string. So that "on" thing is a separate piece of syntax called a "modifier," and instead of inserting something into the HTML text, it waits 'til that <button> has a DOM element and then uses .addEventListener on it.

Anyway, tbh I'm not 100% sure what I would have told myself to save me the motion sickness. Maybe just: .hbs cheats and knows how browsers work, so some of its syntax acts on DOM APIs instead of on raw text.

* I guess the one exception is HAML, but HAML is also just generally deranged.

Current Music: Four Tet — Baby

Someone remind me of this plan next Christmas season, but I wanna get a pair of tape players and

Tape the “repeat the sounding joy” line from “Joy to the World” on deck 1
Play it back to tape it onto deck 2
Tape that back onto deck 1 after the original copy.
Play all of tape 1 and record it after the end of tape 2
Play all of tape 2 and record it after the end of tape 1
REPEAT THE SOUNDING JOY

Ok, well since you asked, here’s the worst Mega Man X Maverick boss names I’ve been able to come up with.

Lahar Marmot
Fast Fourier Transform Alpaca
Gleek Tilapia

OK, so the standard martini is gin, a little dry vermouth, and a green olive. But then you've got the Gibson, which is the same liquids plus a pickled onion. And I'm positive there's another variant that uses one of those miniature gherkin pickles (which I always think are kind of dry and tasteless, but you do you).

But: when you get a falafel or whatever from Wolf & Bear, they also give you a little baggie with a few kalamata olives, one pepperoncini, and half a dill pickle. My plan is, the next time I get takeout from there, I'm gonna make a martini with the whole fuckin' sack.

Current Music: Arvi Teikari — Water Is Sink - The lake

Ok, well since you asked, here’s my pitch for the new Zelda game. We take a break from the whole Gannondorf thing for a minute, right, cause it’s an off year? The big bad is Roy Orbison. His most competent and honorable lieutenant is Orville Peck, but, PLOT TWIST, he turns on him about 2/5 of the way through the game and seizes the power of the Triforce of Fuck-Eyes for himself. We bring back that Dark World mechanic from LttP, but more of a sequins and tassels and tight-ass embroidered jeans kind of situation. Anyway Nintendo already has my number, so *thumb-and-pinkie phone hand*

Current Music: David Bowie - sound and vision

Ok, you should probably check my math on this before using it for anything important, because I definitely got confused and had to backtrack a couple times, BUT:

The density of ethanol at room temp is about 0.789 g/ml.
From this anecdotal analysis (measurement is likely fine, but it looks like a small and arbitrary set of samples), it looks fairly common for unfermented fruit juices to have an ethanol content of around (50 to 80 mg ethanol)/(1 dl of juice), or .05-.08g/100ml.
The unit of blood alcohol content (BAC) in the United States defines "1%" as being (1 g ethanol)/(1 dl of blood), or 1g/100ml.

So if we use the density to convert those units to the usual unit for beverages, which is % alcohol by volume (ABV), we get:

Fruit juice: (.05/.789)/100 = 0.000633714 and (.08/.789)/100 = 0.001013942, or around 0.063% to 0.101% ABV.
Blood of a person just above the legal limit of intoxication (.08% BAC) in the US: (.08/.789)/100 = 0.001013942, or 0.101% ABV.

So, unless vampires are hypersensitive to ethanol (which frankly seems maladaptive in an obligate anthropophage; I could maybe see it if you're diurnal, but a LOT of humans are probably fucked up during prime night-stalking hours), the blood of a mildly intoxicated person would have about as strong an effect as commercial orange juice.

To get up to an ABV of 0.5% (which is the limit for beverages like kombucha to dodge being regulated as alcohol, which turns out to be a whole fuckin' thing), you'd need the blood of a person at 0.39% BAC, which is... a notable achievement, let's say. Wikipedia's (probably not comprehensive) list of the highest recorded BACs hovers somewhere around 1.5%, which comes to about 1.9% ABV, and I think 2.0% or 2.5% is the lowest ABV I've seen in a normal beer (not counting non-alcoholic beers, which go through a low-pressure low-heat evaporation process or something to distill most of the ethanol out, and also I feel like I remember Brewdog did a stunt beer called "Nanny State" that somehow managed to crack the 2.0 barrier without distilling, but that's pretty abnormal). To get up to 3.5% "Utah beer" levels, such that a vampire could get a respectable buzz by pounding a six-pack of your blood, you'd need to somehow reach a 2.76% BAC.

Current Music: Quantic — An Announcement to Answer

It looks like it's not integrated with the create entries page (could use an images panel!), but the upload and manage pages work now, so...

Screenshot from Shadowrun Hong Kong

The deal with the whole standing desk thing is that I started using one at work a year or two ago and I really like it, especially now that I've given up on finding a decent office chair that lets a 5'5" person put their heels on the ground.

(God dammit, I still haven't found that mosquito but I totally just got bit by a flea. How did it even get in here???)

Current Music: David Bowie — Five Years

On the way back from getting a burrito, I saw an SUV with the vanity plate "SUVNIR." And I was like "Oh of course, like from the Norse myth, right? When Loki turned into a sexy armored personnel carrier to lure away that dude's really fast jeep so that he'd lose the rally-cross to Thor? And then later gave birth to eight-wheeled Suvnir, Best of Light Trucks?"

but this fried tempeh is really terrible.

I just DEFINITELY saw a coyote on the sidewalk at NE 7th and Knott. I turned around and was like "what kind of cat are you" and it was like "BYE."

New Year's coyote wishes you a sketchy woolfy fukkin' new year, hallelujah.

Current Mood: BEEP BEEP

( Video post don't want a lot for Christmas... )

We went and saw Paranorman again, because it's at the Laurelhurst, and I'm pretty sure it is the best movie I've seen all year.

I'm most comfortable talking about movies on a narrative and writing level, because that's kind of where my competencies live, but any attempt to explain why Paranorman is so good demands that one range further afield, into areas where I'm not positive I really speak the language. But anyway: the cinematic craftwork, the animation, and the acting are all just really good. Impossibly good.

One thing that kept striking me both times I saw it was how well observed everything was. We had this back and forth outside the theater about real vs. better-than-real, and what I eventually decided was that the animation and design let the audience see the world the way a skilled artist sees it, giving us the illusion of a superhuman power of observation — not just including small details like the way a discarded flyer flutters against a cyclone fence, and not really forcing them on us either (like that fucking scene from American Beauty), but making it feel like we're discovering them ourselves and letting us feel kind of awesome for having done so. I think this is the thing I was grasping after when I was trying to talk about No Country For Old Men about four years back — not mere superhuman observation, but effectively showing you what it feels like to be a superhuman observer.

And in a related vein, I think the animation makes a more or less irrefutable argument for why one would bother with stop-motion in the age of CG. There were several shots where what should have been impossible was instead just brutally grindingly difficult.

Okay, anyway, I don't want to go on forever about the thing. But I do also want to mention how good the acting was and what a good actual horror story it was. About the latter, I think all I said last time was that the lightning witch at the end was legitimately scary, but thinking again, the whole situation is legitimately scary. This is kind of the big switcheroo vs. the movie as-advertised, and is partially obscured by the zombie slapstick, but the bones of the story are actually closest to The Ring, or maybe Stephen King at his rare best. The movie underneath the movie comes out in Norman's "How could you?!" and "They were men like you and they were scared and they did something unforgivable." And then it takes over the surface movie completely at the lightning witch sequence, as soon as we can hear what's left of Aggie's real voice. My point is, it's a familiar horror story, but we're coming at it from the wrong angle of approach and the real scary gets to hide underneath a fake scary for a while, and that's pretty cool.

As for the acting, I simply point to that awkward-but-chill back-and-forth between Norman and Neil about throwing the stick. And the lightning witch sequence, again, of course.

Current Music: Bill Withers - lonely town, lonely street

Soooo... sometimes I make my own fun.

There's a game called Cave Story, I was obsessed with it, and I still play parts of it several times a week as a sort of electronic cigarette break. But not, like, playing a whole area through or anything. More like, go into the falling blocks room in the hell level and make as many back-and-forth trips as you can with only the fireball and the bubbler until you die. I dunno, it's completely stupid, but I love it. It's relaxing. (This sort of thing only works with games where the controls are super tight, by the way, so that you're exactly as good as your reflexes. If it doesn't present the illusion that you could do it literally perfectly if you were only good enough — while staying hard enough that you'll never get there — then it's not any fun.)

Anyway, I made up a new game-on-top-of-the-game the other week, and I call it "Mountain of Blondes." Because the re-release has a challenge mode with a boss that throws clones of Curly at you, and if you get it down to a third of its health, the number of clones in each drop will keep doubling every time. And their bodies don't go away, so you can try try to completely carpet the room before you die!

curlypile

Um, yeah.

Current Music: The Corin Tucker Band — None Like You

Last time, on roadrunnertwice:

( AND NOW, THE CONCLUSION. )

Current Music: They Might Be Giants — The Cap'm

In honor of that last post about huffing paint thinner and then gassing the house with unidentifiable ion-absorbing organic compounds, here's a little song for us to all enjoy!

I got some new coffee apparatus!

maxmartin at work finally convinced me that pour-over brewing is just totally superior to the French press thing I've been doing since whenever, so I splurged on a completely egregious ceramic funnel while I was at Extracto a week or so ago. By "egregious," I mean "a little less than the volume of my head."

"Egregious" also means "about $25." At least I didn't spring for Chemex? I realize you can get one of the single-cup ones for $4, but man, I just really really hate plastic. It absorbs rancid oils, it's impossible to get clean, and I really don't think I need more phthalates in my diet. Also, the ginormitude of this guy means I can finally make coffee for more than two people at a time.

ANYWAY, my coffee immediately got like a dozen times better, and it turns out it's not actually that hard to use. Hurray!

In other news, time to get back to work. The thing is going well, although my original estimate of how much was left is looking a little over-optimistic. The score so far:

Bonus days spent: 1
Bonus days remaining: 0
Days where I just didn't make count: 2 (1000 and 750 out of 1666)
Days where I sorta cheated by counting plot hash-out and re-outlining toward the quota: 1

I'm nine and a half chapters ahead of where I was on the 1st, but I'm seeing seven more in the outline. Things have diverged and tightened up a bit, though, so I might be able to cut some contrivances out and shrink it by one.

We'll see how I'm feeling on the 30th, but if there's still a ways to go, I might just keep up this pace until I'm done.

Current Music: PJ Harvey — Let England Shake

This WEEK, man. You GUYS. You all know I ain't no workaholic, but this weekend looks like a bender. A workahol bender. Yeah.

Crunch time and word quota aside, I did manage to get to the TMBG/Coulton show, which was totally awesome. I haven't seen TMBG since... must have been like 2004 or so. (They were on tour for The Spine at the time.) Not feeling up to a proper concert review, but man, they put on a good show. Some tracks from The Else, some tracks from the new record, some older stuff, and yeah. (CONTROVERSIAL OPINION TIME: Best TMBG album is John Henry, and second best is The Else, with Flood a distant third.)

Things:

I am so glad I switched to Dvorak back in 2008. You've probably heard this from me before, but in summary: the speed boost ended up being basically nonexistant, but the endurance boost has been incredible. I'm not confident that I'd be able to do both dayjob-banzai typing and NaNo banzai typing without it. And the timing of the switch was definitely a good call, since I was doing manual labor and could totally get away with typing like a sloth with a nerve disorder for three weeks.
Oh right, that chair. It's this one:

This chair was in my room when I moved in, which means it's probably Curtis Poe's fault. It's fugly as hell and weirdly short and stubby and also I guess it comes with its own corner?? I originally didn't know what to do with it and it was piled high with laundry more often than not, but then I warmed up to it. It's cushy and lets me put my feet on the ground without any shenanigans, but more than that, it's just a squishy chair of my very own, which is something that'd been missing from my life for a long time before now. (Protip: If you're in your early 20s and moving into your own place for the first time, tell that futon to go to hell and get yourself an actual couch and/or easychair.)

I've got what I'd call a pretty thorough computer setup over at my desk, but for some reason I don't write very well there. Everything is much easier when I'm in my little chair over by the east window. Desks are for editing, apparently, and when I'm writing I'd much rather be close to the ground and tucked into a corner with a wall at my back.
God I love this Bugseed track.
Protip: The correct time to turn on Freedom is BEFORE you sit down. Like, if you get home and have to pee? Turn on Freedom and set it for 3 hours, then pee.

EDIT: Of course, I totally did not heed that last one tonight. *headdesk* Still made quota, though. (Sort of—I ended up doing like 1400 words of out-loud thinking, plot-detangling, motivation-decoding, outlining for two additional chapters I apparently need to shoehorn in there, and for good measure some details about the contents of a document that Zoe's going to get network-cockblocked before having a chance to read. Won't count toward the eventual total, but it kept my momentum up.)

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Entries tagged with stop posting

Miss Tron

Just act normal

sometimes you eat the bars, sometimes the bars eats you

Zalgo to the World

Capitalism makes dubiously useful task-specific animal robots of us all

Barkeep, mix me a Charismatic Megafauna

Just a helpless pink bunny in the sexually menacing ghost cowboy dimension

Vampires Don't Get Fucked Up

Okay, let's try out this new image posting thing

The deal with the whole standing desk thing

(no subject)

Well I don't know how I did it

LET'S MEET IN THE CITY. WHERE. RIVERS CROSS BRIDGES. AND.

The spirit, watch me get into it

The movie under the movie

The pile

Vengeance of the Renovated: Battle for the Fortress of the Wall Lords

Toxic Interlude

Drip drip drip

The only thing I miss about qwerty is the as;djkfa;dsjkf