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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • A large part of growing up with social media is learning how to effectively use your emotions in a way that assists you rather than hindering you. Passion and anger are way too close together, it can be really hard to separate them. Passion is very helpful when motivating yourself to write in a compelling way. Unfortunately, it’s something that can best be learned through practice. The good news is the first step is recognizing that it is a problem, so you have started. The bad news is, you won’t be good at it for a while still, but keep trying anyway.









  • Dungeons and dragons, both the paper version and the digital stuff. I remember as a kid playing some random DnD games with no context and being upset that they were weird rpgs that only went up to level 8 or whatever. Without context, that is not common in videoganes. And not knowing how much more open the games could have been than just playing them “murder hobo” style…

    I only ended up playing paper DnD at around the start of 5e, while I was tangentially aware of it since I think before third edition, I didn’t know I would actually like it back then. And it’s entirely possible I wouldn’t have. I have a processing delay, so whether or not I end up enjoying board games, or anything else involving players taking turns doing complicated thinking… largely depends on how patient the other players are.

    I also wasn’t super creative back then… although maybe playing DnD would have helped. But at the very least, I wish I would have tried learning paper DnD back then even if I didn’t like it, so I had the context when I played the digital games. I would have very much appreciated those if I understood why certain limitations were in place.

    I mean, could you imagine a DnD digital game trying to accurately represent the capabilities of level 20 characters… hitting level 20 in DnD basically forces your campaign into “jumping the shark”. Which omnipotent god are we one-shotting this week?



  • There is a bunch of different modern versions of Myst. It’s also got a VR version that is very good. Riven and Obduction are also available in VR. Not sure about some of the lesser known Myst games like exile, uru, or revelation.

    In my experience, playing them when I was younger didn’t work out great, some of the puzzles were just way too hard for pre-teen me. But they were great to play now.



  • I noticed early in my 20’s that my social anxiety had gotten to a point where I couldn’t casually chat with random people. So I made an effort to do it anyway even though the results wouldn’t be favourable for a while. It took a few years before I noticed it didn’t take much of a push any more to start. I’m 40 now and while I still don’t enjoy talking to strangers, especially when just making meaningless small talk, I at least don’t have a wall of pre-dread anymore to climb in the case that I do need/want to talk to a stranger. Like if they dropped something, or if I want a product in a store that is not currently stocked on the shelf.


  • Back in the day, people wiresharked it all and said nothing untoward was going on back then. And a meta account in this regard is just an Oculus account. It has nothing to do with facebook.

    But yeah, ultimately, I don’t care if other people don’t want to use it. I only care if I want to use it, and I do.

    Also none of my androids came with facebook and still don’t have it. But I don’t buy subsidized from carriers, I just buy the phone I want and use the carrier I want separately.


  • Most people still play it on a monitor, but yeah, it’s great in VR. There can be a bit of a learning curve on monitor. Kind of like the difference learning to drive rally on a monitor versus learning in VR, you can just tell when everything is going right without having to train yourself to notice little signs, you just feel it intuitively. Having said that, I still recommend going through all the training, and when you are done the training, stay with the free beginner sudewinder for a while. Make sure you can afford your first ship a few times over before you upgrade, so you have a cushion if there is anything important to learn.

    You don’t have to be good at elite for it to be fun. And you won’t be good at it for a while. But you will eventually be good at it, and it will be all the more fun then. The first time you slip an agile ship into dock in a smooth motion, amazing feeling.


  • I think it won’t be quite as existential, despite how well they make it all feel rooted in reality, it’s still pretty easy to keep in mind that it is a videogame. And with default settings and leaving “flight assist” on, the space ships handle more like planes. You can always disable flight assist, or have it on a toggle, or “disable when button held” setup too. Or, enable when held, if you want to be free flying most of the time, but still have a “stop” button when you want to cancel out your inertia, or more accurately match it with your current frame of reference.

    Basically, by default, you don’t have to think about your frame of reference. The fact that it is a videogame basically takes care of that. It’s a convenient way to hide that the instance you are in is faking(incredibly accurately) everything else that is not in your current frame of reference. Despite space travel feeling pretty seamless, it’s just cuz they hide the load screens and instance transfers as just part of navigating space. Any time you are unable to touch the controls, that is a load screen. Even if it otherwise looks the same, most notably when entering or exiting a planets frame of reference and switching between the “space” graphics of the planet to the “terrain” graphics. When approaching a planets gravity well, you basically do an uncontrolled glide that transitions you from space appropriate speeds to surface appropriate speed. That speed transition is the loading screen.

    Probably the only thing that might give a similar sense of existential dread for a few seconds is if you jump to a binary star system at a time when the star you aren’t jumping to just happens to be in the same direction you just jumped in from. It will look as though you flew through that star. The odds are pretty low, even full time explorers rarely see it, but it is something that can happen.



  • What do you mean? There is no facebook requirement. I don’t have facebook.

    But I do agree that Meta is the sour note. Luckily, there hasn’t been any practical effect on the headset, or at least not a downside. Meta has had plenty of effect, mostly by way of investing unbelievable money into it. There is a reason no one else can keep up.

    Basically if you are at all interested in the quality of experience in VR, you have to go with Meta, and maybe at some point they’ll take advantage of that, but it hasn’t been yet. And if they ever do, I have no problem cutting ties.

    There was a period when new users had to have a facebook account, but it didn’t last long. As you can guess, you were not the only person who didn’t like that. I already had an oculus account before that, and I was able to keep using that the whole time. The name has been changed to a Meta account, but nothing else about it changed. It’s just a renamed Oculus account now.


  • Oh yeah, I’ve played pretty much everything over the past 10 years in VR. In your same vein, I would recommend Elite: Dangerous. I played it for about 3 years with just mouse and keyboard, then another 3 years with stick and throttle, I still never got quite as good at combat on stick and throttle, but the game was more enjoyable to play overall that way. I haven’t tried the expansion yet. When it came out, it didn’t run great in VR, and part of its features weren’t VR capable. It should run good in VR now, but I don’t think they plan to bring the on-foot stuff to VR.

    The base game without the expansion is still fine to play. And with the expansion, the on-foot stuff will just be played on a virtual flatscreen instead, still fine, better than not having access to it, I suppose. But I just kept holding out, hoping it would be integrated with the rest of the otherwise amazing VR experience the game is. If I play the game again, I’ll probably just buy it. I still haven’t tried it since Quest 3 and my new computer upgrade. It’ll probably re-blow my mind.