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Peridium (2017) · Alluvium (2018)

I am very interested to play Powerhoof's new game The Drifter, but I'm really trying not to buy any more games until I play some of the ones I have already bought, so I played... two of Powerhoof's old free games? Wait, I think I messed this up.

These are both horror point-and-clicks, and they're both game jam entries so they're short, less than an hour each.

Peridium

in a dim research lab a man stands outside a locked door and says there's nothing human out there for a thousand kilometers

in a dim research lab a man stands outside a locked door and says there's nothing human out there for a thousand kilometers

( A researcher is trapped on an Antarctic base where something has gone horrifically wrong. )

Alluvium

pink silhouette of a man stands in a neon colored camp site with camp fire highlighted

pink silhouette of a man stands in a neon colored camp site with camp fire highlighted

( A plane crash survivor keeps talking about the things 'we' had to do to survive... yet he seems to be the only one around. )

Though I think both of these games are worth playing if you like horror, I wouldn't recommend playing them back-to-back in an evening like I did, because I was still thinking about Peridium while I was playing Alluvium, and I kept looking for similarities and got really distracted. So, play them, but not like that. Or maybe play the commercial games you have purchased that are languishing in your Steam library. Do as I say, not as I do.

Current Mood: frustrated

Entry tags:

real life: public transit

The joys of public transit...

I think that I'm going to shift my bus route to/from work a little bit. I've been getting on the bus outside the hotel/near work, taking it to the transit center, and then switching to the bus that goes to work/the hotel (depending on if it's morning or evening, obviously). It's relatively painless, although the schedules almost never match up so I always end up having to wait a bit for the next bus once I get to the transit center.

There's been a growing issue the past few weeks, though, where a few of the jobless and/or homeless guys who hang out at the transit center all day have been giving me trouble. Some of them hang out there because they don't have anything better to do. Others stay there because it's a good place to pick up odd jobs from people, sell snacks or bottled water to raise a few dollars, easily bum a cigarette from time to time, etc. Most of them are fine, and even a little protective when they see people giving the "regulars" a hard time, but there are some who... well, aren't. It's aggressive flirting and not wanting to take "no" for an answer, for the most part, which isn't great but I can deal with it since it's a crowded, public spot.

This afternoon, though, one of them grabbed me by the arm hard enough to leave red marks when I tried to get to my bus because he wanted me to stay and talk with him. Despite the fact that I'd been pointedly ignoring him for a good ten minutes at that point. A couple of the other guys pulled him back so that I could get to my bus, and it sounded like they were giving him a pretty good tongue lashing, but no. Just, no.

What I think that I'm going to do is in the mornings start getting off four stops earlier near the library. I'll have to walk a block-and-a-half or so, but I don't have to cross the street or anything, and if I get off there I can make it to another bus stop that the bus that goes by work stops at without having to go to the transit center. Then in the afternoon, I'll do something similar and get off several stops early, although it's a little more of a pain as I'll have to not only walk a block or two but I'll have to cross two decent-sized roads in the process.

I think it will be worth it, though, to avoid the assholes.

Entry tags:

write every day

Write Every Day: Day 21

Intro/FAQ
Days 1-15

My check-in: Two more titles, and posted all the stories. Woo-hoo!

Day 21:

china_shop,

glinda,

sanguinity

Day 20:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

glinda,

goddess47,

nafs,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

( more days )

When you check in, please use the most recent post and say what day(s) you’re checking in for. Remember you can drop in or out at any time, and let me know if I missed anyone!

Current Mood: hopeful

Entry tags:

weather: storms

Rain, rain, go away...

For over a week straight, the DC kept being hit by storms in the late afternoon, and it's been absolutely killing my head. I've always been sensitive to weather fronts moving through, and the older I get the worse it seems to be getting. (Although there's a definite possibility that some of that might be stress related too, considering the current state of everything.)

There were so many things that I needed to get done this past week that just didn't happen because I got off work and immediately curled up in bed for several hours until the storm had passed through. And by that point it was late enough in the evening that I didn't have time to get everything I needed to do done (or it was too late to start it because of noise-related reasons).

Theoretically the rain is supposed to finally be gone, so we'll see if this week goes better than last week on that front. 🤞🏻

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: Arlo Parks - Cola

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(no subject)

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Current Mood: irritated

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books are the meaning of life

Books

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Current Mood: crazy

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books

reading

Starting to feel like instead of requesting book recommendations, I should solicit anti-recs. Like, I post a list of the 500 or so books I still have on my TBR and y'all tell me which ones not to bother with and why. (Although saying "move this one to the top of your pile" would also be actionable feedback.)

I did have a brief moment of sanity earlier when I saw someone pointing out a discount on physical copies of the Rivers of London series, which have been recommended to me multiple times. I got as far as the amazon.co.uk checkout page and then closed the browser tab because I was about to repeat the same mistake that I made years ago with the Discworld books which I STILL HAVE NOT READ even though they are taking up an entire shelf.

Anyway, I also have like 18 library books checked out, because I'm thoroughly ridiculous.

Entry tags:

write every day

Write Every Day: Day 20

Intro/FAQ
Days 1-15

My check-in: Dinking around with the pod-together stories. Some, uh, research for possible titles? Which did not pan out, but so it goes.

Day 20:

china_shop,

sanguinity

Day 19:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

callmesandyk,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

glinda,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

Entry tags:

[Vorkosigan] Six Sentence Sunday

I've picked up Isekai Cordelia again, which is great fun, taking it from ~11K to ~18K.

My sheer glee and joy in this fic may require a bit of backstory. The first fic I ever did anything with, I submitted to Star Wars Chicks, they were having some kind of competition or submittal or something, this was back when you got there via IP address and not a domain name. Obviously my fic did not win whatever it was, as you would expect. There was another fic that was submitted during that time, it was about an OFC, who Luke falls in love with, and I loved her and the descriptions of her dress at the end, and I will never find this fic again, I am aware of that, and it was probably meant to be a 1/?, and who knows. But it was so great.

There are problems dating this story. My FFN join date was Oct 1998. Star Wars Chicks, according to fanlore, didn't exist until March 1999. I distinctly recall already being head-deep into OT Star Wars, especially the Luke side of things, in 1998-1999. I think I think this story happens a lot earlier in 1999 than it probably did. I used to write fic in notepad and save as .txt, despite many computer changes since then, the earlist date modified on a txt file in my old Star Wars folder is July 1999. There are also problems with that. Also on this deep dive I discovered some school assignments from 1997 and also what might be the address list for invitations to my bat mitzvah, I can think of no other reason for me to have this list of names and addresses, nor why I have it even with that reason for me to have it. At one point, I think around 2003/2004, I had a massive computer failure and had to get everything out through DOS and so that capped file names to be like "ALITTL~1.DOC" and no I never renamed any of them back to their full names, so this is a journey of discovery. -- okay I've got some Q-the-star-wars-character in my homework folder, last modified date December 1998, yeah, who the hell knows. But this does work, I know I was heavily on StarTrek.com and various Star Trek sites before I got into Star Wars.

Later on, I discovered that kind of fic was disparaged as being a Mary Sue, and one of the reasons I was never too het up about Mary Sues is whenever someone would complain about it, I'd be like "you mean that fic I loved?"

So writing an OFC transmigrates into a sci-fi series and fixes everything -- the kind of fic that would get mocked as being Mary Sue -- is so satisfying.

So the next time I'm in the district, I track down Vasily Petrov at a warehouse right outside of Hassadar. There are machines in there that simulate a ski environment. There are Space TV Screens on the wall that show scenic scenery. There are--

--a fully created, fully funded business plan for opening a ski resort in the Dendarii Mountains, which will employ only people who have lived on the mountain since the Cetagandans left.

"I told you to leave it to me," Vasily says, smiling.

Entry tags:

Sunshine Revival Challenge #6

sunshine_revival's next challenge is:

Game Night
Journaling prompt: What games do you play, if any? Are you a solo-gamer or do you view games as a social activity?
Creative prompt: Write a story/fic around the theme "game night".

Well, since you asked. :P

I've played video games for as long as I can remember. My dad was an early adopter of technology and he brought home an IBM clone in the late 1980s, when I was in grade school. He would download tons of games from BBSes for my brother and me. Sometimes these were pirated games from big companies, but this was also a huge heyday for what we would now call "indie" games—stuff coded by one guy in his basement or a couple of college students in the computer lab. Platformers, shooters, puzzle games, arcade clones, roguelikes, RPGs, text adventures, you name it, we played it. Often we didn't know what a game even was until we ran it, because while the original BBS post might have explained what it was, all we saw was an EXE file that was limited to eight characters.

I think gaming was always social for me. Some of the early games my brother and I played did have hot-seat multiplayer (alternating who's sitting at the keyboard) but if it was a single-player game we'd just take turns, and shamelessly order each other around if we thought the other wasn't playing it right. XD When I got a little older and more of my friends started to have computers or consoles at home, inviting people over to play games was a huge thing. I was just recently reminiscing about going over to my friend's house to play Myst, which was a massive phenomenon in 1993. We were young and the logic puzzles were too hard for us, so it would just degenerate into heckling the game and each other until we collapsed in hysterical laughter. That's still one of my favorite gaming memories... and I still don't think I've ever actually beaten Myst.

( cut for length )

Current Mood: hopeful

Entry tags:

real life: extended stay hotel

Hotel Life: Once more on the power front...

The power went off again for a bit but, once it turned back on, everything was working correctly again.

Well, mostly. My AC was still making the odd grinding sound, but I did some googling and opened it up, and I was able to get it fixed. The sudden power outage while it was turned on basically knocked a couple of things loose, but I was able to get them all screwed back in properly so that it's working properly again.

We'll see if it lasts?

ETA: The power went out for another half hour around 7pm, with the fire alarm going off when it went out and again when it came back on. Our guess is that the fire alarm is being triggered for some reason when it transfers to the emergency back-up battery and back. No updates from Pepco about what's actually causing the outages (which is par for the course for Pepco), so everyone is assuming it's because the network is so overloaded from everyone using the AC 24/7.

Current Mood: annoyed

Entry tags:

real life: extended stay hotel

Hotel Life: Power Update

Okay, so apparently the sister hotel and the 7-Eleven next door are having the same issue where about half the lights/plugs in the building are working and the other half aren't. So it looks like it might actually be an issue with the power company rather than some of the wires specifically in this hotel getting fried like we were initially suspecting might be the case.

My AC still won't cool, but I have managed to get it to at least have a weak fan blowing which is better than nothing. And the AC in the hallway just outside my room is working, which is helping a little with keeping the temperature from going up too quickly in here.

Both the power company and the fire department are wandering around trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, especially since two extended stay hotels full of people without working AC (in some rooms, not all - the AC is working fine for some people, although most of the rooms with working AC don't have working lights) in 90+ degree weather is... not great.

The temperature in my room is slowly edging upwards, but it's not too bad yet at least. When the power went out at 11am, it was about 68°F in my room as I turn the AC down low at night to sleep so it hadn't had a chance to start warming back up yet at that point. A little over three hours later, with no AC that entire time, it's gone up to 74°F, so it's averaging about 2° an hour. Which, you know, could be worse.

Now, if they don't get it fixed within the next few hours, it's going to start being a problem. My fingers are desperately crossed that they'll figure it out before then, though.

ETA: It only went up to 75°F by 3pm, so it looks like the temperature might not be rising quite as quickly as it gets warmer. We'll see what happens.

Entry tags:

In which a woman in Kent was threatened by armed police for lawfully being in public

- The nation state of Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Palestine continues.

- In the UK there continue to be large peaceful pro-Palestinian protests, including a march in Edinburgh attended by thousands of supporters.

- Led By Donkeys released a video explaining that the "charity" UK Lawyers for Israel hosted a far-right Israeli MP who has subsequently been sanctioned by the UK government for supporting genocide, and that the uncharitable wing of UK Lawyers for Israel continues to use vexatious legal bullying to attempt to erase Palestinian culture from multicultural Britain including shutting down a children's kite-making meeting by claiming it was akin to terrorism. Some people would call this "ethnic cleansing" and "cultural genocide" of Palestinians. A previous mention of vexatious claims by Lawyers for Israel that failed to remove a public art work.

- Led By Donkeys previously made a 6min video about intentional destruction of our right to peaceful protest in the UK by authoritarian politicians such as Keith Starmer (who is handing the next election to Farage on a plate complete with fascist garnishes).

- In the UK over 220 people have now been arrested and could be imprisoned for 14 years as "terrorists" for holding signs saying things such as, "genocide in Palestine, time to take action" and "I oppose genocide, I support Palestine action".

- One woman in Kent was threatened with arrest by armed police for standing in public displaying the sign "Free Gaza" with a Palestinian flag: "It’s terrifying, I was standing there thinking, this is the most authority, authoritarian, dystopian experience I’ve had in this country, being told that I’m committing terrorist offences by two guys with firearms." The police officers are on vid saying, "We could have jumped out, arrested you, dragged you off in a van." Kent Police issued a statement supporting the illegal actions of their armed fascist officers.

- Multiple legal British organisations with "Palestine" or "Palestinian" in their names have had their bank accounts frozen by multiple banks with no explanation. Some of these orgs send aid to Gaza, amongst other legal activities.

- Article, posted here for archiving purposes, from Scottish newspaper The National:

I'm a journalist covering Palestine Action arrests. This is all absurd.
By Laura Webster, 18th July

( archive )

None of it makes any sense to me, or our team.

The people doing the killing and destroying face no consequences. The people raising the alarm are taken away in handcuffs.

I wonder how many arrests our reporters will witness before the UK decides to take real action against Israel?

If this really is the new normal, Scotland shouldn't have anything to do with it.

I'm a journalist covering Palestine Action arrests. This is all absurd. (Link to The National)

( note )

Current Mood: frustrated

Entry tags:

real life: extended stay hotel

Hotel Life: Happy Sunday?

The power in the hotel went out a little while ago and, while it came back on after about twenty minutes, the plugs for my fridge and microwave are dead and my AC won't blow cold air. And it's definitely not the circuit breaker, because I already checked it and tried flipping everything on/off to be certain. 🙃

While the plugs for the microwave and fridge aren't working, there are three more in the kitchen that are working fine (two on the wall over the counter and one for the oven). I was able to move the fridge to another nearby plug that was working, and I'm pretty sure that there's one close enough that I can do the same for the microwave if I need to use it. Or I can move the microwave to on top of the stove top long enough to use it if the cord won't reach.

It's not a great option, but it's at least an alternative until they can figure out what the fuck went wrong.

The temperature in the room is quickly ticking upwards a little at a time without a working AC, though, which is definitely not a plug issue since it's turning on but is just not cooling anything off. I turned the AC completely off, flipped the breaker off/on, and am letting it sit for half an hour to see if that helps. I know sometimes that can be enough to reset it, so my fingers are crossed it will work this time. Luckily, I had the room cool enough that it will take a while before it gets too hot in here, but still. It's supposed to hit 90°F today, so a working AC is kinda vital.

The lovely part is that the person at the front desk has no idea what to do, because a ton of people are having similar issues where some things came back on but not others. Half the lights in the hallway are still dead and a lot of us are having issues with some things working but not others (although it seems to vary from person to person per the person at the front desk who I spoke with), so it's gotta be some type of wiring issue where plugs that are piggybacked off the same failed wiring are the ones not coming back on for anyone. The maintenance guy doesn't even work on weekends, though, so.... yeah.

ETA: And now the fire alarm is going off, presumably due to the same wiring issue as there's definitely no fire. Today's great, y'all.

The last 24 hours have been a whole year

1. Chaos. Last night, the building across the street caught on fire.

Again.

It's an abandoned/defunct factory; this is the... fifth? time it's caught on fire in the last couple of years. (The owner who acquired it after the previous owner died has been trying to sell it for far more than anyone wants to pay.)

2. Discord. This morning: Skipped my GURPS game (sigh) for round 3 of 4 of the Seattle Worldcon virtual business meeting. 3.75 hours of intense Roberts Rules neepery wrapped around 16 action items. 14 passed, 2 failed. I took notes on (1) everything that happened and (2) How To Bog Down A Worldcon Business Meeting, should I ever be so inclined.

There are a substantial number of people involved for whom Roberts Rules is apparently their main fandom. The Worldcon Business Meeting is their Pennsic. Some of them get annoyed at people who aren't interested in RRONR procedures as much as they want changes to Worldcon rules.

Also I have volunteered to be on two committees; we'll see if I get accepted to either.

3. Confusion. Family birthday party. Eldest daughter came over to cook tacos yay. Much bustling around a small kitchen with people no longer used to having three butts in a one-butt sized space.

Tacos were yummy. Cake and ice cream were yummy. French-press coffee was yummy; I wound up thinking "I should do that more often" and then remembered why I don't - because the cleanup is a hassle, and also, I prefer the coffee hotter than the press makes it. (5 minutes of sitting in a glass cylinder is cooler than I prefer.) But it's nice once in a while.

4. Bureaucracy. 2 hrs of OTW Board public meeting. (The meeting is 1 hr, but I'm involved as a volunteer, so had to be there in advance.) It ran short - instead of the normal "dozen questions emailed in advance + 10-20 questions asked in session," it was "5 questions sent in advance and only 4 more asked in session." All questions answered during the meeting; none left over to get posted on the website later.

5. Aftermath. Kid the Elder has gone home with doggo via Lyft; I am trying to catch up on the several chat channels with all sorts of stuff in them. Also now trying to figure out what writing deadlines I have pressing that have been shoved aside during prep for these two meetings.

( Now what? )

Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: the codaaaa

Entry tags:

dance

Specifically for Nnozomi…

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Entry tags:

write every day

Write Every Day: Day 19

Intro/FAQ
Days 1-15

My check-in: More work on the pod-together stories. Today was largely "what you need to know to enjoy this story" fandom summaries, but also a handful of titles and working out some of the posting details. ("A handful of titles," fml.)

Day 19:

glinda,

sanguinity,

ysilme

Day 18:

badlyknitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chinashop,

cornerofmadness,

glinda,

goddess47,

nafs,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch

trobadora,

Entry tags:

More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI by John Warner (2025)

Almost immediately upon the release of ChatGPT, everybody in the educational field realized it could produce an unlimited variety of essays that would pass muster in a high school or undergrad classroom, and might even get a better grade than a real student's work. Some concluded this meant the end of teaching students to write. John Warner, a college writing instructor, sees it differently—if the writing assignments we give our students are something ChatGPT can easily do, that means there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we have been teaching writing. This isn't a new problem, it's a decades-old problem that new technology is forcing us to finally confront: in our classrooms, we have forgotten what writing is for.

He argues that the process of writing offers invaluable opportunities not only to communicate ideas but to help us learn to think—to analyze our outer and inner worlds, and to synthesize meaningful conclusions. It's a tool for reflecting on and organizing our messy interiority, and (perhaps) using it to convey to other people something of what it's like to be us. This perfectly aligns with my own experience of writing, in which I often don't entirely understand what I think until I write it (and I am currently learning what I think about this book by writing this post) so I will admit that I'm not the best judge of whether Warner successfully communicates this to people who don't already believe it, but he seems plausibly convincing to me.

But education in the US has become increasingly dominated by teaching to the test rather than teaching anyone to think. (Warner traces this to Cold War-era anxieties over being outcompeted by rising economic powers like Japan, leading American legislators to push hyper-standardized measures of school success.) Students have adapted to this by learning only to write what the teacher expects to read—to produce essays that get everything superficially "right" but offer no individual thoughts or insights.

( cut for length )