Kalphite

Hey man. Yeah the boards are a bit quieter now. There was a period of time about a year ago where the boards kept going down for weeks at a time and there was no moderation so the board was just taken over by spambots, so most of the OTers made a discord to stay in touch cause we thought the boards were going to be gone for good. Now the boards are in better shape but discord's a way more convenient medium so most of the activity is there. if you check your PMs soon we'll send you an invite if you use that (and same goes for any other old regulars I've seen popping in here lately - just message RPG if you want to join) Anyways, I'm doing alright. Lucky to be in tech so I've been able to work fully remote and still have a job and everything. Living alone though so the isolation parts have been pretty hard. It feels like this isolation has been like a pendulum for me with how well i'm doing - I'll have a couple weeks that are really productive at work and cooking good meals and exercising consistently and practicing my synths followed by a period of just no motivation / energy where I can barely focus on anything and just daze through the days anxious from the news and playing video games til I fall asleep. Trying to be more consistent about the taking care of myself to foster the good weeks but its hard. Lost a couple family members to COVID back in March so I'm extra sensitive to news anxiety right now. Thankful for discord / being able to stay connected with online and IRL friends more easily, if I wasn't able to have video calls and stuff i'd be going insane. but yeah, just trying to hang in there and be patient for things to be safe out again.

who do you even think you're talking to at this point

Yeah everyone should definitely join the discord at this point if they haven't already

trains is #1 ptree for me but tbh i never really explored anything from before in absentia when I was in my prog phase

Has anybody else seen Us yet? Just saw it last night, curious what y'all think. I have kinda mixed feelings about it which feels a little sacrilegious to me rn because all my friends and the critics seemed to love it. [spoiler=opinions/light spoilers] I thought the film was pretty technically incredible. Definitely owed a lot to old kubrick movies like the Shining but redone in a modern light. A lot of the cinematography was just gorgeous (especially the boy with the car), the music was super intense, and there were tons of moments that just felt downright stressful / skin crawly without having to get so gorey that it distracted from the effect of it. However, the actual plot left a lot to be desired. I feel like every time they tried to explain what was going on it seriously took away from the tension. The first scene where lead girl's clone started explaining what was going on in her gravelly voice was so cheesy to me that I started cracking up in the theater which I really don't feel like was the desired effect. I also found I really wasn't gripped by any explanation given about the "tethered" and kind of feel like it would have been more effective with less of an explanation of what was going on. Also the twist at the end was obvious from a mile away and presenting it like it was some huge reveal kind of cheapened a lot of the ending for me. I think a lot of the thematic points were interesting with how the tethered versions of the characters seemed to emphasize faults / things that were lacking with the earthly versions of themselves. It kind of felt like a commentary about how everyone grapples with insecurity about the things that they aren't and past traumas and that it's something that can completely take over your life and takes a lot of effort and active fighting to be able to move past, and if you can't you're basically just walking around dead anyways. And I thought the ending scene with all the tethered shown all over the world showed that these kinds of struggles are really something universal that everybody has to deal with, not just this family. I think I definitely enjoyed Get Out more though, as I thought it was a lot more thematically interesting and conversation provoking than Us, even if Us is a lot more thrilling than Get Out was. Its definitely more of a traditional horror movie though and is a very different experience. Peele had some really interesting ideas with the movie and I definitely enjoyed it, but I feel like he just had a problem stringing his ideas together without having to fall back on more generic plot devices (all the tethered mom's dialogue, the entire twist at the end, the scene where the mom runs into the woods for no reason, etc), and that the times that it did really detracted from the experience and broke the immersion for me. I still enjoyed the movie, but the problems make it fall short of being something really special to me.

Yeah going to jump on that bandwagon here, used to love Dream theater in middle school/ high school but nowadays I don't really feel the desire to listen to them. Kinda feel like I grew out of them in general, +1 to Hedgehog's comment about not really feeling much from their music anymore and James LaBrie's voice has aged like 2 buck chuck to me as I've gotten older lol. Even the older stuff I used to love doesn't really do that much for me anymore but maybe I'm just due to give Metropolis pt 2 another spin. randomly have really been getting into Tokimonsta's older stuff recently

I mean you wanted feedback and people are giving it to you, complaining about it isn't going to encourage people. Things I noticed: Even when you pointed out the book was supposed to be an I I still had a hard time seeing it. Also combination of the slideshow and arrow buttons for the pictures felt a little weird to me. I wasn't sure that the arrows did anything the first couple times I used them because the pictures were scrolling at the same rate. Maybe just pick one or the other? Also the arrow buttons aren't aligned in Chrome which was a little jarring - I see you have a margin on one but not the other, maybe it'd look better with a bottom margin on the left arrow? I think the font / character images are nice but the layout kinda reminds me of a 90s geocity site lol. It's fine but doesn't look super modern, probably because you don't use the full width of the page like most more modern pages do. Look at some examples for some more modern games like the sites for Stardew Valley and Wargroove - see how these sites use the full width and break up into sections? I think that would help your site look more professional. You could maybe have your background on top, transition into the ItsyRealm logo over it, go into a slideshow, then give your blurb and github link at the bottom. edit: posted this before the second logo but I still have a hard time reading the I tbh

After playing rivals of aether til 3 am with some friends friday night would highly recommend spending the $4 on the game for anyone whose into smash-bros-like games, it's a blast. Plays super similarly to melee.

WHOA THIS THREAD WORKS AGAIN And yeah I was super disappointed by the new Paak album not gonna lie. I loved the direction he was going on Bubblin but the new album just all blended together. It was fine and inoffensive but idk just felt like I was listening to off-brand bruno mars or something on the other hand the new Earl album is [bleep]ing amazing and I can't stop listening to it, probably have listened to it at least 6 times yesterday already. The production all over this thing is incredible, super spaced out and abstract and all over the place as Earl's flows are in top form as he breaks down his depression over the last few years and the loss of his father. It's crazy how much substance he packs into 25 minutes on this thing and it's so out there that it took a while to grow on me but now I'm obsessed. Also for something a bit more straightforward the new JID is pretty wild too, he finally leveled up his production to match how crazy his flows are and it makes SUCH a huge difference.

Holy shit that was the most reading I've had to catch up with on this thread in who knows how long haha Veiva how was Los Campesinos?? I saw them a couple weeks ago here and they [bleep]ing RULED, haven't danced that hard in god knows how long LA was [bleep]ing awesome. Didn't get to see that much of the city aside from the festival but all the brunch places I went to were great, got to go to the Broad which is a crazy cool art museum (finally got to see a yayoi kusama infinity mirrored room which was wilddd) and the festival itself was sickk. Tyler the Creator, Lauryn Hill, and Brockhampton were my favorite sets (Brockhampton's entire crowd was a massive mosh pit to the point where the ffire department had to shut them down). Also ended up getting a bloody nose within like 5 minutes of the mosh pit starting at flatbush zombies lmfao. But it was a ton of fun! def necessary. also found out the company I work for was acquired while I was in LA. so work's been kinda weird, no idea how this is going to pan out but I'm def going to start getting ready to look around there. Promo process hasn't really been working out for me too well here anyways so I'm probably due for a change of scenery (even if I just got a raise this week it's kinda way smaller than I was told it would be and I'm really sick of this happening so often, seems to be very recurring for me here). Off to a friend's going away party and another friend's birthday party tonight and then I'm hoping to just be a vegetable for the rest of the weekend to make up for how crazy this has been.

WHOA HEY THERE I'm kinda terrified to look back at my old posts here honestly lol work is so bleh and it's getting cold here BUT I'm going to LA on friday for Camp Flog Gnaw and it's gonna be 80 degrees and sunny and I honestly can't comprehend that right now but it's gonna be WILD

cat

I feel like I have a ton of problems with first dates. I went on my first date from Tinder in a long time last week. We met up, she was really cute, we had a nice conversation over coffee for like an hour, and...that was it. Like we had a ton in common but we never really broke past talking about mutual interests / kinda small talk-y background stuff. Like at the end of the day this was one date and maybe this girl just wasn't attracted to me in person or something but I feel like I'm doing something wrong with how many of my dates I've been on have ended this way, like I need to find a way to make these more fun. bleh, just kinda frustrating, especially when I've been in a way better place mentally lately and I just want that to translate to other areas in my life I've been trying to improve on lol. But it's all a process I guess and at least I'm finally trying again - a string of bad dates / an extended bout of depression after moving here / latent oneitis / excessive weed use really set me back for a while and now I'm just trying to make up for what feels like lost time now that I've mostly moved past these things.

Wait then what happens to the dispensaries in British Columbia that already exist lol?

voting against natalie dormer feels super wrong but saq def put up the best pictures for miranda kerr who knew this would be such a ~difficult~ vote

Yeah I went to Vancouver this summer and even as I was a tourist I was able to buy medical marijuana there lol, I just had to sign a laminated form with a dry erase marker saying that I was over 19 and I was good. This will make it even easier for tourists haha. I've been in Washington for the last few years where it's been legal and everything is fine and weed isn't even too much more expensive than it was in other places I've been - honestly its a bit cheaper lol. pretty much all positives. Makes some revenue for the state and gives people some more freedom. Yay Canada

flying to japan tomorrow and holy [bleep] do i need this vacation right now. cannot waittttttttttt

Don't rent a modem. The monthly rental fee after a year is about as much money if not a bit more as a super solid modem and router would end up, except then after that you have to keep paying for it. Just a waste of money. Just had to deal with this, got this router and this modem and I've been pretty happy with them, get my full 150mbps even 2 stories up from where the modem is and can balance as many devices as my roommate and I use without a problem. You could probably get by with cheaper stuff too, I just wanted to future proof a bit cause I figured I'd be paying about that much for a year of rental anyways and didn't want to deal with deadzones with how many stories my current apartment is. Ah so I need to get both a router and modem for it to work? I guess the internet company's "box" is both combined in one thing. Will it be a major hassle to get it working? Yeah you need both. Practically, the modem connects to the cable lines via a coaxial cable and retrieves an internet connection and has the ports you can use to connect to it (Ethernet ports, etc). The router connects to your modem and allows you to access that internet connection wirelessly. The things that the cable companies rent are generally a combined all-in-one router and modem. It shouldn't be too bad to get working though, the instructions for these things are generally pretty simple, just took me about 30 minutes or so to get comcast activated and the router and modem working when I had to do it. And yeah I feel you on the grocery struggle, the only grocery store within a reasonable walk from my new apartment is one of those super bougie co-ops where everything is organic and costs twice as much as it should (lol a pound of ground beef is $9 and a pack of sliced cheese is $7). like its literally cheaper to just go out for dinner than to try to cook anything from there most of the time. Trying to figure out an easy logistic way to get to a more normal grocery store but the nearest one is a bit over a mile away which will make walking there a pain in the ass, especially in the winter. Was planning on getting a car which would make this a lot easier but I just found out my apartment building won't actually let me rent a parking spot, so I have to figure out street parking and hope my shit doesn't get broken into (which it will as it happens to basically all of my friends who have to street park here). Ugh. Miss living next door to a grocery store at my old place so bad

Don't rent a modem. The monthly rental fee after a year is about as much money if not a bit more as a super solid modem and router would end up, except then after that you have to keep paying for it. Just a waste of money. Just had to deal with this, got this router and this modem and I've been pretty happy with them, get my full 150mbps even 2 stories up from where the modem is and can balance as many devices as my roommate and I use without a problem. You could probably get by with cheaper stuff too, I just wanted to future proof a bit cause I figured I'd be paying about that much for a year of rental anyways and didn't want to deal with deadzones with how many stories my current apartment is.

YOOO you're here dude?? Let me know if you want to meet up for a drink or something at some point!! Haven't been posting here as much but I'm finally moved into my new place!!! The place is [bleep]ing dope with a massive balcony (like twice the size of my old bedroom). I'm mostly unpacked at this point and everything is feeling a lot more calmed down now. Only thing left to do is figure out seating cause my roommate and I have no living room or kitchen furniture so there is nowhere to sit and chill yet which is a bummer. Making an Ikea trip tomorrow and grabbing a couch from a friend this week so hopefully between all this we should be able to finish getting this place mostly homey soon! but yeah I'm really liking the new neighborhood so far and I'm super excited to finish getting this stuff sorted out

last one is definitely the best imo

Just got my application accepted for a new apartment!!! I'm moving to a new area of town with a new roommate and while the last couple weeks looking for stuff sucked we ended up finding a super dope spot. The apartment we found is a 3 story townhouse where we each have our own bedroom and bathroom, and its 1400 sq ft so we have a hugeeee living area too and a massive patio that isn't even accounted for in that. and the place is like $600/month cheaper than my current apartment so my rent is going down too. And it's only less than a ten minute walk away from the downtown part of the neighborhood. I'm putting a deposit down tomorrow and its soooooo nice to just have this sorted out finally. Now to deal with the logistics of actually moving in 2 weeks... then getting a car... then a new job... shit feels like its never going to slow down lol but I'm definitely ready for some changes

[bleep] apartment hunting

wind up bird chronicle is an incredible book, hard seconded @ring I'd definitely recommend Designing Data-Intensive Applications from O'Reilly. It explains a lot about different ideas between modern database technologies, how they developed over time, and what problems they are meant to solve. Gives a super nuanced view about how to choose the right technology for a given system function and how to make sense of the messes of available options, and is super useful in architecture discussions. It's helped me a lot with being able to contribute to these kinds of system design discussions at work. Even just making it a few chapters in has a ton of gold.

lol i just deactivated my facebook two weeks ago and I do not miss it whatsoever. you can keep messenger now when you deactivate which was the more useful part anyways.