{"id":4098,"date":"2022-07-15T11:47:16","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T19:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/?p=4098"},"modified":"2022-07-15T14:11:05","modified_gmt":"2022-07-15T22:11:05","slug":"i-started-a-tinyletter-for-recommending-youtube-channels-two-and-a-half-years-ago-but-then-i-was-like-wait-i-have-a-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/2022\/07\/15\/i-started-a-tinyletter-for-recommending-youtube-channels-two-and-a-half-years-ago-but-then-i-was-like-wait-i-have-a-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"I started a tinyletter for recommending youtube channels two and a half years ago but then I was like, wait, I have a blog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you are one of the six people who signed up for said tinyletter then I am sorry I never sent a second emission from it; I might still use it someday. (The same goes for my neglected dreamwidth account.) But I feel like I&#8217;ve got a little writing momentum here on NFD and I&#8217;d like to keep that up for a minute. So here&#8217;s a plug for an incomprehensibly deep dive into video games that I didn&#8217;t even really like that much when they were the only ones I had!<\/p>\n<p>There are a lot of white dudes who like to talk about old nerd media in videos on the Internet, but mostly what they do is offer their own opinions, at best seasoned with a little intro lifted from Wikipedia. I find it hard to spend minutes of my one precious life absorbing those opinions. I have too many opinions already. What I value, instead, is the dudes who can explain and explore <a href=\"https:\/\/embeddedgurus.com\/barr-code\/2013\/10\/an-update-on-toyota-and-unintended-acceleration\/\" title=\"I think about the linked slide deck presented to a jury regarding the Toyota Prius unintended-acceleration lawsuit... a lot.\">something I don&#8217;t understand<\/a> in a way that makes me feel like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=p8u_k2LIZyo\" title=\"Evil Bit Hack What The Fuck Newton Iteration\">I do understand it<\/a> (although I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=t_rzYnXEQlE\" title=\"'You either get to know about these things, or you get to go out and touch grass every once in a while. It's a strict either-or.'\">very much still don&#8217;t<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>This is why I subscribe to a channel with the mildly concering name of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/DisplacedGamers\/featured\" title=\"Winner of the 2022 NFD Award for 'most consistently misplaced emphasis in the phrase Game Genie'\">Displaced Gamers<\/a>, which is not about gamers or being displaced. It&#8217;s a series of exegeses on the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikibooks.org\/wiki\/6502_Assembly\" title=\"Threw this link in just to make Jeremy smile.\">assembly code<\/a> that composes old video games, mostly NES games, and the startling things that tiny changes in that code can bring about. I myself could not read assembly code if my life were at stake, but the channel creator&#8217;s steady, patient narration helps me feel like I can almost follow along in real time. I&#8217;m thinking in particular of these most recent two videos, about how and why one can glitch into unplanned memory areas in Super Mario Bros to find the apocryphal Minus World&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/61m5MiyC17s\" title=\"New Discovery for Minus World in Super Mario Bros! - Behind the Code\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&#8230; And then discovering <em>256 completely new Minus Worlds<\/em> in the Super Mario All-Stars iteration of the game, using only three Game Genie Codes. (!)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/Y6HSZ1imGRQ\" title=\"Code History of Minus World and its Return to Mario All-Stars - Talkin' Code Episode 5\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s that last bit that really gets me. I had a Game Genie for our Super Nintendo when I was young, and I made heavy use of it, which is to say that I never got to be good at video games. I never had a solid grasp on the device&#8217;s methods of operation or how to explore a game&#8217;s code with it. I was not, as noted above, an ardent Mario fan (I preferred Mario Kart and the RPG spinoffs) though I respect the ground the games broke and their own <a href=\"http:\/\/thegamedesignforum.com\/features\/RD_SMW_1.html\" title=\"I already wrote about this on Soderblog so I'm not going to self-plagiarize from there... YET.\">interesting design constraints<\/a>. But this particular video essayist earns my attention not only because he&#8217;s doing original research in the history of software&#8212;a field which, I will keep shouting forever, is ahistorical to the ongoing detriment of the entire world&#8212;but because he keeps at the work until he can fit his proof of concept into the &#8220;you can do this with your own Game Genie&#8221; constraint. That&#8217;s powerful Brendan-bait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you are one of the six people who signed up for said tinyletter then I am sorry I never sent a second emission from it; I might still use it someday. (The same goes for my neglected dreamwidth account.) But I feel like I&#8217;ve got a little writing momentum here on NFD and I&#8217;d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,44,85,118,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-connections","category-constrained-writing","category-hidden-content","category-nostalgia","category-plugs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4098"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4103,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098\/revisions\/4103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}