{"id":4353,"date":"2024-07-06T08:11:32","date_gmt":"2024-07-06T16:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/?p=4353"},"modified":"2024-07-12T11:07:49","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T19:07:49","slug":"things-i-have-enjoyed-of-late","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/2024\/07\/06\/things-i-have-enjoyed-of-late\/","title":{"rendered":"Things I have enjoyed of late"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A lot of these are on YouTube, so if you are not a fan of YouTube, you should skip those. But it\u2019s a hard world out there, and videos are some of the things that help divert me from ruminating on matters I can\u2019t control.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>For instance, <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/7MKNTSzftCA\" title=\"Kat and I have been saying 'aaAAAaaAAAH' to each other in a particular timbre a lot.\">Tico and his Man<\/a> are a beautiful example of what can emerge from surrendering to inspiration and letting an enigmatic artist follow his unknowable muse, especially if that artist is a parrot.<\/li>\n<li>I also feel a great freedom in having given up on <a href=\"\/nfd\/2023\/12\/02\/setec-astronomy\/\" title=\"Did I summon other puzzles into being by sheer disgruntlement? Maybe.\">Connections<\/a> and replaced it in my mornings with friendlier puzzles. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cinenerdle2.app\" title=\"Yes, the URL is inconsistent with the game's title and looks like you're being phished.\">Cine2Nerdle<\/a> has possibly the worst Wordle-derived name anyone has yet produced, but it does exactly what I wanted from Connections in terms of interface and hinting, and it\u2019s about movies! (Don\u2019t even talk to me about Cinematrix, I can\u2019t stand it.)<\/li>\n<li>The NYT web games team can still do good work, though. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/games\/strands\" title=\"I do get mad when they have a word that touches both sides but doesn't count as the spangram.\">Strands<\/a> has actual hints that can be earned through play (not that they\u2019re often necessary&#8212;its challenge level varies, but tips toward the easier side). But the first few minutes of looking at a new day\u2019s grid, waiting for my pattern-recognition neurons to wake up, are a consistent if brief instruction in patience.<\/li>\n<li>But back to videos. I found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@TechTimeTraveller\" title=\"I am no time traveller, but he and I are closer in age than I once presumed.\">Brad the Tech Time Traveller\u2019s<\/a> channel algorithmically&#8212;I think his <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/OWwzQyXAvXI\" title=\"He doesn't like this video anymore, but I do.\">literally-bricked hard drive documentary<\/a> was what first caught my attention. I love to wind down in the evening by watching him work, and he also has <a href=\"https:\/\/techtimetraveller.com\" title=\"Brad please actually link or embed your videos in your blog posts about them\">a blog<\/a> which ably demonstrates his time-travel credentials by skillful use of a &lt;marquee&gt; tag.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019ve played a number of games set in the milieu of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but I\u2019ve never actually read the original novel. I could just try that&#8212;the work is very much in the public domain&#8212;but these days I find it easier to digest fiction via audio. So when I want to occupy one hemisphere of my brain with Minecraft, I occupy the other with the podcast that motivated me to make this post in the first place. <a href=\"http:\/\/johnzhu.com\/blog\/\" title=\"You get extra points on my blog if I discover that you also have a blog.\">John Zhu<\/a> originally started his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.3kingdomspodcast.com\/about-the-podcast\/\" title=\"'Understanding ROTK is akin to understanding Shakespeare, and I would hate for it to remain beyond the reach or patience of the majority of the Western audience simply because of what\u2019s lost in translation.'\">Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast<\/a> a decade ago, going through the book chapter by chapter in a kind of ongoing summation abetted by his own commentary and context. I find his work so charming and affable, and generous with explanations for a naive audience member like myself. Zhu has gone on to cover other works of similar import under the umbrella of <a href=\"https:\/\/chineselore.com\/listen\/\" title=\"Brutal use of 'old-fashioned' for the RSS feed though.\">The Chinese Lore Podcast<\/a>. I\u2019m almost a quarter of the way through the 174 (!) episodes of the original, so I\u2019m very glad there will be more to listen to when I get through all of those.<\/li>\n<li>Oh, also I still play Minecraft (and of course I still <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@JoeHillsTSD\" title=\"Joe has become more popular but not, bless him, more normal.\">watch Joe<\/a>). I got back into the game when my nieces and nephews became interested, and then they got kind of bored of trying to coordinate with me long-distance. I kept playing anyway. I can\u2019t play it with joysticks at all, which rules out my Switch, and my laptop is a little unwieldy for games, so I&#8217;ve been playing the Bedrock version of the game on my tablet with a bluetooth mouse. I miss being able to mod the Java version but I don\u2019t miss having to sit at a desk to play it. I have a nice little world going now, featuring such wonders as a villager who sells mending books and also a square chunk hole that I dug one block at a time from a mountaintop to the bottom of the world. It\u2019s just a solo local file, but if you are a friend who would like to play in it, email me and I will click the button that makes it a server.<\/li>\n<li>This is becoming more about video games than I expected. I can\u2019t play Minecraft on our elliptical, so to occupy <em>that<\/em> version of my brain, I use a secondhand <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GfilkFTRU8\" title=\"It's a surprise video link! Gotcha!!!\">tiny piracy machine<\/a> to play a randomized version of Final Fantasy III (6) called <a href=\"https:\/\/ff6worldscollide.com\" title=\"Don't be fooled by the ff6wc.com site, which the current team has apparently just... lost access to?\">Worlds Collide<\/a>. It\u2019s promoted mostly as a racing game&#8212;the community holds regular tournaments where competitors all start with the same seed and try to be the first to beat the final boss. I have played through probably twenty times now and I must accept that I will never, ever be fast enough to compete in even the introductory qualifiers. But the scope of the game and my own teenage familiarity with it are juuust right to make it a fun puzzle with many possible solutions every time.<\/li>\n<li>Let&#8217;s go back to the part where I&#8217;m bad at reading books! It took me an undisclosed amount of time to finish <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jilliantamaki.com\/roaming1\" title=\"It's For Mature Readers because it has some sex and mild drugs in it.\">Roaming<\/a>, because at first its illustrations of youthful personality interplay were too acute. But I barreled through the back half and loved it, as I do everything by either of the Tamaki cousins. I was spurred on in no small part by the chance to participate in my first ever Zoom-based book club meeting, a privilege of my subscription to <a href=\"https:\/\/goodenoughjob.substack.com\" title=\"Full disclosure: Sophie is my wife's girlfriend.\">Sophie&#8217;s wonderful newsletter<\/a>. It was a treat! Sophie always has excellent book recommendations, and has since motivated me to get my heart broken by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fantagraphics.com\/products\/okinawa\" title=\"'If you're a fan of ... Shigeru Mizuki's Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths,'\">a whole different graphic novel<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>And speaking of paid subscription privileges, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/Achewood\/\" title=\"I really don't think he has lost a step. It's great.\">ACHEWOOD IS BACK, BABY.<\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_0816-1024x340.jpeg\" alt=\"It's just a robot butt joke.\" width=\"788\" height=\"262\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-4359\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_0816-1024x340.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_0816-300x100.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_0816-768x255.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_0816-788x262.jpeg 788w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_0816.jpeg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 788px) 100vw, 788px\" \/><\/li>\n<li>I made the above visual goof in a few minutes on my phone with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mematic.com\/about\/\" title=\"\">Mematic<\/a>, which is kind of a silly app to pay for given how much image-editing software I already own. But I like how easily it allows me to make little jokes to show my friends in small amounts of time.\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_2861-963x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Two panels from Scott Pilgrim featuring Todd Ingram saying &quot;you know how you only use ten percent of your brain? well, that's because the other 90 percent is filled up with WILLIAM GIBSON AND JOHN LE CARRE QUOTES&quot;\" width=\"788\" height=\"838\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-4361\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_2861-963x1024.jpg 963w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_2861-282x300.jpg 282w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_2861-768x816.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_2861-788x838.jpg 788w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_2861.jpg 1129w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 788px) 100vw, 788px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_5775-821x1024.jpg\" alt=\"it's the &quot;Travis Kelce yelling&quot; meme with a very long block of text implying that I am ranting about how RSS is still very much in use.\" width=\"788\" height=\"983\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-4362\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_5775-821x1024.jpg 821w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_5775-241x300.jpg 241w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_5775-768x958.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_5775-788x983.jpg 788w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_5775.jpg 962w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 788px) 100vw, 788px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_5776-1024x928.jpg\" alt=\"These are just headlines where I have taken the words &quot;with AI&quot; and replaced them with &quot;with an unpaid intern.&quot;\" width=\"788\" height=\"714\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-4363\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_5776-1024x928.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_5776-300x272.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_5776-768x696.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_5776-788x714.jpg 788w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_5776.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 788px) 100vw, 788px\" \/><\/li>\n<li>I loved getting to see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=I9JrDUIajCc\" title=\"I feel very proud when I recognize any of the songs involved.\">Lucy&#8217;s collections<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=cHyHJON3uMM\" title=\"Now recorded in TWO studios!!\">studio dances<\/a>!\n<li>I continue to enjoy, above all else, being married to Kat.\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/beach-1024x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Brendan and Kat at the beach!\" width=\"788\" height=\"788\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-4364\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/beach-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/beach-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/beach-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/beach-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/beach-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/beach-2048x2048.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/beach-788x788.jpg 788w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 788px) 100vw, 788px\" \/><\/li>\n<li>There&#8217;s just one more YouTube link left in this blog post. But I promise I saved it for last <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/mSlZKdApob0\" title=\"(deep breath) AAAAAAAAAAA (cont.)\">for good reason<\/a>.\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A lot of these are on YouTube, so if you are not a fan of YouTube, you should skip those. But it\u2019s a hard world out there, and videos are some of the things that help divert me from ruminating on matters I can\u2019t control. For instance, Tico and his Man are a beautiful example [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,52,16,54,23,22,131,94,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogroll","category-books","category-discoveries","category-games","category-movies","category-plugs","category-podcasts","category-running","category-team-movie-pong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353","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=4353"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4371,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions\/4371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}