Title: PSA: Use VF-1 Today, For Great Justice
Date: 2024-12-11 06:31
Author: zlg

Hello again. It's been a while.

VF-1 IS A BIG DEAL DAMNIT
=========================

My first order of business here is to confirm I am a dedicated VF-1 user and
am interested in testing any new features Solderpunk chooses to add. I read
his recent post about it [1] and felt it pertinent to put it out there. My
ability to actively contribute is inconsistent, but I enjoy VF-1 as a tool.
It's replaced lynx as my primary gopher viewer.

All this to say, please keep it up with VF-1! I'll add a link to the new VF-1
homepage when I get around to updating my gopherhole.


LIFE
====

The latter half of the year has been "meh" for me. Ups and downs, no real
progress on personal goals aside from backlog busting, which one can check on my
website for now[2], until I transcribe the markdown to Gopher-suitable text. I
really need to make a generator plugin for Pelican that can transform markdown
into something better suited for Gopher, with accumulated links at the bottom.

Largely, I just need gainful employment again. I've been getting by on side
gigs and other things for the time being. It's quite frustrating for people to
ask you if you're a professional (i.e. writing code or doing pixel art), and
then asked "why not" when you say no. Your guess is as good as mine, though I
posit it has something to do with an out-of-reach multi-thousand dollar piece
of cardstock. :) If I can get the mental space and free time to devote to real
projects, I want to add to my portfolio. The pixel editor I made in JS is almost
finished. The LZW algorithm (from GIF) is easier than PNG to implement, but it's
still an interesting nut to crack that will take me extensive testing to get
correct.

I have sadly fallen off the PICO-8 wagon for now. LÖVE2D looks interesting and
more capable of carrying out the vision I have for games. PICO-8 isn't hands-off
by any means, but I'm definitely treating it as more of a prototyping gamedev
notepad for now.


TWITCH...?
==========

I stream on Twitch every now and then these days. It's a Big Platform and all,
but I've managed to meet some people who share enthusiasm for some of the same
games I do. It's not a replacement for in-person socializing, but honestly I
have largely lost interest in participating in online discourse in places like
Reddit, Lemmy, Pleroma/Mastodon, etc. When I participated in that stuff, I
didn't leave the computer feeling good about my interactions. On Twitch, I'm
in this weird group of millennial gamers that play retro games and shoot the
shit, and we all have small gatherings so what little toxicity that shows up is
largely handled by the automod stuff. Only one death threat so far, fairly civil
for 2024 I guess, haha.

I don't expect much of anything from it except some fun memories and good
conversations while gaming. It has been an interesting motivator for art,
though. There are things I've put together that were jokes in passing, but
encouragement from others turned into funny emotes everyone could use to add to
a moment. I've learned a lot about OBS and media manipulation, too. Being able
to use Browser Sources unlocks my existing Web experience and gives me more
reason to learn CSS3 animations. So, ironically this somewhat cringe activity
(depending on who you ask) is uniting my interests in a weird way. I don't
know what to think of it but I am enjoying the pixel art creation bug when it
strikes.


A BRO COMES THROUGH
===================

My desktop rig is now a Ryzen 7-based system, with 32GB of RAM and an SSD,
thanks to a long-time friend who I helped get deep into computers years ago.
It was a really great gesture and it's been put to use to play beefier games
and do crazier shit on the stream. When I get another drive, I wanna see what
Linux-based systems can do with these specs! A new GPU is still in order, but at
least the capabilities of my current card (Radeon RX580) are being met by the
new machine (PCI-e 4) compared to the old one (PCI-e 2). Quite a jump.

It's cool that you can disable the TPM and prevent Windows 11 from being
installed.


BEACH ANNIVERSARY
=================

The lady and I went to the beach, as is tradition, for our anniversary. It's in
November, so it's out of tourist season. Things are slow and quiet. A little
cold, sometimes too cold for a comfortable stroll down the wave-beaten sands,
but the crisp air and distance from the stress of home was rejuvenating for us
despite the lack of sleep. When things are better, I want to take a whole week
off together. But, yeah... eleven years, crazy.

This year's was great. We went to an Italian restaurant that served gluten free
stuff so she could eat things, and I had a GIANT tira misu, my first ever in
fact. I did not know chocolate could threaten to kill you with decadence but I'd
be happy to be in its clutches again.


PET SITTING
===========

The last thing to bring up is, I'm doing some pet sitting for someone in the
near future, and I want to dedicate some time to my gopherhole and getting
it back into a shape that I'm happy with. This place on the Zaibatsu won't
change, but the home gopherhole needs to integrate with my blog, and have its
own exclusive content that I manage somehow.

Anyway, because I'll have less to do those days I'm hoping to get some technical
stuff done that I normally don't have the mental bandwidth for. I'm looking
forward to seeing what a hyperfocus session will do for me next. Those are my
happiest moments, after all.

-z

-----
[1]: gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/more-info-on-vf1-updates.txt
[2]: https://zlg.space/blog/12-in-12-2024-edition.html