Crash Site

Welcome to my Now Page, my thoughts and what I’ve been up to lately. Loosely inspired by my friend Jack Grimes’ format. You’re reading the 9/10/24 version of this page. When it’s gone, it’s (probably) gone.

Making

Honestly, not much these days. School’s started again and that’s taken most, if not all, of my energy. Maybe I’ll try and get back into crochet once my ADHD meds fully kick in.

I’m trying to update this site, really build it out and make it a home base for all my stuff. I think I got kinda complacent and assumed the age of the social media exodus was over… guess not. I only realized after I wrote this whole post that I had to rebuild my site from scratch, so that’s making, I guess!

Doing

Like I said, I’m back at school. I’m not really helping the “engineering students have no life” stereotype here. I’ve been putting on the events I do for MAGE, my college’s geek club: our weekly board game night and starting the planning for our yearly con, Concinnity. I’m really excited to see some fresh faces on the Concinnity planning committee, it’s something I absolutely love doing.

Thinking

So you know how I said in my last Now Page that I’m sticking with Cohost? Yeeeeeeah, uh. Looks like there’ll be no Cohost to stick to in a few weeks. I always likened Cohost to a punk basement show, guess the show’s over now. I had a feeling this is how it’d go once Stripe changed their TOS and killed Cohost’s idea for tipping and subscriptions, but I’m still incredibly sad to see it go. I really loved the vibes.

I’m trying to move over to Bluesky, and I’ve already followed a few friends and a handful of cool people, like Toonami creator Jason DeMarco, the crew from Aftermath, and my aforementioned friend Jack. There’s quite a large furry base over there too, which is encouraging. Furries are a social media indicator species, after all. Really, my only frustration is that there’s no “demetricator” for Bluesky that hides like/repost/follower numbers. I used it on Twitter for the last bit I was on there and Cohost didn’t show any of those numbers, so seeing them again is reminding me of my Extremely Online era where I truly, sincerely, foolishly cared about likes and follows.

I’m just wondering if Twitter is really the best we can do. With Cohost out of the running, every post-Twitter platform is now a pastiche of Twitter. It’s not like Cohost was totally original, it definitely had some of the Tumblr DNA, but it was the furthest away from the Twitter form factor that has dominated the internet for more or less forever. Mastodon is Twitter for Linux users; Threads is Twitter for brands and millennial engagement farms; and Bluesky is just Twitter 2. (Twitter is now the nazi bar, of course.) As someone who had issues with Twitter (see my Extremely Online era above), it’s odd that all the choices are now Twitter, But It Hopefully Doesn’t Suck As Much.

Reading

I finally picked up Leviathan Wakes, and holy shit yall you GOTTA read this. It’s fuckin excellent. I blasted through it in 4 or 5 days. It’s like I was a kid again, blasting through my homework so I could go and read afterwards. Guess I’ve gotta download the rest of the series, because I can’t wait to see where it goes next. (SPOILERS) My only slight complaint is that Miller’s gone; he’s one of those characters that had an appropriate, thematically satisfying death that made the finale hit harder, but you wish lingered just a little bit longer because his chemistry with the other main characters is just so good.

On my radar: Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore, thanks to the excellent Cory Doctorow, and re-reading the Murderbot Diaries series. I read the first novella in high school and it was great, I gotta read further than All Systems Red.

Listening

That Femtanyl show at the X-Ray Arcade that I mentioned in my last update? Holy shit that fuckin RULED. Being in a room full of other nerds/goths/emos/punks and moshing to the melodic noise that is cybergrind (which I didn’t realize was a grindcore subgenre until looking it up after the show, no duh) was a feeling like no other. Shoutouts to the person fursuiting on the edge of the pit and that one person right up on the stage edge recording the show on their 3DS. That ruled. Also, go check out one of the opening acts, Blind Equation; they’re like chiptune death metal, where they have a keytarist instead of a guitarist.

X-Ray Arcade is such a fuckin cool venue, I played House of the Dead with my sister while we waited for one of the openers to start and we got up to the second boss before I ran out of quarters. It’s one of those tiny little venues where you can get right up to the stage edge, no rail or anything. I moshed, I supported Femtanyl crowd-surfing, I danced, I jumped into a circle, it was amazing. Shit ruled. Now that Femtanyl is opening for Machine Girl at the Madison show in December, I HAVE to go.

On the non-live show side, I’ve been listening to a lotta 91.7 WMSE. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the finest college radio station anywhere. And I’m not just saying that cuz I go to the school it’s associated with. Shoutouts to DJ Tony M who runs Chillosophy on Wednesday mornings. Those chill hip-hop, trip-hop, funk tracks give me a real Adult Swim vibe, perfect for those mornings where I really don’t wanna wake up. Tuning in after class and hearing Judas Priest rules. (If you’re looking for a good iPhone app to listen to stations, check out BMBX. Not sponsored, I swear, it’s the app I use.)

Playing

On the board game side, I played Flamecraft with some friends, and it still remains one of my favorite board games. It’s a worker placement game where the workers you place are absolutely adorable dragons. There’s a lot of fun to be had laughing at punny shop names like Draco Bell and going “OMG LOOK AT THIS DRAGON THEY’RE ADORABLE”, but it’s a really solid game overall. With some really clever strategizing, it can get downright ruthless near the end.

Right after, I played some Jackbox with said same group of friends. I loved DodoReMi, I’m in general a rhythm game lover but wasn’t set on this one. It was one of the best times I’ve had with a Jackbox game, it has the Rock Band-esque group rhythm game feeling but without having to track down ridiculously expensive guitars and older consoles. If you’ve got Party Pack 10, give that a try, folks.