Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 146)

In this volume of my Favourite YouTube Videos,  we look at our pasts and our futures, look at computers past and then fly through space in a very unfuture kind of way.

• First, John talks about being in high school and a) how it can leave you feeling an awful lot like a failure and b) how high school is not actually destiny or even life. It's nice to remember that our then is not our now, and our now is not our future.
• Next, Hank takes apart a mechanical calculator and it's awesome!
• Finally, we get a suite of music from Super Mario Galaxy, performed by the WDR Radio Orchestra, conducted by Niklas Willén (who I'm pretty sure is dancing on his way to the party).

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 145)

In this volume of my Favourite YouTube Videos, we die, we lament our lost days and we relax.

• First, it's game over, man, game over ... with Brentalfloss and his comic crew making a tribute to Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies and how bad we all are at games.
• Next, Lindybeige laments that one insignificant day.
• And finally, Yungtown's here to help us relax with the 10 most relaxing pieces of video game music.

Blog: Video Games of May 2016

Quick note: As you may have noticed I'm rather behind in posting these. The retrospective for April was written in early May (and it just took me forever to get it up), but the rest will be written and posted now. As a result, they will probably have some gloss from the passing of time.

May was the first month where I was teaching a course and that ended up eating a lot of my time. So I played with a little less mindfulness than I'd been playing earlier in the year. Most of the stuff I did play was to give me some stress relief and to stop thinking for a little while.
My top five games (by play time) for May were:

1. XCOM 2 - Having played a non-ironman "really easy" run through the first time I played, I thought it would be good to try the game at a little harder. I tried for an ironman run at a harder difficultly level. After a lot of restarts I managed to get a little traction, although honestly this game is *really hard*, or I'm just *really bad at it*.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Stardew Valley - I really love this game. I especially like the 20 minute flow of a day, and I like starting my day with a day or two of Stardew Valley along with coffee and breakfast. It's also nice to be able to drop in for a while in the evenings and play a little extra.
   
   
   


3. Chrono Trigger - It's nice jumping back into old favourites and where I had the time to sit down and focus on a game Chrono Trigger was a nice game to have on hand to jump back into. It's also surprising just how short the game actually is. 
   
   
   


4. Middle-Earth:Shadows of Mordor - I picked this up because I wanted a game I could play without thinking too much. It took a little while to get the flow, but then the stealth to combat mechanic took over and it was a game I could play a lot and let my mind wander while I played it.
   
   
   


5. Super Mario Maker - It's a little disappointing how hard it is to get your levels played, and that's cut down quite a bit on how much I've played. Still there are a lot of good levels out there to play and there's nothing quite so easy to play as 2D Mario.
   
   
   

Project 14 - Sketch Fiction - Home

This is the fourth of six sketch stories. It's unrelated to the others.

You can expect the next sketch story when I damn well post it. (Which is to say I've kinda given up on deadlines here, but I'm still trying to stick with creating cool things.)

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Home

The spar was warm from the sun and there wasn't much that needed done, so she sat and sang idly. The sea was light and the ship surged, pulling for home, same as the crew.

As she sang, a song of harbour and home, the crew calmed.  Hauling wasn't a bad life, better than some courses you could sail, but still, nobody wanted to sail the last stretch, everyone wanted to be home.

The was a fuss down on deck, those two sailors they'd picked up at Stoneille. She made to go down, but Jerin was there and knocked the two of them clean out. She shook her head, first job back home would be to make sure this was the last they saw of the sorry louts.

The crew on deck cleared the two trouble makers out of the way, dumping them on one of the coils of rope. Jerin trussed them up, then stalked among the crew. 

They rounded the headland and the light changed, suddenly brighter, warmer. The city surged down from the hill, a riot of colour, blue and green, down into the plain, yellow and red and crashing white up onto the mountain. The roofs blended together as they poured down to the sea from there, mixing together and meeting at the docs.

"Ahoy," she shouted down, "It's home again."