Webcomics have a very special and consistent place in my life. Even since before
dinosaurs roamed the Earth Google Reader, I’ve paid attention to webcomics.
There have been the classics (XKCD,
SMBC,
OOTS)
and many new additions (Kill 6 Billion Demons (Slightly
NSFW),
Swords, many more). Of all of them, only a few
have ended. Some stopped, for whatever reason, but what I’m talking about are
the comics which have finished, as in had a story and concluded it.
The motivation for this post is the finale of Darths & Droids, which just finished their massive endeavor. The gist is they take each scene from the Star Wars films, and then set their own story to it. This took the form of a tabletop campaign (actually, a few of them, and a few spin-offs), with the Star Wars characters being the in-game characters of various out-of-game players. Often, there’d be a few in-game characters per out-of-game player, and so jumping in to the middle is likely very confusing. Also, a lot has happened over the 19 year run!
The first comic I can think of that finished while I was reading it is 8-Bit Theater. I remember an odd feeling of sorrow, like a good friend was moving away. I knew they weren’t gone, just that our time together was likely at an end. That was a comic I think a few IRL friends actually also read, and so we would sometimes chat about it, and that gave it more impact. That was in 2010 (Aside: holy shit that was 2010?!).
The end of Darths & Droids feels a bit similar. Like the ending of a good book, it’s sad that it’s over, but also it was a great experience, and an ending was inevitable! That’s how everything goes! It made me ponder what other webcomics have finished that I used to read. These are the ones I can remember:
The Adventures of Dr. McNinja might be the second oldest I can remember. Another webcomic my IRL friends and I would talk about. The original site is offline, but the Library of Congress, Internet Archive, and a fan site have the archives. Dr. McNinja taught me that ninjas can never catch me if I am on fire.
The Adventures of God is the (second) most recent example I have. It’s a fun little romp.
Zen Pencils doesn’t quite fit the criteria of having a “finale”, but I do remember it ending, and feeling that same feeling.
And actually, that’s all I can think of right now. There are definitely a few others that haven’t updated in a while. Or, at least not that I’m aware of. Axe Cop and Bearmageddon come to mind. And I’m certain I’m forgetting a few.
In any case, a congratulations to Darths & Droids for making it to the end of their campaign. I think a re-read may be in order!
]]>Everyone has their own take on alchemy, and I’m throwing mine onto the pile. I think alchemy is too easy, reliable, and safe. Here are a few thoughts on how I would change it up.
Skipping over the actual effects of ingredients, because that’s more of a balance thing and other mods already handle that. Instead, I’m interested in the functionality of ingredients.
An ingredient’s quality is determined when it is harvested. For some ingredients, the quality lowers over time; the ingredient decays. The quality of an ingredient determines the strength and/or reliability of their alchemical effects.
In the newer Elder Scrolls games, you can ingest ingredients “raw,” and you’ll learn their effect(s), and possibly enjoy some of their effect(s). Watching Onyx Levithan’s recent Deep Dive on the Cuisine of Elder Scrolls video, I took note of his discussions of some of the fungi found in Morrowind, and his suggestion that eating them will make you sick. I say, most if not all alchemical ingredients should make you sick if you ingest them raw, and some should cause permanent damages. I’m looking at you, “raw glass!”
Many potion ingredients in the game are relatively dry, such as the petals of flowers, or literal chunks of fungi. Once you smash ‘em together in a mortar and pestle, they become a liquid. There needs to be something else that helps that process, and that is a solvent. The Witcher games, or at least the first one, uses alcohol as a solvent, and I think that’s ideal. It inherently limits how many potions you can ingest, before things become problematic, getting sickened or even drunk. Different solvents will impact the resulting potion. Alcohol gets into the bloodstream quickly, but has side effects. Pure water, like (regular) glass can represent the cleanest solvent, with no chance of contamination. Impure water, such as that from lakes (or worse, sewers) can cause impurities. Perhaps there are some specific solvents required for certain potions - animal blood, plant sap, maybe even other potions!
Every potion requires a vessel. Bottles, vials, cups, and the like - something to hold the potion for enjoying later. Or, maybe you’d rather drink it immediately. Or maybe you have to drink it immediately! Directly from whichever alchemical tool you’ve used to create it. Glass vessels have a chance of breaking during combat, or if taking falling damage. Metallic vessels can survive better. Maybe other materials have better durability. Maybe certain materials offer other functionality: regular glass is the purest material, and has no chance to introduce impurities. Glass, the kind they make armor out of, is more resilient but has a chance to contaminate potions somehow. There’s a lot of options here for creating magical containers too. Vessels which extend uses, enhance effects, reduce spoilage, and so on.
Like ingredients, potions have qualities. This is already represented in the game based on skill, and I would additionally include varying effect duration or strength based on the quality of the ingredients used. Higher quality ingredients, with high quality solvents, in a high quality vessel, represents the pinacle of alchemy, and costs (and fetches!) good septims.
Potions decay over time, like ingredients. Certain potions may be more volatile than others, and may only stay potent for short periods of time. Perhaps some potions must be consumed immediately, straight from the mortar and pestle! Certain vessels may help keep potions safe longer, as perhaps some solvents may. Whichever approach is used may have unwanted side-effects.
In the game, the player either crafts a potion, or fails. I think every attempt creates something, just perhaps not what was desired. Like cooking burgers on a grill, if you’re trying to keep a bit of pink, you need to understand your heat, timing, and meat. It requires experience! The more experienced an alchemist you are, the more certain you can be that you’ve made the potion you intended to.
Onyx Leviathan’s video about cuisine brought up another interesting notion: should ingredients always have an effect? If garlic gives a bit of fire resistance, and I make some garlic potatoes, does that meal give me a bit of fire resistance? Food falls outside the scope of alchemy traditionally, but other mods like Sun’s Dusk cover cooking. It could be fun to include longer-lasting, but weaker effects with meals. I’m reminded of Breath of the Wild, and the various meals you can cook in that game. Those fill a simliar place as potions do in the Elder Scrolls games, I suppose.
Both mods I’ve made for Morrowind rely on OpenMW, and this alchemy mod would likely benefit from it as well. I imagine requiring a different user interface than the standard alchemy one, as well as accounting for dynamic effects and things like decay and contamination. I’m always a fan of more options, and of nifty magical items, so adding in magical containers and solvents sounds like a cool system to play around with. Pathfinder’s alchemist class has a lot of functionality related to potions, such as improving their effects, mixing multiples together, or reusing potions in exchange for their daily extracts. These sounds like perfect examples of magical vessels. As it stands, though, I have no experience with OpenMW’s Lua, and generally little experience with Lua in general (though a bit more with Fennel…), so approaching an overhaul like this mod sounds quite daunting. Then again, I’ll have to start somewhere!
]]>Welp, I made it to the end. Here are the final prompts, as provided in this post:
I’d say the biggest takeaway from this experience is that I’m not especially drawn to blogging. That might sound like a disappointment, but it’s really just a discovery, and one which helps me shape how I move forward. I’ve had the wonder, this romanticized spark, that perhaps I’ll fall in love with blogging once I start it. Maybe I’ll grow obsessed, find purpose and drive, and leap into a new passion. Nope! Just another neat thing I can do, as my interest grows and shrinks through the seasons. Despite this, I still feel that I haven’t explored all there is to blogging, to my site, to the Indie/Small/Smol web, and to the communities which thrive in these spaces. A few other takeaways: in my current system, blogging is very straight-forward and easy, though lacking in some small features which I can easily account for with CSS; boy howdy can I ramble on about just about anything; and while I do rather enjoy Jekyll (and I do really love Ruby), I’m interested in creating my own site builder.
Going back, is there anything I would do differently to prepare? Not from my side. August turned out to have the usual gamut of surprises and stresses, and my focus was inevitably draw elsewhere. I’m applying for a new job, I’ve got some potential new clients for my own business, I have wasps nesting in my wall, plus my current part-time day job, and all the gaming, videos, articles, music, etc. to consume. Blogging simply fell down the list, though not to the bottom of the list, which perhaps counts for something. I realize I’ve rambled right past the answer - no, I wouldn’t do anything different in preparation.
Perhaps something I’ll do differently next time is join the community spaces focused on Blaugust. Join the Discord, or find an IRC channel somewhere, and try to take part in those communities as well. Or at least follow some specific tags on Fedi related to it. I can’t say I’ve read any specific Blaugust posts, aside from the few that Fyr posted, but I follow his feed anyway, so I’d catch them regardless of my participation.
I’m slightly disappointed I wasn’t able to capitalize on the event to post some more non-prompt articles. I still have that TMUX article in the works, honest! But as with everything I write here, I do so for my own enjoyment and benefit first, and my needs recently have not focused much at all on TMUX, and thus it gets pushed back. I was really glad to get that Scion post done, though.
Overall, I can’t say I had any favorite or least favorite experiences from my first Blaugust experience. It was all good, no exceptional highs or lows. I learned some stuff, I wrote a bunch of stuff, and I feel like I’ve made good use of this little slice of the Internet I call mine.
I’m almost 40 at the time of writing. That’s a long time, full of much advice both received and given. I couldn’t tell you the best of either, but a few do stand out.
First and foremost: this too shall pass. What challenges you face, you will either overcome them, or they will overcome you, but in the end, all is ephemeral. Some see this as demoralizing, I consider it comforting. The world exists without my permission or effort, and will continue to exist without me, as it existed before me. I am here to partake, and I should remember that and enjoy it. Related, Momento Mori (roughly, “remember that you will die”).
Much of the advice I find most helpful comes from the ancient Stoics. The “Broicism” of tech has tarnished the philosophy, no doubt, but the wisdom of the ancient Stoics is one of resilience in the face of reality: we control nothing except our perceptions, our reactions, and even then only through great challenge and effort. We are faulty, imperfect, ephemeral, but also we are potential. Potential for joy, potential to improve our selves and to help those around us. Stoicism, actual Stoicism, is a pursuit of community, to build up ourselves in order to build up others.
I’ve mentioned before that I am rather easily inspired by heroism, but not just the Marvel-Hollywood-Popcorn types. In fact it is mostly by the mundane acts of heroism that I am grounded, and forced to reflect on my own actions and ask if I am pursuing the life of virtue I seek to.
Two last notes: I remember fondly a piece of advice I gave in a roleplaying game. I was playing as a ranger, I think in a HackMaster game (can’t quite remember - this was 20 years ago…), and we came upon an angry nature spirit of sorts. It was hell-bent on murdering the encroachment of civilization upon the land. I approached the creature with no hostile intent, and we spoke. I reminded it that civilization is fleeting, and while it may temporarily blemish the landscape, it won’t last forever, and that the world will continue, and heal, and forget the civilization ever happened. I then reminded the spirit: there is no strength in rigidity. Even the mightiest tree must learn to bend with a storm, else it will break. I think about that advice often, because I believe it to be true in everything.
And I’ll leave you with this, When You Grow Up, Your Heart Dies, by GUNSHIP
This is a post in the 2026 Blaugust Series. You can find more details here. If I get my act together, I’ll include a link to an index, or a list of other posts related to Blaugust 2026 right here. Thanks for reading this ramble. Be good, do good, stay hydrated, go Bills.
]]>You know the drill: As provided in this post, here are week 4’s prompts:
I’m… generally not very motivated. I tend to enjoy passive activities. Or, at least, lower energy activities. That isn’t to say I’m a sedentary log. I enjoy riding my bike, golfing, taking walks, and spending time outdoors. But I also very much enjoy slow, lazy mornings, catching up on YouTube videos and drinking coffee on my couch.
I suppose that doesn’t really factor into motivation, but what does is that I often think a lot about things, but less often do I just do the thing. And almost all the time, “Just Do The Thing” is the solution to most of my hesitations. It’s easy for me to over-think or complicate ambitions, and I get so wrapped up in unnecessary distractions, that I don’t ever just “do the thing.”
Perfect example: live-streaming. Last post I mentioned how I’ve wanted to try streaming regularly for years. Why do I not? Because I get bogged down in needless details and complications, instead of just turning on the stream and playing something! It goes something like this:
“I don’t want to jump into a game mid play-through, so I’ll need to start a new play-through (1), and I’ll want to make sure they’re all recorded so I have a playlist of the play-through (2). Oh, but do I want to stream to Twitch? I’d rather not depend on The Bezos and instead stream to something like Peertube! (3) And if that’s the case, should I stream to an existing instance, or setup my own? (4) Maybe I should dual-stream it? (5) Can I do that from OBS on Linux? (6) Can I export from Peertube to YouTube? (7) Does that even make sense? (8)
And on and on. That’s 8 distractions in a single paragraph of needless complications. Self-hosting Peertube sounds awesome, but you know what it doesn’t do? Actually. Stream. A. Game. Just do the thing, Bill. Just do the thing.
How do I keep myself motivated? Poorly. It’s one of the biggest challenges I face daily. All things considered, I suppose that’s rather fortunate, but it bleeds into every part of my life. My lack of motivation extends beyond something inconsequential like live-streaming, and touches on actual work, dieting and exercise, home-ownership, personal projects, and more. And these are things which are well within my reach; all very possible. Asking how to keep motivated when something feels impossible seems an inappropriate question for me to approach at this time.
What about scoped to blogging? My goals for this Blaugust, the first I’ve learned of let alone “participated” in, were relatively simple: post once a week. Assuming I post next week, I will have accomplished this goal. I also set for myself some secondary goals, to leverage Blaugust to write some posts about topics that I’m interested in, and also that I know will benefit from me writing about them. TMUX was the poster-child of this, and I do have a TMUX post, and I have made progress learning about TMUX and applying it to my setup, but that TMUX post ain’t done yet, and that’s basically because other things have taken precedence. That being said, another hope was that blogging more would show me that blogging doesn’t have to be a challenging thing to do, and I do think I’ve taken that lesson to heart. It’s easy for me to just spin up a draft, start writing, and push it to my forge for later. The challenge is remembering it later.
As for what drives me to blog, I can’t really point to anything specifically. I don’t think I even expect others to read these posts. I guess, I see it as taking advantage of this Internet Real Estate that is my domain, to post some thoughts or discoveries or just rant a bit. I do have this romanticized notion of getting more involved in the Indie Web or Small/Smol Web, and building some good relationships with other random Internet people, and maybe some day that will materialize, but I can’t say I expect that to happen from this blog.
All-in-all, I’m happy with this Blaugust experience. I posted some stuff, got some project ideas, and overall feel that I’ve grown more comfortable with this little tech stack of mine.
Oh, goals. I’m bad with goals. Like motivation, goals don’t seem to hold much sway over my focus. I’ve set many a goal, but I’ve just as quickly forgotten about those goals, or been drawn to other ambitions before those goals. There are many markers in my graveyard of forgotten and forsaken goals. Heck, I started this year with two “yearly” goals: get back to a healthier lifestyle, lose some weight, and start tracking all that; and get a better grasp on my finances, and start tracking them. I have done… neither. It’s August, so I suppose there’s still time.
Completing my basic Blaugust goal (one post a week) will feel nice, but likely not have any lasting impressions.
Thinking back on my life, there are two significant achievements I feel proud of: the first is losing over 100 pounds of weight, and the second is taking singing lessons. The weight-loss motivation was 70-30, others-to-personal. I had great gym buddies and a wonderful personal trainer who all helped keep me on-track, both with exercise and diet, and there was also a girl. Personally, once I started seeing my weight drop in a pretty consistent fashion, it felt more and more possible for me to actually achieve my goals, and that loop helped a lot. I felt better, I looked better, and that feedback kept me focused.
Singing lessons is my poster child for “Just Do The Thing.” I mentioned to some friends I’ve always wanted to get more confidence singing. One of them said I should take lessons. That afternoon, I looked up local coaches, and signed up with one. Working with that coach was incredibly rewarding, and I made some great contacts through the entire experience. Unfortunately, my coach left because she’s awesome and got accepted to a very prestigious school, and so singing lessons have stalled, but I feel much more confident singing in front of others now. Which is nice. Staying motivated here was also partially motivated by others (my coach, those connections, support from friends and family) and by myself (building that confidence, hearing compliments and encouragement, having fun).
I am, despite my best attempts, relentlessly optimistic and hopeful. This often translates into feelings of “the indomitable human spirit,” for however short they may manifest, and I can always somehow dig deep enough to find motivation. For example, I’ve recently been going through job interviews and also trying to establish more clients for my own personal business. With regards to the former, the thought of this job opportunity not working out fills me with an overwhelming amount of defeat. With regards to the later, the thought of seeking out more clients to find more work feels exhausting. Yet, in both cases, I have felt myself rally to overcome these feelings. Despite this seemingly overwhelming amount of suck, I still feel that power metal-inspired relentless call to glory. I’ve listened to too much awesome music, read too many heroic tales, and played too many absurd video games to ever have the option to give up. I am deliriously inspired by heroism, in all forms, and whenever an opportunity arises that I can channel that inspiration, whether consciously or not, I eagerly do so. Motivation is hard for me to find, but never out of reach. Sometimes, I just need to listen to some DragonForce to find it.
This is a post in the 2026 Blaugust Series. You can find more details here. If I get my act together, I’ll include a link to an index, or a list of other posts related to Blaugust 2026 right here. Thanks for reading this ramble. Be good, do good, stay hydrated, go Bills.
]]>Another week gone by! It’s been a busy one, and while compiling a few other posts and thoughts, I wanted to get these prompts out the text-editor, so to speak.
As provided in this post, here are week 3’s prompts:
Lots of tops! I’m gonna skip over the actors/directors/screenwriters questions, since I can barely think of 5 names, let alone a list of favorites!
For a long while, I’ve had Hacker News and Lobsters as RSS feeds in my aggregator. Easily, these two feeds alone give me 200-300 entries per day. Of those, I’d probably look at 5-10 on average. That’s not a very good “signal-to-noise ratio”, and so I’m giving Hacker News the ol’ “get ratio’d” (as the kids say (What? What do you mean it’s different now?)) and disabling it for a bit. Instead, I want to find more individual sites to subscribe to. This means digging through comments, blogrolls, meta-posts and such to find more reading sources. It’s been a while coming, but Blaugust is a perfect excuse for change, and this week specifically was the week I wanted to do so! Anyway, preamble complete, here are some of the top sites I watch for updates (via RSS, of course!):
A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, by Dr. Bret C. Devereaux, is a blog about history, often specifically ancient warfare and related topics, though sometimes dipping into pop-culture and fantasy topics. Each post (or series of posts) always teach me something, the writing is enjoyable and accessible, and the topics are always interesting.
Barking Up The Wrong Tree, by Eric Barker, is a bi-weekly blog generally about self-help and psychology. I’ve gone through the self-help House of Mirrors already, and I’m not generally excited or interested in the topic, but I enjoy Eric’s coverage of a wide range of sources, and I enjoy his writing style!
Drew DeVault’s Blog, by Drew DeVault, covers mostly technology topics, and especially recently a number of discussions about AI. I admire Drew’s creations and ambition, and think he is a strong and positive force in the technology space these days. I always learn something from his posts.
fyr.io, by Matt, is a personal blog about tech and indieweb stuff, and is one which often provides me with many links to check out, sometimes through the Scraps series.
Lazybears, by Hyde, is a personal blog talking about life and tech and stuff, with some wonderful pictures tossed in, and the series “Over/Under.” I forget where I first learned of the blog (I think it was either Scrolls or Scraps), and I’ve loved every update since!
Low <- Tech Magazine, founded by Kris De Decker and now supported by a full team, covers low-tech solutions to modern-day problems. Always fascinating.
Scrolls, by Mike Sass, is actually only a small part of Shellsharks, and I’ve only just realized that while reviewing this list! Scrolls is a great update about the indieweb, and another infection vector of more blogs for me to read.
Smashing Frames, by Jürgen Geuter/tante, covers technology with a rather heavy anti-AI lean. Self-described as a Luddite, tante actually inspired me to properly learn about the Luddites.
Where’s Your Ed At?, by Ed Zitron, is a recent addition to my list. He was recommended by Cory Doctorow during his recent Weekly Show with John Stewart appearance. From what I can tell, the blog focuses a lot on AI and finance. I’ve only read 3 of the recent posts, but they have been thoroughly enjoyable and informative.
There are a number of musicians that I watch on YouTube, who are more music education and discussion focused. For this section, I want to list some of the artists that I listen to regularly. I scrobble most of my listens to Listenbrainz, if you’re extra curious about my listening habits.
young scrolls makes music using the voice lines from various Elder Scrolls games. It’s legit some of my favorite music. Recommended Tracks: Amulet of Kings, Aura Merchant, Secret Service
Gygax plays Dungeons and Dragons themed rock-and-roll. Recommended Tracks: Light Bender, Second Wind
The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets makes music generally focused around Lovecraftian horror, but, like, up-beat and a bit cheeky. Recommended Tracks: The Great Molassas Disaster, Welcome to the Island
Westkust was an indierock/shoegaze group, that I first heard on a stream. Just good stuff. Recommended Tracks: All of them, on repeat and shuffle, while driving through a field of wild flowers.
The Protomen have created a three-part Mega Man rock opera. They are incredible live. Recommended Tracks: The three parts of the rock opera, in order, start to finish. Light it up!
toe is a Japanese group, playing indie/jam rock stuff. Love throwing it on and reading to it. Recommended Tracks: Song Silly, tremolo + delay, NOW I SEE THE LIGHT
I’m also a fan of some more well-known artists, such as Blue Oyster Cult, Yes, Above & Beyond, Iron Maiden, and the usual charcuterie of video game soundtracks.
I’m splitting YouTube channels and streamers, since these are two sizable lists already, and I’d rather dedicate space to each individually. That being said, I have 165 YouTube channels in my feeds. There are several which I don’t watch, or which haven’t updated in a while, but I watch the majority of those channels. Thus, I’m going to try and grab 1-2 from each of the categories that I setup in my aggregator, with perhaps gaming and music getting closer to 5 each. Also, I apologize in advance, I have named these categories poorly, and now you get to see that, too. Add it to the list of things to reorganize and clean-up a bit, I guess!
Artsy
Crafty
Cooking
Gaming
Oh gosh. There are 38 feeds in this category. Cooking had 13 and I struggled to exclude some. I’m limiting myself here to 5 of the lesser-known creators I watch.
Music
40 feeds in this one. Stay strong, Bill - only 5!
Take a Breath
It’s not a topic, just a need for me. The last couple topics, and in fact all of the above, all have a similar naming scheme of “Topic Bois”, because I guess why not, and these last topics are the least structured: “Smart Bois”, “Talky Bois”, and “Tech Bois”. There are channels in these topics that may belong in others, and there are channels I’ve already mentioned that might belong in one of these. Alas, reorganization calls yet again.
Smart
38 feeds again. This is the category for philosophy, science, mathematics, and similar. Each of these channels is certainly worth a share, but again I’ll highlight only a few.
Talky
Aren’t they all talky? 95% of the recommendations thus far have been “talky.” sigh
Tech
Now, of all the channels I’ve shared, of all the feeds I have, I’d expect this category to be the fullest. There are… drum roll 3! 3 feeds (ah ah ah) are in this category. Have them all:
itsoveritsdone-frodo.gif
I basically watch all livestreams via Twitch. I’d love to find more fediverse/self-hosted streamers (a la Peertube or Owncast et al), and I’d love to become one of those streamers, but for now, you get a list of Twitch streamers. Twitch is probably the biggest source of entertainment for me these days, whether it be live or VODs. I almost always have a stream on in the background while I’m gaming, or writing, or reading, or really anything that otherwise doesn’t require dedicated visual and aural attention. I follow some very popular streamers, but again, here are my top lesser-known streamers:
Behold, my section of shame. One of my goals is to read more actual books. That being said, I have a few recommendations:
My favorite hobby: modding Bethesda games playing video games. I just wrote
a post about Vicn’s DAc0da, and
that post includes quite a few other mods listed. There are a number of
large-scale collaborative modding projects that I will have to dedicate
another/several post(s) to: Tamriel Rebuilt
and Project Tamriel are focused on
rebuilding and exploring the world of Tamriel in Morrowind.
OpenMW is an open-source engine you can use to play
Morrowind on modern day hardware, and with some impressive functionality that
greatly expands modding possibilities. Beyond
Skyrim is focused on rebuilding and exploring the
world of Tamriel in Skyrim.
As far as specific developers go, a few of the larger indie studios that I’m consistently impressed with are Hello Games, the relentless team behind No Man’s Sky; Supergiant Games, the studio behind Hades and Bastion (and Pyre and Transistor); and ArenaNet, the studio behind the Guild Wars MMOs.
I want to finally mention a few cool game or game-adjacent projects. First, I’ve had a blast developing games using the TIC-80, as well as the LÖVE game engine, and the DragonRuby game toolkit. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is an absurdly comprehensive post-multi-apocalyptic game with an incredibly deep crafting system. The Kingdom of Loathing is a browser-based, text-based, meat-based adventure game that I’ve enjoyed for more than half of my life. Luanti is an open-source voxel game creation platform (most known as an alternative to Minecraft). And to wrap up the aforementioned modding talk, Amethyst Mod Manager is a Linux native mod manager for many games.
I’ve been telling many friends for many years now that I’d like to try streaming. I often stream to and with friends in Discord, and I’ve streamed a handfull of times on Twitch, but my true ambition is to stream to something like Peertube. Owning my channel, my content, and the distribution of it. It’s a lot to setup and manage, and requires administrative duties and such. And I can’t even say if I’d use it! I’ve decided a much smarter approach is to begin streaming on a schedule, keep consistent on that schedule, and, if after 3-4 months I still enjoy it, then I can consider moving to a self-hosted solution.
I would also like to pursue music more seriously. I enjoy playing bass and mandolin, and I’m growing more confident singing, and I think it’d be a lot of fun to play in a band with some friends. I have no interest in trying to make a career from it, but playing enough to put an album up on Bandcamp would be super cool.
I didn’t want to include these in the blog section, but I’d feel remiss to not include them!
Hopefully you find something in this ridiculous list that’s worth the time! It also makes sense to me to share my entire feed list, since that’s kind of what this is all about. You can find it here.
This is a post in the 2026 Blaugust Series. You can find more details here. If I get my act together, I’ll include a link to an index, or a list of other posts related to Blaugust 2026 right here. Thanks for reading this ramble. Be good, do good, stay hydrated, go Bills.
]]>While working on that TMUX post I mentioned, I figured I could pump out another prompt post! Here’s week two, as provided in this post:
I’m going to say Twitch/gaming live-streams. I really like watching folks play games. Especially games which are fascinating to me, but I may not want to play, or don’t feel that I can dedicate the time to play. For example, The X-COM Files, or Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead.
I would like to regularly stream gameplay and development work myself, but I haven’t committed to a schedule yet.
I’ve always enjoyed the notion of a vagabond. A wanderer for work, someone not really ever at home in one place for too long. That’s how the Internet has always felt to me: a place you wander, you explore, maybe with a home-base, but often without. It’s what I like about the Internet. And so, “The Internet Vagabond” was born. I do wish, and perhaps I’ll change this eventually, that the blog/URL was instead “An Internet Vagabond.”
After college, I moved back home to look for a job, and my mom bought me 10 years of registration for this domain as a birthday gift. That really solidified it, and I’ve used it on-and-off since then. Checking into it, I believe it was first registered in 2010!
I’ll also throw a little bonus fact in here: my online handle for a while has been “Azulien”, which is the name of a D&D character I came up with when I was younger. I eventually modified it to “Vagabond Azulien”.
The phrasing of this question amuses me, because I don’t consider blogging to be a hobby. My biggest hobby is probably gaming, of all varieties: I regularly play video games; I’ve been playing table-top RPGs for over 25 years now, and specifically have been in the same Pathfinder campaign for 15 years; and I love hosting board-game nights! I also enjoy programming, and technology in general. I enjoy building my own computers, configuring and choosing the software I use, and generally understanding how things work. I try to golf on average once a week during the warmer times. I like cooking, especially baking, and I consider it one of the best life skills one can develop.
I live in Buffalo, NY, and I consider it one of the best cities to live in. I am a bit biased.
Buffalo has amazing food, punching well above its weight in terms of quality and variety. We have incredible art, music, and theatre scenes. We’re located on the Great Lakes, with easy access to lakes Erie and Ontario, and, of course, Niagara Falls. Despite being known, in part, for our rough winters, our weather tends to be mild. We get all the seasons (False August, August, Pre-Winter, August 2, Maybe Winter, August 3: The Return of August, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Winter, Potholes, Surprise 70-degree Day in January, Winter, Pre-Spring, Still Winter, Spring, Nope! Still Winter, Spring For Realzies, and Summer). Generally speaking, costs in this region are a bit lower than average.
Buffalo is a friendly place, with passionate folks. Blue-collar, mid-Western (U.S.A) in spirit, but by no means posers. We are the City of Good Neighbors, and we try to uphold that naming. Heck, we literally sang the Canadian National Anthem once at a hockey game when the mic cut out. Because that’s what a good neighbor does, they help you out. (Fun fact: Buffalo hockey games always include the Canadian National Anthem, regardless of teams.)
Come to Buffalo, get some surprisingly phenomenal food, enjoy the weather and friendly faces, and do so all on a resonable budget. And if you like to party, then rejoice! Our bars stay open until 4 A.M.!
I write all my posts in Vim, as Markdown files. My blog lives in a
repository,
which leverages a Forgejo runner
workflow
to build the site using Jekyll and update the pages
branch of the repository. Then a webhook pushes that branch to a self-hosted
git-pages instance.
While writing, I will often run Jekyll locally to verify things look good.
Spoiler: I’ll have more to write about this workflow in a future Blaugust post.
As antithetical as it is, I think there are actually a number of mundane skills that are basically magical/super powers. Cooking is one. Programming is another. I think learning some of these skills enable so much enjoyment, opportunity, and reward that it’s crazy everyone doesn’t pursue them.
As for a more typical answer, I think super intelligence is probably the super power I’d choose. Tony Stark and The Engineer (from Stormwatch/The Authority) both exemplify the possibilities of being just gosh-darned smart. You can augment your reality to facilitate your continued growth and success. Super intelligence provides alternatives for almost every other super power. Some of the easy ones: flight, super strength, invisibility, any sort of social manipulation, fabrication, super agility, disease immunity, regeneration.
I like to think I would use my super intelligence for good. Ideally, leveraging it to “play the game” of modern day capitalism, generating wealth and jobs for folks, while helping to reinvest and distribute the wealth I generate for myself to those who need it. I’d create, fund, and deploy solutions for disease, climate change, mental health, food and water, and sustainability. Granted, I would likely do so in whichever way would actually be impactful, which means sometimes underhaded, and sometimes fully known.
This is a post in the 2026 Blaugust Series. You can find more details here. If I get my act together, I’ll include a link to an index, or a list of other posts related to Blaugust 2026 right here. Thanks for reading this ramble. Be good, do good, stay hydrated, go Bills.
]]>Thus far, I have kept to my “Blaugust Goal” of posting at least once a week. In fact, publishing this post will bring my Blaugust-related posts alone up to the total number of posts from the previous 2 years.
I have plenty of things I want to write about or do this August, but, by golly, doesn’t life just have a way.
The beginning of this week was relatively normal. I had picked up an extra shift at work, so I had resigned myself to thinking of this week as a wash. Though my job isn’t exactly demanding, it does take up time during a day, and thus is a block of time I cannot do other things during. It is a responsibility. This scheduling anomoly indicated an unusual week.
Monday and Tuesday each saw posts, one about a Scion campaign I’m working on, and the second answering the Blaugust Week 1 prompts. I also have a few drafts started, for topics I’m looking forward to exploring later in the month.
Wednesday was a bit busy. I see a personal trainer Wednesday mornings, after which I was a bit rushed to clean myself up and get to work. After that, I franticly finished a Pathfinder character for the weekly Pathfinder game I’ve been in for, like, 14 years now. I’m proud to say I have continued the tradition of a magus not living past its first session.
Thursday, I wake up, enjoy a slow morning, wander into my office, and hear a slight scraping coming from my wall, near a window. Looking out the window, I see quite a lot of yellow jackets. Putting 1 and 1 together, I’m delighted to announce I have a yellow jacket nest in my wall. And that, to borrow perhaps an older term at this point, tilted me. I bought some spray, and have been trying to manage it, and I’ve been doing damage! There are, literally, dead yellow jackets laying on my roof near this window. Oh, but how unsettling it is to hear something eating your house! And the nightmarish thought of them bursting into my room, like the blown-open garage door in an action movie! Swarms of tiny little nuisances! Surprisingly, I played a great game of golf Thursday evening. Unsurprisingly, I slept horribly.
Friday, I continue the War of the Wasp. Work is busy but uneventful. Friday evening, some more golf, but this time with a friend who is just starting off. This was his first foray onto a proper course, so we played a scramble (we each hit a ball, and then play from the best positioning; also called best-ball). We did very well (which, yeah! Hopefully!)! After, we grabbed dinner, and I returned to my home. The chomping in the wall continues, but I spent time in the room and relaxed a bit. I slept much better last night.
That brings us to today. My dad is bringing over some dust he has had good results with to try and clear out those wasps for good. I’ve got work, which should be tame. And I’m trying to figure out when things will “return to normal.” Which is a funny thing, the notion of normal.
The past couple days have not been terribly unusual for me. Work, golf, coffee, catching up on vids and feeds. Those wasps, though, planted a seed of consistent worry. Throughout all the usual was a tint of concern. Like a filter suddenly applied to all my pictures; it made everything just a bit off. It’s interesting to note the emotional rollercoaster as I’m riding it, which was a large part of Thursday: Discover the problem, grow very concerned. Buy some spray to mitigate, feel less concerned, start to feel capable. Spray-and-pray, see problem persists, start to feel hopeless, failure is certain, my house is borked, and it’s all my fault. Find other resources, reach out for help, renew feelings of success and accomplishment. Now, there’s the usual mix of feelings around a task which needs doing: focus, a bit of over-analyzing, the flirting thoughts of absolute failure and success, an eagerness to get it done. What irks me most, though, are those feelings of defeat so soon after starting to fix the problem. The notion that the problem wasn’t fixed immediately, combined with this dread that the wasps would destroy everything immediately, brought a significant sense of urgency to a problem which could not be solved immediately. Which only fosters more anxiety. It’s a bad train of thought, and one I will seek to avoid taking in the future. Easier said than done, but at least being mindful will help to break the cycle a bit.
In any case, I’m not being a good home-owner. Luckily, my dad’s the type of guy who has to always be busy. I’m hoping he can help me shore up some of my neglect, patching holes or cracks around the outside of my house. This isn’t the first time pests have been a problem, and it certainly won’t be the last, but having an understanding of how and where these problems arise will help me approach and resolve them better in the future.
Anyway, as far as Blaugust is concerned: I had hoped to dive into TMUX Thursday afternoon. That post will be delayed, but I’m still focused on it next. I’ve got 3-4 other topics I want to cover during Blaugust, which includes some actual project work too. As I move through the proper resolution for these wasps, I hope to keep putting at least a bit of time towards writing and exploring my site!
]]>I’ll just hop into it then, yeah? Here be dragons the prompts, as they are
presented (and link to the
post):
One of the blogs I read mentioned it. Here’s that post at fyr.io. I also speak a bit about this in my first Blaugust post:
I’ve long wanted to write more, mostly as a means to catalog some ideas and also to keep tabs on my progress. Though, sometimes in the hopes it finds others who share an interest, and perhaps they reach out. Conversations, connections, community - all that jazz.
Nope! Read about it on July 31st, after rambling about DAc0da, and figured I’d give it a go.
I’m certain I’ve heard of it before this year. Can’t recall exactly when or where. Either in my feeds, or in a Discord community I’m in.
Again, not sure about this one. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some blogs I follow which participated in Blaugust. I think I would be surprised if any started because of Blaugust. In week 3, I’ll have a proper compiled list of some of those blogs. When I review that, I think I’ll try to figure this out!
Well, the very first post on this blog is a compilation of the travel logs of my visit to Ireland, in the halcyon days of yore (2010). It’s rather fun going back to review them, both for the obvious reason of remembering times in Ireland, but also for the tangential little snippets. Reading it still “reads” like me; I don’t think I’ve changed my… uh… voice? Much since then. My writing voice. I love reading my little updates on Kingdom of Loathing. I played much more consistently back then, but still dip in every now and again (I’m Azulien, #1214857). Also, we ate a lot of Chinese food in Ireland.
That being said, I don’t think this was my first blog post ever. I can’t remember what that could be. I remember trying to figure out a name, and figuring out where I’ll blog, and exploring self-hosted options. Though at the time it wasn’t really “self-hosting” as I understand and participate today. It was more owning my own domain, and then figuring out how to use that. To me, back then, that was self-hosting. I still had bright eyes and hope for the Big Tech companies, thinking they could really bring about such cool and positive changes.
A friend suggested the name “Billettante”, as a port manteau of “Bill” (my name) and “Dilettante” (noun, One who dabbles in an art or a field of knowledge). I still rather like that name; I should figure out how I could use it…
Post at least once a week. No topic focus or anything, just make one post a week. The reason I don’t do this normally is, basically and literally, I forget to. There are many, many things in my life that don’t get done because I forget to do them. They range in importance.
When it comes to writing, because it’s a task which does require some specialized attention (writing the post in a dedicated directory of a dedicated repository, with specific formatting), I perceive a barrier of difficulty, whether it’s the case or not. This little bit of friction is often enough for me to pivot to something else, and then I forget I wanted to write something.
It’s a bad habit, and something I want to lessen, which is a side-effect I’m hoping to realize. A related side-effect is building a good habit of “just doing the thing.” By keeping to a schedule and completing a task, I’m hoping I can translate that effort to other pursuits, such as practicing music, tracking my food, and working on my various programming projects.
While the goal is simply one post a week, I do want to try “hijacking” a post or two to talk about something I’ve wanted to get done, and get it done in the process. The biggest example of this is TMUX. That’s the next post.
This is a post in the 2026 Blaugust Series. You can find more details here. If I get my act together, I’ll include a link to an index, or a list of other posts related to Blaugust 2026 right here. Thanks for reading this ramble. Be good, do good, stay hydrated, go Bills.
]]>I’ll just dump the ideas that inspired this one, to get into it. First off, there’s this note I left myself, as a voice-to-text recording, after my cousin’s wedding, in Maine:
All right the party starts at a wedding. Unbeknownst to the party the wedding is infiltrated by cultists. The cultists worship some elder god one that lives deep beneath the ocean unknown to mankind. At the wedding the adventure begins with the party celebrating. After a few drinks suddenly the music shifts in tone and they start to notice odd glyphs glowing on the walls. As they glance around themselves they noticed that certain members of the wedding guests whom they had not been introduced to perhaps guests whom had previously not even been aware of draw ceremonial daggers. The party has an option they can stay and fight or they can escape into the Mist filled evening of the small town that the event is taking place in. The remainder of the adventure is the party trying to make their way back to their room to get their car keys to escape. The final boss so to speak of the adventure is a corrupted moose that the party encounters on a misty Road in the town.
A quick aside: the wedding took place in a small town called Belfast, and at night it got legit foggy. Like, I understand why you might think spooky shit is about to happen in these little towns along the coast in New England now.
Anyway, that’s part 1. Here’s part two, which is a journal entry of mine from 2023, December 23:
Table starts as a free-form RPG, no character sheets. Story is about a small town that the party is visiting for leisure. Nice town, welcoming, one-street-light type vibe. That evening, party gathers for dinner at the local restaurant (yes, the restaurant. And the bar.), when the town’s doctor runs in, frantic, babbling, white as a sheet. Folks try to calm him down, party hears something about Joan coming back from the dead. The sheriff, sitting at the bar with his deputy, overhears what’s going on, reassures the doctor that doesn’t happen, and offers to go take a look. Him and the deputy leave.
Unless party does something, dinner continues. Doctor is escorted to a table, given a drink, where he just stares at it. Folks start to loosen up a bit, jokes about the doc sniffing too many embalming vapors. Sheriff and deputy don’t return.
After dinner, party leaves the restaurant, and out on to the street. Inevitably they pass by the police station, and see the doors ajar, and lights on. They hear a gunshot, then silence. Perhaps something else to hook them into investigating.
Anyway, some other stuff happens, they find the zombie Joan, and the dead-but-infected sheriff, and the infected-but-not-dead-yet deputy. Deputy recounts what happens, Joan and the sheriff attack.
If the party manages to take them out, the building gets suddenly bathed in light, and a man in a suit approaches them. He tells them that they’ve encountered some strange stuff, and gives them a choice: they can known more, or they can know less. If they choose to know less, that’s the end of that character. If they choose to know more, that’s how the campaign continues. Then it becomes X-COM THE RPG BABEEE!
Here’s what I’m thinking:
- All characters start with baseline stats
- Between each session, characters can take one “training”, which improves some of their stats. Examples:
- Basic Training: +1 everything
- Combat Training: +1 combat stuff
- Special Operations Training: +1 sneaky stuff
- Officer Training: +1 combat stuff, +1 social stuff, requires Basic Training first.
- Each session is a mission, with a clear objective, that the group must accomplish. Can take inspiration from some of the Open X-COM missions I’ve seen:
- Crop circles appearing, and need to subdue crazed farmers
- Cults. Lots of cult stuff
- Zombies
- Strange life forms, cryptobiology stuff (big foot, yeti, chupacabra, etc.)
- Each success brings new technology, equipment, and training.
- Some kind of resource management tied to researching new technology, training, equipment, and such. Keep it simple, similar to training perhaps: between each session, group decides what research to pursue.
“Then it becomes X-COM THE RPG BABEEE!” Easy peasy. Thanks for reading.
The little extra bits in that list is part of what’s inspiring my own system, which maybe I’ll detail in a later entry. Also, this entry was most certainly inspired in part by Joan Crawford, by Blue Oyster Cult. What I want to talk about now is modifying these above ideas into the beginning of a Scion campaign.
The gist of it is similar: the PC’s will be initiates in a globe-spanning secret organization that tries to tackle dealing with that “strange stuff” that folks encounter. My current idea is that the PC’s start with a handler, and as the party progresses they get to meet higher-ups. The organization is run by a demi-god of Bast, the Egyptian cat-headed goddess, and employs both scions and mortals that have been gifted knowledge of this secret world.
Now, my campaigns tend to be a bit railroad-y because I really like telling stories. I don’t try to stop player characters from doing much, but I try to finish telling the story I want to tell. In this case, I think I can avoid some of that, due to the nature of the “adventures” being rather episodic. It’s a bit like The X-Files, or like X-COM: each adventure is mostly self-contained, with some themes running throughout. The strange life-forms appearing in a small town, the result of some Titan cultists getting up to no good. Damn kids.
The twist (always a twist; very essential) is that the organization might not be all good guys. Gods have their ambitions, and just because some of them are fighting against “evil” forces doesn’t mean they’re all friends. Heck, this isn’t even the only globe-spanning secret organization that tries to tackle dealing with that “strange stuff” that folks encounter. If the party doesn’t want to join, they might get approached by another organization. Maybe they’re not exactly given an option to join, but forced to. Maybe another organization breaks them out, and now the party has to figure out how to move forward. In any case, I want to tell my story. The story here is that Bast has joined the Titans, and thus this organization actually works for them. While it keeps up the facade of doing “good guy” stuff, that’s only to throw-off the newbies from the real missions.
What about those other organizations? I’m gonna say other organization. Singular. I don’t think we need too many more. There can be the Bast-based one, then a second one, and then an independent network of underground do-gooders that know what’s going on, obviously don’t trust the Bast one, but also don’t like the second one. Like the conspiracy guys from X-Files: they trust Moulder, kind-of, but they sure-as-heck don’t trust The Government.
Here’s the gist thus far:
Party experiences some “strange stuff,” after which they are approached by a man in a suit, who invites them to a secret organization of other scions and demi-gods devoted to dealing with other “strange stuff” happenings.
At this point is a junction: the party can accept the invitation, or refuse. Refusal might mean being abducted and imprisioned. This would then prompt a rescue attempt by the other secret organization. This would then present another junction: the party can join with the other organization, or strike it out on their own.
Accepting the invitation brings the PC’s into the Bast-based secret organization. They are quickly initiated into the goings-on, perhaps even given some nice gear, and are given a task.
Joining their rescuers, the PC’s are immediately told the truth about the first organization, and are asked to help bring them down. They are given some nice gear, and are given a task.
The party either escapes on their own, avoids entirely the abduction from the OG Secret Organization, or refuses to join the Other Secret Organization. They now have a known antagonistic force (OG Secret Organization), and a shady uncertain second force (Other Secret Organization). They must fend for themselves, potentially against both.
Here’s what remains; the details that need doing:
Then there’s the meta-game stuff. I need to remember how to play Scion, and also need to feel confident enough to run a game of Scion. I’ll likely stick to the First Edition of the game, since that’s what I know best, but I’ve heard the Second Edition introduces some nifty things.
And, of course, the game needs a party! And scions become scions when they get visited by their divine parent/guardian. That generally includes handing them their divine gifts, and some brief explanations of things, though not always. So either the party already had their visits, or that happens as part of this adventure.
I think it’s a fun start. It leaves things relatively open-ended for me as a storyteller to build some smaller missions, while still building an over-arching narrative to dip into when I wish. It does help with scheduling as well, since each “self-contained” mission won’t necessarily need all members there. That also means it could be a game with many party members, and once a threshold of players is met, we run a session.
This is a post in the 2026 Blaugust Series. You can find more details here. If I get my act together, I’ll include a link to an index, or a list of other posts related to Blaugust 2026 right here. Thanks for reading this ramble. Be good, do good, go Bills.
]]>There’s a “thing” called love Blaugust, which is, as far as I can tell, a
community-driven initiative to encourage humans to blog often throughout August.
There’s an announcement post for it,
here,
and also fyr.io mentioned it. I actually
read fyr’s post yesterday, shortly after I had rambled my way through my first
Skyrim post about DAc0da. It inspired
me to give it a go. I’ve long wanted to write more, mostly as a means to catalog
some ideas and also to keep tabs on my progress. Though, sometimes in the hopes
it finds others who share an interest, and perhaps they reach out.
Conversations, connections, community - all that jazz. There are actually some
communities setup around Blaugust, such as a Discord and I think a forum, but
I’m not interested in all that just yet. I know I just said I’m interested in
community and what not, but joining a Discord related to writing blog posts
feels like a very convenient way to convince myself I’m “doing the thing”, while
not actually doing the thing.
Or maybe I’m just nervous to join, or feel unwelcomed pre-emptively, or don’t quite feel like “the proper type of person” to join. All of those sounds like silly little reasons I’d avoid something. Very silly indeed. For now, let’s put them aside.
Instead, I want to ramble a bit about some writing things that I want to approach during August.
There’s an older TTRPG called Scion. Some friends and I played it while I was in college (20 years ago…), and it always brings back great memories. My friend Chris was a big driving force behind the game, both running it and encouraging others to run it. I never ran a game myself, but I definitely enjoyed playing in them.
Scion is a game in which the player characters are divine offspring of gods. Mythological gods, like the Greek gods, or the Hindu “gods” (which, some liberties are taken, and it’s more like the “Greatest Hits” of the Hindu gods; similar with Japanese gods). In any case, each character receives divine gifts, and with them and the divine guidance of NPCs or allies, you pursue a goal. The kinda “meta-goal” being to achieve divinity, which is the super cool word apotheosis. A word I learned from Daggerfall - not playing it, mind you, but watching someone play it (Grimith, specifically!), and only like 2 years ago. I’m sure it’s in the Scion books somewhere, too.
Regardless, you make cool characters, go on cool adventures; good times, great
oldies. What I have not done, at least not in any significant capacity, is run a
game. I’ve had a friend voice interest in playing Scion, and it wouldn’t be hard
to get some other friends together, aside from the perpetual final boss of
tabletop. And thus, a thing I want to
write down in August: the idea and some explorations of a Scion game I would
like to eventually run. I’m all but certain nobody I know reads my posts, so
I’m none too worried about spoilers. How lucky.
I already wrote part 1! There are so many more adventures for Watches-The-World (that’s my character; she’s an argonian!) and I look forward to gushing more about Vicn’s next several mods, and maybe other authors’ as well!
Since I was laid-off a few years ago, I’ve spent a decent amount of time pursuing the original reason I went to school: game development. I never did game-dev professionally, and really never programmed any of the ideas I’d come up with over the years, until I had free time. A blessing, and a curse. Burnout is fun.
In any case, I’ve got a few games in the pipeline, so to speak, and I want to at least explore some of my development ideas and approaches, and also do some development!
Maybe other stuff too, who knows! I certainly don’t. Heck, I might write all this today and completely forget about my blog again for 6 months.
Only time will tell!
]]>