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C\shamrock{}OVID-22
(30 Jun 2022 at 23:58) |
Hello. I bolted from my chair in the middle of a relaxing late-night game of Elden Ring after remembering to do the ceremonial post before the end of the month.
A few weeks ago we went to Ireland for a wedding (not mine), the first time I've been there and our first international trip since COVID. It was pretty fun; we drank beer (I discovered that Ireland has good beer, but Irish Pubs are not the place to find it: It seems to be part of their "thing" to just have the same 5 mediocre things on draft) and went in some castles and climbed some rocky mountains. But then we got infected with COVID, which makes sense, as the wedding activities were exactly the kind of thing that will give you COVID. This was a rude disruption to the vacation that created many logistical problems and costs, but we did make it back and have pretty much recovered by now (I'm testing negative and even did some gentle running). I took antivirals (Paxlovid); it's hard to know whether they specifically helped me, but I think it is cool technology and it seemed likely from looking at the studies that it would do more good than harm. So assuming that I continue to get better and can continue my running training, it might even turn out to be overall a relief to have that in my rear-view. \fingers_crossed{}
During my illness I played a lot of video games (of course) since I wasn't finding much energy for projects. I played through Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate (recommendation and gift from Adam); I've been a Benjamin Soule fan since the early days of Ludum Dare and this game is a good exemplar. The gameplay is a bit like Crypt of the Necrodancer (but turn-based). I beat it on hard and that's enough for me. And speaking of Chess I also discovered the engine called Maia, which tries to predict human moves rather than trying to destroy all humans with computer precision, and this is my new favorite engine to play against (it's on lichess as @maia1 or @maia5). It is much more fun than Stockfish because it will fall for traps and when it makes a losing move, it tends to be a reasonable looking one, not like the weird random ones that low-level Stockfish will make. But anyway back to the finer arts, videojuegos: I also played through The Looker, which is a free, single-sitting parody/tribute to The Witness. It has a few creative puzzles in it, and I found it funnier than I was expecting ("Gravity's Rainbow", ha ha), enough to get me through the uncustomizable controls! Then I played ElecHead which is a short puzzle platformer. This game has a small set of mechanics (which felt fresh) and they get a lot of mileage out of them, with constant new ideas. Very good game. I even stumbled upon the mysterious developer room organically. And then finally I'm on my hundred-somethingth hour of Elden Ring, but I'm pretty sure that when I destroy this other tree or whatever it is I'm doing (????), it will nearly be over.
I do have a little programming project going on, though, and I managed to succeed at the main "joke," so I'm pretty sure it will at least become a little paper or maybe even short video. So that's nice! |  |
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| OT: ugif is down! :｡｡( |
> we got infected with COVID […] that created many logistical problems and costs
Is Ireland the kind where the politicians protect people by making such rules that if you are infected, you are neither allowed to reside in your hotel room (they can't allow you to infect other guests), nor board a train or bus or airplane to leave (they can't allow you to infect other passengers), nor go to a hospital (you're not sick enough to require constant hospital care and their beds are full with more serious patient), nor get transported away from a hospital in an ambulance (they don't transport COVID patients, the risk of infection to ambulance workers is too large)?
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| No (and that sounds like a frustrating Catch-22) ... it seemed like most everyone had given up on any kinds of restrictions, and so it was just up to us to try to do the right thing! |
| Anon: We fixed untitledgif.org! Thanks for telling me :) |
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