You just captured the daily life of a UK academic after the catastrophically low recruitment numbers this year.

I absolutely don’t use notepad++ as my main IDE… Honest.

That’s a little more controversial, but towards my taste yes. Majora’s mask is one of those games you could never make today because it combined a children’s franchise with cosmic horror and themes of grief.

It took common ideas like npc routines, day/night, and a solid action core. With this it wove in puzzles that were not just about what you did, but when. This was groundbreaking in its scope and scale, and then they added in the soundtrack… Ye gods that soundtrack…

I could go on for pages but, quite simply, it was a work of genius.

No, I really enjoyed BotW for the same reason I enjoyed OoT! Both innovated and both were very different games exploring different concepts. BotW will forever be my go-to for “open world done right”, and OoT set up a solid action game with strong puzzle elements; that said, fuck the water temple.

Games that break genuinely new ground are rare, in the case of both the old and new Zelda’s there are good and bad (the nds era was a bit of a stagnation), the really groundbreaking titles push the hardware through skilled coding and amazing game loop design.

Also, no spoilers for tears please, it’s on my list once I get a few weeks vacation!

MM is hard to top; it’s peak early LoZ (in an old man’s opinion). It took a familiar engine, added two new major mechanics, and told the first really dark story.

Awakening is the one to play first, it’ll set you up for later games nicely, and it was originally a Gameboy (not GBC game). It took the Zelda formula from the earlier NES iterations, and made a content-rich world.

I’d say save ages and seasons for last (when you get your carts!). They’re amazing games that really show how far the GBC could be pushed, and are very much taking the awakening engine and doing wonderful things. The fact there is linked content between the two means you should also keep a pen and paper handy!

Really neat post, I’d not heard of a few of these (never knew libre office draw could edit pdfs!).

Couple of extra ones:

Note taking and pdf annotation: Xournal++ is amazing, it’s also great to use on larger whiteboard screens. Plug and play support for scribe tablets on both windows and Linux.

Emulation (up to ps1): Mednafen is lightweight and comes with a gui. It also supports recording, though not netplay.

Ebook management/reading: Calibre - allows easy importing and exporting of ebooks to devices, also has a great built in search letting you find DRM free versions of a book.

It’s always about Ads…

Oh, they start off as unobtrusive; maybe a little banner that shows when the app is opening, or a written mention with a link.

But, this doesn’t generate much revenue. Next the banner persists, and suddenly a video plays. Just one, just once.

Eventually you open the app to pop up banners and autoplay videos, and wonder where the app is. Every line you cross with adverts makes the next line easier to cross.

Exactly - if you don’t want to date a trans person don’t. If someone conceals it, that’s not an issue with them being trans, that’s an issue with them being dishonest. It’s ok to dislike dishonest people.

I only wanted to triforce.

Now I need to fix dad’s laptop before he gets home!

The use of the word cis has its roots in an obscure Usenet group; it’s genesis (apparently) rooted in a desire for more inclusive language for trans folks (the notion that “gender” Vs “transgender” was too othering).

It hit Tumblr like a train in the 2010s, and became a symbolic phrase in trans counterculture. “Cisgender” was less than popular with non-trans people, as it robbed them of the illusion of normality and turned the word “gender” into a social trap.

It later found derogatory use in the phrase “cissy” (a counter for the popular derogatory term “tranny”).

It’s a fun word with an interesting history, and it has helped contribute to the wider acceptance of trans folks.

Yup, Google are launching their yearly attempt to convince folks YouTube premium is worth it.

Think of this time not as an annoyance, but as a time to reflect on how shitty Google has become.

Welcome to the age of the licence, where you pay to be given permission to use something in a specific way.

Will give it a try!

Thanks for the recommend.

mocp - For when you want to listen to music in terminal.

It’s a tricky one because of the nature of the net. Let’s say we have three kids: Timmy, Jimmy and Harry.

Timmy starts looking up “tits”, because Timmy loves titties. He’s curious, and you probably want to have a talk about acting and how porn isn’t reality.

Jimmy, well, Jimmy saw a videogame character tied up and it made him feel good, so he starts looking for that online. He’s about to explore the BDSM scene. He’s going to need the “safe sane consensual” talk, otherwise his explorations might get him, or someone else, hurt. He’ll need more of a talk than Timmy!

Harry loves hentai; he found some when looking for pictures of his favourite cartoon character. Harry is going to need a long talk about fantasy Vs reality, otherwise he’s going to disappoint a lot of women! Wait a moment, most of the things he’s looking at involve animals and women… Might be time to get some therapy!

In all three of these cases a different style and level of parental intervention was required. You watch your kids because they’re kids, and kids are experts at getting themselves (and others) hurt. Parents need to watch their kids because it’s their job to intervene, and to decide the method of intervention.

However, we’ve not gone over the case of Lizzy, a girl cursed with religious fundamentalist parents. When they find out she’s more interested in girls than boys, she’ll be subjected to inhumane treatment to “fix” her. So there is a grey area here - not all parents should be parents.

Y’see, back in the day parents were not technically literate because the world was mid-societal shift. “Protect the children” (because parents are unable to) had some justification.

Today, basic computer literacy is a survival skill in the UK. The level of literacy needed to track your own kid is not that high (or expensive to rent).

If you are letting kids use tech you don’t understand, and are not willing to invest the time/money to track yourself, that’s a you problem. It shouldn’t become a me problem.

As for “yeah but what about smart kids”, I’ve got some bad news for you. They will always find a way around ANYTHING you set up.

“Equivalent of a DVD player OS” is now my go-to insult for a bad OS.

Well, I know what I’ll be using to listen to my radio stations from now on. Really neat project!

Also, it doesn’t pick up user defined tags because it’s looking in the wrong place for them!

Row 114:

TAGS=( $(sed ‘s/ /\n/g’ stations.txt |grep “#”|grep -v “#Favorites”|sort|uniq|sed ‘s/#//g’) )

Should be

TAGS=( $(sed ‘s/ /\n/g’ $HOME/.cache/radion/stations.txt |grep “#”|grep -v “#Favorites”|sort|uniq|sed ‘s/#//g’) )

Warlocked for GBC - it was ambitious as hell, and has some quality scenario ideas.

It’s a (less sexist) variation of the “silence wench” meme aimed at brand marketing. Usually you see it deployed against company owned social media profiles in protest of their invasion of a social space. However, it can also be deployed against newsvertising (advertising disguised as news articles/guides).