I've planted watermelons about six weeks ago. Until now I've always failed at these -tomatoes, melons, kiwano... none have survived. So this time I read up on the ideal growing conditions and immunized the buds against common threats (snails and chickens mostly) by building a mini enclosure. So far it seems to work :

That was 3 days ago, the plants have already doubled in size since I took these pictures ! I visit them everyday.

It's fun when it works

I've learned all about a lot of open source projects for my new homelab. Immich to replace google photos, homeassistant for a lot of the smart home stuff to control them locally, and the most recent thing is setting my matrix homeserver for my friends to chat on.

1. Hiking, along with doing competitive hiking
2. Photography (mostly nature or photography that has anything to do with water) - i do it for fun, not a pro.
3. Found a phone along the highway and grabbed it to see if i can charge it and tinker with it.

Just learned that you can make metal press tools with 3D prints. Even just PLA+ works pretty well.

I stamped these in 22 gauge steel with a 20 ton press and the dies looked fine afterwards. The dies are about 3mm deep and the pressing came out just under 3mm. Looks surprisingly professional for my tooling.

Not intentionally trying to be a doomer. I guess I was just answering the question, but... nothing.

I'm not really doing anything with my life. I don't even have time to play video games, at least not for any meaningful amount of time. I'll squeeze in a few runs of Balatro on my phone whenever I have some downtime, but that's about it.

And now that I've actually thought about this for a little while, I realize I really do need to find something to do that interests me outside of family, the kids, and work.

My God, I wasn't trying to be introspective. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Retro achievements. https://retroachievements.org/

Now, I don't think seeking all the achievements is the best way to experience a game in most cases, especially if you're playing it the first time. But games I've already played, maybe multiple times? RA adds goals which often make me aware of content or possibility within games I'm already familiar! Also, retro games run on modest hardware.

I'm currently trying to "master" Solar Jetman, an NES game I've always loved. The achievements have made me appreciate the game even more. I was like "wow, there's more to appreciate in this game than I imagined."

Video games. I got back into gaming and honestly my depression and anxiety have gone down. I been playing Boltgun 2 lately and despite how vicious the game is, it honestly does make me feel better.

I'm learning how to drive stick shift cause I already bought an old Jeep LJ. The adrenaline rush from surviving a trip from point A to point B with minimal stalling is nice.

Trying to beat Turing Complete (I'm on the last two levels), and designing a parametric speaker stand for my coworker in FreeCAD.

I've been enjoying as much time with my friends as possible, offering support emotionally and such. Playing games like Far Far West.

Resident Evil 4, 5, 6, & 4 remake

I used to avoid the franchise like the plague because I really don't like horror. But after playing the action focus games & watching some lore videos, I've been quite interested. However, I wouldn't interact with the fanbase or play any of the horror stuff. I'll just enjoy it on my own terms

Lately, I haven’t done anything fun besides reading tons of yaoi manga and wondering why the hell my life can’t be like that.

My comouter is broken, so I'm playing bloons monkey city on my phone and watching my friend play deltarune

I've been playing a board game Re;Act - The Arts of War. It's a 1v1 asymmetrical game where you play as magical artists and try to punch the other artist 3 times. The game is focused around making a stack of reactions back and forth as players try to respond to each others actions. The characters are very unique and you can actually play the game for free on the developer's website.

been working on a mod manager for the steam frame since mo2 just enough of a pain to get running that it motivated me. working out overrides for the vfs now so files don't get clobbered, then gonna implement mod order for bethesda games and fomod support

technically it'll work on any linux machine (no windows support, the vfs relies too heavily on linux), but it's meant to be easy to use in vr rather than compete with mo2 and vortex on features.

still gonna get mo2 working, though. i can't let it win. mo2-lint claims it installs an aarch64 version on ARM machines but the frame doesn't seem to like it.

I like using AI to make save editors and to improve my games. When I have better local AI models and hardware, I will have an assortment of old games recompiled, and QOL'ed. If I get enough money, maybe buy some of the niche IP and re-release ancient content onto Steam and GOG.

While the AI is at work, I am replaying some games that don't need much VRAM to run. Hopefully, I will get some GPU upgrades so that I can play the more hardware intensive games I haven't tried yet, without stepping on my AI's toes.

Current games being played is AstLibra and Unsighted.

If you enjoy the oldschool Ys games and also liked Muramasa: The Demon Blade, I recommend AstLibra. Unsighted is more a mashup of Majora's Mask and Dark Souls, with a time loop. NPCs die out over time, then when the protagonist expires from running out of anima, the loop begins again.

Been (lead) rock climbing a lot lately

Reading purely for pleasure again—found a book club of sorts sometime in March, around when it started, in a chatroom and decided to follow along, mostly lurking. Took me a bit to actually and regularly read when I first started, despite having the first couple of books in my possession for weeks; I had actually decided to purchase at least the first few so I wouldn't have to worry about holding on to the books for so long—keeping ready availability—even if not the most economical option. Not having to pick a book for myself helps.

I hope to branch out into other things—perhaps writing or other forms of art.

Ocarina of time on PC. Haven't played it in 20+ years, on N64

Started an intro to improv course last week, which was actually pretty fun! Going to have to sit tonight's session out due to recovering from illness the past couple of days 👎

Beyond that, slowly making my way through a series of poker-card sized collages (trying this thing where, instead of just letting my dumb ideas float around unattempted, I actually commit to some of them and try to see them to completion. Outside of the collages, progress is meh). Next thing is to sit down and write more poems to read at open mics for shits and giggles (was on a bit of a roll for a bit, then slowed down significantly).

Going to swimming pool with my kids is the highlight of the week.

I've started making a new game. Yes I know I have 3 unfinished games in the works. Yes I know that AI slop is drowning the indie game market. Yes I know there's a very good chance that nobody in the world will ever play my game but me. Yet, I persist. This one's going to be fun.

I'm enjoying WoW Forever a lot more than I thought I would.

I bought a shit ton of RAM and installed LLM onnmy computer. Now I torture it with questions "What happens if USS Enterprise mets Warhammer 40k"

Wildlife photography; lizards and birds mostly.

Check my profile for the ones I've been happy to post so far.

I recently got a Game Boy cartridge reader. I’ve been playing around with using it to put together full color photos with the Game Boy camera. It’s really finicky, but fun when it comes out well.