Spirit Island is a really good board game! Just wanted to get that out in case I end up too busy to write a longer comment.

Company Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview

In addition to not giving Google access to your personal data, it appears that it's also a good idea to avoid sharing your ideas with them.

Via Hot Garbage.

The instructions for Matomo say it should take five minutes install. This assumes you already have PHP installed and working with nginx. Even so, five minutes is way off. I took all day (with a long break to fill some propane tanks and get lunch).

Here's my notes on it.

I'm exasperated but not angry because I'm not surprised. If I were somehow don't-need-to-work rich, I'd probably still do most of my programming myself, but I would hire a dev ops/sysadmin kind of person to do this kind of crud.

And yeah, things you don't enjoy but need do take time. I just have to live with that.

Despite self-consciousness, I used Tinkercad to illustrate the rail cart situation (and more) in my D&D recap. I had a good time with it! I'm going to try to do more 3D illustrating, and maybe see if there's other non-"this is something you need to spend two years learning" kind of tools out there.

Thanks to the power of HTML, I can easily repost (most of) the recap here:

The Last Several Temptations of the Worst Party

Last Saturday, the PCs fought off many an urge!

Temptation 1

The PCs started with some sneakin'! Past a whole pit full of sleeping lemmings! In addition to the difficulty of staying quiet enough, Whewdo Danger wanted to jump in and swim around. He resisted! Raven used some animal-invisibility magicks in order to make herself untempting to the lemmings.

Temptation 2

Opposums wearing chains of silver, gold, and platinum! And the occasional helmet! The party was able to stop themselves from trying to part the opposums from their shiny accoutrements, and in fact, gave them a little bit more.

Temptation 3

This is where the resisting stopped.

There was a rail cart on a rail. Oika went straight in, while others discussed whether or not they should. Carts are for riding, some said!

In the end, they all piled in, then removed the stoppers and went down the hill.

The cart went faster than expected.

They all had to jump out! Kardosh did not quite make it and went flying into the shaft.

See Jon's sketch for detailed information on the trajectory and velocity in this situation.

It's a long way to the bottom, and Khourdo made it, unfortunately.

Kardosh clutched a chain in mid-fall.

Khourdo, a possible future subject for a parable about rail cart safety, was not so lucky. He hit the bottom. One Strong Friend less.

Interestingly, Cedric did make the jump. Was it the Red Pants? Who can say?

After some arduous work with winches and the PCs' one extra long rope, Kardosh was rejoined with the party.

At the bottom of the shaft, Makalbly Jane found another vehicle for the party to pile into, in which they winched their way to the top.

(The DM actually forgot there was a sizable gap between the tunnel ledge and the bucket, so I guess that means everyone was great at crossing that risky 10' gap.)

The PCs in the bucket (pictured in yellow) made it to the top of the shaft! Without their Strong Friends, though.

At that point, Egg snapped out of her daydream about whatever Egg daydreams about. She allowed Cedric and Kardosh to toss her across the gap from the bucket to the upper tunnel for them.

This was fairly riskless for her because of her precious ring, about which there was an alarming discussion about it possibly being loaned to another member of the party.

Temptation 4

At one fork at the end of the upper tunnel, there was an intriguing patch of grass with a shiny clock on it. Some (Raven) said it was a trap. Others agreed...sort of?

There was a pair of double doors at the other side of the fork. Oika and Kardosh worked on them a bit, but the others...they kept edging closer and closer to the grass and clock. Raven was in lost in memories about an old friend named Jenkins.

The clock. More enticing than rendered here.

And then, the nice grass and a clock somehow turned out to be a huge carnivorous plant. It had vines, pods, and spores – a very complete carnivorous plant!

Perhaps that is why Whewdo developed such an affinity for it after inhaling some spores, despite it slighting his friends in some small ways, like acid splashes and entanglement. (At this point, the party may have internalized Entanglement as a kind of tough love.)

Eventually, the PCs extracted themselves and used the advantage of mobility to get out of reach of the plant, having to really hard sell Cedric that it was the right move. Using a key found elsewhere they opened the double doors (classic dungeon move!) and ascended.

XP

The PCs did 1585 XP worth of escaping, resisting (and not appropriately resisting in-character), bribing, and winching, among other things!

Current XP totals:

• Cedric: 7848
• Whewdo: 9917
• Oika: 9093
• Makalbly Jane: 8093
• Mogredh: 8786
• Kardosh: 8478
• Egg: 7656

Excelsior

What's up these newfound stairs? Time clocks? Carnivorous plants that can cast illusions? Time clocks that can cast illusions of carnivorous plants? More opporunities to fall down things?

Find out next time!

Jim

Earlier today: 10-4-4-4-4-3. Possibly one set less? That's why it's important to record early.

Your Top Songs is a really safe set. Spotify puts the songs with the most plays (with some filtering for children's music et al) from a user together and gives it to that user. And, of course, it's very pleasing to that user most of the time. They get information about themselves, and they get songs they know they like.

I'm no exception, and of course, I think my top songs are great. I'm a little surprised that that I listened to the '90s classics Davidian and Hail Mary that much, but mostly, yeah, I was really into Body Count, Enslaved, and I went through a big Christian Mistress run. And of course, Slayer and Wu-Tang forever.

After the library stopped letting me renew Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, I decided to actually buy it. Unfortunately, it's out of print, and my local bookseller didn't have it, so I thought I'd have to go to Amazon, which I think is ultimately looking to make millions suffer in order to get more money to Jeff Bezos and other billionaires that don't need it. (I'd cite, but there's already quite a bit out there.)

So, I hit up Duck Duck Go and found it on Abebooks.com. For $8.95 from Seattle Goodwill! (With shipping, around $13). The cheapest Amazon price was $30! Maybe if we fight off peak monopolization, some part of capitalism could still work?

If I had a Christian metal band, I think I'd call it Christian Sword. People'd say, "Praise the Lord! It's Christian Sword!"

The graph is broken, but I think the counter may actually still be accurate! Good job, the two guys.

Another random piano jam maker I forgot about: systemjams

(Works on Firefox; only works on Chrome if you click on the page extremely fast right after it loads.)

I feel more tired that I should be. It was a normal length (but high intensity) workday and a normal workout, and I slept enough the previous night. The kid has been good; we read a bunch of books at the library.

Maybe I'm still recovering from previous late nights? Maybe I need to eat better? Is it demotivation? Is this middle age? Is it impending death?

10-4-4-4-4-4. I'm not truly back to what I was doing a month ago, as I took really long breaks between sets. But it helped with confidence.