This is likely a post that very few people will care about, but I am making it nonetheless. Some years back I completely reworked the way my menu structure functioned, and among several tweaks was adding the “Game Tools” menu. Something you need to know about me is that I do not use bookmarks, and instead largely rely on the browser remembering sites I hit frequently when I start typing the name into the search bar. The end result is that I have near total recall while actively playing a game, but rapidly forget what sites I had been using when I go on one of my long breaks from a specific title. I wanted a way of keeping track of these resources that I regularly use while playing games that I often cycle back and forth between. The added benefit of the Game Tools menu is that it allowed me to easily share those same resources with anyone else interested in playing the game.
WordPress has this really neat functionality to nigh infinitely nest menus under one another, and I thought this to be a really cool way of creating a structure for links. The only problem here is that once a menu gets too large it becomes ridiculously cumbersome to manage. As a result any time I changed anything it would seemingly take a progressively longer amount of time to actually save the edit. I’ve even had the save fail completely and cause it to lose an entire submenu in the structure. This only served to cause me to not really want to touch the links at all and leave them more or less in an “as is” state. None of this made me happy, and like so many things in my life, I eventually reach a critical breaking point that brings me to action.
So instead of trying to come up with a clever way of handling this, I am legitimately rolling back to one of the earliest constructs of the internet… a static page. Right now I am in the process of converting all of the nested menu structures into a single landing page. This does a few things that are beneficial, namely, it reduces menu bloat but also serves to give me a place to make some commentary about each resource. At the time of writing this Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy V, New World, and Diablo 3 have been converted to this new structure. The rest will follow as I have time to take my contorted menu structure and rework it into something that makes sense in page form. I’m attempting group links a bit more than I have in the menu, but each game page is ending up a little bit different. I might roll some additional information on each page, like where you can actually find me in that game and maybe a link to that category of posts on the blog.
This is just one of several changes that have been a long time coming. Another thing that is really bothering me right now is the sidebar so I figure once I sort out my menus, that is probably going to be my next renovation. I’ve been consistently blogging on the same website for over thirteen years now, and I feel like I need to uproot a few things and move them around a bit. I still largely like the central column with sidebar format, because that is ultimately what feels the most blog-like for me personally. I’ve always felt like blogs are best experienced in the structural context of the chosen layout of the author, but I have to admit some of the more pictorial tumblr/instagram style formats drive me up a wall.
Again I am not sure anyone cares because I am not entirely certain anyone has actually used that “Game Tools” menu to access the resources contained within. However, I use it… and it will make things a little less fiddly to update.
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Last night was a very good night, and one that I have needed for awhile. It had absolutely nothing to do with what I happened to be playing, which was of course Guild Wars 2, but instead the company I kept. I’ve talked about my friend Grace so many times over the years on this blog and quite honestly they are one of my favorite people on the planet. It used to be that we were pretty regularly on the same bandwidth when it came to games and were partners in crime… whatever that crime happened to be. Lately however we have fallen out of step and the crossover opportunities have been limited. Our fallback was always Diablo 3 and the coming of a brand new season roughly every three months. However we’ve both sworn off Blizzard titles for the moment until the situation there improves… which has been more painful than I can put into words because it has also cost us our regular decompression sessions.
The pandemic has been hard in wildly different ways for different people. Grace and I have managed to stay in contact and pretty much still talk every single day, but our long gaming sessions over voice chat have dwindled to non-existent. Last night however we opted to remedy that and while they spent the evening on a combination of the Switch and Knitting and I had a casual night of World Bosses in Guild Wars 2, we spent almost three hours just talking about whatever the conversation happened to bring up. We talked about parents, jobs, and they graciously listened to me go on at length about Guild Wars 2. I am not necessarily trying to sell Grace on the game but I certainly would love to have them try it, but also know that at least until Living World Season 1 has rolled out completely that is going to be a non-starter. I just have a problem with gushing about something when I am super into it, and Grace has been there for me as I gushed at length about other games that they were not interested in at all.
The sad thing as we were talking is that we realized we had not done one of these big lengthy catch up sessions… since probably last year sometime. That is way the hell too long honestly. Granted we hang out for the length of the AggroChat podcast, but that is a more directed conversation and less free form random word association. The next step however is we have to figure out some game we are both interested in playing at the same time. While I have missed the conversation, I have very much extremely missed the random nonsense that we often got up to when playing games together. Aging and adulthood sucks sometimes, because it often pulls you away from the sorts of interactions you need most. Part of it for me is that I have also not been as available as I once was given that I can only really hang on voice chat when I am upstairs due to the quirks of Parsec blocking microphones. Since I have been working remotely for the last three years… the upstairs is “Work” and when I get off I go downstairs to “Home”. Though last night was fine and I really need to try and sort out how to make a microphone work in spite of Parsec.
In other random news I am really enjoying the Halo series. I’ve said it before but I know next to nothing about Halo and I think it has helped my enjoyment. It does however make me want to go back and try and play the games again. I find it to be a really compelling setting and maybe it will act as a catalyst for me to actually get into the series in general. I know I had not played any of the Witcher games to the end until I watched the Netflix series, and that lead me to go on a deep dive and play everything Witcher related I could get my hands on. I technically own all of the Halo games, and even if I did not they are all available through Gamepass. At some point when I decide to get on a single player kick again, I should try and play through them all.
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I have a bunch of things that I have repeated on this blog but never actually coalesced into a “feature”. I watch way more YouTube than I should, and I often times have a video running on my second monitor that I am halfway paying attention to. I could be watching something more meaningful… but I am trash. I have a number of guilty pleasure channels that I indulge in from time to time, and have shared a number of these in the past. Today I am going to share some more and you can judge me for my bad taste (at least on some of these).
Mythical Kitchen
I’ve been a fan of Rhett and Link for years, and through the transitive property of enjoyment… I got hooked on Mythical Kitchen when they spun that off as a secondary channel. Chef Josh is just the right level of endearing and annoying mixed into a compelling package. I also really like the larger cast of talent specifically Nicole, Trevor, and Vi. There are so many reoccurring bits and the one I linked today is where Josh cooks a three course meal for a famous food critic… and then decides to use some item commonly found in a Seven Eleven. It is this nexus of comedy show and cooking show that I particularly enjoy.
Overnight Channel/TFIL
So there is an awful lot about this channel that would normally annoy me. However something is going on with it that I find interesting. Firstly it very much seems to have started as the same bullshit prank channel that the internet is flooded with, but at some point they decided to lean super freaking hard into paranormal investigations. I am a sucker for these sorts of shows and if I happen to see a marathon of Ghost Adventures on… I am going to watch it. I have watched a number of these videos over the last few weeks and they have greatly improved their technique and are seemingly taking this shit way more seriously than you would expect from a channel of “himbos”. The disturbing thing is that they have managed to capture some pretty shocking evidence in spite of themselves. I think my interest comes from the fact that I too dabbled in EVP back in the late 90s and was in the orbit of a legitimate group of investigators here.
Adam Savage’s Tested
I love Adam Savage. I have loved this man since Myth Busters and I have continued to follow his career after that show stopped. The format of his Tested videos really changed with the pandemic and they became deeply personal, and honestly… something I enjoy so much better. I specifically linked a video of him showing off his Science Fiction Blaster collection, but probably my favorite videos are the “One Day Builds” series. My dad was a maker before that title existed, and honestly watching an Adam Savage video reminds me a lot of my father and visiting his own very similar workshop. My Mom is the sort of person that despises silence… and my Dad has always used his workshop as a way to get some peace and quiet. It is also great when Adam goes into stories about his movie prop making days.
New Rockstars
The next two picks should be taken as a pair and not individually. One of the interesting things that has shifted interesting over the last few years is the way that Disney shows have become the new “must see tv”. As a result I consume a certain amount of media surrounding these, namely I have gotten in this pattern of watching a show and then turning around and watching some of the easter egg videos or reaction breakdowns surrounding it. There are two channels that really stand out for me in the way they digest this media and then spin off content related to that. The first is New Rockstars and they probably have the higher production value.
Screencrush
The second of these is Screencrush and honestly… I think I like its overall aesthetic better. The entire show takes place within a set patterned off of a Blockbuster Video, which absolutely hits me straight in the nostalgia feels. Additionally Screencrush has Doug the Dog, and having a cute animal immediately improves everything. Like I said above I don’t really consider these two different picks on this list, but instead sort of bookends that provide similar but different experiences. For example I have been thinking about both the Dark Avengers and the Midnight Sons of late, trying to figure out how Moon Knight and Blade are going to work into these… and low and behold here is a video with some theories surrounding that.
Loading Ready Run
We close out this section with the granddaddy of guilty pleasure channels for me… Loading Ready Run. If for some reason you are not already in the orbit of this channel, I highly suggest at least tuning in each week for CheckPoint. This is effectively a condensed news comedy show and the takes they come up with are golden. The absolute best thing they have ever done however is Qwerpline, an imaginary radio talk show set in the occasionally eldritch city of Nsberg. I am also partial to Crapshots which is a very short form sketchy comedy show. Again if you are not already watching their content then I would suggest adding it to your rotation.
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Good Morning Friends. I am so screwed up right now in my schedule. The last few days we have not been getting up and around until 9 am, because my wife has been on spring break all week and then I took a few days off to join her. Always in the past our cat based alarm clock would kick in and Josie would get hyper active trying to wake us up. For whatever reason she has decided that it is a far better use of her time to just keep snuggling with us as we sleep peacefully… which results in us just not waking up at all. I foresee us needing to set an alarm clock for the next few days or Monday is going to be very awful.
In Guild Wars 2 the Quaggan are a effectively anthropomorphic dolphins. One thing that Guild Wars in general really nails is just how damned good it is at creating these anthro races. Quaggans however take the cake when it comes to adorableness. However now that I am up in the northern reaches I have encountered the even more adorable Arctic variants that are based on Orcas. I now want to live with these adorable frens. Cooo Quaggan just blew your mind!
I’ve continued to slowly push my way into the Living World 3 zones and I have to say… I love the way these are designed. Bloodstone Fen was pretty damned horrible, but I have greatly enjoyed Ember Bay, Bitterfrost Frontier, and now Lake Doric are phenomenal. There are so many activities popping off at any given moment, and they all feel extremely rewarding. It has been extremely challenging for me to sit down and say that I am going to focus fire the quests, because I want to spend every moment doing all the things and getting all the rewards. I have been waiting anxiously to get to Lake Doric because apparently this is the prime real estate for farming crafting materials. I’ve not spent much time in there, but the Centaur camp does seem pretty awesome.
My biggest complaint with Living World 3 has been that every fight appears to be a “find the stupid gimmick” encounter. Like this one from last night where I had to make the big invincible boss charge through all of the little invincible veteran mobs, so that he would destroy them in the process. Then finally after doing all of that… the fight took mere seconds to finish because I actually got to fight something rather than juggling gimmicks. I really hate gimmick fights. They always just seem like a way of dragging the fight out rather than letting you burn something down and be done with it. I get that they are trying to extend the length of the encounter and make it feel more epic… but it just doesn’t end up doing that when something goes from “unkillable” to dead when you have jumped through a sequence of artificial hoops. I hope this improves as we move into later content.
These encounters aside, I am still very much enjoying my time in Guild Wars 2. I sorta wish I could have arrived at a point of peace with this game a decade ago. I feel like I have lost so much time with something I am really enjoying. There is reasonably no way in hell I will ever really get caught up. Instead I am just sorta chewing away at whatever content fits my fancy for the moment. Guild Wars 2 really is sort of the ultimate choose your own adventure experience. It isn’t going to push you towards any one objective but when you know how to find them… there are so many long term grinds that feel worthwhile.
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