Readings: Essays & Articles

So, I have a big advice post to write, but until I have the spoons, I want to warn everyone now who has legally changed their first name:

Your credit score may be fucked up and you need to:

check *now* that all your financial institutions (credit cards, loans, etc) have your current legal name and update where necessary

check that all 3 credit bureaus, on their respective sites, not via a feed like Credit Karma (so, Trans Union, Equifax, Experian) are collecting that info correctly and generating the right score - you might need to monitor them for a few months if you made any changes in #1

I am about to apply for a mortgage and learned that as of 2 weeks ago:

Experian suddenly thinks I am 2 different people - Legal Name and Dead Name (none of whom have a score)

Equifax has reported my active 25 year old mortgage as closed and deleted one of my older credit cards, hurting my score by 30+ points

Credit scores influence everything from big home/car loans to insurance rates to job and housing applications.

And for whatever reason, the 3 bureaus that have the power to destroy your life are shockingly fragile when it comes to legally changing one's first name.

So, yeah. Once I get this mess cleaned up for myself, I have a big guide in the works if you find yourself in the same predicament. But with the mass trans migration out of oppressive states, odds are there are a lot of newly renamed people who are about to have a nasty shock when applying for new housing.

Take care, folks.

MY BROTHER ; THE PARASITE

People die, and sometimes they come back. Your brother is one of those. Even as his body rots and his mind unravels, he still has control over you— just like when you were kids.

A short, interactive story about a corpse, a complicated sibling relationship, and the things we forget. Made in Twine. Written, illustrated, and coded in about three weeks for the IFComp.

Content warnings included on the itch.io page and in the story itself.

|| PLAY HERE! ||

alright since i couldn't find any compilations of AA games i've made my own.

this is a link to a MEGA folder of AA1-AA6 and Professor Layton VS Phoenix Wright in .3ds format, and AAI and Gyakuten Kenji 2 [the unofficial english patch] in .nds format.

.3ds files can be played on the citra emulator, which you can download here.

.nds files can be played on DeSmuME, which you can download here.

each game is in english, and every file has been tested and confirmed by me to be virus-free.

currently looking for: DGS 1 and 2, preferably patched with the official translation from the switch/steam release. [if you have a non-official translation, that will be added as a placeholder.]

if any links stop working, tell me ASAP and i'll get right to fixing it.

you are free to reupload these roms with no credit. after all, i didn't make these games.

any computer people wanna explain how the hell this works

it wont let me do shit bc i apparently have 81 gigs of apps clogging my c drive, but my largest app is 0.4gb?????? its not system applications either because system is its own segment of storage. wadda hell are you talking about

games (mostly text-based) about houses and places-- exploring them, haunting them, feeding them:

childhood homes (and why we hate them) - after a decade, you return home.

return - a text-based horror game about coming home.

singing from the far side of the hill - about a trans woman, homeless after a bad breakup, who rents a stranger's spare room. it's a decision she comes to regret.

anatomy - Explore a suburban house, collect cassette tapes, study the physiology of domestic architecture.

leave house - leave house

the open house - We at Northtree Real Estate (in partnership with Optix Dynamix Labs) are proud to present our new, state-of-the-art, open house simulator!  Come and take a quick tour of 15615 Hollow Oak Lane, a familiar and comfortable showcase home in one of our premier developments!

what girls do in the dark - This little game is based off one of the greatest fears they had as a teenage girl: showing up late to a stranger's slumber party.

unbecoming - a sonically-textured interactive horror fiction exploring cycles of trauma and unspeakable forces of nature in a mythic rural American landscape.

13 laurel road - an interactive fiction game about the relationships we have with places and reconciling with trauma. You play as a young man named Noah who has been tasked with picking up some things from his cousin’s old house.

domvs - a gothic mystery game in which you rely on your environment to uncover the truth.

flesh, blood, & concrete - you find yourself in a vast, empty apartment complex.

i am still here - a short, unconventional ghost story and vignette reflecting on the end of a long lockdown.

vacant - Film a ghost-hunting show.

The Chrome browser exists to show you ads and track where you go so that Google can show you more ads. Please stop using Chrome. Firefox is open source, and while Mozilla is not perfect, it isn’t actively fucking evil the way Google is. It has a bazillion plugins, including various (FREE!) ad block plugins (I recommend uBlock Origins, which will even block YouTube ads – you can watch videos without interruptions again!). It will also function very effectively with a lot more tabs open than Chrome. I’ve got around 800 tabs open right now (not loaded, of course, except for maybe 2 dozen; it’s been a heavy browsing day), and my wife has between 2k and 3k at any time.

We are in the New Browser Wars. This time there’s a helluva lot of money up for grabs, because a lot of it is about running those ads. Monopolies are bad for consumers.

Just go download Firefox.

Hey, if you're wanting to make some changes to how you eat, remember- it's much easier, healthier, and more sustainable to ADD foods that make you feel good than it is to REMOVE foods.

If you feel like you don't drink enough non-sugary fluids, it makes more sense to try drinking more tea and sparkling water than it does to just avoid soda. You gotta add in the good (and remember, that the only value food has is how it makes YOU feel. Food is morally nuetral and should be enjoyed.)

Try:

Adding a handful of easy produce to lunch and dinner- baby carrots or cherry tomatoes, something 0 prep. And yes, you are allowed to dip it in dressing! (The fats can make it easier for your body to absorb the vitamins in the veggies)

Adding a cheese stick or yogurt to breakfast. The protein is good and can help you wake up faster.

Adding some roasted nuts to your afternoon snack. (ADD, not replace.) That variety and little protein boost will do you good!

Have a glass of tea, sparkling water, or juice each time you have food. Let's be honest- you aren't hydrated enough. Go buy yourself some Kool Aide mix if that'll make you drink more water! Really!

If you struggle with binge eating sugary foods and it makes you feel yuck when the sugar crash comes- eat 1 or 2 pieces of chocolate with lunch and dinner. Every day. Really. Make it not a big deal. Make it not special. Make it something you can expect, instead of crave. Let yourself enjoy it without guilt.

Remember- food is a gift. It should bring you joy, not stress. Trust your body. Enjoy the cookie. Drink something tasty.

Anyway some things to follow when youre a beginner cook:

Don’t constantly shift your food around in the pan if you want to form a crust on it, the less you move it the better.

Don’t be afraid to add water if youre frying up food and the food/sauce looks a bit dry.

Don’t fry up your garlic early on in the cooking process (unless youre making a quick garlic oil) as the garlic flavour can straight up disappear if overcooked for too long and/or the garlic can become bitter if burnt

Don’t overcook your vegetables. Look up recommended cook times for them. Your distaste for vegetables stems from them being overcooked and being poorly seasoned.

Don’t microwave stuff for more than 2 minutes at a time unless you know what you’re doing. Reheating stuff tends to fare better when you mix food between microwaving times since microwaves develop hotspots if you microwave it uninterrupted for too long.

Don’t try cooking everything at the hottest setting. It’s super tempting to have a high flame and do a meal quickly but actually follow directions and cook at medium or low heat.

beginner’s guide to the indie web

“i miss the old internet” “we’ll never have websites like the ones from the 90s and early 2000s ever again” “i’m tired of social media but there’s nowhere to go”

HOLD ON!

personal websites and indie web development still very much exist! it may be out of the way to access and may not be the default internet experience anymore, but if you want to look and read through someone’s personally crafted site, or even make your own, you can still do it! here’s how:

use NEOCITIES! neocities has a built in search and browse tools to let you discover websites, and most importantly, lets you build your own website from scratch for free! (there are other ways to host websites for free, but neocities is a really good hub for beginners!)

need help getting started with coding your website? sadgrl online has a section on her website dedicated to providing resources for newbie webmasters!

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are the core of what all websites are built on. many websites also use JS (JavaScript) to add interactive elements to their pages. w3schools is a useful directory of quick reference for pretty much every HTML/CSS/JS topic you can think of.

there is also this well written and lengthy guide on dragonfly cave that will put you step by step through the basics of HTML/CSS (what webpages are made from), if that’s your sort of thing!

stack overflow is every programmer’s hub for asking questions and getting help, so if you’re struggling with getting something to look how you want or can’t fix a bug, you may be able to get your answer here! you can even ask if no one’s asked the same question before.

websites like codepen and jsfiddle let you test HTML/CSS/JS in your browser as you tinker with small edits and bugfixing.

want to find indie websites outside the scope of neocities? use the search engine marginalia to find results you actually want that google won’t show you!

you can also use directory sites like yesterweb’s link section to find websites in all sorts of places.

if you are going to browse the indie web or make your own website, i also have some more personal tips as a webmaster myself (i am not an expert and i am just a small hobbyist, so take me with a grain of salt!)

if you are making your own site:

get expressive! truly make whatever you want! customize your corner of the internet to your heart’s content! you have left the constrains of social media where every page looks the same. you have no character limit, image limit, or design limit. want to make an entire page or even a whole website dedicated to your one niche interest that no one seems to be into but you? go for it! want to keep a public journal where you can express your thoughts without worry? do it! want to keep an art gallery that looks exactly how you want? heck yeah! you are free now! you will enjoy the indie web so much more if you actually use it for the things you can’t do on websites like twitter, instead of just using it as a carrd bio alternative or a place to dump nostalgic geocities gifs.

don’t overwhelm yourself! if you’ve never worked with HTML/CSS or JS before, it may look really intimidating. start slow, use some guides, and don’t bite off more than you can chew. even if your site doesn’t look how you want quite yet, be proud of your work! you’re learning a skill that most people don’t have or care to have, and that’s pretty cool.

keep a personal copy of your website downloaded to your computer and don’t just edit it on neocities (or your host of choice) and call it a day. if for some reason your host were to ever go down, you would lose all your hard work! and besides, by editing locally and offline, you can use editors like vscode (very robust) or notepad++ (on the simpler side), which have more features and is more intuitive than editing a site in-browser.

you can use ctrl+shift+i on most browsers to inspect the HTML/CSS and other components of the website you’re currently viewing. it’ll even notify you of errors! this is useful for bugfixing your own site if you have a problem, as well as looking at the code of sites you like and learning from it. don’t use this to steal other people’s code! it would be like art theft to just copy/paste an entire website layout. learn, don’t steal.

don’t hotlink images from other sites, unless the resource you’re taking from says it’s okay! it’s common courtesy to download images and host them on your own site instead of linking to someone else’s site to display them. by hotlinking, every time someone views your site, you’re taking up someone else’s bandwidth.

if you want to make your website easily editable in the future (or even for it to have multiple themes), you will find it useful to not use inline CSS (putting CSS in your HTML document, which holds your website’s content) and instead put it in a separate CSS file. this way, you can also use the same theme for multiple pages on your site by simply linking the CSS file to it. if this sounds overwhelming or foreign to you, don’t sweat it, but if you are interested in the difference between inline CSS and using separate stylesheets, w3schools has a useful, quick guide on the subject.

visit other people’s sites sometimes! you may gain new ideas or find links to more cool websites or resources just by browsing.

if you are browsing sites:

if the page you’re viewing has a guestbook or cbox and you enjoyed looking at the site, leave a comment! there is nothing better as a webmaster than for someone to take the time to even just say “love your site” in their guestbook.

that being said, if there’s something on a website you don’t like, simply move on to something else and don’t leave hate comments. this should be self explanatory, but it is really not the norm to start discourse in indie web spaces, and you will likely not even be responded to. it’s not worth it when you could be spending your time on stuff you love somewhere else.

take your time! indie web doesn’t prioritize fast content consumption the way social media does. you’ll get a lot more out of indie websites if you really read what’s in front of you, or take a little while to notice the details in someone’s art gallery instead of just moving on to the next thing. the person who put labor into presenting this information to you would also love to know that someone is truly looking and listening.

explore! by clicking links on a website, it’s easy to go down rabbitholes of more and more websites that you can get lost in for hours.

seeking out fansites or pages for the stuff you love is great and fulfilling, but reading someone’s site about a topic you’ve never even heard of before can be fun, too. i encourage you to branch out and really look for all the indie web has to offer.

i hope this post helps you get started with using and browsing the indie web! feel free to shoot me an ask if you have any questions or want any advice. <3