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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Commenting so I can come back to this later with the site, I can’t recall the name at the moment

    Alrighty, it looks like the list has grown and I can’t remember what site I had used previously, so here are a couple options. It looks like they all roughly have the same format of: create account, fill out games from database, possibly account and app linking options.

    In no particular order:

    How long to beat: create an account, has a games library for your profile

    Keep track of my games: create an account, “pay what you want”-ware (free), can import gaming accounts (Steam PSN etc) to fill out list.

    Backloggd: Create an account, can fill out games to your library and has space for reviews and other user profiles

    Grouvee: Create an accout - homepage is pretty minimal

    Gametracker: Seems more “game team” oriented but it has a spot for filling out a games library

    GameTrack: Has an IOS app as well, can link gaming accounts for achievements, can make lists to sort games

    Playtracker: Create an account, looks like there is a software download for the computer

    Stash: Has both Android and IOS apps,

    Of all of these, the feature sets look basically the same, the main differences seem to be UI layouts and more niche options of sorting/filling out. All of them look to need an account (expected). Since I can’t recall which, if any of these, I had used in the past I will just say that the websites for Playtracker, Backloggd, and How Long To Beat looked the “best”.

    Hopefully this helped and didn’t just give you more choice anxiety, lol.






  • If you are going by titles, GTA 6 is expected to have a reasonably deep single player storyline filled with cultural references.

    The more recent trailer just seemed like them recreating events that happened in real life, and less being a mockery to create commentary on events of real life.

    IMO this is the distinguishing difference I noticed from trailers of previous titles and this current one. Of course it was literally only a minute and 15 seconds of trailer, but it does just seem a little odd to me. Of course, when I wrote a small essay the only comments were “bro piss off it’s GTA” and “it’s GTA you’re reading too much into it.”

    Most just don’t care. And many more have not played the earlier titles which were a little more brazen in their commentary due to the world these characters are living in – CJ as the experience of living in a poorer urban area surrounded by a wider richer city, where you have the dichotomy of what is happening in the story alongside the events on the radio (mostly the hosts reactions), or Niko as an immigrant in New York which brings a different perspective but keeps that thematic class separation while having some pretty decent social commentary.

    GTA5 just doesn’t hit those marks IMO. Yes, there’s active class divide what with Trevor and Michael, but the storyline and the events of all 3 characters definitely have some emotional moments, IMO it just doesn’t hit the same points. Part of this I think is due to each of these characters almost acting as a sort of archetype, not necessarily of character but of game play. Michael is very much set for success, so you can easily progress. Franklin isn’t, and thus has to work for his status. And Trevor is the maniac who just blows shit up.

    In terms of social commentary, there isn’t much that the game actually tries to say, IMO as a byproduct of their overemphasis of the heavily conservative and hyper-capitalist radio, which further is failed by Trevor and Michael being the most average Americans who are part of the problem. And while I like Franklin and his story, it’s ultimately just another story of someone in a bad spot trying to do better, and falling victim to how hard it is to get out. Which, yeah, that’s a decent and very real message, but it’s undermined by it all working out for him and owning a business – don’t worry y’all, crime pays as long as it’s with the right friends!

    So, for me to see the trailer of GTA6 just literally recreating the events that happened in the real world, I sort of feel like the creative insanity where GTA allows us to see whacky shit that could never actually exist is highly diminished as a result of that. Again, it was under 2 minutes of footage and of course there’s plenty more.

    I also personally think RDR2 is not fun and the hype around it is pretty much entirely manufactured as “it’s so good because it’s R* and the ultimate realism!”. Well, that “realism” made for shit gameplay for horses and boring fetch quests. It’s a beautiful game, it’s got a great story, it is not a good game because of that. That’s not to say it is terrible through and through and never has fun moments, I just personally was more frustrated with the game than I was enthralled with it for a majority of my time playing it. Shooting is nice though.

    I must also say, I’ve never been a particularly die-hard fan of GTA or R*. I grew up playing their games at friends houses, so they’re really nostalgic to me. RDR and RD1 were great for their time, Revolver still holds up pretty well today through emulation. Slow for sure, but it holds up. GTAIV was my first real experience at open-world sandbox games, and while I enjoyed my time with it, it definitely is not my sort of game for long-term enjoyment. I can only play the story so many times and then get bored just driving around like a maniac. The best part of IV’s replayability is the physics, which seemed to have been drastically scaled back for GTA 5.

    And I haven’t even gotten into what GTA:O has done, so I don’t have high expectations. I think your assumption of the developer output perspective is likely very apt. GTA5 came out in 2013, 11 years ago. It will likely be on 4 generations of consoles, unless they choose to only sell GTA6 for the PS6 and Xbox1920.

    There is no way that their focus is on a long term single player experience. There’s just no way.




  • IMO that’s just one of a hundred reasons that trackpads are better for the space they take. You can make them mouse input, that doesn’t mean you need to. That is level 1 trackpad use, using them as the hardware was inteded. The software it ships with heavily suggests making it your own. Having the ability to set up a pad specifically for map interaction, or for QAM buttons to have 16 extra virtual input buttons (really nice for RPG’s with lots of keyboard buttons for opening menus, such as Skyrim) or a button combination for auto-walk/sprint.

    Without the trackpads you’re just missing a full spectrum of possible inputs that are free real estate for input remapping. On top of just the ease of use of not having to control a cursor with an analog stick… shudders. I personally would also argue that just because I only play Roguelites on the Steam Deck doesn’t mean that a dual-stick analog is all I need, as I’ve found many uses for the trackpads that enhance that experience.

    Anyway, I’ll I’m positing is that trackpads have been slept on since the Steam Controller and people don’t realize all the ways that they can be easily incorporated without making it “just adding mouse input.” They have always been so much more than that, that relegating them to “just mouse input” is a bit of a disservice.


  • To be honest, any hardware company can’t really compete with valve toe to toe since valves can cut cost and sell at a loss.

    So far most of the companies that have tried it could have taken the same approach. They just haven’t, like MSI and ASUS. I’m guessing because they know they don’t need to, since there’s a demographic of people who will buy “the best” as long as it’s marketed at them. Why sell it at a loss when someone will pay over full price for something like the ROG Ally.



  • Under “Publish by web & e-mail” section the short video shows adding a product listing, which looked pretty straightforward to add. Right click, scroll, add product listing.

    The template it adds looks nearly identical to the affiliate product links I put together for my site, just a bit different on how it fills it in.

    I’m in a similar situation, but I don’t really have physical products. I’ve been putting together my blog using google sites and I’ve come across a few other e-commerce sites, like Ecwid which I ended up using. I’m not sure if it’s temporary or not but they have 5 free listings which I did a quick mock-up for, and that just uses embed code. I can direct people to my Ecwid store ({websitename}.company.site) or simply direct them to my website.com/shop page.

    The main difference with Ghost I’m seeing is there’s no immediate product page for each shop listing, but that shouldn’t really be an issue unless for some reason it prevents you from creating site pages for each specific product.

    In short: I would say if you are able to create a shop page with 5+ listings (which you can see details and add to cart), and then you are able to click a product and have it bring you to its specific page to see more details and add to cart, Ghost is probably as good as anything else.



  • I wish I could say that I spent even 5% of my time on Windows troubleshooting it, within the last 5 years. Linux rant incoming (but not against it)

    A decade ago I would have agreed. In a couple years I will also agree again, because W11 is pretty awful. However, W10 after the first year has been really, really solid for me. The few issues I have had were hardware related and a fresh install solved anything angry that lingered.

    On the flip side, I have a home server that I want to run a bunch of local services on. Anything past Plex starts getting extremely difficult extremely quickly, and I have been playing with Linux on and off for the last decade as well (2014 was actually one of my first projects getting Linux on a laptop). I have trashed hundreds of Linux installs, I just trashed one a couple months ago and now my steady reliable Plex server is am expensive box until I can take the time to reinstall and re-set up this now decimated Linux install.

    I have issues with both Operating Systems. I fucking despise Linux so often of the time I’m using it because I want it to do something very simple and basic and it forces me to learn its unconventional and weird systems where there’s no “right” way to something with 3,521 ways to accomplish it (but don’t do those 5,320 other ways, that’s the wrong way depending on who you ask.). In many ways, that’s the beauty of it. In many ways, there is nothing wrong with having to learn how to use your computer. At the same time, that is the very thing that I attribute to the failure of Linux (both Linux and its wider adoption). If you are familiar, you may see a parallel between iPhone and Android here. One is a more walled off garden (Windows/iPhone) and the other is a looser but more complex system (Linux/Android), but at the core ONE set of users CAN’T switch because they don’t want to learn the other side. They are familiar with their swiping patterns, so switching from an iPhone is reprehensible, how could we possibly ever re-learn something? (FWIW, I’m not saying this is all iPhone/all Android users. My partner has stated she can never switch to Android, because she took forever to learn the iPhone. This is not the only person I know with this sentiment.)

    With that in mind, it becomes clear that we have made computers accessible to everyone. Linux is at the furthest opposite end of accessibility for anyone who needs to do something outside of installing a program from a package manager. There is a reason so many Linux GUI’s specifically try to look like Windows (and MacOS). It’s because those Operating Systems have pretty much solved the issue of the unknowledgeable user. Just the simple fact that someone can’t plug in a hard drive and have it work every time, they have to go into a specific folder and write a specific arbitrary un-memorable UUID and tell it to always mount it on boot. And that’s not even getting started on something like networking. Or GPU drivers, and we can not even try to deny that this is probably the most common bane amongst even well versed Linux users.

    I’m sorry, that is really stupid. In the name of security you are sacrificing basic functionality, which is what inherently will prevent this O.S. from being used. I think I only need to point to the Steam Deck to prove my point – make Linux easy and functional and people will use it. Lo-and-behold, the Steam Deck requires ZERO Linux knowledge and you can use it as a fully fledged PC. And even despite all of that effort, people still had issues setting and forgetting their password. THAT is the bar we are working with here.

    Which of course, brings us to Windows (and in a way MacOS but this isn’t really about them). For Windows, you are sacrificing security for functionality for the unknowledgable user.

    That said I’ve been on Linux for ages so a lot of the issues I ran into on windows were frustrations with knowing how easy it would have been to resolve technical issues in Linux.

    Windows users, scratch that, COMPUTER users in general have the exact same issue, but for their familiarity. You are familiar with Linux and have memorized the workflow to get your reliable answers. The average person is familiar with Windows and has learned that right clicking for the context menu allows them to open the settings. There is a literal SEA of knowledge between these two users, which appears to me to be the fundamental issue with Linux. You have to learn it, actively. This in itself isn’t necessarily an issue, but it is a huge inhibitor.

    What it comes down to is project reliability. When I spin up a Linux project I want it to be pretty much permanent, but I very quickly learned that it is very difficult to keep it stable. I have re-scrapped installs more times on Linux in 10 years than I have in Windows/MacOS for over 20. I have had more frustration, failure, and time waste on Linux than either of the others. Honestly, I hate it and I think I hate its philosophy too. Which is silly, because the whole point of Linux is that it very easily can be LTS, often specifically is. But that doesn’t matter, because as I USER I am not stable. I don’t know what to do, therefore I will break things. It could be as simple as trying to follow instructions for a project online, and doing all of the exact steps listed, getting an error, and now the user is stuck unable to progress. They have also changed things that they no longer know about. It’s only a matter of time before something conflicts and causes issues.

    But goddamn, when it does work and make sense it is really nice. I just don’t feel like I should have to know the contents of a textbook to accomplish that. There needs to be a middleground between telling your computer exactly to a T what you want from it, and from having an OS that actively inhibits the more heavy duty tasks due to imposed limitations. Don’t get me wrong, I have no love for Windows. I’m only using it now because it’s more reliable with the types of programs I use for it (VR, Photoshop, and editing mostly) both in software and in reliability. At the same time, I would never use Windows as a server PC again despite how frustrating I can find Linux to be, because quite frankly Windows is much worse at the same job, and the deeper you look into these niches the fewer and fewer Windows is able to perform well at.

    Windows can do Photoshop. It can run a Plex server. It can run Stable Diffusion. All of these things at the surface level, IMO, are easier to do on Windows - you download an .exe (or clone from .Git), you run it, it downloads stuff and it works.

    Linux can do Plex. It can also install hundreds of extensions, such as DizqueTV. Windows cannot do this. Linux can run Stable Diffusion, and you can configure it to do even more things that are frankly, nearly impossible to accomplish reasonably on Windows (training data on Linux is SO much easier.). Linux can also configure networking, using things like NGinx Proxy Manager. Windows can’t really accomplish this to the same effective degree that it can be in Linux.

    What this comes down to is utilizing the tools best available for the job. I would be an idiot to try and host an extremely customized Plex server through Windows, because I’d be severely limiting what extreme customization I can do.

    Similarly, I would be an idiot to try and use Photoshop on Linux.

    You can do both. That doesn’t mean it’s worth doing.

    Tl;Dr easy is relative to each O.S. and the abilities of the average user. Windows is much better at some things than Linux ever will be. Likewise, Linux will be better at things than Windows ever will be. Heh. Lemme just say, there’s a reason Linux users have to use VM’s…