• Sew, what?

    I have stubby legs, relatively speaking. Not stubbly, just kinda short proportionally. One effect of this is that it’s hard to get legwear in my size. Shopping for jeans/slacks is annoying, and pajama bottoms are even worse because they don’t really do those by measurements, they’re just… “here, this is a roughly standard size, hope you like it because that’s what you’re getting.” But I work from home, so I’m in pajamas a lot. Thus owning a selection of options.

    One pair of pajama bottoms which started out way too long was hemmed by a kind and caring person with a sewing machine, and boy is that nice, having a nice comfy pair of jammies that fits perfectly.

    Another pair, we tried using some kind of iron-on tape product. It… kinda sorta worked, until it stopped working. And thus that pair of pajamas remained in an unusable state for the better part of a year.

    And that bothered me.

    I’d set myself a few modest goals for this late-autumn vacation, among which was: Learn just enough about sewing to be able to fix this situation by hand, myself.

    And thanks to the Internet, I actually did so! I mean, the stitching is ragged as hell (no, I refuse to share pictures) but it held up through the washer & dryer cycle and seems to be sturdy enough. The proof will be when I wear them next, which will probably be early next week. (Our weather’s a bit too warm for the heavier fabric options right now. A balmy near-winter we’re having. But hey climate change is a myth right?)

    I did a thing! All on my own, if you don’t count the various folks whose instructional materials I made use of! I’m kinda proud of it.

  • Winter Staycation 2023

    I was going to take a few days off and my boss asked, “Why don’t you make it a week?” So now I shall attempt to enjoy my time away from the office… virtually speaking, since I actually live in my actual physical office (my bedroom).

    And try not to stress about all the work waiting for me when I get back, since my boss decided to give me a by-year’s-end project knowing full well I will be losing 1/4 of the month to get it done in by being on the vacation my boss insisted on to begin with.

    Dunno what I’m going to do or where (more like “if”) I’m going to go, but I’ll do my best to rest and revitalize. Hey, it could work. Maybe.

  • Satisfactory: Final Destination Tour Video

    Since the inception of the Final Destination site project in my current solo Satisfactory game, I knew I was going to make “content” out of it. (Sorry, Patrick Willems.) There was always going to be a tour, it was just a question of what format the tour would take. I went back and forth on whether to make it a long post with lots of pictures or just record a tour video and put text bits in it. Both options have merits and downsides, and the internal debate allowed me to put off doing anything for several weeks even after (more-or-less) completing the build.

    Yesterday I woke up and decided, it’s time to record a video. Thus, the following:

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  • My Duck On Stuff: The Archive

    As I’m unlikely to ever treat the site as a working feature anymore, and given that it was a very silly name to begin with, I’ve imported the 98 posts’ worth of material from the My Duck On Stuff site over here for safe keeping. If you’re interested, check out the Ducks On Stuff category, to which I may add entries from time to time.

    That’s one domain fewer to renew every year, if nothing else.

  • Satisfactory: I Lumen-ate

    On Tuesday, the 14th of November, 2023 the 8th major update to Satisfactory arrived in Early Access, after spending months in the Experimental branch to shake out the worst of the bugs… most of them, anyway. We have a few things to talk about with “U8” but today we’re going to focus primarily on the new engine’s support for something called “Lumen” and how that makes an already-pretty game even prettier.

    I took this screenshot within the first two minutes of enabling Lumen while at the Final Destination site. Just a purely random view and it shows off the new lighting so well! Dang this game’s pretty.
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  • Filter – The Algorithm

    I suppose I should say a few words about the other new record I picked up last week:

    Filter’s The Algorithm has a few songs I mostly like (and even “For The Beaten” almost loses me in places) but overall is not my cuppa tea. That’s not to say it’s bad, just not-for-me, not an overall style I like. A bigger fan of the band than I am would probably like it just fine, as it is definitely more-of-that.

    To be fair, nearly every Filter album I’ve heard (other than the nearly-flawless Title Of Record) is like this for me, where I end up with two or three songs in rotation and a whole bunch of “nope, don’t want none of that” tracks. So take this with the grain of salt it probably deserves.