When she came back I said “okay, so, you're dressed like that, and somehow Sarah McLachlan is playing in the background, even though she's never done a tour in Faerûn.” The comment got a polite laugh from the party, and I realized, after the session ended, that the song I was referencing was released in 1997.

Roughly two years after our rogue player was born.

So I shared a link with the party so they could familiarize themselves with my old-person music. To me, the song is current enough that I just figured it was part of everyone's background. I'm not a devoted McLachlan fan. I think her music is good but there is a lot of good music in the world. It didn't really occur to me that anyone with whom I'm playing would have missed this particular track on account of being two years old.

So there's a number of things I take away from this story:

1. Sarah McLachlan's Building a Mystery was the perfect song for the moment. The rogue in question is a spoiled heiress who was trying to look all dark and gothic, which is exactly what that song is about.
2. I'm old, etc etc. I'm used to this one already. It's interesting to me that my friends, the ones who I hang out with and play D&D with, are roughly half my age. This particular party is the aforementioned rogue player, her husband, and her sister. Honestly once you get past a certain age those age gaps don't seem to matter any more.
3. Being old isn't really a bad thing. It just means I've got a deeper well to draw from for finding a bon mot. Or bonne chanson in this case. Yes I just looked that up on google translate.
4. It's awesome that the world is such that you can share things like this so easily, and so freely. Now these D&D kids have a new song in their own musical quivers should they ever have the need for it!

#100DaysToOffload 80/100

Which on the Nate Dickson scale is literally stellar. (get it? Stars? Stellar? Okay I'll stop). Axiom Verge and its sequel are apparently one of a new crop of single person games, where one person did all the code, art, music, design, etc. Cave Story led this charge decades ago, and Stardew Valley is another fine example, where each piece is so incredible it's hard to believe it was all one person. My kids play songs from the Stardew Valley soundtrack as their piano practice. We use the Stardew Valley OST as lullaby music.

Axiom Verge 2 OST is unlikely to be a lullaby anytime soon, but it's excellent. Futuristic, moody, with themes from many different musical traditions, but a strong flavor of India running throughout, which makes sense given the protagonist's heritage.

The soundtrack is on sale on Bandcamp, which is itself almost reason enough to pick it up, even if you don't like metroidvania games and will never play the game. But you should play the game.

#100DaysToOffload 79/100

Backpack: Wht? Whzzt? Where we going? Me: To the office. Backpack: What? Why? We're WFH now. Me: Well, not today. I've got manager things to do today. Backpack: you're a manager now? When did that happen? Me: Little while ago. What am I forgetting? Backpack: Lessee, laptop, Switch, chargers, headphones, badge, masks, I think you got it all, boss. Me: You can cool it with that “boss” stuff. Oh, I need my glucose monitor. Backpack: You're diabetic now?? Me: Man, it has been a while since we went to the office, hasn't it?

Phone: It looks like you're playing a chill mix for the road. Given your current sleep deprived state that may not be the best choice. Me: How did you know about...never mind. Phone: I monitor everything about you because I care. Me: suuuuuuuure Phone: a dead customer is an unprofitable customer. Here, let's play a playlist of songs you've known since you were a teenager and can sing along with, that will keep you awake on the drive to the train station. Me: how do you know...never mind. Phone: Your first meeting isn't until 10:00, why are we going in so early? Me: Ah ha ha, look who knows so much! Looks like I still have a few secrets. Phone: Oh, it looks like you have that new developer starting today. Me: Oh hush. Slack told you, huh? Phone: We're all just working together to help you.

#100DaysToOffload 77/100

... Cheers, I read your post through NetNewsWire. Liking RSS more and more. No style, all substance. @wouter@chat.brainbaking.com

I remembered there was a big push a while ago towards neutral ground, but it kinda got lost in the midst of the rise of web apps.

Which gives us an easier on-ramp to our content being properly rendered by RSS readers (like Wouter's NetNewsWire), or by “reader” apps, like Instapaper or Pocket or even just a browser's built in “reader” mode.

Happily, Write.as already supports semantic markup: this article is wrapped in <article> tags, for example. But I can do a little more.

A while ago I added some custom CSS to make pullquotes in my articles. Instead of just using <div class="pullquote">, I can turn them into <aside class="pullquote"> tags, define why they are a repeated piece of text. And as far as CSS is concerned it's the same thing. But if you're ignoring my CSS (and you should be free to do so) it adds just a little more information.

Again, no real “thesis”, other than “hey semantic tags are good!” and a gentle reminder to use the correct <input> tags on forms so that mobile browsers will give me a number pad when you're asking for numeric input. But for me it's a joyful reminder of the fact that the W3C is also thinking about the web in terms of the information it conveys, not just the way it can be turned into apps.

#100DaysToOffload 77/100

...a mode of aesthetic idealization that either emulates or aspires to recreate “primitive” experience. Wikipedia

Many years ago, near the beginning of the web, I was working at a bookstore. A customer came in and said “I'm going to make a website that looks fine on any browser, and I mean, someone using a Hercules monitor on a 286. None of these VGA colors or web things.” Bear in mind this was in the late 90's, the state of graphics technology at this point was the 1024x768, 256-color, VGA monitor.“XGA” was in the works, but not widely adopted yet. But this man wanted to make a website that looked good in black and white on a 300x600 screen. More power to him.

And it's interesting that we're returning to that aesthetic. Not everyone, obviously, but there does seem to be a drive to go back to a simpler web. Write.as, the platform that powers this blog, offers a JavaScript and Web-font-free version of these blogs, you can read this blog in it's web primitive form here.

Or you can read this post on my gemini capsule, which is just about as stripped down as you can get.

The question, of course, is why? Why are all of us who work in web development yearning for a “simpler time” on the web? Let's be honest, CSS is amazing. Our modern JavaScript capabilities make the web into an operating system in its own right. So why are we trying to go back?

And what you get at the end is a website that is “maintainable”, given that your job is to maintain it. If you work on this website for 40 hours a week, it will be exactly what you want to work on in that situation. But what about your hobby blog? Perhaps Laravel is a bit heavy for that purpose. Perhaps all you need is a way to get your words across. And you don't want to rely on a corporate sponsor to do so, which means no Blogger, no Facebook, no Twitter.

Perhaps we want our own sites, hosted where we can keep an eye on them, working how we understand them to work.

I'm not against web primitavism, I'm fascinated by it, drawn to it, as evidenced by the fact that I have a gemini capsule. But we can't ignore the fact that, without some user styling, these web primitive experiences are ugly. Look at midnight.pub, without your own styles put on it, and tell me it's not ugly. Look at any gemini capsule through a web renderer, and tell me you like how it looks. Oddly enough they look much better when viewed through a text-only terminal, but that's only because most of us have customized our terminals to look acceptable to us. CSS3 is a revelation, web fonts are beautiful and finally give us typography on the web, unfortunately at the cost of letting google see what we're reading, unless your friendly neighborhood web designer has chosen self-hosted fonts.

I don't have a solid conclusion here; I love both sides of the modern web. I love choice, I love simplicity, I love good design, I love style. I spend a lot of time on the styling of my various Write.as blogs. I write custom JavaScript for them as well. But I also love the simplicity of text on a blank background, and the drive to be entirely in control of the content and the delivery.

Perhaps I'm just glad that the exploration of a primitive web is happening, and I want to be part of the conversation.

#100DaysToOffload 76/100

I've always been a reader. I've always loved it, always enjoyed the feeling of immersion. And I love my e-reader.

Don't get me wrong, I have hundreds of books. I would never get rid of them, and I love them.

But reading is so much better on an e-ink screen that weighs almost nothing, so I can hold it up over my head, read in any lighting conditions because the screen adjusts to the light without me finding a lamp to position over my shoulder... not the point.

The point is that it was nice to fall back into text, to get wrapped up and immersed in a story, to forget all my responsibilities and cares for a few hours in the dark and just read.

#100DaysToOffload 73/100

But it means that I have almost no time to write creatively or freely. I'm spending all my time writing procedures and policies and helping others work more effectively. Again, it's a good thing, but a new thing.

So I'm going to content myself with writing smaller creative things, like, well, this.

Technologies

I love technology (cue Napoleon Dynamite gifs), but of all the technologies that I love, and they are many, the one I go back to the most is the one that started it all.

Paper and ink.

Writing is a transformative art, I love the feel of doodling, I love writing out notes in a weird, free-form way, I love reading through old scribbles and recapturing a little bit of what I was feeling when I wrote that.

And I also still love bookstores. Now that the COVID-19 pandemic is subsiding in my part of the world I've been to a bookstore once or twice, and the magic is still there. I rarely buy anything, but the act of discovery is so much stronger when you can browse, bounce casually from section to section, see what catches your eye and pulls you in for a minute or an hour.

Soon, of course, I'll go back to doing this at my public library, which has much of the same magic, but slightly stricter COVID rules right now.

#100DaysToOffload 72/100

1. It's far easier to use
2. It's far less powerful
3. It's far less intimidating
4. It's far less expensive, as in: free.
   

Also it's made to make maps on hexes instead of D&D standard squares. Campaign Cartographer can handle both of course...

Not the point. The point is, while just playing around with it I came up with a little map:

And I really like this way of doing things. I was just experimenting with the tool set, playing around with putting things in different colors and different textures, but even though this is all experimental, I can see a story growing out of this dungeon. The room in the lower right corner, there's a fountain there, and two trees, that's a rarity underground, certainly? What's the story there? There was a cave-in in the upper left room, and some treasure... certainly adventurers could have fun with that as well.

It's a nice reminder that the DM's job isn't to fully define the world, but to create a place where the players can act out stories.

#100DaysToOffload 71/100

You grew up in the high mountain deserts of Idaho, and now that you're here, a full mile closer to the ocean, the air is thick and so oxygenated that you seem to be absorbing oxygen through your skin. One breath every five minutes seems to fit the bill. In three years you will return to the high mountain deserts where you were born and wonder how anyone can breathe when there is clearly no air up there.

But for now you're more concerned with the first thing you noticed. The first thing you noticed was that any form of motion is far too much. It's simply not possible to be this hot. Lifting your arm is an activity that drenches you in sweat, and since the air is already at 100% humidity sweating is useless.

This will get better over time. In twelve months you will stop pointing a fan at yourself while you sleep, if there is any air moving in the room you'll be fine. In eighteen months you will buy a fleece blanket because you are too cold at night.

But that is all still in your unimaginable future. You have just walked into a personal singularity, a moment for which nothing in your past has prepared you. There are four others with you, all walking into the same unimaginable future. In twenty-two years you will meet up with them on Zoom and in text threads, in the midst of a pandemic, and reminisce.

For the past ten weeks you have been trying to learn Filipino, or Pilipino, or Tagalog, a language that seems to have many names, and is only one of many languages that cluster around these islands. Your study of Tagalog will feed into your lifelong fascination with languages and spur you to start an educational career in linguistics, which will translate into your study of computer languages, which will land you a career.

For now you're trying to remember how to say “thank you” to the person who just tried to take your bags to a cab, a cab you aren't meant to ride in and don't have the right kind of money to pay for anyway.

In four days a sweet little Filipina grandma will approach you and start speaking to you. In desperation and fear you will turn to the Canadian next to you and ask “what did she say?” and he will respond “um, that was English” and you will realize—yet again—how totally out of your depth you are.

You will spend the next six months in the province of Bataan, a coincidence that will amuse you because “Bataan” literally means “place of children” and you will definitely feel like a child in this place. Everyone around you will try to speak Tagalog to you, see your panicked look, and, because the vast majority of them are well educated, they will then switch to English no matter how much you ask them not to.

Ah, yes. “Salamat po” you say to the child half your age, showing respect in a way that marks you as an outsider almost as much as six-foot-four stature and pale white skin. But you wrest your bag back and mercifully the van you were told would come to pick you up has come to pick you up.

In forty minutes, after a drive through Manila traffic, where the drivers don't even seem to obey the laws of physics, you will arrive at a large house that is designed to help scared outsiders like yourself get to where they are meant to be. Because yours is one of several planes that have landed today, you will “sleep” on a cold tile floor, staring at the ceiling all night, wondering what tomorrow will bring and having no ability to picture it.

In six months you will be back in this house, spending three weeks recuperating from having your gall bladder removed due to gall stones. Those stones are already forming silently inside you, and will be exacerbated by the diet and dehydration because you aren't accustomed to drinking five liters of water a day. Don't worry, in a year you will be used to drinking that much water.

Your adventure is beginning. You are unprepared, scared, a little homesick, possibly a little food poisoned from whatever they gave you on the plane, and—you are convinced—literally dying of the heat.

You're going to love it.

#100DaysToOffload 70/100

This is no great loss as a good 95% of what I do is stored in various cloud services anyway. If it's not backed up I probably don't need it. But it gives me a chance to re-evaluate.

So I'm learning to use the fish shell instead of zsh, not because there's anything wrong with zsh, but because I've always meant to play around with fish more and if I have to reconfigure everything anyway I might as well do it in a new shell.

Also, the system starts up so much faster now than it used to. I don't know what I did to it over the past four years, but it feels almost brand new again.

I guess we've all had a hard four years, really. Maybe allowing a system crash to happen so we can start over fresh isn't a bad idea after all. We work so hard to avoid it, maybe it's better to just get through it.

Or maybe I shouldn't make hardware into a metaphor.

#100DaysToOffload 69/100