getty @aysamanra@sometimes.when.computer

When I say "different from before", I'm contrasting with an older set of cocktail recipe diagrams which were more colorful and less stark. I've got a handful of these at https://cocktail.graphics/

I'm working on some new cocktail recipe diagrams in a different style from before: something more stark and geometric with limited spot color.

X-Files watch update:

Now that this Bluetooth keyboard has arrived, I can finally use my iPad the way that Steve Jobs intended: with a nub mouse.

Tonight's X-Files watching gave us the origin of this one:

I ended up chosting about different axes of "complexity" in TTRPGs and the way I like to articulate them: https://cohost.org/aysamanra/post/890523-i-hang-out-in-a-ttrp

My partner and I have been watching through The X-Files (which I have never seen all the way through) and one thing I've taken it upon myself to do is to point out every time we get the origin of a Meme Image. Tonight we got this one:

Idea: a dungeon-crawling tabletop game about escaping from an Ikea, but the rules are completely wordless, consisting only of Ikea-instruction-style diagrams that you need to interpret.

Plus, using Lua here makes it easy to do some pleasant things, like persisting state across macro calls or doing simple logic (which can be… nightmarish in something like TeX.)

If I were using [La]TeX itself, I could do this with built-in macro facilities, but the goal here is producing HTML. I suppose I could use something like M4 or produce Pandoc, but that sounded… worse, and I like the ergonomics of this.

I wanted to do some writing this afternoon, so the yak I shaved instead was writing a tool to wire up a TeX-inspired markup language for producing HTML and a Lua interpreter to create a little easily-extensible markup language.

I realized today that "Gothic architecture" couldn't have been built by Goths, since all major Gothic tribes were long gone by the 12th century when Gothic architecture started being built. Turns out: the name "Gothic architecture" started as a pejorative term in the 16th century, slamming it as "barbarian" architecture and contrasting it with classical Roman architecture. Earlier Medieval sources generally called it either "Frankish" or "modern" architecture.

This thought comes because my brother's been running D&D for one of the first times and when he asks for advice I keep having to tell him, "Oh, yes, this isn't a problem for other tabletop games, but unfortunately, you're playing D&D."

My interests as a tabletop designer are mostly narrow, idiosyncratic games that are pretty far afield from D&D: for example, two of my current efforts include "comedic one-shot MegaMan party game" and "contemporary paranormal wilderness survival game". …but I do occasionally wonder how I'd try to tackle designing a standard fantasy fighting-monsters game.

Relatedly: I try to keep track of the movies I watch and review each one! My list is in fact public, although be warned that the ratings here are "did I enjoy it", not "is it good" or even "would I recommend it to someone": https://infinitenegativeutility.notion.site/Movie-List-aa3250d5738647288b7e398d12a50ba5

A few years ago, I watched every Coen Brothers film in production order (over the course of months, not, like, in a single sitting) and this year I'm planning to do the same thing but for every Tarkovsky film. Started tonight by watching Ivan's Childhood.

Over on Cohost I wrote a post about some holiday decorations and light pranking I did in my hometown: https://cohost.org/aysamanra/post/745518-so-my-family-has-th

Anton Duvet

Currently thinking about the time that I filmed a time-lapse video of a drive from San Francisco to Portland (although the sun went down before I hit Portland, so the last bit just looks like the end of A Space Odyssey instead.) Some day I should make another attempt at this that isn't marred by a windshield bug for the first third. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb61wE4U2PY