Think I might be in early stages of a hypomanic episode, but not sure.

Need to chill somehow. Running with assumptions, though. Might just be a bad few days; just haven’t had them this suddenly in a while.

Might end up making this comment and by the time next week’s thread is started in a day or two, I’ll be feeling fine(-ish) again. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Could really do with something interesting like the Olympics right now, but that’s still almost a month away.

I don’t even enjoy most sports, but it’s a nice distraction. If I’m being honest, all I’m really interested in is the women’s football portion, although there’s at least more Euro 2025 qualifiers and a handful of friendlies in a couple of weeks to hold me over until then.

Edit: Lol, never mind, already feel better.

Was getting all set up for another playthrough of New Vegas, mods and all (even made my own, though I ditched it last minute), and then I realised, “Wait, why am I doing this? I don’t actually feel like playing this at all right now, even with the new mods.”

So, now I’ve downloaded some stuff in my backlog, but don’t know if I’ll play any of it at the moment because I’m kind of burned out a little.

Lol, my mother comes into my room and says “Kiefer Sutherland died-- No, wait! Wait! I’m so sorry! I’m sorry! I meant to say Donald Sutherland…”

She knows that I enjoy watching the both of them (and she also enjoys him, especially on that show Dirty Sexy Money), so it was oddly funny.

Anyway, I’ll miss him, but I’m glad he got the long and critically acclaimed career he deserves.

Always gave 100% to every role and somehow made the films and shows he acted in more enjoyable with just his presence alone.

Yeah, then they fucked up and trained EddieAI 2.0 on some new art and we got the Dance of Death cover.

They had to roll back to 1.5 after that, unfortunately.

I feel kind of bad.

I really don’t like killing things, but ants have literally invaded my home, so I’ve had to do something.

Sprinkled some diatomaceous earth today. Watching a few stragglers just kind of meandering and basically not knowing what the fuck to do while they dehydrate and succumb to death has depressed me a little.

On a basic level, the way it works, it’s just cruel. Yeah, they’re not “sentient”, they’re mostly drones, etc., but still. Seeing this lonely ant kind of just… slowly dying and not knowing what to do is a bit heartbreaking.

Not exactly playing, but learning my way around the GECK to create a few personal radio stations for New Vegas. I’ve learned how to do most of it, I just now need to sort the audio files and add them. Too cold to sit at my desk and finish this, so I’ll do all that later.

(Before anyone says “why not just use the mod that lets you add your own music files”, it’s because I need separate radio stations with unique names that I can switch between, each with their own chronological order, rather than one giant one which basically works by saying “random bullshit go”.)

I personally blocked all politics and news communities, found much less bots and trolls since then.

Same. It’s a much more pleasant experience in general.

Kernels shouldn’t be a problem if you have the backports repo enabled (you can enable it during install, otherwise add it to your sources.list).

You do first have to specify that you want the kernel from backports (or set up APT pinning preferences), but after that, it’ll keep that specific package updated whenever you run sudo apt upgrade and there’s a newer version.

If you installed the generic Linux image on installation (usually the default, I believe), the quick way to upgrade is basically just:

sudo apt install -t bookworm-backports linux-image-amd64

It should be noted that backports is not Sid or Testing, it’s stuff built specifically for current Stable that people might need newer versions of for various reasons (e.g. hardware, limited feature updates that don’t affect the base system, some development libraries, etc.), so it’s quite small in the amount of unique packages it has. Like, you can get newer LibreOffice packages, but you’re not going to get Plasma 6 or whatever.

Right now, the kernel is on 6.7 in backports, while Stable is on 6.1 and Sid is on 6.8. So you’ll get them a tiny bit later, but that’s in terms of days/weeks, rather than, you know, the usual two-ish years (not counting security updates).

Side note: if you want all this enabled by default, Spiral Linux is just straight up Debian Stable with a bunch of firmware packages preinstalled for easier installation on a variety of hardware and the kernel is updated via backports by default, so you could give that a shot as well.

It’s not like “a distro based on Debian”, it is Debian, but set up with conveniences for modern desktop users and also sets up btrfs + apt snapshotting by default, similar to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed’s process.

I did mention it as a smaller, compact alternative, but I maybe wasn’t specific enough with regard to the scope of gameplay.

Probably should have specified that I meant Outer Worlds as an alternative to Starfield mainly for people interested in a game set in space with the familiar approach to worldbuilding that Bethesda and Obsidian seem to share a bit, and also because it’s not uncommon to hear either of them referred to (maybe a bit unfairly) as “Fallout, but in space”.

Then again, most people interested in that would probably already have played it by now (although lots of new Fallout fans this year, so maybe not).

I’m really surprised that neither of the 2019 “Outer” games with similar names showed up in any of your posts: The Outer Worlds and Outer Wilds.

Worlds because if we’re talking about Starfield, it’s something to consider as a smaller, more compact alternative (although I recently finished a playthrough and there’s actually very few comparisons to be made between the two), and Wilds because… well, it’s just straight up space archaeology that makes heavy use of travel and planet exploration. Also because it’s probably one of the most critically well-received space games.

Something else I wanna throw out there: Heaven’s Vault. Nice little narrative game which takes place in space and has quite a calming (even if completely unrealistic) method of space travel.

Ended up starting a new playthrough of The Outer Worlds.

Mostly enjoying it and having Parvati with me again feels great.

Wii U gamepad was a lot more comfortable for me. I’d play Windwaker or Mario Maker or 3D World or Splatoon for hours and never feel all cramped up with half-numb palms. I play Ace Attorney for an hour and it just hurts.

Plus the charging port location makes it annoying to play while charging. It makes sense for the dock, but it ruins it in handheld mode.

I’d love to just get a Steam Deck and be done with it, but Valve won’t be shipping here anytime soon and the cost of importing it along with our shitty forex rates end up with the base model hitting PS5 cost territory for me (which is also more expensive here than in most Western nations).

Fallout: New Vegas, because it’s been like a decade and I want to play again, especially after watching the series.

Took a while for me to get back into it (and figure out the right mods and settings for me), and I’m still feeling a little bit of that overwhelming “fuck, there’s maybe too much shit to do”, but I’ll just chill with it for now.

Edit: LOOOOOOL. Legion already hates me and I haven’t even met (and killed) Caesar yet. Barely even started the main quest at this point, which I suppose is tradition with Fallout, to be fair.

It’s the same with “hack and slash”. Originally also referred to games like Diablo, but now we all use it to refer to stuff like DMC, pre-2018 God of War, Bayonetta, etc.

Got a new router. Frustrated. I hate networking shit.

I live in a shitty part of the world where it’s not uncommon for power to go out, so I have a backup UPS/power bank for my current router.

When new one is plugged into power bank, it powers on fine, but for some reason won’t register the WAN cable as connected. Plugged directly into socket? Suddenly the cable is connected.

I legitimately don’t fucking understand this. Even tried another power bank with more juice, and same result.

It’s very annoying. I’ve needed a new router for years because the one I’ve been using is like a decade old, has zero firmware updates, and feels insecure all round. It’s also really low on features and I can’t even change the fucking username for logging into the device.

So this has been a fun two days of troubleshooting.

Sometimes I hate technology, if I’m being honest.

Edit: Lol, fuck all that shit. Turns out it had trouble keeping a stable connection with the cable regardless of power source, so seems I was just “lucky” the first time I switched them.

Weird that the cable works fine and is locked in on my other router, though. Finicky on this one. Return it, I shall. Still, technology has been having a lot of fun fucking with me over the last two years. At this point I’m afraid to buy any new tech.

Very tired still due to my overexertion, but I feel like I’m finally back in the headspace where I can hopefully pay more attention to the spoons I’ve got.

Already feel better than I did earlier, so horizon looks good right now.

/r/all was a fucking nightmare on reddit, and I don’t think the equivalent here is that much better either, if I’m being honest.

I find that life is more pleasant when I stick to local and/or my subscriptions, block the communities I’m not interested in, and filter out whatever remains.

What kind of art and writing do you do? Are they always separate, or do you sometimes write and illustrate a single story (i.e. comics or scene illustrations between paragraphs/pages, etc.)?

While I can go with the cliché “just do it for yourself” line (I do think that’s an important approach, though), I’m sure people here would be more than happy to see what creativity you’ve cooked up.

And I bet there are plenty of people here who would enjoy your art and writing as well.

Yes please! I’d personally love to see/read it.

Hrm. Haven’t been pacing well lately. Need to sort that out. Fucking exhausted.

In good news, I had my first appointment with the new psychiatrist yesterday. A pleasant experience, which hopefully bodes well.