Although late to the party. Here's to 2024!
This New Year's Eve we spent at home and by ourselves. It was super uneventful really. Didn't go to the Barcade like the year prior. Nor did we go to the lakeshore. Or to a warehouse listening to speed metal cooking 36lbs of meat in a 55-gallon drum while only having a single packet of hamburger buns sitting on the makeshift picnic table looking incredibly sad for most of the night.
But hey, let's review what all happened this year, shall we?
Events in 2023.
We went to a few events that are within the Midwest region, and the attendance numbers of these events were rather large. However, we will not be talking about these events directly as it goes against a personal rule that we've set up for blogging here. That rule is
"No convention talk"
Why? Because Fandom is fanatical. Criticism even if it's constructive will be met with violence because there is nothing wrong in the mind of the delusional.
Furry events:
To what has been mentioned above. Back in 2016, we wrote up this article about being furry and how no one leaves because there is no such thing as 'goodbye' which is why instead people simply fade from a fandom. Also, how things aren't what they once were when it comes to communities. Occasionally we try to go to events to prove this article wrong.
In 2023, It's as solid as ever. I'm just going to say that the event in question does not need my money. Their attendance will be perfectly fine until it isn't. When that event cross that threshold it will be too late AND not my problem! Okay! moving on!
Gaming events:
Do avoid getting all debbie downer in 2023; If there is one thing we did enjoy in 2023 is going to Midwest Gaming Classic which typically happens around April. I like this picture because of the Ouya. Now, there will be some readers that are going to explode on us with the following:
You just said you're not talking about conventions!! You asshole S!
If you go over to their website the very first sentence on their homepage tells you they are not a convention. But a Trade Show. To some, this is splitting hairs. But there's a distinct difference.
Trade shows typically are events set to encourage businesses to buy products. Trade Shows typically are more commercial than a convention. However, Midwest Gaming Classic kind of goes a little above and beyond with hosting panels at their Trade Show which is not too common. They've even reached out to the roleplaying and board game community too.
In the pinball world, the convention fits this category perfectly. Stern, American, and Jersey Jack all come down with their latest machines and take orders from bars restaurants, and collectors to have that new pinball machine delivered to their home. Sometimes buying the machine right off the convention floor and into their home.
I also posted a link on Odysee for the 2022 expo-hall walkthrough for those who want to see that. It's over there mostly because we were testing Odysee in a previous article.
Unlike a convention. A trade show feels super neutral. There are fans of certain products there of course! But it's not to the level where you feel you're being alienated from going.
Never thought we'd see the day of a game having a $2,199 price tag on it.
The picture above is just one vendor in the hall and there are so many styles of vendors it ranks from the "I know what I got" vendor like the picture above. To the "What's in the box? I dunno. It's yours for $10! I need this out of my attic!" which are the vendors we like. Thank god for emulators where people can maintain their unopened boxes while the price goes to the moon right?
Anyhow, it was good last year. I'll probably go back this year. Also, this isn't the only gig in the world. There are a few pinball and arcade shows like this throughout the states and each of them of course has its vibe to it. So if you do have one in your city. It's worth checking out at least once.
How will you find me at Midwest Gaming Classic? I'll be one of those nerdy types, with a video game shirt. Walking up and down the halls.
Glad we narrowed it down for you.
Best 2023 article.
I'd say one of my best articles for 2023 is the Intel Arc A380 video encoding demo. I should probably revisit that and drop that card into a box with a legit bridge to use it correctly. But it's great because we're entering the world of GPT-generated content on the internet and We don't want it to stop. We want it to get worse! So much worse that Google can't even function anymore. Turn all of the major search engines into grey fucking goo for all we care! Because of how we do our blog entries. How can an AI not only perform the tests we did in this blog but also show the video result using video samples? Now, we're sure someone with enough GPT could generate a workflow to do all of this. But most of these guys want easy money. Which is to use a cookie-cutter GPT to make an article that 'copies' other people and moves on.
The website itself.
We've both improved and regressed at the same time. That is, our site is moving faster because we got rid of all Javascript. By getting rid of all Javascript our website may also feel a little dated.
Respectfully on Marginalia's search engine (one of those few clear-near search engines we legitimately respect because they deal with small hosting content instead of going for the conglomerates right away.) Those Javascript warnings are going away slowly. We suspect by the end of next year most of the ones that are still warning of javascript will be cleaned up too because of how cache settings on this site are set yearly for static page content.
Webrings.
They were too unwieldy to keep in the cellar door. Too many change requests. So we put webrings into a new LNK section over here. Looking back at Webrings we question its use throughout 2023. Because when you think of webrings back in the day it was focused on a particular subject. Is putting a button on a page enough for the reader to click on it? Or is it better to stick with my cellar door methodology of promotion where we write a paragraph as to WHY it exists and WHY it's respected? Then, the reader can decide after explaining a graphic/link its existence if this is someplace they want to go. If the experiment gets too stupid I'll pull the plug and reconsolidate each webring network as a single mention instead of going image-spam crazy.
The enimic Tor / I2P
This might be changed a lot quicker. Lainchan attempted to include these addresses but they don't seem to be replicating all that well. I might revert to my classic listing structure where it's just a site that I have found and have worked on throughout the years.
Mastodon.
The experiment is still ongoing on core.
The timeline was 401'ed to prevent a bunch of scabs from indexing anything here. But it's still online for me to use. Outside of the technical hells of updating it from time to time, it's been far less stressful for me to be on Pleroma/Mastodon than it is on Twitter. In a sense, because we're using the Pleroma engine to hook up to Mastodon it sort of leaves our instance in the reaver territory of the fediverse where some of the bigger ones would ignore any contribution I may have for their timeline. However, in the past being that we were on the primary mastodon instance we think this is a good thing to be excluded from that level of crap.
Of course, clicking about you see lots of love for Threads attempting to join my instance. But overall. It's been a good experience because social networks like twitter/X TURNED into television. With ads being everywhere and people you don't know telling you how you should live your life. To which they deserve all of the bags of dicks to chew on.
Final thoughts.
looking at 2023, we did fail on a lot of things we wanted to do. We wanted to do more art. Maybe even a comic. Get some 3-d shit done. But you see. When you're adulting hard through life. RL has a way of destroying all of the things that you want to do. Perhaps it's being too much of a workaholic to focus on anything really fun. Or living in a world where the possibility of not being under the thumb of a landlord that jacks your rent by forty percent is turning savings and ownership into a laughable dream because you exchange that thumb of oppression with another thumb which is a supposed bank with a 30-year mortgage. Fun fact, a life sentence in jail is 25 years.
Of course, you get those that argue that the debt is 'good'. Just like college debt is 'good' because the education helps further your career and ability to get jobs. For every person, we know where that is true. there are 20 that have gone through college, have received their degrees, and are essentially back at working for Home Depot this time with 40-120k of debt over their head. Now, those who are working in the careers required for college are just barely breaking even. Living check to check. So even when you do get the career you want. Throw the wrench of inflation into the mix and now you spent 4 years being back where you started.
So what is a person to do? Well, since we're all not stacking mad eddies in this cyberpunk dystopia making six-figure incomes every year. Does one decide to save up just enough for a foreclosed house and live the fight club dream while trying to slowly rebuild the place from the inside out? Even when that's accomplished the average homeowner is still dancing madly upon the lip of a volcano because all it takes is a serious medical bill or an accident. And the house as an asset can be liquidated. Because if they see a run-down shack for a house they may decide it's not even worth the legal hassle to pull the asset.
These are some of the stresses we think about. We know we're not alone on this. Many are going through the same shit. Life was never given the 'easy' button but damn a little bit of a break can go a long way in any generation.
Anyhow, that's what server said
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