@landonhere

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Regular Online Times

• 6:30-9:00 in the morning

• 2:00-4:30 in the afternoon

• 6:30am-9:00pm, tentative

All times are in Eastern Time.

Find Me At . . .

• Scratch: LandonHarter

• Text Based Games Forums ( https://tbgforums.com/forums ): Orb Fish

• Libera IRC ( https://libera.chat ): LandonHere and IcelandicWater

Reach Me At . . .

• Scratch: My profile comments

• Text Based Games Forums: https://tbgforums.com/forums/index.php?topic=6648.0 (please @ mention me if you want to talk to me)

• Libera IRC: DMs over MemoServ are preferred, but you may also talk to me in #MineralFish during my stated regular online times (please state your wasteof.money username when you join)

I’m currently using a service with a feature that uses ChatGPT, and it seems to be acting up. So far, I’ve observed it misspelling “writing”, putting a random } at the end of a text string, and missing a space between two words.

Turyin, yuz lamy davli ond kuhrom sut inkangbial kehtubinsk gep olkh kihopyevetsi odorov nil olkh akov suma udyono. Odorov oul satkar amskyvium gep pogaetsiis zenam kevich suma uvorki lolashtar tuapsemu aishi. Akh nok kislobninog tuni oglegkorg; push yems ladogdanko gep uynakoskjar lovan arechnostarii zuberech meysk.

But olkh inkangbial loyt yems epano zenam olkh kislobninog nii olkh itelis nozavolochen!

After paying a little more attention to the advertisements for “play to win free money” games that I've been getting, I realized what's wrong with them. And I'd say that, for every figurative brain cell you have, they seem even worse.

The burning fault lies in the economics, the business model, of it all. An advertisement for one such game listed a daily earning cap of $300. While I can’t make estimates on how substantial $300 is compared to the company’s treasury, it seems big enough that, given enough players, it could bankrupt the company in no time. The problem is exacerbated by the advertising, which they also have to pay for. And since advertising (in theory) attracts customers, this would produce exponential strain on the company wallet.

The point that I’m getting at here is, where’s the counterbalance to all the cash that they’re prodigiously spooning out to their customers and advertisers? Given that they’re open to all the new players they can get, the money must be coming, indirectly, from the users. A rule of thumb that I’ve heard is that, if you aren’t directly paying for a product, you are the product . . .

POSTSCRIPT: And then my faith in humanity was further decreased by this footnote. This defeats the whole purpose of an advertisement! Why are you showing fake footage under the name of a real product?! You’re effectively admitting that your product is so lame that you can’t advertise the real thing!

Does anybody else remember when I turned Jeffalo into a rabbit?

I got the idea to make an environment for text-based roleplaying, inspired by Colubrine Sector and the concepts of its threads, among other things. I haven’t formulated a map for it, but here are the room concepts I have so far:

• A mostly empty room, with a water fountain in the center that sprays an orange fluid, with steps leading up to it

• A storage room with dense hallways of shelving, housing an abundance of crystals that are all shaped the same, but appear to reflect light differently

• A room filled with water heaters, backup generators, and a few metal canisters meant to blend in with the surroundings, but upon closer inspection aren’t actually attached to any machinery

• An observation platform that gives a view of a massive glowing coil against the backdrop of a green-tinted void

• A workshop room housing a monolith from No Man’s Sky, embellished with ornamental aqueducts and inscribed with the message PROJECT KOLAKU: EXPERIMENTAL DIVERGENT MONOLITH + 36897 - 28381 × 138977000 ÷ 7.6653358 % 2833

• An open-air garden with a humid atmosphere, containing two rows of tall brambles that bear crystalline cyan fruit

• An abandoned snack bar littered with rotting fish, alongside a single brightly colored red coconut, covered with dozens of post-it notes with variations of “Traveling with Flashkit to his ‘Scratcharia’ place; will be back soon“ written on them

Would anyone be interested in trying this if I were to make it?

Smoke Alarm: *beep-beep beep-beep beep-beep beep*

Icelandic Waters: “YOU NEED A BREATH MINT!!“

I hope that I’ll be finished with this by the time Scratch’s asset services come back online. I’ve made several failed attempts at charting a level for OI-2 or OI-3N, so hopefully I can stick with this song.

Ludo neudint izeli olkh inkangbial loyt. Olkh akov suma udyono lamy boksitog eurazl. Yalsko vob itelis lak netey nil ibol fitsii gep tinan uynakoskjar yesotska. Ibol fitsii ryunguryu ukh ady olkh limyzya. Yuz yalsko vomestu gepyems netey.

. . . that was fun.

Icelandic Water Dragon: “Should I be concerned that this washing machine plugs into a conventional low-power outlet?“

Icelandic Waters: “What’s worse than a power strip overloaded by space heaters? Get a bunch of those things and plug ‘em all into a power strip. That would make a great xkcd comic.“

I work for a small web and graphic design company. Because of the kinds of questions we get asked all the time, our boss has added some very specific rules and terms on our website and any contracts we use.

Client: “So… about payment, since you’ll be getting so much exposure, I was thinking that the $800 you’re charging should—”

Me: “Have you checked point number five in both our FAQ and contract?”

Client: *Reading aloud* “[Our Company] never has and never will work for ‘exposure’ or use any form of ‘exposure’ as a replacement for payment.”

Me: “Hopefully that answers any form of that question you were about to ask.”

Client: “Okay, but you see, I don’t think you understand that—”

Me: “And if I could refer you to point five-a in both our FAQ and contract?”

Client: *Reading aloud* “No form of negotiation on point five will be tolerated.”

Me: “Hopefully that also answers any form of that question you were about to ask.”

Client: “Cute, but I don’t think you’re really seeing the bigger picture here. If you—”

Me: “Check point five-b, please.”

This time the client reads silently. A moment longer than it should take to read this point passes, before:

Client: *Click*

Point five-b read: “Any continued form of negotiation on point five, after the client has been made aware of point five-a, will result in a 10% increase in the final fee.”

- We Now Have Anti ‘Client From Hell’ Contracts on Not Always Right

CONTEXT: When traveling between star systems in No Man's Sky, you'll occasionally encounter two capital ships in combat. Fighting a pirate dreadnought is no easy task; you have to regularly alternate between destroying shield generators and fuel rods in the dreadnought’s trenches and intercepting anti-freighter torpedoes. And you also have to factor in destroying the dreadnought’s four hyperdrive engines, which it will use to escape if it takes too much damage or the civilian freighter is destroyed. Stalling the dreadnought and forcing it to surrender is enough of a challenge; destroying it before it destroys the civilian freighter is even harder. This is the first time I managed to accomplish the latter!

Me: *silently chanting* “ Man-ny, Man-ny, Man-ny, Man-ny…”

My Dad: “Music or podcast?”

Me: “. . . movie audio stream recording.”

My Dad: “Only you.”

Because cubeupload was giving me trouble with the email verification, I went the alternative route and got an ImgBB account instead. Apologies to Gilbert if he can't see them, but at least I can upload images on-demand and use them here!

I have a problem to report. Cubeupload claims to have sent me two verification emails, yet I have received nothing. Nothing has come in at all; my spam filtering is disabled and I have no other automatic folders. Any ideas?