Hey folks! We've got a little server update for you. We're going back to the past of 2006! Because Discord has released a new feature: Forum Channels. A feature we've tested extensively (and by that I mean we tested it for an hour). After this testing we decided to immediately go live with Forum Channels.

How do Forum Channels work?

As you might have noticed, Forum Channels look slightly different from normal channels. They have a new icon and there's an indicator for active posts.

Once you open a Forum Channel you will be greeted with a view that's a little different than what you're used to from Discord.

Here you can search for or create posts, filter by tag, or sort by 'Recent Activity' or 'Creation Time'. In the case of #current-events there are tags for 'World News', 'Europe News', 'Us News', 'UK News' and 'Uplifting News'. You can assign tags to your posts yourself, no need for an admin or mod to do this for you.

What if I don't like Forum Channels?

For now, as a trial run, we've replaced #suggestion-box and #current-events with Forum Channels.

We're planning on switching #entertainment and #general-games to Forum Channels as well in the near future. If we decide that we don't like Forum Channels, either because we think they're too complicated, or because people don't feel really engaged, we can always revert these changes. All the OG channels will always be archived.

If you have any questions, or want to provide feedback for how we could make better use of Forum Channels, there will be a questions and feedback thread in #general.

So I definitely dropped the ball on actually posting updates, so here's a bit bigger one, even though most of this was from one afternoon.

So with our larger pond, the one issue we were really concerned about going forward was this absolutely vile growth on the surface. We thought it was some sort of algae bloom, but it actually looks like it's the top growth of an underwater plant.

Either was it's hideous and the one reliable way we say to resolve this was...well basically other plants. Lilies in particular are great at taking over ponds. Some people dread that, but frankly even a solid pond of lily pads and flowers would be a welcome site.

We had originally just put some lilies in the koi pond to see if those would grow out, but proving just how much cross contamination occurs between the two ponds last year every single lily that the koi didn't eat ended up coming out the downspout of the koi pond's drain into the main pond.

A few plants managed to take root in the pond and this year they really exploded in growth.

Other work continues around the farm. We're still gathering scrap metal as we find it. We're honestly ready for a pickup at this point, we just wanted to clear the barn out of a few more tin roof panels.

The bigger job, lately, has been mowing. Not normally a difficult task, the absurd amount of rainfall we have been getting has been causing the mower to kick up major clods. I don't really care about the "condition" of the grass. This isn't a manicured lawn, it's just pasture land I want to keep managed. But I do want to try and avoid beaching the mower in a spot I can't drive it out of, which is really evident here.

Every single thing that was on the gross has been turning out super damn, and positively full of worms as well. Kind of sad we weren't able to get the garden going this year. Fantastic weather to get some plants started to be ready for next year, but oh well.

We're also officially gone full free range with the birds. They love their freedom, but are pretty good about being led back home at night (well the ducks oddly are better, the chickens are starting to give an attitude about being put to bed). The only thing we're concerned about now is the garden the chickens are in is completely overrun with garlic mustard plants. They're not really toxic, but they're also definitely not native, and every single plant you see there is garlic mustard.

Finally some random bits. My wife bought a beautiful new wind chime. We're taking care of the bug situation going around as we can, but we're still getting rid of a few. Spiders are our friends, wasps are decidedly not.

And randomly our upstairs bathroom is finally done enough to actually take a bath in. My first bath bomb ended up being gatorade colored, so there you go.

Oh and here's a really fuzzy super short snap of some deer I saw while I was out mowing.

Epilogue. This is Oreo. Oreo's name will be changing. Oreo might be a new member of the farm and he might be coming with a friend.

So we've had the farm a little over a year now, but we've really started doing some much larger projects outside, and instead of just spamming photos in random channels I thought I'd start doing an update when something significant goes down.

Today was one of those busier days. We've been sick here, but both tested negative for covid so we decided to try and gut it out and get some stuff off our main list knocked out. First though, our morning (and really evening bookend) ritual with the birbs.

The ducks are getting enormous, and we're really gonna have to accelerate plans to get their butts outside. They're just refusing to grow feathers, and the temp has been all over the place here so we didn't want the stupid messy poodie splashers to freeze to death outside somewhere (more on that later).

We have noticed that a few of the chicks are starting to teach themselves how to roost, which they have taken as a cue to start pooping into their food from the top. This is decidedly a new and creative way to crap in their own food, and I think they were quite proud of themselves.

On to work though. Not pictured was our foray into making a little fenced in area for our compost. We forgot tin snips at one point, and couldn't get everything to stay upright enough for the fencing not to sag. We've got a few ideas on how to fix the issues, but that's for future Jason. For now it's at least containing the poop and pine shavings.

We'd also gotten a pallet of concrete blocks delivered near the shed, and of course we had to build this thing pretty deep into the woods behind the shed, so my current back ache began. It was decided that a step be built on the back side as some sort of...I'm not sure my wife's friend was over and things started to get a bit cultish. They wanted to build their own stick figure burning man to set as a base for their effigies when burning things from their past.

Hoping I'm not on that list.

I had to pause and take break, get a lil bit of Guardians play in before heading back out. Ellie also took a break with me.

First thing we did back outside was talk all the rotting boards and junk we'd found in and around all the outbuildings. With the amount of brush and bramble we have on the land I knew we were going to need a damn big pit, but I wasn't expecting to fill it straight away.

This one is out of order, but this is the level of focus Ellie has when you have any sort of squeaking toy in hand that she's brought to you....usually forcibly shoving onto your person (face, hand, crook of elbow, whatever she can reach).

We did eventually end back up outside, built the chincy duck coop we'd gotten online. We got it near to the ponds. As is the case everywhere on the property, there's bramble and berry bushes all over that we need to clear out, but I love the view here, and the short jaunt they'll have to get their beaks wet.

We were also finally able to get the coop set up properly, but fret not the wife has decided we're going to move it closer to the garden, just the opposite side of the property, no biggie.

I really want to start taking some photos with a real camera, cause we have moments like this constantly and I hate how fuzzy this came out. We wandered off and were packing up to head up inside and saw this family chilling out by the barn. We counted thirteen in total, most of them milling up behind the barn, but these four kept their eyes on us until we got in. Looked like the three adults were just keeping tabs on the youngest of the group here.  

We finished the day cleaning up the birbs again, dragging slop buckets out to the compost pile and finally parked it inside. I don't know if this is at all interesting to anyone else, myself included. But I wanted to try something different and see how it felt. Miss you all!

For some reason (alcohol) last month I decided I wanted to do a couple of Christmas songs this year. I'm not terribly good at singing, but I love doing it. More than that I love singing for and about my Lonely Yog friends and family.

This year I enlisted the help of the uber talented Angela (Angie in my head) to help me with lyrics and editing my tremulous voice a bit. Neil got in the crossfire and really helped us both writing out the lyrics.

I wanted to go a bit more personal this year (and as I've already said, I'm so sorry for not asking permission ahead of time). I missed a lot this year, and it was a lot of fun having Neil and Angela recount every amazing moment of the Lonely Yogs this year. I'm sad I missed so much, but how incredible it is to know that no matter how long the absence this community will always being there waiting with open, loving, accepting, and tolerant arms.

As we dove into the project I realized Angela was again going to go above and beyond anything I could have every hoped. The lyrics (with the exception of the final verse), and humble voice are mine, but this song truly is Angela's. She did so much more than I was even hoping possible. I love it, her, and all of you so much.

So without further ado, to those who celebrate Christmas, to those who celebrate other holidays this season, and to those who just want something to smile about, we give you a Lonely Yogsmas Carol, a Jason and Angie collab (with Neil the Historian's Apprentice assisting):

The last great exclusive release of the PS4 era, the moniker being given to Ghost of Tsushima. Does it deserve that title, though? Let's be honest, this has been a banner year for the Playstation, made even more important with the imminent rise of the next generation. Microsoft was scoring a lot of points to the build up of the next gen with backwards compatibility, connectivity, and cross-play features that were backing Sony into a tight corner. Lo and behold, though, Sony's proving that the most important factor is, after all, games.

With currently exclusive releases like Final Fantasy VII remake, Nioh 2, Last of Us Part 2, and now Ghost of Tsushima, the PS4 is really flexing its muscles one last time this generation. Honestly this is a good thing for gamers

On to the game itself, though, as GoT (Really does anybody want to try and defend that acronym belonging to show or book series anymore? If Martin releases the next book in the series I'll rescind my comment, but until then I've officially moved on from anything to do with games and thrones) is the thing we really want to look at here.

The story follows Jin Sakai, nephew to Lord Shimura head of Tsushima island, and his exploits following the sudden mongol invasion lead by Khotun Khan,  voiced and performance captured by the wonderful Patrick Gallagher. For the first, but decidedly not the last, time I'm going to draw parallels to the Assassin's Creed series, as like Odyssey the game thrusts you into the game world in the midst of a major conflict where victory is impossible.

After giving you some basic controls through this first conflict, you are finally given a glimpse of the meat of this game through a series of stealth tutorials that guide you through escaping a mongol controlled village. As you progress through the game planning out your path through any mongol controlled territory feels very much like planning through a take down in the last few Assassin's Creed games. Careful planning is by no means required, but boy does it make the game easier, and it's really satisfying when something you planned works really well.

That said, the progress of the game is a lot loss Assassin's Creed, and a lot more God of War. Getting weapons and armor in Tsushima are typically linked to epic quests, themselves hidden behind other precursor side quests. They're not very easy to acquire, and upgrading them is even more time consuming (though it is of course worth every effort). Instead, the majority of your progress is done through unlocking skills and abilities.

Your gameplay style will very much dictate what you want to unlock first to help you get through the first part of the island. Do you want to expand your assassination skills with wind chime decoys and the ability to kill more than one enemy through assassination? Perhaps, like me, you're more of a run in ask questions later sort of fighter, being able to kill more than one enemy through a duel is probably your route, as well as more blade skills.

You'll also be given options for sword fighting styles that are strong against specific opponent types, and a brilliantly simple quick style switch to combat multiple enemy types in succession. There are also abilities and charms you can unlock and acquire that give you bonuses based on play style, healing for killing enemies certain ways, or....well here's the thing, there's a lot of depth to explore. I feel the best part of all this is that despite the depth of options available to you to grow your Jin, the system stays out of your way for the most part during actual combat. Yes you can spend ten minutes tracking enemies, planning smoke bombs, assassinations, bow kills, and hostage rescues. Once you start enacting your plan, though, the game really stays out of your way with smooth combat (which is very much unlike my experience with Assassin's Creed).

Exploration is fun in this game, combat is a blast, the story is a little...well derivative but that was literally their goal in making a Kurosawa like game, and all of it is beautiful.

And I do mean spectacularly beautiful. I don't even understand how they pulled it off. Some of the textures are lacking (the horses can sometimes look pretty ugly, strange considering how big a part your horse plays in the game), and you will see about 8,000 (slight exaggeration) of the same home as you venture through the first parts of Tsushima, but every single thing in this game is beautiful.

The lighting is bar none the best I've seen using the PS4 Pro. When you travel to some of the southern portions of the Tsushima, and the lightning booms and flashes in the distance, rain coming down in torrents, your horses' every footfall squelching loudly through the mud as deer howl and birds cry at your passing, you really feel fully drawn into this game. The only thing that's really removed me from the full immersion has been the assassination deaths. They always feel so loud and gurgly (done on purpose I assume), that I can't imagine the entire village hasn't heard me just brutally murder one of their comrades.

Very much like my early time with Red Dead Redemption 2, before you hit Saint Denis, I really got lost in my exploration of the island of Tsushima. Each area on the island is distinct and beautiful. The iconic Golden Forest is only one of many areas that will take your breath away. The first time I light a brazer in a lighthouse, looked east, and saw Castle Kaneda, where my uncle was being held prisoner, off in the distance, with mongol ships dotting the sea all around, I was floored.

Most impressive of all, though, has been the load times. From game start-up from the PS4 main menu, to being in game and running around clocked in at about 4 minutes. There's a wonderful quick travel system that allows you to travel back to unlocked areas, and areas that you've liberated from the mongols. Selecting an area across the island from where you just were takes you to your destination in seconds. I don't know why they even bothered with load screen tips, I've yet to see one long enough to read much less cycle through any additional hints.

Not just the game world is beautiful, it looks to me that the team even took care in designing the menu elements. It has this strange mixture of old DVD menus, searching through select special features, and ancient maps and scrolls. It all works well together to keep you in the world. Though I did use the map frequently, particularly when trying to quick travel, I found myself surprised at how well the ghost wind tracking worked.

Generally I've found any usage of the PS4 controller's speaker or touch pad to be annoying at best, and intrusive in most situations. Here swiping on the pad gives a feel of gently requesting assistance. Swipe up to have the winds blow and guide me, left to pull out my flute and play, right to sheath my sword. It all feels gentle, and almost gentlemanly. Very on point with the Japanese Samurai theme. I did turn off the controller's speaker, as all it did was emit a blowing wind midi (I'm sorry that speaker just sounds like a crackly old midi player), but I was pleased to find the option to turn it off was given.

In terms of getting more play out of what could be a very short game, the collectables deliver in spades, at least they did for me. Composing haikus to receive bandanas with those compositions on them. Completing specific side quests to unlock hats, weapons, armor, and more. Following insanely adorable foxes to unlock charm slots. Traversing up, down, and around complex jumping puzzles to acquire powerful charms to slot in to. Timed button pressing memory games to display your sword cutting skills.

These side quests feel a part of the world, a very real part of your Jin's journey. They're each distinct enough to not feel too repetitive, and for the most part unlock some truly useful things for your journey. For instance contemplation in  hot springs can be fun interludes to a bloody crusade, but they also increase your maximum health. Other unlocks are just cosmetic, but still joyful, like the Patchwork Straw Hat here.

In all, I think Ghost of Tsushima caps off one of the best swansongs for a generation we've seen ever. It delivers on so many levels; epic gameplay with fun simple controls and mechanics that grow in complexity as you play. A wonderfully lush and vivid world, lovingly designed by people who clearly cared about the source material. A masterfully scored soundtrack, and oodles of extras to give the game so much extra value. It's also done this while having the quickest to load times I have ever experience, through what I can only imagine is some sort of demonic witchcraft (though I'm hoping this is a preview of what we can expect on the PS5).

In short, if you have the time and the money you should get this game. If you have a great 4k TV, booming sound system, and the PS4 Pro, prepare yourself for a spectacular treat.

Hey, quick update (I know, we just had a server update), we've added a new leveling system.

A quick explanation of how this works:

• You gain XP for messages you post. On level 2, you get a role added to show how much you've interacted on the server.
  
• After that, you gain a new role every five levels starting at level 5, and then at level 15 .
  
• The required amount of XP increases dramatically per level, so if you want to gain more levels. You'll have to engage in conversation if you want to increase your level. 😉
  

As people gain more levels, we might change the later levels up a bit, but for now we've got roles up until level 25.

If you have any questions about this, don't hesitate to ping or DM @alexjuuhh, @Lou or @Angela :)

Hey, we're almost at the end of June, and I'd like to give you a community update. This is personally something I've wanted to do for a while now, so this is hopefully the first of many.

Out with the old (bots), in with the new!

As you might have noticed, in the past couple of days, we've made some changes to our server bots.

After 5 months of service, we have decided to say goodbye to Angela's Hawkbot. Angela hadn't worked on the bot for months, and there wasn't really much the bot did for the server, so together, we decided that it was best to let them go. We have also removed the Giveaways bot and the giveaways channel. We came to this decision because nobody has really used this bot and channel since March. The Giveaways bot and channel might be brought back during or after the Jingle Jam when people have more of a reason to give stuff away.

Two new bots have been added to our server. BirthdayBot has already been used a lot, but for those who need a refresher: You can add your birthday to BirthdayBot with the bb.set (date) [timezone] command. Once set, BirthdayBot will announce your birthday to the server.

The other new bot we've added is Statbot. We tried using this bot before when the server was much smaller, and it wasn't as useful as we hoped. We want to use Statbot to track server statistics, so we might get some insight into what makes our server tick. And obviously, we'll share some fun stats with you from time to time.

Changes to the suggestion box

We're also changing how we handle suggestions for the server. Before, when you'd post an idea to #suggestion-box, we would have to sift through all the suggestions to find what we're looking for. This wasn't efficient because we didn't have a clear overview of all the ideas. That's why I have set up a Trello board that will collect all suggestions made, which has been made possible using Zapier (not a sponsor). With this, we want to improve our transparency regarding any server decisions made, because anyone can follow the progress of a suggestion through the Trello board. (We're also starting over with the suggestion box, so all the old suggestions have been deleted.)

And last but not least, some starboard stats! (It's really not that exciting but I thought it'd be fun either way.)

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading our very first community update. We're going to make more of these in the future, hopefully with some more exciting server news.

But for now, stay safe and have a good one :)

These past few weeks the measurable, and palpable, growth of anxiety in myself, and all those around me, has been almost equal to the sharp increase in COVID-19 cases all across our increasingly isolated (and stressed) little planet.

For gamers struggling just as much as anyone else right now, Animal Crossing: New Horizons couldn't have come at a more opportune time. Every single cute little detail serves to distract you from the tragic, and sometimes scary, realities we're all living in. Quite frankly I'm embracing the island life with open arms.

From the moment you start the game up, with the twin Nooks Tommy and Timmy greeting you, and prepping you for your flight to your very own deserted island, AC:NH smacks you across the face with its incomprehensible cuteness. Everything is there, from adorable language quirks like finishing sentences with "stubble," to ridiculous personalities that somehow mix debasement with delight.

The "tutorial" stage of AC:NH is as lengthy as any of the previous entries, allowing you to play the entire game at your own pace, possibly never even advancing past your first humble staked tent. It's this laid back attitude that is so appealing to players, though. You could easily get lost in comparing your progress to your friends online, but the second you get that rock climbing wall set up in your room, you just don't care anymore.

Everything about the game is as joyful and frustrating as it has always been. Catching fish, snagging bugs, shooting down presents from the sky. You just feel a sense of calm doing it all (mostly). The game never rushes you, so after some initial flurries to get your first home set up, you just sort of settle into a calm routine of living on your island.

There is also the fact that what is in the game works almost spectacularly well. There are still the frustrating moments like casting a line at a fish that has just turned away from you, or smacking a net just to the right of that incredibly rare bug you were hunting for hours, but generally it's a skills based blunder, not a mechanical one.

Quite a few of the new features in the game really reel players back in with more frequency (fishing pun, deal with it). The Nook Miles system is quite genuis. Previously you cycled through getting a new home, incurring debt, and then running around doing things in your town to earn bells to pay back Tom...who somehow never felt like a Boston area landlord, instead gently coaxing you for payments.

With miles, achievements have ostensibly been parsed out to tasks that guide you around the island, allowing you to earn miles for completing simpe tasks. This is further enhanced with Miles+ tasks that cycle on a constant basis. While you can unlock quite a few neat quality of life features with your miles, the real golden ticket is just that, a ticket to a randomized island getaway.

This island has everything, new fruits, flowers, and occasionally a friend to join you on your island. You sit there with your single inventory, and you just stock up on everything you can find, basically stripping the island of all of its natural resources before leaving it in a desolate state as you fly off with your bounty of coconuts and tulips.

Surprisingly, the best feature was one that sounded the least appealing, local co-op. When it was revealed that the only way you could play with live players on your island was through a local co-op feature, that further limited you to a leader and follower(s) system, there was great concern.

Switching the leader is as easy shaking your controller to pass leadership, and then shaking the control (or pressing the A button) on the new leader's controller.

My wife created an account on my switch, we loaded up the game, and had her join me on my island. After she got her tent set up, we started messing with the playstyle possibilities. Switching the leader is as easy shaking your controller to pass leadership, and then shaking the control (or pressing the A button) on the new leader's controller.

There are definitely ways you can troll all the followers. The leader doesn't need to wait for anyone for any reason. If the leader wanders off, all followers are forced to the leader in a puff of smoke. If they open their Nook Phone, or their pockets, whatever the followers were doing is interrupted (yeah that big catch you had on your line gets away instantly when the leader does this).

Lucilky my wife and I do not hate each other, so this hasn't really been a problem except when done by accident. The brighter side of this is how well this works when you're cooperating. The follower can shake trees, or chop them, while the leader wanders around picking everything up. This really did increase our efficiency in getting my wife caught up to me in game, and was a lot of fun to be able to experience the island together.

The only other downside to the local co-op is the decisions on inventory management. It is understandable that some concessions had to be made, like having all items followers collect go to the recycle bin (which I hope is upgradeable). The fact that the animation for items to poof from your hands to that bin takes a noticeably longer amount of time than normal item pickups is really annoying, though. You're also unable to access your tool wheel as a follower. For those who have filled their entire favorite's wheel this can lead to some frustrating panic moments of trying to cycle all the from your fishing rod to your bug net when you see a spider on the ground.

In all though, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been pure and unadultered joy. From the moment it loaded up, my mood has brightened significantly. There are no longer hours where I'm checking stats, or reading increasingly distressing articles. I'm simply enjoying my island life, and sharing my exploits across the internet with a suprising cadre of friends who have also picked up this game. If you have a Switch, there really isn't a reason to skip AC:NH, particularly with the world as it is around us. Enjoy your day with the Nooks and company on an island of your very own.

Lately I've been reading a lot of books, articles, and journals dealing with spirituality. Authors like Brené Brown, topics like aggression, and occasionally I hit a spark like I did reading parts of a classic that I've always found difficult to finish.

I've picked up Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance probably a dozen times since it came into my possession. It's been so long since I first got it that I can't remember which of my two brothers gave it to me. Some of the abstract, and circular logic confuses me, most of it exhausts me. Yes I get it, if you think about it hard enough existence is nothing more than perception. Does acknowledging that serve any purpose?

The title of this post refers to a moment reading where I was lost, and searching for meaning. For some reason something about quality hit home in me. In the book, the narrator asks a class, but really he's asking us; what is quality? I foolishly continued on without stopping, but take a moment and think about that question. Try to succinctly define quality, you can even google the word if you like. We can even stick with the adjective form of the word to make things less complex (relatively):

of or having superior quality: quality paper
producing or providing products or services of high quality or merit: a quality publisher.

Not exactly starting in a good place when the definition includes the word that it's trying to define. This doesn't even do a good job of that as it focuses on aspects of good quality. It is such a strange thing that something we know so intimately, and base a lot of important decisions in our life on, is something that we have almost no ability to define.

You know good quality when you see it. You've either been taught the scale of quality for individual things (that's a really good quality television), or inferred it based on accumulated knowledge (a good quality tree is one that exemplifies traits that make a tree useful).

The author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig, presents to us our own thinking. We believe that the quality inhabits the object, but simultaneously we're painfully aware that what we find to be of good quality may not be universally seen as such. So you flip the owner to try and make sense of things, the quality inhabits the observer, our mind. This also doesn't work as each individual doesn't have their own catalog of quality, it is influenced by other observers, by other objects even.

So Pirsig, through the fictional Phaedrus, tries to define quality by separating it entirely from mind or matter. Instead he tries to define quality as an event. Our mind perceives matter in our world, and instantaneously, after perceiving it, the "quality event" occurs. It's this instantaneous scoring of every perceived object on a scale of quality.

So I've taken this postulation and sort of....worried it over a lot. I began to ask myself a lot of uncomfortable questions. How much of my life is based solely on this instantaneous metaphysical scoring system? Am I trapping people, objects, experiences simply based on a gut check categorization of good or bad? How much have I missed out on doing this?

I don't believe wholly in the idea that there's this event outside of reality that is the sole source of quality's definition, but it is hard to ignore the idea that our brain makes choices in perception of our reality for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's safety, or sometimes it's aesthetics, but for the sake of brevity our brain quite often just guesses.

We're very often taught in higher education to question things, but very rarely are we instructed to question ourselves. That could prove dangerous. Trust your instincts, we're told, it is better to be alive than to be loved. This task of defining quality presupposes the goodness or badness of that quality.

I had a conversation recently with someone about making tacit and complete judgments about one's own opinions. That we're apt to frame things definitely, a show is bad, a joke is not funny. These are qualities we're talking about, but through language, cognition, and our mind's constant act of tricking itself, we lead ourselves to believe these statements of quality.

It might be simpler to think of it in terms of art. We have the cognizant recognition that what is or isn't good art is in the eye of the beholder. Why is any other quality different? I did not find the joke funny, but that does not mean that it isn't funny. The simple telling of a joke implies that the person telling it found it funny enough to relay.

Deeper and deeper I dove, until I was basically pissed off with quality. I had personified it, and I hated it. Who was quality to tell me what my reality definitely was? Why do we let quality dictate...the quality of conversation we have with others?

So I've challenged myself to recognize quality more. When I'm applying quality in my life to my own detriment, and how I can listen more to other's quality to learn experiences outside of my own. Humanity can be seen as levels of interconnectedness. We have a sentience that allows us to think about the fact that we're thinking, but our brain is combating us at every turn in an effort to be succinct, to survive by acting quickly. I'd like to think past that.

So eons ago I promised a second round of my SASS introduction, and as I recall ever so faintly I wanted to touch on multi-select...although I really misspoke when I called it that, let's just call it advanced selection.

All of this goes into inheritance, which is a common construct in object oriented languages, but was not really a thing in CSS. If you wanted to have specific elements of an unordered list share a style, but have some minor differences based on the context of the list, you really had to either use IDs or replicate a lot of code.

Let's take a look at a nested selection in CSS:

#header{
	div.menu-mobile{ display: none; }
    div.menu-wrapper{ 
        padding: 50px 0px 0;
        border-radius: 15px;
    }
	.logo {
		text-align: center;
		margin: 5px auto;
        float: left;
		a {
			display: block;
			color: #fff;
			i.fa{
				margin-right: 10px;
				vertical-align: middle;
				position: relative;
				top: -3px;
			}
			img {
				display: block;
				max-width: 100%;
                height: auto;
                margin: 0 auto;
			}
        }
        &.text-logo{
            margin-top: 12px;
        }
    }

So there's a lot going on here, but I included it all for a bit of context. So first we have the ID selector #header that is encasing all this CSS logic. No matter what selector we use in here, if it's not in an element with an id="header" it's all ignored.

Let's take a closer look at the .logo class though. In this we're saying that anchor elements in anything with a class logo should have this definition. More specifically image elements within that anchor element should also have a specific style. but what's that &.text-logo call for? Ampersands in SASS are really neat.

Typically you can designate that multiple classes are required for an element to be styled, but they have to be nested in order. Ampersands let you define that order. An IDE like Visual Studio Code allows us to trace this out visually:

So I can have text throughout an element with a class logo, but if I define an element of text-logo within that logo class element (and only within), add a bit of a margin if you please. So why the ampersand? Well in this case the default behavior of a nested class says to do exactly this. All classes and selectors nested within a defined element will be children of that element...but the ampersand let's us redefine that later without having to necessarily rethink our nesting (that wasn't a fun sentence to write).

Take this as a crazy and useless example:

.logo {
  #header.text-logo & { }
}

This is now telling the compiler to create the following selector:

#header.text-logo .logo {}

Oddly enough this is saying that we should select the .logo class only if the element with an ID of #header also has the .text-logo class.

The second, and far cooler, use for the ampersand is in modifying classes. It wasn't until much later (now really) that I was even aware of the &'s ability to do this, but it's now my favorite.

.class {
  &-first {}
  &-second {}
}

Say I have a class of items defined as above. They share a lot of styling, but the first and second really need some stylistic differentiators on the page. I could easily accomplish this by nesting classes normally. I would then be able to select them by just using both classes. This combines all that and actually creates the classes. The compiled CSS looks like this:

.class-first {}
.class-second {}

The .class-first has all of the styling from .class, and from .-first, and likewise for .-second. See? Really cool right? There is so much more you can do with the & in SASS/SCSS by comining it with psuedo classes, or combinator operations, and more. Next time I'll be comparing mixins and placeholders, and when it is best to use either. Hopefully that'll be up within the next year or so based on my schedule. Till then!

Maybe?

I've spent about 30 hours with this game, and sometimes I was loving it. There would be moments I opened a door and saw a sprawling panoply of lights, activity, and things to explore.

This feeling of awe quickly dissipates though as you realize what looked like a large vibrant living district, is in fact very shallow, and not just physically.

I think the most frustrating thing about Outer Worlds was that the clear and ready ambition makes every letdown feel that much worse. There would be moments where I was genuinely invested in the impact my decisions would have on the game world.

After spending so much time with Parvati early on my journey through Emerald Vale, I legitimately had to pause and think deeply about the first big decision I had to make.

There were more quests for the main town than there were for the outcasts, so I knew them better, perhaps I hated them more for that, but clearly there was a right and wrong choice here right?

The problem is even though my gut was personally tied in knots about this decision, once I'd made it...nobody seemed to care. There were some set piece scenes in various places, but nobody was accusing me, the only stranger in their midst, of any nefarious deeds. My own companion, Parvati, who had strong opinions of her own, quickly forgot her misgivings upon seeing my badass ship.

It made the world feel dead to me, and I couldn't completely escape that feeling for the remainder of my time in this universe. Even things like design decisions struck a wrong chord with me. We have plenty of modern day corollaries to what is happening in game, but they chose the 1950s ad man bubble building aesthetic. Look, I understand this team wanted to say, "Hey remember that Fallout you really liked? We're the team who made it!" But did they really need to make this game feel like a more colorful version of that world?

This wasn't a post cold-war apocalyptic earth. It was a brand new universe, and the blind adherence to jingle laden advertising fell incredibly flat for me. We have modern issues with what capitalism can do to a society, and I felt that the choices in aesthetic made were cowardice. It was a sense of trying to avoid the direct comparison to the problems corporations pose for society right now.

The whole game suffered from this. It felt like that friend who giggles and tells an awkward joke when they feel that the situation is too tense.

The story, though was really good. Don't get me wrong, the payoff at the end of the game was definitely worth the ride. And even completing all of the companion quests, which genuinely felt like tacked on side stories that didn't affect their behavior towards me and others during main missions, even those had a nice epilogue scene you earn by completing them.

But there's more to a game than story, and here Outer Worlds ambition also seems to get in its own way. There is a disgusting amount of variety in consumable items, and I genuinely feel bad for whoever had to design them and write up little blurbs on them, because you probably won't use any of them in a play-through.

I found out there were beds about ten hours into my play. There's literally an entire game mode that requires you to eat, drink, and sleep, and it's not a default game mode. There are hundreds of items, an entire mechanic, that you likely won't even see on a normal play through.

The variety of weapons feels good at first, and on more difficult modes some of the different types/weaknesses actually matter, but for the most part you'll be playing with the weapons that fit your play style. I will say that the variety of weapons including plasma launchers, shotguns, snipers, assault rifles, and more are actually distinct enough that this works.

Armor similarly plays a key roll in the game. Some times you do want to have some protection, but more often than not I found myself collecting top hats, and goggles, and more for perks to my dialogue options. I found myself changing clothes regularly to complete different tasks, which did feel silly (wearing stealthy glasses and jumper to complete a hack, and switching to something a little more intimidating to threaten the person whose terminal I just hacked).

All that said, I finished The Outer Worlds. A strange statement, but for me a significant one. I haven't really beaten a game all the way through in almost a decade. Despite the flaws the game kept calling me back. There was something about the world that made me want to take the next step in the journey, and I do wish there were some changes that could have made it even more engaging, but it's a fun game...maybe just not $60.00 fun.

Hey, so as you all know the Jingle Jam is one month away. And as good Yogscast fans, we want to help them a little bit. That’s why we have set up a GoFundMe campaign to collect some money before the Jingle Jam starts. Once Lewis and Simon have started the Jingle Cats stream (as is tradition) we’ll donate all the money under the Lonely Yogs name. We would love it if you could donate even a little bit, although it would be awesome if we could reach our goal of €500.

You’ll have to enter your real first/last name when you donate, but you can tick a checkmark under it to set it as anonymous so nobody (except for myself) can see your name and comment (You can also enter just the first letter of your last name, like "Alex H.") Make sure to put your Discord username in the comment of your donation so we can assign you a special Jingle Jam role on the server.

A few (preemptive) clarifications:

• The goal is set in euros because I set up the GoFundMe and you can only set up a GoFundMe in your own currency, it seems.
• When you make a donation your bank will automatically convert your payment into your own currency, and it will charge you the appropriate amount. GoFundMe doesn't charge any conversion fees, but you might want to check with your bank to see if they charge a currency conversion fee. So sorry for any inconvenience caused.
• If you want your donation refunded because you're suddenly strapped for cash or any other reason, just send me a DM so we can get it sorted.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the link!

https://www.gofundme.com/f/lonely-yogs-jingle-jam

NanoWriMo Project

Part 1

Where Devin quits his job, gets evicted, and finds new love.

Chapter 1

It was a frigid January morning in Boston. A fresh snow had just fallen the previous night, and the clouds still hang low, encapsulating the city in a muffled globe, all sounds seeming to die just feet away from where they started. On days like this the snow would crunch and squeak beneath each footfall. Sometimes pleasingly, sometimes precipitously when what seemed to be a normal step was actually the edge of the sidewalk.

Falling forward sickeningly, Devin just catches himself, back screaming in pain, a mumbled curse jumping from his lips. Luckily it doesn't travel far, it's still dark out, and will be for another hour or so. He pulls his hat firmly over his ears, shrugs his backpack further up his shoulders, and starts his half jog down South Huntington up again. There's a faint squeak behind letting him know the Green E Line is making it's turn just down the block from him, and his stop is still a block and a half ahead of him.

He wants to stop and enjoy the sight, snow cleanses the worst parts of this town. It turns the trash strewn streets into a magical wonderland of snow, and beautiful red brick. It's New England at it's best, where you can feel the age of the cities around you, but not have to see the shit holes some parts of it have become over the last 200 or so years.

The T blares its horn at a car brave (stupid) enough to try and sneak in front it, the driver's face pure panic as her car slides a few feet foward in the slippery snow. Crisis averted, though, as her sedan, clearly not well suited for winter conditions, does eventually stop angled before losing a fight against the 85,000 pound train. Devin shakes his head as he tries to keep his pace up to the corner.

He's rushing to get to a job he hates, away from an apartment he can barely afford, in a city with which he is quickly growing tired. He seeks generous contributions (solicits money) from passersby in the Financial District downtown. It's a prime spot, if you even get one person to donate to whatever cause it is that made it on to your clipboard, you'll more than likely meet your daily quota. The only problem is finding that one person pits you against the worst scum humanity has to offer.

Devin has to continually remind himself he's only been working this job for eight months. His patience has worn this thing in eight short months, his loss of faith in humanity, his mounting frustrations (bills) have all occured in roughly 245 days. Less time than it usually takes to create an single human being, he has grown to despise the rest of it that's already living.

His strain visible in clouds of vapor the escape his lips and trail behind him, Devin finally makes it to the corner. A mere block and a half away from the front steps of his apartment, but trudging through fresh snow is not particularly easy.

The train stop before him, and the doors thunk open. He steps in, mumbles to the conductor while tapping his pass on the scanner and trails snow across the floor of the train cabin, empty but for himself, and sits. His mind wanders as Mr. T makes announcements, and the train slowly screeches (screams) as it turns off South Huntington, onto Huntington Ave proper.

Chapter 2

"Entering Park St, doors will open on your right. The destination of this train is Lechmere."

"Devin, there you are man! You wanna grab some Dunkin' before work?"

Devin hears Carla before he sees her, the doors have barely opened and she's already cheerfully (loudly) calling for him. Carla's much short than him, pretty and mousy, though all he could see of her right now was her face, a tuft of hair fashionably(?) pulled out of her beanie.

"Yo, morning Carla. Yeah I could use some coffee. Fuckin' cold out. It's normally not this cold right after some fresh snow, this is stupid cold. Almost missed the T trying to budge my frigid ass through all of it."

She laughs at him, "Watch your fucking mouth sir, I am your boss after all."

That was probably the worst part about his job, Devin absolutely adored his boss. He was almost convinced she might not be human, consider his blanket disdain for the rest of his own species. She was first and foremost patient, with him or anybody else she encountered, even the scum that set Devin fully on edge.

She had an easy smile, but was firm and forward. Nothing about her seemed fragile, or easily manipulative. She was, in essence, everything Devin was not, and he had the utmost respect for her because of this. You may as well have slapped a ball of happy sunshine above her, a depressing storm cloud over him.

"Yeah, sure Carla, let's get moving though eh? My boss is a real hard ass when I'm late."

"Oh yeah, she's a real disciplinarian I've heard. Beats her subordinates who push her buttons too often," Carla's already turning heading towards the escalators.

The early morning crowds push their way out of the escalator into the brightening sunny morning. The snow in the Common is making it feel brighter than it really is, but it really does look...right. Frozen stone fountains just look better when covered in snow. Devin didn't really know why, but they did.

People were massing by the street, waiting for the crosswalk light to change on Tremont. A few brave (dumb) souls cross before the light's changed, apparently confident that they won't slip at all in the fresh snow. Only a few do, and by that time the light's already changed.

He crosses the street with Carla, not really paying attention as she chatters on, not slowing down for her shivers, or to catch her breath. They make it to Dunkin', leave with a coffee each, Devin with an everything bagle to tide him over.

"You seem distracted my man. I know you're the weak and silent type, but you're a little more quiet than usual. What's on your mind?"

Devin pauses to pop his coffee open a bit, take a pleasurably scalding sip, "Oh nothing, just having a rough morning."

Carla raises a single eyebrow, she can be pretty cute sometimes, but right now all Devin could see was concern in her eyes.

"Really I'm fine Carla...it's just my landlord's been on me about rent so hard this last month that I've been too scared to even mention my heater's been acting up again. I just haven't been getting a lot of sleep is all."

"Sir, you need to talk to him about that today. Even if you're a little behind on rent, there's gotta be some law in this damn city about not providing heat to tenants in the middle of winter."

"You know Carla," Devin starts to smile. They both know she's wrong, there's absoultely no such law, but they both also know that he's not going to convince her of this. So he just laughs, and lets it drop. "You're right, I'll talk to him tonight, see if we can't come to some kind of arrangement on the rent, too. Feel good about today, gonna solicit.."

"Seek generous contributions."

"Right, I'm gonnna seek the ever living fuck out of some generous contributions and get my full pay today. See if that'll be enough to keep him off my back a little while longer. I mean he knows it's winter, there's just not many people wanting to stop in the middle of the street to make out with their partner much less talk to a strange so..eeking contributions."

"Nice save. Look, just try to get 15 in your shift today and I'll see what I can do about getting your full pay. Nobody's getting their 30 a day right now, not even close. I'm sure  I can convince Eric...of something I don't know. I'll think of the flowery words later, you just focus on getting 15, and getting your damn heat fixed. I'll check in on you around lunch, see how you're doing."

Carla walks away from Devin, turning around to wave at him, nearly dropping her coffee. He smiles and waves back, turns to head down the other way down the block, searing his throat with coffee, hoping that might keep him up for the next 4 hours.

Chapter 3

Here's the deal with soliciting money, you have your clipboard so, in Boston at least, people can pick you out from a mile away. You're not necessarily looking for money on the spot, although cash and checks are greatly appreciated. No, what you're actually looking for are names, emails, phones numbers, and the promises of money yet to be. That's what the clip board is for.

The first trick is getting someone to stop, and it is absolutely a trick. There are ways of asking questions that get people to stop in their tracks, offensive or insulating are absolutely valid as well, "Are you really comfortable killing a child today?"

The goal is just to get someone to stop, have a conversation with you, maybe even a debate. Even if they start off angry, they're at least talking to you, and if someone just ignores you and moves on, then clearly you have no chance of 'seeking generous donations.'

Devin was not great at any part of his job, though he was just good enough to have survived through it (just) for these eight long months. He stuck with more disorientating questions, "Have you ever wondered how long it would take to drown an elephant?"

Nothing that would anger anyone (though it may distress a few), just something to confuse them long enough to trick them into talking to him. Today he was not on form, and in three hours of digit numbing pacing, he'd successfully been ignored by two or so dozen people on their way in to getting paid to take care of other people's money.

"Hi Mam, have you," Devin hadn't noticed the tears in this young woman's eyes until he was already too close, clipboard shoved in her space. His question lingered briefly on his lips just before she slapped him. No, that wasn't a slap, it was definitely a punch.

He hears her short scream of surprise as he spins, his back giving out, and he finally lands on his knee. Pain rockets outward from the point his knee impacted the sidewalk after driving through four to five inches of snow.

"Fuck...Me!" Devin gasps for air, his clipboard forgotten, lost in the snow as light (refracted off the white snow?) fills his vision. He can hear a voice apologizing, words spilling out in a rush.

"Oh no, oh jeez. I am soooo sorry. I didn't mean, it's just you scared the crap out of me, and I'm just into town, and you didn't make a damn sound, and oh my god are you alright?"

"Yeah (no)."

He takes a few deep, painfully cold breathes, then grunts and finally pushes himself back up.

"See good to go!" There were already tears freezing on his cheeks as he exclaims this a little too loudly. Devin sees her eyes flit from his face down to his legs, sees the moment her expression changes. He looks down himself and sees something splotching through on his knee.

He looks down to the divet he just created in the snow, sees the bright red splashes, "Well, shit."

Devin hates hospitals, although at least during the winter it actually feels almost temperate, when you're not sitting too close to any door people insist on opening to the elements.

He's well aware that he did that exact just a few minutes ago when he first arrived, but somehow when it's somebody it is entirely unnecessary. This is what he's covinced himself of, at least.

He looks back down at the chart, staring again at emergency contact. He's not terribly worried about coverage, Boston, for all its expense, is in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts, who just so happens to have the best state funded healthcare in the United States (so their governor says).

The woman had gotten him to the hospital. He was genuinely able to hobble himself down to the bus stop, but she had insisted on paying his fare, at least making sure he was okay to get to the hospital. Devin had wanted her to stay, she might get lost making her way back out, or worse stay and fret.

He had told her about the coverage, that he'd be fine now that he was in, and in between twelve hundred other words she'd try to get out all at once he'd managed a muted, "Thank you."

She had laughed at him, nervously, the message finally hitting. She got up, said you're welcome, and left. So he now sat staring at that emergency contact box, realizing he didn't even know her name.

Two hours later he hobbled out of the hospital, knee excessively wrapped in white gauze. They'd found no injury to his patela, just a pretty good amount of skin missing, and he'd kept quiet about his back. That was the last thing he needed right now.

He pauses against a pillar just out front of Mass Gen, he finally pulls his phone out dreading what he's going to see. Sure enough, five missed calls, twenty unread texts, likely almost all from Carla. The boss (the real one, her boss), would have only called once, and his call would not have been kind.

He ignores the text and just calls her. It will be easier to just explain it over the phone instead of trying to answer all the likely increasingly panicked questions she might have had.

"Jesus Devin, where the fuck are you?"

"Wow, start out straight with that? I was hoping for at least a little companionable worry before we got down to business."

"Shut up, you know I was...god dammit, am worried. What the hell happened? Are you okay? Brad is asking about you."

There it was, Brad the Boss, the Real Boss, "I had a little incident. My fault really, scared the ever living crap out of this young woman, definitely a flatlander. She turned, slapped me, and I just fell is all. Busted my knee up good, just got done being patched up at Mass Gen. I was heading back to my spot right now."

Creative literati of the Lonely Yogs, I call out a challenge to us all, let us spend November writing.

What is it?

NaNoWriMo is the National Novel Writing Month, originally a full on novel writing challenge...or more accurately I should say it still is, but I don't find the goal has to be writing a novel.

The challenge I set stands at this:

• 50,000 words through the month of November, or just writing every day of the month, even if it's just a few hundred
• Post weekly updates (if you're comfortable) for live edits and suggestions
• Have fun

I love words. Reading them, writing them...comprehending them on some rare occasions. I'm constantly trying to think of ways to get myself closer to words in some form, and I would especially love to see what any of you all wonderful people create. If you're interested, slide into my DMs or post in #creative in the Lonely Yogs Discord.

On June 24th GoG, which is owned by CD Projeckt, released the first closed beta version of their Galaxy 2.0 client. Top on the list of features announced was the promise of a single unified library. A client that would allow you to launch any game you owned, from any number of proprietary clients including from a Steam library.

It turns out that some of the library filter features that were just included as quality of life options ended up being something that was so popular that eventually even Valve had to take note. They opened up a beta for their Steam client featuring the most significant changes in what feels like a decade on September 17th.

While Steam has the benefit of ecosystem, they by far have the largest share of the digital games marketplace, GoG would seem to have the more interesting offering. Their new platform allows you to integrate and launch games from any other platform. It does this by actually starting the services, so you will still see Steam load in the background. You can also manage installations of these games, customize box art, and of course filter your games based on criteria and save those results as "bookmarks."

The other factor playing in here is how willing companies will be to either reign in games to their own platforms, or utilize Epic's fledgling platform to pull people away from steam. This has worked wonders (or horrors depending on your perspective) in the digital media space with every single company starting up their own proprietary streaming platform. The question is, will gamers be as will to adopt that many platforms, or is GoG ahead of the game in recognizing their desire to have one platform to rule them all?