My first Halloween one-shot of 2026 is in-the-bag (as of about 90 minutes ago).

Mind you, it didn’t start until way later than anticipated (due to a scheduling conflict with one of the players), and then it ran for a marathon 6 hours before the 3 players “won” by rescuing the surviving vanished villagers and escaping with their lives. There were flying heads, vampire mercenaries, even a werewolf butler, all of whom met a sticky end at the “hands” of our heroes. Good times were had by all!

I’ll be running it again for 3 different players in about 10 hours. Hopefully their session goes as well for them (although I wouldn’t mind if it went a bit quicker, too 😁).

@prologic@twtxt.net

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I’m tied up for most of the day today, but I’ll see what I can get running here later tonight. Very cool! 🤩🤘

@thecanine@twtxt.net I fell you 100%.

My son asked me to fix his Win11 laptop: When he logs in, he gets a GSoD (gray screen of death). So, I fiddle with it for a few minutes, and I get it to login, but now the start menu button doesn’t work. So, I fiddle with it for another hour, and I get the start menu working, but he only has 2 GB free on his primary drive, and that’s not enough for all of the “critical” Windows updates it needs, so now I’m moving files around…

I know everyone says how “user friendly” Windows is, but I call BS on that - my Manjaro install may not always work perfectly, but at least my Start menu button does…

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Spam is as spam does (or maybe it’s “slop is as slop does”).

What’s the point of writing text with UTF-8 formatting and always sticking to the boring-old ASCII set? 😃

@prologic@twtxt.net Understood, and I apologize if it sounded like I was trying to do a price comparison (I really wasn’t). Instead, let me ask this way: as I am still unlearned in the art of small VMs, what does one do with a 64MB container? I’m old enough to remember when apps were really small, but even most “simple” apps are too big for a 64MB machine, right? Or am I missing something?

I guess that’s why I made the comparison with the 512MB droplet at DO - that’s the smallest machine I’ve run in a VPS so far (and even my home servers have 8-32 GB of RAM).

Maybe a better question is: What would you run on a service like what you’re talking about? Or what do you envision people using it for?

Sorry if the previous post broke anything, but between PHP-ageddon and the certificates with 3-bit keys today was just a ZALGO HE COMES kind of day.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de C’mon, it can’t be that bad OH MY GOD IT’S 11000 LȈ̷̢̠̟́NĔ̴͎̺͆̍̈Ş̴̛̉͒͑̚ ̴̙́̀͆̑Ó̴̧̝̝̌Ḟ̵̽̌̒ ̷̡̻̖͛͆͛̎̋C̸̊̒́͒ ̵͈̩̈́͑̕A̴͙͌̎̀́̕Ņ̴͐̓́̆Ḋ̴͇̕̚͘͝ ̵̡͓́T̵̹̘̼͐͑̈E̴̹͊̊S̷̫̔͑̂̊͘T̵̟̂̾Ş̵̼̘̠͛̆̉̐̄ Z̷̘̠̹̪̳̝̥̗͐̑̍̅̃͋̿̕A̴̜̦̖̟͍̒́L̴̢̧̥̤̖̼̯̝̭̠͒̈́͆́̇̔̾Ģ̸̰̯͇͔̦͎̱̳̖̠̽Ỏ̶̠͗̏̑͂͐͗̕͝͠ ̴̜̦͎̟̬̮͕̙̠͙̬̅́̔H̶̖̬͙̱̺͍̣͆͌͊͗̈́͛͑͒̿̃͘ͅÊ̶̮̝͇̲̺̈́̔̐͂͒̈́̽͗̿̄̚͝ ̸̜͍̩͉̭͎̤̼̊̃͛͊͌̏͝C̵͔͎̟̝͖̃͋̓̍͠͠O̸̡̯̰̜͖͉͊̃̄̕̕̚Ṁ̷̡̨̺̹͕̳̼͇̼͚͔͌̌̌̈́͆͗̉̇̌̎̕̚͘̚Ȩ̵̞̫̤͓̹̫̬̲͔͓̘͔̣̖̅́͋̈́́̌̃̀̀̇̐̌̓S̸̢̮̰͙̳̲̺̫͖̯̻̣̳̎̇̄͌͗̔̅̊͊̈̋͌̋͆͠ͅ!̴̡̨̳̗͉̭̙̦͓͆̇͒̎͆̓̒̓̑͑̌͘̕͝!̸͎̻͚̩̜͇͐͋̄̐͜͝!̷͙͚̱̤͔͓͂̐̑̀͆̃͜

@prologic@twtxt.net Potentially, but 64 MB is kinda small. I haven’t run a host with < 512 MB in quite some time, and it would take 8 @ 64MB to match that, although that would only be $1.40 (for the first 3) + $3.50 (for the last 5), so still under $5 a month…. Yeah, most likely, even if just for a couple of off-site services and secure backups.

I’ll be honest - I’ve had a VPS at DigitalOcean for years, but I barely use it anymore because I got big into “owning my own servers” (hence my interest in Self Hosted, which I just signed up for), so now I run a few repurposed old desktops throughout my house. But I trust you way more than I do some other random VPS provider, so again…. Yeah, most likely. 🙂

#Magic Update: This week, our Magic time was up against the local team’s Sportsball game, so we only had 4 players to start. I decided to try out a brand new deck, a lightly modified version of the new Jace, Multiverse Architect preconstructed deck that I picked up from my FLGS a few days ago, and let me tell you, that deck dominated, with everyone else quitting around the 90 minute mark. I know much of it was luck (especially in the early game), but it was so much fun to play, I look forward to breaking it out again… in a few weeks. 😁

By the time the second game started, the local team had won their Sportsball game (yay, sports team!), so it was one of our usual 5-player affairs. This time, I played my old-school Defenders of the Mirth deck, and it held up long enough for all but one other player to quit, and then I killed on my next turn with a truckload of unblockable commander damage at about the 2 hour mark. That put me at a rare 2/2 overall for the day. Good times! 🤘

Today’s putt.day (#158) is alot of fun, and has a real mini-golf-in-space vibe (complete with a windmill!) https://putt.day/s/yDg4fWjZgG99

🎶 “Like This” - Girl Talk https://youtu.be/vRbMp0IAQvI?is=_E5k7ETg5QW0_JAY

The transition from Karen Carpenter to Metallica + Lil Mama (towards the end) is sublime.

🎶 “Wizard” - Castle Rat https://youtu.be/DyhYzRRMBSU?is=VhzfCFwQjw9ECOJC

It rocks so hard, and I totally dig their low-rent fantasy schtick.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org More excellent shots, thank you for those.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Thanks for that keymapping idea, that’s clever!

Everybody have fun tonight,
Everybody Shang Tsung tonight.

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@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Loverly!

Yeah, things aren’t quite that bad where I work yet (thanks to no one wanting to pay the outrageous bills associated with the “frontier models”), but some people keep pushing for it. Personally, I’m still hoping that either the bubble bursts real soon and/or the people in charge realize that “enterprise-class” and “vibe-coded” are mutually exclusive software concepts, but who knows.

In the meantime, at my work, we’re still doing mandatory human PR reviews (with optional copilot ones), and there’s a big push for “respectful” AI use (as in being respectful of others, like always reading any text / code the AI generated for you before asking someone else to). We’ll see how it goes.

I hope things get better for you, @movq@www.uninformativ.de (and for anyone else dealing with the same issues).

@david@daiwei.me

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Very cool shots! 🤘

Today I got to take my doll and a couple other cats to see this nifty new flick at the Independent Picture House, a supermurgitroid, nonprofit theater in Charlotte.

It’s called “Psycho”, and let me tell you, it was Fat City - easily the ginchiest flick I’ve seen in a hot minute (and that’s the word from the bird).

If you haven’t seen it, I don’t want to be a wet nag, so I’ll keep the ending on the down low, but don’t wait, daddy-o - it’s radioactive!

OK, I can’t keep it up. :D

Yes, today I took the wife, son, and daughter-in-law to the theater to see a 66 year-old movie (and one which we’ve all seen before, many times). But the experience was great, and it’s one of my wife’s favorite movies (as well as a very important and influential one), so it was well worth it.

One might even say it was the bee’s knees. 😁

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OMT - in my experience, having just a single hardware token (for a password, passkey, 2FA, or whatever) is dangerous, as it’s too easy to lose it or get it wet, so I tend to keep two: one on my keychain, one at the house. I’m not sure how well this kind of device would work in tandem with another just like it, especially at $100 a pop (and coupled with my previously mentioned concerns about crowdfunding hardware).

@prologic@twtxt.net Pretty much everything @jecxjo@sh0.xyz said.

Mind you, I’m not saying “don’t back it”, I just treat it like I do when I go to a casino - I only spend as much as I’m willing to lose.

Unfortunately, sitting out has bitten me a couple of times (ex: I would have loved to have picked up a Flipper Zero, but I didn’t trust it to deliver). OTOH, it’s also saved me from backing several projects that I considered, but which ultimately failed.

@prologic@twtxt.net Hmm… Interesting. 🤔

They definitely made some bold decisions with it, but I’m always skeptical of crowd-funded hardware projects…

@JasonSanta@jasonsanta.xyz For sure. Even the self-hosted version is pretty easy to deploy, but I’m plenty satisfied with the web-based PWA. 🌤️

I forgot to note it here, but last night I opened my first bug report for the Old School Essentials Online Rules Reference, a modern set of rules for playing classic D&D-like games (and one which helped inspire my own system).

@JasonSanta@jasonsanta.xyzI was aware of it, but I hadn’t looked at it yet. Pretty cool!

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Nice color on the clouds.

@jecxjo@sh0.xyz Where would the world be without Real Heroes ™ like that? 🤣

This has become my new favorite way to get my local weather forecast (although I don’t think it works outside of the US): WeatherStar 4000+.

It emulates the feeling of watching The Weather Channel’s “local on the 8s” circa the late 90s / early 2000s, but it’s interactive, on-demand, and even includes a replica light-jazz soundtrack.

I installed it as a PWA on both my laptop and my phone. 😁

Also, it can be self-hosted, but the original author’s site has been good enough for me (so far).

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This was hilarious: https://minesweeper.mikelacher.com/

📽️ Phantoms (1998) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6i2zB2NsW8

“It’s just a Bundt cake, it’s just a Bundt cake…”

(And, incidentally, Affleck is the bomb in this.)

@david@daiwei.me Thank you! I’m not brave enough to play in public, but I know several people who do. I basically only play with friends or friends-of-friends.

@prologic@twtxt.net Yes, @david@daiwei.me is correct - it is a website with (most) everything one would need to run a fantasy tabletop role-playing game, either in-person or online. I use a service called Roll20 which provides a “shared” tabletop with virtual maps, dice, and character sheets that all the players can see (and I can control). It’s really alot of fun - it’s basically adult make-believe, but with a shared set of rules and a “game master” to keep the story moving. 😁

@jecxjo@sh0.xyz LOL, you aren’t the only one who remembers it: see https://github.com/ZuraGuerra/beat_time and https://hackaday.io/project/193777-the-curious-case-of-swatch-internet-time 🕚

@prologic@twtxt.net It depends on which part you’re asking about…

First some quick context: I’ve been into tabletop role-playing games (ex: Dungeons & Dragons) since I was a teenager, and I’ve been playing and/or running games for most of the last decade (mostly on Discord for the past few years, as my players are scattered around the country).

The Planar Vagabond’s Guide to the Multiverse is a website where I’ve collected much of the material I’ve written or adapted into my custom RPG ruleset, HOSR (Heroic Old-School Roleplaying), and I just published some new stuff there. 🤩

While most RPGs are played as “campaigns” (over multiple gaming sessions), a one-shot is an adventure that can (theoretically) be finished in a single-night (3-5 hours of gameplay). I’ve done horror-themed one-shots around Halloween for years, typically based on the classic gothic adventure, Ravenloft. But this year, I’m running something new(-er) called Escape the O.V.T.!, and I’m being intentionally cagey about it because I want it to be a surprise for my players.

Does that explain it? I’m happy to go deeper on any of it. 🙂

Today, I released a new update to my TTRPG project, The Planar Vagabond’s Guide to the Multiverse, adding a handful of new spells, monsters, magic items, and races.

Plus, after nearly a year away from playing, I’m super-excited to run an all-new Halloween survival-horror one-shot this year called Escape the O.V.T.!

“Who will survive, and what will be left of them?”

Everything about time management is a pain for developers: time zones (and the locales that ignore them or go half-way), leap seconds, all of it is messy and weird and human. And DST is the worst aspect of it by far.

My first professional coding job as part of a team was in a Java shop, and there was a running joke along the lines of “Only Java would have a class called SimpleDateFormat which is anything but simple.”

@prologic@twtxt.net Yes, welcome back. Great pics, by the way. I know you said at least some of it was crowded, but it looked very tranquil.

@zyak@twtxt.z85b.xyz That’s a good idea. I’m updating the twtxt rendering on my site, and I think I’m going to add a toggle to show / hide replies. Thanks!

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Thanks, that was a good read, really took me back. 😍

“One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach… All the damn vampires.”

@movq@www.uninformativ.de OS/2?

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I hadn’t thought about that in 20+ years… In high school, I had a friend who was a die-hard OS/2 Warp fanboy, but I never got into it (and wound up jumping ship to Linux in college).

“Hey, you know what they say: See a broad to get ‘dat booty action, lay her down, or smack ‘em, yak ‘em!”

@prologic@twtxt.net Nice! Looks tranquil.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Agreed, and I have an extensive library of “my own” files. However, we bought into the Google Home ecosystem some years ago (we have those little hockey-puck-shaped speakers throughout the house), and the only way to get multi-room streaming to work with them is to use a streaming service that they support. Hence, YT Music.

I’ve been expecting Google to EoL those speakers for the past few years, and figured I’d finally pivot to something self-hosted once that happens. But not yet!

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Thanks!

@david@daiwei.me
My email is hey (at) itsericwoodward.com, if that works. While I agree it doesn’t help test federation in the short term, right now I don’t really have a frame of reference for how it should work, which makes it doubly hard to setup. 🙂

TBH, my biggest concerns with running my own instance is with DNS, just because of the “unique” way my home network is setup (plus, it’s always DNS…).

Agog to be the 4,960th 🐲 on BackerKit for Deathbringer TTRPG by Professor DM. 🤘

@david@daiwei.me To be honest, I’m a bit tor: part of me wants to set it up on my main application server (alongside gitea, TwtKpr, and a few others), but part of me wants to run it on a Raspberry Pi with Docker (because why not).

I’m also something of a bad geek in some areas, and IRC was never really my scene, so I don’t have a ton of experience with it (I went straight from BBSes to WWW)… Maybe I’ll take you up on that offer of an account at https://chat.ratha.us/, just to get my feet wet… (if it’s still open) 😁

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Nice!