My friend actually made (sung? wrote?) this song, so I figured that I would give it a plug here in my blog.
Music Monday: November 9th, 2020
categories: music; word count: 22 words
I can’t believe I’ve never mentioned this here.
categories: personal; word count: 249 words
One of the things that “girl gamers”, simultaneously used as both a term of endearment and a pejorative (and sometimes by the same person) depending on the conversation, take a lot of flack for in 2020 — of all the years — is “being too feminine” while playing video games. You get criticized for having and wearing too much makeup, or for liking “girly things” like dresses or the color pink. God forbid you like more than one of those things and are honest about it. That’s almost literally the kiss of death “being taken seriously” by guy gamers, which should simultaneously be used as a term of endearment and a pejorative, even though you realize that no one’s opinion should matter to you but your own… although you shouldn’t need to feel the need to be validated in the first place. There are, after all, things like Gamergate, and being scared into submission for being a gamer girl that’s “too loud” about certain things, so one has to exercise caution…
If you’re disabled or a single parent, or disabled and a single parent, they don’t know what to do with you.
People should be free to like what they like in the combinations that they like them in without feeling as though they have to measure up to someone else’s standards. There is no right, or wrong, way to be a “girl gamer”: if you identify as a girl, and you like to game, congratulations! You are literally a girl gamer! 100%!
One day, we will stream consoles. One day.
categories: consoles; word count: 290 words
One of the things that I’ve been looking into is streaming on various websites that… let you do that, with YouTube being one of the ones that I’d like to stream on the most since we already use it for personal reasons. However, reading about what I have to buy to stream retro consoles (why can’t they just stream like the PlayStation 4?!) and where I have to hook it up has actually given me migraines. I’m not even going to lie. But I’m eventually going to get it done, I’m eventually going to understand this, and I am eventually going to stream our retro consoles. And our new consoles. But it still surprises me that you can’t natively stream on consoles like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, which are still pretty new consoles. That one still confuses me.
Frankly, I wish that setting up equipment to stream off of retro consoles was just a bit easier overall.
There are so many old games that I would just love to be able to stream at the click of a button, but sadly it is nowhere near that easy. That seems to be the one catch with the one thing that I want to do the most…
You would think that at least some of the “newer” consoles wouldn’t have the “protection” that they do that prevents this, or that their respective creators would allow you to stream over them, but you still have to walk in circles to be able to stream games from them, and that really sucks if you want to make any sort of job out of this or even if you want to stream them on sites like Twitch and YouTube to have a little bit of fun.
Adding to his collection, I’m adding to it…
categories: action and adventure, personal; word count: 294 words
I’m still getting the occasional game to pad Bub’s collection, even if we won’t be playing it for awhile due to his age, the rating, being busy with other games, that sort of thing. So far, I’ve picked up Witcher 2 and Witcher 3 for him for a few of those reasons… there’s the rating of both of those games to contend with (and the reason for those ratings), and the fact that we’re busy with other games right now. I’ve heard a lot of positive things about how open-ended the games are, and if there’s one thing that Bub loves doing with me in video games, it’s traipsing around in games that let you wander around wherever you want almost within reason. This is why games like Skyrim appeal to him in the manners that they do… and, well, always have.
Meanwhile, I am thinking of removing my stereo from my bedroom. I’ve had it since I was a child, and it’s actually so old that it has cassette decks on it and a record player. The only functionally useful thing that it still has attached to it is access to FM radio. It’s just sat here since I was a child, largely unused over the years. It also reminds me of my mother, which is another reason that I want to be rid of it as soon as I can manage to unplug it from the slight mess of cords that are back behind my television. For a number of reasons that involve saving up space and being rid of just one more thing that reminds me of someone that I would like not to be reminded of, I would like to be rid of it at my earliest convenience, whenever that can be.
I figure I should start an exercise tag, so…
categories: personal; word count: 358 words
So I’ve been walking 0.10 kilometers per day on my treadmill now that it’s together, although one of the things that has bothered me about it is the fact that the belt (thing you walk on, whatever you should call this) is a bit looser than it should be, and that was messing with one of the side railings on the bottom of it… but I think I got the side railing “on there” hard enough for it not to start to come off any more when I walk on the treadmill, which is a slight improvement from where we were. I’m able to walk that 0.10/day slightly faster than I was when I first started, although it continues to be the same strain on my lungs as when I started, which may be and probably is attributable to my asthma. No surprise. You get what you pay for.
And part of the reason that I did get this treadmill was because it was comparatively more affordable.
Once walking this far every day gets easier, I’m going to look into the virtual races that I’ve mentioned here and sign up for an easy, light one. Some of the sites that I’ve seen have five-mile ones that you can do entirely at your own pace, so that might — probably will — be where I start. You can also log your times on the actual website or in apps that they come with, of those that are a bit longer, since I still have to hold onto the arm rails to use this treadmill and my arms not “moving around” won’t track movement for walking purposes for my FitBit. With time, I hope that I’m able to confidently walk on it to the point that I don’t have to hold onto the arm rails, although this may involve finding a way to completely straighten it if possible…
I suppose the only way to figure out how comfortable I will get with the treadmill is just a bit more time, although like I’ve said, this has a lot to do with the slightly loose belt coupled with the incline that it’s still at.