Tales of the Aggronaut

Gamepad is Cozy

February 15, 2023 by Belghast

Good Morning Friends! I’ve not really talked about it here on the blog, but for a while now I have been helping with the operation of Gamepad.club. Recently there have been some situations in the greater Fediverse where instance Administrators have gone missing leading to periods of significant degradation in operation and instance culture. Due to these wider concerns, Gazz wanted to protect the instance from ever being in a situation where an administrator could not be reached. I was asked and I agreed to help around with the instance. The variance in our operating times helps us catch those sign-ups and approve them a bit faster. So if you have any questions or concerns about Gamepad.club feels free to hit me up through any of my many social channels. I’m not really around on Twitter anymore so if you reach out there, it is going to take a while for me to even notice.

I have to admit I had been somewhat hesitant to talk too broadly about my role as an administrator on Gamepad.club not because I was ashamed to talk about it, but more because I wanted to spare the instance any undue heat. I had a fairly significant falling out with the Administrator of another gaming instance that launched last November. Largely I was trying to keep from our small home drawing her spite and her blocking the instance. However, I feel like I have been walking on eggshells since the events surrounding the launch of that instance and my being removed from the moderation team. When the same exact things happened to the other moderator of the instance, I just got tired of trying to be cautious. I will not let that bullshit that we dealt with damage my joy when it comes to the fediverse any longer. I feel safer on Gamepad than I did on other instances, because I have known Gazz for so many years, and he also knows me.

We’ve not had what I would consider meteoric growth, but it has been steady growth nonetheless. I think the great social media land run is more or less over, and folks who would be willing to leave Twitter already have their flag planted on some instance here. Most of our growth has been folks migrating from other instances because they wanted a more chill local feed. Truth be told the great thing about the Fediverse is that there is no real reason why anyone needs to be on any specific server. More than anything it is about choosing your local feed and maybe having a “cool address” behind your name. We’ve thrown out a placard and announced that we were open for business, and folks have answered that call a few at a time. Even I put off moving entirely for a while because it is a bit of a hassle to uproot yourself and plant yourself in a new place… even when you feel like that new place will be a better home.

I have to admit I am honestly fine with having a bit of a personal touch to our home, rather than trying to bring in thousands of people. None of us are trying to make a living off running an instance, but instead just trying to carve out a comfy home for ourselves in this new social landscape. The really cool thing about where we are now in the fediverse is that you can maintain a small instance, yet still have a good federation with thousands of other instances. I think last I knew we were federating actively with some 9000 other instances. Small instances that are not terribly well federated have issues with hashtags and the like, but so far the handful that I follow habitually are still introducing me to new people. I admit I was a bit concerned about that by moving away from one of the “stuxlikes”, but I’ve not really seen any tangible difference. I don’t think Patreon fully covers the operating expenses but if nothing else it is putting a decent dent in them.

So far things seem to be trucking along swimmingly. There has been a bit of weirdness when someone migrates from an instance we have not had migrations from before. We aren’t entirely certain what is going on there but it settles out after a few minutes. Essentially when you migrate from another instance there is a flurry of activity as the new server handshakes with both the old server and every server that you were following folks on. The whole “moving” instance thing is relatively new as in the past the only option you had was to export the list of folks you were following and then import that list into the new home. Previously there was no means to move followers, and the new process essentially asks for permission from every instance. If it succeeds the instance has the person who was following you previously follow your new account and then unfollow your old account. This works great so long as every server is running the same version of Mastodon, but largely falls apart when you are talking about other fediverse variants like Pixelfed, Pleroma, Misskey, etc.

Because of the voluntary nature of server migration and follower moves, this is in part why I always suggest folks export all of their data manually to CSV so that they can fall back to importing those if anything does not go as planned. In a worst-case scenario, you can then manually import everyone you were following, and hope the nature of the fediverse takes hold and they follow you on the new account. Server migrations are commonplace enough that rarely does anyone really bat an eye when someone jumps instances. More than anything the ability to change instances provides a self-healing characteristic that you just don’t have in another environment. If an instance gets stale, too busy for your tastes, or is unsustainable by the administration team… then you can move your home and in most cases, the entire process takes less than fifteen minutes from start to finish. Instances sign onto the Mastodon Server Covenant as we have as a way of providing at least three months’ notice if an instance needs to shut down.

Right now we are going through a rather public scenario where a large instance is shutting down. Currently, folks are using this as an excuse to decry the failure of Mastodon. For me, I largely view it as the system succeeding because instance admins have thrown out the welcome mat to make sure the folks from Mastodon.lol needing a new home can find one easily. Migration is one of those things that is just built into the Mastodon experience. I’ve shared the entire history of my instances before, but Gamepad.club is my tenth instance and in each case, I had perfectly valid reasons to move. That isn’t to say you need a reason other than “I want to” and the beautiful thing is that after awhile folks understand that the nature of the fediverse involves people shifting into more comfortable positions. I would never put the hard sell on anyone to migrate to any instance because so long as there is no defederation nonsense at work, we will be able to talk freely no matter where you end up.

Anyways long post that went in a bunch of different directions as often mine do. I’m helping out with the operations of Gamepad.club and while I’m technically an administrator I still very much take my lead from Gazz. I mostly help out with tedious things like loading emojis and helping to approve account submissions, but am there to step in if there ever comes a need for me to take a more active role. It is a good home and we’d love to have you, but also there is no pressure to move if you are happy where you currently “live” on the fediverse.

Ten Books Down

February 14, 2023 by Belghast

Good Morning Friends! I’ve continued to keep busy with my whole consuming books nonsense and thought I would give some updates this morning. I’m feeling a little groggy this morning because I was up until well after midnight finishing up a book. I’ve also come to the realization that any concerns I had about being a slow reader were largely unwarranted. The speed at which I read seems to be directly related to my desire to read, and maybe the books that I felt like I was reading slowly… just gave me an insufficient drive to keep going. At this point, I am halfway through my 20 books this year goal that I set for myself, which makes me think I maybe need to re-evaluate that goal. I continue to greatly enjoy using the Bookwyrm website/app to track my progress.

I suppose I should have started things off with a Happy Valentine’s day greeting for those who are participating in it. My wife and I are a bit weird when it comes to holidays and our “valentines” activity is going to be on Friday when we both have the day off. It probably says a lot about us as people and as a couple that the chosen activity is going to be hitting up two libraries in nearby communities and getting additional library cards there. One of the neat things about the Libby app is that you can add multiple libraries, which effectively expands the pool of available books to check out. We are part of a massive regional library system already, but two larger communities in the nearby vicinity are not and have their own offerings. They charge a fee to get a library card if you are not from that community, but I am more than happy to support said library systems. So our Valentine’s gift to each other is to go sign up and get two more cards a piece, to theoretically mitigate the holds a little more easily.

Since I last gave a book update I have consumed three novels or more two novels and a novella. The first was The Lies of Locke Lamora and this is something that I had recommended to me numerous times over the years. At the beginning of the novel, I was not entirely certain I would enjoy it, because I don’t usually go in terribly well with the whole thieves guild thing. That said as the adventure unfolded before me, the more hooked I became with the fate of the Gentlemen Bastards. At its core, this is a grand heist novel… but instead of one single heist, it is made up of innumerable smaller outings culminating in one final major event. The flowing back and forth between the current time and past remembering was a bit jarring at times because you essentially needed to keep putting a mental bookmark where each timeframe left off. I figure I will give the next novel in this series a shot, but I expect it to play out in a more linear fashion since this LoLL served as a bit of an origin story as well as the tale of an epic heist.

Next up was Battle Ground, the latest novel in The Dresden Files series and in truth the second half of the novel Peace Talks. For as badly as I viewed Peace Talks, this novel was effectively the payoff, and given that they came out in the same year… my assumption is that a single larger work was crudely chopped in half and then released as individual books. Dresden is best when it is a small personal outing that is focused on a single “monster of the week”. This is the other sort of Dresden novel however that is focused on wide-sweeping cosmic forces… and as a result, it effectively becomes “Changes 2.0”. I won’t explain that further because I don’t want to spoil the flow of the series for anyone who is otherwise unindoctrinated but suffice it to say Changes was a novel that changed everything about the world, and Battle Ground similarly opens a brand new story arc. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but also I am looking forward to dropping down this hill into what seems to be more “Core Dresden” for lack of a better term for it.

Lastly is the novella that I read last night in a single sitting called The Law. This takes place directly after the events of Battle Ground, so I would highly suggest NOT reading it out of order if you have not fully caught up with the baseline novels. This story alone gives me a lot of hope for the sort of Dresden we might see in coming outings because it was effectively an old-school detective case file. It wasn’t exactly the best thing I have ever read but followed the case of someone down on their luck turning to Harry Dresden for help and him having to navigate the subtleties of the supernatural world for them. It makes me anxious for the release of the next proper novel because I think we are going to be entering a period of the sort of Dresden stories that I enjoy the most.

I have a number of holds on books that are not quite available yet, so I think I am going to roll into Heroic Hearts and keep with the Dresden theme for the moment. This anthology has another short story that is set after the events of Battle Ground, featuring the valiant fae Toot-Toot and Lacuna. Toot was one of the first characters you got introduced to in Storm Front, and he is still one of my favorites of the reoccurring cast. I fully expect this to largely be a comedic story because Toot has always at least somewhat served that role in Dresden. The little folk however have also shown that they can be mighty adversaries just due to the sheer number of them, so I expect a proper adventure as well. It should be a fun diversion until some of the more serious novels come off hold and become available.

I think more than anything I wish I had landed upon this pattern of interaction with books before now. I know I tend to be super into one thing for a period of time, but I am hoping that I can sustain this sort of thing because I am really enjoying myself.

Primalist is Strong

February 13, 2023 by Belghast

Good Morning Folks! I spent a good chunk of this weekend playing some more of the Last Epoch Beta, largely because it is too much of a pain in the butt to switch back to the normal client on a whim. Entering the Beta required me to input a key and patch my client, which means I cannot easily play the normal game without reversing that process. I have to admit I vastly prefer when a game has a separate test client on Steam as New World did, but I am rolling with it for now. We talked about this game a bit on the podcast. Still, considering I had reached the beginnings of the endgame on the Necromancer, I opted to try out a few other classes rather than grind away and risk burning myself on the game before the multiplayer launch.

As a further sign of my growth as a human being… I opted to give the finger-wiggliest of classes a shot. Mage is actually pretty fun and I leaned in heavily to the lightning bolt that you start the game with. After a good number of upgrades I eventually wound up with a fairly wicked chain lightning attack and arced from enemy to enemy across the field. My core problem with the class however is that at least out of the box it felt exceptionally squishy. I’m wondering if some of the subclasses fix this, but it felt like I needed to zip around the field kiting mobs to keep from getting overwhelmed. I mean that is fine given that is how I expect a pure spellcaster-type class to feel, but it also wasn’t necessarily my jam.

The Primalist however was absolutely my sort of gameplay. What I found in this class is the Diablo III Barbarian-style gameplay that I had been missing with the Sentinel. Essentially I built into a design that focused on dual-wielding axes and running around with a retinue of animal friends. I focused my points on Leap and Swipe giving me good movement around the battle and a powerful area of effect main attack that causes lightning to course through the attackers and spawns little claw totems for added damage. Combine that with some heavy health regen on hit and kill and my Raptor, Wolf, and Crow dealing additional damage along with me make it seem like an extremely strong pure melee option.

Helping this build are some neat uniques that I picked up along the way. First up is a pair of axes called Taste of Blood that makes it so that I cause bleeding on my targets and then additional hits cause those bleeds to tick down even faster. Then there is the chest I found last night called the Doublet of Onos Tull, which gives my minions a chance to create bleeds and increases the duration of those bleeds. These combine to make it so that I am dealing a lot of damage over time to my targets which really helps to whittle down boss encounters. Uniques in Last Epoch often seem to have way less of a downside than I am used to from Path of Exile.

I have to admit the Primalist is giving the Necromancer a serious run for its money when it comes to what I want to play when the multiplayer patch goes live. For the moment I have specialized on Beastmaster, but I could see serious reasons for going druid eventually since that is the mastery path that gives you access to the Werebear. For the moment however, I am more than happy to run around with my pack of animal companions while shredding things with a big cleaving attack. Rift had a warrior pet class that involved running around with a giant cat pet while decimating things with a two-hander and honestly… that is the feeling I am getting for this character so far.

March 9th can’t get here soon enough when I can sorta take off the training wheels and pour some serious focus into this game. It is impressive how far this game has come since the first few times I played it and ultimately turned my nose up in disgust. What I saw of the endgame systems over the weekend, makes me think that this will be capable of holding my attention for awhile.

AggroChat #422 – Excuse to Kill Dinosaurs

February 12, 2023 by Belghast

Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks! This week Bel has been playing Last Epoch quite a bit of late and has roped both Grace and Tam into it. We talk a bit about how the game has improved over time and how it compares to Diablo III and Path of Exile. From there Thalen and Tam talk a bit about their further experiences with Lord of the Rings Online. Kodra talks about his adventures in watching a live stage production of Bluey, and we talk a bit about the show in general. Tam shares his thoughts on Hi-Fi Rush and dives into a topic about the oddities of Steam Deck Compatibility.