Thirteen Books

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Good Morning Friends! I am on my fourth day this weekend and as a result, it has made me terribly late to sit down and write a blog post. When last I shared my progress in this year’s bookish journey, I had finished my tenth book. As of about 11 pm last night, I have now finished my thirteenth. I find myself in a position currently where none of my holds are available and I have nothing currently checked out of the library. So once I finish writing my morning post, I will begin the process of sifting around and trying to land on my next novel. I have a handful of ideas but ultimately it will be determined by what is actually available. I acquired the Iron Druid series from something other than Amazon or the Libby app, so I might start down that road next. I am thinking about starting an audiobook section of my Plex Server so that I can use that to keep track of my progress and shift between machines while listening to the same book.

The goal of this weekend was to acquire two shiny new library cards. That did not exactly work as expected, because thankfully I consulted one of my librarian friends first. It turns out that most of the smaller libraries are all signed on to the “OK Virtual Library” which was a way of allowing smaller communities with smaller budgets to be able to afford the trappings of full access to digital materials. However, this means that one Library card at the OK Virtual Library system is effectively the same as any other card, meaning that if I really want a third card to expand my access… I will need to make a trek down to the Oklahoma City Metro Library system. I’ve already noticed a difference in what I have access to through Libby however, so our trip to Bartlesville is definitely a net positive. I also got to hang out albeit briefly with my friend who is a Librarian there which was also extremely good.

When last I shared my journey through books, I mentioned that I was about to start Heroic Hearts. This is a collection of short stories from various authors, but the primary reason I was interested is it includes another tale that takes place after the events of Battle Ground involving Major General Toot-Toot Minimus and Lacuna… and to a much much much smaller extent Harry Dresden and Will the Werewolf. The story itself was fun, but I stuck around and consumed a number of the other tales including one set in the Iron Druid Chronicles focused around the dog Oberron and his point of view. Probably my favorite of the stories was The Dark Ship by Anne Bishop… which means I need to do some searches to find out what else that author has written. I think this is why I have always liked these anthologies of short stories because it gives you a view into the world of a lot of authors in a short condensed manner. I have to admit from the short focusing on Oberron I am thinking the Iron Druid Chronicles might be a little too “captain planet” for my tastes, but I am still willing to give it a shot since it was suggested by a good friend.

Next up I dove into Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis. This has been on my list of books to read for a long while because I am a big fan of Lindsay’s long-form YouTube video essays, and wish that was a thing she was still doing. I remember listening to some podcast discussion centered around the creation of this book and how one of the things about being a popular YouTuber is that book deals appear out of the woodwork, and how she waited for the right one that would more or less give her free reign. What we get in Axiom’s End is a nostalgic trip through that particular brand of internet weirdness that was the late 2000s, more specifically 2007. Effectively this novel is Dubya-era nonsense blended with Wikileaks scandals, a bit of the X-Files, and the movie E.T. centered around a fully adult cast rather than a group of kids.

It takes a bit to really get engaged in the setting because it starts throwing out what sounds like important vocabulary without really explaining what any of it means. It reminds me of reading Dune for the first time and having to interpret a lot of things through context clues, the key difference being there was a thick glossary at the back of that novel… which is lacking here. I like the central character of Cora Sabino and the journey she goes through during the course of the pages. It is a bit of a weird romp, but well worth your time sticking around until it properly grabs you. There are a few unanswered questions that you sort of have to roll with because I still have no fucking clue why the first events of the novel actually took place. There is a logical sequence that never really resolves that you sort of have to hand wave away, but the rest of the novel resolves neatly.

Most recently I finished up Dead Man’s Hand by James J. Butcher… who is the son of Jim Butcher the author of the Dresden Files series. While digging around to catch up on the Dresden series I stumbled upon the existence of this novel which immediately placed it on my radar. My friend the aforementioned Librarian said that they were reading the novel, and funnily enough, my hold kept them from extending their own old so I technically finished it first. At its core… Dead Man’s Hand is the most generically competent urban fantasy novel you have ever read. That doesn’t necessarily make it bad, but it feels like a setting you have been to before with highly regulated magic users and a not-quite-ministry-of-magic governing them and their actions. I guess one of the things that do make it more interesting is this is a post-unmasking society where “usuals” and “unorthodox” have learned to live together in a somewhat unsteady peace.

One of the cardinal sins of this novel is that it has some truly awful character names like the primary protagonist of Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby. At face value, it is a slightly awkward first novel from an author that at times feels like a caricature of his father’s writing style. That is probably unfair however because if I did not go into this expecting at least some similarities due to my extreme familiarity with the other’s body of work… I would likely judge it more positively. The novel did manage to make me care about the characters and make me interested in hearing more about this world. The second book in the Unorthodox Chronicles series has already been announced and will be called Long Past Dues releasing this October. I am interested enough in GG Grimsby, Huntsman Mayflower, and Wudge to definitely throw that on the list of must-reads. If you like magical detective stories, and more specifically like the buddy cop dynamic of a completely green rookie and grizzled grumpy veteran, then this is probably worth a read for you as well.

More than likely I am going to be starting book one of the Iron Druid Chronicles at some point today. The series begins with a book called Hounded, which I am guessing will dive into the bond that the main character has with the hound Oberron that I met in the short story discussed earlier in this post. I liked Oberron quite a bit, so if nothing else I think I can limp through a novel just based on that alone. My friend mentioned that it felt a lot like Dresden Files and even though the story I read was from the point of view of the dog, I can absolutely see some similarities. It still floors me that I am thirteen books into this journey with no real signs of slowing down. I know at some point I will probably stall out at least for a bit as I will want to play some narrative games this year, namely the new Jedi Survivor game coming out in April. Tomorrow I will likely share my progress in Guild Wars 2 that I made over the weekend.

Hopefully, you have a great week and as always feel free to drop me any suggestions for novels I should explore. I will say that I am not terribly interested in anything with a more romantic focus. That isn’t really my jam, as I tend to skip through romance scenes in novels because I find them exceedingly awkward most of the time. I might have to dive into a few at some point because I happen to be friends with several romance authors, but I am largely putting that off for now lest I get bogged down.

AggroChat #423 – Why Is Bel Laughing?

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

Tonight we have a bit of a short show as we had to punt several topics to next week since Tam and Thalen were out.  Bel talks about his recent adventures since the beginning of the year with the Library system and the Libby App.  From there Ash shares his experience using Character Questionnaires to drive character development in a tabletop pen-and-paper game.  Kodra talks about streaming a day of Celeste Strawberry Jam and his experiences playing the game with a pillowcase on his head.  Bel talks about what happens when a large Mastodon instance closes and over 17,000 folks have to relocate at once.  Bel also talks about his experiences helping to administrate Gamepad.club. Finally, we talk about times when games decided to break their world or remove large chunks of content and why it didn’t work.

Topics Discussed

  • Adventures with the Library System
    • Bel gets a Library Card
    • The Libby App
    • Gideon the Ninth / Harrow the Ninth
    • The Last Watch
    • Catching up with Dresden
  • Character Questionnaires are Amazing
    • Using a questionnaire to help build character development in tabletop games.
  • Celeste Strawberry Jam
    • Beginner Lobby
    • Kodra plays with a Pillowcase on their Head
  • The Death of an Instance
    • What happens when a large Mastodon Instance closes
    • Bel helping admin Gamepad.club
  • Breaking the World Does Not Work
    • Guild Wars 2 Living World Season 1
    • World of Warcraft Cataclysm
    • Evequest 1 to Everquest 2
    • Destiny 2 Removing Content
    • FFXIV ARR did Work However

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Defeating Ranger Personal Story

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Good Morning Friends! Over the last week, I’ve found myself fading away from Path of Exile more and more and diving further into Guild Wars 2 again. I am sure the tables will flip when the new Diablo III Season 28 rolls out or the Last Epoch Multiplayer patch drops in March, but I am primarily mainlining Guild Wars. For a while, I have been focused more on my Longbow Soulbeast Ranger as opposed to my far further progressed Pistol/Staff Harbinger Necromancer. I just find the Ranger much easier to drop in and out of content, and the extreme ranger of the longbow means that I can cheese a lot of world boss mechanics by simply standing out of the range of attacks. I still enjoy the Necromancer, but there is just something that I enjoy about the bow-style gameplay as opposed to the much shorter-range pistol I use on Harbinger.

So as a result I have been working a bit on catching up with that character and starting to finally chew through the story content. Essentially my goal in doing this is to be able to unlock all of the content that I don’t currently have access to and in theory, begin doing things like strikes and later zone metas as a Ranger. Last night I pushed through the rest of the personal story and started the beginnings of Living World Season 1. My intent is to burn through all of the story content in the order that it was intended, and while I know I won’t be caught up for a long time it is at least some forward momentum. I’ve been slowly chipping away at upgrading to ascended gear, and the biggest obstacle standing in my way at the moment is leveling Huntsman from 425 where I currently am to 500 so I can craft myself a bow.

I’ve also been logging in every day on the Necromancer and farming some of the zone currencies that I can use to complete a few of my accessory slots. At the moment I am farming Winterberries in Bitterfrost Frontier each day and Blish HUD makes that a trivial process. Essentially it marks the location of every Winter Berry Bush, and you just run around until you have made all those icons disappear from your viewport. In total it takes me maybe fifteen minutes given that you often have to fight a veteran monster at each spawn point. The thing that is a major pain in the ass is just how expensive leveling from 425 to 500 in any trade skill is. It is enough of a pain that I even contemplated just going for the Legendary Kudzu instead given that I have crafted a lot of the sub-components that it would need already.

In Guild Wars 2 your “home instance” serves as this game’s version of housing, and every major city has a home instance that you can access themed around that particular setting. My favorite of these is the one in Rata Sum only because the nodes you can farm every day are much more conducive to quickly gathering them. I’ve started to collect cats for my home instance, and a few days ago when I zoned in… they left me a present by the portal. On the ground was a “Dead Bird” that I could interact with and ultimately clean up after them. Growing up the cats we had used to leave us offerings of crawdad claws on the front porch to show what a good hunter they were. If I was not already in love with this game, this dumb feature would have been the thing that tipped me over.

I also recently had to pick up a microtransaction at the shop. As part of the End of Dragons expansion, you gain access to a fishing skiff and there are various skins you can buy to give it a different appearance. I periodically browse the store to see what new items have been released, and when I saw this Viking Longboat-themed design, I had to pick it up. My two primary characters are both beefy boy Norns and this just feels more natural than the lithe skiffs that I normally see. Not that I use my skiff a ton, because generally speaking the skimmer mount is a much better way to travel across the water. At some point, I might get engaged with the fishing mini-game, but as of yet it really has not grabbed hold of me.

Other than chewing away on story content, I am still periodically dropping into the odd world boss kill. My favorites are Tequatl, The Shatterer, and Drakkar because they are the most epic feeling. Generally speaking, I try and get in on the 6 CST server reset Tequatl kill each day, and then depending on how long it takes me to do my daily quests and farm the home instance and guild halls, I will drop into whatever other bosses sound fun to me at the time and are currently available. For those who are uninitiated, the World Bosses in Guild Wars 2 spawn on a rotating schedule and there are a number of resources you can check to see what is up currently. If you are willing to spend some shop currency there is a World Boss Portal Device that I use which will teleport you to the portal nearest the boss (even if you don’t have it unlocked) and tell you what fights are coming up shortly. This only works on the Tyria fight, but a lot of the heavily farmed ones are on that rotation including all of the ones I mentioned.

I am happy to be back in the swing of Guild Wars 2. I honestly thought it would be Final Fantasy XIV that caught my attention first since I did get a house over there. Right now I just seem to be more into the action gameplay style, and combat in FFXIV feels sluggish. There is also not really a game mode that I can drop into as easily as I can in Guild Wars 2, which also feels like forward momentum. At some point I will catch up on the story there as well, but since I am listening to Audiobooks while playing… I am not sure I can handle the FFXIV story right now.

Gamepad is Cozy

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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.