Every madcatz controller I’ve used has been terrible. Xbox, Dreamcast, and PSone. Just terrible.

The Dreamcast had a keyboard for Typing of the Dead, but iirc they also had one similar to the pic I posted for Phantasy Star online.

I tried the first game years ago and couldn’t click with it. I should try again.

VATS build with Deliverer pistol in FO4 is OP as hell. Almost to the point it’s boring.

Play all the fallout games. V.A.T.S. doesn’t care if you suck at aiming.

Only half joking. I played all but the 1, 2, and Tactics on steam deck and it worked out decently. Didn’t even bother using the touchpad aiming because it felt worse to me than the analog stick.

Lol, no question I’m privileged in that regard. We do have half the state burn during the hottest parts of the summer, so can’t use it then. And an overzealous neighbor who likes to burn yard waste on the nicest days of the spring/summer, if that makes you feel better. :)

1. Whole house fan, and it’s not even close. We’ve saved tons of money by not running the AC as much as a result. Plus it just feels nicer to have fresh cool air come in from outside. I’ve even used it in the winter after the whole family got over being sick. Crack a couple of windows, turn the fan on, and the entirety of the house has fresh air in minutes. That got cold pretty quick, but worth having some stale air purged.
2. Drill press I’m an amateur woodworker who is apparently incapable of drilling straight holes.
3. Blackstone griddle A gift from a loved one who passed before they got to see me use it, but a nice reminder regardless. Works great for meal prepping something like breakfast burritos!

Halls Of Torment. It’s a simple game on the surface, but has some surprising depth I wasn’t expecting that I like. Plus when you do a completely broken build and your frame rate drops because of all the damage your causing to the entire screen, it makes me laugh.

Plus killing the skeletons makes the most satisfying crunchy sound. Similar satisfaction to Vampire Survivors when you have enough garlic to “pop” enemies by walking into them.

• Habits
• Tasks
• Quillpad
• Firefox
• Bitwarden
• Immich
• Miniflux
• Wallabag (also testing Omnivore)

Vampire Survivor. So cheap but fun to jump in for a run or six.

One I didn’t include because it either requires specific hardware, or some hacky workaround is Synology Note Station. Great app, and I got it up and running using a docker container that runs their proprietary OS. Other problem is the mobile app is not nearly as good.

As you can tell, I love notes apps. So the trend of all these Personal Knowledge Management/second brain apps is amazing.

I’ll admit I’m a sucker for a good UI, and I’m very picky apparently. And as much as I like Markdown, I like looking at rendered Markdown more, lol. I was just looking at GitJournal and Markor and my god…hideous apps.

I came from DayOne, and their format is some json that I wasnt too keen on for future proofing.

ah beans, I’m late as shit replying…

Parks & Recreation

Sort of…I’m still testing various apps. The big draw for me to Keep was mobile and web apps. I will often sit at a computer to input even short ToDo because phone swipe keyboards and me do not get along. There is no shortage of Keep clones, but a bunch are missing sync function entirely or require Nextcloud, which is way too much app for my hardware and I’m not standing up an instance just to sync some notes. Here’s a not very formal rundown of what I’ve so far:

• Joplin - seems like a solid app and you can easily selfhost the server. But the android app is awful. That and the fact it stores Markdown files in a sqlite db had me look elsewhere

• Quillpad - a fork of Quillnote. Looks identical to Keep. Only syncs with Nextcloud and has some quirks. The big one was creating a To Do list with checkboxes from the Notes app in NC displays correctly in Quillpad, but you cannot interact with them at all. So strange.

• Zoho Notebook - Zoho as a company is likely the closest you’ll get for a straight up Google replacement. But their privacy policy has some concerning statements regarding sharing data with “market partners”. It was enough for me to keep looking.

• Carnet - only syncs with Nextcloud and for some reason the Android app is stupid slow.

• Memos - more of a microblogging app. Similar format to Twitter but you can keep it all private and publish nothing. This one has no official app, in favor of a well done progressive web app. Also stores .md in a db file. Incredibly easy to self host. I keep wanting to love this one, but the single column view (think Twitter threads) as opposed to Keeps grid…i don’t know. I still have it up on my server since it takes almost nothing to run and I keep playing with it.

The two contenders for me right now have some amazing promise and nice features already, but it’s whats on their roadmaps that has intrigued me more:

• Acreom - not FOSS yet and the mobile app can only sync with their cloud. No E2EE…yet. On desktop it’s great. You can use it without an account and like Obsidian, it stores it in flat .md. The To Do/Task function has some natural language processing that can recognize date/time for due dates like “Deploy patches Wednesday at 4am” would recognize Wednesday as Sept 20th since that’s the next closest date and the time at 4am. I think once they open source it and at least allow local only storage on a phone, it’ll be killer. I’d love to use Syncthing to just keep my pile of notes up to date between multiple devices. Not possible on mobile yet. This one is geared more towards developers to track projects, even offers a Jira tie in (gross).

• Notesnook - somewhat recently open source. Has great apps for all OSes as well as a web app. And what is really nice is that the UI is consistent across platforms. They have a paid tier that’s a bit spendy for my liking, but they are working on a self hosting option that will be free of course. The dev did tell me they’re toying with the idea of a charge for commercial self hosters, but definitely not for individuals. This one isn’t in plain .md due to their selling point, which is encrypted everything.

I actually started that afterwards! I have a whole section about my self hosting adventures and hunt for a Google Keep replacement.

I don’t remember why, but there was some reason I wrote off LogSeq. I tried so many apps but Obsidian was the best fit for me. Maybe I’ll have to try Logseq again and remember…

I was looking for a journaling app that didn’t have vendor locking, or required some weird export dump that messed your formatting and folders up. That lead me to Markdown and Obsidian. I love it. And when I die, that shit will still be readable by any basic text editor.

• Death’s Door just a stunning game in regards to art style and music/sound design. Really creative boss battles too that never felt stale. Can be challenging.
• Omno very chill game with a really cool vibe and music. No combat to speak of. Short though.
• Pseudoregalia PS1-style graphics but oddly gorgeous. It’s a metroidvania of sorts with some of the best movement mechanics in recent memory. Highly recommend a look at least.
• A Short Hike really cute game that is all about exploration. As the title suggests, not a very long game. On the Switch version there was a toggle to turn off a graphics filter that is reminiscent of the 3DS. I personally liked it, but I have not checked the Steam version for the same option.
• Sea Of Stars releases on 29 Aug, but there is a demo available. Between the gorgeous 16bit inspired graphics, the lighting effects, and the incredible soundtrack this would be an instant buy for me if it weren’t hitting Game Pass on day one! I may still plunk down on a physical copy. Leaning towards Switch, assuming it plays as well there as other platforms.

These are maybe not what some would consider beautiful, but I love the variation in art styles and how they can be beautiful while either being simplistic or retro-inspired. All but Sea Of Stars were very cheap during the Steam Summer sale or in a Fanatical bundle that may or may not still be available right now.