I woke up and found Morty inside his little kitty cat tree condo just lying down looking awesome. I wish I could have gotten a picture of Stewie taking up the entire kitty condo, but unfortunately I didn’t wake up in time to see it. He’s a bigger cat, and having him in that tiny space would have been a fun pic to grab.
That Escalated Quickly
Went to the Doc today; they’re scheduling an MRI for me, and I’m off of work until next week with plenty of time to heat, massage, and stretch the affected area. I literally have a pain in the neck! A pain in the neck that’s being a pain in the neck to the rest of my right arm… I’ve had to wrap my wrist or wear an arm brace to stop random shocks from happening. It’s like literal electricity flowing through my arm, and with that sharp coldness it makes it extremely annoying to go about my day to day routine of scaring people with my mad lifting skillz.
As a result of recent events I’m currently operating in left hand mode for basic computer usage, and so far that seems to help alleviate the pain. I don’t think I’d be able to game with my left hand, but for my own personal work usage I have no problems getting by. I even got a small bit of work done in SFM tonight! I’m a bit slower, but working with the other hand causes my whole arm to freeze and go numb… I’d rather go a little slower on a project and have happy limbs than go fast and regret it later. I’m just hoping some time off and a little medication will help get things back to normal; I really don’t want to go into surgery unless it’s a last resort.
Lost in Sleep and Imagination
During my time in bed most of yesterday I pretty much kept to myself, with my Linux Surface at my side. It’s really nice for reading, watching videos, spying on my corner of the internet, etc… I’ve been watching all kinds of music videos recently, to both see what the songs I grew up listening to were like in video form, and to also study the cinematography of each video. I’ve been kind of playing a game of “if I were to recreate this music video in SFM, what game would it represent?”. I’ve already come up with a few ideas!… that will never fully see the life of day thanks to YouTube’s copyright bot demons. Maybe I can get away with using them in future cutscenes? Speaking of cutscenes, here’s a WIP:
Goodnight everybody!
Memorial Day/Night Open Thread
Happy Memorial Day!… evening.
I’ve pretty much spent the day in bed. My shoulder is continuing to give me grief, in fact parts of my hand and arm get a strange cold numb feeling. It’s at the point now where I’ve had to use a sick day to see a doctor tomorrow. I know it’s just a pinched nerve, but two days off of work doesn’t seem to be enough to get my shoulder to stop yelling at me.
I think a couple things that would help would be to replace my old mattress, and get a new computer chair. Something comfortable but ergonomic perhaps.
Memorial Day Brunch With a French Twist
I wanted to make a more fancier brunch than usual, being it’s a holiday and everything… I made an omelette filled with blue cheese, and topped with grape tomatoes and onions cooked in oil and balsamic vinegar. I also bought some French Bread made with cranberries and blueberries, layered with some sweetened cream cheese and berries. The bacon is there by default. 😛 With their powers combined, they gave me Memorial Day Itis.
Sometimes I Wish I Could Factory Reset Myself
I haven’t been feeling well these last couple days… or rather the whole week. It’s been a fight with a stiff shoulder/back/ limbs etc. I think my body needs another vacation, and a new mattress. I’ve pretty much been sore one way or the other since my last weekend; hopefully I can use this upcoming one to work out these kinks.
On a brighter note I’ve finished my After Effects render! This brings me to Stage 4: Staging/Animating the end of the video. I might work on that a bit tomorrow, maybe if I don’t feel thrashed I’ll attempt to do a livestream.
No promises though.
Meanwhile, in After Effects

I’m almost done animating the hologram/codec call in AE. I just have some other tweaks to perform to it, possibly add another layer on top of a couple of points, then I’ll have something to render. I’ve forgotten how fun it is to play around in After Effects. It makes me wish there was something available in Open Source software…
I’ll have to sit down one of these evenings to see if there is something that could give AE a run for its money. I never use Premiere Pro anymore, and Photoshop is getting less use thanks to Krita. The less Adobe I use the less I have to use Windows. 😛
A Ghost In A 3D Printed Shell
I decided to try one of the many games I haven’t touched in my library, and my magical dartboard of destiny landed on Ghost 1.0, a metroidvania meets megaman type of game that isn’t afraid to make fun of itself:
Your name is Ghost, and you’re on a mission to steal the greatest electronic secret ever hidden on the Nakamura Space Station. Primarily you remote control an android that can be rebuilt via 3D Printing should you die. You can also use your mysterious unexplained digital ghost powers to possess different robots and androids on the Space Station to solve puzzles, or clear things out ahead of time.

It handles nicely under Linux, even on my Linux Surface Tablet! It runs as if it were made for it!
Aside from your typical powerups and weapons, you also have upgrades and… geeks? I found a geek item while playing a little bit ago, and equipping it seems to emit a weird scream anytime you’re damaged by an enemy.
You can also collect skill points to apply to certain skill trees. You can improve your chassis or your ghost abilities. You can also level up Jacker and Boogan, the ones that hired you to take on this cray cray adventure. Boogan is your technical specialist, and Jacker is a hacker . 😛 You can also improve things for yourself around the space station, but so far I’ve mainly focused on chassis upgrades.
So far the game has been fun, challenging, and funny enough for me to forgive the voice acting in certain spots. Perhaps I’ll will myself through this game on another weekend, and maybe also during a long trip on my tablet! I can finally tell the co-worker that gifted this to me that I love it! 😛 If you like metroidvania style games you might want to consider looking this one up.
Smoked Salmon: Bacon Of The Sea
This weekend’s Brunch was a Frittata! I was actually going to make this recipe, but decided to change a couple ingredients, as well as add some extras. I still had leftover spinach that needed to be used, along with some grape tomatoes. I traded the cream cheese for feta, and used kalamata olives instead of typical black. I also added a garlic clove and cooked it in a little remaining marsala at the bottom of a wine bottle. I had it along side some sourdough bread and it was real flavourful. The smoked salmon with the feta and olives really paired well. It looks like I’ll have a fancy breakfast to pack for work for at least a couple of days! 😛