2026-05-20T14:28:13.535Z
So that's a handy approximation for when you need iy
2026-05-21T17:57:07.689Z
"it's like Star Wars but whiter"
"it's like Wii Golf"
two descriptions by the same man about the sport of golf
2026-05-22T17:36:55.186Z
I finally finished my Shortpacked! re-read binge
2026-05-22T17:39:12.517Z
A few things:
Shortpacked! is the third and final (main) comic series in its continuity, after Roomies! and Joyce and Walky!. It follows approximately real-time, with many of the strips being about toys (especially Transformers) from during the strip's run (mid-2000s to mid-2010s)
2026-05-22T17:41:03.969Z
There's a mix of strips: a main storyline, one-off gags with the characters from the storyline, and occasional gags set in other universes (plus some BTS/IRL type of content)
2026-05-22T17:42:41.319Z
All that means is that if you're not a Transformers fan, it's not really worth sitting through all the references you won't understand for the good stuff. There are some good, even great comics in there that you do have to reslly live with the characters to get, but they're not worth the price of admission.
If you had a condensed version that's just story strips, it might be recommendable, but I'd still advocate for his current series (Dumbing of Age) over Shortpacked!.
DoA is better written and illustrated, and was intended as a choesive story from day 1, while Shortpacked! was sort of an accident
2026-05-23T04:41:16.625Z
Kinda fun: the same two characters, from two different continuities, in the same location, drawn 13 years apart


2026-05-25T19:52:05.481Z
Here's a weird thing with the soundboard at church

You see the highlighted column where it says "1k91 Hz"?
that actually means 1910 Hz, or 1.91 kHz
2026-05-25T19:53:57.859Z
I do wonder how frequencies >10 kHz are notated, I should check whenever I'm there again
2026-05-26T20:02:45.928Z
I saw the other day someone refer to a "long expired" copyright from 1990
if only, man
2026-05-27T16:36:30.567Z
Hey, STiBaRC is a music company, why not review some music?
I just finished listening to the Simutrans OST. It's an interesting one because the game uses MIDIs for songs, and the soundfont used depends on the system. For Windows, it just uses the default system soundfont. For Linux, it also uses your default if you have one set, but has some built-in soundfonts as fallbacks. I used a completely different soundfont for listening to them, and you can find the tracks with yet another soundfont on YouTube. I spent some time getting my copies to sound as good as possible, but there's still improvements that could be made. With that out of the way, here's my reviews:
Most of the first part of the soundtrack, written by shunter and Lmallet, you can skip. It's mostly not very good, the "programmer music" of Simutrans. Unfortunately, it's also most of the soundtrack, so it's probably most of what you hear in-game. The OST opens with two real duds, two of my least favorite songs in the whole thing: Simutrans Main Theme and Gotta Catch That Train. Really, that's what they picked for the main theme? Couldn't have gone for anything else? I suppose this is a good time to mention that the names of songs on this OST have some ambiguities. There's two canonical sources for their names, and they differ in capitalization and even spelling in a few places. So it might be "Gotta Catch That Train" or "Gotta catch that train", who knows.
Overall, Lmallet's tracks beat out shunter's on average, but the highlights in my opinion all belong to shunter: Steamin' Across The Praries, Last Journet Of The Niagra, Needlessly Striking, and Float On By. If you just handed me those four tracks, I'd think they're a sample from a competitent OST. Unfortunately, the rest of the music in this group drags it down to "bad", an observation shared by a number of internet commentators. I also think there's a track worth mentioning for its creativity, which is Stephenson Blues. Stephenson Blues is a pretty simple blues song which notably uses the bird tweet sound effect commonly found on keyboards. I think it's a great choice that adds character to an otherwise very generic-sounding track, but unfortunately it runs into the limitations of the MIDI format. It really overuses the tweeting, which wouldn't be a problem if it was a randomized bird tweet sound effect each time, but you can't really do that in this format. As such, it's just the same sample again and again, all throughout the song. I think I see why those sound effects are used pretty sparingly. This section ends with two tracks by Marcos Maestro, which aren't worth mentioning in great detail, before one more arranged by shunter (but written by vilvoh). Then we get into the real fun stuff.
Kayoko contributed two tracks to Simutrans: Driving on the Midnight Highway and Above The Sky. Perhaps it's just the contrast after two hours of mediocore music, but I found Driving on the Midnight Highway to be the real highlight of this album. The energy is exciting! There's a tempo change! (I don't think we've heard the tempo change in a single song up to this point.) The percussion is well-written, there's judicious use of grace notes to keep the pace up, and the simple arrangement of piano + electric bass (+ percussion) is one I'm a sucker for. Above The Sky is also great, and might even be my #2 on this album. It's a very strong melody, but gets a bit too repetitive for my liking. Still, there's some great instrumentation and/or key changes to keep it moving.
The next two tracks, as well as one towards the end, were written by Gobanboshi and tracked by Phystam and Reti_N. I had initially evaluated them as just okay, but on a re-listen I bumped each of them up a bit. Misty Forest lives up to the name, with a gentle sound that fits the described setting. Summer Intersection feels full of summertime optimism. They all just drag it out for too long, with not enough unique ideas to fill the space. Even House in the Station, which comes in under three minutes, feels like it's stretching by the end.
There are five tracks contributed by RykSeb (one originally written by anoKTOK). The first of these, Salty Breeze, is my last highlight for the album. It provides a nice balance of digital and analog instrumentation, and keeps the melody moving and fresh. The other three if RyjSeb's original songs feel too formulaic to me, almost more of an academic exercise than an artistic one. I mean, one's even titled "Techno Movement". anoKTOK's Snowy Road is fine, unoffensive, but doesn't really do anything interesting enough either.
And that brings us to the final composer, Shingoushori, with a single track, Where Thomassons Lie. Unfortunately, it's a fitting end for this OST. Not the worst song on it, but firmly in the "bad" camp for me. It sounds more like it should belong to a different OST I recently listened to, the Tarzan Activity Center DVD-ROM game. Although if I'm being honest, the songs there were better-composed than Where Thomassons Lie.
Anyway, that's the review. Out of 53 songs, I'd say there's 5-10 that are worth a listen. Doesn't exactly knock it out of the park, but yet I think there's a highway that will stay in my mind for a while longe
2026-05-30T14:06:50.274Z
This river gauge brought to you by McDonalds

2026-05-30T15:07:39.794Z
You know I bet there's hikers out there who aggressively optimize the ratio of ingredients in their GORP for maximum nutrition
2026-06-01T23:15:04.575Z
according to 2022 NHTS passenger data, about 4500 people traveled from the San Francisco area to southern Nevada by train
which is impressive because there is no passenger rail in southern Nevada
2026-06-01T23:16:38.037Z
I guess it's possible that they took the train to Needles, CA and then like Ubered or drove from there to Las Vegas?
2026-06-02T17:24:00.303Z
Ⓧ

2026-06-03T18:57:30.615Z
watching old Alex Jones footage through court recordings
this might actually be the funniest InfoWars headline + lead image

2026-06-03T19:06:13.760Z
in retrospect it's hard to imagine how Alex Jones's lawyers expected to endear themselves to the jury by making them listen to like an hour of InfoWars
when they said they wanted to show this video I figured it would be a good one for him, like one where he sounds like the moderate voice in the room compared to his callers
but it's really, really not
2026-06-03T21:07:21.787Z
wait sorry InfoWars was deplatormed off AirBnB? What does that even mean?
2026-06-06T17:23:04.507Z
oh man I forgot that this was the "did you know, that 12 days ago, your lawyers messed up and sent me your entire cellphone contents" triala
2026-06-07T18:05:56.525Z
This is kinda neat but it should be free https://www.redditfav.com/purchase.html
Or at least less expensive
2026-06-07T18:07:46.778Z
Why does it cost 15-20¢ per refresh? What does it actually cost them to get ten random posts from a list and show them to you?
Do they actually temporarily host images? I would guess that they just link out to the source/Reddit, but maybe not
Also, why does it cost 49¢ for 3 credits but 99¢ for 5?
Yeah it looks like everything's just hotlinked, this should be basically free to run
2026-06-07T18:13:37.739Z
Oh maybe Reddit charges for these API calls now? idk