Important Upcoming Date:

• Timasomo Showcase Thread -- Wednesday, November 5 (one week away!)

Technically all work should be finished before November 1st (but don’t worry, it’s not enforced 😉).

November 1-4 are for putting finishing touches on the project to ready it for the showcase.

To get a feel for what the Showcase will look like and how to prep your project, check out past ones:

• 2024 Showcase
• 2023 Showcase
• 2022 Showcase
• 2021 Showcase
• 2020 Showcase
• 2019 Showcase

Update us on your progress so far!

• What did/didn't you get done this week?

• Anything go according to plan?

• Anything go off the rails?

• Any successes or struggles to share?

• Do you need feedback or help on anything?

This is your topic to share anything and everything you want about what you’ve made so far.

When I was a kid, I remember the soundtrack to the world being oldies. Stuff from the 1970s and earlier. Boomers were always being pandered to by nostalgia. Decades later that pandering shifted to the 1980s, something I'm sure the Gen Xers must have appreciated. A year or two ago I realized that the nostalgia train has been in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

It occurs to me that there has been nostalgic pandering going for a long time and I just hadn't realized it. I assume it's because a lot of the most notable ones have been pretty bad, particularly in the case of movies like the Space Jam sequel or the Jurassic World series. But music has had it's share too. I remember hearing a lot of references to 90s hip hop, and old bands like Backstreet Boys and My Chemical Romance have got back together. I've also been seeing a lot of references to old TV shows like Gilmore Girls and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (though, to be fair, people never really stopped talking about Buffy).

Personally speaking, I'm not a fan of this. Yeah, the movies have been bad, but that's basically just the state of hollywood right now. But more than anything, I'm kind of disappointing by it. I'm more interested in new art, generally speaking, and more importantly, seeing all of these throwbacks is starting to make me feel old.

1995 A.D.

I traveled back to this year to revisit the release of Chrono Trigger.

The game is out for the Super Nintendo Entertainment system in Japan and the United States. It is not available in Europe or Australia. Those regions won't get an official release until Crono uses the Epoch to visit the Nintendo DS in the year 2008 A.D., over a decade later.

I travel around and speak with different townsfolk. Everyone seems to have opinions on the game.

My first stop is a little cave called GamePro where I speak with Sir Scary Larry:

Chrono Trigger is another satisfying and superlative game from Square. If you've finished FF III and are itching for some fantasy field work, pick this one up. Thankfully, the fantasy isn't final yet.

I then meet Al Manuel in a little town square by the name of Electronic Gaming Monthly:

THIS IS AWESOME!! Chrono Trigger is an RPG that combines the best features of the FF series and Mana and puts them all in a game that easily gets my vote for RPG of the year! As with all Squaresoft games, the visuals are drawn with stunning detail, and the music immerses players even further into the quest. Of course, the game's best feature is its endearing story line. Add multiple endings to that and you've got a must-have for your RPG collection.

I wander into some houses and find Video Game Magazine lying on a desk. Geoff Higgins has written about it:

Chrono Trigger is the newest in an increasing number of quality RPGs to come out in the past year. Coming on the heels of games like Ogre Battle and Might & Magic III, Chrono Trigger could easily have paled in comparison. Instead, Squaresoft has brought us another reason to hold onto our SNES.

Right next door is Game Informer, with this posted on their bulletin board:

In contrast to Square adventures of the past, Chrono is a shining new star. [...] The characters that you meet during your quest all have well-developed storylines that make their small sprites seem larger than life. The magic spells advance and become more grandiose as they go to double and triple techs. To put it simply, Chrono is the pinnacle for RPG's on the Super NES and must be played to be believed.

While there, I also speak with Andy "The Game Hombre" McNamara:

Let me tell you a little story. Everytime one of these Square Soft RPG's comes to the office I can't get any sleep. I get so involved in the storyline that I stay up late trying to see what happens next to this soap-opera on a cart. You'd think that one of these days these guys are going to screw-up and I may finally get some sleep, but noooooo. It never happens. Once again, this game put me into that guru floating sensation of "wow." If you're looking for an RPG, you don't need to look any farther. Chrono is the feel-good game of the summer!

I am about to leave, but he keeps going:

Originally, the cover of this issue of Game Informer was going to be graced with Chrono Trigger [...] However, the artwork created for the game was done by a well-known Japanese artist known as Akira Tomiyama. This man is famous in Japan for such artistic feats as Dragon Ball Z and Chrono Trigger -- the hottest game right now in Japan. In his ride to glory, however, he managed to forget the little people.

He and his company refused us the rights to use his artwork on the cover because they felt that any magazine that featured Akira Tomiyama artwork on the cover would instantly be worth quadruple its original cover value. They even went as far as to say that it would be traded on the black market because his artwork is so sought after in Japan.

I think he meant "Akira Toriyama" but I don't mention it. And now that I think about it, none of the places I visited had Chrono Trigger artwork on their main displays. Sure, you can see some of the characters and screenshots tucked away in individual houses and shops, but the banners I see when entering the locations are always for different games: Killer Instinct, Lunar: Eternal Blue, Super Bomberman 3, the Virtual Boy.

Everybody is talking about Chrono Trigger, with many people seeing it as the hero of the time, but nobody is featuring its artwork.

But then I notice a little Game Players shop, and it, quite surprisingly, does have a small picture of Crono and Marle on its door. Interesting. Inside, I talk with Chris Slate, who doesn't mention it:

Can Square Soft do anything wrong? I mean, look at the track record: Secret of Mana, Breath of Fire, Final Fantasy II and III [...] it's hard to criticize near-perfection. The graphics are beautiful, the interface is slick, and the gameplay is just plain fun. It's RPGs like this that wil eventually win over the mainstream.

As I'm leaving, I notice Super Play, the shop across the street, has a full, front-and-center display: Chrono with the Epoch! Did they get permission from To[m|r]iyama? Did they break the rules? Was this actually just fan art drawn by someone else?

Wil Overton doesn't have any answers for me, but he does share this:

This is a fine game and one Square fans will get a lot out of. The time travel premise is superbly implemented, and the way things are intermingled through the different periods means the main underlying story stays strong throughout all the individual quests. Definitely recommended... if you've got the time (ha!).

Having thoroughly explored the region, I hop back in the Epoch and return to...

2025 A.D.

It is here that I noticed that the threat of Lavos still remains, his heat steadily growing, slowly placing the entire planet in peril. Meanwhile, despotic royals lust after power and oppress their subjects to pursue their own selfish glory and greed.

We can use a hero. Maybe Crono will visit our time?

Or maybe we have to pursue this quest ourselves.

Team up, level up, fight for good, support one another, and...

...maybe...

...against all odds...

...change the course of history.

So concludes this month of our COLOSSAL GAME ADVENTURE!

For anyone wondering, u/ali asked me to step in and host because they are traveling and weren't sure if they'd have consistent internet. I hope what I wrote is up to their standards!

This topic is to share your thoughts on Chrono Trigger:

• The good
• The bad
• The fun
• The interesting
• How the game was like back then
• How the game holds up now
• Your favorite moments
• Your least favorite moments
• The things it reminded you of
• The memories you have of it
• The memories you made playing it
• And absolutely anything else!

Because we are now removing the cartridge, spoilers will not be hidden in dropdown blocks so please be aware of this if you haven't yet finished the game.

This topic remains open, so you are welcome to post in it whenever you do finish the game, even if it is days or weeks later.

Up Next:

• Current CGA Schedule

Our next month, November 2025, is our very first Arcade Special, which is a group of shorter games that are intended to be played together.

The theme is: PlayStation WHAT? and will be hosted by the esteemed u/Lapbunny.

It's a collection of oddball, off-the-wall games, 4 of which are on the PlayStation and 1 of which is on the PlayStation 2 because someone forgot to check the games' information before bundling them up.

It was me. I'm the someone.

Its 2am and I should be asleep so I'm sorry if this is maybe just a weird midnight rant.

Today I saw a news article on the other site about aggressive monkeys with covid and herpes escaping a crashed semi truck.

My first reaction was "is this headline a joke" and I couldn't tell. Then I looked at the source (action news 5 or channel 5 action news, or... something) and even opened the page to have a look for clues of it being fake and without digging deeper I just couldn't tell if it was a legitimate news site or not. So I read the (short) article and looked for clues and it sounded probably legitimate. There was a photo of the scene with a monkey at the rear of a trailer but af this point I can't instantly spot AI images and who knows if it isn't just an old photo. Then I go to the reddit comment and they're parroting additional "facts" but nothing that felt substantial.

I felt very struck by the feeling that I don't know if I can trust any information online unless it's REALLY from a trusted source, and I'm not really sure what sources I can trust anymore.

Is this just me? Have you felt a significant change in the last few months? AI is playing a big part in my distrust, but Im also seeing echo chambers somehow get even worse.

Also, it found out later that the monkeys weren't knfected with a bunch of viruses, it was some sort of miss-communication.

The other day I realised I should have used a disclaimer on a comment.

It is a comment that is supposed to be light hearted and fun so I started to amuse myself in a way that I haven't done in quite some time.

I've "always" enjoyed breaking down words (preferably in the "wrong" place), finding synonyms or sound-a-likes or second meanings and their synonyms or sound-a-likes or second meanings, etc, etc...

So I would like to invite you to build on my example below, bring your own examples or tell us about ways that you play with words.

Example:

I've tried a LOT of Personal Knowledge Management software in the journey for the perfect way to record all knowledge I want to save.

TL;DR: I've tried a bunch of apps to try and replace a combination of Todoist and Obsidian. What software and system do you use to keep track of personal knowledge and tasks?

What I'm looking for
There are three different attributes I am looking for in a PKM, in the following order:

1. Ease of use. I need whatever I use to be really easy and frictionless to record information with. If there's too much resistance to getting information into the application than I probably won't end up saving it and I'll just forget about it.
2. It needs to be easy to surface relevant information but also browse through less relevant information. This one is sort of a few sub categories. On one hand, I need reminders, due dates, and the UX to make sure that I don't miss certain tasks. On the other hand I need to be able to categorize and view all recorded entities - tasks, as well as pieces of information unrelated to tasks. This means I want to be able to categorize the information in a way that allows me to filter down from a larger list or from completed tasks - the best way to do this is usually tags.
3. I like to use software that doesn't allow the developers to access my information; usually this is done through end to end encryption. This is especially important in a PKM because of the volume and sensitivity of the information being recorded. However, this is last on the list because I use multiple devices which introduces additional surface vectors if someone were to try and get my information. End to end encryption is just a nice to have.
4. A bonus, being able to share tasks in a secure and easy way with my significant other.

Where I've been
Todoist
I won't make you read the whole post to find out my favorite... it's Todoist. I've used it for years! It really locks down that first attribute, ease of storing tasks. Todoist makes it really easy to add tasks, move tasks, and reschedule tasks. It's a simple and functional task manager that really works for me. I basically use it to keep track of everything across several projects. I roll over most of the tasks from day to day until I'm able to complete them. For tasks that need a reminder I add a due date - the reminder system is pretty basic but it works. It's the app I keep coming back to after trying all the others. But being primarily a task manager it lacks the ability to store information not related to tasks. Like information about people, places or things. So I searched for another app.

Obsidian
I'm trying this out on Obsidian right now! It's a wonderful piece of software that has full end to end encryption. I use it as a sort of digital "safe" for information I definitely don't want to lose. Unfortunately Obsidian lacks some critical functionality:

• Tasks are just checkboxes. There are plugins that can help you handle them better but the native UX for managing them is just copy, paste, and delete.
• There's tagging and folders but there's no real way to move through lots of semi-related pieces of information. I like a big list of stuff that can be filtered down, not lots of scattered documents. All of the linking and tagging happens in the middle of the rest of the text and a list of backlinks at the bottom of the UI.
• Maybe this sounds silly to you the reader - but basically it's all just too manual. If Obsidian had a sort of "parent note" at the top of each folder - like Notion which I'll cover next - it would make Obsidian a lot easier to use. Instead I always have to choose between a new block in a note, a whole new note or a folder. I'd love to be able to write out stuff as I think of it and then move stuff into sub folders - or lists - more easily.
• It's expensive for a journaling app with a relatively basic feature set. Note to note linking and cloud sync are just expected features at this point for an application like this.

Between Todoist and Obsidian I am able to meet all of those listed attributes:

1. Todoist makes it easy to enter information and make sure I remember it when I need to. I can write a reminder in Todoist to make sure I record information in Obsidian.
2. It's pretty easy to keep track of a lot of relevant tasks and other pieces of information in Todoist. For information that I need longer term or isn't related to a current task, it goes in Obsidian
3. Obsidian is end to end encrypted. Anything related to sensitive stuff goes in Obsidian.
4. Todoist allows setting sharing at a project level. So this makes it pretty easy to share tasks.

After using this system for awhile I started to see cracks forming. Todoist makes it easy to keep track of tasks but complex projects are often hard to manage. It's easy to lose track of tasks that are further out then a few days without using obtuse filters. Obsidian is difficult to use on mobile and having to transfer information from Todoist to Obsidian is frustrating. There are probably Obsidian plugins I could use to manage some of this but then I'd have to evaluate each one for data privacy concerns. And paying so much for Obsidian it's a little frustrating to have to rely on community plugins.
So I began looking for a new application, one that could do it all.

Notion
I still use Notion for a few different very specific things. I could probably use Obsidian or some of the other apps I'm about to talk about for these things. But I really like Notion - when it first came out it blew me away! It did so much stuff! It's great for keeping lists of well categorized pieces of information. It has great support for tagging, and the aforementioned folder / page hybrid. It's basically a wiki software combined with a task manager. A few issues keep me from using it as my main application:

• Like Obsidian it's hard to use on mobile. Especially for complicated stuff like moving through lots of different pieces of unrelated information.
• The reminder system is clunky. Since everything in Notion is a "block", reminders are tied to them. I think if I put a lot of time and effort into building a process for keeping track of my tasks it could work. But again, I don't really want to spend that much effort when I have system that already mostly works.
• There's no end to end encryption and nothing but a true / false value assigned to your user keeps employees from accessing your information easily.

A great piece of software but ultimately one I moved away from after a bit and back to Todoist.

Workflowy
This was the first time I felt a real paradigm shift. Workflowy is basically a really big list. Every bullet on the list is a "node" and you can zoom into nodes endlessly. So you can go from seeing all of your information to seeing very specific pieces of information very quickly and easily, even on mobile. And entering information is a breeze, you just add it as a bullet and then move it to where you need it. It's amazing for what I like to do, which is start with a general idea and build more and more specific information. For example, when going on trips I could create a "trip to place" bullet. Workflowy has amazing support for two way linking lists - basically you can change a list in one place and have it updated in all the other places its linked. So I could have a packing list that I link to the trip to place bullet. Or I can copy it and add to it. You can see all the possibilities and the UX makes it seamless.

The real killer here for me was the lack of reminders. The way to handle due dates in Workflowy is to literally type the date; there are UX solutions like a pop out calendar that handles this for you. And then you can filter down to bullets that contain that date. In theory it works well but it requires me to make sure I am looking at the right information when I need to be instead of the other way around. I tried using Todoist to supplement this but ended up having to constantly check both to make sure each was properly updated. If Worflowy had a way to assign reminders to bullets so a notification popped up that would make this the perfect app. In fact, I might give it another try after writing this out!

Lastly, it doesn't offer end to end encryption.

Twos App
This is the other app that got really close to being perfect. Twos App is the software that touched the sun and lost its wings. It does everything! It's sort of similar to Workflowy where you can have checkboxes (tasks) and bullets (pieces of information). You also have lists. So you can start a "shopping list" that sits outside your daily tasks, and you can fill that list with items you need. Then when you are ready to go shopping you can move that shopping list into a "day" and it's automatically a task. It also has a pretty good reminder system.
The problem with Twos App is unfortunate: the bugs. I found it doing odd things like reordering items, separating them out of lists and just generally glitching out. My theory is that the app is so feature packed that the systems start to conflict with each other. I've seen they are going to release a new major version soon so I might give it another try.

This is getting way too long! Just real quick some others I've tried:

• Capacities. A lot of protentional, like a more structured version of Notion. It shares a ton of the same features and functions similarly. But everything revolves around "objects" which are basically just... templates. There's no inheritance or ways to compose objects that would make something like that really powerful
• Amplenote: Another app that is close in theory but one big thing is it lacks the ability to tag tasks. You can only tag notes, which tasks live inside of. There are UX solutions for this but it's pretty clunky. It also supports end to end encryption but on a note by note basis? It seems like another situation where if I put a lot of time in I might be able to get something working but just doesn't seem worth it.
• Loqseq: End to end encrypted! Great support for tasks! But I think it's just still too underbaked. The sync feature is still in beta and requires you to pay in the form of donations? They basically tie your account to the donations you make and then give you access. Seems not worth it for the current set of functionality. It also lacks task level tags, like Amplenote.
• I've also tried Day One, Daycast, Standard Notes, Legend, and probably a bunch of others I'm not listing. I almost forgot about Ticktick.

So this brings me to my question: what application and system do you use?

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

A prototypical example of what I am looking for would be fruit juice. Where I am at the only options for something that isn't orange or apple are overpriced lemonades with about thirty to fifty percent fruit content and truly expensive 100% ones.

Usually I simply buy the expensive ones and add 1-2 parts water ending up with better tasting juice at same or less cost.

Another step would be squeezing fresh fruit yourself but that adds time, space, complexity and money costs.

What things can be done in a typical kitchen without buying additional single purpose appliances? Sufficiently multipurpose ones or small tools are fine. Basically I want to reduce the number of steps in which the food is industrially processed.

As some of y'all know, I moved recently to NYC (Brooklyn specifically) and now that I've settled in a bit more, I was wondering about volunteering my time to help out the less fortunate, especially with the holidays and everything going on with the government shutdown.

I've been juggling the thought of doing a soup kitchen or something but just wondering if anyone else had any interesting/unique/critical need things that they do! I hardly do volunteering unfortunately, always was more of a donating my money kinda guy.

I did fairly well on my SAT's, (10 years ago so idk how much help I can be) but I was thinking of volunteering to teach kids or something but not too sure if a weekly commitment is too much for me or not.

Pretty much the title. I want to move away from OEM 1st party controllers due to quality and inevitable joystick drift. I have an 8bitdo Ultimate, but it's not working for me on CachyOS.

Anyone else have experience with good quality controllers on Linux? The Flydigi Vader Pro 5 caught my attention, and I am a pretty competitive person for certain games (mainly Halo 3 and Halo Infinite), and like tight controls for platformers and souls-like games as well.

Edit: I primarily used my controllers wireless, especially on the living room PC. I am more okay with wired on my personal computer.

Found a solution!!

Edit as of Tuesday, October 28th 2025: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1iceer5/8bitdo_controller_fixes_for_linux_my_impressions/

Fixes for 8BitDo controllers running under Linux.

sudo mkdir /etc/udev/rules.d

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-8bitdo-xinput.rules

ACTION=="add", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2dc8", ATTRS{idProduct}=="3106", RUN+="/sbin/modprobe xpad", RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'echo 2dc8 3106 > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/xpad/new_id'"

sudo udevadm control --reload

Change Product ID according to your controller:

Product ID 8BitDo Ultimate/Ultimate C 2,4Ghz: 3106

Product ID 8BitDo Ultimate 3-Mode 2,4Ghz: 200f / alternate Product ID: 201b

Product ID 8BitDo Ultimate 2C 2,4GhZ: 310a

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I was reading this post about the Tildes hierarchical tag system and it got me thinking about possible tags with double meanings.

For example, the gooning tag could be interpreted in a sexual way, or interpreted as the act of being a goon/villain. To clear up the misunderstanding, you could make a gooning.baddies tag, but that also has a double meaning.

What are some tags that could be used for serious topics that can have a less serious interpretation?

I have held out for years from getting a loyalty/membership card from supermarkets as I hate the tracking that they do. But here in the UK so many prices are now locked behind it in most supermarkets, it feels like I’m just giving them so much extra money it’s getting ridiculous. I end up spending more money to shop where they don’t do this, but most of the major players are now adding these member only prices it’s hard to keep the status quo.
For other privacy minded people, how do you manage this?

In a landscape of so many quality things to watch, I wanted to take a minute to recommend Code 3, which came out earlier this year. It stars Rainn Wilson, Lil Rel Howery, and Aimee Carrero, among a few other known actors and actresses. It follows Wilson's character, a paramedic working for Los Angeles 911, through a period of a couple of days. The comedy is pretty funny, although I should mention it does have a couple of dark moments as well, in case anyone would rather shy away from that. But I recommend it specifically because, having lived that life, it's the most accurate depiction of life on a 911 truck I've seen from Hollywood. The ups, the downs, the laughs, the tears. I watch a fair amount of things that I feel like weren't worth my time in hindsight, but this is the first movie in a while where I enjoyed the entirety of it. Hopefully some of y'all do as well :)

Trailer (YouTube)

IMDB

TheMovieDB

Rotten Tomatoes

safety.air, food.processed, neurons.artificial, storage.data - there are many many more examples to be found of unnecessarily hierarchical tags. These are not tags that benefit from such a scheme. All we have now are syntactically reversed phrases, reducing readability. What person wants to look up "safety" and peruse rail vs. air vs. public? Or energy vs. data vs. thermal for "storage"?

Where we have the line drawn now is far too arbitrary. Why is republican party not party.republican? decomposition.runaway?? lights.head for "headlights"??? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

I propose that heirarchical tags should only be used for things that have a clear natural hierarchy that is generally used outside of Tildes for some purpose. Geographic hierarchy makes perfect sense to me. Being able to search by country, then by state/province, then by city is very sensible. For describing a section of the tree of life - yes please. Maybe we should even go so far as to use : instead of . for tags like source.youtube. When would I ever look up just source?

This is the nineteenth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing The Poisoners Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine by Deborah Blum. We will be discussing We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis Taylor at the end of November.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.

And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

I've gotten very tired of fighting the GUI of my company's self-hosted charts.io instance, so I've been looking around at diagramming tools. I saw D2 posted on Hacker News, which seems like an interesting option, but I'm curious if anyone around here has a beloved tool to recommend.

I think my main use-case would be diagramming how components of a software system go together, although sometimes I'm interested in making wiring diagrams and stuff, too. Something that lets you specify overall dimension constraints for diagrams would probably help, since I often need to throw a diagram into a PowerPoint.

Important Upcoming Dates

Wednesday, October 29 - Final Update Topic
Wednesday, November 5 - Timasomo Showcase Topic

November 1-4 are for putting the "finishing touches" on your project and readying it for the showcase.

While November 1 is technically the creative deadline, remember that there are no Timasomo Police, so if you need to keep working into November, go for it! We've had people submit to the showcase days and even weeks later.

Time for another update on your progress:

• What did/didn't you get done this week?

• Anything go according to plan?

• Anything go off the rails?

• Any successes or struggles to share?

• Do you need feedback or help on anything?

This is your topic to share anything and everything you want about what you’ve made so far.