I have always believed that sharing what you know is very important.

Altruistically, it helps create a wealth of knowledge that anyone can build upon.

Selfishly, it creates a knowledge-base for your future self, and - arguably more importantly - helps you build a following.

After years of pondering on the idea, I took the plunge and started a screencast on React and React Native. I only published four episodes so far, and they are all very basic, but I'm planning on publishing a video every other day for a few months at least.

It's called RNcasts. You can see it here. I would love to get your opinion on it.

It's by no means perfect, it hurts my eyes to look at it, and it hurts my ears to hear my own voice, but I had to get started somewhere.

Also, I will be sharing my journey of working on this screencast on the RNcasts blog. If you are interested in starting your own screencast or video course, feel free to follow it. I'm hoping to share all I learn, the good and the bad.

(I am not directly posting as a link, as I have originally shared this over Gemini, which I don't think a majority of the people here have a client for, and directly linking to a proxy just seemed weird to me. So here are both the original and proxied links for people to choose between)

gemini://ebc.li/posts/open-standards-are-simple.gmi (HTTP Proxy)

For context, Microscope is an RPG system where you collaboratively write the history of a world. It's focused entirely on collaborative storytelling, rather than dice-rolling (there are no dice).

• Homepage : http://www.lamemage.com/microscope/
• PDF Manual

So I wrote a Dictated Scene for our world, and I was rather proud of it, so I thought I'd post it here since it almost stands on it's own. I'm curious what other people think and what kinds of questions it provokes about the world it inhabits.

Meris had played in the clearing all her life. Every time she went to play by herself the little Jima would come out and sit on it’s rock to watch her. She always talked to it, though it never talked back. It just liked to watch with it’s tiny eyes, wary of approaching shadows that might scoop it up.

Under the Jima’s rock was where Meris kept her treasures. Well some of them where the Jima’s treasures. Meris had found all of the treasures, but she let the Jima watch them so it seemed only fair that she let him keep some of them. Her favorite treasures were the small crystals no longer than her finger, though her fingers weren’t very big since she wasn’t very big yet. They were probably half as big as Momma’s fingers.
When the wind blew hard enough on some days, like right before Momma made her come inside before a storm, the crystals hummed. Dozens of little humming voices, like a choir singing a song just for her.

On some mornings Meris went to the market with Momma. She liked listening to people in the market, especially when she heard them use new words. Sometimes when she repeated the new words, Momma would scowl at her, which usually just made Meris get the giggles.

The last day that Meris went to the meadow, she was repeating some new words she had heard an angry man yell at someone. As Meris looked through her treasures, she counted to make sure they were all still there. As she picked up her favorite treasure, it’s shiny crystal facets cast spots of rainbow light around her. Meris repeated her new words one final time, and then was silent.

When Momma found her, the sun was low and the last rays of light were still shining on Meris, sitting unnaturally still, looking down at the crystal she held in her hand. The last rays of sunlight were still striking the small crystal, sending a few small prisms of light across Meris’ motionless face, frozen perfectly in marble.

Momma took the crystal from her daughters hands, tears streaming down her cheeks as she asked the gods what she had done to deserve this, what her daughter could possibly have done to displease them. She pleaded with the gods to return Meris to her, gripping the crystal tightly in her fist. As her desperate Words reached toward the heavens, the crystal suddenly emitted a single clear Tone, and all the grass around became frozen and still.

She ran as fast as her legs could take her, the crystal still gripped tightly in one hand.

Three weeks ago I decided I should stop developing on my own and open my side project to get feedback. So here we are now.

Midnight pub is a writing platform that aims to be the virtual equivalent of a pub: you go there to talk about your day, interact with a person or two while you unwind, and leave whenever you feel like. It's centered around the idea of entries & references (backlinks) to connect entries together.

It's a small community of people at the moment. Anyone is welcome to drop by and say hi!

https://midnight.pub/

• Read more about the concept: https://midnight.pub/e/268288534443459079
• See a video demonstration: https://share.getcloudapp.com/8Lu7JkNO

Hello hello, sorry for being a bit late recently with these, been real tired hahah. Alas, I am still keeping the tradition and making these once a week, every Friday ! It's my little escape time, anyways :P Since I missed the writeup for last week, I'll be putting both on the same post for extra goodies for the fellow readers of this !

June 5th:

this week for my curry dish I have prepared a green indian curry ! Which, frankly, I didn't know existed in this form before.... If you know me, you know there are two foods that I really hate the most when raw, those being cilantro and yoghurt. So, when my dad sent me a green curry based on cilantro and yoghurt, I was a bit skeptical at first. I mean, surely combining both of my least hated ingredients together would make for a sensory disaster ! But, to my surprise, eating this was not as much of a pain as I thought it was going to be. No no, instead of being an awful pile of green mush, it ended up being quite nice chicken with a rich and tasty green sauce on top. Honestly, one of the most confusing and fun times of my life ! Cooking it was a bit of a hassle tho, since it did smell awful for me. But it was well worth it ! :P

Picture of the dish: https://imgur.com/a/LNV3nAl
Recipe: https://www.scrambledchefs.com/classic-indian-green-curry/

June 12th:

Hello hello, sorry for being a bit late recently with these, been real tired hahah. Alas, I am still keeping the tradition and making these once a week, every Friday ! It's my little escape time, anyways :P

This week, I have prepared a dish I found on the channel Get Curried: Chicken Handi! It's a dish traditionally made in a special pan called a Handi, which I do not own! So I just used my trusty dutch oven pot. The recipe was a pretty simple curry, consisting of a mostly cream/yoghurt based sauce with a little tomato, varied spices, onion, and of course, chicken ! I think by it's own it was a pretty good recipe, but for me, what made it stand out was the fact that I used ghee for the first time in one of these. Took me 6 months to finally do it, but I bought a tub of ghee for this just to try it out. And...
Oh My God.

Ghee was an absolute game changer !!! The nutty, creamy flavour really propelled this dish into fantastic territories I didn't even know were possible ! I haven't been this ecstatic for a single ingredient in a while, but god damn. I truly believe ghee to be irreplaceable after this experience, I'll have to see if it impacts other dishes I've made a lot or not. But safe to say, this was such a great addition to my cooking ingredients. Will have to use again.

On another note, here's a little anecdote about the whole cooking process from that day. Dad and I went to buy some yoghurt to make naan (which turned out quite amazing in the end), and he saw a tub of yoghurt that was on sale. Quite cheap, too. So without hesitation, he bought it. Once we got back home, he realized it was skim yoghurt, which wouldn't make for the best naan, but it's alright anyways. Once he started kneading the dough, he soon quickly realized that he had gotten... Vanilla yoghurt. So now, we had a whole batch of sugary naan dough which would definitely not work well with our curry and no yoghurt left for anything. In retrospect that was quite funny, lol.
He did end up going for some yoghurt, though. We ended up making some pretty great naan, as I said before :P

Anyhoo, great recipe that I'd REALLY recommend doing, especially if you're using ghee! But maybe don't use too much, we made the mistake of adding a bit much, which made a really big grease pool on top, which could be unappetising. But hey, you ain't hearing me complain about it :P

Picture of the dish: https://imgur.com/a/uEi00Q9
Recipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO0issT0Rmc
Question of the day: what foods have had a "click" in your lifetime? Perhaps something you have once hated, but then suddenly just finally understood. It's happened to me a few times, curious to see if anyone else has gotten that feeling hahahah.

Have a great day and STAY SAFE ! <3
Tomi, your friendly neighbourhood marshmallow~

hello hello dear friends !

I am here once again a little late on my curry posting this week... the whole world is just so in shambles right now! It's a bit of a heavy subject so I'll refrain from talking too much about it, but it's certainly affected me personally if I am honest. Might be a factor in why I decided for something so simple this week hahaha.

Anyways, we've got another Chana Masala this week ! Yes yes, the third week I do this recipe, and it's still quite a kicker ! This time, I used a recipe from the trusty ol' Bon Appetit, which was honestly probably the easiest one of all the ones I have made. Just put some tomatoes on some onions and add curry powder and chickpeas and BLAMO ! a delicious, hearty meal ! It's still crazy to me that such things like this exist... It took me like, what, a few minutes to dice and brown an onion ? then wait 20 minutes ? and then I get to have such a nice and happy time with my parents eating at the table together and cherishing moments together... all from something as simple as this! it really is a marvel, I tell ya.

Picture of the dish: https://imgur.com/a/MORtjiv
Recipe: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/chana-masala
Question of the day: What is a food that you absolutely adore that is also quite healthy ?

Have a great day and STAY SAFE ! <3
Tomi, your friendly neighbourhood marshmallow~