November 1st is here! Technically, the creative time period for Timasomo has ended but if you need more time to keep working, go for it!

We have a few more days before the Showcase goes live, so I wanted to run through some guidelines:

Examples: The best way to get a feel for the Showcase thread and its expectations is to take a look at the previous showcases: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019

Time: I will be posting the showcase when it’s approximately 8:00 AM, Sunday morning, in Auckland, New Zealand. You can use that link to see when the topic will go live for your local time (which for much of the world will still be Saturday).

Do not feel obligated to post immediately unless you’re ready to! Take the time you need — the Showcase topic will be there when you are ready for it.

Requirements: The only requirements for the showcase are a title for your project, as well as the sharing of your project (or parts/info about your project — see Privacy below) in whatever way is best for you (could be pictures, videos, download links, etc.)

Recommendations: While your project will speak for itself, the story of its creation as well as your own thoughts and feelings are also valuable and help personalize your work for people. Feel free to add any “creator’s statements” you want in addition to your work to convey that. Many of you have been posting AMAZING stuff in the weekly discussion threads, but a lot of people who view the Showcase won’t necessarily have followed that.

Think about what you want people to know about you and your project and share it alongside your work!

Unfinished Projects: It is PERFECTLY FINE to share projects that are in an unfinished state. It is also PERFECTLY FINE to wait until you’re done to share them. Go with what works best for you.

Privacy: Tildes is a privacy-respecting site, and that extends to you and your work. If you created something for Timasomo but do not wish to fully share it publicly, that’s fine. Feel free to share a limited glimpse into your work rather than the whole thing.

Alternately, you don’t have to share anything! You could simply describe what you did for your Showcase entry without sharing the product itself. It is entirely up to you how much you share and how it gets presented.

Promotion: Timasomo is an incentive to create, but it is not the roof under which your work has to live. Your work is your work, and it’s yours to share elsewhere as well. Feel free to post it on X/Mastodon/Tumblr/reddit/your blog/etc. Also, feel free to share your work outside of ~creative.timasomo on Tildes if it fits into, say, ~games or ~tech or ~life (tag it with user content). This will help your project reach a broader audience here (since not everyone is subscribed to this group).

The Tildes Code of Conduct says the following about self-promotion:

Sharing your own content is welcome as long as you're involved in the community, but don't just treat Tildes as a source of an audience.

Anyone who is actively participating in Timasomo is, by definition, involved in the community. Your work for Timasomo is absolutely welcome on the site!

Hosting: If you are looking for a good place to host images that isn’t Imgur, postimages.org is a good alternative.

If you have greater or different hosting needs and no easy way to make that happen, ask in the comments here. Tildes has a lot of wonderfully helpful people who are super knowledgeable with tech and will likely be able to point you in the right direction.

Questions: If there’s anything I missed, ask below!

Hype: I am SO excited for the Showcase y’all don’t even KNOW! It has been a joy and a legitimate inspiration to follow your projects over the last month. I am thrilled that the whole community will get to see them as well as all of you, standing tall and proud beside them (metaphorically), in just a few days’ time.

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

It is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the game/games are worthwhile.

If you don’t want to see threads in this series, add save point to your personal tag filters.

So, I used to think I hated all love songs.
I disliked them because, in the ones that id heard were the type that found on the FM radio stations, and those tend to fall into a couple broad categories:

• I just met you, and I want to marry/stalk you
• You broke up with me, and I will do anything to get you back
• Your with someone else, and Im trying to win you over

My view on them changed when I found I'll Take Lonely Tonight, A song about the temptation of cheating in an established relationship.
While not a song I can exactly relate to, it still struck me, because its, well, respectful.
Its respectful towards the woman offering the one night stand, but still describes a deep, enduring love between Tim and his wife,
that he would rather spend the night on his own then break their trust.
(I guess it probably helps that I already like tim minchin, especially his newer, more subdued works.)

Since then, Ive only discovered one other song that scratches that same itch: Like my Father, a song about how the artist's parents relationship set the standard she strives for in her own relationship (My parents relationship was very much a role model for my marriage today, so this one hits me in the feels)

Im actively looking for other similar songs, and would appreciate any other suggestions.

Every few months I get the itch to support journalism and expand my news from the low quality high fluff news sources that tend to be free and subscribe to some long-form sources of news, opinion, and investigative journalism, but every time I go through the same process of pricing subscriptions, struggling to decide which one, and then finally just giving up and not subscribing to any of them.

If money was no object I'd probably subscribe right now to:

• The Atlantic
• The New Yorker
• Harpers
• The Economist
• National Review
• WSJ
• NYT

(trying to focus on a variety of political leanings, but mostly from generally high-factuality sources)

I like Apple News+ in concept, and the price is decent, but after a trial subscription I felt like the UI was difficult to navigate, difficult to search and filter, and the news sources were still a subset of the entire publications. I also have to wonder whether the journalists are sufficiently compensated by Apple or whether they get pennies compared to a direct subscription.

So, I come here seeking recommendations -- perhaps somebody here has found a good solution to this problem?

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.

Spotify recently increased their price, making it the same price as Apple's service. I've had Spotify since 2016 (started with the free version), and got premium in 2018 when they had the college student deal where you would get that and Hulu for only five bucks a month. I've been an off and on Premium subscriber since 2019. Only re-subscribing to it when Spotify would send me offers to sign up for three months for the price of one. This is actually the first year that I've consistently had Spotify all year since I was in college.

But now that they're the same price I was wondering if I should switch over. I don't want to get into the whole quality thing and lossless (I don't even know what that is) but I haven't been happy with Spotify's algorithm for a while. Streaming services have always been how I discovered new music, going back to me using Pandora while I was in high school. But now Spotify keeps suggesting the same songs whenever it's on smart shuffle. For example, if I play a song from the late 60s or early 70s, I know the next song Spotify plays is going to be Ain't No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Whenever I play an indie pop song, like a Lana Del Rey song or something, I know that the next song is going to be Borderline by Tame Impala.

I'm kind of sick of it at this point, and I feel like it's limiting the scope of what I'm listening to. I'm not sure what Apple Music's algorithm is like, I've heard mixed things with some saying it's better than Spotify and others saying it's worse.

I'm also happy taking recommendations on other things to do or try with Spotify to correct this.

Choose one series
that you love
that you think deserves more love

Tell us what it is, and why.

Previous posts in the series

Additional Details

For the first time in my adult life I actually have some real discretionary money, and the one personal purchase I've wanted to make for a long time is a VR rig. I was hoping for input I can be pretty sure isn't tainted by capitalism/ads.

Cost-vs-value will matter a lot, but the actual cost isn't too big a concern anymore. Budget up to maybe $3-4K if it's really worth the money.

And to note, I already have a pretty gnarly personal computer that is more than capable of running VR games (Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core / RTX 3090 / 32GB DDR4) -- I just need the rig.

Rangers and Diamonbacks fans may be few and far between on Tildes, but I figured it's worth a shot!

Let's use this post to discuss the battle of the underdogs.

As for myself, I'm a lifelong Rangers fan, which is to say I'm used to misery. It's a bit surreal to be back in the WS after such a crazy end to the regular season AND postseason.

Just saw this other thread about the FNaF movie actually doing quite well at the box office, which apperently is much newsworthy and something I should care about. This here thing is popular, this and that is trending, read all about it. Yay. Well sure, it's quite nice they made their money back, but I felt it looked a bit overproduced and cookie-cutter like. Okay, haven't actually seen the blessed movie, but I've decided to hate it, so there!

I know about David Lynch, I know about Cronenberg, I know about J-horror, all that old stuff, but are there any contemporary horror movies which will screw me over? Something a bit more art-house and crazy? I've been a bit away from movie for the last decades, but I'm unsure if I'm out of the loop, or if there is anything to be out of the loop about.

Upcoming Dates:

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

Technically all work should be finished before November 1st (but if you're running up on time, that's never really been a hard deadline 😉).

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

If you need an idea of what the Showcase thread will look like, here's last year's.

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.