Some background: this trip was originally my 40th birthday present from my now ex-wife. We've since divorced and I'm insistent on going by myself, as something always seems to come up and ruin my overseas travel plans. So, I want to treat this as a sort of growth/healing/looking forward trip.

About me: I've traveled quite a bit but I've never been outside of North America. Europe is completely new to me. I am very fond of football, food, beer, hiking, history, and new experiences. I prefer to stay away from tourist traps and I'd rather find hole in the wall type places that are recommended to me by locals. When I travel somewhere, I want to immerse myself.

I'll be there for ~9 days and I have the first 5 days fully worked out. What I need help with is figuring out what I want to do in London for the last 3 days of the trip before I head back to the airport. Other than going to a Fulham game next Saturday, I'm completely wide open. I would prefer to stay in the greater London area since the first half of the trip already involves quite a bit of travel.

I'd love to hear your recommendations do's/don'ts, or general guidance. I'm open to pretty much anything.

AD&D 1e the other night. Two sessions being packed into one report.

Party

• Jeff, Half-Elven Druid 6, Fighter 4, Magus 4 (~50k XP)
• Lee, Grey Elven Fighter 5, Magic-User 4, Thief 5 (~46k XP)
• Moya, Halfling Thief 6 (30k XP)
• Oryn, High Elven Magic-User 5, Thief 6 (~58k XP)
  • Henchman Takeshi, Human Ranger 4 (~13k XP)
• Varda, Human Cleric 6 dual-classed into Magic-User 4 (~47k XP)
  • Henchman Rudy, Halfling Druid 2, Thief 3 (~8k XP)
• Vordt, Half-Ogre Cleric 4, Fighter 5 (~38k XP)

The party sets out on the 23rd, arriving at the Temple the night of the 24th. On an impulse, they decide to check out the Elemental Earth's main place of worship. It is a fairly massive room filled with dirt, the center containing a square pyramid with steps leading up to a stone pillar that has bronze manacles attached. As they enter the room, four Earth Elementals appear in the four corners, still and waiting. They discuss a game plan; Lee puts protection from evil on himself and then moves forward to the pyramid. On the other side of it is a stand with a small bronze box. Lee moves in to check the box for traps and the elementals move closer, to the four corners of the pyramid. He proceeds to check the box for traps, finding none, and his spell expires right as the elementals attack.

(1st round) Two are close enough to try and smash him immediately as the others move in, and he takes a heavy blow. Oryn, Moya, and Jeff let off bows and slings while Rudy prepares their staff of slinging to hurl a boulder and Varda prepares to levitate Lee, who is trying to withdraw as Takeshi charges in. Missiles bounce harmlessly off the elementals, though the boulder does a solid chunk of damage to the elemental. Takeshi ends his charge early, opting to keep the ones firing missiles and casting spells safe. Lee backs away, but is followed, and then levitate goes off, lifting Lee ten feet into the air. (2nd round) Oryn begins casting protection from evil on himself, Jeff casts magic missile, Varda lifts Lee another ten feet up, who is trying to cast mirror image on himself, and Rudy throws another boulder. One of the elementals manages to strike Lee, disrupting his spell, but then he is lifted to a safe height. (3rd Round) Oryn rushes towards the box, Lee is levitated a further ten feet, putting him in contact with the ceiling, at which point he maneuvers himself along towards the exit, Rudy throws another boulder, Jeff catches some in a web, and Takeshi begins ushering the other members out of the chamber. Turning their attention towards Oryn, a couple of the elementals try to smash him but are wholly prevented from making contact due to the protection from evil surrounding him. (4th Round) The elementals continue to fruitlessly whale on Oryn as he snatches the box and leaves with the rest of the party; the elementals do not follow beyond the limit of the chamber.

The party casts some curatives on Lee and decide to travel back to the second floor. They encounter some ghouls on their way but quickly dispatch them. They make their way into a large octagonal chamber with exits in each cardinal direction, some crystal braziers hanging from the ceiling, an altar with a crystal bowl and knives, and a shallow pit built almost like an inground pool. After some investigation, they locate a secret door in the southeast corner that they cannot find the mechanism for. Lee opens it with a knock, revealing what appears to be a wraith, but was actually a drelb. Either way, it gets hit with a barrage of magic missile, has amplify damage put upon it, and is put down in the first round. The hidden chamber it was in appeared to be empty, but after some further prodding, they find a loose bit of floor hiding a censer that they later learn is a censer of controlling air elementals. Moya takes the crystal knives and bowl. The party then comes up with a plan to remove the crystal braziers from the ceiling to bring home, albeit one at a time given their size and weight; worth 8k gold each if sold (they were). Though out of reach normally, Oryn having been polymorphed into a gargoyle hybrid by a curse helped out here. After the second brazier is brought out, they rest until dawn to reprepare spells and allow for some of Lee's health to regenerate through a magic item of his. Oryn throws an invisibility, 10' radius on everyone and they re-enter the dungeon.

They eventually find themselves in another chamber with a sheet of crystal embedded into the wall, which lights up to reveal Lawful Good-aligned outsiders that ask some questions about the party's purpose and suggests they leave their magic items near before leaving the room, as these celestials intend to bless the items, but their method will sear flesh and blind eyes; however, this must be done quickly, as their ability to peer through the window is short-lived. Between their own suspicions and Varda's patron tulani whispering in their ear that something seems off, the party moves on.

The party wanders into the living quarters of the Elemental Fire priests; the first thing they run into is a captain with a couple of bugbears, whom they surprised, partially due to the invisibility. Varda targets the captain with levitate and he fails the save, so up he goes. Between the surprise segment and their captain being immediately removed from the fight, the bugbears surrender, but are killed anyways for being bugbears. The captain begs for surrender and is told to drop his weapons. He does so, save for one sword that he claims is a family heirloom. One detect magic later, Rudy notes that his armor, sword, and a rope at his belt are radiating magic, so he's killed and looted. At this point, only Varda, Lee, and Takeshi are visible.

They move on into another chamber where a singular priest is lounging. Varda happens to be wearing older Elemental Fire regalia, so with a positive reaction roll, he considers Varda to be part of the faith, that Lee/Takeshi are his entourage, and has an exchange with him. Varda reveals that the army of Good being gathered some sixty miles away is ready to march and will descend upon the Temple soon, leading him to try and take Varda to the head priest. Before this can happen, however, Moya, Oryn, and others lead an attack on him and are able to cut him down before he can raise the alarm or get a spell off.

They're unable to move into the head priest's quarters without alerting him, however, but this ended up not mattering as initiative dictated the win goes to the party. One bout of looting later, they find a path they think will lead back to an area they've been to before, and lo, it does, albeit straight into the arms of a troll that they... kill quickly. A problem arises, however. They try to burn it, and it's not burning. Quick pat down in a mild panic reveals its wearing a ring. A dirty, filth-encrusted ring, but a ring nonetheless. One good pull later, it's off and they're able to burn it, and then they take their leave to head back to town. They decide to force themselves to march so that they can get back ASAP, and they arrive at dawn on the 27th.

Notable treasure: censer of controlling air elementals, flametongue, ring of fire resistance, rope of entanglement, along with some magic armor, couple scrolls, and another ring. Gold share was about 6k each.

A general thought that came from a more specific one I had the other day: I've been trying to make sure I eat breakfast by making overnight oats, but it can be a pain on tired nights to get it set up.

Are there any gotchas with making your own mixes of dry goods? I feel like I know enough to scare myself with things like "oh well that might not be shelf-stable when mixed since xyz pathogen from it grows well when provided with abc".

At the moment, I'm just imagining prepping like a weeks worth of oats, chia seeds, raisins, etc. so that I can dump milk in each night, which seems like it would be totally fine.

We had this topic a couple of months ago where Framework was mentioned in a few response threads, but the overarching discussion was across a wider subject.

My 2016 (I think? It was snagged from e waste) era thinkpad is struggling to keep up with my usage of it. The screen is small, the keyboard sucks, the touchpad is not quite right, it is beyond its useful life.

I like the idea of a Framework laptop. I am leaning toward getting one on principal. It seems like this company is going to survive for a while. I think the last thing I am looking for is anecdotes.

If you use or have used a Framework as a daily driver, what are the pros and cons that you have with them compared to a similar less-modular system? How is support?

Here is the schedule for the upcoming year

Last week in August - Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut,

Last week in September - Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Last week in October - The Poisoners Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine by Deborah Blum,

Last week in November - We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis Taylor,

December break for the holidays.

Last week in January - Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bissen,

Last week in February - The Truth by Terry Pratchett

Last week in March - The Metamorphosis by Kafka,

Last week in April - The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See,

Last week in May - Pnin by Nabokov,

Last week in June - How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Wexler,

Last week in July - A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers,

Last week in August - Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Last week in September - Dr. No by Ian Fleming

This is just a random thought I had. I don't do gardening currently and not looking for advice per se. Just thinking about how the physical world feels far behind in terms of automation compared to the digital world, and wondering what kind of possibilities are out there. I was wondering how close we are to having consumer-form-factor robots to help with various things, and growing food is a natural starting place.

I was imagining what kind of robots are needed to deal with a garden—assuming a house with a plot of land suitable for a large garden—with tasks like:

• Fetching water, either from plumbed water or a natural water source
• Getting seeds from somewhere. Maybe online shopping and then the robot knowing how to open the box. (Probably not by identifying existing plants and picking/stealing them.)
• Planting the seeds in the right place
• Watering the plants regularly
• Maintaining temperature and sun exposure
• Digging up the plant and bringing it indoors so I can inspect or smell it without having to go outside. Then replanting it safely.
• Determining when food is ripe, picking it, reusing the seeds
• Washing and cooking it

It feels like a lot of these are already available off-the-shelf today. I searched and there is a project which I hadn't heard of before called FarmBot which seems neat and geared toward enthusiasts ("prosumers") and education, and includes open source hardware and software. To be clear I'm not affiliated with them in any way.

FarmBot probably handles a lot of the important parts of gardening, but I'm sure it doesn't handle everything on my list. How far are we from a 100% automated experience?

Other than that there was some recent marketing around cheap robots like LeRobot by HuggingFace (the company where basically all the open-weight AI models are hosted). It has nothing to do with farming except that they have one shaped like a hand, so it could probably be programmed to grasp and move things around.

Sorry for the rambling post. Really curious to hear if anyone else has gone into robotics and interested in hearing your experiences and also other resources on what state-of-the-art looks like. Also I bet a lot of this is solved in proprietary solutions and by Big Agriculture, but right now I'm more curious on the consumer-grade level.

BY RAW PHOTOGRAPHY I MEAN THE EDITED OUTPUT OF RAW FILES TRANSFORMED INTO IMAGES BY PHOTOGRAPHERS

Yes, I understand that raw photographies are not all the same and soulfull photography exist today. I also understand that all digital photography is data and there is no such a thing as photo that is more real than another. That said, I hate what most people do with raw photography.

A lot of raw photography resemble paintings more than photographs. If every single thing about a photo is completely perfect, I don't know. It causes me no emotion.

We hired a photographer to take some pitures of our kid. The images are beautiful. They also look like a deodorant commercial or an episode of Please Like Me. It is too perfect. The colors are perfectly in harmony to each other. The bright light spots were atenuaded. We have a naked lightbulb above the table and I know it should be blown out. In the photos, the lightbulb is much dimmer. I can see the bulb in perfect detail (which I can't even to the naked eye...), but the light coming from still manages to illuminate our faces in the same way.

I hate that we inadvertently reacreated a Pampers advertising campaign.

Introduction

July, 1914. Paris.

Tensions are high all around the European continent. A long-growing discontent has reached a sharp peak not even a full month earlier with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. In the midst of these ever-uneasy days, a young American doctor by the name of Robert Cath gets a sudden invitation from his best friend, urging him to join him on the now-legendary Orient Express.

As he boards the train, he cannot predict the chaos that will follow. Luxurious as the train may be, this will not be an idyllic trip, but the scene of a murder. Blood will be shed, conspiracies will unfold, secrets will be revealed and romance will have a chance to blossom. With the official beginning of the Great War only a matter of days away, he may be the last passenger to step aboard what will be...

The Last Express

Welcome everyone to the first month of the Colossal Game Adventure! I am sure most people reading this will know the details already given the activity on the setup threads. Just to reiterate though, the Colossal Gaming Adventure is a monthly event where we will be playing through older games together. While @kfwyre organized the voting and nomination phases, each month will have a different host. We have seven months' worth of games already scheduled through March 2026, and I have the honor of being the conductor for the inaugural round!

As you saw above, our first leg of this grand journey will have us board The Last Express, a 1997 adventure game about a mystery on the Orient Express. I myself have not played it yet and will be experiencing it for the first time with most people here, because this game seems to be the poster child for hidden gems. A game that received critical acclaim and praise from critics and players alike, and clearly a work with serious passion and effort, but according to Wikipedia it sold only 100,000 copies on its initial release.

Luckily for us, one of those 100,000 copies belongs to kfwyre, who brought it to my attention with this passionate recommendation back in May. That link has some mild spoilers for the very beginning of the game, so you may not want to read it, but here's the key takeaway that made this game so interesting: this game plays out in real time. As you explore the train, characters will go about their set routines and events will unfold off screen regardless of you being present to witness them. These events can set up unknown domino effects that will impact you, and your own choices can also have unforeseen consequences that won't come into play until much later.

To that end, don't be discouraged by failure. Many adventure games of this era rely on trial and error but in this game failure is particularly integrated into the gameplay. Someone might somehow get the luckiest run ever and manage to complete the game on their very first playthrough without ever encountering a fail state, but ultimately, this game will call for a bit of patience. And maybe guides if you have the original version or the hints don't help. Which I personally think is pretty neat. Doesn't get much more classic/retro than looking up walkthroughs on GameFAQs!

So all aboard The Last Express, and enjoy the ride.

Game Information

Versions: Original Release and DotEmu/Gold Edition. The DotEmu version is a re-release which has additional features such as hints and tutorials, which may make it easier.

Platforms: Windows, MacOS, MS-DOS, iOS, Android

Genre(s): Adventure, Mystery, Point-and-Click

Links: Mobygames, Wikipedia

Stores:

• GOG, Original: The original 1997 release, in all its 1990’s glory for purists. (Also may come with some extras like a soundtrack and "making of" from a 2011 Collector’s Edition published by DotEmu, but which is now wiped from the internet...?)
• Steam, Gold Edition: The remake/remaster released by DotEmu with added hints and tutorials, as well as interface tweaks. (Note: while it lists macOS, the game is 32-bit, which is unsupported by any macOS versions beyond 10.14 Mojave.) This version is on sale for only 11 more hours at the time of this topic being posted!! An extreme time crunch for sure, so if you see this message, now's the time to buy it!!
• iOS (Apple App Store) and Android (Google Play Store). These ports are also by DotEmu and predate the Gold Edition.

Game Setup

The main purpose of this topic is to get people up and running with the game. As such, it's recommended that you:

• Share which version of the game you're playing
• Share what hardware you're playing it on
• Share if there are any tools/mods that you recommend
• Share anything you think is important for people to know before they start the game
• Ask questions if you need help

Another purpose of this topic is to revisit the game and its time period:

• Do you have any memories or associations with this game itself?
• What about its system or era?
• What aspects of retro gaming were common at the time?
• What other games from the same time period are you familiar with?
• What are you expecting from this game in particular?

Finally, this topic is the beginning discussion for people starting to play it:

• Post updates sharing your thoughts as you play.
• Ask for help if you get stuck.
• Offer help to others.

It is recommended that you reply to your own posts if you are making consecutive updates so that they are in the same thread.

IMPORTANT: Any links to the game should be legal distributions of the game only. Please do NOT link to any unauthorized copies.

IMPORTANT: Put any spoilers in a dropdown block. Copy/paste the block below if needed.

<details>
<summary>Spoilers</summary>

Spoiler text goes here.
</details>

FAQ

With all the pleasantries out of the way...

> PRESS START

(Credit to @Boojum for the splash screen. It's too awesome not to include!)

Hey all, I'm just curious what bands or songs you keep in rotation for your kids. I usually split this question into two lists: one that is for songs specifically geared towards kids or otherwise your kid loves to hear, and another for songs that are somehow enhanced in the context of your children (and example for me is Perfect Day from Lou Reed).

If you want to give any additional context to your answers, great-- but not required. That might be approx age or the decade you had kids, or some story about it. And yes, many kids just listen to whatever stuff the parents would normally listen to, including mine, that is normal, but not really the question here.

I'll start with one and come back later with more:

Kid: Okee Dokee Brothers
Me: Perfect Day - Lou Reed

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films 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.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

this past summer, I started biking quite a bit and part of my route involves lots of hills and so forth. It was painful af the first few months, not gonna lie.

although, now, my legs muscles have grown quite a bit (didn't expect that) and I am quite happy with my muscular endurance, although there is still room for improvement obviously.

However, oddly as it sounds, my breathing is still off. As I bike up the hill, I feel heartbeat go up quite a bit and my breathing becomes quite laborious and I wind up taking quick breaths with my mouth aka panting. If I try to do it through my nose, I quickly feel like I am suffocating like I can't get enough air.

In the beginning, this made sense. I was out of shape and all that.

But summer is over, my legs have adapted but I feel like my breathing hasn't. when I am going up a hill, I still feel the need to pant and breathe through my mouth and take short breaths.

Is this normal? that I would have to pant even after 3-4 months of this kind of exercise everyday. I figured my lungs or whatever would get used to the biking route I am taking by this time.

I recently joined a tech company purportedly with a mission I believed in. Before joining I had some hesitance about how their product achieved that mission, but I liked most the people I interviewed with and the offer was good. Turns out despite being profitable it’s a dumpster fire of a company led by a terrible person who is actively hostile towards my coworkers and our customers. So, I’ve been looking for a new role to get out ASAP.

Some challenging factors: the market is tough right now and I don’t get as many interviews as I feel I should, SWE interviews remain extremely stupid, and occasionally my brain just shuts off during interviews despite practicing it a million times. So getting an offer isn’t a breeze.

The question I’m wrestling with is should I join another company whose product I’m very skeptical of? It has market traction and many of you may have heard of it, but it’s not very compelling and it’s in the blighted world of social media (which I largely don’t use). My fear is that a bad product may necessarily mean a bad company. The confusion for me is that every single person I’ve interviewed has been incredibly down to earth and genuinely fun to talk to. They all claim to respect work-life balance (it’s remote too) and it doesn’t seem like lip service; they pay very well too. The opportunity to learn skills I can’t learn in many jobs seems compelling.

The role itself is the title I want, but the focus I’m not wild about. It’s a bit more user growth focused than I’d typically want. The problem is my current job is wrecking my mental health and I’m desperate to get out.

I’m interviewing with two other companies with better missions I’d much prefer to work for but both are dragging their feet and lower pay; one pays pretty terrible. I’m rapidly approaching a point where I will likely have a single offer in hand with no guarantee that others will manifest.

Any thoughts or guidance on how to navigate this? I want to approach this as “a job is just a job” and clock in and clock out, but I’ve seen at my current role that is not possible as I carry the stress and despair into my free time. I desperately don’t want to join another toxic company, but I don’t want to use that as an excuse to stunt my career growth either.