For those that don't know, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is an annual challenge to write a 50,000 word novel over the course of the month of November. That translates to roughly 1,600 words a day. More info on NaNoWriMo here.

I first tried it two years ago though I fizzled out at around 10,000 words and moved on to another WIP. Last year I didn't formally participate though I made an effort to write something every day. Not sure about my word count.

This year I'm doing a series of short stories in a shared setting since I've been doing more short form writing as of late and I've been mulling over the idea for a few weeks now. It's a nice way to experiment with different settings and themes within a "singular" work. I've made some notes on plot hooks, settings, characters, and ideas I wanted to explore, so it's only a matter of writing the stories now. Maybe I'll even share excerpts as I go along.

So has anyone else made plans to do it this year?

feels like we should probably have one of these in here since it doesn't appear we've had one of these as a community in ~creative in awhile--if ever.

i've spent the better portion of my day today working on a census form for the kryfona kingdom, which is one of the many countries in my fairly large worldbuilding effort. the first page actually came out really well, i think, so that was time well spent. i've considered making a post about some of its more intricate detail since i think some people on here might enjoy that, but for now i've opted to just make this general thread since i dunno how well it'd go as a discussion topic. maybe if y'all think it's worthy of one? idk.

anyways, what creative things have you been working on recently?

I was wondering about uncommon game mechanics recently and would like to get some inspiration for a possible next project. :)

I personally enjoy games in which a story is generated organically based on the user's gameplay.

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!

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.

What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk a bit about it.

Notes: I've modified the title a bit, having it say "this week" when it was never weekly (it's bi-weekly) was a bit weird.

Past weeks: Week #1 · Week #2 · Week #3 · Week #4

By "lost", I mean games that have been lost to time--games that you would not be able to play now, even if you wanted to.

It could be because you cannot currently get a copy of the game (through legitimate means), or your own copy is not able to run since the tech has moved on. Perhaps the game's servers have been shut down or the multiplayer base has died out. Or, perhaps the game's development took it in a different direction and you're left hankering for an older build.

One of my biggest hobbies and passions over the last 10 or 15 years has been essentially all of the above. I'm not the smartest or the most well-read lady out there by any means but I enjoy exploring the more shadowy realms of discourse. There's lots and lots of dross but occasionally a nugget of something magnificent, and over the years it's eroded away my original scientific materialist atheism completely and my thinking now is more animist, panpsychist, deist. I've spent years off and on experimenting with (actual, not stage) magic, and though I was never super committed to the full ceremonial experience like others I've seen, it's become a part of how I think.

So I was wondering if there's any here that don't fit into the typical scientific materialist box in one form or another. And if so, what're you reading or experimenting with right now?

Currently I'm reading through Conversations with God and it's persuaded me to start practicing loving-kindness meditation. I've only been at that a few days but I'm interested to see what impact it has on my daily life. It's definitely true that up until these past few days I've never actively focused on trying to love myself and others, which kind of surprises me when I think about it. But that sort of thing isn't really something I see emphasized in our culture or in my own little circle.

How about you?

A classic can be a franchise or just a standalone game. Some examples of current classics can be old arcade/Nintendo games such as The Legend Of Zelda, Mario, and Pac-Man, or slightly newer ones like Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, or The Sims.

I'm fairly happy with mine, it's simple and tastes good, but I'm hardly a chef so I'm sure it can be improved. Bonus points if its simple enough to do when you're tired as hell and just want a nice drink.

Mine:

Start heating milk on low heat, then slowly add sugar and cocoa powder while mixing, 1 tbs each per 4oz of milk. I find this pushes the saturation limit of the milk a bit too close, so I add some more in to make sure everything dissolves. Add in some cinnamon, along with a pinch of nutmeg and salt. Once hot splash in a bit of cool cream and serve.

I never have, and I find it both fascinating and exciting that people can control exactly what happens in their dreams. Has this ever happened to you, and if so, does it happen regularly? Are they generally good or bad experiences for you?

hey all!

i see these kinds of posts in ~music where people talk all about what they're listening to that week, what they checked out for the first time, what they really enjoyed or hated. i thought it'd be cool to do a food version!

did you try a new recipe this week? how was it?

eat at a cool new restaurant?

try a new dish that you absolutely loved / hated?

grab a plate and dive on in!

I hear a lot about how Twitter is a bad concept, because the character limit means things can be oversimplified, taken out of context, and posted without a source. I've never used it myself, but recently I've been wondering if it can be useful to me. For example, some bloggers I follow might post some insights on Twitter that they don't anywhere else, and help me discover other interesting blogs.

Have you found a good use for Twitter besides as a social network or news aggregator?

I've been running Linux for a little over a year now and, after a recent conversation on Tildes, I decided that I need to wipe and re-install so that I can enable full-disk encryption.

Thus, right now I'm shopping around for a distro and trying out different live environments to find something that works for me. My question isn't necessarily for right now though (my hardware is old enough that I'm definitely going to need to use a lightweight distro, which severely limits my options). It's more for the future, in that I plan to replace this computer in a year or two with something up-to-date, which means I'll be able to run any distro under the sun! Any!

So, I'm curious to hear from people who have found their "forever distro." What do you run for your everyday use, and why? Also, what's your level of technical expertise? I am very far from a power-user at present, but I'd like to be somewhere closer to that when I replace my computer.

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!

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.

Mine are a bit of a mess, with decades of accumulation and lack of maintenance resulting in a forest of poorly organized folders and completely inconsistent filename schemes.

I'm interested in hearing about things like folder hierarchies/taxonomies, naming conventions, and techniques for efficient access. This goes for everything from personal documents to projects to pictures to media collections.

Hey Waves!

I've been wondering how other people discovered they were bi, or gay, or pan, or ace, or straight, or anything else. You can tell stories of your first crush, how things just 'felt right', anything.

What are you all typing on?

Right now I'm using a Planck with gateron reds. It was a gift from a friend and I'm loving it. It didn't take too long to get used to the ortholinear layout and I'm starting to like it more than staggered. At first the lack of keys seems like a con, but once you really start digging into the power the firmware offers it's easy to counteract, and it can become easier and faster to use than a full size keyboard

With Essen Spiel 2018 arriving tomorrow, I was wondering what boardgames you guys are most anticipating.

I've listened to a bunch of podcasts and watched a bunch of top-10 most anticipated videos and there are a bunch of games that are getting me excited.

For example, Treasure Island, which I only found out about yesterday, looks pretty interesting to me. It involves one player hiding some treasure and the other players trying to seek it out (Scotland Yard style). The pirate hiding the treasure has to give out clues that may involve drawing areas on the may in dry-erase marker with a compass, like a ship's navigator.

However I'm most eagerly awaiting more detail on the forthcoming Capstone game, Pipeline and some more details on the Splotter expansion to Food Chain Magnate (even though I don't think it needs an expansion).

I was recently reading a reddit post about a 15 year old speaking out about climate change. In the comments there was a depressing amount of people dismissing her thoughts, opinions, and arguments simply because of age (and possibly because of the topic, but most stated reasons were age). In my own opinion I think young people should have just as much consideration given to their arguments as older people, if not more. They are the ones that are going to live in the world the older generations are leaving behind, and they want to make it a good place to live in. Admittedly, I am biased towards giving her a stage. I myself am still pretty young, especially here on Tildes. Maybe I only view it this way because of that. It's hard to tell, which is why I want some other viewpoints. Do you think younger people should be given consideration, despite their age?

Guess this is the proper way to do the post without getting lost posters then.

Anyway, what have you been watching/reading this week?

Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its Anilist, MAL, or any other anime/manga database you use!

thought it would be interesting to hear some of your guys' habits in day to day life.
feel free to answer only one of the questions if you feel uncomfortable or anything :)

these are mine:
the good habit is definitely walking for 20 minutes every day.
and the bad one is not sleeping enough.

I am looking for any resource that could tell me how much knowledge and training is needed to go from a beginner to expert, in let's say application software development for example. Or in artificial intelligence.

If there isn't any one source, are there any general type of sources I can use to piece together one mega-source?

Hey y'all, first time actually posting something here! Just curious what editor people use, whether its for coding, writing, or just the occasional note, whatever. I've gone through most of the well-known ones (vim, emacs, atom, vs code for starters), but only ever really messed around with vim enough to like it, and I've also been trying out gedit for the last little while and really liking it, but I'm curious to see what other people 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!

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.

What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk a bit about it.

Please also tell me if you think this is too frequent, in which case I can switch to doing this once a month instead of every other week. I'll edit the post text to append the decision. Have a nice weekend!

Past weeks: Week #1 · Week #2 · Week #3

This can be anything, I'll accept "relaxing in front of the TV with a drink" as an answer.

Personally I've grown fond of Wednesdays, because that's when I sometimes get me a sandwich from my favorite place, and Sundays because that's when I often go to play board-games with some old friends.

Do you have something you look forward to in your week? Or maybe some advice for people who are looking for something to look forward to?

I have recently been getting into the Brave browser and they have a system called BAT. I'm still not totally clear on all the intricacies, but the basic idea is that they have a universal token that can be given to content creators, instead of using advertising. Here's a link because I probably messed up that description somehow. So what are your thoughts on it?

I was inspired to ask this because I see a lot of other groups like ~TV people have been doing periodic discussions, and I got to thinking it could work here too. Every now and then, we could hold a discussion on either a video game or board game, for example. If I were to start this up would anyone be interested?

Edit: Oh, and any suggestions for if I do start it up? What games I could start with etc?

New title to hopefully avoid people getting lost and posting the wrong media here, if you have a suggestion to make it less ugly then please say something.

Anyway, what have you been watching/reading this week?

Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its Anilist, MAL, or any other anime/manga database you use!

Today I stumbled upon a pdf of Peter Arnell's redesign of the Pepsi logo, touted by a person on twitter as "the height of human bullshit". And it reminded me of the time I worked at a small start-up company, where these kinds of overblown but substantially empty ideas were common currency.

So I'm wondering: do any of you have any funny or interesting stories of encounters with these kinds of things.

Friendships can be fun, mutually helpful, full of insightful conversations, and sharing something intimately valuable. Many of us are probably curious about these things, and some have thoughts or little stories to tell. Without personal details, what are the "deepest" experiences or conversations you shared in a friendship?

I'm here for a few hours during the day while at my shop (EST), and usually about two more in the evening, around 9:00 pm. Every important thread I read (announcements, site discussion, well-commented threads) seems to be at least 12 hours old, with most being more like 19 hours old. It's hard to get in on the conversation when every thread I reach where I'd like to comment is that aged.

If I look at the last 12 hours, I get a bunch of threads with 0-5 comments. Maybe there's not a great solution, but it's hurting my contributing here because no one really wants to dredge up a conversation that people had yesterday or the day before.

So, what sort are most people using, and does anyone else see this issue, or is it just difficult to create a sort that would assure my seeing threads that get "hot?"

Habits can be good! I mean, if you build the good ones of course. But ya know, sometimes people fall into habits that annoy you. I mean, they probably don't know that they're annoying you. Or that they've fallen into the habit at all! What linguistic habits have you noticed in yourself (or others) that drives you up the wall?

Just joined the site. Looking to see if anybody here plays TCG's.
What games, formats, decks, etc y'all play.
I play Magic and Dragon Ball Super.
Used to play Yu-Gi-Oh, Vanguard, and the previous DBZ card game that was far from understandable, lol.

Impact can be in many different areas (carbon emissions, energy use, water, plastics, land use, advocacy etc etc). I just want to know something you're doing that helps the environment. It can be big or small, something you've done for a long time, just started or want to implement soon.

I'll start, about 18 months ago I bought a bike and started cycling again. Most of my shorter journeys are now by bike and I'm looking at cycling to work.

Environmental news is often really bleak, lets hear some positive efforts!

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!

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.