Sorry for the late post.

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!

I'd love to hear about how you create your favorite works. Of anything. How did you write your best music? How did you create your favorite character in a story you wrote? Anything of the sort.

I'd love to hear all the different processes people have. It's really quite an interesting topic of discussion, for me.

Personally, I grab a cup of coffee and listen to instrumental music (mostly avant-garde jazz [Coltrane, Washington, etc]) while creating the world of the story I'm writing. There's something very productive-feeling about being wired on caffeine while also having a constant noise in your ears. It's how I compose some of my better characters and settings.

Due to my constant writer's block phenomenon, sometimes I'll smoke some pot to get past it. It's almost like phasing through a wall you can't jump over. There's something lifting about it.

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: Do any one of you follow any literary magazines? How do you follow fresh pieces of literature, and grab hold of them "fresh out of the oven"?

Past weeks: Week #1 · Week #2 · Week #3 · Week #4 · Week #5

Following on from the Tildes 0.5 year survey in which 72% of users stated they used an Android device, and 24% used an iOS device, I thought it'd be fun to ask people in a longform manner to talk about their current phone, and their dislikes & likes about it. What has your upgrade history been like?

I'm currently utilising an iPhone XS (no "Max") in 256GB. This is my first phone upgrade where I've felt like the changes are a step sideways rather than forwards from what I've previously experienced. The minimal bezels are very nice, and once you understand how the iOS experience fits into the overall vision for Apple's phone lineup, the notch becomes an immediately obvious choice—a design compromise for the time being until we can place the sensor array under the display.

Face ID is acceptable. It fails a bit more often than Touch ID ever did, but it fails in different situations, and also works better in others. For a first generation iteration it's acceptable; if it can get more diverse with time and work better in extreme sunlight and at wider angles, it'll become definitively better than a fingerprint scanner.

I talked a bit about the OLED display in the XS in this comment here, where I can distinguish the pentile crosshatching pattern, and again, I feel that the OLED is a case of better in some situations, worse in others. The inky blacks are fantastic, but the dark ghosting is a compromise I'm less happy with. Apple's IPS LCD panels are so good, they had a high bar to meet here.

The camera is again truly fantastic; not enough to ever make me consider selling my Sony mirrorless, but the computational photography aspects makes taking challenging photos more of a breeze than ever before.

Finally, after living with a plus-sized phone for the past 4 years, a step back to a smaller form factor with a similar sized screen is a breath of fresh air—I can finally tie my shoelaces up with my phone in my jean pockets again.

The watch & AirPods & continuity integrations will keep me happy in the Apple ecosystem for a while yet, but I'd need to see a very compelling new feature of aspect to a future phone to upgrade in the next 2 years at this point. Phones are lasting longer than ever before, as they should, and Apple knows this.

Previously I've owned

• iPhone 7 Plus, Jet Black 256GB. The Jet Black finish coupled with the weightier frame & thicker body definitely resulted in this feeling like the most polished iPhone 6-style design to date. Runner up for my favourite phone. Further more the P3-gamut display significantly improved image quality. I wasn't happy enough with the iPhone X to consider an upgrade.

• iPhone 6 Plus, Silver 128GB. Might be my least favourite phone of all time? Too thin, slippery, suffered from bendgate; and had display issues which gave it a bad rap. Touch ID was cool; however.

• iPhone 4, Black. Might be my favourite phone of all time, purely from a design standpoint? Utilising the steel frame around the edge of the phone as an antenna was completely unheard of back then and truly a fantastic design innovation. The sandwiched glass profile was both a fingerprint magnet and truly gorgeous; and the Retina display was breathtaking. I'd love to see a return to this design profile.

• iPhone 3G. My first phone. I distinctly remember jailbreaking this device to change the cellular provider name in the top left corner & enable some extremely low quality video recording; this was also the good old days of fantastic games like Tap Tap Revenge.

How about you?

I find myself on a bit of an unending quest to organize my own thoughts, especially since my work evolved into multiple streams on different projects.

I have been looking for a tool to help me organize myself and focus on the things I want to do. More specifically, I keep wanting to improve my ability to remember things: Be able to remember faster, longer, recall more reliably, categorize, filter and export those things, etc.
Links, reading material, "watch later" material, todo lists, contacts, phone numbers/emails, identities, what I know about people, reminders, highlights, emails to respond to, work logging, etc. The more I think about it, the more I have this need for a tool that essentially acts as a permanent second brain.

I feel like I've tried everything. Note-taking apps like Keep, orgmode, wikis, journals, disorganized text files, issue trackers, Pocket, gmail itself, calendar reminders, even Magic. Nothing quite works. The issues I most consistently hit are:

• The method is not good enough at ingesting abstract data. Examples: Anything calendar-bound is not good at storing anything that isn't related to a point in time. Pocket cannot store things that aren't links to web pages.
• The method is far too cumbersome to be able to braindump into it or too impractical to retrieve data from. Examples: Wikis, Keep and other object-based note-taking systems are unfilterable unless you take a ton of time to attach a lot of metadata to each note. Magic is too asynchronous as you sometimes wait several minutes for responses (and it also gets far too expensive to use at the level I'd like).

Despite trying everything, I don't know if I want to build that tool myself, because I think it probably already exists somewhere (and it might be down to me not knowing how to use the things that are already out there). Although if someone does feel inspired to build that, hit me up. :)

My current flow looks like a frankenstein mix of Keep/Gmail/Calendar, which at least integrate with one another, and a ton of proprietary or dissociated methods (including Pocket, Discord, Spreadsheets/Drive, Magic, Kayak, 1Password and a ton of duplicate files and documents). Then it just becomes a matter of remembering what type of information is where, and how to best find it.

So Tildes, what do you use?

Making the thread before I fall asleep edition.

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!

Hello, ~tech!

I've been really interested in the Google Pixel 3 (non XL) for quite some time, mainly due to my boredom of the Apple ecosystem. I've been primarily an iPhone user since 2014 (currently stuck on the iPhone 6S) and I've recently been eager to make a switch to Android. The Pixel 3 seems to be exactly what I'm looking for. Stock Android experience, a beautiful camera, modern device, and I'm already pretty integrated into Google's ecosystem of services, and I feel the transition will be very smooth.

So, for any Google Pixel 3 users, non XL or otherwise, what do you love and/or hate about your device? Were you in my shoes as well?

Hey Tildes, I got a job directly supervising a small team of 4 software developers. I'm very excited at the prospect and would like to put my best foot forward. To that end, I would like to have a discussion around a few topics. Feel free to expand the scope if you believe the conversation would be beneficial. I'm sure I won't be the last person to be in this position. I've done research, read, and watched videos regarding several of these questions; however, since Tilde prioritizes high-quality discussion, I thought it would be a fun opportunity to chat with others about these topics.

• As a member of a software development team, what are things that your supervisor has done that has had the greatest (a) positive and (b) negative impact?
• Supervisors, when you joined your new team, what was your methodology for reviewing the team, projects, and processes? What was the scenarios behind your review and the outcome? What would you do differently?

Last week I didn't realize I hadn't made the weekly post until it was a couple days too late, so I decided to just rollover to this week. Sorry, folks. Might have to get someone else to post sometimes.

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!

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

Obviously this depends heavily on one's interpretation and subsequent extrapolation of the current geopolitical climate. That being said Nazis, the Soviet Union and generic Middle Eastern terrorists will eventually fall out of vogue and lose their cultural significance with each passing generation. What might come next?

If nothing else, I suspect zombies will remain one of those recurring trends that come in waves.

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.

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?