When I saw what Telwyn of Gaming Sans Frontières had for a Blaugust writing prompt, I knew exactly what the answer would be: What piece/s of technology would you have the hardest time living without? And I can answer that because I just recently had to live it. Earlier this month, Hurricane Isaias menaced the entire east coast of the United States without ever really doing much damage, and everyone from Florida to North Carolina breathed sighs of relief. But it was an arrow that was pointed right at New England. It came barreling through Connecticut and dropped tornadoes and trees alike through its rampage. Most of Connecticut was without power for at least awhile; my neighborhood was without power for five days. ...

I thought I was so incredibly original when I started using the tag #loveinatimeofcorona on all my Instagram posts back at the beginning of the pandemic. Now I see it everywhere. And I saw it everywhere on Instagram, too. But now it’s everywhere. The header image was captured from a video by Dr. Panda called “ ”. It’s a really good and informational video explaining the pandemic and its origins to children. ...

“Content creation” – it’s one of those words like “influencer” or “social media” that seem vague but have come to have very specific definitions in modern times. Content creation, as I understand it, is stuff generated to be ranked highly in search engines in order to entice people to follow it to your website, at which point they will be monetized and you will eventually get paid. Today’s writing prompt, from Joar’s Warcraft Alt Addiction, is: ...

Turns out that everything that ever happened in online games happened first in Monopoly. They said the Monopoly Cash Shop would only sell cosmetic items – sure. That’s how it starts. Was still figuring out how to do a comic, so still a little rough. I eventually dropped the “Comic Filter” and vastly improved the lighting.

After I posted today’s Blaugust prompts, especially the bit about the origin of most of my characters’ last name, “Tanglewood”, Bhagpuss commented that there was actually a game by that name, back awhile ago. I had absolutely no idea. It was kind of funny that he’d also considered “Tanglewood” as the name of his druid. The 80s-era game was for the Amiga and the Atari ST, and looked like a pretty standard adventure game of the era, with some rather nice graphics to go along with the gameplay. This is back when adventure games were a genre – a genre that no longer exists. ...

I at first didn’t want to write anything about fear, the topic of the first Blaugust Promptapalooza prompt. I’d much rather talk about the second one, which was easy, and all prepared. But, I came into this Blaugust thing determined to write a post for each writing prompt. Just because something is hard doesn’t mean I get to skip each. The things that are hard, are the things on which I should focus. ...

I was so excited when I saw a video on the Polymega this morning. The Polymega is a sort of uber-emulator console that can take your PS1, Sega Saturn, Sega TurboGrafx 16, and Neo Geo CD games, rip them to internal storage to keep them safe forever, and from then you can play them on a cool looking console while your original games are stored safely away. I’ve got an original copy of Panzer Dragoon for the Sega Saturn, which (last time I looked) was worth over $600. I want that kept safe. ...

There’s a lot of issues I have with gaming. Lack of time, for one. I’d really like to have a lot more time for gaming, and blogging about games. But then I think – hold on, wait a second, I work. And if I wasn’t working, then I’d be broke, and unable to play games (or at least, unable to enjoy playing games), and then I’d lose the house and be on the streets and be miserable and clutching the Othello set my mom bought me when I was a kid, my last remaining game. ...

My son hates old movies, old songs, old anything. If it’s over ten years old, he’ll refuse to have anything to do with it – with certain exceptions. I try to sneak things in, sometimes, but then he’ll catch on. “That’s Led Zeppelin. Not interested.” It’s Millennial nostalgia, really. If it happened before the nineties, it’s the previous generation, and it has nothing to do with him. I guess that’s where the modern desperation for reboots come from. The 90s kids haven’t seen it, so it doesn’t really exist. New to them! ...

It is known that the best bad guys are mirror reflections of the good guys. Batman and the Joker. Superman and Darkseid. Wonder Woman and Cheetah. Captain Marvel* and Black Adam. I imagine the same holds true with the Marvel heroes, but I’m not very familiar with them. They should make some movies, get some publicity. * This is the real and only Captain Marvel. Fight me. The very best villains go beyond the mirror, with goals and dreams all their own, and perhaps knowing them so well, they wouldn’t seem like villains at all. Misguided, but perhaps not beyond redemption. ...