If you find a mistake in one of my stories posted here, don't panic!

Not only can you email me, but this is really just the place I put early drafts of stories, so that I don't forget them. When they're posted on fanfiction.net and my website (here), they'll be fixed up like new. Trust me, I don't exactly feel proud about my mistakes, and I hope to rectify them soon.

I haven't completely forgotten you (not like Tumblr anyway)

It's just that my laptop has connection issues. And also it's in storage, and Mom doesn't come back for another week, meaning we don't have either the key or a car. And also it's running Windows Vista when it was made for Windows 8.1. That wasn't wholly related, just thought I should mention it.

Bigger fish to fry

I doubt self diagnosed autism BDSM AIDS is going to be all very important in 7 years once our oil production drops below 50 percent, the price of anything that used oil including power and clothing will rise dramatically, and life is going to be hell outside the American South and Midwest, or the farmland regions there still are in Europe and Asia.

People, we've known about peak oil since the nineteen fucking sixties, why does nobody take it seriously? Whenever I try to bring it up, "alternative power! alternative power!". Sure, but what about clothing and plastics, for example?

Alternative power might work well, but we'd never know, it's not like we're implementing it. We're decades behind on alternative power, and it's not going to power our trucks for decades to come, which means no food for you.

Keep this in mind guys, this isn't going to happen in some far off year of 2975, this will happen in the fucking twenties. In at least 70% of all our lifetimes, and early on for at least half of us. I'll only be 20-27 when it finally hits.

I hate everything.

Check out my vidbit channel.

http://www.vidbit.co/user/quietpickles

FANFIC READING TIME - MINECRAFT MOB LEAK

I DON'T HATE XASH3D (A remake)

I saw the reception "I Like Xash3D" got, and to be honest, I have to agree. It wasn't written very well, and I didn't have much to say.

So, because I fucking hate that post, I'm going to make it better.

== I DON'T HATE XASH3D ==

Right off the bat, we're treated to the menu, a nostalgic affair which is nearly identical to that of the 1998 disc release. If you own the Steam based copy, like I do, the background isn't animated, instead using, obviously, the Steam background of Gordon Freeman in front of a gray background. The engine, however, does include the menu buttons.

It has the same menus as the Sierra version of the game, except you can't select the graphics driver in game, and you can see a 3D rendered preview of your player model in the multiplayer menu, where you can also select whether or not your models are left or right handed. I imagine if you loaded the Counter-Strike mod, you would get the different models, but when there is only one set of models, it simply flips which side it renders, and not actually the models. I imagine that it's for models which are half unrendered.

When you start the game, it is mostly the same as whatever version of Half-Life you have - if you have 1.0.0.6, you will still have all the features it has. If it's 1.1.1.2, you have all the 1.1.1.2 features. Fairly standard stuff.

If you have not set your model in the settings, the game defaults to player.mdl. If you have, however, it uses the multiplayer model for both singleplayer and multiplayer. However, it does not work with games that supply their own models for teams, like Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic. I've tried. Most of the differences between Xash and Goldsource is in the minor technical side, and not the gameplay side. It increases many, many limits imposed by Valve for 1995 computers. It doubles, triples, or even quadruples the map limits, so I think that at least a niche of people making maps would enjoy these features.

Plus, you can load Quake 1, Half-Life, and HL:Blue Shift map types. Personally, I wasn't even aware that Blue Shift had a separate BSP version. You can load any of these to display instead of a background in the main menu.

But these features really shine when you've played 2 or more hours of Deathmatch. The increased decal count really shines here.

It also helps with mods if you want them to be more complex. A few noteworthy ones: Shaft, In Deep, Half-Life Enhanced, and PARANOIA 2.
It's 100% compatible with Goldsource content, as long as you have the version appropriate for your HL build.
Seemingly the points are to push the limits of Goldsource at the same time as making Sierra mods compatible. An admirable goal, surely.
I give it a rating of 8.2/10. It only adds functionality to your game.

Fanfiction Reading Time Episode 3, Life as a Pokémon can be so interesting

Why am I starting with episode 3? Firstly, to avoid Valve's tragic mistake. Secondly, it's the best episode in the lot visually, with episode 2 (Forbidden) being the best in actual review terms.

Art by kakepop.
And yes, I did legitimately forget the name of my own show, that wasn't just a joke. I haven't done the series in quite a while, if you couldn't tell.

Oliver A. Podolski's Story Academy, Day 1 (Originally posted 6.6.2016)

I've noticed that there are a ton of people who can't do this whole writing thing. So, to try to control this, I'm going to post something to try to improve your writing just about every day or two, but I don't have a fixed schedule.

By reading this, you've automatically enrolled. so congratulations!

Lesson 1: Pre-Flight Check—Grammar and formatting 101.

I'm starting with this because it's rare to get someone who can get this down in the fanfiction world.

PART OR PRAT?

Mind your spelling, since it can cause huge changes in the way your story will go. For example, you wouldn't say that beatles were a common household pest, as they are actually a rock group.

English words have other words that sound the same but mean different things and are spelled differently, For a mostly comprehensive list, I'd suggest reading the TV Tropes article Rouge Angles of Satin. But tbe most common ones are:

its/it's—it's is a shortened version of it is, what you would say when you want to describe something, and its is the possessive, someone has something. For example, the locomotive could not move, its coupling rods weren't in place yet, but it's ready.

your/you're—you're is shorthand for you are. You're reading this sentence. Your is possessive, like its. Your warm drink gets cold as you're browsing the internet.

they're/there/their—They're is they are, there is a place, and their is possessive.

TELL ME WHEN TO STOP.

Another error I've seen is in regards to full stops in dialogue. When you write dialogue, punctuation becomes more complex. For most instances, you don't follow the quotation mark with a capital letter, as in "'Help me!' He asked", unless the following word is a proper noun, since that is very awkward, and reads as a quote followed by an action, rather than a dialogue tag, a way to indicate who said what usually in the form of [character] [tone of voice or vocal action], like for instance he said or Jane inquired.

However, if there is a full stop in the sentence, as in "'I've been shot.' He wasn't lying", do capitalise the next word.

The accepted form to ending a statement in dialogue when you're planning to continue is the comma, since full stops are just that—the complete end of a single thought. Commas are simply indications of pause, so put one where your character pauses or you want to separate something.

Don't use ellipses, also known as "dot dot dot", unless you want to portray extreme pauses, such as the pauses in the G-Man's speeches in Half-Life. Like this: 

"Well, it seems we won't be working together. No. . .regrets, Mister Freeman. Although, there are a few. . .survivors of your. . .personal holocaust, who would like the chance to meet the man responsible for the total annihilation of their race."

For the most part, ellipses are used not for dramatic tension, but as an extended comma.

When using dialogue tags, in order to cut out a large amount of writing, you can omit the dialogue tags after the characters are first introduced in the paragraph. This works best with scenes using only two characters or ones where it is made clear who is talking through other means—speech mannerisms, being addressed, using their own name, etc.

Also, don't use adverbs for most of the story, since they are best used subtly.

ADJECTIVE HELL.

Adjectives are words that are used to describe nouns. It's best to avoid them for the most part, we'll come back to those in due time.

PARAGRAPHS—TL;DR OR SHORTER THAN CHANDRA DANGI?

Paragraphs should not be too long, the recommended length for one is between three and ten sentences. However, if you have a thought you can't fit in with the paragraph you're on, you can put it in a new paragraph. This is the standard for dialogue, you generally want to have characters speaking in new lines for each of them.

Paragraphs are used to break up a work, so use them to your advantage.

CAPITALS, BIG LETTERS, AND OTHER ASSORTED LARGE THINGS.

Capitals are used to mark proper nouns, starts in sentences, showing a change in tone, and ear-deafening sound. The gun went BANG! and the cyclops was HUGE.

Another thing used for these is large letters. This can be used for great effect in particularly tense scenes.

The final use of capitals or big letters is for titling something. This is because the eye is naturally drawn to large symbols, and it is effective as a text break when lines aren't available.

(BONUS!) AUTHOR'S NOTES AND "I DON'T OWN THIS PROPERTY" DISCLAIMERS.

Author's notes are used as a way to quickly convey behind-the-scenes notes and as a way to generally augment a text. However, they are most often abused. The first type of abuse I want to talk about is inline author's notes, where the author inserts a note after the sentence of interest. This kills the flow of a story and bogs your readers down with unnecessary information. There is another type, the ones who use the notes as a sort of pre- or post-show sketch. As these are usually done in script form with blatant mischaracterisation, it's best to avoid these as they often aren't funny. Notes aren't a place to write down miniature comedic breaks in a story, and all they do is deflate the reader's suspension of disbelief, the exact opposite of what an author's end goal is.

The I don't own [property] dsclaimer is a legal disclaimer stating the author doesn't intend copyright infringement, and that the original property is not theirs. I hate to break it to you, but this is the worst possible thing to do. Not only are you posting this on a fanfiction website, a flimsy admittance of guilt will do nothing in courts, and in fact you lose the ignorance plea. Not that you had one in the first place, though.

Don't worry, because unless you get mega godly popular, no rightsholder would waste their time suing you. Even if you did, most rightsholders are not hostile toward fanfiction authors. And even worse is when these are turned into mini skits. They weren't funny before, and now you add in the obnoxious and cliché line, and you have a recipe for disaster. A better course of action is being cease and desist compliant.

Class dismissed.

If you like Netscape Navigator,

but are clued into the news that it's not 1996, you should try SeaMonkey. It's based on Firefox, but instead of the new interface from Firefox 4, it keeps the classic Navigator interface. It is a suite with RSS, mail, and developer functions, but if you don't want any of that you could probably not install them. I haven't checked, I use all of them.

Kickass is down.

But you probably already knew that. At least, the domain kickass.to is down. kat.cr doesn't load for me, and I don't trust setorrents.

Check this guy out:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGZQCZ4_H6MelLtBVrmPciA

New Frontier Craft is a project run by one or two guys that aims to be a steady stream for a while of new content, to breathe new life into the Minecraft Beta. Check him out.

Here's a joke I found on YouTube.

Did you hear the one about the Muslim who walked into a gay bar? he looked at the bartender and said "FREE SHOTS FOR EVERYONE!"

Third parties are only as ineffective as you make them.

If you don't vote for a third party because "they'll never win", it becomes true. If all the people who voted Democrat or Republican because they "don't want to waste their vote" voted for their actual party, maybe the two main parties wouldn't be a duopoly.

trail

2 10 1848

it was so close

we were going to make it
'
it was twelve miles

i was the last one left.

-jd

You know how it feels to find something from your past again?

wdell.com

Walton Dell's website was a pretty big part of my childhood. I found it from looking for Super Mario 64 stuff, and there it was. Then I went to look at the other things, and I was hooked.

If Walton Dell is in the audience, please update it more.

Rest in Peace, ZippCast. 1 March 2014 - 10 June 2016.

As you may or may not have seen, ZippCast is dead. This is a tragedy to me, but it's just a video sharing website. The world will keep turning. So far, as of 10 June, 2016, the servers are being shut down and you will never be able to visit the website again. It did have a cycle of reboots in the past, but Louis, the site owner, seemed sincere this time. It's a shame, too, since ZippCast had the advantage of being large, having a UI reminiscent of YouTube back in 2009 or so, and having mediocre copyright enforcement, which is more than I could say for YouTube. It really is basically like a 2009's YT, but modern. Was, sorry. The closest places in functionality I could find were Upload Society and Wenoo, but I heard bad things about them and probably won't make an account there. The ZC core community of Maklarr4000, NJP, spiderfan, CaptainNnif, mattwo, Cameron, and possibly x51dg I believe it was, correct me if I'm mistaken, Amandablue, Mr_Superannuated, GamingTopTens, possibly Kratos, and Alisson. If there are any former ZippCasters that would be considered part of the core community, please leave your name below. I myself would join but the website has an age limit of the seemingly completely arbitrary 23 years old.

Of course, I have to shout out two important people whom I made my content for in the first place - my subscriber, Maklarr4000, and my colleague in videomaking, Nintendo64World, who introduced me to the friends feature of the website.

HERE LIES ZIPPCAST

"IT WILL BE FIXED WITH THE NEW CORE"

2014-16

The colossal amout of work that goes into developing a game that we will never see is astonishing.

Sure, you've got your coding and all of that, but that's a topic for another post. What I mean is all of the unused, forgotten, or accidental materials that get cut before the release of the game. Like the original story of Half-Lfie 1. The story the game had in the early part of 1997 is that it's 2003, six years in the future, and you're a weapons research scientist that opens a superamplified portal drawing power from a Cold War-era nuclear warhead to an alternate universe, and when aliens come spewing out, you have to fight for your life while the other scientists, security guards, aliens, and even the friggin' CIA try to kill each other on top of you. The CIA in particular is important, since they're about to detonate some explosives in the same building as the nuclear missile from earlier that will wipe out the west half of the United States, so you have to stop them, and also free the alien slaves from their masters and command them into battle against their former owners.

Just that should have made you go "Huh" if you've never read it before.

And other than people into gaming at the time and people who have spent enough time looking for that information to know about it, like me, nobody will ever know that. It just blows me away. The page is currently still up, too, as of 3 June 2016, so you can look at it here. If it stops working, the page has been archived many times, so just pop the link into the Internet Archive and it should work.

And that's not all. In fact, the whole damned game is technically Half-Life 2 in a developmental sense - that means that at least seven Valve-made Half-Life games have ever existed. Half-Life, Half-Life 2 (1998), Half-Life Air Exchange, Half-Life Borealis Control, Half-Life 5 (2004), Half-Life 6 (2006), and Half-Life 7 (2007). That is, based on how different each version was from the last. Allow me to go off topic for a second, but there are four Valve HL games officially released, and two of them are just thirds of the same game. Suck on that "Half-Life 3 is never coming out" people, you've had it since 2006.

As apparently the only human being on the planet who thinks this, let me get this out of the way right now.

I like "bad" graphics. I don't think that low graphical fidelity looks bad, in fact, I think there's a bit of charm in older graphics, as though it's the game being honest with us. But what I don't like in a game is a bad graphical style. It's the difference between TF2 with low settings and no texture filtering and Quake 1. Don't get me wrong - Quake 1 is graphically a good game technically. However, I just can't get behind the grey and black all over the place. Half-Life looks so much better. It's also why I don't like "newer" graphics, and that's not me just being a technohipster, although I can be one at times.

I just legitimately prefer older graphics over newer ones.
Update:
I played the new Ratchet & Clank game demo at Walmart, and it looked pretty good. I'm not going to buy it though.

I don't like poetry.

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The Snippet

You should give this song a listen.

I Like Xash3D

I like Xash3D. Here's why.

Start the review.

Firstly, we open to the menu. I had the Steam version that I got from registering Half Life, which gave me Ricochet and Day of Defeat, the only two HL-based games I don't have, so it was a nice surprise that I opened it to get this:

It certainly looks like Sierra's Half Life, although it doesn't have the moving logo. I liked it, but it's a minor thing.
We open the game, from my save since I have one, and we see this:

It looks no different from normal Half Life. That's because it isn't.
I guess this thing was less pointed than I thought. It's Half Life, what else can I say?

Well, how about this?
(Update 1st June 2016: When I took this screenshot, I thought the game was bugged. It wasn't, sort of. When I installed the game, it defaulted to rendering the models as left handed models, and to fix it I had to go into the MULTIPLAYER OPTIONS MENU. The most hidden place it could be, rather than putting it in graphics options, where it really belonged.

Hell yes. Do you see that? That is not a rotated image or map. That is strafe bobbing with only a Steam copy of Half Life. I have a copy on CD, but I've lost it along with all the expansions and mods.
This one thing is what made this port stand out above all others.
The mods.
Here's a picture of the actual Alpha at 640x480:

Here's the mod at 960x720:

It has a bunch of fantastic mods and games made with it:
Shaft & In Deep (what you see there), you can use any Half Life game with it, and IONIZATION, which I think is one of the best looking Xash games.
There is one downside to the engine, though:

Yeah. Sorry, guys.
Overall, it's a solid engine that adds to the experience.
8.5/10, I would totally get it if you want to liven up your experience with the game via mods.