Vidy of Gemes: The Blog

So anyway, I've been playing solitaire in real, on and off.

If I have some free time to actually game on the job, it'd either be my Arduboy with the whopping three games I've uploaded on it (the collection's called Atomic Puzzle Pack, if you're curious), or my deck of cards I bought at a Flying Tiger store. Both are highly pocketable, but I'm certain our boss will not like me as much as staring into this thing.

Though from the two times she came closer to my table, I don't think she minds me playing cards that much.

After trying to do a few rounds of Klondike, I understood there is one quality-of-life improvement the computerised card games usually have: they draw cards so that the player could actually win the game (with some luck, of course). The IRL Patience isn't always like that: you don't know where the cards are and the possibility of painting yourself into a corner rises by, like, a tenfold, especially when it turns out the ace you've been looking for this whole fucking time was actually at the tail end of the long pile of cards.

Speaking of which, kings are assholes and also why I can't get always rid of the damn pile.

At least real life lets you cheat and not feel too guilty about it. After all, placing all of the cards takes a hot minute, so yo, why let that go to waste? Just flip everything and keep looking into the stock a million times! Really, if you're on your lonesome, who cares.

...oh yeah, and I've been trying to practice this funky way of shuffling the deck. You know, the one where you take both halves of it and just slowly flip the cards one over another. It's kinda difficult to do when what I've got is only 40% smaller than the normal deck, especially when I need to throw both piles into one and there's a few cards that just bumped into each other and can't be pushed further.

TIL cards can bump into each other and not be pushed further.

Man, every time I wanna cover a video game in a more relaxed manner, I keep remembering I've been wanting to actually lie down AND play a video game for weeks now.

I've kinda told myself the same whenever I wanted to sit down and read a book.

Oh well.

A Plogbost About What's Been Going on With Vidy of Gemes

Heyyah, this is brightentayle, professional dumbass and gfx/msx contributor to a dozen indie video games you might've never heard of, like Multidude, Sector: Invasion, Captain Drexx, or this little futuristic racer called BallisticNG (which you can buy on Steam right now). Also, I'm still a mod on most things related to Bootleg Games Central, particularly its' Discord server. And I've used to maintain @vidyofgemes on Twitter – which is basically my screenshot folder with all the goofy video game stuff in it, rolled into a neat tapeworm of a timeline.

But yeah, see, uploading stuff to Tweetdeck manually is a fucking chore. Thing behaves extra clunky, scheduling tweets in bulk is a chore, no 24-hour time formatting at all, and the posting time doesn't carry over from the previous tweet you've pre-published. Also, it belongs to Twitter, who I don't even want to as much as support anymore – I've already moved to Nitter just to spy on a few accounts I still care about, but that's it.

Yeah, Vidy of Gemes is not a bot. It's 85% handcrafted.

I gave up on Twitter and moved over to Mastodon. Mastodon is not a whole lot better than Twitter, sure, but for what it's worth, it is part of the Fediverse: a series of self-hosted services that allow you to, in layman's terms, have a Twitter account and use it to comment on a YouTube video without having to make another account on top. People hate hoarding accounts. Not me, but that's how people feel usually.

Too bad @vidyofgemes, a gimmick account with 2000-ish followers and dropping down definitely will not maintain myself. So, in order to survive anyhow, it has to be a bot.

And not just a Twitter bot.

Too bad my list of ambitions is kinda ridiculously high at this point, and I have a job, and also none of the dedication to go through all of it, but rest assured, I will get there eventually.

So What Is It Gonna Be?

I have a kinda faulty Raspberry Pi 3B (non-plussed) lying around that I'm yet to use more as a server for my Discord-to-IRC bridge. I've said “kinda faulty” because it keeps giving me the undervoltage warning no matter what, even with a proper-ass power supply. From what I've seen, though, it can pull it through.

My first paycheck from my new job should probably warrant me a 256GB microSD card to host everything I will need in the nearest future. I have a shortlist of overly ambitious plans, which may take time to implement:

• Have a @vidyofgemes Mastodon bot as well
• Install my own Mastodon instance just so I could host @vidyofgemes from there and also do conversations from the comfort of my own Corporate Branding™
• Install my own PeerTube instance, just so I could pursue my V-Tuber™ career
• Develop my dumb placeholder (and non-self-hosted) website just so it could include a portfolio and everything, all at https://mnk.systems/

I'm not sure how good I'm gonna be on (unlimited) bandwith and also on attaching stuff to an existing domain that already hosts a site – I'd probably need an extended vacation to figure all of it out and make it work.

Wait, Did You Say You're Gonna Start a YouTube Series?

Yeah, I didn't do YouTube stuff for a while. I guess the last time I've uploaded something more substantial was back when YouTube wasn't ContentID-laden. I've still been using it, though, to watch many a videos. And god knows how many youtubers I've been inspired by, but now I want to dedicate some of my time to doing a video series about me rambling on video games. I have a number of people still subscribed to my channel even though it doesn't have much going on, so hey, why not?

There's something alluring about the idea of me doing voiceovers on top of music from shitty NES vidya and that one picture of Doraemon having an existential crisis I made a while back (it is now basically a Bootleg Games Central meme). I still have a lot of obscure games with funny stuff going on to talk about – and, I mean, that's entirely in line for Vidy of Gemes. Actual narration (I hesitate to call that “reviews”) about real video games existing in the wild.

Most of it is gonna be slavjank. Hell, I can even tell a few things about the developers, or whatever I can find on them on the interwebs.

I'm still gonna main my PeerTube instance, though, because of all of the obvious things going on. Copyright claims, a highly abusable system that can put moral guardians and large corps on top of actually creative people... well, yeah, I guess there is a good reason as to why YouTube is the world's second most popular search engine. And it's as heavily regulated by Google as Google.

But Why PeerTube Exactly?

Just to address some of the concerns, PeerTube's watchable with an app! If you've got an Android device, go get NewPipe. Go get it now. Ditch this fucking godawful official YouTube thingamajig as soon as humanly possible.

Also, PeerTube's a federated service. Again, layman's terms, have a Twitter account, use it to comment a YouTube video, just replace the former with Mastodon/Pleroma/whatever and the latter with PeerTube, and you'll get the idea.

On top of that, in my videos, I might approach topics that might be non-grata for most of the centralised net – not just for minors, but also for an average social media dweller with an LGBT flag in their profile. Bear in mind: I'm not a 4chan dweller, and I'm not the one to go against the minorities simply because they're queer, but moral guardianism and cleansing the interwebs of The Unpure has gone so far I genuinely believe we as a humanity in general have went below the bottom of the barrel. You know, #NukeAmerica and shit. And even taking long breaks doesn't really help me forget about it.

That's the short version of how I feel about it all.

Edgy jokes aside, the plan's gonna be as follows: videos with pristine everything will be uploaded to PeerTube, videos that are edited to not have potentially icky or bot-unpleasing stuff go on YouTube. Those won't be monetised, but I may also drop that idea and get a few pennies extra.

One thing for sure: no sponsorships.

Conclusion

Uh, yeah, I guess that's it. I hope it clears some things up. As soon as I get some free time and the equipment needed, I'm gonna start doing the content machine setup of my wet dreams and keep pushing it until I get bored. At least the bot's still gonna be around.

If you have an account anywhere on the Fediverse, just copy the link of this article into the search bar! Hey, I'd be up for chatting.

Otherwise, you can also find me at @klonoavirus@mstdn.social and @brightentayle@outerheaven.club, if you wanna.