As a revived fan of Patrick F. McManus, I’m trying to make up for lost time by reacquainting myself with this works, like Whatchagot Stew: A Memoir of an Idaho Childhood, with Recipes and Commentaries, a (mostly) nonfiction volume he wrote with his sister, Patricia McManus Gass (real OGs know her as The Troll).
You might have heard about whatchagot stew but by different names: barbecue hash, son-of-a-bitch stew, leftover casserole, “what the hell is this”, and more colorful terms. As the name implies, you gather various vittles, throw them together, and hope for the best.
Ink Tippler posts comprised of a variety of topics follows the same philosophy. I think whatchagot is a fine word to describe the variety I like to display, and I shall use it going forward.
Sporeshelf
I’ve been struggling with writing a post for a while now. This morning, while looking over the sources for a post in progress, it hit me: I spent the past two and a half years trying to arrange my scattered thoughts into coherent papers that other humans could understand and judge for merit, grammar, and academic integrity.
Maybe now I just wanna write a fucking note every now and then without pretending the thought came fully formed.
There’s a popular belief that if you keep seeing something, it means a great change is coming in your life or, at the very least, you’re supposed to be pay attention to the repetition. For me, it was the presence of digital gardens. These aren’t curated blogs or digital museums, but rather ongoing field notes people keep online.
For someone who’s aggressively shedding every last inch of pompous academic effluvia, this is my kind of thing. Even if I have to get used to categorizing notes as “seedling”, “budding”, “evergreen”, “plant”, etc.
Except that Sporeshelf has a vague mushroom theme. So “sprout”, “mycelium”, “mushroom”, and so on would be more fitting. Finished posts will probably be named something cute, like “harvested” or “salad topping”.
It gives me yet another project, but if it makes future work more enjoyable, then I’m happy to take it on.
Creative interfaces and games
I’ve been toying around with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and having a wild time trying to make my creations function. Current projects include 1) a retro-inspired kinetic novel interface that will make a nice home for a semi-abandoned webcomic I’m trying to revive, and 2) a scrollytelling interface for another semi-abandoned webcomic that’s been living with me since 2010.
I have a feeling a lot of old projects will be given new life because I managed to figure out backticks and when to leave out a comma.
Then there’s this monstrosity:
I wanted an assault on the eyes, but this might be a little too much. I’ll probably pull back a bit and have maybe just a teensy bit of glitching. And bitcrushed wails of the damned.
More on this project later, but it goes without saying that this is very much a work in progress. With some dedication, I might have a short demo to show off by the end of this month.
Right now, I’m fighting with Ren’Py’s peculiar syntax and trying to prevent it from fussing at me every time I add something new. That’s usually when it finds some pre-existing line and claims it’s causing an error because of some imagined colon that wasn’t even there in the first place.
This will be the first and final project I create with Ren’Py. For now, courage.
My backyard neighbor
I have a variety of wildlife in my backyard: songbirds, spiders, beetles, box turtles, cotton rats, rabbits, hawks, possums, and the occasional coyote or fox. Recently, I came across the remnants of a regular: a black snake.
I probably shouldn’t call it a “remnant”, since it implies the creature died. No, that would be appropriate for the headless hawk I found in the underbrush that one summer.
This animal obviously made it, head and all, and left behind its old skin for curious humans to marvel over. In length, it’s about as long as I am tall (five-foot-four-ish… probably a bit shorter these days). Good thing the original owner is nonvenomous.
But the fact that the old skin was mostly intact was the best part. Look at the spectacles (eye caps).
When snakes shed their skins, they secrete lymphatic fluid between the old and new layers so they can wriggle out. That explains why the pine needles are stuck to the shed (or exuvia, if you want to sound scientifically fancy); the fluid acted as a glue and dried up.
I can’t say I much enjoy living in this particular area of the country, but the presence of wildlife makes it bearable.
This is my post-grad life. Researching, coding, and building a side gig is how I’m spending most of my days while job/contract hunting and creating a portfolio. Oh, the questions will roll in eventually: “Why don’t you work in a library with that MLIS of yours?” “Why don’t you volunteer?” “Why don’t you at least get a part-time job?”
Maybe, for once, folks need to let me follow my instincts instead of pressuring me to take up every suggestion that inevitably ends in failure. For the first time in recent memory, I’m not dreading the future and I’m actually okay with the current state of things.
Now if I could just get Ren’Py to cooperate…