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2025-05-31: Didn't have the juice to do much this weekend. Sleep schedule has been out of whack from fighting a headache and stuff. When feeling better, I plugged away at Ghost of Tsushima. It's really really good.
Here's hoping for a better week.
Also, why is my neighbor playing the drums late at night tonight?
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2026-05-26: So, I discovered a bit of an existential nightmare for anyone who cares about historical preservation. I stared into the gaping maw of the generative AI monster today as I searched for some preliminary factbook info about a nearby ghost town:
Each of those entries depicts a ghost town with non-representational AI-generated images, coupled with sometimes-topical youtube videos embedded on the page explaining some history, a bit of text pulled from wikipedia and other publicly-available sources, stamped into the vague shape of a travel vlog's guide to the place.
One particularly funny example near me used gen-AI images of distinctly Southwestern ghost town imagery, with dust and sand and a building pulled straight from a spaghetti western. In reality, that town is basically a dozen 1920s-30s bungalows, a 20th century industrial building, and a general aviation airport in a hilly, wooded bit of country.
The entry for Picher, Oklahoma, a 21st century ghost town vacated after an evironmental disaster, had a section on health issues in the population. The alleged AI got some wires crossed and embedded a PsychHub video, titled "What is a Mental Health Crisis?" IDK PsychHub, but this site is about to send me into one!
It was one of over eight-thousand entries, many uploaded within a minute of each other between early April 2026 to present.
And to what end? What does the webmaster for this site gain by doing this? Checking on a phone browser without adblockers, I didn't get rushed with pop-ups or banner ads, none of the sort populate the page. It's mystifying.
And, tragically, folks who don't suss out the artifice of the AI imagery and take the text at face value may take this as a legitimate source. I can picture a high school or first-year college student, facing a tight deadline on a report on ghost towns in their state or area, taking this blog's word for it. Or some tourists asking locals nonsense questions based on some AI-generated nonsense.
I cannot prove conclusively that the text is AI generated. Of the places whose backstories I know, it seemed like it pulled from more-or-less correct sources. Still, even if I give them the benefite of the doubt, even if the webmaster's simply uploading a massive backlog of earnest blog entries on these places and genuinely want that history shared, coupling that information with obviously fake images demolishes the credibility of the text for me (and for a lot of people for whom authenticity and verifiable truth matters.)
Egads, it's no wonder that the prattle harping on about "alternative facts" are so giddy about this technology. If nothing is verifiable, if the well of truth is so poisoned by an endless flood of nonsense, it's so much easier to pass obvious lies off for truth.
Anyways, That's my requisite anti-AI screed for today. On the plus side, I discovered a couple personal websites and small organization sites from the old Geocities days that provided limited information! Many thanks to the local history folks whose little passion project websites make otherwise unattainable information accessible. And woe unto those who LARP as those community chroniclers, but use data farms to generate terrabytes of mistruth.
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2026-05-25: Glad to have gotten an extended break, but ready to get back to my normal routine.
With that extended time off, I managed to finally finish Grandia! It's also the first JRPG I've ever beaten. Review coming soon.
I'm updating my to-play lists figured out. On one hand, I have a couple modern games I want to pluck away at, while on the other, I want to follow up with some other JRPG games, including Grandia 2 on Dreamcast. I actually have a slightly more powerful emulation handheld on the way, one that can handle Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and PSP. I found I am more likely to play these retro games on a handheld in bite-sized chunks. Frustrating that I couldn't get those working on my current handheld setup, but those were absolute bargain basement hardware so it's not shocking. I'd also like to explore the PSP library as someone who only ever saw them briefly on school trips when classmates let me try out a game.
My friend starting out on Linux seems to be settling in well. Nobara has proven to be an easy starting point for him, and tonight we walked through the software installation process for stuff not represented in official repositories. I got the text tonight, asking where to find Linux's eqivalent of Program Files. The Linux filesystem (and the way it packages programs and shared libraries) is totally different from Windows though, so I walked him through the process. If you have an installation executable, your software center handles that stuff for you!
Welp, it's late and I gotta go back to work tomorrow. Take care!
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2026-05-24: I could have swore I made a blogpost between the night of 5/20 and now. Oh well.
Got back from my getaway on Friday, made a beeline home since I went overboard on groceries and had perishables on board. Everything made the trip just fine though! (If I get sick later this week, it's probably because I was wrong about this.)
Since getting back, I have been unpacking, washing laundry and bedding, and got my floors swept and mopped. Nice to have things ship-shape so I can enjoy downtime tomorrow.
I am also on-call for a friend tonight as he gets Nobara Linux set up on a desktop. Already answered some "before you start" questions that online guidance left a little unclear. Here's hoping the process is as frictionless as possible for him.
Finally, between my getaway and today, I have made a ton of progress on the PSX JRPG Grandia! If I understand rightly, I am fighting through the last dungeon before the final boss. This will be my first-ever time beating a JRPG! And the first game I will have beaten since Cyberpunk 2077 I think? In any case, I've had a great time with this game and will probably review it. It's one I recommend emulating if you have the setup for it!
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2026-05-20: First night at the cabin. Thankfully weather is holding out, doesn't look like it's supposed to get bad tonight, and rain chances are fairy low for the first half of tomorrow too. Here's hoping I can explore a bit instead of being stuck inside!
This town has one of the saddest Wal-Marts I have ever seen. And that's saying something! Thankfully I found the good grocery store in town, got stuff to make tacos, a frozen thing of penne, chicken and pesto for tomorrow, and some snacks. I was beyond lost at both stores though, they're laid out totally different than any I'm used to.
If we get decent weather tomorrow, I plan on going out hiking and taking pictures. Otherwise I'll check out some gift shops, a winery and a distillery. Then come back and work on my site.
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2026-05-18: Waow, the last week flew by fast. Between Ghost of Tsushima and getting back into Cyberpunk 2077 a bit, I ended up disappearing off the face of the earth for a few days. Oops.
After finally coming back around to watch Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, I might have a review for the game and anime in me. I came away from my previous experience with the game kinda nonplussed, but it feels like it kinda snapped into focus for me. We shall see.
My vacation plans might be getting flipped upside down. I planned on going to my old neck of the woods to see family, but they took a trip. So I'm headed to a scenic area a couple hours away. Unfortunately I managed to pick a week where we're anticipating a solid week of rain and storms, so the outdoorsy things I wanted to do might be off the table. Hiking in the foothills in a thunderstorm sounds like a terrible idea.
If that happens, I'll be stuck in a mini cabin for a couple days. I am gonna plan for the worst and bring stuff to make the best of it! Books, my kindle, a handheld emulation console and a laptop will get me by. I'll also grab some snacks and easy-to-cook things in case i need to stay put for a while.
If that happens, I might finally start working on my to-do list for this site! Coding in a cozy cabin isn't the worst way to spend a couple days.
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2026-05-13: Just submitted that book review to the journal editor! Unless he needs me to make some specific changes, we should be good to go.
And not a moment too soon! I found out today that work is going to be challenging for a bit. For the third time in as many years, I'll have to completely upend a chunk of my workspace to accomodate our facilities getting carved up. We're reaching a point where we can't hardly give any more ground before it starts undermining my department's basic functions, so we shall see how this goes. In any case, I have to adapt to another round of nonsense as best as I can.
I'll hopefully get some quality rest on my vacation in a couple weeks and will be able to hit the ground running on this.
Also, holy cow, Ghost of Tsushima is incredibly pretty. I'm really loving it. It's been a nice respite from a frustrating week.
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2026-05-11: Yay, site update #2,000! Have I really added enough content to this site to warrant that many changes? No!
I'm prone to saving changes, viewing the results, realizing I misspelled something or messed up the HTML/formatting, then going back to change it. It is what it is.
Still, kind of a neat milestone! I have made it almost a full year! While I have been a little spotty updating different sections, I have still been consistent enough with updating this blog to not abandon it entirely. Considering how many things I pick up, try a couple times, and drop, that's pretty good!
I ended up taking a friend to a baseball game this weekend, then had to rush home to beat some storms that ultimately never came. They changed direction, so we didn't have a ton of hail to worry about. I also more-or-less finished that book review for that journal. I'll look it over tomorrow after work, then submit it if no glaring issues remain. I had to slap my hands away from the keyboard a few times to stop myself from getting too autobiographical. I've gotten used to writing here, where the audience wants to hear from me in particular.
The folks checking the reviews in this journal want to know if the book is worth picking up for their own research, not whether the reviewer has anecdotes to share.
Also, I picked up a couple new games! One is Ghost of Tsushima, which I got as part of my PlayStation Plus subscription. The other, NASCAR 25, I bought on a whim. I got the former when it was free shortly after getting my PS5, but my life has been way too upside-down to give it any time or attention. I ended up playing the prologue tonight after getting other stuff done though. The new NASCAR game was developed by the people who make iRacing, the preeminent racing sim on PC. NASCAR games have had a really, really shaky reputation the last ~15 years or so, but my early impressions of this game are positive!
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2026-05-08: I realized yesterday, I haven't left town in like, two months. Between moving and settling in and all that, I just haven't had the time or opportunity. I need to go out to a lake or something this weekend if weather permits.
Oh! Also! One really fun gift one of my friends gave me last weekend:
I greet people with "Howdy!" often enough that it tracks! I think I'll be putting this over my washer and dryer or something. This isn't the exact item, and mine isn't anywhere near this big. It's like, 3.5 feet wide. They also got me a little goose planter!
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2026-05-05: How the heck am i still writing "2025" on new blog posts in May?!?!?
Also, spent yesterday with a DEFCON 5 sinus headache. Still not feeling amazing but better than I was. Probably allergies. I hope it's allergies at least.
I also introduced a friend of a friend to Neocities! He apparently expressed an interest in the Indie Web to our mutual, who put us in contact with one another. Turns out, he ran across Onio's webbed site and youtube video about the Indie Web and wanted to check it out for himself. Small world!
Some advice he wanted was outside my wheelhouse. I keep things very simple since scope creep would quickly cripple my site. I don't have anywhere near the JavaScript and other coding knowledge needed to add fancy widgets and things to it without things breaking and me not being able to figure out a solution. I'd quit having fun with it if that got too overwhelming. Text, links, images and the occasional embedded video is about all I need for blogging and reviewing and shortform writing. That's sufficient for now.
Still no movement from my friend looking to switch to Linux. He's gonna need a three-day weekend to really sink his teeth into it. I'm hoping my advice is helpful and the process turns out pretty painless.
Playoff Basketball is back! My OKC Thunder have made it past the first round and are taking on a twilight-years LeBron James and the LA Lakers. Gonna see what kind of watch parties are going on in my area these next couple weeks. And if all else fails, I have a couple friends and a coworker I wouldn't mind hosting for a game or two. Ain't no way I'm going to a game unless someone else buys tickets though. They're gonna be expensive, my finances still need to recover from moving, and *jestures broadly at everything* things are kinda wack right now.
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2026-05-03: The housewarming party was good. Got the chance to catch up and celebrate this new chapter with my frens. I've got some cleaning up to do tomorrow.
I also got Bazzite set up on my gaming PC. I initially planned on putting one of my friends onto Fedora but he's not in a spot to give a ton of time to troubleshooting his computer. So, a pretty fool-proof gaming setup with a lot of stuff pre-configured will be a comfortable landing spot. He can spend a few months on it and try other things down the road.
Thing is, I never really used it. I ran into issues with how it keeps system files locked down. This kept me from installing my preferred VPN client, and I was too inexperienced and easily frustrated to get a manual VPN connection working. This time around, I got it figured out though! I'll use this for a few weeks in advance of him to give him pointers. Who knows, this might just be the best fit for this machine.
Anyways, I am full of late night pizza and chocolate dessert stuff. I'm gonna get around for bed.
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2026-05-02: I've got friends coming over for a little housewarming party! Snacks and sweets are ready to go and I'll be ordering pizza for dinner. We'll play some board games and some party games on console before we put a movie on. Really looking forward to a full house with some of my all-time favorite people.
Also, heads up to any followers using Linux. There was an exploit reported a few days ago in the kernel that has had system admin and cybersecurity folks scrambling. Basically, someone discovered a 9-year-old bug that violates normal admin privileges and permissions, allowing any user to get admin access with a tiny little Python script. The bad actor would need to have a degree of access to your machine (and both the knowledge and intent to do it,) so your average home Linux user isn't the main target. It's a real headache for folks running servers and stuff though for sure.
Regardless, update your computer ASAP. If you're a linux user using any remotely mainstream distro (Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE), Those updates should have dropped in the last couple days. This all hit around the time Fedora released their latest version, so I imagine that was a part of their day-one updates if it wasn't already taken care of before release.
For a more detailed explanation, here's a video from a tech youtuber who can explain the nuts and bolts far better than I can:
Incidentally, this is one instance of analytical AI uncovering serious security holes in computing and networking. While I'm a vocal AI skeptic, I do appreciate this particular implementation of the technology, scouring code and finding exploits that a knowlegable person can dig deeper into. The obvious worry is that, for all the cybersecurity experts who are using these tools to patch things up, there are surely others trying to take advantage of exploits before they're discovered by others. This arms race has been going on for about as long as computer networking has been a thing.
Anyways, safe surfing everyone! Have a great weekend.