hallo

[melannen]

Hey it's been awhile! So much for my resolution to post here every week. (Also so much for my resolution to exercise Shelly every day, she is getting more sedentary by the week, but then now that winter's coming so am I.)



There was some work stress for awhile but I think that has resolved in the direction of less stress for everybody going forward, which is nice, but there's still just enough chance the rug will be pulled out that I'm still kind of glancing over my shoulder a lot.

Other than that, I've been wasting a lot of time with Minecraft and Minecraft fandom; Hermitcraft fandom has gone kind of wild in the last three weeks because one of them has built an extremely elaborate roguelike adventure game *inside* the game using only normal game mechanics and all the streamers are playing that 24-7. I've also joined the MCYT tag wrangling team, which is my first large tag wrangling fandom in awhile, and I've been enjoying having wrangling work again mostly but it's definitely illustrating for me again a lot of the problems with how volunteer work is managed in the org. (Don't get me wrong, my fellow volunteers are great, and so are the supervisors! It's just everything around how the work is structured at scale that isn't.)

In terms of playing I had to sort of quit my two main worlds because the lag was getting really bad (I need a new laptop if I'm going to keep doing this) but then I realized that most of the lag came when I was exploring, so instead I have started a world where my only goal is to dig the spawn chunk down to bedrock using only things I have found in the hole, and that's had no lag issues at all! (I need a new laptop/computer but I don't want one. Anyone want to help me decide what to get?)

I'm also still making zines for FAPA every three months and enjoying the apa experience immensely, and I think doing fandom meta the slow way and for a severely limited audience has been really good for me, I'm back to reading actual books & feeling more connected to SF fandom than I have in awhile. Of course that means that a lot of things I might have posted here are getting saved for FAPA instead, so it's not helping with keeping up with posting on the internet. (Also, though I'm doing pretty good at getting it written slowly over the course of three month production period, I still haven't managed to ever finish the typing up until right before the deadline.)

If anyone is interested in joining the oldest continuous SF-Fantasy fandom social media community in continuous existence, now is a great time to join FAPA! There's even information about how to join on the internet now! If you want to know more about what's involved or what the apazines are like, feel free to hit me up.

Partly because of FAPA, I decided to go to my first post-pandemic meatspace con and will be at Capclave this weekend (masked. And hopefully recruiting for FAPA; I will have my binder of FAPA mailings along to show people.) (It's interesting how at least our local small fan-run cons seem to have self-sorted into "we are still taking Covid seriously" and "we tried to reopen in 2021 and therefore we went broke.")

If work stress stays down, I'm also hoping to actually do NaNo this year, although with nonfiction rather than fiction; we'll see if I get my outline done in time or if I just keep digging holes in Minecraft instead.

And I actually got Yuletide noms in this year! I nommed Mademoiselle de Maupin by Theophile Gautier, and three childhood favorites that I have recently been thinking about how much they shaped me: Goblins the the Castle by Bruce Coville, Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink, and the picture book series Sweet Pickles.

Anyway, between FAPA and becoming more active on Discord, I'm afraid I've been hitting my "enough talking about stuff" limits before I get to DW, so I am going to try to work on DW before Discord, and on being more willing to do short silly DW posts (more cat pics!!!) No promises though.

Comments

[vriddy]

Slow fandom with a small audience sounds really good :) I'm glad it's working out well for you!!

And wow, con time!! That sounds awesome, hope you have a ton of fun with it.

[melannen]

I hope it will be fun! I went a few years pre-pandemic and it was kind of okay but not, like, the most fun a con has ever been. But I feel like I'm coming at fandom from a different place now so we'll see.

[strikeslip]

The Decked Out videos and streams are all-consuming and also delightful. (We are all Ethogirls now, to quote Gem from yesterday.) I've been building a modded minecraft base while watching myself. I'm using a desktop PC (prebuilt from Microcenter, and it's lasted me forever) -- if I was going to get a laptop, I'd probably be looking at the Framework 16, but that's very high end and I'd be getting it for work. My desktop can take 150 mods at once in a 1.19 instance though, so really, I have no complaints.

[melannen]

We are indeed. (You should join hermitcraft if you haven't! we are trying to make DW MCYT fandom happen.)

I was not gaming and not even thinking about gaming when I got my current laptop; it's very underpowered because I didn't think I'd need it for anything more intensive than browsing the web or maybe playing old DOS games, but then Minecraft happened to me. It's really rather impressive that it can run Minecraft at all (and it worked fine until 1.19, and then 1.20 was worse; I don't know if that was the game getting more intensive or the laptop getting worse or my worlds getting more complicated, though. 1.20 was supposed to have performance improvements but I haven't seen them.)

I've been thinking about Framework! My primary goal with laptop buying has always been not having to buy a new one, so fully repairable sounds great, I'm just a bit leery of investing in something based on repairability when it hasn't actually been around long enough to prove out.

It might be time to get a desktop again, I'm just not sure I'd ever use it, because I am very invested in laying on the couch to stare at the screen.

[strikeslip]

I will happily join the attempt to make SW MCYT happen!

I am not sure there's a way to avoid not having to buy a new laptop (since they're delicate creatures that get carried around a lot), but Framework might be one of the better bets on that. Mac software upgrades certainly expect you to be replacing your laptop on a regular basis, even if that basis is several years. Side-effect of being the corporate pick, probably. And most windows laptops are... eh.

[melannen]

Yeah. I have never found a laptop review site that will give durability ratings for anything other than the super high-end ones intended for adventure expeditions, and nothing for give me a laptop where the battery life will actually last more than six months. But being able to buy new parts when the old ones break is great! As long as they keep making the new parts (the last laptop maker advertising that didn't last more than a couple of years.)

[strikeslip]

Yeah, you might want to investigate technology that will let you lay on the couch with a hookup to your desktop somehow. Wireless monitors (this is in fact a thing. e.g. Sidecar.) very long cables? rolling desktop stands? (I have one, and did roll it to my bed once, for a very funny bout of videogame playing.)

[melannen]

I actually already do a fair amount of plugging in to a large screen with a long hdmi cord as a second screen (mostly for watching videos while doing other stuff.) But I also am used to having the main screen really close by and easy to move with me when I move. And also attached to the keyboard and trackpad and USB ports. So I don't know. I have the kind of executive function issues where every extra cord I need to plug in or device I need to connect makes it less likely I will ever get out of bed at all, I kind of feel like I could get a really nice desktop with a great setup and that would just result in me only ever using my phone. But maybe not!

[primeideal]

Excited for Capclave! :D

[melannen]

I hope I will see you there! Though I don't know if I will know you. (I will be the one trying to recruit people to join FAPA :P)

[seekingferret]

I'm so tempted by FAPA still.

[melannen]

I am still happy to try to lure you in!! Is there anything I could tell you more about to convince you?

[seekingferret]

I just am over-committed right now and shouldn't get involved in anything new.

[melannen]

I know that feeling (in fact I tried to use that same excuse when I was recruited.)

It *is* only two pages every three months though! It's really not that big a time commitment unless you want it to be, especially if you already do fandom stuff.

[melannen]

(Now would be a great time to get going for the mailing that's due Nov 11!)

[elf]

Join us... join usssss....

FAPA needs people. And FAPA needs people who have some kind of connection to traditional-scifi-fandom, which is why I'm not actively recruiting across my various Discord servers (well, that and I'm introverted enough not to have any idea how to recruit).

I'm happy to accept "interest in" as "connection to." I'm just not recruiting from, say, my BNHA fanfic-sharing servers, nor the various mobile-app gaming groups I check for tips. ...Also I am not trying to recruit anyone who pronounces "zine" to rhyme with "line."

[umadoshi]

Awww, Shelly. *sends scritches*

[melannen]

She is sulking today because I changed the quilt on the bed (because she made a mess on the other one!)

[shannnon_foraker]

I'm good at computers! What's your budget? What fandom stuff/Discords do you do? I do fan_flashworks, and I'm in the Fanfiction Library, among other things.

[melannen]

Budget is nebulous! I have a fair amount of savings that I don't really use for anything, and laptop is enough of a keystone that I feel like it's worth putting real money in, but also I don't have enough to waste a lot, so budget is basically "I don't want to pay more than it's worth for capacities I won't use and something that will start breaking down in six months".

I do lots of fandom stuff and it is subject to change at zero notice! :D Mostly Minecraft at the moment though lbr

[shannnon_foraker]

What capacities do you need/want?

[melannen]

Dunno! :D

I want to be able to play solo Minecraft, and maybe also assorted indie games, without worrying to much about lag or overheating, even if I'm also i.e. on a video call or something at the same time. It would be cool to maybe think about using it for video editing and/or streaming but I don't know if I ever actually would. I'd like lots of ports, including several USB, HDMI, standard audio, and DisplayPort would also be cool. Good battery life - and a battery that will go a long time without losing battery life, or at least be cheap and easy to replace. Drop tolerant. Maybe a number pad? A DVD drive would be great but I realize that's probably a pipe dream for a laptop at this point. Not super concerned about size unless the battery actually lasts because I always end up tethered to a cord within a few months anyway because laptop batteries all suck. Nice size solid state hard drive would be good. Uh. Nice keyboard? Still comes with Windows 10 (but also could maybe think about running a Linux dual boot, except it's been a very long time since I did that, do people still do dual boots?) Possible to open it up to swap parts out relatively easily. IDK. Things.

It's been a very long time since I've thought about performance when buying a computer, to be honest, because it's been even longer since I've been doing anything that would need it.

[shannnon_foraker]

Oh boy... I do dual boot and can help you with that. Can you figure out what parts you want? Can I ask some nerd groups for you? Can you live with port hubs?

You'll likely want 16 or 32 GB of ram. How confident are you at installing RAM and drives?

[melannen]

Well, a lot of that is very pie-in-the-sky. All I currently do on the computer is read fanfic, tumblr, and message boards, screw around on Discord watch videos and dig giant holes in Minecraft. If I knew what parts I actually wanted instead of just daydreaming about I could probably figure out where to get but I do not.

I am OK with assembling things myself as long as I don't have to solder anything! I think I have swapped out every bit of a laptop except processors at this point, but soldering boards scares me (and did not go well the one time I tried.) I would rather not have to buy and install Windows myself, though, that feels like just adding injury to insult.

I would prefer not to deal with port hubs in that I own several right now and it never seems worth the trouble to mess with them as opposed to just dealing with not being able to plug stuff in. Also right now two of the three USB ports in my laptop are a bit unreliable, which always seems like one of the first bits to fail, so I am a bit dubious of trying to run everything through one or two ports as opposed to actually having some redundancy built in. (I'm fine with daisy-chaining adapters if I *have* to, but if I'm outlining my perfect laptop I'd rather not *have* to.)

[shannnon_foraker]

That you can fix some stuff is good to hear. I've only done a laptop processor swap once, and it was on a pair of 1st gen Core i-series mobile chips, and you'd need to have mastered BGA array soldering to even think of trying swapping modern laptop cpus.

So, you'll want unsoldered RAM. It's easy to get a laptop with Windows on it. If you have lots of tabs, you want lots of RAM (I know my fav web browsing tool has 4 GB, and could use 3x, maybe 4x that, but that's an example of "do what I suggest, not what I do", because it's a Chromebook and is pretty slow).

Do you use Ray Tracing? That takes a decent GPU. What FPS?

Do you just rely on integrated graphics on your CPU? Can you take a screenshot of task manager (without your IP/MAC addresses, like stick to the CPU screen)?

[superborb]

Wow, those kinds of long running zines/communities are so interesting! I suppose the lack of internet presence also means the zines aren't scanned? Does the stuff you write for it have to be zine-only?

[melannen]

So the current rules are that it has to be zine-first, in that it can't have been published anywhere else more than three months before the zine goes out. The zine doesn't have to be FAPA-exclusive though; several of the members also mail theirs to a list of independent subscribers, afaik (I have been mailing my spare copies to a couple friends whether they want them or not). I don't think there's any rule against also posting online, but nobody currently does. Most of the new members I think don't really see the point in just printing up some blog posts so they make something special for FAPA. (FAPA zines are also traditionally in conversation with each other, so usually at least part of a FAPA zine is responses to other people's FAPA zines.)

I am a weirdo even for FAPA and hand-write my drafts and then type them on an old manual typewriter before I photocopy, so mine have not been besmirched by the touch of a digit at all*. But most people are using Word or something so must have a digital version? If you go to fanac.org there's a bunch of older FAPA zines scanned; none from the last fifteen years or so but tbh the old ones aren't that much different from now in format, technology aside.

*well, I'm sure the photocopy is digital these days but we politely pretend otherwise because even I'm not quite in it deep enough to dig up a ditto machine.

[kalloway]

So I still have FAPA information open in a tab and remain intrigued and tempted. (As someone who's made zines for like twenty-five years, making ziiiiiines but also I am possibly too something for trad-sci-fi fandom? IDK?)

[melannen]

Yeah, the question of how much trad-sci-fi fandom you need is something that those of us who are trying to recruit are still struggling with. FAPA traditionally was the most hardcore of the trad-sci-fi fandom, it was all people who went to (or ran) all the cons and knew (or were) the pros and smofs, and so on. But that was when it had a waiting list.

I'm in it because I always wanted to have a place in that old-school trad-sci-fi fandom and I've read all the fandom history stuff and so on, but even then I'm not trying to hide the part of my fandom life that isn't that. And recruiting only people who are there to do historical re-enactment won't bring it back to life anyway, but maybe we also don't want to bring in a bunch of new people who don't know or care about traditional sf fandom and would make it not FAPA at all anymore? So idk!

But there aren't any particular content rules at the moment - as long as you're willing to make a case that your zine relates to science fiction or fantasy in some way, you're ok. And if you're enough into science fiction and fandom tradition to think that joining a nearly-hundred-year-old apazine exchange with a mix of older fans and people who are into the idea of oldfandom sounds cool, you'd probably be fine? But that's all something we're kind of feeling out as we go, tbh.

Anyway, if you want to know more I can try to answer questions, or I can connect you to some of the other new FAPAns on DW or Discord.