I absolutely don’t use notepad++ as my main IDE… Honest.

That’s an impressively designed bit of kit.

Guess I have to go barter with the architecture department to use their 3d printer…

That’s a little more controversial, but towards my taste yes. Majora’s mask is one of those games you could never make today because it combined a children’s franchise with cosmic horror and themes of grief.

It took common ideas like npc routines, day/night, and a solid action core. With this it wove in puzzles that were not just about what you did, but when. This was groundbreaking in its scope and scale, and then they added in the soundtrack… Ye gods that soundtrack…

I could go on for pages but, quite simply, it was a work of genius.

No, I really enjoyed BotW for the same reason I enjoyed OoT! Both innovated and both were very different games exploring different concepts. BotW will forever be my go-to for “open world done right”, and OoT set up a solid action game with strong puzzle elements; that said, fuck the water temple.

Games that break genuinely new ground are rare, in the case of both the old and new Zelda’s there are good and bad (the nds era was a bit of a stagnation), the really groundbreaking titles push the hardware through skilled coding and amazing game loop design.

Also, no spoilers for tears please, it’s on my list once I get a few weeks vacation!

MM is hard to top; it’s peak early LoZ (in an old man’s opinion). It took a familiar engine, added two new major mechanics, and told the first really dark story.

Awakening is the one to play first, it’ll set you up for later games nicely, and it was originally a Gameboy (not GBC game). It took the Zelda formula from the earlier NES iterations, and made a content-rich world.

I’d say save ages and seasons for last (when you get your carts!). They’re amazing games that really show how far the GBC could be pushed, and are very much taking the awakening engine and doing wonderful things. The fact there is linked content between the two means you should also keep a pen and paper handy!

Really neat post, I’d not heard of a few of these (never knew libre office draw could edit pdfs!).

Couple of extra ones:

Note taking and pdf annotation: Xournal++ is amazing, it’s also great to use on larger whiteboard screens. Plug and play support for scribe tablets on both windows and Linux.

Emulation (up to ps1): Mednafen is lightweight and comes with a gui. It also supports recording, though not netplay.

Ebook management/reading: Calibre - allows easy importing and exporting of ebooks to devices, also has a great built in search letting you find DRM free versions of a book.

It’s always about Ads…

Oh, they start off as unobtrusive; maybe a little banner that shows when the app is opening, or a written mention with a link.

But, this doesn’t generate much revenue. Next the banner persists, and suddenly a video plays. Just one, just once.

Eventually you open the app to pop up banners and autoplay videos, and wonder where the app is. Every line you cross with adverts makes the next line easier to cross.

I only wanted to triforce.

Now I need to fix dad’s laptop before he gets home!

Yup, Google are launching their yearly attempt to convince folks YouTube premium is worth it.

Think of this time not as an annoyance, but as a time to reflect on how shitty Google has become.

Hah, jokes on them, my university is too poor to afford copilot.

Hello fellow bear, I don’t know why we’re talking about women either. Since we’re both fellow confused bears can you please direct me to the nearest top secret bear club, where we bears meet to eat berries and drink fermented honey while laughing at beaver related memes?

I think the shutting down after such “incidents” is the final expression in this piece of art.

“A connected world is great, as long as that connection includes approved messages only.”

I mean, here is a thought, if an AI tool uses creative commons data, then it’s derivatives fall under creative commons. I.e. stop charging for AI tools and people will stop complaining.

This isn’t a meme, it’s an emotional massacre…

Operation archive the archive?

And probably shouts “four of a kind, checkmate” randomly while waving arrest warrants in the hopes of distracting his opponent.

Putin strikes me as the kind of person who’d lose against a bongcloud opening.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/513049/alphabet-annual-global-income/

Let’s pause a moment and just appreciate how much money Alphabet actually make net (after expenses). $73,795,000,000 last year - higher than the GDP of entire nations, in profit.

The “bad” year, 2022 that drove all this change, they only made $59,972,000,000 net. Oh how terrible (!)

5 years ago, they made $34,343,000,000 net, so they’ve more than doubled profits.

Take a moment to appreciate that, and really consider if they “need” the money.

Welcome to the age of the licence, where you pay to be given permission to use something in a specific way.

I mean, a lot of folks who voted leave are probably dead by now…

Those who voted remain knew this was coming, and still get to live with it.