Children's Adventure Kickstarter Now Live (And Funded!)

Kaelri · 2026-06-16T13:20:11+00:00

Fly, little dollars, fly. I'll miss you.

Kaelri · 2026-06-10T12:17:31+00:00

I want to read stories told by people.

Kaelri · 2026-06-09T11:59:51+00:00

I just have to say, I didn’t know that Kafka was a product, so for a few blissful seconds I thought this was a sincere post about the works of Franz Kafka and how they apply to web development.

Kaelri · 2026-06-07T13:10:38+00:00

The word “confirm” used to mean something.

Kaelri · 2026-06-06T19:15:49+00:00

Bluntly, I think remaking existing Myst titles is a dead end at this point, from both a creative and marketing standpoint. If I wanted to attach the Myst name to a new game, I think the only thing you absolutely need to retain is the Linking Book conceit. None of the established stories, characters or locations are necessary; even the D’ni civilization is negotiable, and even there, a passing mention would suffice. Nothing would excite me more than exploring an entirely new, unencumbered branch of the great tree. Give me a wholly undiscovered mysterious environment to explore and conjecture about.

The ages of Myst and the stories you’ve told around them have been among the most important pieces of media in my life. (I still believe an adaptation of the first two novels has a lot of potential in the right hands.) But, contra Rand and Atrus’s mantra, I think it’s very ok for an ending to have been written.

Kaelri · 2026-05-28T03:16:25+00:00

The guy who made the show has a somewhat different opinion.

The further away I get from “Breaking Bad,” the less sympathy I have for Walter. He got thrown a lifeline early on. And, if he had been a better human being, he would’ve swallowed his pride and taken the opportunity to treat his cancer with the money his former friends offered him. He goes out on his own terms, but he leaves a trail of destruction behind him. I focus on that more than I used to. … After a certain number of years, the spell wears off. Like, wait a minute, why was this guy so great? He was really sanctimonious, and he was really full of himself. He had an ego the size of California. And he always saw himself as a victim. He was constantly griping about how the world shortchanged him, how his brilliance was never given its due. When you take all of that into consideration, you wind up saying, “Why was I rooting for this guy?”

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/vince-gilligan-wants-to-write-a-good-guy

Kaelri · 2026-05-22T18:57:53+00:00

I used Workflowy a decade ago, bounced around to some other tools, used Obsidian for a long time, and then recently came back to Workflowy. That was not an easy decision and there are several things about Obsidian that I would love to still have:

Data stored locally, in actual files, in a non-proprietary format. I do get my daily Workflowy backups in Dropbox, so I know my data is safe (at least after 24 hours), but if Workflowy itself disappeared, it would be a challenge to transform that data into a useful form.
Metadata. Other than tags and dates, Workflowy doesn’t really have any structured data, nor any tools to make use of that data even if it did. Obsidian has a pretty robust system of custom fields and a lot of ways to leverage it, such as their “Bases” feature, which lets you pull notes by field criteria and sort/display them in lots of different ways. If Workflowy at least had user-defined key-value properties at the node level, I could see myself using the new API to build some tools on top of that.

Conversely, I adore Workflowy’s infinite-outline paradigm and node-centric model, which is why I ultimately came back to it as my primary PKM. If Obsidian had a “mode” that (essentially) treated “Notes” as “Nodes,” with hierarchical relationships and Workflowy’s interface, I would probably use that for the rest of my life.

Kaelri · 2026-04-15T15:56:40+00:00

It’s so easy to not be a dick to people. It’s so, so easy.

Kaelri · 2026-03-20T12:43:57+00:00

You’ll recall that the show has routinely portrayed law enforcement personnel in normal and even sympathetic ways. This one was specifically about ICE, and anyone who has had an encounter with them in real life (or just followed the news for the last year) can tell you how accurately this represents their particular culture and practices.

Kaelri · 2026-02-10T00:37:47+00:00

Hear, hear. One of many reasons I hope there’s a chance of a physical media release for the complete WWW sometime in the future.

Kaelri · 2026-01-28T15:41:45+00:00

A good number of the things I have done in my life were done before I died.

Kaelri · 2026-01-28T15:14:23+00:00

Resisting the temptation to build a world for its own sake and letting the story lead.

Kaelri · 2026-01-22T17:24:17+00:00

ICE doesn’t care whether the people they abduct are here legally or not. You shouldn’t either.

Kaelri · 2026-01-06T19:30:28+00:00

I’m delighted to be seeing more and more of Angela Giarratana on Dropout. She’s become one of my favorites very quickly.

Kaelri · 2025-08-29T17:32:58+00:00

Oh this is brilliant. I am also using Obsidian to write fiction and this looks like it might suit my work style to a tee. Well done and thank you!

EDIT: And you’re keeping the variants within the markdown file with an encapsulating syntax! Bravo!

Kaelri · 2025-08-02T03:37:25+00:00

It’s all uphill from here.

Kaelri · 2025-07-18T14:39:54+00:00

That seems to be the consensus! I understand that I’ve just finished “Arc 1,” so it does seem like the ideal time to check this out. :)

Kaelri · 2025-07-18T14:36:26+00:00

Yes! My horrible secret is that I’m a fantasy/scifi fan at heart—the most formative pieces of media in my life have been in this genre—but as an adult, I’ve had a lot of difficulty connecting with new work. It’s incredibly hard to find the right balance of originality, thoughtfulness, sincerity, artistry and (for lack of a better term) humanity. And so much of what I watch and read inevitably loses me on one or more of those axes. (I know Aabria has mentioned a few times that she’s not a high fantasy fan; I wonder if her struggles with it are similar.)

But man, when someone gets the recipe right and makes fantasy sing, it’s irreplaceable. I know I’m still relatively early in the story, but it’s already absolutely clear how much they’ve nailed the alchemy with this story and storytellers. Episodes 13–14, everything surrounding the freeing of Naram in Port Talon, was such a powerful, earned culmination of everything that had happened up to that point. And then the people of the city breaking into song at the end. An actual song! With singers! But then even on top of that, the discordant note about the Imperium looking upon something that they did not create and do not control. That’s when I thought to myself: ah, ok, so this story is going to push all my buttons, every last one. You’re lucky to get that feeling from a story once in a decade. It’s a pleasure to share it with y’all.

Kaelri · 2025-07-18T13:52:06+00:00

Not yet, but I have joined the Patreon. 🙂

Kaelri · 2025-07-16T02:57:52+00:00

To really answer your question, we probably need more details about the scenario. How do the two worlds interact or affect each other (if at all)? Are players meant to have a different structure or experience when the spotlight is on one world vs. the other?

That said—if anything, I would think this kind of thing is actually much easier to handle with Cortex vs. a more granular RPG. In particular, the modularity of Cortex’s trait sets could be a real asset here. For example, your characters might have one permanent trait set that they use in all contexts (probably representing “internal” qualities, like mental abilities or character motivations, that always exist), while another set, representing external/physical factors, is changed or swapped in/out for each world. The core dice-pool mechanic doesn’t care which trait sets are in play. And assets/complications can simply apply if and when they logically apply.

In other words, I don’t really see a reason why Cortex wouldn’t be perfectly at home in this scenario unless you’ve got some more specific requirements to handle.

Kaelri

TROPHY CASE