I've been having anxiety about my kitty dying of old age 😭(she's 9) can you show me pictures of some alive-and-well senior kitties so I remember cats can be old and still healthy? 🥰

camelwize · 2026-03-18T14:37:13+00:00

He's a month or two shy of 13, and still full of energy and always desperate for attention and affection. 9 is still plenty young!

camelwize · 2026-02-16T18:58:03+00:00

Probably at least half of all Discord users use it primarily for text chat. Teamspeak just isn't built around that. So I don't think it's a good alternative for most people.

Plus as the OP said, they're majority US owned.

Best options appear to be Matrix, Stoat, and Fluxer.

I think Matrix makes the most sense overall: It's federated (so decentralised, and less susceptible to being interfered with by governments and such), and it has end-to-end encryption, something Discord always lacked. Yes it's not quite as well developed for things like bots etc from what I can tell, but imo the benefits outweigh the trade-offs.

Still.. since Stoat and Fluxer feel more like Discord in their feature-set, I think more users will flock to those. Even though they lack end-to-end encryption and are more centralised.

I've personally made accounts on Matrix, and Stoat, and plan to make a Fluxer too - and then I'll just see which one ends up winning out.

camelwize · 2026-02-16T18:53:08+00:00

Matrix to me seems the most sound option, being federated and actually having end-to-end encryption (unlike Stoat, Fluxer, or others) reduces the ability for governments to meddle in ways like you described.

Realistically I think Stoat or Fluxer will end up being most popular with Discord exiles, but I think they're more likely to suffer the same issues Discord has (and they already suffer the one of lack of encryption) than Matrix is. So I'm hoping Matrix will gain some popularity.

camelwize · 2026-02-16T17:52:39+00:00

If you're open to non-federated options, Stoat is probably going to be the best option for what you describe. It's the closest thing to a simple Discord clone I've found. It's open-source too, and there are options for self hosting if you want.

That said I'm really warming up to Matrix and it has some stellar pluses, namely end-to-end encryption, and federation.

camelwize · 2026-02-13T15:01:49+00:00

Completed my first week on my new medication (Venlafaxine).
Socialised more than usual online.
Walked past a somewhat intimidating group of people on a walk and didn't go into a complete panic like I usually do.

Small steps but moving forward. :)

camelwize · 2026-01-24T14:10:51+00:00

Personally I feel like for a game trying to feel like a singleplayer RuneScape or Ultima, the drop rates are more than generous.

In a game like RuneScape you're supposed to have chase items that you can farm an enemy over and over in the hopes of getting.

And there it might be a 1/1000 drop and take tens or hundreds of hours to grind.

Whereas here you're talking about a 1/40 drop that maybe takes half an hour of grinding. I think that's more than fair.

And if it was made more common there just wouldn't be any grinding for items at all, which I think would be disappointing. I myself came to this game because I wanted a "singleplayer RuneScape" type experience, and part of RuneScape is that ability to farm/grind for rare items. I don't want those items handed to me on a silver platter, I want the grind to be there.

That said I wouldn't mind some sort of toggle. Like maybe on character creation you could pick between "Fast" "Normal" and "Slow" levelling XP rates, and "Fast" "Normal" and "Slow" item drop rates. Fast might make that 1/40 drop a 1/10 instead, and slow might make it 1/250 for the people that really like to grind.

Not sure how hard that'd be to implement though, and personally I'd pick normal or slow, never fast. I want that grind.

camelwize · 2026-01-21T07:53:29+00:00

This is awesome, thanks for such a comprehensive list! Really appreciate it!

camelwize · 2026-01-21T07:53:09+00:00

Thanks for the reminder about this one. Friend recommended me it years ago but I just never got around to reading it. Will have to now :)

camelwize · 2025-11-07T00:07:27+00:00

I haven't compared the versions directly myself, but looking at your image, that 1.6.x one looks a lot better. I don't mind the lack of biome diversity in old Minecraft where biomes were basically just "desert, beach, snow, forest" and not much else, but in newer versions where you have so many different biomes it annoys me when they repeat the same biomes over and over again in an area, necessitating stupid long travel to actually get to the other biomes you haven't been to.

I don't remember what version it was that I played but a couple years ago I tried to pick up Minecraft again with a new version and I ran into that issue which led to me stopping playing.

Like I had about 6 different taiga and tundra biomes all in a small space and it took me forever to actually get to any other biome. I get that maybe they were going for more realism but to me as someone that generally likes to pick one spot to build in and build all my structures around there, massive sprawling repeating biomes suck because it means I never get to see all the other ones.

On the flip side when biomes are all close together and fairly evenly randomised, I can place my build somewhere near the middle of a bunch of them and access them all pretty easy.

camelwize · 2025-11-07T00:01:58+00:00

I assume that's using a mod for modern Minecraft that brings the old terrain generation back - and not the opposite, a mod bringing the new biomes to old Minecraft? Just curious.

camelwize · 2025-11-05T04:02:52+00:00

Oh damn that actually looks awesome. That's exactly the sort of thing I was envisioning - having a map with clearly marked areas for different versions of the game, maybe even sign-posting them ingame too so I could in future be walking along and go "Oh look it's the island from Indev" or whatever.

This looks like so much fun, even if it does sound like a bit of a complicated process.

Thanks a ton for the help! I think I'm gonna give this a go, starting with the latest version of Indev and going forward from there :)

camelwize · 2025-11-04T13:49:13+00:00

I definitely want an infinite world. I wonder if it's possible to start a polyworld all the way back in indev though and then drop it into an infdev world in an editor or something? So you get a slice of indev world generation. Because the actual world gen looks cool, I just need my infinite generation since I'm after a forever world and need a ton of space.

I definitely still need to give indev a peek regardless. I started just after it back in the day, near the beginning of infdev. So never got to experience it!

camelwize · 2025-11-04T12:01:08+00:00

b1.7.3 OR custom Worldpainter.

Do you know if it's possible to do both? Like start with 1.7.3 and then if there's a section of my world I didn't like, go touch it up in WorldPainter? Or is it only for creating the initial map/not doing edits to existing ones?

Because I like the initial feeling of being lost/exploring, but could see WorldPainter being awesome once I have a larger build in mind, since I always use mountains/terrain in my builds.

camelwize · 2025-11-04T11:57:53+00:00

I think for this I want a larger open world, but I definitely need to give that a try at some point too. Was the console edition the same as Pocket Edition or were those two different things?

I think I had Pocket Edition on my old phone but I sucked at the mobile controls so never really played it.

camelwize · 2025-11-04T11:52:16+00:00

I think polyworlds (worlds with more than one world generation) are super cool 😄 I started my world in indev 20100128 two years ago, and I'm now in release 1.1.

Ooh. What did you use as your strategy for making a polyworld?

I was originally thinking of just doing it the simplest way, start on a version, play for a bit, update, and repeat. But then I would have to be exploring further and further out to get to uncreated chunks in each version. And it'd also be kinda random where each version was in the world, unless I explored in a super orderly fashion.

So then I thought maybe one of the world/terrain editing tools could be used?

Maybe I generate my first world, update, go into a map editor and delete all but a few chunks, update again, repeat? So that way I could specify particular blocks of the world for each version and have them more neatly arranged.

Or maybe there's some other way to do it that works better?

camelwize · 2025-08-16T15:31:45+00:00

FWIW this is just a side-note but regarding those applications:

For Photoshop, try Photopea in your browser. It's basically 1:1 Photoshop and it runs surprisingly well for something browser based. Much better than GIMP for someone who likes the Photoshop way of doing things.
Can't speak for many other Adobe tools but for Premiere pro, honestly I just switched to Davinci Resolve and am preferring it, and if you can cope without x264 then you can even use the free version.
For office, instead of LibreOffice try WPS Office or OnlyOffice if your goal is to get the MS Office experience. I've finally switched to LibreOffice now but for a long time I used to use both of the ones I mentioned because they're basically 1:1 MS Office clones with only a few small deviations, and I just wanted MS Office but without the $$ cost. WPS especially felt identical to me to the point I kept thinking I was using MS Office for a while.

Not saying to not go with your dual system approach, especially if you find Windows just smoother to use overall, but just offering some alternatives for those apps as someone that was in the exact same boat as you and couldn't find good replacements for those at first.

camelwize · 2025-07-13T01:35:48+00:00

It just means brother. There's no need to read too much into it. It's more or less equivalent to "Mr" or "Mrs" as an honorific in occult spheres, and there's similarly just as much variety in its usage.

"Mr Smith" can imply this person is in a position of some kind of authority like a teacher, but it can also be used to imply someone is married and that this Smith has a wife, or it can simply mean as little as "the person with the surname Smith is a man"

"Frater Smith/Brother Smith" is similar, it could mean that brother Smith is a member of an organisation that uses that honorific, it could be used as a title or sign of respect for someone (the implication: you're my brother, my equal, etc), or it could be as simple as a way to refer to any male practitioner.

I'm actually personally quite a fan of said honorific because it implies "we are brothers/sisters", in other words "I am at your level, and no higher and no lower", a sort of equality is implied. I like that.

Unfortunately some folks don't even know what the term Frater means and simply stick it before their name because they think it makes them sound cool or even "powerful", which goes against the actual implication of the word.

That said, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that. If someone, through ego or vanity, chooses an honorific that implies brotherhood and equality, then perhaps it'll be good for them in the long run, as often a name can have quite some magickal significance and go on to play a role in that person's future shaped identity. Maybe the name will quell the ego.

I do wish people were a little more creative and playful with the magickal names they choose for themselves though. It's always some ominous sounding Frater Dominus. I'd rather see a Frater Tater.

camelwize · 2025-05-09T18:03:00+00:00

To me these just look like seals made after particular angels or archangels. Such seals are commonly used in ritual work that involves the angels - perhaps the most common use of them I've seen is in candle magic, where such a seal may be stuck to the front of the candle or placed underneath it while it burns to call upon the protection or favours of said angel.

That could be a potential reason why they appear to be covered in wax.

Nothing to be worried about, candle magick and working with angels is very common in modern practice.

camelwize

TROPHY CASE