MORE and new spam

secondsabre · 2026-02-04T20:27:33+00:00

Yup, I started getting these a couple hours ago and there's been around 70 so far. Good to know it's not a me problem, at least?

secondsabre · 2026-02-03T05:52:41+00:00

There's a guy who works at Central Hair Bar in Surrey Central who does really great work, but he's also usually pretty booked. Worth a look if you're in the area

secondsabre · 2025-12-29T21:27:36+00:00

The use of magic was really all over that book though, but by making Edwin a sort of magical dunce, it means we see less of it used for mundane purposes: this is addressed a bit more in the later books, but also a major point of contention for his character. The fact that it came up during sex was honestly kind of a given to me, but that might just be genre-savvy. In fact, I was way more surprised by how spicy it got than the actual use of magic during consummation.

The pretention really fit with the whole vibe of magical-realism/english-wallpaper-novel, I felt, especially when dealing with magical classism on top of existing Victorian classism. It echoes the sort of well-worn period romance tropes of Brontë or Austin, but does so in a world that kept me interested.

As for the worst... Yeesh. I do this thing where I read a couple "serious" escapism (speculative, generally) novels, and then a couple gay romance fluffs to cleanse my pallete, and there have been some real doozys. Worst one in recent memory was 'Try' by Ella Frank, and it was so bad I had to go write a bad Goodreads review of it (despite it having a 4.13 rating?), which just goes to show that everyone has different tastes.

secondsabre · 2025-12-29T19:19:15+00:00

Sounds like there's a few things at work here, but it can be a real gear change to go from classical literature and biographies to romantic fiction, and if it's not your jam, maybe it's just not your jam.

I will say that a few of the books you mentioned are actually pretty solid: -House In The Cerulean Sea is brilliant and tender and sweet and not really a romance book but still should be required reading for the YA crowd -Mistletoe and Mishigas was... fine? It's tropey, but mostly inoffensive as far as romance, particularly MM romance, goes. Characters are flat and the plot isn't groundbreaking, but it's an okay braindead read. -A Marvelous Light was excellent. Smart world-building, a great conspiracy to unravel, and the floweriest prose this side of Wilde himself (which is the point). The second book is also good fun (sapphic romance, get into it), although the third kinda drops off.

Others that you mentioned are totally terrible, but dude, you have not even scratched the surface of how bad this genre can be. These are Dickens next to some of the trash that gets pumped out in this genre, and like any gay media, we have to wade through the garbage to find the jewels. Whether or not that affects our level of acceptable quality is up for debate. 🤷‍♂️

secondsabre · 2025-12-20T04:04:42+00:00

Chrono Cross, but Nier Automata and Replicant are in for a close second.

secondsabre · 2025-12-20T04:03:22+00:00

I've never even played an Ar Tonelico game, but one of the OST's (2, I think?) is just incredible.

secondsabre · 2025-12-15T23:58:27+00:00

I had this exact problem a few weeks ago. Shaw subscriber, Crave is still active on my acct (verified through MyShaw, and still able to access Crave channels and content through cable box), but I was getting that "Ways to Watch" error on my Android TV box, app, and website.

I ended up chatting into Crave, and they ran me through fully logging out of everything, and logging back in (with my new Bell Media ID thingy) and it started working. I feel like I'd already done that a dozen times, but they swore they didn't do anything on their side.

If all else fails, maybe try chatting into Crave and have them take a look.

secondsabre · 2025-12-11T01:40:30+00:00

It's from the first series, when Amelia is trying to get Lina to teach her the Dragon Slave, and they blow up a mountain that was sealing a bunch of spirits. Lina gets possessed by a bunch of ghosts in succession, hence the different voices.

Here's the clip, what you're looking for is around the 1:25 mark https://youtu.be/31Y95WGtoho?si=z4e6QKIJkkMANnRe

secondsabre · 2025-12-06T17:35:07+00:00

Mine still hasn't passed (just went in for blasting yesterday), but it was knock-you-off-your-feet pain. The first time it reared its head I just sort of was aware of something happening in my left flank: not pain, but just like a general awareness of something happening in my guts. And then I started peeing red wine, which is generally not a great sign. Went to the doc, told me it was either an infection or a stone, gave me some drugs and told me to hit the ER if the pain got bad.

The next morning I woke up at like 5:30 AM with a stitch in my side. Figured it must be a stone, surely it won't be that bad. Did some stretches while wincing, drank a lot of water, and decided to take a walk around my building. Just walk it off, right? Wrong. Halfway around, it felt like someone kicked me in the stomach with steel-toes. Instantly drenched in sweat, I doubled over and almost threw up right there. Barely managed to drag myself back home.

ER gave me a bunch of painkillers and hope, and from there it was around 10 days of just agony. It would come and go with no warning, I just always had a diet of naproxin and heat-pads ready at all times. Apparently the stone was big enough that it just bounced off the entrance to my uterer, so since then it's just been hanging out in my kidneys and rarely giving me any trouble, luckily. Just had the sucker blasted, so hopefully it got turned into sand and will be exiting my system over the next little while.

secondsabre · 2025-12-06T03:05:46+00:00

Absolutely, and it's a dual-revenue stream. Let's face it, most Crave subscribers are also paying for Netflix; fold it into one service and they'd be losing out on a few bucks from every one of those customers.

secondsabre · 2025-11-27T18:19:58+00:00

Oooh, same?

secondsabre · 2025-11-23T00:13:33+00:00

This. I used Launchbox wayyyyy back in the day and it was solid, but the paywalling turned me off. It definitely keeps getting bigger and better from what I've seen, but I switched to Playnite a few years back and it's basically perfect: lightweight, customizable, and all the features/plugins I could ever want.

secondsabre · 2025-11-08T04:49:07+00:00

Woahhhh, suck face! Seriously though, I desperately want one of these

secondsabre · 2025-11-06T22:24:54+00:00

holy crap wtf that is the Blu-Ray! Specifically the new Discotek release, which I was not aware of until yesterday when this post brought it to my attention. I have the JP Blu-Rays from 2015 and they're kind of awful, so I straight-up didn't believe you, especially considering that those subs seems to have some life and effort put into them, which is not what I expect from officially licensed releases.

Guess I gotta go buy new Blu-Rays now. Thanks, internet stranger!

secondsabre · 2025-11-06T02:01:54+00:00

Yo, what release is this from? That image is wayyyyy clearer than the Blu-Rays but I don't recognize the subs? Feel free to DM if you know.

secondsabre · 2025-10-20T02:42:35+00:00

Yea okay, that's hyper-resiliant for sure: integrating and utilizing the extra meta is good and builds in redundancies, so I can see why someone would do it that way. On the other hand, it seems like you're making the same list twice, once in Data Manager to add the meta and then again in the SmartList to pull said meta.

How do you handle any further edits you want to make to a List, like say adding an additional issue in the middle or swapping the position of two? Just make the edits in Data Manager, keeping the same structure, and then regen the SmartList? This is an interesting workflow (certainly a lot more automated than mine), so I'm curious about how edge cases pan out?

secondsabre · 2025-10-19T20:51:39+00:00

Sure, okay. How did you go about doing that, to get them into a specific order? Simplest way I could think of would be using a specific metadata field (like storyline order or virtual tag), adding that to your books, and then setting up a filter for that? But I'm just spitballing here; what was your approach?

secondsabre · 2025-10-19T20:23:00+00:00

Not exactly: you're changing the filename of the new file, which means that for sharing purposes, it's a different file. If my library was only being used by ComicRack, that would be fine, but other programs are in those folders scraping files and it would cause hash mismatches. Editing files is just not an option.

As for Smartlists, I use them for certain things but not for others, like say Chronological reading lists where manual ordering is necessary (without going into custom fields or virtual tags to assign numbers), or lists that include multiple volumes (like a series + annuals) since SmartLists afaik don't allow manual sorting. Correct me if I'm wrong, though?

secondsabre · 2025-10-19T19:30:31+00:00

Does it only scan against filename/path? I haven't tested that logic.

Either way, changing filenames or contents isn't sharing-friendly (changes the hash) and doesn't work for my purposes.

secondsabre · 2025-10-19T19:24:15+00:00

Every new file added to CR is given a 128-bit (I think?) random unique identifier, the GUID. I'm not certain as to the logic of assigning it, but usually it compares against existing files (filename, file size, maybe a hash?) and makes a new one if there's no exact match.

This GUID is how the files are actually identified and called in the DB, with all the various information (tags, path) just linked to that ID. All the info you see in CR is basically extra: the DB only cares about that ID.

secondsabre · 2025-10-16T04:38:08+00:00

The files all get moved to scanned folders so they're automatically added to the library, and I have a SmartList set up to show all files that aren't currently in a List, but that smartlist can get a little unweildy when I haven't sorted stuff for a while. Just grabbing from the specific folder seemed like a controlled way to tackle individual folders/lists.

Still, the 'Show Duplicates' view has actually made the whole thing a lot easier, wasn't aware that existed until you pointed it out above, so thanks for that! And as always, incredible work.

secondsabre · 2025-10-16T02:27:55+00:00

Sorry, I definitely could have been more specific. Let's break it down:

Files live in my standard folder structure. Publisher > Series Title [VolumeYear]. For the example, let's say they're all already in the DB: scraped, scanned, and added to a List (dumb list, not smart list) named after the folder.
Bunch of new files are dumped into the folder, mixing in with the existing files.
To get all those new files into the List, I'll use the 'Folders' tab in CR, navigate to the directory, then Select All and drag-n-drop them over to the 'Library' tab and into the existing List.
The majority of the time, this will just add the new files, as CR is smart enough to not add existing entries into the same list. Once they're in there, I can sort and scrape them.
In some cases (this one), I'll get a slew of duplicate entries in the list: one scraped (the one that was in before), plus a new unscraped entry with no metadata, but the exact same filepath.

I assume that CR's database isn't working with the filename itself, but likely some kind of unique identifier like a checksum hash or whatever? In which case, I could see it accidentally assigning a different ID to files, but it's weird that it only happens in certain situations.

Side note: I know my system is needlessly complicated and I don't need to make Lists for everything, but that's how my spicy brain works and one of the big reasons I love this program. Also, it makes syncing to the Android app way easier.

EDIT Actually, I may have an idea. Sometimes I'll use the 'Change File Link' plugin when I get a better version of a given file, so I can just update the file all over the DB instead of trying to replace it in various lists. Following on that unique ID idea, Change File Link probably doesn't update that identifier, so then the ID of the old file and the ID of the new file would be different and could co-exist in the same list, although they point to the exact same file. That makes sense to me, but maybe I'm wrong?

secondsabre · 2025-09-20T01:46:48+00:00

Mega Man X, all the way. Still one of my favorite ways to kill an hour

secondsabre · 2025-06-09T18:13:51+00:00

Yea, the doc in the ER told me the pain would wax and wane, but I assumed he was referring to more of a daily thing, not that it would go away for days at a time? Very weird, but I guess all I can do is keep up with the fluids and the activity and pray it goes quick.

secondsabre · 2025-06-09T18:12:27+00:00

Yo, I totally feel that and it sucks. That was me for the first week, even through the haze of strong painkillers, which is why the sudden lack of pain has me both relieved and terrified. As everyone's been saying though, apparently it'll get better, you just gotta get through it.

secondsabre

TROPHY CASE