ChronosCat

Welcome back
Your dreams were your ticket out...

Nice to have you back.

So I just finished re-reading the reaction threads over on Keenspot (a project I started not long after the initial move to the 910CMX forums; it was a low priority project, and a long one too) and feeling nostalgic I decided to take another look over here. I really wasn't expecting to see new posts, particularly as I checked back periodically through 2020 and I believe even early this year. Seeing the forums active again really was quite the pleasant shock; it's almost like an early Christmas present!
Hopefully the forums remain usable for years more; I've always liked this community, and I've yet to find a form of interaction online I like better than forums (I have a hard time comprehending how Reddit is supposed to work, and Discord is too "in-the-moment" for me; I like to be able to look back at a conversation and see how it's developed).
So, in conclusion, hello everybody; it's nice to be back.
 

Welcome back.

So I just finished re-reading the reaction threads over on Keenspot (a project I started not long after the initial move to the 910CMX forums; it was a low priority project, and a long one too) and feeling nostalgic I decided to take another look over here. I really wasn't expecting to see new posts, particularly as I checked back periodically through 2020 and I believe even early this year. Seeing the forums active again really was quite the pleasant shock; it's almost like an early Christmas present!
Hopefully the forums remain usable for years more; I've always liked this community, and I've yet to find a form of interaction online I like better than forums (I have a hard time comprehending how Reddit is supposed to work, and Discord is too "in-the-moment" for me; I like to be able to look back at a conversation and see how it's developed).
So, in conclusion, hello everybody; it's nice to be back.
 

Natural light with a touch of flood fill of Explorer the Cat in a sunbeam, being all cat like and cool

I would rather he be golfing.  Less chance of doing something dangerous to America at that time.

<completely missing the point>
Scientists have documented about 1.2 million animal species, but this is only a small fraction of the total number of species out there; a brief search brought up the estimate 8.7 million a few times, but I also saw an estimate as high as 50 million.
Of course, this includes aquatic animals, which they didn't take on the big boat, but they did have at least two members of every animal species they took, so I think it's safe to say there were at least a few million animals on the boat.
...By the way, you forgot the guy the boat was named after.
</completely missing the point>

Back in the mid 80s, my Uncle Roger won a Commodore 128 in a contest. He used it for a few years before passing it on to my Uncle Jimmy.
I was really close to Jimmy back then, and I would often hang out with him while he used the computer. I remember one time, he explained to me how he could connect to other computers over the phone line, which was a novel concept to me at the time. He had a huge collection of games for the computer (all technically Commodore 64 games),  and occasionally I would play them - but I spent a lot more time watching him play, particularly Zork and Zork II.
When Jimmy moved on to a Windows 95 machine, he passed the Commodore 128 on to me. I was really grateful for the gift, but I didn't get nearly as much use out of it as its' previous owners. I wasn't in the habit of writing on the computer yet, I didn't have a clue how to go online with it and wasn't really all that interested in figuring it out, and I had a NES and a Super NES so most of the C64 games seemed pretty simple and boring by comparison. (For some reason, I never really made a serious attempt at the Zork series; I probably should have, as they at least would have had depth equal or greater to the games I was used to by that point.)
I played some of the games occasionally, but mostly the machine just sat around collecting dust until we finally boxed it up and put it in storage. Despite that, I still look back on that computer fondly.

Back in the mid 80s, my Uncle Roger won a Commodore 128 in a contest. He used it for a few years before passing it on to my Uncle Jimmy.
I was really close to Jimmy back then, and I would often hang out with him while he used the computer. I remember one time, he explained to me how he could connect to other computers over the phone line, which was a novel concept to me at the time. He had a huge collection of games for the computer (all technically Commodore 64 games),  and occasionally I would play them - but I spent a lot more time watching him play, particularly Zork and Zork II.
When Jimmy moved on to a Windows 95 machine, he passed the Commodore 128 on to me. I was really grateful for the gift, but I didn't get nearly as much use out of it as its' previous owners. I wasn't in the habit of writing on the computer yet, I didn't have a clue how to go online with it and wasn't really all that interested in figuring it out, and I had a NES and a Super NES so most of the C64 games seemed pretty simple and boring by comparison. (For some reason, I never really made a serious attempt at the Zork series; I probably should have, as they at least would have had depth equal or greater to the games I was used to by that point.)
I played some of the games occasionally, but mostly the machine just sat around collecting dust until we finally boxed it up and put it in storage. Despite that, I still look back on that computer fondly.

"Hooray for Incompetence!"
Cute
But as a mantra for life, I still prefer "Dare to be Stupid"

Somewhat less risky (though far from risk free) but equally important are those responsible for making vital supplies.
My sister and father work in a factory (my sister as a member of the Quality Control team, and my father as a mechanic) that makes swabs, including the type used in the corona-virus test kits. They're both working overtime these days as the company tries to get as many swabs as it can out the door as quickly as possible. I have to admit that I never realized before how important their work could be; I'm now quite proud of them.

Somewhat less risky (though far from risk free) but equally important are those responsible for making vital supplies.
My sister and father work in a factory (my sister as a member of the Quality Control team, and my father as a mechanic) that makes swabs, including the type used in the corona-virus test kits. They're both working overtime these days as the company tries to get as many swabs as it can out the door as quickly as possible. I have to admit that I never realized before how important their work could be; I'm now quite proud of them.

I am now playing through a playlist of ALL TEN SONGS off my Derivations album. You read that right - I've finished writing them! I put the last tweaks in on the last unfinished track yesterday. Now, I'm checking for relative volume levels, mastering differences, appropriate track placements, and other details. I've also put out a call for help in getting the album cover designed.
If it weren't for my knee and my infected toe, I would be a happy camper indeed.

I'll put $Q 25 on April... of 2021.

I'll put $Q 25 on April... of 2021.

*nod* That concerns me too and, as far as I can tell, I'm very much like Dan in many ways relevant to what I like to read and write about.
I suspect the difference is that Dan feels the pressure to keep a schedule while I'm much more willing to delay producing something in order to meet a certain standard.  After all, everyone productive agrees that "perfection is no good if it means you never get it done" but where to draw the line is a fuzzy thing.
(For my story ideas, I'm taking the "plan out the whole novel/fanfic first, then fill it in like a progressive JPEG, then only share it with strangers after it's more or less done," approach... something that keeps getting me dopamine hits from a trickle of insights I never could have had from writing in linear order, which cause me to make significant but proportionately worthwhile changes to the character bio charts, backstory, etc.)
Heck, once I clear out some more urgent projects, I have a Scrivener competitor in a very early stage of development where the ability to pull up note cards which share a certain tag (eg. character bios) in a cross-comparison display is on the TODO list specifically because I'm finding it's starting to get laborious to double-check that my characters aren't evolving toward too much similarity as I continue to develop my conceptions of them.

On the one hand I enjoy seeing people embrace the fun of transformation. On the other hand, every once and a while I get concerned that Dan is making his characters more and more similar over time to a level that is unrealistic (and potentially could lead to them no longer feeling like distinct characters); I'm feeling that concern again. (Other examples: Both Tedd and Elliot are nonbinary/gender-fluid. All of the main 10 except Justin and Nanase (and arguably male!Tedd) are some form of bisexual. ...Though at least those examples are of things which don't get enough representation elsewhere. Having most of the cast being interested in transformation just feels indulgent.)
At any rate, yay for blurry-sunburst-with-bubbles background in panel three! Yay for diagonal-lines-and-bubbles background in panel four!  

Are you?
Look again at the story. The ultimate proof it's not real is that Susan got away with it.
And, actually, she tried multiple times to NOT be rude just to find out it's not working.
Also, note that even if this is not real and we are all in a video game, you still shouldn't be rude to other players. It's only allowed to be rude to NPCs.
(However, I doubt that. I mean, seriously, noone would try story as improbable as real life.)

Thank you! I thought I saw your name roll through on a Bandcamp receipt the other night. Much obliged!

This is, of course, the anniversary of one of the most important events in the history of EGS
28 January, 2003
https://egscomics.com/comic/2003-01-28

Here is explorer hanging out on my overstuffed chair
.

Or possibly that people were doing the same thing about her.

Which is in-character and hasn't killed you (yet).

This does not keep them from either proselytising or from being assholes.
Yes, Richard Dawkins, James Cameron, I am looking at both of you.
I have encountered atheists who reacted with such complete and reflexive rejection of religious thoughts that it in turn made them irrational. I made the simple statement that modern Western culture is largely based on Christian thought and they rejected it unthinkingly. They could not wrap their minds around the idea that we live in a culture that has been steeped in Christianity for centuries and that it has shaped the thought of our parents and their forebears in all that time -- and that this inevitably has affected even those of us who have rejected Christianity as well. All they did was scream that the Bible was invalid nonsense, too fearful to realise that Christianity represents far, far more than the simple idea "I believe in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit."