DnD classic videos

DnD classic videos

This is the kind of entertainment that the internet had in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. Not political, full of vitriol, not overrun by bot comments, not divisions and raging against the latest -ism of the week. Just fun, intelligent slices of gold.

One of the first would be this sketch called Dungeons and Dragons (also known as Summoner Geeks or Attacking the Darkness). It was a comedy sketch parodying the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game experience produced in 1996 by the Dead Alewives. It originally comes from an album of like sketches titled Take Down the Grand Master; but was later animated:

Then there’s The Gamers. Four college DnD players must guide their characters through dangerous forests, ancient ruins, and not get killed by the girl next door. They went to make JourneyQuest, Dorkness Rising and a host of other videos, but I think this original is still the best.

Cleaning up trash

Cleaning up trash

Walking around Portland, it doesn’t take long to find a mess. Litter bugs, homelessness, and open drug use are a regular thing. The downtown area is particularly bad; especially around the McDonalds on Burnside and 20th. It’s a daily thing to pass a few passed out bodies lay on the street/bushes or standing around open sidewalk campfire. Drug dealers are very active in the morning at 7am.

A few of us that go to daily mass sometimes pick up a garbage bag, grabbers, and do a walk around the church. It’s not uncommon to complete a 10 minute walk around the block to see there’s already more trash. Used needles, fast food trash, lighters and foil, food remnants, filthy clothes, bottles, cigarette butts, human feces, and people passed out in bushes. It’s all there. I wake people up sleeping to make sure they aren’t dead. I point them towards the many services freely available in the city just blocks away. I usually get a few 4 letter word responses.

As I walk around the building, I often would just say the rosary or pray. When things are bad, you can despair, let anger overwhelm you, or just do something out of love. I say this as someone keenly aware of how badly the city of Portland has failed. Portland policy has directly created this humanitarian disaster. Deaths are now more than double (at one point 4x) what they were before drug legalization. It is a sad fact that prison was literally doing a better job of saving lives than legalization and harm reduction.

As I walked around the building and picked up trash, it struck me that I wasn’t that different. I too leave little bits of trash around all day.

We drop a dirty little comment here. We leave a little lie there. We are discard contempt at a slow shop employee that annoys us. We dirty up someone’s reputation with gossip. We cut someone off in traffic. We bully someone at school/work. We ignore a friend or person who could use a little of our help. We focus only on ourselves. We carelessly drop little bits of un-love trash all day long. Others often have to deal with the fallout of that trash when their spouse comes home from work upset.

It was a moment for me to reflect that when I am humble and help clean up a mess – of either real trash or some situation I find myself in – this is the work of God. God comes to help clean up the hurt, damage, and trash we have made of our lives and our society. We are called to do that out in the world as well.

Where can I stop littering little acts of un-love? What trash can I clean up today in thanks for God helping me clean mine up?

FLY – the VR successor to Google Earth

FLY – the VR successor to Google Earth

Google Earth VR was the first mainstream real-world immersive map exploration app for modern PC VR headsets, but the app never made it to the standalone VR headset era. The new app FLY still uses Google Earth’s 3D map tiles, but brings exploring Google Earth in VR to Quest 2, Quest Pro, Quest 3, and Apple Vision Pro. It even includes the 3D geometry for certain cities.

The future of truck pulls is electric?

The future of truck pulls is electric?

Instead of ear-splitting roar of an engine, this Tesla cybertruck quietly pulls as far as 2500-3500 diesel engines.

Honestly, it’s probably inevitable. I mean, trains use diesel-electric combo where the diesel engine powers the electric motors that do the actual pulling. If someone hooked a few train motors into a frame, slapped a auto/truck body on it and took it to a pull, it would likely out-pull anything out there…

Making shoes with no stitches or glue

Making shoes with no stitches or glue

Starting with the basic idea of using a hot glue gun to form and build up a model, why not make whole objects in this way? Why not shoes? If you attach that glue gun to a robotic arm and the glue into a light filament – voila: LightSpray.

LightSpray is a technique that use a robot arm to spray a recyclable filament around a mold to create a seamless one-piece upper that is directly attached to the midsole, eliminating the need for stitching or glue. The entire shoe is fully assembled in just 3 minutes. Supposedly coming Fall/Winter 2024.

The video is pretentious – thinking they invented something new – but it does get the idea across. Like Nike’s attempts at 3D printing, and 3D printed clothing, I think it’s definitely going to change things.

More Tetris firsts – probably the last

More Tetris firsts – probably the last

Just a few months back, Blue Scuti got the first Tetris kill screen; now DogPlayingTetris just got the last remaining achievement of NES Tetris.

The NES Tetris community has long been aware that you could (theoretically) avoid the crash at level 255 and then cause the game to loop all the way back to level 0. Rebirth has been the game’s mythical true ending – thought thought to likely be impossible/extremely unlikely.

Just today, NES Tetris rebirth has finally been achieved by “DogPlayingTetris” or “Dog” or “Michael Kahnh” at 1:40:34

Medieval Jams

Medieval Jams

Teenage Engineering makes some beautiful products. Now they’ve come up with a new one: the EP–1320 which features hundreds of built-in medieval sounds. Create your own medieval melodies with drums and medieval string and pipe instruments such as their kind of wacky intro video below.

There’s also some folks already making medieval jams on youtube.

Luno custom car camping mattresses

Luno custom car camping mattresses

Luno makes a lot of cool car camping gear. Pillows, window covers, camp fans, organizers and other upscale tidbits for your #vanlife. Now they’re offering their AIR+FOAM custom fitted car camping mattresses. They claim to be better than a standard air mattress because they use air and perforated open-cell foam sandwiched between protective layers.

Each set is custom fitted for your specific vehicle. You put in your make/model/year and it’ll find the set that perfectly fits your vehicle (if available). It looks like they charge a flat $499 for most vehicles.

For the more budget minded, they have cheaper pre-owned/upcycled/returned products.

Car camping is fun, but something you should always keep in mind is that these pretty much take up all your cargo space (unless you use only one – which is a nice feature). So, if you’re bringing any other gear/food it better all fit in the front seat or it’ll sit outside all night (in the rain/snow/elements and with critters or bears around to nibble on anything edible). Some other tips for car camping here – like always sleeping with your head pointed uphill (since it’s been shown being inverted for long periods has even led healthy people to death).