When you follow aesthetic/fandom blogs but also social issue blogs
Tags:
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #the humour of my people #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #drugs mention #juxtaposition
So apparently today is the 20th anniversary of Pokemon.
For obvious reasons (aka IT’S A VIDEO GAME THE DEVIL WILL EAT YOUR SOUL), I never played Pokemon as a kid, and my grasp of it even through fannish osmosis is about limited to “I know what Pikachu looks like”. Recently I’ve been wanting to check it out, not unrelated to all the anniversary hype, but Google and the marketings seem to be aimed at people who at least have a little sense of what the fuck’s going on.
So. Do I have anybody that could answer some questions?
* It has color names instead of numbered game-episode-thingies like Mass Effect. Does that mean you can jump in anywhere, or do I need to know a playing order?
* I’m only seeing references to it being played on a console. Is there a PC port or an app version? If not, is it the sort of console you plug into your TV (I don’t have a TV) or the sort where there’s a little screen built in? How much does it cost and where do you buy it? (The console and the game/s both.)
* Are there guides / walkthroughs? I fail hard at video games without guides. I got so lost in the tutorial level of ME1 that I had to watch a video walkthrough to find my way down the ramp to the Prothean beacon.
* Is it primarily single-player, co-op, player-vs-player, or what? Do the older ones not have enough players to make it fun anymore / are there servers that have shut down / anything like that?
I, too, feel very left out by my inability to speak Pokemon. (*grumble grumble Crystalline Gala grumble*) Anyone want to help us out?
This thread is very branchy, so rather than reblogging each one I will just make a list of distinct branches:
I have still not played any Pokemon console games (yet?), but I have played Pokemon Go, which despite its gameplay differences remains helpful for learning one’s way around a Pokedex.
Also, in related news: Bulbagarden (the Pokemon wiki) is available as a downloadable file [link] through the same people who brought you downloadable Wikipedia [link]. As of this writing, the downloadable version was last updated in October 2018, and the space requirement is about 1.4GB for a full copy and 200MB for an imageless copy.
Tags:
#(March 2016) #conversational aglets #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers
Update: as of today, all three of these problems are gone.
* Last summer, a guy I bumped into at a Pokemon gym inducted me into the local raid-coordination chat. I’m still pretty bad at actually *catching* them, but I’ve made it to the catch screen a fair number of times (and got some TMs!), and I did get an Arcanine.
* Today I checked the Discovery Channel website just in case things had improved, and they *had*: it looks like they’ve gone back to ad-supported streaming, and no longer require a TV subscription. I watched Daily Planet today, for the first time in about a year!
* Learned last autumn that I could indirectly sell Amazon credit (taking roughly as much loss as I’d expected to take selling directly) by buying electronics on Amazon and then immediately turning around and selling them on eBay/Craigslist/suchlike. Still not as good as extracting the full value from the credit, but it’s something. (and they continue to expand their gift-card section! still have hope for eventual Wegmans! *crosses fingers*)
Tags:
#oh look an update #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon #adventures in human capitalism
I saw one of my local gyms was trying to get an all eeveelutions gym, so I’m like ‘cool’ and toss my Umbreon in, but when I went to check on the gym later to see if someone added the Flareon and Eevee we needed I saw this
Look at him! Of course he’s part of the Eevee family look at his ears. Nope nothing suspicious here, not at all.
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#not even remotely suspicious #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon #oh my god
I’ve really been feeling my lack of networking lately.
I don’t know anyone in my neighbourhood, so I have nobody to team up with on Pokemon Go raids. (At my current strength (level 24, in an area where Geodudes and Machops pretty much never spawn outside events and I get a Dratini every couple of weeks), this effectively limits me to tier-1 raids unless I’m lucky enough to happen to show up at the same time as a stranger, and it’s impossible to *ever* do a tier-4 raid without a *minimum* of one other person, no matter how high-level you are.)
I don’t know any Canadians who both have TV service and would trust me with their TV-service login credentials. (We recently cancelled our TV service because we can’t afford it anymore, which means I can’t watch Daily Planet on TV. I can’t even pirate it, because it’s not popular enough for black-market providers to consider it worth stealing. Discovery Channel has an online streaming service, but you need TV-service login credentials for them to let you in.)
I don’t know anyone who I can both trust-trade my excess Amazon credits with and who wants to buy them. (Menial Internet labour for poor people, much like charity for poor people, usually fails to follow the “just give them money, rather than goods they’ll have to sell at a discount to buy the things they *actually* needed” guideline. They make excuses about how Amazon credit is basically the same thing as money because you can buy ~everything~ there, but in fact the list of things I want that Amazon has is fairly limited, and I end up getting credits (both USD credits and CAD credits) faster than I can spend them.)
This is clearly a problem (or a collection of related problems), but I don’t know what to do about it.
Tags:
#oh look an original post #rants #(sort of) #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon #tag rambles #traditionally when you don’t have money you’re supposed to trade favours amongst your network of personal contacts to pick up the slack #but I don’t *have* a network strong enough to trade favours with #so when I can’t solve logistical problems with money they don’t get solved at all #and as my finances continue the slow deterioration they’ve been doing for half my life #I increasingly can’t solve logistical problems with money #my normal approach to friendship is #to stumble into relationships with people I don’t know well enough yet to know what terrible people they are #and about two years later I know enough of their terribleness that I can’t take it anymore and leave #occasionally I stumble into relationships with people who *don’t* turn out to be terrible but this happens too rarely to compose a network #(and besides even then I sometimes lose contact with them anyway) #I don’t know how to deliberately make friends #and I don’t know how to filter in advance so that a good fraction of new friends remain likeable after >2 years #and I *especially* don’t know how to do any of this in the Hard Mode of being poor #and therefore a noticeable portion of my motivation for befriending them being necessarily mercenary #(even when it’s a mutually-beneficial kind of mercenary I’m told people tend to find that sort of thing offputting) #(or they use it to take advantage of you) #(which is probably why the first group finds it offputting) #at least I’ll probably be strong enough to solo tier-2 raids before too long #that’s something #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #adventures in human capitalism
Recently have been playing around with this one program called Hexels, and it’s really addicting and keeping me from finishing other projects regarding my own characters. Ended up making little pixel eeveelutions!
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#I recognised more than half of these! #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon #art
SD cards turn out to be a lot more complicated on Android 6.0 than they were on 4.2, so it took longer than I thought it would, but I’ve finished the transfer. All of my stuff (give or take a weather app) is on my new phone, and my old phone is now officially Mom’s.
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Re: Internet access, it remains to be seen how much can be done with option 1–I might still use it at least partially–but it’s looking like the primary answer is going to be option 3.
Mom was remarkably agreeable to switching to my old smartphone as her primary cell phone, under two conditions: that nobody expects her to use the smartphone to anywhere near its full functionality (she doesn’t want to have to deal with getting to know a new kind of computer, at least not beyond a shallow level), and that I figure out a reasonably practical way for her to carry it around with her (she currently carries her phone in a flip-phone-sized pouch in her backpack).
(Dad suggested sticking her SIM card into a smartphone when I wanted to use data, then putting it back in the flip phone afterward for routine use. I said I didn’t think flip phones had removable SIM cards. Turns out the real answer is in between: *modern* flip phones have removable SIM cards, but her phone is so old it predates PC Mobile flip phones becoming the type of phone that has a removable SIM. In order to switch a SIM card back and forth, she’d need to get a new flip phone; if she’s going to change primary phones anyway, why spend money on an additional phone when we have a perfectly good smartphone available?)
It seems we can’t get a monthly or yearly graph of how much phone credit she’s actually using, but judging from the amount of credit she currently has built up, over the six years she’s had her account she’s used an average of ~$70/year. Put another way: if the average usage rate holds, we could buy a $10/month basic data plan May – October and not run out of spare credit for about 6 years. That’s long enough to be getting on with; hell, for all I know, I’ll have a need for my own phone plan by then.
I already borrow Mom’s phone on those occasions I need access to the cell infrastructure. This will just be an extension of that.
I’m not going to take any action on obtaining a data plan until it gets close to spring. If all goes well, Mom will keep her old flip phone for the rest of the winter, and she’ll have some time to get used to having a smartphone before trying to do any actual phone stuff with it.
(It’ll have to be Brother who gives her the tour of how to do actual phone stuff on a smartphone. I’ve never done it, after all.)
Spring update:
I’ve been playing Pokemon Go for about a week now. (It’s been warm enough for a while, but I had to deal with finals first.) Thus far, Operation Mobile Hotspot has been a complete success!
(Mom’s smartphone even fits in her customary phone pouch. Turns out the pouch was more elastic than we thought.)
If I’m careful to supplement heavily with Wi-Fi (and prevent other apps from using background data as much as possible*), I might actually be able to stretch a 100MB plan to last a whole month of playing 1 – 2 hours/day. The plan does permit overage data, but it’s 50% more per MB than the first 100 are, so I’d rather not. (But still, I have the option of using a little bit extra to finish the last walk or pop out to the nearest Pokestop for a streak bonus.)
(I know every public hotspot within half an hour’s walk now, and how big a range each one covers. Conveniently, Pokemon Go doesn’t crash when you lose Internet**: it merely pauses, springing back to life the moment you re-connect. This makes it easy to switch back and forth between mobile hotspot and public Wi-Fi as I move in and out of coverage zones. I also save anything that can be done while stationary–such as sorting through new catches and transferring the ones I’m not keeping–to do at home.)
I’m enjoying the game so far, even apart from its practical benefits. (Practical benefits: learning my way around a Pokedex***, going for more/longer walks.)
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*My saved-network settings have an option for “treat this network as if it were mobile data for data-conservation purposes”, which is very handy for mobile hotspots.
**It crashes once or twice an hour, but not from this. (Possibly due to GPS issues: it tends to happen at the same locations.)
***Me, last night: “Wait, is that a Jigglypuff or a Wigglytuff?
…I’m surprised I even got that far.”
Tags:
#media I consumed primarily to know what all the fuss was about #(while I *am* enjoying the game even apart from its practical benefits) #(the practical benefits were the deciding factor in playing it) #Pokemon Go #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon #oh look an update #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #(oh by the way I looked it up just now and it looks like it’s a Jigglypuff)
SD cards turn out to be a lot more complicated on Android 6.0 than they were on 4.2, so it took longer than I thought it would, but I’ve finished the transfer. All of my stuff (give or take a weather app) is on my new phone, and my old phone is now officially Mom’s.
—
Re: Internet access, it remains to be seen how much can be done with option 1–I might still use it at least partially–but it’s looking like the primary answer is going to be option 3.
Mom was remarkably agreeable to switching to my old smartphone as her primary cell phone, under two conditions: that nobody expects her to use the smartphone to anywhere near its full functionality (she doesn’t want to have to deal with getting to know a new kind of computer, at least not beyond a shallow level), and that I figure out a reasonably practical way for her to carry it around with her (she currently carries her phone in a flip-phone-sized pouch in her backpack).
(Dad suggested sticking her SIM card into a smartphone when I wanted to use data, then putting it back in the flip phone afterward for routine use. I said I didn’t think flip phones had removable SIM cards. Turns out the real answer is in between: *modern* flip phones have removable SIM cards, but her phone is so old it predates PC Mobile flip phones becoming the type of phone that has a removable SIM. In order to switch a SIM card back and forth, she’d need to get a new flip phone; if she’s going to change primary phones anyway, why spend money on an additional phone when we have a perfectly good smartphone available?)
It seems we can’t get a monthly or yearly graph of how much phone credit she’s actually using, but judging from the amount of credit she currently has built up, over the six years she’s had her account she’s used an average of ~$70/year. Put another way: if the average usage rate holds, we could buy a $10/month basic data plan May – October and not run out of spare credit for about 6 years. That’s long enough to be getting on with; hell, for all I know, I’ll have a need for my own phone plan by then.
I already borrow Mom’s phone on those occasions I need access to the cell infrastructure. This will just be an extension of that.
I’m not going to take any action on obtaining a data plan until it gets close to spring. If all goes well, Mom will keep her old flip phone for the rest of the winter, and she’ll have some time to get used to having a smartphone before trying to do any actual phone stuff with it.
(It’ll have to be Brother who gives her the tour of how to do actual phone stuff on a smartphone. I’ve never done it, after all.)
Tags:
#I looked it up and it turns out PC is actively encouraging people with SIM-less phones to upgrade to SIM models #so they can consolidate their networks #for us personally I consider this a good sign #because it means it *probably* won’t be a huge hassle to switch her account to a new phone #people usually make things easy to do when they’re trying to convince you to do them #hopefully running a mobile hotspot will also be non-frustrating #*knocks on wood* #oh look an original post #oh look an update #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #(and not three) #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon
Brinens and Things 