The "Zapper Disaster" turned out to be the defining moment of playthrough 11. In order to describe it, I have to break with my practice in these write-ups: I have to discuss some system-related stuff earlier than I would otherwise prefer. In my playthrough 10 write-up, I said I'd save the D&D-based details until the end. I…
I'm taking a different approach with this Baldur's Gate 3 write-up. As with my playthrough 10 write-up, my goal is to make things easier for whoever might be reading it. This time, I'm breaking the write-up into smaller individual blog posts. I've typically written one long post per playthrough. My goal, as with my massive post on…
I have a social media presence on Facebook, Bluesky (@acorn.garden), and Mastodon (@wgseligman@pagan.plus). Because my ego knows no bounds, I posted the following on all three: My review of ta' puq mach has just been published on Amazon. I was a bit surprised they accepted it. (For those of you whose Klingon is rusty, ta' puq mach…
When someone shares word of a death on Facebook, I will occasionally respond "So it goes." What does that mean? In a couple of Kurt Vonnegut's books (most notably Slaughterhouse-Five), there's an alien race called the Tralfamadorians. They perceive time differently. They see the past, present, and future all at once. When someone dies, they say "So…
I received an email via the Acorn Garden website inquiring about Kickin' Wiccan, the pagan jewelry shop I set up through Shapeways. Even though I was no longer marketing my items through Etsy, I still received occasional orders through the Shapeways shop page. The reason why the prospective buyer contacted me through my Wicca page is that…
In my previous post on creating the Bard instrumental ensembles in Baldur's Gate 3, I had a misleading statement: It’s almost impossible to get all six instruments to play at once within the main game. [...] In the main adventure, even if you have all four of your party members with the Musical Instrument skill, you’d need…
CW: There are videos in this post that include rapid movement in a video game. If you have vertigo or a similar reaction to visual media, the videos may be disorienting. Since this essay is about the audio, you can close your eyes or look away while the videos play and still understand what's going on. TL;DR:…
The following essay repeats material that I originally posted on Facebook. For years, I subscribed on-line to both the New York Times and the Washington Post. I rarely read any given article past the headlines, but I thought it was important to support high-quality journalism. I looked on it as an act of charity, the way I…
TL;DR: If your game controller isn't working, it's not your fault. My apologies if you clicked on this post expecting to see a political discussion. It's difficult to talk about the real topic of this essay without using the word "left". The actual topic? Joystick drift on a PS5 controller. A trivial topic, to be sure. There…
It looks like the murder mystery party I'd planned for Dec 7, 2024, is not going to happen. That's the TL;DR version. The rest of this post goes over the details, if you're interested. I'm not sad Let's get this out of the way: I'm not actually disappointed by this. A murder-mystery party is fun, and I…