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Category: The Paper

  • Dragon Quest Builders 2

    Dragon Quest Builders 2

    I finished DQB2 a little while ago, and have been too busy playing the post game to actually post about it.

    Here are my thoughts:

    Spoilers Inbound (Post-game spoilers included)

    Features major spoilers throughout the game (including the endgame).

    • Malroth — I already see him as my BFF so there’s that.
      • But (not sure if this was discussed) I’ve been thinking about the origins of the demon version. So Hargon summoned him in DQ2? Was Malroth living in a separate dimension this entire time up until that moment? And then when you get to Malhalla, you can get this substance called malrothium, which the description says is some sort of mysterious element extracted from the Master of Destruction. Like it’s definitely not from the human world. (Maybe he’s from Malhalla originally…which is a separate planet. 👀)
      • After seeing his tastes in food during Lulu’s tea party, I wonder…the reason why we never see him eat anything is because all of the food they’ve encountered so far is too “normal”? Wonder if he would like the food from Malhalla better. 🤔
    • Lulu — Y’know, I don’t hate her as much as other people. I wished she would shut up about Lulutopia (“no offense, Lulu, but this ain’t your island 😤”), but she does care about her friends (particularly, the Builder and Malroth, since they’re the only family she has at this point), and wouldn’t even budge from the dock when they were stuck in Skelkatraz, waiting for them to return.
    • Krumbul-dun — These folks care way more about having a bar than a bedroom with four walls. 🤷‍♀️
    • Skelkatraz — Gotta say, they did such a good job at making you hate this place. (Also the scene following that with the Builder, Malroth and Lulu was just 🥺).
    • Moonbrooke — I admit, thanks to TvTropes (and I gotta stop looking up TV shows/games on that site that I haven’t finished yet), I already knew what was going to happen and was pretty steamed at THAT part (you know the one). On the other hand, when I finished the island, I found that very few people actually wanted Malroth in prison, and the ones who did are dead. They’ve spent their entire lives in a warzone—all they’ve ever known is war. So I actually felt sorry for them. I went back and planted more crops for them (and trying to build them nice rooms, but they all want to live in the castle along with the Builder and it’s getting difficult trying to stuff 6+ people in said castle and still have enough room for a dining hall, kitchen, training room, etc). Just wish they would recruit a farmer to harvest them. :/
    • Malhalla — Never thought a monster afterlife would feature less betrayal than an island inhabited by humans. Was really glad I got to bring them back to my island eventually (minus Adamn, Zebadee and Drackson, who weren’t at the Ark for some reason), but wish we could’ve brought the actual Ark. I might turn this island into a vacation resort.
    • Buildertopia — Pro-tip: Move the teleportal to where you want your town/house to be. Otherwise your only warp points are going to be at the dock, which is separated from the rest of the island by a huge gap that you can’t bridge over (like the explorer’s shores). Also finding the large Blossom Bay type works best for building a farm, unless you’re planning on growing mostly sugar cane and rice.
    • [EDIT] Ordelia — This lady has been living underground by herself since she was a little girl (according to her), but she’s wearing clothes that fit her and is able to think and talk (kinda) like an adult. 🤔

  • The Ballad of Belle G. Pig

    The Ballad of Belle G. Pig

    Belle (f/5, going to be 6 next month) has some severe arthritis. Right now, she has extremely limited mobility in her back legs, along with some sort of grunty breathing. We went to see Dr. Fowell on Tuesday, who confirmed via X-ray that she has arthritis. As for the breathing, her lungs looked clear, so no respiratory issues. Dr. Fowell thinks it might have been caused by convulsions, from the pain. Along with the meloxicam (and anti-seizure/anti-convulsion meds), I’ve been doing warm water soaks (per vet) and rubbing her leg joints. She kind of flexes them a little and no longer does the loud breathing, as of Sunday.

    But because she can’t completely move around on her own, I’ve been having to move her around the cage, putting new hay piles in front of her and hold the water bottle in front of her (if she’s not near one) so she could drink.Despite that, you couldn’t tell she has bad arthritis. Her face still looks alert and perky as usual, and she still gets excited for vegs and her urinary & vitamin C supplements.

    And obviously, all of this didn’t happen overnight. Dr. Fowell thinks this was developing for a while now, but Belle was hiding it (as guinea pigs do). I remember her doing the grunty breathing last Thursday night, the night before I found that she having mobility issues.

    And something triggered the arthritis, like maybe something scared her. And at the time, I couldn’t think of what could’ve caused it, but after contemplating and going through previous messages to contacts, I remembered, Friday night when they were getting their dinner, a loud plane flew over our house. Belle screamed from her hidey and at the time, I thought the noise just scared her and that was it. But after all this happened, I think the noise triggered the arthritis, and she was screaming from the sudden pain?

    🤔

    Timeline of Events

    Apr. 22, 11:40pm — Noticed she had loud, grunty breathing. Thought she had something stuck in her throat and thought it would pass (based on what I read and my previous experience when hearing this sort of thing).
    [Actual probable explanation: Pain from the arthritis was making itself more known, but she was still trying to hide it.]

    Apr. 23, 8:31pm — Loud plane flew over our house and Belle screamed/wheeked from her hidey. They were also getting their dinner, so I couldn’t tell if the noise scared her or if she was telling me to hurry up with the food (it wasn’t a loud wheek, more like “wheeeeeeeee!”, which is how she normally wheeks, unlike most guinea pigs who go “wheee wheeee wheeee!”).
    [Actual probable explanation: The noise triggered somehow triggered the not-able-to-walk part of arthritis.]

    She ate her greens as usual (in her hidey—so at the time, I thought she was still freaked out by the noise).

    Apr. 23, 11:50(ish)pm — Noticed that she having seriously trouble moving on her hind legs. Had a huge thing of messy 💩 stuck to her bottom, usually means she hasn’t been eating hay (probably hasn’t been getting up).

    She did eat the hay I put in front of her though.

    Apr. 27, 2:00pm — X-rayed, diagnosed with severe arthritis. Prescribed meloxicam (for the pain) and Gabapentin (for the convulsions from the pain).

  • GPORG’s Lighthouse Scores

    GPORG’s Lighthouse Scores

    I don’t really use Chrome, unless if it’s for work purposes. So that’s probably why I didn’t know you could use Lighthouse in the webdev tools window. 😱

    Soo yeah, this was the best I could for GPORG (on the homepage). Apparently it is possible to get 100s all four, but almost impossible unless if you have an extremely barebones, one-page site. Some of the stuff Lighthouse wants you to do to score a 100 under Performance and Best Practices is kind of ridiculous:

    • Remove unused CSS & JS — I mean…I once I figured out tree-shaking, the Performance score went from 80s to 90s. The only reason why it’s not a 100 is because the “unused” CSS & JS is being used on other pages (like the CSS for the Gutenberg blocks), and I still need that for things to display correctly. But Lighthouse doesn’t know that, so I still got dinged. If the CSS & JS files were much bigger due to code being used on other pages, I would’ve gotten a lower score.
      • Also depending on how many plugins you have that bring their own (required) code to the party, you might see a lower score.
      • And also? Adding things like tracking scripts can generate a lower score.
    • Reduce server load — not getting this one anymore, but when I was still getting it, it was like…”how???” I had a pretty darn good caching plugin, combined with Cloudflare with memcached enabled, soo….🤷‍♀️
    • Registers an unload listener — this is caused by the WPBruiser plugin, injecting some embedded JS directly onto the page. There’s no way for me remove that, and even if I could, I have no way of knowing if it would break the plugin.

    Moral of the story — use Lighthouse as a guide but don’t lose sleep over it. (The only scores I care about really is accessibility and SEO, both of which I got 100s on.)

    – THE END –

  • SpellScan? Should be SpellScam

    SpellScan? Should be SpellScam

    A few things about this:

    1. I should probably format these messages so they’re readable.
    2. No, I did not, “Beth”. 😤 That’s how you spell “cron”.
    3. This Spellscan site is a series of spam form submissions hitting sites lately. It made itself known to a few clients at work. If you get one of these, don’t go the spellscan site.
    4. The fact that it actually got through WPBruiser’s antispam checks tells me there are humans submitting these, and not bots. So if you mark it as spam, you might cause legit form submissions to go to spam as well. Which I’m pretty sure you don’t want.

    Edit

    More folks talking about Spellscam–I mean Spellscan.

    Edit #2

    I guess it’s debatable if it’s actually a scam (I didn’t visit their site). But definitely spam. Spellspam then???