Separate me from my own two hands, I've killed so many times But I can't save the world from the creatures that don't die.

I kinda like the way you tell me, “Baby, please come home, I need you here right now, I'm crying underwater so you don't hear the sound.“

Burst into flames Scream in the dark I'm gonna light up this place And I will be the only light I'll be the only light

Those lyrics are so good! That's why I Love Pierce The Veil.

#PierceTheVeil

Beautiful rock cover of U2's original

#OurLastNight

I think the systems are in place now, at least for the most part. I feel as though the right step forward, after reviewing the previous alpha release – is to b-line the game to playable a state as close to the final product as possible.

'Playable' being the key word here. Development time is ultimately a balance between playability, variety, and quality.

The Garden Path's gameplay loop relies on variety to a degree, so I'll need to generate a good, sizeable amount of content to test the game's playability.

Quality, at least right now, matters the least. So while it may be tempting to pour time into a really good looking chair, what's important is that the chair is in the game as an identifiable object, not the artwork itself

Fortunately, since all the the items in the game are created by a single spreadsheet, if an item is on the spreadsheet, it's in the game. That means that over 200 items are already readable by the game and entirely functional, even if the artwork doesn't yet exist.

The artwork that's crucial are props, NPCs, and (to some degree) player equipment. While it doesn't matter how good ferns (as an example) look at this point, it's crucial that they're there in some form. Likewise, all NPCs play an important role in the game, so while they might sell items with no artwork, their presence and function is still felt by the tester.

This means essentially making quick splashes of colour for a concept, and moving on quickly to something else. As a result I've got lots of pretty crazy looking artboards at the moment! I'm sure the time will come when I clean it all up – but its all form over function.

Unfortunately this dampens my plan of sharing hoards of artwork content on social media to help promote the game, as most of this content is maybe 30% complete. In due course things will begin to take shape, but for now I'm a little reluctant to litter people's feeds with half drawn wood burners.

Which is one factor that lead me to consider live-streaming parts of the game's development – half-completed things are more interesting when they're being worked on.

So I did just that! Yesterday for about 2 hours I did my first ever live stream. It went better than expected, exceeding my personal goal of 2 live viewers (since 1 would just be me monitoring the stream). While I knew it wouldn't be as by-the-minute productive as a typical session working on the game, the goal is hopefully get more people interested in the development, and provide an easier place to answer questions.

I'll definitely be streaming again next week. I had a handful of folks tell me that they would have watched live if they had more of a heads up, so I'll likely be tweeting something out in advance from now on as a reminder.

But, if you're interested in live development, do check out my page on Twitch. Don't feel any pressure to make an account or follow if that's not your scene. I want to make an effort to have Twitter and Mastodon as active platforms during the stream so people can contact me there, since I know some may be reluctant to register.

*

Lets just take a look a couple gameplay decisions I've made over the last couple weeks.

The player character, in any game really, always has a funny relationship with the player themselves. Some people want to play themselves, some people want to play anyone but themselves, and in some games it not even questioned that the physicality of the player-character is given to you rigid.

We all love customizing our Legend of Zelda Link, for instance — deciding which armour we like the look of best with what colour dye and so on. We never question why we can't make our Link a woman, or give our Link a beard, perhaps by way of convention, or perhaps because he's a fully formed character with a name and backstory (although, plenty of games do exist where the latter is true and you can still customize the character to your heart's content).

In some games, however, if a certain customization option isn't available when so many others are, it's only natural to feel a little robbed.

I've wondered if I could do a successful balance in The Garden Path, one that's somewhat centred in the 'respect the world' philosophy I've tried to bring to root everything back to. In theory, it should reduce character-creation fatigue and keep the excitement of customization into the gameplay loop, all while still feeling as though the character is (at least in someway) an extension of the player's person. I realize I might just end up displeasing everyone.

I've mentioned before that skin colour is probably the one option I feel uncomfortable taking the option away for. I recall Animal Crossing back-in-the-day had a kind of 'tanning' system where the character would gradually get darker-skinned the more they stand in the sunny weather. That's a can of worms I don't want to open, and lends almost nothing to the player themselves.

Having struggled with an idea for hairstyles, however, it occurred to me I could utilise a similar principle – hair growing over time. The player can have it cut back should they want to, but can't cut their hair 'long' like in so many games.

I like this, because it goes hand in hand with the theme of passing-time that's core to the gameplay, but also with the absence of binary gender options. Long hair is long hair, short hair is short hair – should the player wish to couple that with a more masculine or feminine look, they can do so. I've made an effort to have all the different tiers of hair look appropriate either way.

*

Finally, a few thoughts on tea. As anyone knows tea is going to be a core part of The Garden Path's gameplay and identity, so it's important to me to get it right.

It always irked me that in a game that I want to feel is 'anti-crafting' that tea brewing ultimately a form of crafting.

Instead, I'm in the process of building a system that will feel more akin to Breath of the Wild's cooking than a traditional crafting system. That is, the player should never be punished for what they choose to combine. With the removal of hard-recipes, the player might not be brewing things most efficiently, but it will always be worthwhile.

As such, teas will only be different teas by why of identification, functionally all teas will follow the same rules. Certain ingredients will increase stats, some will multiply particular stats, some ingredients will combo with others. For instance, adding mint to any tea will always increase a character's charm, and sweetening a tea with honeycomb or syrups will multiply any charm benefit already there.

The game's job is to calculate what that tea will be called. It would be boring if everything was just named exactly what's in the tea. So, if certain criteria are met, it will receive its appropriate name – adding ginger and cardamom and other sweet spices will likely result in a Masala Chai, for example.

And this, to my delight, has brought everything full circle. It never felt right requiring tea leaves for a tea. After-all, pouring hot water over a hibiscus isn't a 'true tea', but it is still widely viewed as a tea. Tea itself is a plant that requires a very particular climate and geography, and a long drying and oxidisation process to become what we know as tea.

Tea would begin to consume the game – players would feel compelled to have huge tea farming operations. 'Black' teas, and 'white' teas, and 'green' teas are all the same plant of course, so there would need to be a system in place to oxidize the leaves at different stages in order to give the player choice.

I don't want that. I want a garden that feels abundant with a huge variety of different herbs and spices, each with a similar sense of importance-of-function.

So — tea will not a growable plant (its visually pretty boring, so no great loss), instead dried tea leaves will be a valuable traded resource. A resource that, when brewed with other ingredients, becomes a 'true tea', greatly multiplying the benefits of that tea.

Who is the sole trader of our valuable resource? Our good friend Tabbal the Toad, of course.

And so, finally, his impatience becomes an obstacle worth overcoming.

*

Follow me on Twitter, or maybe even Mastodon.

De komende nacht van de filosofietjes

Wat zal deze nacht brengen? Worden er in de wijk om middernacht duistere pakketjes afgeleverd met sterrenlicht en maanstof? Lig ik dan te woelen of te draaien? Eigenlijk woel ik liever dat klinkt aardiger. Hopelijk hebben de huismussen vandaag wel genoeg gegeten, afgelopen nacht kon ik hun magen horen tsjilpen. Wie weet heeft de God van de buurman vandaag tegen hem gezegd je hoeft niet te bidden om twee uur 's nachts. En Hij sprak tot zijn schare via facebook 'Staak u nachtelijk klagen en smeken en ga slapen dat is beter voor Mij en voor jullie'.

Doe ik mijn ogen toe of dicht, en wat maakt het uit. Lig ik daar straks wakker van? ga ik in discussie met mij, – . -

Doe je ogen toe! Neen ik doe mijn ogen dicht, ik kan ze niet toe doen! Kom nou iedereen kan zijn ogen toe doen, dat doe je al na de geboorte, er voor zijn ze al toe, in die baarmoeder is toch niks te beleven. Neen, mijn ogen kunnen alleen dicht, hooguit kunnen we ze sluiten, is dat een goed alternatief? Ik kan mijn ogen sluiten maar onder protest, ik voel meer voor toe. Let op, hier sluiten ze. Ik zie het nu ook niet, dan zijn die van mij ook gesloten.

. – . Zoiets, ik word misschien wel wakker met dorst, een droge mond of juist een volle blaas. Twee dingen die je eerst een poosje moet negeren en hopen dat ze voorbij gaan, nachtelijk activiteit is een slechte invloed voor de dagelijks gang van zaken. Het is nu te laat voor preventie, het water moet naar de blaas, zo is mijn lijf afgesteld. Ik heb geen kamelen bulten op mijn rug, dat zou niet zo lekker liggen, maar daar hadden de matrasmakers vast wel iets op gevonden. Vooraf op maat gemaakte kuilen. Dan lig je ook stabieler.

Na hardlopen heb ik vaak last van warme voeten, mijn voeten slaan energie op. Inslapen en warme voeten gaan bij mij niet samen. Koude voeten ook niet. Ik moet maar gewoon op bed gaan liggen en een nachtje slapen over al deze dilemma's. Morgenochtend moet ik deze morele vraagstukken maar op een rij zetten. Ze met de juiste uitwisbare marker op het whitebored zetten, voorzien van een prioriteiten nummer plus kleurcode, en daarna eens flink gaan mindmeppen.

Jullie zullen wel met je eigen moeilijkheden naar bed gaan, wel of niet met echt genoten. Koude voeten van een ander zijn ook geen pretje. Ik heb nog wel een paar sokken over, hoor. Die hangen hier al sinds de kerst, een Noord Pool met een rode muts en een witte baard is vergeten er wat in te stoppen. Onvergeeflijk. Smelten met die rot kappen.

Welterusten & heel veel mentale sterkte de komende nachtrust.

Frodo is a hobbit, an adult child-looking creature living in The Shire.

Frodo inherit "the Ring that rules all other rings and makes you invisible but when you use it the Dark Lord Sauron sees you, like Jesus when you do dirty things alone" from Bilbo.

Gandalf the Grey, old wizard, tells him he needs to destroy the ring, they depart to do it; easy stuff, you can do it only in a gargantuan vulcano, near Sauron, 29384K miles away from The Shire and they go by feet, in this light you excuse a book of 1200k pages and more.

They form the Fellowship of 9 people (4 Hobbits, 1 Elf, 1 Dwarf, 2 Humans, 1 Gandalf, some rosemary and thime, cook slowly and you're done).

They meet Gollum, he's an ex Hobbit, ugly AF, evil AF, slightly touched in the head and wants to play with the ring.

Gandalf fight the Balrog, dies grey and reborn White.

Legolas and Gimli are in full bromance.

Merry & Pippin smoke Old Tuck's weed all day, drink the Ent water of power and becomes big-ass Hobbits, like giant newborn infants with swords.

Sam has breathing issues because he's overweight but saves Frodo many times, they ascend Mount Doom and throw the Ring+Gollum+Frodo's'finger in the fire.

The Dark Lord explodes, the ring melt, Gollum dies, the war is won.

Aragorn is the new king, marries hot woman-elf, lives a lot.

Some go beyond the sea to Elfland, some stay in the Middle Earth, richer and wiser.

Sam go back home to hot wife & kids, not so bad good'ol Sam!

THE END

#froginthefog #drds #hobbit #lotr

A great read on why reputation matters so much now. Especially in light of how much information is available to the public nowadays. Plus some light history lesson on where the “Moon Landing” conspiracy theory came from.

Link: Say goodbye to the information age: it’s all about reputation now

In the average-case scenario, you trust newspapers, magazines or TV channels that endorse a political view which supports scientific research to summarise its findings for you. In this latter case, you are twice-removed from the sources: you trust other people’s trust in reputable science.

Huh, I actually didn't think of it that way, but that's true though.

So, do we now have to fact check everything we read or see online? No, that would take absurd amounts of our time. Not to mention, we probably won't come up with the correct answers doing our own research. Instead, we should ask the questions the author presented in the article, that I quoted below. It can act as sort of a checklist or framework for quickly verifying the accuracy of new information.

Whenever we are at the point of accepting or rejecting new information, we should ask ourselves: Where does it come from? Does the source have a good reputation? Who are the authorities who believe it? What are my reasons for deferring to these authorities? Such questions will help us to get a better grip on reality than trying to check directly the reliability of the information at issue.

Tags: #Bookmarks #Information

Inspired by the Anxiety theme

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My reading continues apace, again, like last month, almost entirely fiction. The exception to this is Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy, which I have just started rereading to ease me back into philosophy and adjacent subjects (Alan Ryan's epic On Politics is also high up on my list). I think having one fiction and one non-fiction book going simultaneously will work well, but right now I'm just having too much fun with the former.

When it comes to fiction, I consider myself to be in the exploratory phase; I've been scouring annual summaries, reviews and book awards shortlists for likely candidates, reading online previews of the promising ones, and ordering hard copies of those I like. If the subject matter doesn't interest me or the preview doesn't capture my attention, I forget it and move on to the next one. There's a virtually unlimited supply, so ruthless culling is essential.

So most of the novels on my list are critically acclaimed and from pretty big-name authors, almost all of whose work I'm experiencing for the first time. I'm going for breadth to start with, but will undoubtedly come back and read more of my favourite authors in future. I've started with contemporary-ish novels, but there are also quite a few classics that I'll get to later on.

I've also found a good place to buy my books: bookshop.org, from which the proceeds are distributed between independent booksellers around the country. Right now the storefront is pretty basic, so I'm hoping they'll add more features so as to become more competitive with Amazon. At the moment most books are generally a little more expensive (which is understandable and acceptable), but what's really jarring is paying the shipping costs on top of this. Hopefully they'll create some kind of membership program with discounts and/or offer free shipping for orders above a certain value. They also need to add book previews and links to reviews to keep people on the site. But anyway, it's a good start and I hope they're successful.

As ever, I won't be providing reviews here; I've included links to the publisher's website for a synopsis of each book, and you all know how to use a search engine.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Last Samurai. Additionally, I was left feeling almost ashamed at how wasteful I've been: killing time when I could've been doing something much more worthwhile. Not that I'm claiming to be a genius (like the subject of the story), but still. I took this novel as a badly needed wake-up call, and for that alone it was worth it. It's also a very entertaining read.

Following this debut, DeWitt doesn't seem to have done much more, but this stands as a very strong magnum opus.

Next up was The Road, which I read in a single afternoon; this one certainly kept my attention. The reader is left in no doubt that whatever calamity has caused it (I'm guessing an asteroid impact), the end of the world really is nigh. There's no happy ending here; any reprieve for the characters is just delaying the inevitable. Horror in the true sense of the word. Relentless, with plenty of insight into human nature.

Next, the magnificent, immense The Overstory, the kind of book I've been waiting for.

In many of Powers' recent interviews (worth checking out) he talks about three different levels of storytelling. The first two are those we're all very familiar with: psychological and social-political, whereas the third is very unusual in modern times: the connection between humanity and the natural world. He suggests that many of our current problems have arisen from losing sight of this connection — from erroneously imagining ourselves as somehow separate — and that we therefore badly need a realignment of our world view, along with the exchange of hubris for humility and knowledge for wisdom, if we want our civilisation to continue (a sentiment I'm in agreement with).

Powers makes this explicit in the novel itself through one of his characters, who, incapacitated following a devastating stroke, has had his wife read stories to him:

The books diverge and radiate, as fluid as finches on isolated islands. But they share a core so obvious it passes for given. Every one imagines that fear and anger, violence and desire, rage laced with the surprise capacity to forgive— character—is all that matters in the end. It’s a child’s creed, of course, just one small step up from the belief that the Creator of the Universe would care to dole out sentences like a judge in federal court. To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.

Ultimately, this is not a book about individual trees; it's about the whole tree of life and humanity's place within it. Many of the underlying ideas will already be familiar to the informed reader, but, again to quote the book:

The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.

This is most certainly a good story.

Phillip Roth's The Plot Against America rounded out my May reading. Roth is yet another famous author who I'm discovering for the first time. The novel was very good, in common with all the others this month. Although an alternate history set around 1940, it is very relevant to our current situation; the dismantling of a nation via deliberate, gradual, quasi-justifiable steps is all too plausible.

So on to June, and first up is the Cold War epic Underworld, a door-stopper that looks like it might take up a good chunk of the month all on it's own, especially if I also get moving on A History of Western Philosophy.

I'll keep you posted.

#reading #books

This was a Thanksgiving creative writing assignment for my 6th grade English Class. We had to write a story about turkeys during Thanksgiving. I wrote it about 2 years ago so some of the writing is a little childish, but I recently went back to edit some of the worst parts. Ethan thought this story was funny, so I hope you do to. -Benji Silvernail

Turkey Day Afternoon It all began when I was strolling to the boring, deserted bathing pool on a perfectly interesting evening. All of a sudden, I thought I heard something behind me. I flipped around. “Thomas, are you stupid. Did you not hear what mom said?” It was my sister, Sally. “Yes I did, ok. I thought this was ok. It is real close to the hideout.” “Well it is not. Mom is going to be so mad.” said Sally. “Ha ha the joke is on you. Mom sent me here. I don’t even want to be here. I had a place to go. Jerry and I were gonna hold up a place.” I replied. Sally’s face sunk. She always wanted me to get in trouble.
Now you may be wondering, what is my family like. It sounds pretty crazy. I was born into a group of crazy turkeys. We are hated by almost everyone. The humans hate us, but hopefully not you, the other animals hate us, and even some turkeys hate us. Jerry is my best friend. Me and him grew up together. He is not as attractive as me. He hangs out with me, and so girls like him as well. I like to tell myself that is not the only reason he is friends with me.
Anyway we needed money. It was around Thanksgiving so we had to stay around the hideout. Jerry and I were going to do this low key, cause Mom and Dad would not like us doing this. Anyway, Sally looked real sad. She started walking away. “Be back soon,” she said, trying to sound nice. I started walking to the bathing pool. When I got there, Jimmy was waiting near the pond inside a treehouse that we set up when we were young. The only reason I saw him was cause I knew he would be there. He had two masks clamped in between his feathers. “What’s up, where have you been. We hardly have enough time,” he said. He was not mad. I could tell by the way he looked. He thought I might be late.
We started walking. While I was walking a thing popped in my head. Why had Sally not yelled at me for holding up a place. She definitely would have taken the chance to yell at me. Then it hit me. I bet she was also worried about the money. She probably wanted me to do it. That’s what it was. I felt better about it.
We came up to the shop. We were about 50 feet from the store. Jimmy climbed up into a nearby tree. He held up a pair of binoculars. “I think there are about 15 turkeys in there,” he said. “Ok, I’ll be crowd control.” We both put on our masks. “So here is the plan,” said Jimmy, “you will run in and yell, ‘This is a hold up,’ then I will run in and start emptying the cashier. See you will scare them with your claws, ok.” “Yea I got it.” We ran in. “Reach for the sky!” I yelled, then realized I was supposed to say ‘this is a hold up’. “This is a hold up,” I corrected myself. Jimmy ran in behind me. He ran right over to the cashier. He was good at this. I stood there awkwardly. This was taking too long. Suddenly, I heard the noise of shattering glass. I saw Jimmy duck. He was just in time. A bullet hole was right were his head had been. “What was that,” I heard a bystander yell. I looked through the gap the glass used to fill. I saw two hunters. What, I thought. Hunters never came this far into our territory. Jimmy and I both looked at each other. I yelled, “Ok now everybody run into the back room!” Everyone stood up. They seemed pleased at the idea of running from the gunshots. Once we all got back behind the wall, Jimmy and I had a second to talk. “What do we do now?” I said“I don’t know.” “We could leave these people and try to escape by ourselves.” Jimmy said, “No, we got to help these people.” He was right. It would be mean and awful to leave these people. “You are right,” I said. With this new responsibility, we started to form a plan. We would start a fire by lighting a piece of wood, and then we would throw it out of the store. We hoped that this would scare all the hunters away. There was one more part of our plan. We would charge out of the store after we threw the log that was on fire. He and I both knew how this would probably end, in our deaths. So out of the store we ran. The last things our eyes saw before this, were the faces of 15 shocked people. As we ran out the door, two bullets flew at us. Jimmy’s bullet flew right through him. Mine missed, but we both kept on. As we came up to the hunters they were in shock. How was Jimmy, or that turkey to them, still running. As we came upon them we started scratching them. We did not want to kill them; we just wanted to scare them off. It worked. They ran off, scared to death. And right there, in my arms, Jimmy went to sleep, and never woke up. About a year after this there was a knock on our door. As I opened the door, I was shocked to see all the animals from the store we robbed outside my door. I thought it was the end. They had decided to finally kill us. But what I heard was quite the opposite. A man walked up from the crowd. He said, “My daughter was at the store you robbed.” I was ready for the end. “She came home without a scratch. I thought nothing was wrong. But when she walked in, she told me what happened. The heroic acts of you and your friends made us all think twice about you guys. If you guys don’t rob anyone or do anything bad, then you can come back to the town.” The only reason we ever started robbing was because they kicked us out of the city. Now they were taking that back.

【空降热搜✖️绿林】520约会篇（后续R） （前文） 陆以尧看着被自己骗到身上的人，终于开始吃起了自己的食物。陆以尧轻松的撬开冉霖的防线，扫荡着本就属于他的一切。他熟练的卷起冉霖的送入自己口中品尝，温柔而激烈的吻使二人抵死缠绵。

不知过了多久，陆以尧终于松开了冉霖。冉霖微微喘息着，发现自己在什么时候已经坐到了陆以尧腿上。刚想翻身回副驾驶就被陆以尧按回他的腿上。

“先……先回家。”冉霖看着陆以尧的眼神说道。他太熟悉这个眼神的意思了。

陆以尧将冉霖压到方向盘上，开始解冉霖的裤腰带。

“先回家！”冉霖开始有些着急的捂住自己的防线。

陆以尧看着冉霖的动作，换了个目标，不慌不忙的解开自己的领带，推着冉霖的手臂迫使冉霖将手举了起来，他感受到了冉霖的挣扎，熟练的将冉霖的手系起，然后将领带多余的部分串过了挡光板与车顶的缝隙，又熟练的打了个结，“乖，一会儿要记得提醒我帮你解开，不然会勒到你。”

“能不能先回家……”

“不急，约会才刚刚开始……记得，这是第一次……”

（正文）

陆以尧将手从冉霖上衣的下摆伸入，一遍一遍的描绘着冉霖的身形，像是一件艺术家抚摸着他的艺术品。终于他掀起了覆盖在艺术品身上的布料，品尝起了那诱人的樱桃。

冉霖被陆以尧的动作激的紧咬牙冠向后仰去，明明是逃避的动作却被他做出了迎合的样子。

陆以尧满意的看着完全挺立起来的粉红，迅速褪下了面前人的裤子，右手打开了旁边的抽屉，掏出了一瓶润滑剂，仔细涂抹在手指上。

“你……你为什么会在车上放这种东西？嗯……”冉霖已经看出了这场早有预谋的“战役”，说话间下身被那衣冠禽兽塞进了一根手指，让他只能转移了注意力。

陆以尧小心避开了敏感点，用右手慢慢的做着扩张，左手也扶上冉霖的腰，托着他让他省点力，上身衣物一时间没了控制，一副半挂不挂的模样。

“嗯……哈啊……唔……”陆以尧控制着时间塞入了第二根手指，换来了冉霖的惊呼。

“乖，没人听到的，别咬自己。”陆以尧将冉霖往自己面前送了送，轻吻了一下有些牙印的嘴唇：“放松点，没事。”

“嗯……嗯啊……”冉霖被身下搅动的手指弄得有些不清不楚了。

陆以尧看着冉霖的样子眼睛亮的惊人，强忍着冲动开口：“宝贝，我做不到第三根了，我现在能进去了吗？”

“嗯，呃嗯……进……哈进来吧。”

冉霖舍不得陆以尧憋着，但是在看到巨物的一瞬间，还是忍不住瑟缩了一下，下意识想往后退着逃避，却没想到让在体内的手指更深了。

陆以尧轻笑了一下，把手指抽出，将带着套的自己缓缓送进冉霖体内，感受着那人承受不住地颤栗，顺手解开了冉霖被缚住的双手，艰难的挺进，扩张做得不充分导致二人现在都不怎么舒服。

冉霖在手解放的一瞬间就搂上了陆以尧，小声在他耳边微喘。他微微偏头，看到了陆以尧额前的薄汗，感受着陆以尧忍耐的推送，想着自己说过要当礼物，而且之前好像直接进入也不疼，然后他闭着眼睛深呼一口气，抬着屁股直接坐了下去。

“啊——嗯——”冉霖被这种撕裂的感觉疼的差点晕过去，直接趴在了陆以尧肩头发抖。

陆以尧被这突如其来的动作弄得一惊，下身被紧致的小穴包裹住的温暖感受忍不住让他轻叹一声，然而他自己现在没心情尝这个果实，有些微怒的对着冉霖道：“你干嘛？！你这样会受伤的你知不知道？”

“陆以尧，疼……”冉霖被这一吼有点受不住的夹杂着抽泣说道。

陆以尧庆幸套套上自带的润滑效果不至于让冉霖受伤，他没敢动，等着让冉霖适应这个巨物。陆以尧偏头吻着冉霖的脖颈，一手轻拍着他的后背让冉霖放松，一手又伸进冉霖衣物抚弄起了粉嫩，努力调动起冉霖的情欲。

等到感觉到冉霖整个人软下来的时候，陆以尧终于开始了隐忍的抽动，冉霖的双腿紧紧夹住了陆以尧的腰身，上衣松松垮垮的挂在身上，双手环到陆以尧背后将白衬衫攥的皱了起来。陆以尧不停的在冉霖脖颈处吮着，而那人顺着他的动作仰去，画出一条好看的弧度，陆以尧在自己种下的草莓上反复舔弄，身下也加快了速度加重了力道，将怀里的人撞的左摇右晃。

“嗯，哈……啊！”冉霖最好一丝理智终于被这快感撞得支离破碎，发泄出好听的呻吟。

陆以尧听着后面变调的一声，就知道自己刚才故意的那一下起了作用，于是他猛烈的向那一处软肉撞去。

“啊……啊啊啊哈……嗯！”

“慢……慢……哈，不……不行了。”

“宝贝，怎么这么快就求饶了？”陆以尧不停，依旧大开大合的前后动作着，“宝贝，要不要叫老公来听听，说不定我还能考虑考虑。”

“……嗯哈……老公，啊！老公……哈啊……慢……慢一点，啊！”冉霖爬在陆以尧肩头乱颤，双手将白衬衫揪的更紧了。

可是满嘴胡话的男人并没有因此放慢速度，继续动作着，时快时慢。后座的一排娃娃随着震动滚到了座位下，散乱了一地。

在不停的抽插中，冉霖终于感觉自己马上要冲破防线：“我……哈啊，嗯……我要到了，啊……嗯，和哈……和你一起唔嗯……”

这番语言不详的话虽然断断续续的传出，前言不搭后语的，陆以尧依旧听懂了冉霖发意思，一手堵住了小冉霖，感觉自己脖颈处微凉，陆以尧偏头去看，发现冉霖眼尾处的红色，和因生理而挂在睫毛上泪珠，顺着泪痕吻了上去，惹得那人睫毛轻颤，忍不住摸了摸冉霖的头发，加快了来回运动的速度。

冉霖偏头吻上了陆以尧的喉结，努力让自己忽视疼痛享受着，也让自己不去想那被束缚住的快感，那白色衬衫也不知道是不是因为他抓的太用力而导致崩开了几颗，冉霖将一直放在陆以尧身后的手伸了进去，感受着那几块结实的腹肌。陆以尧猛地一顶，冉霖被迫离开喉结急喘了一声，声音已变得十分沙哑，被出来的眼泪从陆以尧胸口划过，那要命的一丝冰凉简直要把他燃起来。冉霖知道自己结束后陆以尧就算马上快到极限也会忍着不继续了，陆以尧舍不得冉霖太累，而冉霖也舍不得他这么忍着到最后只能自己解决。

终于两个人都抱着彼此攀上了高峰，发出满足的喟叹，安静的等着高潮的余韵过去。冉霖滑落在陆以尧的胸口处，急促的喘着气。

“怎么办？还有四次呢，宝贝你体力太差了，以后要不然给你安排几个锻炼计划？”陆以尧事后的声音带着说不出的性感。

冉霖对着这么蛊惑的声音根本没有一点抵抗力，“我……呼，我说到肯定……”他又喘了一大口气，“肯定做到的，还有，我体力挺好的，我还拍打戏呢。”

陆以尧忽然想起了什么，从旁边之前放润滑剂的旁边拿出了一管药膏。因为在外面做所以两人衣服基本上都很完整，连裤子都在大腿上挂着。

陆以尧不由分说的继续往下扯冉霖的裤子，后者一惊：“不要，回家……先回家好不好。”冉霖觉得自己应该主动说点什么讨好陆以尧让他能停止自己的举动，他现在根本没有力气去阻拦这个刚刚充了电的男人。

“嘶——”冉霖倒抽了一口凉气，冰凉的触感随着膝盖蔓延开，消散了一些疼痛，他这才发现刚才做爱的时候陆以尧也在一直小心的护着他的腿。

冉霖微微有点不好意思。

陆以尧无奈的叹了口气，手上继续揉着药膏：“你哪次高潮后我会不让你休息就继续的？”

冉霖不说话了，随着他动作——当然也只能随着他动作。

陆以尧把冉霖的腿上好药后，抽了几张纸巾简单的处理了一下两个人，和套/子一起丢入了车载小垃圾桶。然后小心翼翼的把冉霖送回了副驾驶系好安全带，还没等车子启动，冉霖就已经累的睡过去了。

陆以尧又重新俯下身亲了亲冉霖的额头：“睡一会儿吧，一会儿可能就想不到了哦。”

车子终于启动，开回了不远处的别墅。

然而夜还很长。

陆以尧回到别墅抱着冉霖进去的时候还碰到了来找冉霖玩的夏新然。

陆以尧：“你怎么来了？”

夏新然：“来找冉霖玩啊，不是听说他今天结束早？”

“对不起我忘了你们单身狗不过520。”陆以尧目光里带了些许同情。

夏新然：……

cnmd死基佬。夏美人内心爆了一句与他长相极其不符的粗口，然后目光终于落在了被陆以尧抱着的冉霖身上——揉皱的衣服，衣服上不明的白浊物，汗湿的头发有几缕黏在了额头，脖子上的吻痕，睡着的冉霖和精力旺盛的陆以尧……

不想知道发生了什么都难。夏新然看着冉霖，忍不住还是说了心里话：“你个禽兽你也注意点，别使劲折腾他！”

“小处男闭嘴吧。”陆以尧回以微笑，越过他进了别墅。

“艹！”夏新然愤然离去。

冉霖悠悠转醒的时候发现自己已经裹着浴袍躺在了床上，熟悉的气息瞬间包裹而来。

“终于醒了？我还以为我的礼物想赖账故意不醒呢，我还想着一会儿该怎么叫醒你，没想到刚帮你把澡洗完你就醒了。”陆以尧撑在冉霖身侧说道，他强行分开了冉霖的双腿，手指已经底上了穴口——还是湿润的，说明不用做什么扩张了。

“我都说了我说到做到。”冉霖主动环住陆以尧的脖子吻了上去，将双腿分开的更大，方便陆以尧进入。

旖旎的气息再次传来。

第二天，冉霖好不容易花了十分多钟勉强挣扎着起来想去卫生间，结果一下地就腿一软直接栽了下去。

陆以尧听着楼上的动静赶紧上了楼，上楼的时候还不断庆幸——还好没关门。不然以他家这隔音效果，他什么也听不到。

陆以尧刚进卧房就看见冉霖瘫在地上，赶紧过去扶他起来。

“你是不是哪里不舒服啊？我还以为我按摩一早上你会好点。”陆以尧说道。 “没……咳……”冉霖说不出的沙哑，“没事，就是……没力气，腿软腰疼。”冉霖声音越来越小，几乎就要听不见。

“对不起都是我不好。”陆以尧轻吻了一下冉霖的额头，“你下床想干什么？”

“上厕所。”

陆以尧一个公主抱将冉霖抱了起来，“走吧，我陪你去。”

“不……放我下来！我自己可以。”

“别闹了宝贝，你站都站不起来，还是我帮你吧。”

End.

So even though I managed to get libmtp compiled under Windows, I can't get it to work with Node.js. I've decided to take the same approach as what I did with ffmpeg's libavutil library, and cross-compile it under Linux instead.

To do this, I needed mingw64 on my Linux machine:

sudo apt-get install mingw-w64
sudo apt-get install mingw-w64-tools

It doesn't look like libusb has been pre-compiled for mingw64 on Linux, so I had to do the following:

git clone https://github.com/libusb/libusb.git
 git checkout v1.0.23
./autogen.sh
./configure --host=x86_64-w64-mingw32
make
DESTDIR=$HOME/Code/mingw64/ make install

This installs the libusb library (compiled for Windows) under $HOME/Code/mingw64/. Then I had to configure libmtp to use our Windows libusb build:

PKG_CONFIG_PATH_PREFIX=$HOME/Code/mingw64/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig  ./configure --host=x86_64-w64-mingw32
make

Again I had to fix unicode.c to get it working. I should submit this work as a PR to libmtp.

Next step: Try to get this working in as a native Node.js addon.

For reference: http://www.tinc-vpn.org/examples/cross-compiling-64-bit-windows-binary/

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.

#100DaysToOffload #day33 #libmtp

I have a love and nostalgia for video stores that runs deeper than probably any other form of nostalgia. My first job was at a video store and I feel like I spent the majority of my weekends in my youth hanging out in video stores. It was just my favorite place to be and sadly a place of the past.

Growing up movie collecting was important to me. My father didn't believe in buying movies, because he would never watch a film more than once. I, on the other hand, loved to re-watch movies and I loved having a little piece of the video store in my own bedroom.

The first big title on VHS that I owned was 1989's Batman. I got this for Christmas and it was arguably the video I watched the most.

As I grew older, I began taking my birthday money and Christmas money and buying movies that I liked. My Dad would help out occasionally, but usually it was up to me to build my collection. Not all of my tapes were commercial releases, since I also had a massive collection of blank tapes that I used to archive TV shows, wrestling, and even rented movies in SLP.

By the time I became a teenager and working at Blockbuster, my VHS collection had grown into the hundreds. Flea markets and yard sales had been good to me over the years and I had a little bit of everything. I proudly displayed my movie collection and I kept it until sometime around 2007 when I finally boxed up my tapes and got rid of them.

I won't go as far as to say I regret that, but some titles I wish I would have held onto. About three years ago, I stumbled upon a small collection of VHS tapes my parents had of mine, but these were movies I cared so little for I left them when I moved out. I brought them home with me, but ultimately decided to discard them as well.

Last year, my fiancée bought me a sealed VHS copy of Scream that I intended on taking to a horror convention and getting signed. Some problems arouse that prevented me from making that trip, but I held onto the tape since Scream has slowly become one of my favorite franchises and it looked good on my shelf.

A few weeks ago, my buddy Michael started collecting VHS tapes again. His purchases excited me and I thought about how much I would love to do the same, but I've dabbled in collecting them in the past and I always struggled with it. It's not that I don't enjoy trying to hunt VHS tapes down or watching them, I just have this thing about space and living lightly and VHS tapes are bulky.

Also, in the past when I've bought some VHS tapes, I've bought just random titles I stumbled upon. I didn't intentionally collect. I didn't go after those titles I really wanted or the boxes that I had nostalgia for and that was a mistake. I'd look at the tapes and feel like they were useless clutter and get rid of them.

A week ago, I was chatting with Michael about laser discs when I decided to browse some titles on eBay. One search led to another and the next thing I know I had stumbled upon an auction containing the entire Scream trilogy including the widescreen version and director's commentary. Also included were the first two I Know What You Did Last Summer films and House of Wax. It was an instant collection of films that I liked and I decided to buy it.

When I got the box Tuesday evening, I opened it up and found the seller had included a couple of bonus films: Wrong Turn and Believe. I had never heard of Believe before and the idea of there being a late 90's horror film that I didn't know and owned on VHS excited me to no end. I had to watch it and so yesterday I stopped off at a local Goodwill and I got lucky. For $8.99 I found a great Sony VCR that was in excellent condition. It even had the plastic wrap still on the clock display screen.

I had no way of fully testing the unit, but I did plug it in and made sure it rewound and seemed to play the tape that was found inside of it. The Goodwills around me don't typically sell VHS tapes, so thankfully someone had left their recording of the revival of V in the unit.

I got the VCR home and I sanitized it. Luckily my fiancée had some RCA cables to hook it up. I hit play once the TV was turned on and I had a perfect picture and everything worked great. I was back watching TV like I grew up watching.

I really enjoyed watching my VHS tapes yesterday and I look forward to collecting some more. I think it may be time to rebuild my movie collection.

#100DaysToOffload

A small disclaimer before I start. This is a hypothetical scenario I'm quoting here! Please don't take everything 100% serious!

Have you ever thought about this scenario? What if there would be no more social media platform around. No Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest or Twitter. All gone within a couple of minutes.

One thing would funny for sure. A lot of these digital marketing gurus put there, would be super scared and don't know what to do! Most of them count heavily on these platforms. Especially Facebook and their Ads Market would be a massive lost for most of them.

But for the majority of us, this split or deletion would be a pleasant surprise. As you might know – expect if you were born after 2005 you would have no idea about it – there was a time before, when you would actually meet up in person. There was no WhatsApp or DM to reach someone.

This article shouldn't be a retrospective of life before social media. It's a What If scenario! One which could very much come true, as President Donald Trump is threatening Twitter and Facebook at the very moment I draft this article.

I believe – once everyone realised that they can't check Instagram anymore – most people would immediately be looking for an outlet. Social media is such a part of our everyday life, people would need to find a distraction fast! My bet would be on libraries, book shops and meet-ups. Most of us would start to read again and therefore find a filler for the big social media hole. For the younger audience reading this article, you would find an alternative too. Maybe you would finally start picking up a book! From a private aspect, we would know what to do within a couple of days.

But if you take a closer look at this from a business standpoint, you will start biting your nails. Let's analyse a few specific fields of operations:

Marketing and Sales:

This is the one department a tone of business would suffer from. So companies use social media as a powerful communication tool. Not only to interact with their audience or community, but to also feature new products or releases within seconds.

If you add the whole advertising aspect into the mix as well, you would end up seeing a lot of missed ad space. I would even go as far and say, that the regular paper, magazine and TV ad would take over again. Meaning only the richest or biggest companies would afford to advertise again.

However the most brutal place businesses would miss out, is in their sales department. Not only would sales reps loose the possibility to double check their leads, they would also have to get back to annoying sales methods, like cold calling over the phone. Most importantly, they would loos the ability to close deals fast. As they would rely on regular communication systems again.

HR and Recruiting:

For these departments this situation could be very dangerous. Not that they would not be able to their job anymore. Recruiting was very active before the emerge of social media, but there is one platform a tone of them use: LinkedIn! Heck, they even set out pricing plans for HR and Recruiters.

The standard workflow for recruiters these days is to look for the profiles of candidates and save their profiles for further questioning. If they would get rid of this essential tool, I believe most of the recruiting would take longer and therefore more projects in the end could be postponed.

Especially if there is a big hiring spree in a cooperate environment. These delays could end up costing big companies more in the long run...

For now, these departments would be the one suffering the most from the direct loos of social media outreach. However, I believe that a lot of work colleagues would suffer as well. As most of the after hour gatherings or lunch events are planned with Messenger or WhatsApp Chats.

However, I believe the most interesting question we can throw out there is, if the companies associated with these giants would be taken down as well? In theory Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus and Vine could be bought back, if they have enough money. That however is proper guess work, as we have no idea what the legal arrangements are with said companies.

All in all, life would be less hectic. We would stop compare us and actually focus on proper relationships again. A lot of cyberbullying would stop and teenagers as a whole would stop being so fake. On the other hand, the business world could suffer immensely and would be taken back a couple of decades again. I'm not saying that it wouldn't work, but a lot of industries would have to adapt again.

Let's see what the future holds. I just saw the announcement of President Trump. Maybe he already pushed the law into action. Time to catch up and see what will follow in the next couple of hours. I will definitely write a follow up for this article!