link roundup

[kradeelav]

digital kewlness edition ~

• pirated subtitles end up on the official Turner Classic streaming network - and also a hint of some 'secret' torrenting history.. (i recently found the rss feed to torrentfreak and have been very happily surprised that their articles are some top tier journalism in of themselves.)

• 80.style (requires javascript) is the absolute coolest site i've seen lately, it's basically a forum wrapped in a skin that looks exactly like a crt screen.... or a LCD calculator screen... or about 8 other retro such skins. i've been reverse-engineering parts of it today in hopes of mimicking the look via css for this diary/the site logs there's even a little cartoon speech bubble pop up thing that's not distracting at all, what a clever UI tweak.

• "The DOOM mod that best describes our uncanny reality" via queenlua - had 0 knowledge of DOOM mods, walked away with a much deeper appreciation of how good hobbyist game/level designers can essentially create an entirely new (eerie) story/experience. faintly reminds me of that one LSD-dream emulator game that started as the game creator's wife's journal.

• did you know you can make a RSS feed out of any character/pairing/trope tag in AO3? :D Seriously, just go to a random tag page that looks like this, and look in the top right; there's a big ol' RSS button where you can catch the feed and just plug it into your favorite feed reader. absolutely glorious way of keeping fanwork accessible even to people who don't want to create accounts on the site.

• the door problem to combat design is probably not unfamiliar for anyone who works in gamedev, but i've been desperate for thoughtful text articles on gamedev/level design and this shed illumination on why a lot of any shooter's/ME2's maps Look Like That.

• lastly, found via the last link; while trenchbroom is technically a quake modding tool, it's robust enough it's essentially free, cross platform (linux too) incredibly robust level design tool that looks like it could handle any PS1-era games with ease. imma have to experiment with this. :o

Comments

[neotula]

been using the ao3 rss feed trick for a lil bit now and it's so nice! i've had zero motivation to go through the FE tag recently, so it's a nice little way to know i won't miss any fic about my favs.

[kradeelav]

nice nice, so glad to hear it's been working for ya! :D iirc i think you were the one that made me realize it was a thing, so thank you in hindsight. :)

[homobirb]

ah, the rss trick only works with canonical tags unfortunately :( my last fandom had really weird canonical tags (it was merged with another fandom despite having nothing to do with it), which made trying to track it with rss impossible. that being said, when it does work it's really nice hehe :3

[kradeelav]

TIL what canonical tags are, that's so interesting; but i'm sorry it doesn't work in those edge cases. D: what a bummer! can see how that'd affect smaller fandoms (or stuff like star wars which gets aquired over time).