Europe Pub

The way I was taught to play Uno, the reverse card changes the direction of play.if you're taking turns clockwise, it changes it to counterclockwise.

However, I often hear people say "uno reverse card" in the context of saying "whatever you just tried to do to me, I'm turning it around on you". That seems to me to imply that in the game, the reverse card turns things around on the other player. Like if they play a +2, you can play the reverse card and make them pick up 2. Is that the way some people play?

Is this one of those "house rules" situations where some people make up rules different from the official ones? Like the famous Monopoly rule where people put a pot of money in the middle that you win when you land on free parking, even though the official rules say nothing happens on free parking

So recently, I spent a fair time chatting with the creator of PSPunk, a website I'm sure many here might have visited. But that chatting (which ended up being an interview) pivoted instead to something a bit different from what I usually end up doing with articles.

Rather than just talking about the website itself, we ended up discussing the people who keep older gaming communities alive. We covered how PSPunk started as a simple custom firmware guide, why preserving guides and community knowledge is just as important as preserving games themselves, the modern PSP homebrew scene, and why the handheld still has such an active community more than 20 years after launch. You might recognize me from a few PSP articles I've done these last months, I just...think they're neat:

It was also interesting hearing from someone who doesn't consider themselves a developer or a major figure in the scene, just "a helpful user who creates guides." I think that humility says a lot about projects like this, because every community needs people documenting, organizing and preserving information just as much as it needs people writing the software.

in the words of philosopher ariana grande: yuh

No, it wasn't a woodworking tour de force (which wouldn't belong here), it was an Ikea desk. The perfect dull furniture.

But it's almost twice as wide as the makeshift worktable I had before, much more stable, and has a drawer pedestal on one side. My oscilloscope fits nicely on it, and there's space to actually work on projects now.

Comments

Oracle laid off ~13% of its staff to fund a $300B computing deal with OpenAI. Now, a credit downgrade and $7B in required power grid guarantees put the massive project in jeopardy.

!ebookreaders@lemmy.zip

I have an unhealthy obsession with ebook readers. At last count, I owned 45 dedicated devices, including the PalmPilot PDA I bought in 1997. I read The Hobbit on that tiny screen. During staff meetings at work! No one had any clue! lol

The idea that I could carry several books in my pocket completely fascinated me, and before long I was collecting every reader I could get my hands on. My budget is tighter now, so I don’t buy anymore unless I see a super cheap deal on ebay that I can rehab or something.

I still read fiction every single day on a dedicated ebook reader, and I still follow news about the newest models. So I figured I might as well start a community, just in case there’s at least one other nerd out there who loves this stuff as much as I do.

And if not, I’m perfectly happy with an audience of one. :)

Artist: Usa37107692 | bluesky | twitter | patreon | danbooru

Based on a journal entry I wrote to chronicle the creation of my first Morrowind character in over a decade after asking Lemmy for suggestions, Morrow(Re)wind is the tale of Argonian Dragoon Polishes-His-Spear (Pol for short). Join us as I poke my way through the maddest Elder Scrolls game and attempt to complete it with no guides, only hazy memories and potentially the input of readers.

We're running OpenMW with the I Heart Vanilla modpack plus Daisy's Lua multimark and as of the end of part 2, HOPLITE. See the post on patientgamers for links.

(Don't worry, I won't always be posting them this frequently, I just decided to repost Part 1 from patientgamers when I was ready to post Part 2 and onward here.)

After recovering from his initial recoil, Pol learns that the particularly alien-looking elf is named Fargoth, and by his clear unprompted description, it's clear that the ring we found was his. With a heavy sigh at his fortune leaving as suddenly as it had come, Pol returns the elf's ring. The Hist had blessed him with all that fine diningware, best to not be greedy.

Fargoth promises us that his friend Arrille will give us friendly prices at his tore up the way, so off Pol trots for some shopping. We offload our scavenged goods, as well as our filthy prison clothes, and pick up a breezy robe, a fair-looking iron longspear, and a medium weight Imperial cuirass. Sadly the cuirass was the only piece of medium armor the elf sold, but Pol will make due. Pol also buys a healing spell to replace the ring, a few scrolls of Divine Intervention, which he remembers working a treat for returning to the barracks chapel after a night of drinking, and a few scrolls of something called Almsivi Intervention. Pol's not sure what an "Almsivi" is, but if it can also save him from passing out in a ditch, Pol will be glad to have it.

Our hero certainly intends to attend to his quest in a timely manner, lest he be tossed back into a dank prison, but reasons that a brisk walk about town and some fresh air before another leg of travel will leave him best able to respond to whatever unknowns this island throws at him. Pol mingles around town, chatting with the locals and sampling the local plants and fungi. Pol notices that however briefly, one of these mushrooms makes him feel as though he might dance atop the water rather than swim through it. One of the locals mentions some trouble with a den of smugglers just outside town.

As he wanders out towards the lighthouse, eager to get a higher view of this surroundings, Pol is tested in true combat for the first time! A skittering mudcrab charges him with murderous intent! Pol quickly discovers that with a short hop backward, he can remain just outside the reach of the beast's claws while deftly stabbing it in the face. The best defeated, Pol consumes the sweet crabflesh to gain its power.

While taking a refreshing dip and practicing some spearfishing, Pol discovered one of the local varieties of clam seemed to produce some fine pearls, and made a note to keep an eye out for them while he was near the coast. Pol journeyed further into the swamps outside town in search of more snacks, and discovered that not all the local fauna was palatable when some fern pods sapped his strength. Oh and a body. He also discovered a dead body. Pol recovered a sack of coins and a document appearing to list local tax collections. The man looked to have been done in by a weapon rather than accident or animal. Pol would have to speak to someone about this when he returned to town.

As Pol was just about to turn back toward town, he heard a startling scream. Rather more startlingly, it seemed to be coming from directly above him. As an elven mage slammed into the ground in front of him, Pol wasn't sure what was more astonishing: the mer's sudden appearance from the skies, or the fact that he hadn't splattered into mince on impact. He checked that the man was dead more as a courtesy than anything else. No one could survive a fall like that... could they? Pol found a few scrolls in the wizard's pocket, their label mentioning something about flight, which according to the journal he'd landed on seemed to have had something to do with the mage's final predicament. Tucking them away for further study, Pol also reasoned that there was no point letting good fashion go to waste and took the chance to trade up for a much more impressive robe.

Returning to town, Pol heads to the only authority he knows in Seyda Neen, the old man at the census office. After telling the Imperial about the body, Pol begins a new chapter in life as a bounty hunter, being deputized to find the taxman's murderer. Leaving the census office, he meets the strange little man Fargoth again. Remembering that his name was on the tax form, Pol questions Fargoth on whether he'd seen Vitellus in the days before his murder. Fargoth reveals that Vitellus tended to a flame in the old lighthouse, so to speak. Pol heads off to question the dead man's lover, hoping he's not breaking the sad news at the same time.

And of course, he was. After breaking the poor woman's heart, Pol manages to discover that Vitellus had been arguing with one Foryn Gilnith, another name on the tax sheet who'd owed quite a bit of money. He's also asked to keep an eye out of a particular ring Vitellus wore, one that certainly hadn't been on the body. Pol confronts Foryn in his ramshackle shack in the lower part of town. To his surprise, the man easily admits to the murder, gloating in fact. The man says he'd killed the tax agent because he was overcharging and skimming the profits. Detestable to be sure, but was this something that warranted a vigilante murder? Not to mention the man's smug attitude, and his clear personal motive for the murder. Pol decides the best course of action is to take the man to the authorities. If this sort of justice is accepted in these parts, then he can argue his case to someone well above Pol's pay grade.

Gilnith does not take this well, and immediately attacks Pol. Though bare-handed and unarmored, the man proves a slippery opponent for our out-of-practice hero, and manages to knock him down a few times before Pol's spear find purchase in the murderer's heart. Rifling through the Gilnith's pockets, Pol finds the dead taxman's ring. He reports his findings and the execution to the census office, receiving a tidy 500 septims in return. He also returns the ring to the grieving girlfriend, netting himself a few health potions that may prove useful if his magical energies are depleted. Exhausted and with nowhere else in town to stay, Pol returns to the one place in town he knows has a free bed. Giving a nod to Foryn's corpse in the corner of the shack, Pol passes out in the dead man's hammock.

Author's note: Another blessing from the Hist! I've added one more mod at this point. Just this week modder sn0rch released HOPLITE, seemingly the most workable one-handed spear mod to date, and just yesterday they managed to port it to OpenMW. This is a feature that I think should have been in vanilla. Spear and shield was an incredibly common real-world fighting style, and every other melee weapon barring daggers has 1 and 2 handed variants. The extra armor from a shield will help us offset our helm and boot problems, and provides one more thing to enchant later. This mod also adds throwable javelins. They're a fair bit stronger than other throwables, but also much heavier so we won't be able to carry near as many at once. If they prove OP, we may just forget these exist and revert to darts and throwing stars as planned - we'll see.

Before - After

#erandique #blackjackgs #pixelart #aseprite