Nova Storm @NovaSquirrel@computerfairi.es

I took out the recycling today and apparently it hasn't been picked up by the truck yet, so I went looking and there's just so many high school memories I decided to rescue past just the referrals.

There's an edited abstinence pamphlet I thought I'd lost, comics and art (!), a heartfelt note I found in my lunch one day, seating chats I shouldn't even have, and more. I can't believe this was all going to get recycled.

Today is the canonical birthday for Isabelle from Animal Crossing 🎂

Sometimes I'll hear a note or two that feels familiar for some reason, and then my mind will just continue throughout the song based on just that.

It's @maple !

Improved mail system with the ability to preview a message before you send it, the ability to reply to and delete mail, and most importantly I fixed the ability to type spaces! #gamedev

After fixing a few minor things, the mail UI in Tilemap Town doesn't feel quite so bad. It's just *plain*.

A friend suggested that you should be able to include a gift with a letter, which sounds cute to me and I could probably implement it as including a copy of an inventory item that the recipient can choose to add to their inventory or not.

Kik is trying to lure me back in with "Hey, friends are messaging you! Log in and see them!" but given my experiences with Kik they're 90% likely to be porn bots

Honestly with how I don't seem to be qualified for any local programming jobs I can find (and how college doesn't seem to have prepared me very well), that really hurts my self esteem. I wanted to eventually start a career programming and I was excited to finally graduate after four years but I don't know how reasonable that is anymore. It feels like no one wants me and my skills are unimportant. There will always be a better candidate than me and I won't get picked.

Sneak peek into my very terrible WIP mail UI for Tilemap Town because I do not have web design skills really

When I get a job I'm definitely switching to a different VPS company. I've been having connection problems recently and I guess I can't complain for $15/year but my projects deserve better than this.

Here's a photo of some actual uranium I got from one of my favorite websites https://www.unitednuclear.com/ which is a site I realize I should have asked for stuff from for Christmas.

Speaking of nuclear stuff this is a sword I drew when I was talking to a fairy who said they were harmed by iron so they couldn't use a normal sword, so I was like "hey what about uranium?"

I'm the mayor who puts their house directly next to a nuclear power plant.

Because people originally guessed that SimCity for NES not getting released was due to being too expensive, I was expecting something with a bunch of extra RAM, but instead it's only got 16KB and the game makes a lot of compromises.

With this in mind, it makes sense to me. Why release an inferior version when the SNES version (which was a launch title) can be a system seller and a "proper" SimCity experience?

Tilemap Town has the start of a mail system now. Things should be mostly implemented server-side (aside from anti-abuse measures I will need to add) and I need to add it client-side now too.

I don't think I'm going to put in a bulletin board system though because honestly that job is better done by forums.

I think it's the part of December where everyone's off visiting their families so I'm gonna brave it as best as I can and be productive with it if nothing else.

Me, except I'm not sure there's anything I actually want. I should probably ask for plushes or something.

Realizing that I have a NickServ and ChanServ equivalent but no MemoServ so I should get on that. Leaving messages for offline users is pretty important!

I found a big stack of referrals from high school that I thought were lost! Now I can reminisce about how bad students at my high school were.

When thinking about architecture for Tilemap Town features one thing that pops into my mind is "wait a minute am I reinventing IRC services here?"

I think the real problem with IRC services was that it was sort of clunky having *core* features like name and channel ownership be bots you message, but that kinda stuff is actually integrated into the server here.

I guess the concept of non-core features in the form of server-side bots for all users to use is harmless, though.

I think it's amusing how the pizza recipe I use barely uses most of the ingredients. A teaspoon of salt and sugar, 1/16th cup of oil. You can buy a large container and not have to again for like a year if all you use them for is pizza.

And then cake calls for a whole 1/3 cup of oil and it looks a little less endless after making a few.