I found this on Facebook, and thought I would share it.  Not too bad...

This one I got a giggle out of!

My fiancee asked me to do a Tarot reading about the Election, and I hesitantly agreed.  In my opinion, there are better tools to use for discerning major prophetic perspectives than Tarot (I'm looking at you, Astrology), but since I don't know enough about Astrology yet to make any kind of educated guesses by looking at Charts, I drew five Tarot cards for a reading.

"What will the next four years of America look like?"



The Universe, The Aeon (Judgement), The Sun, The Moon, and The Star.

The very first thing that popped out to me was the fact that not only are all of these cards Major Arcana cards, but they are the LAST FIVE in REVERSE sequential ORDER.  I looked at the next several cards to ensure that the cards were in fact shuffled, and they were (The Ace of Cup, the Six of Wands, etc).  AND, I also noticed that the VERY BOTTOM card was the "instruction" card, which I forgot to take out of the pack before shuffling.  The odds of this occurring just boggle my mind, because I shuffled these cards for a good five minutes while in meditation.  The fact that this is the first time in over a year that I've picked up this deck to do a reading is also telling.

So, onto the reading. What does the next four years for America look like?

Well, the Universe card, indicates the completion of a cycle.  Because the Major Arcana cards depict a story of The Fool in his/her journey through life, the Universe is an upward spiral card.  We are at Square Zero again, but on an elevated plane.  We've learned the lessons we've needed to know, and have applied them.  We are ready for our next adventure!

The Aeon card is Judgement in other Tarot decks (I'm using the Thoth deck here, only because I was working on my bed).  It signifies that a Divine Judgement will come to pass, people who have been bettering themselves and working on helping others shall be rewarded, while people who have been causing harm and chaos shall be punished.

The Sun card is always a welcoming card of growth, warmth, generosity, and nurturing love.  I'm not sure what else I need to say about this card showing up in a reading.  It's a really positive card!

The Moon, on the other had is full of mysterious secrets, deals with the Occult and hidden knowledge.  Secrets being revealed, it talks about the subconscious mind, and the land of dreams and illusions.  However, the Moon is also a feminine archetype, so this could be point out that perhaps Kamala Harris will become the next President?

The Star, is the card of Hope.  This card comes after the Tower card, or a traumatic destruction or event surrounded by chaos.  The Star is a beacon, that guides us in the direction we should follow, IF we're wise enough to follow it.

If I were to add in what little astrology I do know, knowing that we are actually entering into the Age of Aquarius, and Pluto will finally complete it's passage in Capricorn at the end of this year.  This, I feel is important, and the synchronicities are very telling.  There are no such things as coincidences.  Overall, I would put this down as a very positive reading, and I must admit, like many other Americans, breathed a sigh of relief and excitement when Harris was endorsed by President Biden.  Finally, we may not be stuck in a repeat of 2020 (Biden vs. Trump).  I believe that nobody truly wanted to run that race again.

Honestly, I have to admit that I don't think I've ever been more excited about politics.  Here, stands before us a woman who is somebody who I believe could unite all the minority groups (with the exception of MAGA).  She believes in liberty and freedom for ALL.  She's got my vote!

So, I got to thinking today while wasting away at work...."Why would I play this game.  What's the point, what's the goal.  What pleasure could be invoked by playing this game.

I want this game to focus on fun, taking your time, just kind of meandering through it.  I don't want any clocks to beat, and I've never really been all that excited about competition.  So I got to thinking, most games that feature this type of slow, gradual pace involve creation, whether by building or crafting.  I think that should be a major component.  Another option I could pursue would be puzzles, although, I must admit, I'm not really any good at creating puzzles to solve.  And I'm wanting something fairly straight forward.  Beasts that may threaten your character's life to be neutralized may be a good way to blow off some steam.

Another thing I got to thinking of is what about achievements?  Instead of just some arbitrary level, why not have the levels give something that's tangible to the character/player?  Like, I'm thinking about granting special abilities, unlocking them as you progress, but I'm not sure if I want it to be something that can be sought out through like perform X quest to unlock Y skill/ability.

But at the same time, I want this to be more interesting than just a "hack and slash" game.  I'm sure more things will be created as I develop the game core.  And of course, I always welcome your ideas!

After some trial runs, it appears that 3 minutes at 350 degrees is about perfect.  Maybe 2 minutes.

I have been looking to purchase a toaster or toaster oven, but then somebody suggested, since I already have an air fryer, why not use it and save my money.  I never thought about using an Air fryer to make toast.  So, I googled some "recipes" for toast.  Who would have thought...?

Anyway, I've seen temperatures between 350 and 400 degrees, and times between 3 minutes to 5 minutes.  So, I guess it's going to depend on the type of bread, and how dark I want my toast.  I'm going to have to experiment!  I may even take this a step further and try making grilled cheese sandwiches in the air fryer too!  Why not, right?  I'll let you know my results the next time I have a craving for toast!

AniMyth (short for Anime Mythology), is a game concept I started dreaming about back in 2010 when a former friend of mine convinced me to help him on a game he was building.  I was to be the background story creator, however, after playing around with Unity 3D for a while, I quickly fell in love with game design itself.  Today, I've migrated over to Unreal Engine, for a number of reasons.

AniMyth started out with being an anime-centric clone of Asherson's Call, a MMORPG that was one of the original big three games that ran from 1999 through 2017.  And there are still many aspects that I'm borrowing from Asheron's Call.  However, I'm taking full creative liberty with this project.  I've actually decided to make this game a hybrid between a typical RPG (role playing game) and a RTS (real time strategy).  I'm not entirely sure what this game will look like as a result, but just imagine something like World of Warcraft combined with StarCraft or Rise of Nations.

I want the game to be anime centric.  So all the characters will be based on the Anime style.  Think of wild hair colors, and provocative outfits.  Physics will also be non-normal.  I'm going to be building the game so that it can be played Stand Alone, meaning by your self, but I also want to include network capabilities too.  Remember the old LAN parties of the late '90's?  Maybe, if the game idea gets popular enough, I'll add a Dedicated Server function, but honestly, that could be years away.

I'm looking for some ideas, as I don't often actually play computer games much anymore.  But I'm having a blast learning and creating my own game.  I'm thinking I may borrow heavily from the many role playing game systems that I've purchased, changing them up to make my own system (must avoid the copyright infringement monster!)  In fact, I've already got the basic STAR system that I developed for my pen/paper RPG I was creating.

Some main aspects that I'm taking from Asheron's Call, are an easy and intuitive interface.  Most of the information is contained within the Right-hand panel.  There will be a Message Box Area that will be useful for diagnostic information and special commands, I'm thinking.  After all, eventually, I'm planning on this being a LAN based game, so you're going to to want to have the ability to communicate within the game!

I also want the game to be slightly educational.  I'm going to be adding in the various bits of mythological lore, herbology, and technology construction that I'm fairly comfortable with.  But as for right now, I don't have a clear definition about where I want this game to go, just that I know I want to build it.  I know that it's going to probably be set in the Near Future time setting, but I'll probably place it on the mythical island of Ogygia.  Kind of a blend between past and future.  I want the ability to leisurely create your "city", which may actually be a the internals of a computer system.  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to pull that off yet.  Time will tell.

Let me hear some of your ideas, what do you think would be cool to have in a small indie game like this?

Here we are, another Progress Log!  Day one:

So in a plot that sounds like it came straight out of a movie, let me see if I got the current events timeline correct.  The Heritage Foundation, gets hacked by a group of Gay Furries, leaked the data to the world, turns out some of the connections to the above mentioned Foundation have IP addresses originating from China, and now the FBI is involved because of foreign political influence?