11/06/2022: State of the Site Address

Spooky Month has come and gone, and only two blog posts were made during that time. Oh, well. I guess the scariest thing of all is forgetting to update!

New Let's Plays:

Last time I updated, I only had two Let's Plays of Super Mario Odyssey out. This time, there's a total of seven episodes! You can find them here on this site or you can find all episodes and series on The Official Grimbark Gaming Youtube Channel. That place will be the most up-to-date collection of the Let's Plays and series that we've been working on. I'll be working on keeping this site up-to-date as well, but as we've seen, sometimes there will be delays.

New Pokemon Content?

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet will be releasing worldwide on November 18th, 2022. In less than two weeks from the time of writing this, it will be released, and I'm ecstatic! I've been looking forward to this game for a while, and every new official information drop has only made me more excited! I've always been a Pokemon fan, but I don't think I've been this eager to try a new game in a while.

This all being said, I'm not sure if there will be Pokemon Scarlet / Violet content on this site for a while. I don't want to make playing video games a job / chore for myself, so I don't want to make any promises. There is no official schedule or plan for content as of this moment. Still, there will likely be a Let's Play at some point, since it's the latest Pokemon game.

Pokemon Legends Arceus Projects

I have been working on spreadsheets and projects for Pokemon Legends Arceus. There is a completed spreadsheet that includes the general locations of all Pokemon, the Research Tasks that you need to complete, a breakdown of the Moves you need to see Pokemon use, and a breakdown of which Pokemon you need to defeat with certain Move Types. There is also a Defeat Rate analysis page that goes over maximum efficiency of Pokedex Perfection. In other words, if you wanted to use the required Moves to defeat Pokemon that need to be defeated with certain Move Types, how difficult would that be? This tool is meant to aid Pokemon Trainers with perfecting (or at least completing) the PLA Dex as efficiently as possible.

However, I'm running into a bit of trouble when it comes to hosting this tool. My initial idea was to have a download link on a Tutorial / Tool page to allow Trainers to have their own copy. The issue is that Neocities only allows uploading a limited number of file extensions for a basic account. I tried to work around this using an XML file format (which is supported), but I ran into issues when downloading the file. I'm unsure if I want to link to a Google Drive repository, since that both goes against the philosophy of Neocities (keep things hosted here), and I don't want to maintain a separate Google Drive repo for these projects.

I will likely be working on this problem, either by uploading a modified version of my research to the Pokemon Center or by figuring out an alternative solution.

toki pona: The Language of Good

Another project I've been working on is learning toki pona, a conlang made by jan Sonja. Toki pona has ~120 words, making it a relatively easy conlang to learn. In the preface of her book "Toki Pona, the Language of Good," she make the comparison, "If English is a thick novel, then Toki Pona is a haiku." The focus of the language is on simplicity, not specificity. A good resource for learning the language can be found here.

I'm very much so a beginner to this language. I wouldn't even call myself a speaker of toki pona. Still, I find this conlang really interesting, and I want to share what I've been working on. There are many communities that are dedicated to learning this conlang, and so if you're curious about it, I recommend checking it out!

Fairly Oddparents: An Analysis

Full disclosure: I did not grow up with Fairly Oddparents. I didn't have cable TV when I was a kid, and even then, Fairly Oddparents wasn't exactly my top pick. I did grow up with two VHS tapes with episode collections, but that can only tell you so much about a series. Now that I have access to the show, I was curious about the show, and I wanted to analyze it. I've been slowly watching every episode and taking notes about my thoughts. The finished project won't be out for a while, and I'm not sure where I would put it on this site as it stands. I feel like relegating it to a blog post doesn't seem quite right, but I'll figure out where it should live closer to its release, if it even lives on here.

Archiving the Site

I've been trying to keep the sidebars up-to-date on the newest additions to this site, but it's starting to run a bit long. There are many pages where the content is short, but the sidebar make the page longer. I will be workshopping ideas on this issue; I do like the way that the right sidebar keeps track of the newest additions to the three main parts of the site (Blog, Gaming, Let's Plays), but the left sidebar will only continue to grow if I keep using the current system. I feel like adding a scrollbar would only delay the inevitable, rather than being a proper solution to the issue. There may end up being a "Changelog" option on the navbar so that all of the changes are documented, but they're off in their own little corner. Maybe the right sidebar will move to the left. Who knows?

Thank You!

If you've made it this far, then thank you so much! Genuinely, it makes me happy that you at least had some fun reading this. I've been working on a lot of projects for myself, and it's nice to share them here, even if they're not complete. This site isn't dead; it's just dormant. What did you expect in the Fall? In all seriousness, I will keep posting here, even if it's not super frequently. Thanks for being on this ride!