RAWRRR!  Just in time for Halloween.

Kreator at Mac Hall on Sept 20, 2024

Table of contents

• Indie Sleaze
• Hand-coded HTML
• Recently on the ImplausiPod
• Multi-melting
• ICEBreakers
• Space Marine 2
• AppendixW Episode 99
• Slight Delay

Recently, on the implausi.blog...

As noted in the above blog post, we started creating a lite/indie version of the blog, along with the newsletter and podcast archives.  Right now, it's looking a little like this (clicking the image will take you there):

alternatively, you can use this link to get there directly.

Back in May when we introduced the idea of the Dial-Up Pastorale here in this newsletter, we talked about that moment in the zeitgeist where people from different areas were looking at a simpler way of interacting with the web. As noted in the blog post above, we took to updating a lite version of the blog, podcast and associated pages by hand.  Here's my impression, after the last few weeks:

A: The site is blazingly fast, in an impressive way.  Much like visiting the "lite" version of some major websites (witness the difference between the regular cnn.com homepage, and the lite version of CNN here)   and the difference is incredible.  Nothing is loading or buffering, it's just there.

B: Looks good on mobile, which goes hand-in-hand with the above, but it's nice to see how readily it adapts to the mobile experience, which granted, is mostly due to how the browser renders the page, and how readable it is.

C: No Javascript*, so again, nothing extra needs to be running for the page to just work.  Simplying following some sound construction principles provides a decent experience.  (* Now, there is a little bit, in the embedded player on the individual podcast pages, but you can still download the episode directly as well.  If I can figure out how to remove those links and allow for a player without the scripting, I'll make that happen, but it might take a little bit.  Baby steps.)

D: The site is knowable.  Still early days, I know, but the site and it's contents still feels known to me.  I've made a few mistakes that have necessitate going in and making a bunch of edits, but it was a learning process, and I know how it works better because of it.  The layout and structure may not be "optimal", but I understand it, and I know why a particular thing is where it is. There's a deep satisfaction in that. And that leads to...

E: It's fun, to work on, to play around with, to log into and make some changes, and see them take effect instantly, or to just update one of the backlog of episode pages when I'm having a bit of brainrot at the end of the day.  And that fun ultimately leads to doing it again, more often, more regularly.

In addition to all the work that was done with the porting the blog, pages, and feed, we've also ported over this very newsletter to a lite version over on the indie site too. The lite version of the newsletter archive is here.  Like much of the indie site, it's a little rough, but that's alright. The content is the thing.

Since the last issue of the newsletter came out back on August 28th, we've been on a pretty good run with the Implausipod.  Some of these episodes will be familiar to readers of the newsletter, as we've discussed parts of them before, but let's recap what we've been up to:

A busy couple months, with an episode nearly every two weeks!  This is getting close to where I want to be.  And, as part of our "indie sleaze", the episodes and transcripts are available under the indie section of the website at indie.implausi.blog/implausipod/podcast.html, if that is easier to access.

We've continued our trend for this year with grabbing a new album every few weeks, to the best of my ability, and added a couple concerts to the mix as well, along with a movie and a video game, of which we'll talk more later.

Despite what the above record selection would indicate, we're pretty excited by all genres of music, and when an opportunity came to see Kings of Leon at the Saddledome came along, it was easy to say yes.

I'm not that familiar with their catalog of songs, outside of a couple of the hits, and they were set to share a huge sample of that catalog with their fans.  Setlist.fm lists them as playing some 27 songs over the 2-1/2 hours of the show, and I unfortunately had to step away a little early.  Perhaps a little too much Leon for the Kings, but a hyped crowd helped bring the energy.
 

Ever go to a concert and a D&D session breaks out?  That pretty much describes my experience at the Klash of the Titans tour.  The stage show for Kreator (shown at the top of this newsletter) was fantastic, with three giant demon statues filling the back half of the cozy stage, reflecting the lights and casting deep shadows all throughout the set.  The crowd was hyped, and even though I had never given them a huge listen, it was a lot of fun.  I probably tuned out a little bit near the halfway point of the set as the music veered near self-parody, but it was still a lotta fun.

Testament also brought some old school thunder, focussing on their first two albums, which was fine by me.  I had seen them a few times before, the first nearly 34 years ago back in 1990, and they were impressive enough live back then to warrant continued interest.  A solid set, fast and furious, with images out of the Monster Manual on the screen behind them (as shown above).  Fantastic stuff.

I came a little late to the show to see all of the Possessed set, unfortunately, but it was great to see some pioneers still rocking on the stages, and hanging with the audience through the rest of the show.  Great attitude here too.

In addition to the above, we managed to check out Joker 2: Folie a Deux and the new Space Marine 2 video game, of which more below...

And the multi-melting gave us the opportunity to return to something I had first tried out a few year ago: a shorter version of the podcast, running at about 5 minutes, as a commentary on something more recent in the news, a movie review, or as a extension of one of the longer episodes.  In the last 5 weeks, we've done all three:

ICEBreaker 002 - Excession a bit of additional info for episode 36 of the podcast.

ICEBreaker 003 - Joker 2: Joke Harder a review on commentary on the new movie.

ICEBreaker 004 - Opti-minus commentary on the impact of the recent Tesla event.

ICEBreaker 005 - Terminator at 40 reflections on the 40th anniversary of a genre-defining classic.

I've dubbed these bonus episodes as "ICEBreakers" because:

• a) they're short,
• b) they're a quick take
• c) they're significantly easier to produce
• d) they're topical

In short, they're fun for me, and as you tell by this list, they kinda fit with the aesthetic of our approach to Hand-Coded HTML too, and I hope you enjoy them as well.  I think we'll try and fit more of those into the mix as we go forward.

Given the general thrust of the content on this tiny corner of the internet, this one may have seemed obvious, but truth be told it has likely been over a decade since I bought a "AAA" gaming titles within a month or so of it's release. 

(Check that: just under, as the Doom reboot came out in 2016.   So sub in "nearly" instead.)

But a few weeks of constant clips of live plays and streamers did its work (remember, all promo content is advertising, after a fashion), and I felt I had to jump in. 

The game is beautiful and awe-inspiring, in ways that I'm probably not qualified to say, but the visuals were stunning, and the speed of play, while not quite at the levels of Doom, still moved quick and emulated the target fiction quite well.  For good and/or ill (see below).

Two big downsides, as sometimes it became grindy (on my machine) in ways beyond my control, with some scenes feeling like an Everquest raid circa 1999.  Lag......

The other was the difficulty in mapping my inputs to the match my expected actions within the game.  Sometimes I felt like I was simply mashing the buttons until all the enemies stopped moving their pixels around the screen. I know there are more advanced combos, yet I have no idea how to effect them in game.

Still a lot of beautiful, messy fun.

Or at least one of them, as while you may have a destination in mind when you start a project, the place you may wind up at be wildly different, or at least the path more circuitous than expected. So if I didn't discover anything new along the way, it would have been a fine project, but I would have been a little disappointed.

The original endpoints can be seen in some of the sections that we started with: the descriptions of technology, the methods of travel, the aliens encountered; all overarching aesthetic elements by which we classify something as "sci-fi".  And while we were off hunting for the origins of things, we began to weigh how much these tales had directly influenced their descendant that they had heavily inspired.

And that inspiration can be seen directly in how some of those aesthetic elements were portrayed by their modern descendant.  But there is more to it than just that aesthetic dimension, as the beliefs and ideologies of those authors were also embedded in the fiction they wrote as well. Sometime explicit, as seen in Starship Troopers or The Forever War, sometimes more tacit or obfuscated.

These beliefs were those of the post-war era, in tales written by men* who often served or came of age during World War II. Their science fiction reflects that era: we see large militaries and bureacracies; hierachies and authoritarianism; of the belief in the rightness of one's cause; of being on the winning side.  Sometimes this is questioned as in Dune, and sometimes it is exagerrated to the point of satire as in Judge Dredd, but regardless, they were common enough that the tropes and stereotypes began to be repeated.  Zapp Brannigan, I'm looking at you.

So part of our original goal was to see how the impact of these ideologies can be traced as well, the throughline that follows through fiction through the decades, the continuous feedback loops between fiction and the real world.  And this is still one of the goals.

But the real world has funny ways of moving faster that you might like. And real world events are starting to see the manifestation of these ideologies in ways that it wasn't thought possible.  So while the podcast is barely at the beginning, we're soon going to publish the penultimate episode. Episode 99.  Then we'll go back and fill in the spots in between.  And we'll leave room for an episode 100, to catch all those things undreamt of when we started, to combines those elements of nescience and excession and bring them together with what we already know.

Stay tuned, we'll announce it here and on the blog when it arrives.

If you've been with us for a while, you many have noticed that there was no September issue, and this is a combined September/October one. It seemed the most expedient way to cover the slippage that happened as the end of September got very hectic for external reasons, combined with my ambivalence about continuing to use wordpress as a platform.

Luckily, the newsletter is in a simple enough format that we can migrate it elsewhere, like the indie version mentioned above, or somewhere else if need be.The goal is still monthly, or more frequently, if my writing process allows for that, but in the event of a brief absence, we'll manage like we did here.

Next time, we'll have a few more episodes to talk about, expanded social media, and we'll delve into the world of "no-code" process automation with a visit to Make.com.

Contact us at drimplausible@implausi.blog

See you soon!