Blag 
Sending my Phone to Jupiter
November 19, 2025—I've been thinking a lot about dumb-phones recently. I didn't have a smartphone until 2016, so I'm probably doing better-off than a lot of folks when it comes to small-screen addition, but it still manages to be a time-waster for me. However, I'm mostly just sick to death of 10,000 notifications a second from every single thing—some of them useful and important, but many of them only barely so. I don't even have a lot of apps installed. It's just part of the endless wave of attention-seeking from the entire world I guess. I'm also a hater of having to open my phone when I'm out of the house to look at a menu, or search for something! I don't want to look at the internet! I want to be able to leave!!
Anyways, I learned today about the death of 3G (and soon, 4G) networks across the U.S. and how that unfortunately renders a lot of old phones into bricks. I was surprised to learn that the old 2G bands seem to be hanging on in some markets though! According to randoms online, its because some mid-distance radios (think security guards and little trucks without CBs) rely on it, as well as some back-up cell service for stuff like elevator-rescue-phones and security systems. Going even deeper, I learned there were two competing standards for 2G service (in addition to the multiple bands), GSM & CDMA, with the latter not surviving in any meaningful way here. Point is, that I could maybe grab an old Blackberry 8820 or Curve and be in business as a call/SMS only person. When I have more time for that distraction I'll learn more.
This is, of course, part of my larger mission in life to become harder to reach. This sounds silly, but I have come to truly believe that the extremely recent phenomenon of never being able to "step out" is 100% bad for us. To no surprise, this is mostly abused by employers and other huge businesses, but it rubs off on all our social expectations. Until extremely recently (2000s, I'd say), it was completely acceptable that someone could step out of the house and just be ~gone~ from the world for a little bit. It feels scary now, but I think that regular experience of mini-isolation was probably very important to our minds.
I've been thinking about how much I hate big companies and AI too (they are friends). I've settled in my opinion that I categorically hate AI and don't care what it can, could, or might ever do, because it will always be negative for regular people. Think about the industrial revolution for a moment: a lot of people focus on the demographic shift of farmers, no longer needed in the fields thanks to greater crop yields and mechanization, moved to the cities and factories for "a better life." They made more money, yes, but were on the whole much more unhappy due to their treatment. But I think we also forget what happened to the skilled artisan, who went from a pretty nice station in life to the same horrible factories. The conditions sucked, the work sucked, and they all derived 0 joy because they just did one horrible thing all horrible day. It sucked so bad, they invented communism about it.
I'm curious to see what happens when this next batch of professionals are all laid off again, and sent to the only non-automate-able professions left like service. It's going to be a nightmare (even more that it already is) for young people&emdash;imagine an 18-year-old having to interview against teachers, accountants, and lawyers for their crappy job because all those professions were replaced with LearnGPT or Goobi or PongO or whatever the hell the new Satan will be called. I saw a report recently that the top 10% of earners make up almost 50% of all consumer spending because everyone is broke. All these big companies in every field are ripping everyone off AND cooking their books through funny accounting and massive amounts of circular-borrowing that it all has to fall apart at some point. Something's got to give! The financial economy and the real economy aren't even connected at this point; investors make money on imagination and fairy dust.
I'm trying to let myself ramble more and, in turn, let these posts be longer. We've forgotten how to just... write essays about stuff. The act of creation effects the thing created and the person who makes it; I'm trying to create more real things because of it. I was looking for something in Emerson's Spiritual Laws the other day (I didn't find what I was looking for) and got distracted reading some honestly beautiful sentiments and ideas that, effectively, some random guy just had one day. I do not think this blagpost will be someday significant, but maybe something I just write down will be. They say writing presupposes thinking, but profound thoughts presuppose writing (lots and lots of garbage writing, specifically). More thinks = gooder thoughts :3
Also, I think I should title these, since the RSS format implies that maybe smart boys use titles for posts.
November 06, 2025—I found out that we can't embed scripts in free neocities pages :c I had found a cute visitor counter that looked like a little train. Alas. I did, however, add an RSS feed to this blogpage! I thought it would be fun to bring that relic back too. If I can just convince my friends to do the same, we won't have to keep telling each other "look at my site" when we add new stuff. No idea if it's working. I may add a little RSS button up by the word "Blag" just to show it off. So if you see that, I did.
November 02, 2025—I just realized I've been forgetting to update the "Last Updated" text on my site. I don't really need it on this page, huh? I might leave it on the other ones though.
I have an interest in cars, and have recently been looking into the Texas rules for classic car plates (because my cars are old). The rules were made for the older, date-stamped plates, so I wasn't sure that it was even possible to get approval for the later sticker'd plates. So far, it looks like they'll let you use them, based on a single photo I've seen so far. Anyways, I purchased some 1983 stickers to (hopefully) affix to a correct-vintage plate in case I come across one in the wild. I just think cars with old plates looks so... proper.
My normal car is from 1999, which is also considered classic (yuck!), but by '99 Texas plates didn't have any date indicators on them, so I haven't found out if there's any chance on me getting to use those plates yet. Hopefully I can find out! In case anyone has the car sickness, here's what I got:
- 1999 Honda Prelude, Blue
- 1983 Mercedes-Benz 300DT, Black
Oh, and of course, these are examples of the 1983 and 1999 plates (from licenseplateinfo.com) c:
October 28, 2025—Hoo boy. I decided to try installing Linux now that Windows 10 is at the end-of-service (and I hate using Windows 11). I actually grew up in a Linux house, and have been using it off-and-on since Ubuntu's "Warty Warthog" days. But it's never really been all that pleasant to use. I'm giving it another go now, and it seems (so far) that things have finally stopped being so crusty all the time. I still had to install Windows 11 to the other SDD though, since I need it for AutoCAD and the Microsoft™ Family of Products™. I really ought to be studying instead. Oops.
Also oops, I started re-making the entire Joan of Arc campaign in Age of Chivalry: Hegemony to be more reflective of history. Idk that I'll ever finish it, but learning how to use the Triggers that scared me as a kid is very rewarding.
October 10, 2025—I found it!!! If you're looking for your edited scenarios, they get moved to "Users\[You]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files(x86)\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires II\Games\Age of Chivalry\Scenario" Apparently, the "VirtualStore" is a Windows workaround for making Program Files into an admin-only area so that (esp. older) programs don't explode when write-denied.
If you install the game elsewhere this probably won't happen to you!
Otherwise, I've been very busy lately. I added the "indentations" for these blogposts today too, since they were getting hard to discern.
October 09, 2025—I spent way too long yesterday and today trying to convert the "Joan of Arc" campaign from Age of Empires II to work with the Age of Chivalry: Hegemony total conversion mod. It uses the CD version (1.0c), which has been absolutely supplanted online by both the HD Remaster and the Definitive Edition. It made finding any valid resources extremely difficult. Shout out to the AoK Heaven forums for keeping stuff up; I was looking at posts from 2003 to find this info. I learned a lot about how the game files are organized though. You can extract the .cpn (campaign) files with a tool—AoK Campaign Manager—and get the .scn files back out. Those files don't come with any of the AI scripts (sorta; see below) or sounds though, but they will seek them out if you put them in the right places. All the sounds in the base-game folder (\sounds) have to be moved into the Chivalry sub-folder (\games\Age of Chivalry\sounds). The AI scripts are semi-embedded in the .scn files until you touch them in the editor. You have to use "AoK Trigger Studio" to dump the .per files, then make your own .ai files (they are just blank files with the same name and .ai extension), then move all those scripts to the "\AI.Scripts" folder in Chivalry (not the base game!). What a mess.
Having done all that, and updated the scenarios, I am pleased to report that the saving process has moved them to some unknown location and I can't find them! I looked all around the mod install, the base game install, and even through my %temp% folder but didn't find anything :c
Alas, such is life. (If you know where they are please let me know.)
October 02, 2025—I read Project Hail Mary over the weekend; it was really good! It had been on my "for sure gonna read" list forever, but (at their reccomendation) my partner and I went to the library and I actually checked it out and read it all in one go. Supporting libraries is cool! In a similar vein of "imagine doing something for months instead of doing it", I decided to pick up Foxhole on Steam's autumn sale. I really just want to drive those little narrow-gauge trains and don't really care about the shooty bits. I used to play EVE back in the day, so I think the extremely slow always-online pace will be fine for me. Time will tell!
I also added some newspapers to the mod, which was fun. At some point I should probably expand the scope to add more "filler" articles, which I've considered doing based on some real articles I've read from the time, like one marveling about a Boston company that was contracted to ship ice to the Pacha of Egypt in 1836[source].
September 22, 2025—I moved the *this* part of the website to here! I think its more appropriate and maybe I'll do little updates like its 2005. I was sick all weekend with fever, a sentence directly from 1850. I also added a guestbook! I can't think of a good image to replace the host's logo though :/
September 19, 2025—Does this page look broken? Try Ctrl+F5. I finally put some substance up on this site. Every button now leads somewhere! That stupid dropdown menu on "Gamestuff" took forever to get to display, so please enjoy clicking on it (if you put an element inside a link, it will only sorta-function. If it had just been 100% broken, I would have figured it out sooner). I guess this is just the landing page, but maybe it'll become a blagosphere-type environment? I think the net needs to heal by having more random people talking to no one like the good-ol-days and less social media hyper-botted mega-consumer "content". I'm going to try and avoid the term in relation to my own work here, and I think everyone should do the same; we aren't content!
Anyway, art, maps, my extra-niche mod for Victoria 2, and some funni haha images have all been added today c:
I've saved this image a long time... now it shall rise.
