I’m thrilled to be the 10,082nd 👻 on BackerKit for “First in Fright: The FANGORIA Compendium”!

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Just call me Little Eric {first_name}}. 😁

After I’m gone, and the years have passed, I hope people will remember me not just as a man, but as a hoopy frood who really knew where his towel was.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Great find! Other than a couple of games I bought over the years, my 5.25” disks were always dark grey / black.

And 3.5” disks were another matter entirely… 😄

It looks like someone forgot to check their email template… 😁

https://itsericwoodward.com/images/fbbe1b75.png

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Congrats, that’s no small feat!

The blogosphere will never die!! 🤘

I went 1-for-2 again at Magic today, winning the first game with my (mostly standard) Fallout “Hail, Caesar” deck by creating a swarm of soldiers and slapping people across the face with them (LOL!), before quitting the 2nd game for lack of time after my board got wiped (I mean, I might have lucked into something eventually, but it was getting late, so I dropped out).

I hope to play more regularly going into the summer, but who knows.

@prologic@twtxt.net Wow, thanks everyone for the kind words! 😊

In answer to @movq@www.uninformativ.de and @bender@twtxt.net: I’m sorry, it’s just the default camera app on my Samsung Galaxy S23 phone with the “Portrait” mode turned on. It’s a trick I learned from my wife, who used to work for a dog daycare and took pics of doggos for their FB page. It works well for humans, too. 😁

I really dig #caturday on the Fediverse, so I thought I would start doing it here as well.

For this week, I’d like to introduce my spirit animal, Bowie.

https://itsericwoodward.com/images/4dde8634.jpg

May his supreme laziness (and fuzzy-chunky-monkey cuteness) serve as an inspiration to you, too.

https://itsericwoodward.com/images/bdd3932e.jpg

Reached a new high score on “River Raid” on the Atari800 emulator.

Overall, a most productive night. 😁

https://itsericwoodward.com/images/1e7c3058.png

Looking back on an old project, while keeping an eye to its future…

@tftp@tilde.town Greetings and salutations! 👋

@bender@twtxt.net Thanks!

I’m pleased to announce that express-twtkpr (my ExpressJS library for hosting, editing, and posting to a twtxt.txt file) continues to crawl towards a full release with another (pre-alpha) update published to NPM. This update includes a whole new plugin system, and even a (little) more documentation. Check it out, if you dare (and use it at your own risk): https://www.npmjs.com/package/express-twtkpr

And speaking of plugins, here’s where the fun’s at: announcing express-twtkpr-core-plugins, a set of 3 plugins for your TwtKpr install: emojiButton, uploadButton, and postToMastodon. Like express-twtkpr, this set of plugins is still in pre-alpha, and lacks documentation, examples, tests, installation flexibility, or polish (so also use them at your own risk). Other than that, they work great: https://www.npmjs.com/package/express-twtkpr-core-plugins

https://itsericwoodward.com/images/bba54e39.png
https://itsericwoodward.com/images/e472ea48.png
https://itsericwoodward.com/images/65b23473.png

Stay tuned for more! 🤘

@bender@twtxt.net I sound like I’m dumping on the game, but it really is alot of fun, especially with the right people. It’s just a whole different beast from D&D.

@bender@twtxt.net Apologies, I’m still working through some layout issues with TwtStrm and frequently miss mentions…

Magic: the Gathering does not use a Game Master (although professional referees are often used in sanctioned events). While the game has alot of thematic crossover with with D&D (or fantasy games in general), the system is much more of an abstract, card-dueling system involving things like “the stack” and insanely specific rules on card timing and interactions.

Like, we joke about “I’m sending my army of (goblins / elves / angels / whatever) at you,” but that’s about as far into the “role-playing” element most magic games get in my experience (and most of the “official” competitive games I’ve played at my FLGS were even more abstract and less thematic, although it’s been years since I played in one of those).

Agog to be the 2,644th backer 😎 on BackerKit Crowdfunding for Old-School Essentials Demonic Grimoire! https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/exalted-funeral/old-school-essentials-demonic-grimoire

My first game of Magic ended with a truly EPIC TURN yesterday…

It was a 5-player game, and I was running my (unpublished) Superfriends deck (mostly Planeswalkers and counter manipulators). After some ups and downs, I was able to pop the ultimate abilities on a handful of PWs all on a single turn, pumping my Bioessence Hydra to 110/110 (!) before tapping it twice to kill 2 opponents, and then following that by destroying all of the lands of a 3rd opponent and stealing all of the creatures from the 4th, at which point the survivors decided to quit. As I said, EPIC TURN!

Game 2 ran long, so I dropped out. But that first game…

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I’m glad you found it useful. :)

@klaxzy@klaxzy.net Thanks for that. I couldn’t agree more.

I won our only game of Magic for this week with my (yet-to-be published) “Bolas Triumphant” deck: 5 players over 3 hours, including 4 board wipes (one of which came from my Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh), and I even got to cast Omniscience via a Fae of Wishes. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I had a good time. 😁

Also, this really speaks to me (or maybe it speaks for me): https://neilzone.co.uk/2026/04/just-let-me-compute-in-peace/

“There is sauerkraut in my lederhosen.”

@bender@twtxt.net You got me there. Mine is mildly passive-aggressive, but ultimately supportive. Yours sounds… less helpful. 😀

Message on my watch this morning: “Last week’s goals slipped away. No worries, this week is yours!”

Thanks, watch. Where would I be without you?

TIL that SSH actually stands for Secure Snake Home, a massively multiplayer snake game playable via the SSH protocol: ssh snakes.run

Of course, no one else was online when I was playing, so…

https://itsericwoodward.com/images/047d28bb8c1ce8970ad2af0276cd3be58915a3cc69eb83c76f4a33954a9b623c.png

I went 1 for 2 at Magic this week… Temmet made a good showing the first game before being overwhelmed by an infinite number of Wylls (aka Fred Durst, on account of all his “rollin’, rollin’, rollin’!”). As a result, I unleashed Chatterfang on the group for the second game, and he lead his squirrel army to victory once again. Good times!

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org That’s crazy! If you don’t mind me asking, what browser are you using when you see this?

@bender@twtxt.net Glad to hear it, I’ve neglected a Safari test thus far.

Thank you both for checking.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org For reasons I can’t fully explain, we have a bunch of courses in the area, most in public parks (they integrate nicely since they can be built with the existing landscape, only adding some yellow baskets, concrete starting pads, and maybe signs).

In my experience, the main difference between a disc golfer and a frisbee thrower is that the disc golfer will often have a bag full of different shapes of discs (including drivers of varying ranges and/or putters). Even in my small bag, I’ve got some long range drivers (a Beast, a Cheetah, a Valkyrie, and a Wraith), my aforementioned MRV (Mid-Range Vector), an ultralight Aero (which feels similar to a “standard” frisbee), and 2 “rubber” putters (softer plastic, less “bouncy”).

https://itsericwoodward.com/images/da146cde70e843c4edd9012b11d528ad46c42c937f44d4428168be023f926b33.jpg

@bender@twtxt.net Thanks, and you are correct: MRV stands for Mid-Range Vector (I think) as it is a stable mid-range driver (it says so on the disc):
https://itsericwoodward.com/images/520b231931b8d8569d400e40e6fcc805b0bbee35e04b2ce5e35df0848852c807.jpg

@falsifian@www.falsifian.org Congrats! That’s no small feat.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Thanks (again) for the heads-up!. I’m not sure why you were seeing black text, but I just pushed a new version of the library (v0.10.1) with some updated colors in the demo’s themes (which should hopefully address the contrast issues).

The dark mode was an aesthetic choice by a designer with a strong preference for dark mode (and who thought the maroon looked better as a background color), but in the interest of being supportive of my audience, I added a localstorage-backed memory to the theme toggle (so when you turn it to light mode, it should remember for future visits).

For the first time in years, I managed to get out and throw a round of disc golf. Had a good time playing Vietnam Veterans Park in Kannapolis, throwing +10 over 9 holes, with my only par being thanks to a 40’ “putt” with my MRV. And the weather was perfect.

I hope to play another round soon.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Thanks for the heads-up.

It lead me to publish an updated version of twtxt-lib (v0.10.0) which supports the v2 hashing algorithm: https://twtxt-lib.itsericwoodward.com/

Went 2/3 at Magic today: Prosper dominated game 1, Ash and his Knights came within a single planar die roll of winning game 2, and then Atraxa came up with the win in a fairly tight game 3. All in all, not a bad afternoon of Magic.

@prologic@twtxt.net Thanks! 👍

@bender@twtxt.net Thanks for that as well, I’ve removed the extraneous letter and it now (correctly) points to https://www.itsericwoodward.com (I am a developer of webs, so I tend to have many webs in development at any given moment).

@bender@twtxt.net Thanks for the tip-off, fixed!

I hope to have some time this weekend to tease apart my current setup and build a couple of example sites with it (while also writing some docs along the way). But given the rate I’ve been going, it’ll probably be another month. 😢

I’m happy to report that, earlier today, I published an early version of express-twtkpr: an ExpressJS library that enables hosting (and directly posting to) a twtxt.txt file. It works great (otherwise you wouldn’t be able to read this), but it’s still in alpha and lacks documentation, examples, tests, installation flexibility, or polish, so please use it at your own risk. Enjoy! https://www.npmjs.com/package/express-twtkpr

@bender@twtxt.net Correctamundo! In this case, it’s available for the browser as a single (optionally-minified) JavaScript file, or for Node via NPM (as JS) and JSR.io (as “native” TypeScript).

I had to do it that way because I wanted a library I could use in both an Express server (for TwtKpr and TwtStrm) and the browser (for my website and… TwtStrm).

Hopefully, I’ll have more to share about those other projects soon…

New library alert => Last night, I published twtxt-lib, a new isomorphic TypeScript library for parsing and interacting with twtxt.txt files. Check out the demo at https://twtxt-lib.itsericwoodward.com/!

Last night, I beat Castlevania SotN. Tonight, I won the Superbowl in NFL Blitz 2000.

Clearly, my mad PS1 skillz are finally at their peak…

Another successful playthrough of Symphony of the Night draws to a close… And Richter’s story begins once again…

What a horrible night to have a curse…

Spent most of the long weekend working on a few coding projects… specifically, I pushed some updates for TwtKpr to my test instance before spending some time working on the build process and demo page for my new twtxt-parsing library… which lead me to make some changes to my existing fluent-dom-esm library.

So, nothing actually got finished, but the incremental updates continue…

New post: 2025 - A Year in review (https://www.itsericwoodward.com/journal/2025/12-31-year-in-review.html)

Happy New Year, everyone!

Day 6 of AoC, and I’m all caught up. 12 puzzles down, 12 more to go!

Working on day 3 of the Advent of Code 2025: https://adventofcode.com/

My solutions repo: https://git.itsericwoodward.com/eric/aoc-2025

I like to read through old RPG books and zines for inspiration for my games, and lately I’ve been enjoying the Arduin Grimoire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduin), one of the earliest 3rd-party zines (coming out during the initial run of OD&D). It’s filled with a bunch of unique ideas (some better than others), entirely too many charts, and is very much a product of its time, but there’s something about its “raw”-ness (and its variety) that I still find appealing.

I wound up running 2 out of 3 of the one-shots, both Halloween games based on Ravenloft / Curse of Strahd, and both rousing successes (for the players, not so much for Strahd).

Since I’m on something of a gaming kick, I think I’m going to try and finish plotting out the rest of the fae adventure I’m running for my kids, while also (hopefully) finishing my super secret astral gaming project.

Can I do it? Stay tuned and find out!

After taking most of the year off from role-playing, I’ve got 3 one-shots coming up in the next month, all of which need some tweaking before I can run them (as do my homebrew rules).

Plus there’s a “build a game” code challenge at work, a pair of media boxes I need to rebuild, a pair of dead machines I need to diagnose, and I’d like to (eventually) get my twtxt apps to a “releasable” state.

So many projects, so little (free) time…