Whatever Matt Feels Like Posting

So, I'm way too late in posting this (again), but my 26th birthday was last Sunday!!

Wow... I'm 26. I remember when it felt like it would be a LOOONG time until I was 13. Now I've waited that long twice!

What I got for my birthday:

- Piranha Plant amiibo!
- Three books I read years ago and wanted to reread: Caps For Sale, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, and How to Eat Fried Worms! (Well, I thought I read them all years ago, but I'm reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing right now and everything is so unfamiliar to the point that I think I may not have actually read it years ago, I just remembered thinking the title is funny-sounding. So maybe I'm reading it for the first time now! Would you look at that!)
- They didn't come in until the 18th, but Nintendo Labo VR Goggles!!!! I've been wanting those ever since I knew about the new VR mode in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate! :D

(note to self: put in the previous/next buttons later)

http://www.museumofconceptualart.com/accomplished/index.html

(This marks 10 years after when I did this when I turned 16, the first time I ever posted this for my birthday. Wow... I've known about this website for over ten years. And it's still around, even! Good for them!)

At age 26:

American anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote her famous dissertation, Coming of Age in Samoa, which claimed that in some societies adolescence is not a particularly difficult time.

Albert Einstein published five major research papers in a German physics journal, fundamentally changing man's view of the universe and leading to such inventions as television and the atomic bomb.

Benjamin Franklin published the first edition of Poor Richard's Almanac, which was to play a large role in molding the diverse American character.

Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Chereshkova became the first woman to travel in space.

College dropout Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Computer.

Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, revolutionizing the economies of the United States and Britain.

Antoine Joseph Sax invented the brass saxophone.

"Johnny Appleseed" brought apple seeds to the Ohio Valley.

Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Italy.

Gon Yangling memorized more than 15,000 telephone numbers in Harbin, China.

Orion Krynen of Denver, CO reached this age without much incident.

British ethologist Jane Goodall set up camp in the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve on Lake Tanganyika and began studying the lives of chimpanzees.

Ken Kesey published his first novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Thomas Pynchon published V., for which he won the William Faulkner First Novel Award.

Kirsteene Luhrmann of Melburne, Victoria quit smoking.

Stephen Breen from Dublin, Ireland found this site.

Darren Blackburn became the first and only athlete of the Principality of Sealand, despite being somewhat lacking in athletic ability.

Syd Jesus co-founded the dUdU Art Collective in Oakland, California and turned an entire warehouse space into a conceptual art piece entitled "The $5000 Gallery."

Matthew Royer took a dog for a walk every day of the year in Minnesota, with a coldest daytime high of 0 degrees F. The average walk time was 30 minutes.

Derrick Pallas was horrified to realize he was losing his hair, just like Dad.

Jan Birkeland from Norway managed to get to work without hitting a single red light.

Katherine Blauvelt in a skirt was deemed "all grown-up" by her boyfriend.

Kristen finally was able to get her fingernails to grow without chipping and peeling because she started taking a multi-vitamin on a daily basis.

Tom Pemberton rode a bicycle with lit fireworks strapped to it into a pool while wearing a banana costume.

SJ Yee resigned from a giant multinational corporation to found a personal development site for the book smart.

Angie Olson got so drunk on her 26th birthday, her friends were able to dress her up as a clown.

matt1993 discovered the two mysterious lost episodes of Super Mario Maker Crash Course.

...

Okay, okay, that last one's not on the list. But it SHOULD be! I have a story behind that. Stay tuned for when I write a full post about it!

Speaking of Miiverse, here's a Miiverse backup post that I meant to post last week! :)

Featuring what apparently was my first few Nintendo Land posts in 13 days. At the time, that was my longest hiatus from any specific Miiverse community in addition to this being the first time I posted to Miiverse at all in over a week.

← 01/10/2013 01/21/2013 - 02/01/2013 →

Nintendo Land Community
Matt 01/18/2013 8:45 PM

Nintendo Land Plaza


8 7


Nintendo Land Community
Matt 01/18/2013 8:50 PM

The Legend of Zelda: Battle Quest
Having to keep refilling my quiver makes ME quiver...

3 0


Nintendo Land Community
Matt 01/18/2013 9:02 PM

Metroid Blast
Wow, Level 6 was easy compared to the one before it...

5 0


Nintendo Land Community
Matt 01/18/2013 9:54 PM

Donkey Kong's Crash Course
Finally made it to Area 8!

6 0


Nintendo Land Community
Matt 01/19/2013 7:19 PM

Pikmin Adventure


7 1

(It turned out I was remembering wrong when I drew that first panel - in that section, the ? Block [that I'd opened by that point on the first try but not the second try] has a clock IN it; the ? Block and the clock are not both there at the same time. I'm pretty sure the one comment was me pointing this out.)


*I always assumed this was specifically the theme for timed missions in Pikmin Adventure, but apparently it's not!

I was supposed to have posted this one last week. This feature just keeps steadily getting less and less regular...

← 01/01/2013 01/05/2013 3:30-5:30 PM →


New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 01/03/2013 9:12 PM

Dragoneel's Undersea Grotto
Considering how hard Dragoneel is to avoid, how did we beat it with 3 Star Coins on 1 try?

1 0


New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 01/03/2013 10:18 PM

Which-Way Labyrinth
Sorry, Boos! In Soviet Russia, Baby Yoshis scare YOU!

2 0

(Huh. Apparently my first two [and only two, I think] Soviet Russia jokes on Miiverse were a mere four days apart. I thought there was a longer time span than that between them.)


New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 01/03/2013 10:35 PM

Flight of the Para-Beetles


1 0


New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 01/03/2013 11:13 PM

Seesaw Bridge
This level seems even harder the second time around…

1 0


New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 01/04/2013 10:45 PM

Spine-Tingling Spine Coaster


1 0

Woefully late in posting this, but:

----

Go to Wordle and...

1) Paste in all entries you posted in January 2017 and make a Wordle configured any way you like
2) Paste in all entries you posted in February 2017 and make another Wordle configured any way you like
...
12) Paste in all entries you posted in December 2017 and make another Wordle configured any way you like
13) Make a Wordle out of your entries from ALL months of 2017, configured any way you like

Then post all of these Wordles to your LiveJournal and/or DreamWidth and/or whatever other blogging site(s) you're on!


You may do steps 1 - 12 only or step 13 only if you prefer.

It's up to you if you include subject lines, comments, community entries, friends-only entries, music tags, location tags, etc., and it's up to you whether you post your Wordles in a public or friends-only entry. Anything else I didn't think of is probably optional as well.

And if you're on more than one journal site (in this example, LJ and DW), you may do this for your LJ entries only, your DW entries only, your entries on both sites combined, all of the above - whichever. And you may post it to only one site or the other, or to both - whichever you prefer.

----

Personally I opted to do this for my LJ and DW entries separately AND combined, and post all three versions of each to both LJ and DW. Which means this took about six times as long to make as it usually does...

Left: LJ only
Center: LJ+DW combined
Right: DW only

You can also tell because I tried to skew the colors of the LJ-only ones towards LJ-blue and away from DW-red/pink, and vice versa for the DW-only ones. Looking at how some of the color schemes turned out, though, I might need to adjust my algorithm before my 2018 Wordle Year in Review...

( Wordles under the cut! )

Oh, and this year, I thought of a little word search game I could add onto this meme! (you don't have to make a little game like this if you make your own Wordle Year in Review though)

( Wordle Search! )

Well, today is the day that Miiverse is shut down at 10 PM PST. (which would be midnight in Central where I live, so... I guess for me, it's not actually today? Whatever.)

Out of all the drastic changes this year (so far), I think this is the only one that I'm not all that upset about. Miiverse started out as probably the most positive online community ever, but it didn't stay that way for long - eventually it went so downhill, it's been years since the last time I visited Miiverse itself. I'd still read posts whenever they appeared in game (Super Mario 3D World, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Nintendo Badge Arcade, etc.), but I think the last time I went to Miiverse itself was 2014. Maybe 2015. I didn't even hurriedly try to find a way to save my own posts somewhere. (Though while looking up information about the discontinuation, I did notice that there's a way to request a downloadable archive of my posts, but I doubt I'll have time to figure out where to go to do that in the next few hours.)

...okay, forget what I said about not being all that disappointed. NOW it's making me kind of sad. :( Maybe I'll try and get an archive of my posts after all.

EDIT: Submitted the request! That was easier than expected. So easy, I must've done it twice by accident because it told me I submitted it already. :)

While I'm on Miiverse for the last time, have some random stats about my Miiverse account:

Following 53 users

13 followers

256 posts (hey, a nice nerdy number! And I wasn't even trying to have any of these be interesting numbers!)

1,788 Yeahs

Last post was on November 23, 2016 in Nintendo Badge Arcade. (Though it ALMOST was not the last post; for Valentine's Day 2017, I had every intention of celebrating by putting badges of the lovely Mary O. and a bunch of hearts from Zelda on my HOME menu because I'm the sort of dork who would at least consider doing that and posting that to the Nintendo Badge Arcade community. I did in fact make such a HOME menu, but didn't post it because it wasn't Valentine's Day yet - and for whatever reason, making it again on Valentine's Day and posting it slipped my mind. Probably because that was so soon after work started.)

I only made two Miiverse posts overall in 2016, and none in 2015 - the last one before that was on July 29, 2014 in the NES Remix 2 community. (I'm not surprised that this was so soon after Lucina and Robin were confirmed for Super Smash Bros. 4 - I do remember how the last time I checked Miiverse regularly, it seemed like EVERY SINGLE POST in the SSB community was like "With my Levin Sword, I'll _____".)

Speaking of which, my bio is:

"I'm a sensei; i.e., SNES am I!
(translation: I've been playing video games since the NES and SNES. My all-time favorite classic game: Super Mario World!)

I can't wait to play Super Smash Bros. 4, but I'd be even MORE excited if people would stop whining about the roster being just SLIGHTLY different from what they want. I really hope that there'll be less of that once the game's released..."

...SSB3DS has been out for over three years, and in a couple of weeks, that'll also be true of SSBU. I went THREE YEARS without updating that bio. Why do I have the sudden urge to turn up the hearing aid that I don't have?


Well, whatever. At least now my Miiverse posts will be turned into an ice cube so future generations can thaw them out and marvel at my same-length legs! :)

Happy a-few-minutes-early-in-my-time-zone birthday to me! :)

And also happy birthday to 13catswaltz, who has the same birthday as me! :)


And also also to Luigi - because Mario Bros. was released in Japan on July 14, 1983; my negative tenth birthday. ;)



Hey, there's an idea for a totally nerdy survey...

This page has a table (several paragraphs down from the beginning of that section...) that lists the dates every* Super Smash Bros. character debuted (because in SSB4, the order you fight them in All-Star Mode is based on that).

Use that to figure out your answers to these questions:

1) Which SSB character(s), if any, debuted on your birthday in any year?
Luigi

2) Which SSB character(s) debuted closest to the date you were born?
Meta Knight (debuted March 23, 1993 - the date closest to July 14, 1993 in that list).

3) Which SSB character(s) debuted closest to the date you created your LiveJournal/DreamWidth/some-other-journal-site account? (If you have/had multiple journals, you may answer this separately for all of them, some of them, or just one. Whichever you prefer.)
My LJ was created on August 19, 2007 - the character whose debut was closest to that is Rosalina (November 1, 2007).
My DW was created on May 13, 2017, long after the debut of the newest character (Corrin, on June 25, 2015).

:)



*Except Miis, alternate characters (the Koopalings and Alph), and characters from Melee and Brawl who aren't in SSB4. ( I went ahead and looked up the relevant dates in case you want to include them )

Wordle Year in Review 2016


It took a lot longer than usual for me to get around to it this time, but I finally did it!

---

Go to Wordle and...

1) Paste in all entries you posted in January 2016 and make a Wordle configured any way you like
2) Paste in all entries you posted in February 2016 and make another Wordle configured any way you like
...
12) Paste in all entries you posted in December 2016 and make another Wordle configured any way you like
13) Make a Wordle out of your entries from ALL months of 2016, configured any way you like

Then post all of these Wordles to your LiveJournal!


You may do steps 1 - 12 only or step 13 only if you prefer.

It's up to you if you include subject lines, comments, community entries, friends-only entries, music tags, location tags, etc., and it's up to you whether you post your Wordles in a public or friends-only entry. Anything else I didn't think of is probably optional as well.

---

← 2015 2017 →

This time around, there was an additional complication involving an entry I actually wrote in May 2016, but listed as January 2015 to mess with everyone's heads, including mine. (which, like a lot of my entries, will probably make no sense whatsoever if you haven't read a lot of my entries from November 2014 [at the LATEST] to May 2016... but if you're feeling lucky, go ahead and read it without context! :P )

Anyway, the complication is: does that entry count as January 2015 or May 2016? So some Wordles have two different versions, one listed as being from 2015 or 2016 and one listed as being from "2015B" or "2016B". Without the B, it means the retroactive entry counts as the month it was actually written: May 2016. With the B, it means the retroactive entry counts as January 2015. (And yes, this means I'm retroactively adding two more Wordles to the PREVIOUS year in review!... but to reduce confusion, I'm not actually putting them in that entry; I'm just putting them here.)

( cut for length )

By now you no doubt have heard the news about Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's president. :(

I intended to write a tribute to him as soon as I had heard the news (a very short tribute, of course, because I'm still not a very good writer), but I ended up putting it off until the 14th, which was my birthday, and every time I want to post about something sad and something fun at the same time, I'm faced with the decision of: Do I try and write one entry about both topics, with some sort of "On a happier note..." transition? Do I post two entries in one day? Do I just pick one and post about it?

ALL of those options have either always worked out badly for me in the past or have never been tried because I KNEW they'd work out badly, hence why I ended up not even posting at all on the 14th. I was considering waiting until the 18th to post about my birthday anyway since that's when my birthday party was, but I still ended up procrastinating so long that by the 18th I was in the same scenario: ready to post about my birthday party, but I still hadn't posted about Iwata, and still didn't know how I should go about writing about either topic.

And then, as you can tell, I ended up procrastinating even further because I feel like there's a huge hole in my journal now there's three consecutive entries that I'm posting way too late. At this point, I think the only way I might be able to make myself not feel this way is if I ask you to pretend that this entry doesn't exist but the three below do and were posted on the dates listed. (note: this probably doesn't matter at all, but I don't know whether or not the repost buttons will work correctly...)


( 3 entries that I should've posted instead of this one, and 10-17 days earlier )

I can't believe it - I finished the creative vortex poll I mentioned I've been working on!!

( cut for LOTS of length )

I hope the poll shows up...

EDIT: It did, but I accidentally put "Finish rereading" as an option when it should've been "Finish rereading therapy notes" and I can't change it now. Oh well.

Have a surprisingly good reason to repost this

For those of you new here, it's become a tradition for me to post comics made with the Garfield Randomizer after I've been on hiatus for a while. And I've also promised to post some comics made with Garkov as well, but I never did, and I found about two more similar randomizer things in the meantime, so here you go!

I don't have any vision-impaired transcripts for my older ones yet, but I've added that as yet another entry on my to-do list :)

( Garfield Randomizer #159-163 )

( Garkov #1-10 )

( Previously on the X-Files #4-8 )

( Jesus Markoving Christ #1-5 )

Maybe this entry could get going if it lets you kill it without an.