Whatever Matt Feels Like Posting

I can't believe it.

I'm over 80% done fixing my entries. AND I've finally fixed all of my entries from 2016!!! (Fun fact: while keeping count in the process, I noticed that the first time I ever mentioned Mary O. in this journal was in my 1,111th entry. Would you look at that!)

I wish I hadn't had to waste two years just to get this done, but I'm a lot more hopeful now because it's getting done!!! I'm almost up to the entries written AFTER I joined DW! :D


Of course, after this I'm still gonna need to update my profile on both LJ and DW for the first time in a while and make a new updated glossary/list of userpics/FAQ sticky entry.
I think it's about time for me to start thinking some more about what I need to add or remove from my FAQ.
Well, mostly on what to add to it - several people have made it clear to me when I asked about this a couple of years back that a lot of the questions that are in there are pointless since no one's thought about asking them (and it made me feel really weird about myself when people suggested removing them), so I'm going to remove them. (To the few of you who liked the fact that those questions are in there: Don't worry, I'll keep the current version of the FAQ in a non-sticky entry as well for posterity and link to it from the new version as the answer to something like "What happened to the old FAQ?")

What are some questions that you've had about me or my journal and have wanted to ask me? This can include ones that are answered by the FAQ already or not (in fact, it'd be better if you pretend for right now that I don't have a FAQ at all yet). It can be ones that you still don't know the answer to or ones that you found the answer to eventually. Or if there's something about me or my journal that you understood but think others might not and that it'd be helpful to have that in the FAQ, you can even list that.

But no suggestions about which ones to remove from my FAQ, please - it's already a given that I'm going to be removing or condensing most of them. Let's focus more on what should be in it than what shouldn't be. :)

https://www.livejournal.com/2018/

Apparently the image that's automatically generated by this feature doesn't stay around forever - it gets replaced every year with the next year's version, so my "2017 in LJ" entry is now showing the 2018 stats. Lame... So if you're reading this a year or more later, my actual 2018 stats were 126 entries posted and 948 comments and likes received.

I don't like it when things get deleted or replaced after only one year or less. If homestarrunner.com took that approach, only one Strong Bad Email would still be on the site by now and it's one that isn't technically counted as a sbemail. If Super Smash Bros. took that approach, NONE of the characters that are in it would be there because all of them - even the most-recently-created ones like Inkling, Corrin, and Incineroar - debuted at least two years before Super Smash Bros. Ultimate came out. </rant>

← 2017





In other news, I've fixed over 1,000 entries! Yay! :D

Super Mario Maker Crash Course Minus Yamamura is a comic dedicated to removing Yamamura from the Super Mario Maker Crash Course comic in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Ms. Mary O. Mashiko. It is a journey deep into the mind of a manual guide who has become her own worst critic, desperately trying to appear optimistic while secretly fighting a losing battle against anxiety, self-hatred, and fear of rejection in an isolated... video game manual?


So, uh... This is a little Garfield Minus Garfield-esque idea I thought of about two years ago, back when the Super Mario Maker Crash Course comics were new.

( brief history of this idea and the two places I was thinking about using it in eventually, but didn’t )

Anyway, after two years, my patience has finally run out... I wanted SO BADLY to show that removing Yamamura has about the same effect on Mary O. that removing Garfield has on Jon, I decided I'm not gonna save it for PrtSc Land or iToons after all - I'd just make it NOW and post it here, while there's still at least a chance that no one else has made something similar already.

Though I'm probably safe, because really, has ANYONE else ever been obsessed enough with Mary O. to make this? Does anyone else even know who she IS? :P


Original strip: Super Mario Maker Crash Course Episode 1

Super Mario Maker Crash Course Minus Yamamura: (NOTE: Due to the large image size, it may be broken in this entry, but it will not be if you click on it)





(And no, I'm not going to do this with the other episodes of the comic - it probably only works with the first one, and even then only because I cheated a little and added an extra line for Mary O. :) )

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! :)

(music tag should be: Snippets of Mario, Kid Icarus, SSB, BtVS, Enya, Dido, Céline Dion, Sarah McLachlan, Moya Brennan, Matchbox 20, Rascal Flatts, & Savage Garden music thrown together randomly in Audacity)

This has been kind of a disappointing April Fools' Day because:

1) Homestar Runner didn't update at all today, even though they did for April Fools' Day 2014, 2015, and 2016, and April Fools and Halloween are almost the only times they ever update nowadays.
2) I don't think many people noticed my April Fools prank at all.

For reference, my April Fools prank was this entry; however, when I first posted it (on March 31 in my time zone, but late enough that it was April 1 already for some of you), it was an exact copy of my first entry. Then I waited a few minutes or so and changed it to a copy of a different past entry in the same way... then changed it to another after a few more minutes, and so on - basically, if I was at my computer, I'd change the entry anywhere from once an hour to once every few minutes. (At first. I gradually updated it less and less often because it seemed like no one was noticing...)

By "exact copy", that means including the subject line, repost button, userpic, tags, mood, music, location... basically, everything except the timestamp, the comments, and friends-only status [though, of course, the only friends-only entries I used were ones that probably would've been fine being public]. And anything that I intended to change each time but accidentally forgot sometimes. Though if I used an entry I'd posted in _dreams_, autism, or asperger, I added a notice saying that it was cross-posted (even though I don't think copying a community entry to my own journal years later for April Fools' Day actually counts as cross-posting).

I chose the entries semi-randomly, sometimes by going to my Calendar for random years and months and picking a random entry I'd feel comfortable posting again, and sometimes by just putting in notable entries that I remember and wanted to include in this prank at some point. Some entries were used more than once.

And just to mess with your heads even more, I thought it might be fun to come up with a hypothetical FUTURE entry and add it into the mix! That's what the 2023 year in review is for. It ended up being my favorite thing about this prank, so I left that one up significantly longer than any other single entry.


Now that April Fools' Day is over, all the entries I ended up using are listed below for posterity. (Don't expect the repost buttons to work correctly, though...)


( The entries that you could've sworn that you'd seen already and/or that they said something completely different a few minutes ago, in order of their first use in this prank )

Since certain past years and dates (especially starting with 2015) sometimes still sound futuristic to me when I think about them, I thought I'd make a poll about it.

Poll #2062591 Forwards to the Future

What is the earliest year that you have, at some point in your life, thought of as the distant future?

1983 or earlier
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021 or later

What is the earliest year that you still sometimes think of as being in the distant future?

1983 or earlier
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021 or later

What is the earliest year that you still almost always think of as being in the distant future?

1983 or earlier
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021 or later

I think my 1, 9, 2, and 0 keys want a break now. :)

(I say that right before I have to type all those years one more time for the tags on this entry...)

Time-travel to your journal

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 )

Happy New Year! :)

Which reminds me, I still need to post about what I got for Christmas and post my usual Christmas and New Years memes...

Oh, and can we please not turn every mention of 2016 into a conversation about the bad things that happened? I know I already made a post about this, but that's just how annoyed I still am by it. I know some people need to vent about it, but I wish they'd find some other way to vent, because blaming the year is taking it too far - it's making me worried that kids who were born in 2016 are going to eventually be frequently bullied because of it. :(

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!... and I'm beginning to look like even more of a dork than I was this time last year. :P


By the way, for some reason, a lot of the oldest images in my ScrapBook have mysteriously gone missing... That hasn't happened to anyone else, has it? :O