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!

About time I posted another one of these. If I'd stuck to my intended schedule of posting my Miiverse backup entries once a week, this would've been posted between June 24 and 30, 2018.

I'll get caught up someday...

At least I can prove I'm still capable of posting entries that don't mention the Quidd drama!... wait a minute... DANG IT! :P

← June 2013 01/01/2014 →


New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 07/17/2013 8:45 PM

For my birthday I got (along with other games and things) money to get NSLU from the eShop, so I'm gonna do that now… If I'm not back in an hour, send a not-being-distracted-by-Miiverse after me XD

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(I wonder what I was doing if it took me three whole days after my birthday to post this. Probably playing Kid Icarus: Uprising - I got that for the same birthday, but didn't get to post about it on Miiverse for a while because there were no 3DS game communities back then except for Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon.

Also, I think this is the only time I posted about a game that was out by then, but that I didn't have yet. I may be wrong though.)


New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 07/17/2013 11:14 PM

Got NSLU and liking it so far! I wish there were an official in-story explanation of why Mario's not there, though, if only so there wouldn't be fan speculation... But I'm liking the game :)

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(That's how you know that this post predates Game Theory's "Mario is Mental" videos - I found some other Mario-related fan speculation annoying enough that I had to post a mini-rant about it.

Also, like the next few, this ended up in the NSMBU community instead of NSLU because for whatever reason, New Super Luigi U didn't give me nearly as many opportunities to post from in-game, which was the only way to post in the NSLU community at all.)


New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 07/17/2013 11:32 PM

My sister is REALLY enjoying playing as Nabbit and being invincible :)

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New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 07/20/2013 12:47 PM



0 1

(Despite making a lot of posts/drawings about things that happened to us in specific New Super Mario Bros. U levels, this is the only time I ended up doing so about a specific New Super Luigi U level. And I don't even know what level it was except that it was clearly a castle.)


New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 07/20/2013 2:08 PM



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(This is the second of my only two Miiverse posts to have no words, and technically my last post in the NSMBU community since the next NSLU-related post actually made it to the NSLU community.)


New Super Luigi U Game Posts
Matt 07/23/2013 10:28 PM

Beat the game!
Why is it that this is the first time I've gotten asked to post to Miiverse in NSLU?

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(Again, this is my first AND last post in the NSLU community. I think we continued playing New Super Luigi U for a while after this, but not long enough for us to get around to 100% completing it unlike with NSMBU. I should finish that someday. This was also my last Miiverse post of 2013 - it would be about 5 or 6 months [139 days, to be exact] until I finally started posting again, setting another new record for my longest hiatus.)

I've been trying to cut down on the "express everything I want to say by editing Garfield or other comics and/or making stuff with my sprites" thing that I did on LJ a lot in 2012-2013 or so, but I just HAD to make THIS one:


(Original Garfield strip: June 19, 2003)

Hmm... Seeing those three versions of myself in one room like that really makes it stand out that the modern sprite version of myself has a skin tone noticeably darker than my real skin tone. Oh well.

Being obsessed with a) mezzacotta, the randomly generated webcomic that's (retroactively) been around since 9999999999999 BC, and b) nerdy math-related stuff, I thought of an idea for a LJ/DW meme that incorporates both! Back in July or so. Why didn't I post it until now? For that matter, I'm surprised I didn't think of this meme before July 2017.

Anyway...

1) Look at the mezzacotta strip from your birthdate:
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=1993-07-14

2) Look at the strip(s) from the day you joined LJ and/or DW and/or any other blogging site you use regularly - if you don't know when that is, you can go to your profile and find out (at least for LJ and DW):
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=2007-08-19 (LJ)
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=2017-05-13 (DW)

3) Optionally, also look at the strip(s) from any other dates that are significant to you!
I'll skip this step, though - while there are many other dates that are significant to me for whatever reason, I think I'll just use my birthdate and the dates I joined LJ/DW for this.

4) Put in the same dates from steps 1-3 again but with AD changed to BC. You can do this just by putting a minus sign before the year in the URL:
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=-1993-07-14
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=-2007-08-19
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=-2017-05-13

5) Put in the dates from steps 1-4 again, but replace the years with the last two digits of them:
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=93-07-14
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=7-08-19
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=17-05-13 (...so is he going to show me or not? :) )
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=-93-07-14
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=-7-08-19 (A hair restorer on leeches?)
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=-17-05-13 (I guess a penny isn't enough.)

6) Now take the dates from steps 1-3 and replace the year with your LJ and/or DW (and/or other blogging site) user ID! On LJ and DW at least, that's also on your profile.
(Any time I say to replace the year with a number that isn't a year like your user ID, do this for both BC and AD if the AD version exists [i.e. the number is between 1 and the current year]. If it doesn't - which it won't 99.9% of the time - then just use BC.)
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=-13627499-07-14
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=-13627499-08-19 (I'd say that's changing focus more than just "a bit". :P )
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=-13627499-05-13 (Yes, I even combined my LJ user ID with the date I joined DW and vice versa. Because that makes a lot more sense than the strip I got by doing so!)
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=-3192525-07-14
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=-3192525-08-19
http://mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=-3192525-05-13 (The first panel of this one is the best part.)

( these next few are so mathy, they're under a cut )


If any of these methods gives you an invalid date:
Year with leading zeroes - remove the leading zeroes.
Year is 0 - use 9999999999999 BC (13 nines), 1 BC, and/or 1 AD instead. Or, if this happens in step 5, replacing it with 100 BC/AD makes sense too.
February 29 in a year that doesn't have one - use February 28 and/or March 1 of that year instead.

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! :)

I meant to take this quiz on my birthday, but I ended up forgetting to for 30 days :(



For some reason the text of the result isn't part of the "post to LJ" code anymore so:

(EDIT: I had the result down here, but then decided to try to put it where it's supposed to be.)

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 )

(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 )

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 )

Before my previous two entries, I also took several online quizzes I hadn't taken before, but saved all the results to a file on my computer hoping to post them later.

Since posting them all right now would be a bit much, I'll just post three of them today:

( Oops, forgot to LJ-cut these at first )


Can't think of a clever repost button caption right now