Progress, progress..

So of recent I've been playing some really crappy games - on my phone I've been playing Make More, this incredibly shallow idle/clicker game that pines for my attention, and on my PC I've been playing the Mystery PI series, an image search game where you spot weird items in weirder places. I've 100% completed 4 of 5 of those games in the past couple weeks, and as soon as I complete them, I stop playing them. Not temporarily, but permanently. 

I feel this is a mirror image about how I feel of my internet usage - I feel I'm building a lot of systems at the moment that allow me to say those permanent farewells, which, I know - probably aren't permanent. But it feels nice to make headway on the topic, and that's precisely what this post will be about - it's been a couple weeks now, and I'd just like to provide you a quick status update of what I've tried out, what else I'm considering, and where I'll be going next.

Let's start off with one of our big bads from last time, good ol' Facebook - my habit of signing in on desktop and scrolling continues, but I've made some progress at killing this - I've setup Buffer, a social media management tool that allows me to manage Facebook completely from a third-party tool, including advertisements - without touching the actual site. Every now and then you do need to sign in to reauthenticate, but provided you keep a reliable recovery method, it would totally be possible to say, set up the app, then change the password to your Facebook account to something random without saving it so you can't sign if you tried. And lastly, I've made my peace regarding parting with Facebook marketplace - I probably don't need a cocktail bar anyway...

Onto the one with the most progress, both forward and backwards, YouTube - let's start with the new tech this time around - I'm using an application called TarTube on my desktop to create a database of YouTube videos, and I believe once I can set this up to save videos to my server, this'll probably be how I download everything to do - you can have it run regular sync and auto-downloads, which means I could still watch from my favourite creators. There are applications like Tube Archivist more designed for running in a Docker environment, but there's some quirks of these I've yet to figure out. Maybe I'll switch over once I can get these nailed down. I'm still using YouTube just as much (if not more) than I was before, but I feel this is due to not being able to figure out media management properly. Once I can create enough storage to start downloading a bulk down into Tartube, I feel I can hot-foot it over there a bit easier. I can only hope that this is the case, because this is going to be one of the hardest goodbyes.

I've been covering some good ground with Spotify, though I do feel it's pertinent for me to make a confession - a lot of piracy has been involved with this one. Not Anna's Archive, though if I could figure it I would - instead, I've been downloading albums from YouTube. "Do you feel no shame?!!" I hear you cry, and I do hear you - I've been thinking about how I want to act with this one. Ultimately, what I'm creating here is a database of music, a database that can be maintained and recorded - so I've been exporting data from Jellyfin imports into Google Sheets, and my intention is to purchase as much of the music in the list as possible. There is an obvious exception to this, which is any AI-generated music I happen upon - while I don't shun myself for listening to AI-generated music (which I feel like could generate a whole other post on my thoughts there), I am well-adjusted enough to decide that they don't deserve any of my money. Thusfar, I've purchased about 8% of my music library, including stuff I'd already bought, and I'm working on increasing that number month-by-month. Slow progress, but meaningful progress.

I've been thinking a lot about finality lately, and how I've prototypically hated it. I resent the idea of being confined to a certain number of options, opportunities, chances, abilities, and yet it's only in these limitations that we are able to find meaning. I've been trying to look more inwards on this one, figure out a way I can settle with finality. And would you believe, those dumb puzzle games have got their place in that. And I hope so too, has this chapter.


Until next time, friend.
-Oliver



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