Reference Blog 👾

Things I think are cool, useful, or important!

[3liza]

usa: you do not need to go to the post office to mail a package

you can order priority mail shipping boxes and envelopes in any size from store.usps.com for free. if you do not have a printer, you can buy them with the postage already paid on them. the postal service will deliver these boxes to your house. you can pack your item into the box at home, then go back to usps.com and schedule a time for the mailman to pick the package up from your house. this is also free. you do not have to visit the post office at any point in this process. if you use flat rate mailers you also do not need to weigh anything.

i have to explain this to people about 20 times a year, no joke. it is some sort of anti post office conspiracy that everyone thinks you have to buy shipping boxes and then drive to the post office and stand in line to mail things. you do not. shipping mailers and boxes are 100% free. priority mail service or above (and prices are now adjusted to the point that its usually pointless not to use priority mail) entitles you to a free pickup, and if you have even one priority mail package to ship, you can ask for all your other packages to be picked up on the same trip too.

if you are shipping JUST books, use Media Mail. its very cheap

[songoflove]

Possibly in Michigan, 1983, dir. Cecelia Condit

[beta--persei]

i looked up the director and if this happened to me i would probably totally 100% lose my mind

you can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLJNSD3H5sg

[roamingmineralsilence]

[myskinishungry]

[analogdelight]

Backup your blog(s)!

Afraid of being terminated for the crime of existing on the internet? Hoping to hold onto as many of your posts as you can? Try this one weird trick the hellsite doesn't want you to know about!

(disclaimer: this only works on desktop. mobile-exclusive users, i'm sorry 😔)

Go into your blog setting. My usual route is clicking on the Account dropdown on the left side of the page, clicking on my blog, and then clicking on the Blog settings button on the right. You can also go to tumblr.com/settings/blog/<your-url>

Scroll all the way down to the end. Right above "Delete Blog" is a section labeled "Export"

This screenshot is from my backup blog, there's nothing there to backup yet. I just wanted to include what it looks like if you haven't clicked anything.

The backup will take some time to be available for download, depending on the size/age of your blog. My blog is ~14 years old and over 130k posts, so it took about two days for my backup to be available. The backup is available for download for a week after it's completed

I haven't actually successfully backed up my main blog, the file size is massive and I keep having to either turn off my PC or something else happens that interferes with the download, but so far the zip file has gotten to ~250gb and i think there's still room for it to get bigger, i'll update this post with an approx. size for reference when it's actually done.

I did successfully backup my old nsfw sideblog, so I'll give some rough estimations from that. The blog topped out at just 1,428 posts (not original, mind you. this includes reblogs), the backup took under an hour to be ready, and the .zip file containing the backup is 2.4gb.

The backup comes in a .zip file, it contains all of the media (jpgs, pngs, mp4s, etc) attached to every post on your blog, labelled with a bunch of numbers. See the bottom two in this image labelled [numbers]_0 and [numbers]_1? Two images from the same post.

It will also contain a second .zip file with every post on your blog, formatted in simple html. These html files contain all of the text from every post.

I'm pretty sure it will also contain a third .zip file with all of your messages, but I can't confirm that because I never sent any DMs from my sideblog, I stopped using it before you could do that. I'm pretty sure my gf's backup from one of her blogs has html files for every blog she'd chatted with, and it's a full record of the conversation from start to finish.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

This backup has *everything* you've put on your blog. Not just your original posts, but every reblog. That's not my fault, that's how tumblr designed it. I don't know how to backup just your own personal things, I don't know if there is a way to do that. It's on you as an individual to not steal other's personal content that you've reblogged and post it here or elsewhere. Don't be an asshole.

There is a website that will search your blog for your original posts (https://jetblackcode.com/TumblrOriginalPostFinder). It only works for blogs that are still active (i.e. haven't been terminated or deactivated by the user), so it's more for being able to find original posts to interact with them again more than creating an actual backup in a meaningful way.

[theinternetarchive]

i have turned it into a letterboxd list: good films that are free on the internet archive!!!! Each film is linked in the notes on letterboxd. this will be continually updated so it's a good link to save if you want to keep up!

[matchagirl]

[typewriter-worries]

there’s this extremely kind soul of a woman on instagram that makes accessible recipes that don’t require standing, chopping, or a stove and she might just have a permanent place in my heart

edit: here's her YouTube account, as well as her TikTok and Facebook :)

[barbienostalgia]

✨🎀 Download Barbie Games 🎀✨

PC Barbie Storymaker (1996) Barbie Magic Hair Styler (1997)

Magic Fairy Tales: Barbie as Rapunzel (1997)

Detective Barbie: Mystery of the Carnival Caper (1998)

Barbie Riding Club (1998)   Barbie Pet Rescue (2000)  Barbie Explorer (2001)  Secret Agent Barbie (2001)  Barbie Sparkling Ice Show (2002)  Barbie as Rapunzel: A Creative Adventure! (2002) Barbie Horse Adventures Mystery Ride (2003) Barbie Beauty Boutique (2003)  Barbie of Swan Lake: The Enchanted Forest (2003)  MyScene (2003) Barbie Fashion Show (2004) Barbie Mermaid Adventure (2004) Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper (2004)  MyScene Goes Hollywood (2005)  Barbie and The Magic of Pegasus (2005) Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses (2006) Barbie as the Island Princess (2007) GBA/DS Barbie: Magic Genie Adventure (2000) Barbie Secret Agent: Royal Jewels Mission (2002) Barbie - Horse Adventures - Blue Ribbon Race (2003) Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper (2004) Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus (2005) Barbie Diaries - High School Mystery (2006) Barbie in The 12 Dancing Princesses (2006) Barbie as The Island Princess (2007) Barbie and The Three Musketeers (2009) ♡ you will need to use an emulator if you have a mac or if you are trying to run the gba/ds games 💕

[awesomefitnessrecipes]

[brinconvenient]

There’s a total of like 6 steps to stir fry and I just found like 8 ways I’ve been doing it less than ideally. Thank you for this! I’m definitely making stir fry this week and I’ll be using this to guide me.

[vriskakinnieaynrand]

not enough spices imo. here’s how i do it

shabu shabu beef. because it’s sliced thinly, you don’t have to defrost it. take it out of the freezer, crumple it to your desired size of bits, bung it in the pan

frozen vegetable mix / frozen spinach / yu choy (v underrated vegetable imo)

soy sauce, oyster sauce, (sparingly) toasted sesame oil, fish sauce, rice vinegar. brown sugar if you want but oyster sauce has plenty

five spice powder

black pepper, white pepper, five spice powder, (optional) galangal, ground loomi (easier than keeping fresh limes on hand)

once it’s in a bowl, stir in some laoganma

everything that isn’t frozen or shelf-stable is optional because who gets groceries more than twice a month

[technofeudalism]

i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

[technofeudalism]

since this post blew up, i've been wanting to do an addition with all of the recommendations from the comments and tags. but there's a lot of them. some people might be crazy enough to sit down and seriously put them all in one post with descriptions. those people are honestly sick in the head.

anyway, here's all of the recommendations from the reblogs. not all of them are text-based, but it's a great mixture of styles. also don't forget the links in the second paragraph of the OP which will take you to FMHY where there are a bunch more games listed.

Games

A Dark Room - text-based science fiction role-playing game.

corru.observer - science fiction adventure web game.

Improbable Island - old-school text adventure game.

Candy Box 2 - incremental clicker game that evolves into RPG.

Arcanum - open source wizard clicker game.

sandspiel, Powder Game, Powder Game 2, The Powder Toy - more sand physics games.

Orb.Farm - fishtank simulator.

Façade - experimental game with a real-time interactive narrative where you try to fix a failing marriage.

The Catacombs of Solaris - trippy art game.

Yume Nikki Online - online version of the surreal classic plus fangames.

The Barncle Goose Experiment - combine element/alchemy game based on antique theories of abiogenesis.

Fallen London - free-to-play text-based open world RPG.

Nested - very unique text-based universe expanding game. described as possibly @orteil42's favorite thing he's ever made.

The Process of Elimination - interactive web novel (by @hypertextdog)

Discworld MUD - multiplayer, text-based, online game (a MUD, or text MMORPG) based on the Discworld books.

Horse Master - surreal text game about training a horse.

EYEZMAZE - flash (RIP) or HTML5-based puzzle games.

You Are Jeff Bezos - text game. spend Jeff Bezos' fortune.

The Password Game - challenging puzzle game where you have to meet password requirements (by neal)

Universal Paperclips - incremental paperclip making game.

Half-Earth - planetary disaster planning game where you try to save the world using socialism.

ChooseYourStory - community-driven website centered on CYOA style story games.

PhD Simulator - random event based text game. make your choice each month and see if you can graduate on time.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - open source roguelike.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - turn-based survival roguelike set in the modern day.

Nethack - open source roguelike originally released in 1987.

FarmRPG - simple, mobile-friendly, text-based farming RPG.

Kingdom of Loathing - browser-based community MMORPG.

PokeRogue - browser-based Pokemon roguelike

Tools

Text Game Builder - works in your browser, with just a little bit of Python (by @grumpygandalf)

Twine - great (free!) tool for making text-based games quickly.

Ink - scripting language for interactive fiction (also free)

Flashpoint Archive - a community effort to preserve games and animations from the web.

PICO-8 - fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs.

Non-Games

Library of Babel - interactive illustration which attempts to simulate what it might be like to browse The Library of Babel.

Superbad - technically not a game, sprawling website full of secrets.

17776 - serialized speculative fiction multimedia narrative about football in the far-future. beautiful, creative, legendary. created by Jon Bois, a legend and one of my favorite writers of all time.

Choice of Games - text-based, choose-your-own-adventure games (interactive fiction). some free-to-play, others can be bought like an ebook.

The Deep Sea - scroll to the bottom of the ocean. encounter the humble squid and his friends (by neal)

Space Elevator - like The Deep Sea, but up instead of down. you can equip your avatar with a scarf (by neal)

Internet Artifacts - an interactive history of the early internet (by neal)

If The Moon Were Only One Pixel - scroll through an accurately scaled model of the universe.

r/incremental_games - reddit community for incremental games.

r/WebGames - reddit community for web games in general.

thank you to everyone who contributed and the creators. please be sure to show them some love where possible.

[psykopaths]

[stigmatagloryhole-deactivated20]

[stability]

this is modern art

[geocities-zip]

kidcore cursors

[escuerzoresucitado]

The landlord fears the urban oyster mushroom farmer

[aluminumapples]

I have seen this on every social media site and folks- if your home is damp enough to get full fruity flushes of oyster mushrooms (from stray spores from a grow bag batch), they are the LEAST of your worries. You know what doesn’t produce highly visible fruiting bodies? Most molds. And wood rot. Go ahead and grow them indoors, because they’re a canary in the coal mine if they start fruiting anywhere.

[walks-the-ages]

^ the above reblog right here!!! People in the notes saying "don't do this!!!" Are missing the part where people are not deliberately growing Oyster Mushrooms all over their apartment, but that the stray spores from Mushroom Growing Kits are revealing systemic dampness problems that Landlords cannot dismiss and forces them to take action.

[cryptotheism]

My top three rules for world building:

How are these bitches eating?

How do these bitches stay warm at night?

Who is paying for all of this bullshit?

[newlevant]

New zine that's free for anyone to print and distribute! Read the whole thing at newlevant.com/COVIDzine or in the rest of this post.

UPDATE 4/11/2023:

I swapped out the colloidal silver nasal spray info for xylitol nasal spray info. I originally included colloidal silver spray because of the linked study and recommendation from RTHM, but I don't want to be pointing people toward something with notable health risks. Xylitol spray (Xlear) is also cheaper and more widely available!