#ScribesAndMakers for August 4: What's the first thing you think of when you hear the word troll?
I hear Sean Bean in my head, wearily saying "They have a cave troll."
Remote
Trevor
@lovemakeshare@sunny.garden
mastodon 4.7.3Parent to three, husband, dog dad, reluctant cat dad. Day job: Educator, instructional designer, e-learning developer, team lead. Off hours projects: Writing, 3D printing, dabbling in prop & costume building, some woodworking, tinkering with tech, and the occasional ill-advised dip into prototyping video games. Entertainment: Non-denominational nerd (but especially Star Trek). Chunky novels. Paddling.
Check out the new hashtag game #LoveMakeShare!
218 Followers
358 Following
34 Posts
Joined December 29, 2024
#WritersCoffeeClub for May 1: Workers' Day: What can we do to support and protect other writers, not only now, but in the future as well?
There are so many amazing answers here, so I'll just add:
Instill the joy of reading in your kids. Model using the library. Model reading both physical books and ebooks instead of being on your phone. Read together, often. Try books that are new to both you and your kiddo. Give books as gifts. Write together.
A love of reading and books is a learned attribute, and it has to be taught.
Still in full "moon-joy" mode over here about #Artemis2. I'm also working on a video (or maybe a couple!) about building and flying our first model rocket (and designing our own too!) with my 6-year-old. Anything you're curious about? I can answer here, and if you're curious it might be good to address in the video for others, too!
Replying to
For those of you who like an image version, here you go! Text is linked via the blog post above.
#LoveMakeShare
Replying to
@peteriskrisjanis @freya @quixoticgeek This was my immediate reaction. Almost none of these projects are actually building anything - it's all an imitation of growth on paper.
I miss when these companies made things.
Also on behalf of Canada I apologize for Kevin O'Leary, although he has tried his best to distance himself from us for decades.
Catching up on #WritersCoffeeClub for April 19: How can prose achieve lyricism without verse structure?
I know that Aaron Sorkin is "cringe" in 2026 or whatever, but the way he intentionally writes dialogue to be musical should be studied by anyone who likes the idea of lyrical prose.
Call & response, repeated phrases first by one speaker and then by another, punctuating phrases, line length, whitespace and silences, contrasts in intensity, rises and falls, varying register.
I think people miss out on creating lyricism because they write and never hear their words. I am a very strong advocate for reading your work out loud to yourself as a check for character voice and musicality, and against purple prose and wordiness. Read it out loud! You'll feel silly but nothing is as effective a tool for revision as hearing your writing read aloud.
#WritersCoffeeClub April 20. What have you tried to immortalise in your writing?
Silver linings, I suppose.
The beauty we find in grief. Joy, defiant joy, in the face of adversity. Love and family in different forms, even when they're complicated. Perseverence. Growth.
I am nothing if not consistent in being a bit of a Pollyanna.
Absolutely captivated by #Artemis2 this whole time. Can't get over how successful that flight was. Relieved and delighted that the crew is safe and happy. And now - onward!
Buzzing about the #Artemis2 lunar flyby and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen's words:
“From the cabin of Integrity here, as we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth, we do so in honoring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration. We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear. But we most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived.”
Let's go.
Replying to
@jpaskaruk @colorblindcowboy I feel like I need to make a couple of dummy accounts on bigger instances to see exactly how my stuff is (or is not) federated. This is the kind of stuff that makes me leery about the long-term viability of the fediverse, too.
Replying to
@AhTheGreg @Dianora SLS sure has had a fraught journey to get here. On the other hand: SPAAAAAAACE
Replying to
@AhTheGreg @Dianora If we're being real for a second, the launch is not the part of it I'm worried about. By all accounts, Orion performed very well during Artemis I, but the heat shield stuff is concerning. Hoping that was all appropriately resolved.
A late #LoveMakeShare for May 7, 2026:
We’ve all got a white whale of a project. What’s yours?
I have many. I'll pick out one in particular that I was thinking of recently because I saw a video on my feed about cancelled Nintendo projects, and it reminded me that at one time, I was going to pack a SNES, an HDMI hardware upscaler, and some wireless adapters into a SNES-inspired case made of angular, laser-cut smoke black clear acrylic, with some engravings and LEDs inside. The case design was inspired by the 8th console generation - namely, the PS4 and XBox One.
Since it was a Super Nintendo in an 8th-gen case with some modern features, I called the project Super 8.
I never went forward with it because at the time, the total cost was going to be just way too high, and after that, it seemed like a better way to accidentally destroy a perfectly good SNES than it was an project I held close to my heart. Add to that the increasing unaffordability of retro games, and it's a project that will always be just out of reach, just over the horizon.
#LoveMakeShare 5. Scope creep affects us all. Have you ever managed to perfectly scope a project that could easily have gotten out of control?
Since I'm in a "making games" mode, I'm thinking back to this project the kids and I did ages ago. My wife loved playing (and watching her dad play) the OG Zelda as a kid, so we made her a little video game for Christmas that was part top-down adventure, part JRPG, and part escape room, at the end of which she would get her actual present. Games are notorious for changing specs and scope creep, but I managed to keep this one tight.
https://lovemakeshare.ca/2018/03/09/seven-things-we-learned-making-a-video-game/
Replying to
@rachelcholst@linernotes.club I am itching to get back to podcasting. Make sure to share the Kickstarter here when it's available!
Replying to
@jpaskaruk @colorblindcowboy That's fair, I tend to err on the side of wholesome and even being a bit of a Pollyanna online, so that's not my concern - it's more that I really have no idea how the moderation practices of my instance affects reach & visibility.
Replying to
@rachelcholst@linernotes.club Welcome! And being a comics writer gives you a great leg-up on today's prompt!
Replying to
@Aradia@weirder.earth Thank you for contributing! Looking forward to seeing you around. :)
Replying to
@Aradia@weirder.earth I am very excited to have found a new audio drama creator! (Among other things, what a great list!)
Replying to
@jpaskaruk @peteriskrisjanis @freya @quixoticgeek Not the *specific* words I would have used, but yes.
Did you know he acquired and killed The Learning Company so hard it almost took down Mattel? And maybe took the whole edutainment software industry with it? 'member that? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftKey#Acquisitions
Replying to
@doctormo@floss.social I haven't the faintest idea what a Tippy bow is, but I think you just found your squirrel Little John and soon enough you're going to have a whole crew.
Replying to
@silvermoon82 This was *definitely* all eyeballed. Our goal was mostly to build a rocket in Kerbal Space Program and then 3D print it to see what would happen when we jam a motor in it! There was no center of mass/thrust analysis, it was heavy, etc. etc. There's software out there to simulate model rockets, so a version 2.0 will happen where we try and apply some best practices to it.
In terms of a full-sized tube, that would more significantly change the balance, and I think we'd want to understand the basic prinicples of model rocket design better before launching something even bigger and heavier than this!
I was so convinced that #Artemis2 was launching today that I started planning a little launch party for the littlest. I guess the real April Fool's prank is that it's not actually April yet!
Maybe we go buy a new model rocket kit after school as a consolation prize.
Replying to
#PeerTube and text versions coming as soon as I am able - if either of those are a strong preference, watch this space!
Replying to
@rogeredwards@gamepad.club And to be clear, this isn't me carrying water for the big corporation. It's just my intense personal distaste for Peters and the way he's managed all this from the beginning.
Replying to
@csgraves Yeah, I am using it here to be intentionally dismissive of the term.
It's a younger person's term that I, earnest Millennial that I am, can't really get behind. Then again, if I were living in the digital social panopticon that Gen Z & younger inherited, I might have weird social policing/self-preservation instincts too.
God help me, I fired up Star Wars: Galaxies.
#LoveMakeShare for May 6, 2026:
Share a recent book or article that you loved!
Not a recent article, but one I discovered recently.
I've been thinking about old edutainment properties a lot lately, as I try to design an enriching and safe digital environment for my littlest. The fact that an entire lucrative genre of software disappeared basically overnight still baffles me, and the avalanche of freemium web-based tools that have come since really don't scratch the same itch. So where did edutainment go? Turns out it was hollowed out and suffocated, largely by one guy. You know him as Mr. Wonderful, I think fondly of him as the most embarrassing Canadian. It's a powerful reminder that capital will not let a good thing be - but also that good ideas can still be good, even if "the market decided" they weren't, because "the market" is sometimes just a guy.
Replying to
@rogeredwards@gamepad.club Alec Peters can't help himself but be giant ass about, well, everything. And CBS/Paramount never fail to take his bait. It's so stupid. A pox on both their houses, but Peters especially, for being one part swindler and one part professional victim.