Abraxiel [any]

Top opening bottles are probably a bit of a vestigial design feature now, but I imagine before modern materials, sealing, and cold storage, having the cork, cap, sealant, or other stopping mechanism on the top meant less chance for it to deterioriate or fall prey to pests.

This is all to my fallible recollection.

I remember having to do a research project in middle school. We all got shuffled into the computer lab to start researching a topic to ultimately write an essay or presentation or some such on. The problem for me was that I was kind of blindsided by it.

I all of a sudden had to not only learn how to use a scholarly database to find good information on a topic, but had to pick a topic as a preteen that was interesting and had information available to digest. I don’t remember what I ended up doing.

There were other instances of this in my pre-university education though that went better, with more constrained topics or scope.

I don’t think video games would be as big or as developed as a medium and hence as an industry without piracy. For every dollar “lost” because someone pirated instead of buying, there’s probably a greater factor of money “gained” from people gaining and maintaining interest in the medium. Maybe even especially for smaller games, the number of people introduced to the idea that indie titles can be really good, who play something they wouldn’t have if it meant foregoing a more reliable large title, and then go on to talk about it online, and maybe buy it themselves is a big factor in growing the audience for those games and the medium itself.

I also don’t believe in intellectual property as it stands today and believe in the end of capitalism and market economies as a necessary feature for human development, so hopefully the idea of piracy will be moot eventually.

I hope to make commercial games and while that would seemingly put me in conflict with pirates, I’m convinced that my attitude won’t change, for the reasons above.

Big fan of Krita as a painting program. You’ve gotta learn some different hotkeys and all that, but it’s better laid out and easier to learn than like, GIMP or Blender ime. Lots of good tutorials, plenty of free brushes, quite customizable. I really like its alpha-locking and groups as an alternative system to clipping masks.