You know, I've forgotten how much I enjoy hanging out here. :-D

I love that @Lunduke continues reporting the news that isn't getting reported anywhere else. Sometimes it gets old - another foundation or whoever goes hard left, another tech legend got banned, another system gets hacked, etc. But it's important enough that I still want to follow it. And he still works in some fun stuff too (like his ReactOS piece, which kinda has me wanting to create my own Linux distro with a fully Win32 userland). :-D

But he's not the only one creating awesome stuff on here! In case you're not aware...

• @Greg_Gauthier has not one, not two, but three channels going! Old Computer Nerd, Old Sci-Fi Nerd, and Old Philosophy Nerd. I just spent like 2 hours following along on this cool "let's do a type-in BASIC program" video. More on that later.
• @Dirt2901 posts random YouTube videos that always lead to fun! Whether it's new emulators, computing history, tutorials, or random stuff like "hard to pronounce Irish names" - it's all fun!
• @leebase has been chronicling his adventures in generative AI. Now I've seen AI do awesome things and I've seen it do awesomely stupid things... but if we're all stuck with it anyway, I'd like to learn to use it well. And seeing Lee's trial and error and tips and stuff has been informative, and often leads to more fun and tinkering.

So tonight, I wanted to work on my book. Ugh! Revision! No! Okay, I'm in a writing rut. How about some code? I'm sick of web stuff! And my main Linux fun-project is starting to feel like work! Guess I'm in a coding rut too. So what's a geek to do?

• I watched Lunduke's video about the Epstein Files - idk who Epstein is, but that's hilarious!
• After having a good laugh, I found Greg's BASIC video. Now I love 8-bit computers and consoles, but I never quite got the hang of 8-bit BASIC. I mean I get its syntax and all, but I have to admit I've never done much with it. I mainly used it to POKE around memory maps, experiment with how stuff is done, and then switch to C or Assembly for the real work. But I know back in the day, BASIC was a big deal. It was the Python of its day - portable, high-level, and easy to learn. I know back then, a lot of people learned to code by following books and magazines and stuff to create programs. I know even serious business work was done, at least to some extent, in BASIC. But how people got there has always been a mystery. Well tonight, I found out, by actually trying to DO one of those type-in programs. I didn't get very far, but I learned enough to where I have some ideas for games and apps of my own. That got me out of my coding rut, so much so that I wish it weren't 10pm here so I could fire up TheVIC20 and play!
• But what about the writing rut? Well, leave it to Dirt to fix that one. His videos on funny-sounding Irish names got me thinking: if I ditch the hilariously weird spelling, this name and that name could totally work! And the meanings of those names are kinda awesome! Not to mention, in the guys' video, one of my characters' actual names came up! As Dirt says, "Who GNU"? :-D
• And as for Lee and his AI interests... well before I logged in on Locals, I thought to ask AI for help on revising my draft. I was still too "ugh, revising" to actually follow its guidance, but it gave me lots of really good tips that I totally plan to use. I'm not giving an AI my story as free training fodder, but I love that I can ask it questions only another writer would understand and get actionable next steps.

Hanging out here helped me turn a night of "Yes! Free time... but what do I do with it?" into an "I can crash now. That was time well spent." 😃 So guys, thanks a million.