T w e n t y S i d e d
From The Archives:
The Best of 2018
I called 2018 "The Year of Good News". Here is a list of the games I thought were interesting or worth talking about that year.
Skylines of the Future
Cities: Skylines is bound to have a sequel sooner or later. Where can this series go next, and what changes would I like to see?
Why Batman Can't Kill
His problem isn't that he's dumb, the problem is that he bends the world he inhabits.
The Gradient of Plot Holes
Most stories have plot holes. The failure isn't that they exist, it's when you notice them while immersed in the story.
Rage 2
The game was a dud, and I'm convinced a big part of that is due to the way the game leaned into its story. Its terrible, cringe-inducing story.
A bit off-topic, but something’s happened to the Wavatars. Even in old threads – from before Shamus’ passing – everybody’s Wavatars are different. I really liked my little red guy with sunglasses, but now he’s gone. Is there anything you can do on your end to revert the change?
When we updated the blog software it appears to have updated the connection to the wavatars function. The update was necessary for ongoing security monitoring. The wavatar icon is auto-generated based on the email provided, and apparently that changed as part of the updates. I ran into that when upgrading a previous blog a couple of years ago. I have not *yet* found a way to specifically force a connection to the old algorythm, but I am looking to see if that can be adjusted in any way. You can visit the wavatar site and put in a preferred or custom avatar, for the record. That is, if you can find an example of your old wavatar, you could actually save it or capture it, then input it as a custom icon to be used.
EDIT: To be clear, yes technically this is through “gravatars” since there really isn’t a “wavatar” plug-in anymore. But somewhere in the update the call request is different now and produces a different result, even if the functionality is the same. The actual wavatar plug-in doesn’t function with modern wordpress, and even before the update there was no “wavatar plugin” being loaded; it’s already *in* the PHP/CSS.
I found my old Wavatar on Archive dot org, and I changed it in my Gravatar profile. It’s fixed now – even in the old threads. But that doesn’t change the fact that everyone else’s Wavatars have been changed. I regularly read old comment threads, and I know most of the regular commenters’ Wavarars by heart, and they help me navigate the threads more easily.
And as dumb as it sounds, I’ve really gotten attached to some of those goofy faces :(
So, I really hope you’ll be able to find a fix for this soon.
I’m glad it worked for you, and I’m letting everyone know, but I understand it’s a frustrating outcome. I don’t currently have a lot of hope this can be rolled back while keeping the updates, but there is a possibility there is some corner I haven’t poked that will have an answer.
I hated my old one anyway. I thought it looked like a racist caricature. This one is good, has a cute toof.
Ah, it’s back. Welcome back!
Got a lot of mileage out of that frame “Aragorn looks stage right, Legolas and Gimli look stage left”.
This one posted on Shamus’ birthday.