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How my friend and I became Lords of Oblivion

posted by graham originally on cohost.org on and reposted on

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion came out for the Xbox 360 on March 20, 2006 -- almost two decades ago. It launched during an era when there weren't really game wikis to google, which meant that most of the bugs and strange discoveries in the game for me came from word of mouth in my social circle.

A view of Frostcrag spire from above, pulled from the Oblivion wiki

Beyond the more widely-known "horse-armor" DLC launched in April of 2006, there was a number of other DLC items. The only relevant one to this story was the Frostcrag Spire quest for the "Wizard's Tower". I did not buy it, but my friend did and we would regularly hang out. We found that if my friend logged in while he was at my house, then I was able to download and play the DLC on my console. However, either because of limitation in the storage of our hard-drives or because you could only associate your Xbox Live account with so many Xbox 360s at once, we got into this mess where I kept having to re-download the DLC every time he visited if I wanted to play it.

This went on for a few weeks until one of us accidentally tried to load…

tags: #video games #elder scrolls #glitches #longposts

Thought I Saw Someone I Knew

posted by graham on

I was walking down the street to get some takeout tonight, and out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a huge stuffed animal sitting in the front window of a toystore.

Closeup of a maroon face with black eyes and a black uwu mouth

And it reminded me of an old friend.

Closeup of eggbug from cohost doing the same face with the same sort of coloring

Until I looked again more closely.

Zoomed out stock photo of the stuffed animal from a product page

tags: #cohost #eggbug #squishmallow

Bay Area Cohost Wake

posted by graham on

While cohost's users were mourning the loss of the website online, Natalie (and Liz and Zandra) organized a Seattle Cohost Wake that happened last week. Additional wakes popped up in Boston, Philly, and a few other cities. Today, I attended the San Francisco Bay Area Wake, cohost-(heh)-ed by Damien, Nicky Flowers, and Diane in Oakland.

We met, N95+ masks on, by Lake Merritt under the shade of a giant tree and sat in fold up chairs, on blankets, and generally about the grass. I brought my fish picnic blanket and an id I had printed out at the library the night before because I was worried people wouldn't know who I was without the swirly profile picture.

There were a solid 40 people at least, though I didn't get an exact count and it varied over the hours. It was nice to get to see people, but my biggest takeaway was just how tall everybody was. I don't know why but I had imagined everyone on cohost being just barely taller than Jae, when in actuality, many people there today were several inches taller than that.

It was nice to hear people suggest turning this into a…

tags: #cohost #the bay area #meetups

A Year of HxH Characters

posted by graham on

A short boy in checkered vans and a tall-collared jacket with a skull on it holds his hand out as if to manipulate a finger on the other hand into a sharp claw A hunched over Frankenstein monster wearing a suit and pointing one finger out in a finger gun Shizuku, a short woman with glasses, a turtle neck, and a gold cross necklace, looking off into the sky. And Blinky, her Nen vacuum, who has eyes and teeth and a tongue Owl, a gray-skinned man with a gargoyle head wearing sunglasses, who has a toothpick in his fanged mouth and a tan kerchief in his pocket Worm, a mostly nude man with a 💩 head bursting out of the ground as rocks and dirt fly skyward Rabid Dog, a man with spikey hair and sharp teeth running open-handedly towards the camera Leech, a Junji-Ito-style portrait that's zoomed in on the face and has lots of unsettling details, including a long and thick tongue that looks kind of like a slug Porcupine, a short bald old man with a giant mono-brow looking up at the camera and doing the 🥺👉👈 expression Very simple sketches of each of the other named shadow beasts, along with their names below each one A barbarian stepping with a boot on a canyon rock while catching a bazooka shell in one hand and a bullet in his teeth A man in a rocket-boosted wheelchair electrocutes Killua via long metallic snake wires A guy wearing a mask slamming his hand down in the air while a giant magical hand slams the ground in front of him A muscly guy with shoulder-length straight hair, a button-down, and a bow and arrow A man with a sort of pompadour haircut and a mustache and beard but no goatee crosses his arms and holds an ink brush in one hand. He wears no shirt, only a vest A woman with purple hair billowing out against gravity, and in a matching purple cocktail dress bends over and blows a kiss at the camera A short, androgynous looking woman with pointed buck teeth rolls up their sleeve while grass green musical lines swirl around her A shiny purple plastic box with a red lid, opened to reveal three sections, each containing one of the items listed in the quotes below An overhead shot of an old woman sitting at a table, holding a tea mug A three panel comic: 1. Ging Freecs wearing his animal coat and scowling while holding his hand out, 2. A zoomed-out view showing Ging riding atop the head of an enormous melting frog, 3. A further zoomed-out view of that melting frog riding an unfathomably large green dragon, all soaring above clouds over the open ocean An over-the-shoulder forced-perspective view of a guy sitting on a tree branch, curled up in a ball from recoil, with his hands out producing a hadouken of smoke that goes down to an acorn bullet zooming towards Kurapika on the forest floor A bored-looking lady resting her head on her hand on the front counter, while raising her other hand into the air with her pointer finger out, summoning a magical ghostly gremlin. She has lots of tattoos, including a forehead one that says HUNT A girl with dark purple hair hunches over with arms akimbo. She wears black and pink clothes that are both pink witch and a little bit spooky A woman in dark red scrubs patterned like a ninja and wearing a stethoscope holds her hand out towards the camera with an even darker red glow of nen around it Kastro and his ghostly imperfect doppelganger pose back-to-back as they each prepare to deliver tiger bite fist attacks A one-legged cloaked man holding a cane, with a tube coming out of the face-hole of the cloak, raises his hand as if letting three purple spectral beyblades be ripped towards the camera. He is flanked by two blueish ghostly silhouettes of the other two of The Chosen 3 in a forced 3-point perspective A tall, lanky man with messy hair wearing an untucked button-down stands looking slightly worried, but otherwise non-threateningly A little guy with tightly cropped brown hair in a dark gray gi with no belt, holding his hands in fists at his sides and slightly bowing as he says Osu The guy pointing at himself meme but it looks like nervous Killua with extra eye make-up and text at the bottom that reads Friends? A woman in an old formal purple dress, a bulky visor, and a big floppy hat stands fanning herself An old, hunched-over man wearing a cloak and a stole over it that says one kill per day A fancy looking man with Handsome Squidward's face sits in a blue chair next to a dog with human arms laying curled up on a throw rug A young black woman wearing a red hooded cape standing in a defensive pose with her cane in some sand An anime woman in bright clothing holding a small microphone and speaker gestures behind her to a mountain in the background An old, absolutely ripped man holding his lower back with one hand and leaning on the other arm bent over an industrial-sized trashcan on wheels A butler wearing a vest and tie about to flip a coin, with a menacing grin on his face Mike, a dog with arms that is the size of a house, squeezes a human like a stress toy with purplish haze clouding everything An illustration of a person kneeling as he digs furiously at the ground at dusk A low angle illustration of a buff man in a robe walking towards the camera with his left hand dragging through the gray brick wall as he moves An illustration of a cloaked figure next to a woman with thigh high boots, a skirt, and a crop top, with big poofy bright magenta hair in two ponytails An illustration of a muscular anime guy who is on fire from clenching his muscles so hard An illustration of a gangly guy with long dark hair holding two candles of different sizes A forced perspective illustration of a blue man punching the ground really hard so that it cracks An old woman holding a cane who is in a green dress with comically large black eyebrows An illustration of a lady with sunglasses, a vest, and a sniper on her back An over the shoulder illustration of a man with a grey moustache and no mouth while running mid-stride A bald old man with a white beard wearing a blue and white robe and geta sandals, holding a squash ball in his right hand A drawing of Menchi holding 9 knives on the left and a much taller Buhara holding a fork and wearing an apron on the right An illustration of a boy dressed in all green holding a fishing rod above his head and leaping toward the left. His outermost layer is a green camo-textured robe An illustration of a guy in red and blue spinning nunchucks in one hand while slightly crouching and guarding his chest with the other hand. Guy holding what looks like a bat attached to a beehive over his shoulder A drawing of a man smiling and pointing to a ninja mask that he's holding up next to his face An illustration of a buff, bald, shirtless male 90s action-figure with pins sticking of it A lad holding a skateboard while wearing a white t-shirt. Their white hair points up like a flame, and they drink a fowl-looking drink contentedly A Martin-Prince-looking kid sitting in front of a laptop like Schroder from Charlie Brown A drawing of a Jojo-looking person with a pale white face, pink hair, and a pale lime green doublet with playing card symbols on it A guy in a white button down and black pants sheepishly rocking on the heels of his brown oxford shoes with his hands behind his back A green green jelly bean man in a t-shirt that says GAY on it

A year ago, a new podcast came out, and with it brought me one of the silliest and most fun art projects I've ever been a part of. There's plenty more art to come, but I wanted to do a bit of a review as I migrated and archived the old art from cohost onto here. Rather than filling up RSS feeds with over 50 drawings one at a time that many of you may have already seen, I've opted for this grid approach. Each one is clickable to go look at the original cohost post. Maybe I'll update them to web-archive once cohost shuts down. Who knows?

Media Club Plus is a podcast by Friends at the Table and its premier season focused on Hunter X Hunter anime based on the manga by Yoshihiro Togashi. I've been listening to Friends at the Table for years, and I knew that the group behind Media Club Plus would be fun to listen to, even if I didn't know anything about Hunter X Hunter (HxH). Part of the conceit of the podcast, after all, was that Jack De Quidt had also never watched the anime nor read the manga, so we would…

tags: #art #digital art #hxh #media club plus #friends at the table

Wizard Sokoban

posted by graham on

Today, my friend and I launched another new version of our puzzle game named Wizard Sokoban (working title). You can play it on itch.io for free, though it works best on a computer using firefox:

I wanted to take some time to discuss the journey we've been through getting here because I'm proud of what we've made so far and I'm excited for what it'll be after we've applied another few rounds of polish.

Our second time game developing

In May of 2024, my friend Jules and I found ourselves simultaneously unemployed for the first time in our professional careers. With no structure to our days, we talked about some side projects that we'd been meaning to try out when we had more time. He mentioned wanting to try out Godot, and I mentioned that I had an idea for a puzzle game that could be pretty fun and simple to make.

We've been playing video games together for over a decade, and we most recently took on the idea of making our own when we went on a vacation to take part in Indie Train Jam 2017 from Chicago to Emeryville.[1] Surrounded by…

tags: #video games #game development #puzzles

Under Construction

posted by graham on

I've finally found the motivation to make a personal blog, and not a moment too soon. It's slow going, but the RSS feed should work. For now, the feed just contains every post with no filtering options, but I'll probably separate it out into individually-subscribable tag feeds before I post much else.

Part of why this all took so long was because I wanted to find a url that didn't include my full name and that did allow me to do silly stuff with it, like the blog link being at "graham builds a blog" when you read the url without punctuation.

tags: #meta