I have everything I need right here (shows both hands)

There’s an old ‘Toothpaste For Dinner’ comic I always think about, which I’ll just put below!:

I remember when I was a teen, while trying to describe why I liked the Books, I re-coined the term ‘soundscape’. And there’s so many times since then where I stumble upon a cliche again, or realize some age-old fact.

For example, I been feeling homesick for reasons I think I mentioned in a previous diary post (I accidentally made myself invisible). I’d changed my number, my email, and didn’t do it properly where there’s a decent amount of emails just not reaching me. Then I got off all the social networks I was on (except the beautiful solarpunk future that is Scuttlebutt). And I was feeling lonely and not sure what to do. There was all this sorta ambient friendship back home that I was missing here–like I got friends in NZ and they are great, but I was missing all my old friends and that old ambience. And I was thinking, “I wish there was some way I could just sit out on a porch and have friends from all over the world come by and visit. Do that that old nighttime sit-on-the-stoop-with-coffee thing, where I enjoy the stars if they’re all that appear, but enjoy the friendship if that appears too. But how can I sit on a stoop that extends the world?” Then I wondered if there was some sort of video I could record that was live, and anyone could visit, and maybe chat too and how nice that’d be. And then I had the completely new revelation, “Oh! the internet! The internet can be used to connect people around the world!”

So, I think I’m going to try out the internet? Or more specifically, I’m going to start a video stream every few nights. It’ll just be my face and likely me coding on coolguy ins ome way, but I’ll put up a schedule here and if that schedule works for you, you can stop by and say hi. I really don’t know how to do video streams, and know that I want one that anyone can visit and that can do chat...so I think I’ma use twitch for right now. I’d like a non-amazon and free and self-hosted video stream, but I’m not sure how to do that yet and I’m not sure if figuring it out is my calling! So for now (unless you, dear reader, have a great suggestion) I’ll use twitch. And it’s happily not causing me any stress, since I’m not actually trying to start a twitch show. There’s no golden number I’m trying to reach to make it worthwhile, since I’m treating it like a digital porch and that doesn’t have any meaningful metrics, thank god.

In a similar, obvious fashion: I want to share more of my thoughts about things (life, love, future, transformers, whatnot) but get stressed out about the reception of my sharing. And then I realized I’d built a site that was <em>perfect</em> for this. I have no way to tell if anyone read anything, I have no metrics to track, and I have no desire for promotion. So putting something on here is essentially the same as leaving it on a park bench—just a park bench that has my email on it.

So I’ma likely gonna be sharing more loose scraps on the coolguy,a nd likely going to be sharing my future tech thoughts because let’s be honest, I think about tech and the future a lot. And not in a “INVTEST IN CRYPTO NOW” sorta way. More a “How can we make tech bring us to the future Zelda: Ocarina of Time promised?” coolguy.website has no purpose except to be an endleslly expanding digital home. I need to make myself at home more!

With that spirit, I’ma just share these thoughts now! They ain’t finished, they likely got typos, but I’m sharing away! Also, the comic ‘My Brother’s Husband’ is really good, and it’s summer here, and the greenbelt trails down the mountainside to get to the city are now covered in homemade swingsets. Kids just throw ropes over the strongest branches, and tie a loop at the end of the rope, and groups of them gather to swing off the edge of a steep hillside and hope neither their secondhand rope and randomly chosen branch break. Angelica and I walked by a gang of these kids and as we passed they all stopped and politely offered us the next go at the swing, because Kiwis are so gentle and so hardcore simultaneously.