matt1993, posts by tag: distractions - LiveJournal

Okay. So. Every sporting event in the entire world is cancelled. Every restaurant is closed. Every grocery store is closed. No movies or video games will ever be released again. E3 is cancelled. TV shows are being cancelled. obligatory in-joke incoming: Authors are being cancelled. Every xkcd comic from now on until the end of time will be about the coronavirus, and all other webcomics that still update are probably following suit. You can't go to ANY news site without hearing about the coronavirus.

We're all running out of ways to cope with the constant unrest in the world. And now we can't even go to NON-news sites without hearing about the coronavirus. If the Homestar Runner Wiki - HOMESTAR. RUNNER. WIKI. OF ALL PLACES. - is now insisting that we all shouldn't get to be happy right now and STILL need to be repeatedly kicked while we're down is any indication, we're about to COMPLETELY run out of ways to cope.


People say that the best way to deal with anxiety is to stay away from news sites for a while so we don't keep hearing about it constantly. THEY SAY THAT LIKE IT'S EASY. THEY SAY THAT LIKE IT'S *POSSIBLE*.


Well, seeing as it's not actually possible to browse the Internet without constantly being reminded that the world is ending, it is now my duty to do what I can to MAKE that possible!


I'm going to stockpile a list of links to all websites I know of that I know for a fact (or can reasonably assume) do NOT mention or reference the coronavirus in any way whatsoever. It doesn't matter what they're about. I'm not even going to sort them by category or any other sensible order. Just as long as they DON'T mention or reference the coronavirus in any way. I will periodically update this list.

Before we begin, I ask you all to:
1) Let me know of any other websites you know of that meet the condition mentioned above. I want this to become a COMPLETE list of websites that meet that condition, not just a list of websites *I* have heard of.
2) If any of these websites DO mention the coronavirus, please let me know so I can remove them from the list.
3) Share this entry with others if you found it helpful.
4) DO NOT GET UPSET AT PEOPLE FOR NOT MENTIONING THE CORONAVIRUS. THAT'S EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT PEOPLE WITH ANXIETY NEED. WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO TAKE OUR MINDS OFF THE NEWS IF WE WANT TO.

Now, let's begin! (Last updated: March 24, 2020.)

http://www.homestarrunner.com/ (The site itself ONLY. Not the Homestar Runner Wiki, or Strong Bad's Twitter.)
http://garfield.com/
http://mezzacotta.net/ (NOT the entire mezzacotta website - only mezzacotta the comic, Infinity on 30 Credits a Day, Awkward Fumbles, and the non-webcomic features of the site. Or, at least, I'm not caught up far enough on any of the other webcomics on this site to know whether or not they mention it.)
http://www.kittenwar.com/
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.…
https://googology.wikia.org/wiki/G…
http://terrorisland.net/
http://factitious.net/FOMS/060203.…
http://www.kidicaruswiki.org/Main_…
http://gadzillionthings.net/
http://www.galactanet.com/comic/vi…
http://alphabetclock.com
https://www.undefined.net/1/0/?str…
https://www.miccostumes.com/ (okay, I'll admit it: I stumbled on this site randomly a couple of years ago and visit it every now and then just because a lot of the female models are cute/hot. Hey, if it helps me keep my mind off the fact that the world is ending, does it matter how? :) )
http://downloads.khinsider.com
http://enya.sk
http://www.nataliedee.com, http://nataliedeemachine.com/ and http://blog.nataliedee.com/ (However, other sites in the Sharing Machine network don't get a mention because they are still updating and therefore may have mentioned a certain topic I'm trying to avoid)
http://www.circleversussquare.com
http://garfieldminusgarfield.net
http://amiibo.life
http://asofterworld.com

Honorable mentions:

http://greatday.com (It's possible that the latest few posts are about the coronavirus, but these posts don't mention it directly and are focused on staying positive, on a site where positivity and motivation and moving forward is the theme of the entire site. Even if the latest posts are indeed about the coronavirus, the only way one would know is by looking at the timestamps. Therefore, I would recommend this site even if it mentioned the virus directly.)

You know what's even nerdier and niche-ier than writing an entire entry about a hypothetical Super Smash Bros. moveset for the guide to a video game manual?

Writing TWO entries about a moveset for the guide to a game manual, of course! :P


I wrote that first entry about Mary O. & Yamamura's made-up moveset shortly before the E3 reveal of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and since then I've thought of some updates to make to it based on what was revealed about the actual game... enough that I'm gonna have to bore everyone with another entry about it so I don't have to keep getting distracted thinking about the idea! Since the actual game comes out this week, now seems like the right time. :)


In the unlikely event that you're interested in reading this entry but haven't read the first one yet, I'd recommend reading that one first. Because in this entry I mostly only describe the changes I made, without repeating anything I decided to leave unchanged.

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It's December now? GOOD!! Because at least there's one New Year's meme I can get out of the way now, six days before I get too distracted playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to remember to do it. :)



Go to your Calendar and find the first entry for each month of 2018. Post the first line of it in your journal, and that's your "Year In Review".

January 2018

I think there's a glitch in my copy of Windows 7. It says today's date is "1/1/2018". I thought the year 2018 didn't exist - didn't the world end in 2017?

February 2018

YES! I'm FINALLY done fixing all of my entries in 2007-2010! (Hopefully...)

March 2018

It's Friday already and not Tuesday or Wednesday... but at least this is still the most regular feature I've had in my journal since the weekly Garfield Randomizer comics in 2009!

(This, of course, is about my weekly Miiverse backup entries... which of course did not remain a regular feature for long...)

April 2018

https://www.mariowiki.com/Mary_O._…

May 2018

So I found this two-part YouTube video called "500 Characters I Want In Smash Bros. Switch"...

June 2018

About time I posted some more of these. Once again, I meant to post them last week...

July 2018

- On June 14 or 15 or so I saw The Incredibles 2, then saw Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom a week or two later! I liked both :)

August 2018

It took four days (more than that if you count the time I spent putting it off), but I'm finally done fixing one of my longest and most cringeworthy entries ever! :D

September 2018

Well... it's September 4. So Sunday was the first anniversary of the day I was finally motivated - by a glitch LJ had for about three weeks where a lot of images were suddenly broken in entries - to finally get around to fixing the broken images AND everything else I wanted to fix in my entries on both LJ and DW.

October 2018

WARNING: I am extremely depressed and therefore this entry is going to make no sense whatsoever because I am physically incapable of wording an opinion very well when I am depressed.

November 2018

pathvain_aelien stayed at my apartment for a while; in that time we watched the How To Train Your Dragon TV show! (Specifically, the third of the three shows there were. P_A, what was the third show called again? Dragons: Race to the Edge.) We made it to season 4. :) Have any of you watched it?

December 2018

It's December now? GOOD!! Because at least there's one New Year's meme I can get out of the way now, six days before I get too distracted playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to remember to do it. :)

About time I posted another one of these. If I'd stuck to my intended schedule of posting my Miiverse backup entries once a week, this would've been posted between June 24 and 30, 2018.

I'll get caught up someday...

At least I can prove I'm still capable of posting entries that don't mention the Quidd drama!... wait a minute... DANG IT! :P

← June 2013 01/01/2014 →


New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 07/17/2013 8:45 PM

For my birthday I got (along with other games and things) money to get NSLU from the eShop, so I'm gonna do that now… If I'm not back in an hour, send a not-being-distracted-by-Miiverse after me XD

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(I wonder what I was doing if it took me three whole days after my birthday to post this. Probably playing Kid Icarus: Uprising - I got that for the same birthday, but didn't get to post about it on Miiverse for a while because there were no 3DS game communities back then except for Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon.

Also, I think this is the only time I posted about a game that was out by then, but that I didn't have yet. I may be wrong though.)


New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 07/17/2013 11:14 PM

Got NSLU and liking it so far! I wish there were an official in-story explanation of why Mario's not there, though, if only so there wouldn't be fan speculation... But I'm liking the game :)

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(That's how you know that this post predates Game Theory's "Mario is Mental" video - I'm annoyed by some other Mario-related fan speculation enough to post a mini-rant about it.

Also, like the next few, this ended up in the NSMBU community instead of NSLU because for whatever reason, New Super Luigi U didn't give me nearly as many opportunities to post from in-game, which was the only way to post in the NSLU community at all.)


New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 07/17/2013 11:32 PM

My sister is REALLY enjoying playing as Nabbit and being invincible :)

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New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 07/20/2013 12:47 PM



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(Despite making a lot of posts/drawings about things that happened to us in specific New Super Mario Bros. U levels, this is the only time I ended up doing so about a specific New Super Luigi U level. And I don't even know what level it was except that it was clearly a castle.)


New Super Mario Bros. U Community
Matt 07/20/2013 2:08 PM



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(This is the second of my only two Miiverse posts to have no words, and technically my last post in the NSMBU community since the next NSLU-related post actually made it to the NSLU community.)


New Super Luigi U Game Posts
Matt 07/23/2013 10:28 PM

Beat the game!
Why is it that this is the first time I've gotten asked to post to Miiverse in NSLU?

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(Again, this is my first AND last post in the NSLU community. I think we continued playing New Super Luigi U for a while after this, but not long enough for us to get around to 100% completing it unlike with NSMBU. I should finish that someday. This was also my last Miiverse post of 2013 - it would be about 5 or 6 months [139 days, to be exact] until I finally started posting again, setting another new record for my longest hiatus.)

If you're not into Super Smash Bros. or Super Mario Maker... and maybe even if you ARE into those games but aren't as obsessed with Mary O. as I am... then this entry will probably be of no interest to you and you should probably skip it unless you REALLY want to know what goes on inside my head. :P


Being the Nintendo nerd I am, ever since the first Super Smash Bros. I sometimes tried to imagine what it would be like if various characters (video game or otherwise) that weren't playable in any SSB games yet were.

But I don't think I've ever come up with a complete moveset for one until now. Usually all I think of is:
- "What would Kirby look like if he copied this character?"
- "What would this character's alternate costumes be?"
- (for characters who aren't from a series that's already in the game) "What would this character's series symbol be?"
- MAYBE a game mechanic that would be unique to that one character
- MAYBE taunts and MAYBE special moves and a Final Smash.

And usually I don't write about or draw any of these ideas either - just think about it.


But lately, due to my constantly being obsessed with Mary O. (who unfortunately is still obscure enough that I feel like I have to link to that article again), I've been thinking more and more about what it'd be like if she and Yamamura were playable in Super Smash Bros. as a 2-in-1 character similar to Duck Hunt.

In fact I first thought of this idea at some point before April Fools' Day 2017 (see the music tag for that entry), but lately I've been thinking more and more about how this could work, enough that I think I have ideas for their entire hypothetical moveset by now.

And I keep thinking about said moveset so much that writing an entry about it is probably the only way I'm ever going to stop being so distracted thinking about it, even though I doubt it'd be interesting to anyone here (none of you are as obsessed with Mary O. as I am, and a lot of you probably aren't even into Super Smash Bros. enough for this to be of interest to you). So I'll LJ-cut it so I won't bore you. :)


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It feels so weird that I've put all this thought into making an entire moveset and such for Mary O. & Yamamura for literally no reason since I doubt I'd be making a Super Smash Bros. fangame or hack anytime soon... and it feels especially weird to actually be typing out this ridiculous idea after spending so much time only thinking about it...

Well, now you know what goes on inside my head! :P

This has been kind of a disappointing April Fools' Day because:

1) Homestar Runner didn't update at all today, even though they did for April Fools' Day 2014, 2015, and 2016, and April Fools and Halloween are almost the only times they ever update nowadays.
2) I don't think many people noticed my April Fools prank at all.

For reference, my April Fools prank was this entry; however, when I first posted it (on March 31 in my time zone, but late enough that it was April 1 already for some of you), it was an exact copy of my first entry. Then I waited a few minutes or so and changed it to a copy of a different past entry in the same way... then changed it to another after a few more minutes, and so on - basically, if I was at my computer, I'd change the entry anywhere from once an hour to once every few minutes. (At first. I gradually updated it less and less often because it seemed like no one was noticing...)

By "exact copy", that means including the subject line, repost button, userpic, tags, mood, music, location... basically, everything except the timestamp, the comments, and friends-only status [though, of course, the only friends-only entries I used were ones that probably would've been fine being public]. And anything that I intended to change each time but accidentally forgot sometimes. Though if I used an entry I'd posted in _dreams_, autism, or asperger, I added a notice saying that it was cross-posted (even though I don't think copying a community entry to my own journal years later for April Fools' Day actually counts as cross-posting).

I chose the entries semi-randomly, sometimes by going to my Calendar for random years and months and picking a random entry I'd feel comfortable posting again, and sometimes by just putting in notable entries that I remember and wanted to include in this prank at some point. Some entries were used more than once.

And just to mess with your heads even more, I thought it might be fun to come up with a hypothetical FUTURE entry and add it into the mix! That's what the 2023 year in review is for. It ended up being my favorite thing about this prank, so I left that one up significantly longer than any other single entry.


Now that April Fools' Day is over, all the entries I ended up using are listed below for posterity. (Don't expect the repost buttons to work correctly, though...)


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I can't believe it - I finished the creative vortex poll I mentioned I've been working on!!

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I hope the poll shows up...

EDIT: It did, but I accidentally put "Finish rereading" as an option when it should've been "Finish rereading therapy notes" and I can't change it now. Oh well.

(I finally posted it. Here goes nothing...)

(By the way, pathvain_aelien and ellaina02, I added a few things after the proofreading)



CHARACTER 15: I have a really fantastic idea for a new website.
ELIZA: We all have something we're ashamed of. Don't we?
{beat panel}
CHARACTER 15: Yes. Depressing, isn't it.

What's sad is that recently-- Well, okay, not that recently, due to the long amount of time it took to write this entry, have it proofread, and continue to worry about whether or not it makes sense even after I had it proofread. But last October, I was hit with a realization similar to Character 15's, and I'm not even a randomly generated webcomic character.

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EDIT: Can't believe I forgot to say this last time, but this is my 800th entry!!! :D

These unique interactive clocks have been distracting me all day today, so I thought I'd post an entry about them so that at least the idea for this entry won't distract me...

http://thecolourclock.co.uk/ - Takes the hour, minute, and second, divides them by 23, 59, and 59 (respectively), multiplies them by 255, and changes the red, green, and blue values (respectively) of the background color to those numbers. The effect can be pretty relaxing! Currently it is blue in my time zone, since it's just after midnight.

http://www.ruinsofmorning.net/flas… - Hexadecimal clock with 16 hours in a day, 256 minutes in an hour, and 16 seconds in a minute. Currently reads 0:32.D.

http://www.alphabetclock.com/ - Uses letters instead of numbers, with A=0, B=1, ..., Z=25. 26 seconds in a minute, 26 minutes in an hour, 26 hours in a day, 26 days in a month, 26 months in a year, 26 years in a century, and 26 centuries in a millenium. Since it's synchronized to UTC, it currently reads FJSYD:STM even though it's just after midnight right now. (FJSYD: is the date and :STM is the time; the first few letters of the date can be omitted depending on how specific you want to be, like how you might abbreviate 2011 to '11, say "October 24" with no year, or say "the 24th" with no month or year) Also includes a time and date converter.

Interesting finding - :ENYA is 11:11:11 AM in my time zone...

http://www.purplemassgroup.com/upl… - Custom version of the previous clock that shows two more digits of the time and includes a calendar.