Some searching gave me Maloja, which feels like it is probably a word with a meaningful definition I am not aware of, but searching doesn’t give anything. It runs with Docker, which is nice. I set up the container and got it running. I downloaded and imported my last.fm history as well. Then I went to set up Panoscrobbler, which I use on my phone. Panoscrobbler and do more than one scrobble target, so it can do Maloja and Last.fm. Except it apparently doesn’t like using HTTP. Because Maloja is just on my home server it just sits at IP:port. You can’t set up HTTPS SSL certs against an IP.

I remembered something I had seen recently and asked Claude about, an SSH Proxy tunnel. So I asked Claude about it, and got a set up guide, which was mostly familiar. Aside from the tunnel itself, which was just setting up.an SSH based service, the rest was things I had done before. I needed a subdomain, easy, I needed to set up a virtual host for it, easy, I needed to run Let’s Encrypt against it, easy.

And now the scrobble service is set up at maloja.lameazoid.com, as well as on my last.fm. Panoscrobbler can be configured to target multiple services at once.

I also, for reasons I can’t quite remember, have more than one last.fm account. I went ahead and downloaded data from all three accounts, and dumped them into Maloja, for a slightly more complete image of my listening history. There were about 6000 scrobbles with bad time stamps, but I was able to get into the SQLite database and purge those out. Surprisingly, not much changed in my “All Time” numbers other than Pink Floyd and Nobuo Uematsu rank much higher now. Which is fine, both were frequent listens before I started using Last.fm.

I also can hit this service now without being VPN connected to my home network, which is a bonus.

Which gave me another idea. Why stop at scrobbles, I can do the music too. Another recent project was trying to get a better self hosted music streaming set up. Basically, self hosted Spotify. I had set up a music only Jellyfin account but that was a bit janky. I recently had discovered and set up Navidrome, which is much nicer and designed for Music. I followed the same tunneling procedure and now I can take my personal music library, which Navidrome tells me is 38,000 tracks, and listen to it everywhere much more easily.

But why stop there? What else can they new shiny tools do? It turns out Maloja has an output API. I turned to Claude again and had it make up a script that will create a weekly digest markdown record of weekly top 5 for artist, albums, and songs, as well as a dump of every scrobble. It stumbled a bit on the date format for the API, which is pretty poorly documented, but after feeding it the code from Maloja, it was able to decipher the proper format.

And even more fun, as part of an unrelated recent project, I now have the CLI version of Joplin running on my project server. So I have the script also push this weekly summary to my Joplin notebook.

But wait, there’s more! What about, the old scrobbles? Well, I have a script that makes weekly digests, the next step was a slightly altered script that would loop through all of the weeks from today back to 2005, making digest files. I mean, no one, including me will probably ever look at this but I have it down, and its going to make new ones automatically going ahead.

In short, what I have actually been messing with, is vehicles in Lego Fortnite. Because the Madalorian quests have added some more vehicles and new mechanics with the new Hover Brick.

Before I get more into that, I really wonder just why they are making getting these schematics so complicated. There are three phases of drops, two available now. You get them by doing quests for Din Djarin and Grogu. The quests are fairly simple, the hard part is finding Din and Grogu. Its not clear what triggers them to spawn in a village, some I have seen suggest he will only show up in the Star Wars island village or the First Village you made.

Before this started, I decided to do the old Star Wars Island quests, which was a good idea because it also gives several Star Wars themed buildings. So I was already in a Star Wars village when it started, and he never showed up, after waiting and messing around a bit. I went to my first village, and waited around there, no sign of them. I decided to check the other villages I have started, and he showed up, in what I am pretty sure was my third village. So the whole “First Village or Star Wars village seems to be nonsense.

What is also annoying and bizarre, there seems to be more drops than quests. So you have to do the quests in one village, then go to a second world and do the quests again.

Week One Drops

• Mos Espa Speeder Garage
• X-36 Landspeeder (Luke’s Landspeeder)

Week Two Drops

• Mos Espa Moisture Farm
• Jalopy Landspeeder
• Aratech Civilian Speeder Bike
• Mos Espa Cargo Skiff

Week Three Drops

• Custom Sorosuub Land Speeder (Fancier Luke’s Speeder)
• Mos Espa Bazaar Pavilion

The fun part has been the speeders and the hover bricks. The Jalopy Speeders is prrtty bare bones and works well for slapping parts and jets on to build little vehicles. The Cargo skiff works pretty well too.

I still have not quite gotten the hang of how it all works, half the time I end up with a Speeder that tries to take off and do loop de loops.

I tried adding some hover parts to one of the Ninjago airships but doesn’t seems to have worked. And I did use the wrench to activate them. Plus I threw like 20 on because its not clear how much weight matters.

Just one last note on annoyingly hard to get. They has Mos Eisley buildings in the store. They also had a bunch of overpriced Decor sets, but the buildings seemed nice and useful, but they were there for like, a day. Good job on the FOMO I guess, nice job missing out on a sale. Hopefully if it comes around again I am still caring, but I doubt it.

Also for the unaware yoots, Crack Jack used to give prizes in their little boxes of caramel popcorn. Hell they may still, I don’t eat Crack Jack, my wife is allergic to nuts, plus I can buy a whole bag of caramel corn for way cheaper. But no prizes.

Also, the cereal prizes back then probably were not actually good. I remember like, McDonald’s toys being cooler way more than I remember cereal prizes being cooler. But it was basically the modern Gotcha prize toys, but you got a bunch of cereal with it, and they were shitty quality.

Also I don’t know why I am acting like cereal doesn’t come with prizes, I just got a bunch of Toy Story 5 trading cards from my Frosted Flakes this morning (technically last night).

Even better, I recently got a free set of mediocre headphones with Tony the Tiger emblazoned on them, but that took buying TWO boxes of cereal. Plus, Kelloggs pretty regularly has digital Minecraft prizes now, which are way cooler than paper cards, and just as useless because I just use a custom skin anyway.

Video Games

I have almoat finished the Droid-dex in Fortnite’s Droid Tycoon game. I just need a Raindbow R7. If I want to “max out” my base I need like a dozen of them. The R7 is the top slot droid for the Astromech stations. The Opti-Strike is top for Battle, I have I think, 3/5 for that. The Mono-Walker whatever its called is top for worker, I have a few, but only two Rainbow tier. But I am making up for it with Rainbow Mecha Droids, which is the next best.

There was also a third event today to get IG-11, kill storm troopers, steal their Beskar, deliver it to Din Djarin. Pretty simple, I did it in a private lobby because it was easier. There was also a really nice looking base paint, though I kind of hate the giant Mando hologram out in front of it.

I have also been hitting LEGO Fortnite Odyssey a bunch. It has Star Wars specials events as well, but they did not start until mid-month. The new Hoverbrick is fun, and I have been playing around with the various vehicle bricks making well, vehicles. I made a pretty sick speeder bike, for example. Though I took a break from that to sail off in one of my Ninjago Airships and check out Klombo island.

The mode is fun, but probably my biggest problem is just how empty the world feels. Like maybe it needs to be 1/4th the land mass, and your villages could use like 3x the NPCs.

ATS Illinois has also been a fun little expansion. Its funny how there are areas that “feel familiar”. Plenty of places I have never been though. The scale of this game is going to be so broken if they get to the East coast, Rockford here already feels likeits just a suburb of Chicago. They really should have started with the East Coast I think, where things are much more compact.

Toys

For the longest time, my Walmart had a bunch of Legacy Jhiaxus Transformers. Its a voyager, so at this point, it was a $40 toy. I kind of like the look of him, and idea of him, but not that much. They all disappeared at some point. I came across one though, the box was beat to hell, but all the parts seemed to be there, and it was marked down cheap, so I decided to go for it.

He is a neat Transformer, surprisingly pose able. The plastic kind of feels weird though. His design is kind of intentionally wild too, he isn’t a Seeker (Starscream) remold, he is all new, but the robot really feels like a bulked up seeker. Apparently all of that is part of his lore.

Music

Last week I talked about setting up Navidrome. I attached it to Last.fm as a back-end, which is an option, and man, that really supercharged up the auto-mixes. Its basically like using Spotify but my own music. I hit the “Insta-mix” based on a song and for the most part, it gives me a good mix of actually decent tracks mixed with some banger b side tier tracks by the same or similar artists.

The short is, I started buying toys as a hobby in High School when I started working and had money to buy things. I have childhood toys, and still have some of them, but I didn’t start “collecting until I was buying them myself. This was back in the 90s, so, I have been at it for a while. I have had times where I bought more and when I was cutting way back. I am pretty way back currently, thanks mostly to U̷̬͙͛n̶̬̒̾p̸̙̑̈́r̵̬̫͗͛e̵̡̓̊c̸̞̖̈́i̷͚͆̚d̴̮̚e̷̹̜̿n̴͔̣̈́ṱ̶͚̅̆ě̶̤̗d̷͈̀ ̸̻̳̄Ṭ̷̿̐i̵͚̤͛͊m̷̛̮̟e̷̦̖̊s̵̝͊.

I have a few focus lines, but I also have kind of just bought whatever. Like even back in the 90s I discovered these cool Bandai model kits from Neon Genesis Evangelion and saved to buy them, though they were very expensive at the time. But for larger parts of the collection, I have a ton of Transformers, Marvel Legends, and Star wars stuff. I also tend to collect from whatever is new at the time. I really am not into nostalgia collecting, I collect because I like sculpts and articulation and the engineering behind making it all work. Like, I have a ton of Transformers, but I barely consume any of the media. The only Transformer shows I can confidently say I have watched all of are Beast Wars, Beast Machines, and Prime.

I also don’t collect for any delusion of value. I have most of my stuff out on shelves in the basement, nicely organized. I very often randomly grab stuff to mess with at my desk. I love walking into the space and just like, “all this stuff is super cool.” I almost never sell anything, and find often that after I do, I end up regretting it later. Like I have several things that I wish I still had that I sold in the past.

Anyway, not sure if that meets the “Toy Craze” topic, but that is the short version of my toy story.

This thing is so much more, its basically a little event based RPG world set in Navarro.

I am not going to discuss the movie clip, its probably just part of a cold open action bit, its fun, I am… not sure it really made me excited for this movie. It feels really weird they are making this movie at all, what happened to the Rey movie? Or maybe Solo 2, that set up for a sequel.

Anyway, the game. You get stuck with 12 other random players (or a party I suppose if you bring friends). You are all on a sort of tour trip to Navarro but The Mandalorian breaks into the sales pitch and is all “The Empire is coming, stop them.” Fortunately for the planet this was apparently a tourist trip for guns for hire. After fighting some Stormtroopers you gain access to the city and get recruited by IG-11.

After that, you are free to do little quests and gain levels and get better gear. There is a PVP arena if you are into that as well.

One mission involves helping little Baby Grogu, who takes you out to meet the Mandalorian himself to get a special rifle. Which is funny because during the intro, he said he was “off planet” and that was why he needed your help.

Liar.

Every five minutes or so there is another wave of Imperials attacking, with varying difficulties. In between these there is a random bounty target that shows up that you can race to defeat before other players.

I am not sure if this mode has an “endgame” moment but it’s pretty enjoyable. The city is busy and detailed and feels like a real Star Wars city. It’s fun to just run around in it and do the little tasks. The leveling is fairly brisk as well, so it’s not demanding and endlessly climbing grind like say, Droid Factory.

Doomscrolling kind of feels like it has connotations of negativity. Like you are scrolling looking for negative. Or just scrolling like you would gawk at a car wreck. Its admittedly hard to not get caught up in it these days. There is so so much bull shit these days.

On the other hand, I try to put purpose to my online activity. Even with social media. I frequently browse social media, but also, its focused. Like I go to Bluesky, and run over my follow list and maybe Discover, but usually I check my list of the dozen or so people I don’t want to miss, and that is mostly it.

I also don’t really get caught up in “gossip tier” “news”. Even for stupid shit like making fun of or pointing out hypocrisy of some MAGA bull shit or something. Like, these people are doing actual heinous shit, I don’t need to give a shit about so and so dude wearing a dress in high school. Who cares, the dude is helping murder school kids in Iran, thats the focus, the gossip is a stupid distraction.

Something that has recently helped me doom scroll less is getting perma banned on Reddit. I have a whole post I never posted from the end of January about it, I should just post it and back date it. The short is, anything even remotely “violent” gets a suspension, 3 strikes its permanent. Its stupid. They also got rid of /r/all, which is also stupid. Its like they got tired of everyone pointing out the atrocities in the world and they threw up blinders to make discussion harder to see and find.

I replaced Reddit with Lemmy but its a lot slower. Its also kind of full of the annoying type of progressive who put perfect ahead of progress so no one can get anywhere. Unlike MAGA nazis, leftists are not a mono culture, its both a strength and a weakness.

Anyway, Doomscrolling….

I just, feel like my scrolling is just more productive. Browsing for projects I will never get to and reading dumb random trivia articles. Pilling books and movies and video games on the endless to-do list. Trying to find positive instead of doom.

They say the TV would ask “Do you know where your children are” to get parents to remember to check on their kids. Its definitely true.

When I was young, my friends and I definitely just sort of, wandered all over. We had a fair number of regular outside activities.

The core activity was riding bikes. We would often just rude up and down the snakey road that was our neighborhood. We would try to do all sorts of trucks and such too. Pop wheelies. “Jump” them with little bunny hops. Riding with no hands was a big one, I could ride back and forth up and down the neighborhood with no hands eventually.

There was also a woods area with some trails where you could bike, with hills to get actual air when jumping.

Sometimes we would ride down to the grocery store to spend our allowance on comics and candy.

The other big activity was “playing guns”. This generic term meant many different activities themed around plastic guns. Sometimes we would assign teams and do little wars with “bases” around the neighborhood. Other times we would all be on one team and just sneak around the area like we were on a spy mission. This usually meant carrying one gun, and a backpack with other guns.

This evolved a bit eventually with Super Soakers. Because it meant actually shooting something and not just making “gun noises” with our mouths.

We definitely got in trouble some. I remember once getting chewed out (rightfully) by a woman upset after we were trying to race cars through the neighborhood. There was also a crabby old lady down the street that didn’t like us jumping our bikes over the irregular sidewalk in front of her house.

Blokees Shockwave is the second figure kit I have picked up from this line. I like figure kits, but the size makes them a bit less appealing since they don’t match with mainline toys at all. Plus, I am not a huge fan of the stylization choices of some of the designs.

Shockwave, probably due to his form being Cybertronian, always tends to just look like Shockwave. Plus, I just like Shockwave as a character. He may actually be my favorite Decepticon character. Like movie Megatron, I also don’t really care about his alt mode. The ray gun is kind of goofy and I am not super into the modern “spider tank” concept.

Megatron is the only other Blokees I have, so I pretty much have to compare them. Though there is not much to compare, Shockwave is superior to Megatron in, basically every way. It helps that he has more colors than gray and gold, so his design pops way better. He is also so much better articulated. Especially in the legs, where his knees bend way more than Megs. No waist though, Megatron has a waist.

His accessories are pretty light, one alternative hand option, and the display stand plus blast effects. I don’t know how many blast effect options there are, but Shockwave and Megatron have different effects, which is nice.

Its possible the battery in my Megatron is dying, but the light up gimmick works much better in Shockwave as well.

I like Shockwave much more than Megatron and I am kind of tempted to also pick up Soundwave, who appears to be a wave mate kit.

There was a time in High School, where my friend and I figured out how to directly call each other over the computer to chat online. I mean, we could have just called each other, especially since we were doing it over dial up modems, but it was new and techy and super cool!

We also used a few BBS systems that had a chat feature. I used to use one with the username “Bevis” because I screwed up spelling “Beavis”.

The next big one for me was IRC or Internet Relay Chat. I had my own channel (anyone could make channels), and it was mostly filled with folks from AGFF (alt.games.final-fantasy). We even had a dumb little bot, if you said “X is Y” it would catch that and remeber, then repeat it if you said “X” again. We used it for so many dumb jokes.

Then there is Discord, the modern chat everyone uses.

Chat is great. I love that it can be both real time conversations but also asynchronous. I can @ or T someone and they can respond hours later.

Even chatting in games can be this way too. You can just randomly talk with strangers in public chats usually. Though they have a fancy game wrapper, they are still just fancy chat rooms.