easymode

I think things are working well... and we have swords ▬▬ι══════ﺤ
I have been enjoying the forum. I basically ignore twitter, the fediverse, and bluesky now. If there isn't much going on here, I just get back to work. Even though I'm scrolling less, I feel a lot better with the small community than I do on those microblog sites, so I think this was the right direction. I also think many others would love it here, but they just don't know it exists...

I have only mentioned it a couple times but I do think it would be awesome to have a bigger community.... enough to fill a couple game servers, keep some conversations going, and get the game of the month thing running. Organic growth is best, but people need to know we exist.

I don't want to push it heavily though and I am still on the fence about discussing it on Tek Syndicate. There are awesome people there who would surely love it here... but, judging by my moderation que on every video... there are some unhinged people on YT and I'd surely have to ban them here.

I will talk about the forum on easy mode videos though. I should make some videos, but I've taken a couple weeks off and my happiness levels have gone from a 2 to an 8. I have no idea why I choose a profession that I hate so much. I guess work doesn't feel like "real work," unless I hate it. Anyway, that's for another day. I do enjoy gaming and commentary more than hardware videos.

---

You may have noticed some self-indulgent stuff on the sidebar. I don't want to put 3rd party ads on the site. I think the most I will do is maybe a footer link saying, "this site using this hosting company and we recommend these vpns," or something. If everyone hates this idea, I'll nix it as well. However, I do want to post updates on my music and projects. On that note, I think it would be awesome to open this up so that we can discover community projects.

I set up a mailing list and I added a category for community projects. So, if you are working on something (album, book, movie, software, game, artwork, etc.) let me know and I can add it to future newsletters. It's early days regarding my personal need for a newsletter, but I am working on a game and book... and already have the music, so this can all go together. I separated things as well, so users can check-mark categories they care about.

---

I think someone summarized this best by saying, "it's a book club for games." We can get lost scrolling through our libraries... and then distracted by nonsense, work (usually ancillary, unnecessary toil/busy work in my case), and social media. I think this is a great way to discover games while sharing our experiences. I think this was way more of a thing before social media... We'd get a game then talk to others at school or in chatrooms, etc. Anyway, I think it's healthy... but I do think it would work better if we had a few more active members. Anyway, it's ok to start small.

Here are my name ideas: Mandatory Fun or just Game of the Month... Let me know if you have ideas.

---

@skullmeat already got a Quake 3 server going (Hell yes. I'll try to hop on this weekend after I get the game installed and such). I think it would be cool to have a few going at any given time... but again, that will be better once we grow a bit. I'm mostly interested in UT 1999... but there are so many interesting games from back when that we could try. Anyway, I don't think there's much to say about it now, but I do plan to rent a couple servers eventually.

---

You really have to use things to figure out what would be best. I do like the game categories (by era), but I don't like how I organized the hardware categories (again, by era). I find that I usually post about a sound card or a graphics card, not a 1999 gaming PC... So, I think it might be better to go to hardware categories for the gear sections... then we can encourage users to put the era in the subject... for instance: "Discussion about ISA sound cards (DOS era)," or something to that effect- not mandatory, but yeah. Otherwise, I'm happy with the categories, but let me know if you have ideas.

---

I think the site has been working very well. I'm somewhat proud of the "hacks" I've done here with the smiles, nginx stuff, and mapping the file uploads to an R2 bucket. I think they really help. I wish I could release some of these things for the phpbb community, but I'm not good enough to make extensions out of them. So, I guess we will just have to suffer alone with all this benefit.

Let me know if you have any ideas, complaints, requests, etc. Are there any features you want? Phpbb can do a lot; there are even blogging extensions. It's early days, but I really enjoy hanging out with everyone here.

Lastly, I'll leave everyone with a question... Sometimes I see a very interesting topic and want to make a video discussing it (probably on easy mode). Are you for or against this? I don't want to make the site about me or only my projects... but I do think I've been talking in videos for almost 20 years and it's how most people found the site in the first place... so maybe it's a good thing. I'll see what you all say now.

I want to start by saying that I really like this forum. It has gotten me away from algorithms and doom scrolling for the most part. As for pushing it on Tek Syndicate, yeah, I can understand your hesitation..I think keeping discussion of the forum on the easymode channel is a good idea.

I quite like the idea of having community projects and such on the sidebar, and I’m not at all opposed to a little footer link for the VPN and hosting company. As long as it’s not intrusive, I’m good with it. I understand that you gotta keep the lights on.

I’m totally on board with a Game of the Month club! I’m not great at names, so I’ll leave suggestions for that to others.
I’m personally not a huge multiplayer gamer, but I’m not opposed to giving it a go. Old school fps games ie UT 99 could be a ton of fun.

Reworking the hardware section to be organized by categories is a good idea. I think breaking it down by era is too broad...A console generation is a lot more distinct than ‘lets talk about computers from ‘95 to ‘08 in this section’. Splitting it up by category makes a lot more sense....a section for software could be cool too. Software is the thing we interact with after all.

If you want to make videos discussing cool or interesting topics you come across here on the forum, I’m all for it! It could be a good way to get some more folks here. I personally don’t think that’s overstepping!

Thanks again for the forum, and shout out to everyone who has been posting here so far. This place is cool.

ward wrote: Apr 10th, '26, 15:56

Growth

I have been enjoying the forum. I basically ignore twitter, the fediverse, and bluesky now. If there isn't much going on here, I just get back to work. Even though I'm scrolling less, I feel a lot better with the small community than I do on those microblog sites, so I think this was the right direction. I also think many others would love it here, but they just don't know it exists...

I have only mentioned it a couple times but I do think it would be awesome to have a bigger community.... enough to fill a couple game servers, keep some conversations going, and get the game of the month thing running. Organic growth is best, but people need to know we exist.

I don't want to push it heavily though and I am still on the fence about discussing it on Tek Syndicate. There are awesome people there who would surely love it here... but, judging by my moderation que on every video... there are some unhinged people on YT and I'd surely have to ban them here.

I will talk about the forum on easy mode videos though. I should make some videos, but I've taken a couple weeks off and my happiness levels have gone from a 2 to an 8. I have no idea why I choose a profession that I hate so much. I guess work doesn't feel like "real work," unless I hate it. Anyway, that's for another day. I do enjoy gaming and commentary more than hardware videos.

I'm in for an organic growth. I have been in opposition mostly with promoting yourself elsewhere, since I find that way it attracts the negative attention. Every community I've been to that was small when I first joined and then has since grown from scratch has always been a positive experience. I have heard a lot that people who had a community but it has since gone down hill in terms of attitude, and wanted to start off with a clean plate, I find that starting all over again, after taking a well-needed timeout from the socials and the publicity of course, is the way to go; even if it means you have to do all the hard work. But that's like a first step in pivoting yourself and your newly created community away from the past. If your loyal followers wanted to find you at your new place, well that's up to them.

I'd say this is the best method to get this place to attract the different kind of community. What was built from Tek Syndicate may as well have to stay back there, risking of alienating the community over there. However, it's for your own good of filtering out the negativity.

ward wrote: Apr 10th, '26, 15:56

Organization

You really have to use things to figure out what would be best. I do like the game categories (by era), but I don't like how I organized the hardware categories (again, by era). I find that I usually post about a sound card or a graphics card, not a 1999 gaming PC... So, I think it might be better to go to hardware categories for the gear sections... then we can encourage users to put the era in the subject... for instance: "Discussion about ISA sound cards (DOS era)," or something to that effect- not mandatory, but yeah. Otherwise, I'm happy with the categories, but let me know if you have ideas.

This kind of subject debating on how we declare stuff to be "retro" is a never-ending topic, lol. Personally I find that; not just games but technology, including computing stuff, that are 20 years and over are considered "retro" to me. Now if I were to say that elsewhere I could end up starting a debate where people ask me why that's the case, and the argument is that anything at least 10 years old should be "retro." That's fine to me, because that's their opinion that I can have my say on.

With that said, I agree that with games, they can have their own categories, period-wise. With hardware however, I find that there's no such definitive period on what we have. I mean, we can have a fancy, dancy modern panoramic case designed like skyscrapers of the modern era, but then inside it'll be an ATX motherboard from 1997, a CPU from 1993, video card from the mid 90s, PSU from the early 2000s and a nostalgic case badge that was printed out a few minutes ago; all put together by maybe today or tomorrow. So that's why I feel like while we can feel nostalgic with old hardware and remembering when they were first released, what we can make using them will have no holistic definitive period.

There is a forum elsewhere where they have a thread all about old computer hardware, and it is interesting to see a different aspect of audiences thinking what's already considered "retro," compared to my thoughts. And it is overall a great thread to rediscover or discover hardware we may or may have not seen before. I just want to share over there one of my 16 bit ISA video cards that even has different video modes for that era. Bet no one over there can go as nostalgic as that.

@Destroyed007 How do you feel about talking about topics on the easy mode YT channel? That audience is smaller and has been extremely chill so far. I think we can grow something cool there. @Casey said it was cool, but I want to hear any other opinions as well. I want to make a video just goofing off and talking about the DOS soundcard rabbit hole we all went down.

I thought that might be ok for Tek Syndicate since it's about hardware stuff... but then I thought, "why..." I don't know if that channel cares as much about old stuff. YT has blacklisted the channel mostly anyway. It makes it hard for me to care about the channel these days.

Plus, I am very bored with modern tech. I am supposed to make videos, but I wish I could just give the channel to someone at this point. easy mode has about 1/100 the subs, but gets almost as many hits and more hits on modding videos.

ward wrote: Apr 15th, '26, 11:32 I thought that might be ok for Tek Syndicate... but then I thought, "why..." After getting a strike for talking about removing AI from Windows... and also talking about LTSC... I have had a very hard time caring about the channel. That plus I am just very bored with modern tech. I am supposed to make videos, but I wish I could just give the channel to someone at this point.

Oh that's news to me. It's just too bad that the giant corps needed to BS themselves as an excuse to punish you for something that the public and even advocates support in doing. Kind of brings to your point that modern tech is starting to get a bit boring. And as for someone who has been doing stuff in computing as a hobby, and in some cases as a living, for nearly 20 years, I can understand why today nothing excites us, especially where the tech sector is being swiftly poisoned by AI, "x" as a service and just pure bullies out in the world of tech. Also, seeing how many YT channels are there just making videos on modern tech, I'm kind of over with talking about modern tech. It just doesn't trickle my interest that much, compared to 10 years ago.

With that said, regarding the Easy Mode YT channel, I think we can start off with something you and everyone here are interested about; anything computer and tech-related from around 20 years ago and beyond. For example; Probably make a video talking about producing audio in the 8/16 bit era; something that I got you diving into that topic, lol. Or, trying to install Windows 98 on a system from the 45nm CPU era. I don't know but that's my thoughts.

I edited the quoted bit out (probably while you were typing). I figured I should vent in another post, but it's all good. Yeah, the YT support was hostile and told me that if I contacted them again they would blacklist me. It just feels really dangerous to critique any of the big AI tech companies now because YT doesn't have rules... they only have "guidelines," which allows them to target channels without giving specific reasons. It's wonky.

Anyway, I was going to mostly talk about games on easy mode, but I think the old stuff that enables games is totally fair too... so I'll probably get into those topics you were mentioning @Destroyed007.

ward wrote: Apr 10th, '26, 15:56
You really have to use things to figure out what would be best. I do like the game categories (by era), but I don't like how I organized the hardware categories (again, by era). I find that I usually post about a sound card or a graphics card, not a 1999 gaming PC... So, I think it might be better to go to hardware categories for the gear sections... then we can encourage users to put the era in the subject... for instance: "Discussion about ISA sound cards (DOS era)," or something to that effect

Maybe I was overthinking it a little but I was going to make a thread discussing an XP build that included a newer (~2011) GPU and then wasn't really sure where to put it as the rest of the system was older.

Spooky wrote: Apr 15th, '26, 13:40 Maybe I was overthinking it a little but I was going to make a thread discussing an XP build that included a newer (~2011) GPU and then wasn't really sure where to put it as the rest of the system was older.

here you go

I kinda went for a more is more approach.

ward wrote: Apr 15th, '26, 12:15 Anyway, I was going to mostly talk about games on easy mode, but I think the old stuff that enables games is totally fair too... so I'll probably get into those topics you were mentioning @Destroyed007.

Yeah and games as well, all the way up to the 2010s. For all platforms.

I've gotta say I definitely agree with yall with being bored with modern tech, stuff feels like it plateaued awhile back. It often feels like all the passion is gone and replaced by pure greed and the consumers are basically unpaid beta testers at this point. I've been feeling the same with phones plateauing awhile back too, I'm really tempted to get an alright enough cheapo for my next one and rock that. The garbage bloated corporate social medias were the only thing that didn't perform the best on older budget phones I tried many years ago, they've come giant leaps and bounds the past few years with what you can get for not a whole lot of money now. Indie stuff on pc is what mostly excites me these days, I've largely given up on the AAA space, and if I do get one it's way later at a very dirt cheap price on sale or cheap on a 3rd party key site, I'm certainly not jumping for joy rushing out getting every single new title at full price day 1 lol. That'd be cool to have vids based on discussions being had here, might even bring in some more chill like-minded people.

I really would like a Steam Deck at some point, just at a more frugal price... kinda kicking myself for not pulling the trigger on an actual Steam refurbed OLED one, I have a site that updates me if that particular URL updates, but they haven't been in stock for the OLED ones for a verrrrrry long time now. I mostly want that model for the much quieter fan than the LCD one, and quite a bit better battery life too.

Frankly I'm just glad to have an actual old school forum to hang on again like the good old days, on top of corpo social media having an algorithm that seems intent on pushing 24-7 hate or bad news galore, they've just become so extremely toxic that I've majorly cut down on their use... I occasionally doomscroll for a meme or two to chuckle at hopefully, maybe see a little news (that I end up regretting seeing lol), or some video game posts to keep up with what might be cool or coming out, I've been loving a retro gaming page posting random games from yester-years with a description, maybe a little mini-review, and several pics of the said game.

I've had some more pressing urgent irl stuff take my expendable extra cash lately, but, would really like to build an alright enough secondary ddr4 gaming backup pc before prices on things get even worse than they've already gotten >_>