A good performance yesterday at Christ Church. Everyone present said the word 'cold' at least once, and cold it was. I was shivering as I played. There was a small crowd, perhaps 30 or 40, and almost everyone there had never seen us or knew what to expect, which is a good thing, and I think we went down well. It was a small show, 15 or 20 mins, but still our largest in 2 years.
The subsequent talk by David Tolliday about Charles Tunnicliffe was very engaging, largely due to his enthusiasm for the subject, and enthusiasm generally. He is an excellent presenter.
We were glad to be home though, the cold was too much to bear after a few hours. I've developed a few ways we could do better, in terms of presentation, next time. Oh for the funds to do so.
I've felt somewhat despondent today. I started my repotting my fern, Ferny, but he appears to be dying, a few fragments of dry leaves. The one fresh spur is now broken by my carelessness or panic. I can but wait and hope. The time of 'fungus gnats' is over, but perhaps they were already a sign of doom.
Society6 has cancelled my account and closed it. I had, at one point, my entire digital oeuvre for sale either there or on RedBubble. RedBubble deleted my account for being 'low quality AI-generated artwork'(!) in around 2022, despite the fact that I 'hand created' those images in 2002. Too far ahead for the times, perhaps. Society6 recently reduced the maximum number of images to 10, a pathetic amount. The only hope of selling is really to have lots of designs, all of them, hundreds. I sold one or two a month on RedBubble. Zero on Society6, mainly because the choices were too small, leaving me torn between album covers and digital art, and no room at all for painting. It amused me that, on RedBubble, the simplest designs - plain black and white checks or stripes, were the best sellers, and they were the designs eyed for deletion. Fools. Well, when 10 designs became the limit on S6, it was the death-knell. Where would YouTube be if they only allowed an hour per person due to penny-pinching? Society6 are small thinkers to impose such limits when data is cheap. They are no Alphabet.
I feel that everything is dying. Have I absorbed the spirit of Philip Roth? I must fight back, crawl up though the gravesoil to a dawn sun.
This afternoon I began work on an update to Radioactive. I can't easily switch screen modes 'live' in the program, alas. I had hoped to offer 640x480, and 720p and 1080p, as instant options on the menu. With my new game engine this is easy, but this is a DirectX7-era program, and re-loading everything is a complex task. I wonder if I should set a default resolution which is lower?
I'll make a few changes. First, the separation of user-settable 'Options', and 'Bank' options which are set and saved by the program. This is the way I do things now. I'll also make the 'cheats' Steam Achievements, and prepare for new screen colour options, and possible new maps by way of bonus/enhanced content.
