It’s a lamp positioned under my desk since that’s the only place I have a plug left for it, so it’s reflecting the light off the edge of my desk lol

Yep, I think the key is to not boil it. Besides that, if it tastes like cucumber, backsweetening it makes it taste like watermelon again.

Reflection on the glass, if you’re talking about the lower part of the glass that’s not chase the craft/stillIts logo lol

For sure! Honestly even as a “wine” (it finished fermenting in a week) it tasted good, but it does require back sweetening. Without any sugar watermelon tastes like cucumber. Before the liquor fairies got their hands on it I added a small bit of simple syrup into a small glass of it and it still tasted awesome. I’m not sure how well the flavor would hold over time though, but with my quick test, it turned out great. I did ferment it rather warm, to get some esters to give it some sweetness to it, but it did require backsweetening to get it to taste right.

I mean I don’t condone breaking the law but also in the US if you don’t sell it the ATF doesn’t generally care if some liquor fairies happen to distill something. There’s plenty of legal reasons to have a still too, for example my clothes steamer calls for only distilled water ;)

If you’ve ever had dehydrated watermelon, it tastes almost exactly like it! and if you’ve never had it, I highly recommend trying it, it tastes like candy but isn’t that artificial watermelon taste like you’d get out of a jolly rancher lol

I’m calling it toddermelon, in honor of a buddy of mine who passed. If anyone wants to recreate this, number one tip (and this will be weird for home brewers) do not heat or boil it at all! I made a starter with half a watermelon and a packet of Cote des Blancs. From there I sliced up and blended 5 watermelons, put it into a BIAB bag and strained out as much as I could. Added 8? Pounds of sugar I inverted and water to bring it up to 5 gallons. Tossed in my starter and 2 extra packs of yeast to be safe (remember, no boiling) and let it ferment. In the mean time I also cut the last of 6 watermelons up and filled a 16oz jar with them and sugar to make a watermelon syrup while dehydrating the rest of the melon. Once it was done fermenting the liquor fairies took care of the distilling, proofed it down using my watermelon syrup and let the dehydrated melon sit in it for 4 days before straining it out. All in all I got 2 liters of the most delicious watermelon brandy I’ve ever had (everything else tastes artificial)

Usually I go the lazy route and just buy apple juice from the store, add invert sugar, and some other spices. Good write up though!

These sound absolutely awesome!

Have you tried blade and sorcery? That’s the only sword fighting game I had and it’s… visceral. Definitely a fun game especially now that it released into 1.0 and has a progression/story mode!

It’s even cheaper than a round of actual minigolf! (Plus the real life places don’t like it when you take their balls lol) but yes! I even got the cosmetic pack from them (though I never do anything with cosmetics) just because I love supporting the devs.

As much as I love hardcore type shooters and things like blade and sorcery, I will admit my absolute favorite game is still walkabout mini golf, and I’ve been playing around with grab, and I gotta say it’s a blast. Simple graphics can be a blast if the mechanics are fun

Was excited to try it but OOF. it was a free game and i still wanted my money back. Controls were super wonky, for the sword I had to contort my wrist into horrible positions to get it to be not pointed towards myself, walked out and got immediately killed by something invisible. I had some low expectations for it but it somehow failed to meet even those.

Yep!

If you can get them into a digital format I’ve personally used eleven labs to clone voices and make narrations for missions I created for a video game. I tried using different open source projects and getting it to run on my own with no avail, but 11 labs has been solid (it is unfortunately paid software of like $5/10 bucks a month though)

It’s such a great game. I will say though, the woman’s lot DLC that gets started when you ask Theresa about the story is a bit of a slog… it’s an alright story but I’d definitely make a save before starting it if you’re not a fan of its flow and tediousness lol

This actually kinda reminds me of PointCtrl used in VR mouse control for flight sims. It may look uncomfortable but if it works similar to it it’s actually incredibly intuitive to use

If you use Waze instead, they actually have a setting you can toggle for roads that are more twisty. In my experience it works great!

Yup, similar boat but with planes instead of cars. Most inputs Linux can support on a single usb device is 86 or so, my throttle alone has well over 150 buttons on it. Add in all the stuff for my sim cockpit (probably around 1000 buttons), my haptic feedback chair, and then VR… as much as I’d like to use Linux, I don’t think it’d be possible for the foreseeable future for me to switch.

Honestly I’m keeping my negative review permanent. The game is great and I enjoy it, but besides a temporary back lash I want the sting to stick around to hopefully teach companies about fucking around and finding out.