Hello, everybody!
You’re looking at the first post exclusive to DungeonsAndPossums.com!
I went and bought a domain, got hosting (thanks for the tip, Luka) and learned some WordPress. I’m still very much in the learning phase, and there’s been a ton of errors and manual corrections and stuff along the way, but it’s been liberating to take this project on (even as it steals time from other projects). It’s been a huge undertaking and honestly there are absolutely some things still to complete as far as getting this thing up and running on its own.
Why did I do this? The new Blogger UI prevented me from doing certain things from my mobile devices, and that frustrated me. And also because Google cannot be trusted not to murder Blogger. Frankly, when they updated the UI, I got flashbacks to Google+ changing biweekly as they slowly brutalized it into unbeing.
What’s Past?
Well, we leave behind my old Blogger site, dungeonspossums.blogspot.com, which, as of the posting of this post, is formally defunct and redirected to this site. Please update your bookmarks, feeds (should be redirected automatically anyway but https://dungeonsandpossums.com/feed is the link just in case!)
The Blogger site we leave behind achieved over 200,000 views since its founding on 22 June 2018. We’ve just crossed the two-year birthday! I failed to note it on the day but I did catch it a week later on Twitter. At the time of my escape to WordPress, 148 articles had been posted on the first incarnation of this blog. My most-read article of all time remains How to Get Started Playing Old-School D&D For Free at a little north of 20,000 views (accounting for 10% of my overall view count!). All the counters start over here, now, so we’ll see how that all pans out into the future.
What’s New?
First and foremost: This new website will continue to be my blog. Same blog. All the same articles have been migrated. All the same topics will continue to be covered. I just wanted to say that up front.
New stuff, though, includes domain name, link structure, a new contact email, and the site will now have its own hosted downloads and such, rather than relying on Google Drive links. Now we also have neato widgets containing my illustrious tweets and other such gimmicks. But otherwise, no real changes to the day-to-day.
There’s a new logo, too!
BLAZON: FIELD ARGENT, BEND VERT, WITH OPOSSUM RAMPANT PROPER.
- In heraldry, the silver (white) field represents peace and sincerity.
- The bend ordinary, which is that bar running from the upper left to the lower right, is associated with defense and protection; green is the heraldic color of hope and joy.
- The rampant pose is specific to carnivorous beasts and is considered fierce and strong; I thought it was hilarious to apply that to a ridiculous opossum which is absolutely not a traditional heraldic beast at all. Because the possum isn’t in classical heraldry, I get to determine its meaning, and I choose “preposterous idiocy.” The term proper in heraldry indicates it is in its natural colors.
- The motto, “EX QUISQUILIAE, EST LUDUM” is, of course, roughly translated to “FROM GARBAGE TO GAME.”
- I’ve already made alternate colors and seasonal versions of this that I will sub in as the whim takes me.
I genuinely spent a few minutes thinking about the choices for this dumb thing. I could’ve doodled whatever but I thought a coat of arms would be fitting and also, to the informed, convey a reading of a peaceful space of fun and happiness full of preposterous idiocy.
A very special sidenote: the overlapped scroll for the motto was produced under CC-BY-SA 4.0 licensing by TilmannR and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons; credit and original ownership for that element belongs solely with that artist. I could not be trusted to get anywhere near symmetrical. I suspect soon I will have to make my own scroll but for now it’ll do.
Anyway, hopefully these changes are a more sustainable future for my dumb blog and provide a good home base for future projects. I have a number of things I’m working on in my scant time.
What’s Next
I’m going through even as I write this and trying to correct small issues. Surely there are going to be ongoing problems. Surely there will be a link I missed here or there. Expect changes to sidebars and stuff like that as I progress in my understanding of WordPress.
To that end, I have some serious requests:
- Let me know if you spot anything – broken links, failed redirects, fuzzy images.
- Update your bookmarks.
- Update your blogrolls to point to this new site.
- Spread the good word.
Any help at all is appreciated; there were like 150 articles to work through and I could really use the extra sets of eyes. I really appreciate the help I’ve gotten so far.
Thank you, to everyone, very much – for your support and for reading my dumb blog. Thank you for following it to its new home. Thank you for putting in the effort to update bookmarks and stuff. It means a lot. It’s been extremely rewarding to write and doodle dumb creative stuff together with you all. I hope to do it for years to come!
Cool arms, btw.
High school Latin was a long time ago, so I may well be wrong–but I think “quisquiliae” wants the ablative case, “quisquiliā”. And the verb “est” with the accusative “ludum” is throwing me a little, although it might depend on what words are being elided from the sentence (or it might be an edge case of motto-specific declension that my schoolboy Latin doesn’t stretch to).
High school Latin was a Never Happened thing for me, so I appreciate this correction. When I get around to replacing the scroll with my own scroll, I’ll correct this (soonish)! The motto was, as you’d likely surmise, reverse engineered through Google Translate.
There is a long and proud tradition of dubious Latin in mottos, in works of fiction, etc., so I think you’re in good company either way.
There are a couple of different ways to express the idea, depending on which words you want to elide–e.g.,”[he is] gone, but [he is] not forgotten”–and exactly what sense you want to convey.
If you wanted to keep it as close as possible to the present form, you could just use “ex quisquiliā, ludum” (“ex quisquiliā, [extuli] ludum” / “from the rubbish, [I have brought forth] a game”)–or “ludos”, if you want the plural “games”.
To use the nominative, you could do “ex quisquiliā, ludus” (“ex quisquiliā, ludus [emergit]” / “from rubbish, a game emerges”)–or “ludi”, if you want the plural: “ludi [emergunt]” / “games emerge”.
I’m going afield here, but you could also do “quisquiliās in ludos” (“[commuto] quisquiliās in ludos” / “[I turn/convert] garbage into games”)
Honestly it’s just down to whichever formulation you find the most aesthetically pleasing.
lol, I literally just realized that you said exactly what you wanted it to mean in your post.
“from garbage to game”, most directly, would be “ab quisquiliā ad ludum” (“from garbage to/towards game”). “ad ludos”, if you want the plural “to games”.
Hi :3
Recently discovered ttrpgs after years of curiosity. Your “How to get started…” article was really helpful. Appreciate that resource! I’m playing solitaire and practicing design to learn mechanics, etc. New site looks great, good luck with it