Tag: Entertainment

Jiggy’s Jog Through 2025
It’s the season of all things “Wrapped,” folks… And I don’t just mean holiday gifts!

As we get closer and closer to bidding 2025 adieu, all our favorite sources for entertainment keep hammering us with the stats of which films, TV shows, music, video games, and more that kept us going throughout the year. It’s a trend that seemed to really take off once Spotify’s Wrapped recap became a must-share among users. Now, every platform, from Steam to YouTube, shares a tiny yet interesting nugget of data with its users each December.

I don’t exactly have a lot of “data” for a variety of reasons. For example, not all of my film and TV consumption was done on Netflix. In fact, our home has access to what feels like a dozen streaming services these days, so none of it would really be all that accurate. Instead, I’m presenting all of you with some of what I considered the very best options from what I consumed this year. A good selection that I can confidently recommend!

Film — Animation Ruled the Year

Netflix alone reports that I watched its content for 219 hours (or around 9 days). It is probably a lot by most standards, but do keep in mind that I’m still technically unemployed. When I’m not in my home office trying to remedy that situation, I’m either asleep or in front of a television. So, brushing my excessive consumption aside, here’s what I discovered this year in the world of film.

Like so many others, KPop Demon Hunters seeped into my soul.

While I don’t necessarily have anything against animation, an animated piece of media does typically have to really ‘wow’ me in a way that live-action doesn’t. Which is yet another weird fact about me, I know. Most geeks like me are known to love it, especially anime and manga, but I just never picked up that characteristic, I guess. But three films that I watched multiple times on Netflix this year got me right in the “feels.”

I’ll go ahead and get KPop Demon Hunters out of the way. Yes, I did completely buy into the hype, but only after I had kept reading glowing reviews one right after another, and friends of mine demanded that I watch it with them. As a lifelong, 40-year-old nerd, I do not believe that I fit into this movie’s target demographic in the slightest… But it still managed to capture me. First of all, the soundtrack is full of actual bangers, the mythology and lore is spectacular, and the story of the Demon Hunters themselves is heartwrenching, but understand me when I say: Cat. As a father of cats, it’s hard for me to avoid anything cat-related, so without question, Derpy the big, beautiful, silly, and supernatural blue tiger is the real star of KPop Demon Hunters for me. And I can only hope that any future sequels or tie-ins include Derpy as much as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade did!

The other two animated films that I fell in love with in 2025 were both Academy Award nominees that competed for Best Animated Feature Film. The first is The Wild Robot, a DreamWorks Animation venture that featured the voice work of an all-star cast, including Lupita Nyong’o in the title role. This film was first recommended to me as a candidate for us to watch together in my Discord community, which we did back in July. I have to confess here that the story of Roz, the “wild” robot in question, brought a little bit of a tear to my eye.

This is sort of like my reaction when Flow was first released.

The last film, which actually wound up winning the aforementioned Academy Award, was a little Latvian production called Flow. As I had stated earlier, it’s hard to keep me away from anything cat-related, and boy, does this movie deliver! The movie’s entire plot, which is presented without any spoken dialogue, follows a small cat trying to survive in a world that seems to now be largely devoid of humans, and the water level begins to rise dramatically. The way in which this movie is able to convey the emotion and panic through the eyes of mostly just this one cat (and occasionally his other animal pals) is incredible, and speaks volumes to the way the film was handcrafted in free and open-source graphics software Blender over the course of more than five years. By saying that I “highly recommend” this film is an understatement.

As for honorable mentions, y’all know that I’m a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so I would be remiss not to mention both Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four: First Steps. I think that both movies represent more of a “return to form” for Marvel going into next year, which will see them releasing the next Spider-Man and Avengers offerings. They were also far and away better movies than the fourth Captain America outing that was released in the early part of the year.

Television — This Was More Varied…

I’ve mentioned in past posts and on my Now page that I watch a lot of television. I think part of the reason why I also love the Marvel universe and a few other big franchises is that it’s all serialized. I like taking a big bite out of stories that are likely to continue in future installments. Big fictional worlds created to endure. So, needless to say, I consume more series than I do standalone films. You might want to strap in for this one! It’s gonna be a looooong list.

Key art from Showtime’s Yellowjackets, featuring actresses (from left to right) Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, Tawny Cypress, and Juliette Lewis.

And for the sake of time and length, I’ve also only included TV shows that I actually started watching this year. So the latest seasons of Stranger Things and Wednesday, spectacular as they are, don’t get featured here!
- The Diplomat. I’ve loved Keri Russell since Felicity in the late ’90s/early ’00s, but I couldn’t really get into her award-winning turn on The Americans later on. But surprisingly, this series has hit all the right buttons for me. I’m already on the third season after having just started a couple of weeks ago!
- Wayward. Toni Collette is absolutely chilling in this limited series!
- The Residence. This series had me absolutely hollering! I’m so disappointed that a second season isn’t going forward. Please give Uzo Aduba all the flowers and awards, please and thank you.
- Sirens. This is another limited series that had me captivated from start to finish. Parts of it felt very soapy, but in a kind of good way? Especially awesome performances by Julianne Moore and Meghann Fahy!
- Yellowjackets. This one is a few seasons in already, but I discovered it for the first time this past February and wound up adding Showtime onto my Paramount+ account just so I could continue watching more recent seasons. This show is completely bonkers, but in the most addictive way! The cast is pretty star-studded, also, and they carry the show remarkably well.
- Severance, Silo, & Foundation. Putting these three together for a reason, which is that they all felt like they blurred together for me. Let me explain: After gaining access to Apple TV+ this year, I knew that Severance was going to be one of their first shows that I was going to binge. I like a lot of the cast, and the sci-fi premise already sounded fascinating from the tons of posts I kept seeing on social media about it. And I clearly know myself, because immediately after the first episode, I couldn’t stop. While I was still in the middle of Severance, my brother insisted that I check out both Silo and Foundation, both of which are incredible stories adapted from sci-fi books. So, once Severance was finished, I moved right on to Silo, and then all three seasons of Foundation after that. Each one is quite the adventure, so if any of them sound appealing to you, I do urge you to check them out! I also wrote more about these shows and Apple TV+ overall in this post from the Ghost Archives.
- Daredevil: Born Again. Technically speaking, this series “began” with the Daredevil series on Netflix years ago, but Disney and Marvel rebooted the series to bring it to their “proper” Marvel universe timeline, and its first season was released earlier this year. It still maintains its much darker and violent premise, and Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock/Daredevil), Vincent D’Onofrio (Wilson Fisk/Kingpin), and Jon Bernthal (Frank Castle/The Punisher) still star. It’s a must-watch for fellow Marvel fans!
And I’ll once again give an honorable mention to Marvel with the Ironheart series. Even though it was hugely delayed, only gave us six episodes, and it didn’t receive nearly as much pomp and circumstance as most of the other Marvel properties, it was still a highly entertaining watch for a few hours!

I’ll likely close out this year by finishing up Stranger Things and the second season of Fallout.

Music — Oops, All Throwbacks!

If it wasn’t actually released in the 1980s, then it probably sounds like it did!

According to my Spotify Wrapped recap, my most-played song was “Friday I’m in Love” by The Cure. And while that track was released on their 1992 album Wish, a lot of the band’s popularity and most of their gothic rock and new wave sound were straight out of the ’80s. Several songs in my recap were also from The Midnight—a modern-day band with a retro synthwave sound. You can visualize their inclusion on the soundtracks to every popular ’80s film you can think of.

Jumping back out of the decade I was born in, the rest of my favorite tracks are also tracks that I’ve been jamming to forever. Some selections I’d like to share include:
I know, I know… My favorite song from KPop Demon Hunters wasn’t the massively popular “Golden.” I love that song too, but it’s the closing number for me. Why? Because there’s something beautiful in the moment when you finally meet the real you.

I also resurrected No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom album this year. I don’t know why, but that album is just the sound of the ’90s to me. Probably because of “Don’t Speak” topping charts for an incredible 16 weeks back in 1996. That song was ubiquitous, and I can’t say that I don’t understand—easily one of the absolute greatest rock breakup songs.

If you had this album on repeat at any point in the ’90s, we should be friends!

Oh, and since it’s the holiday season, check my Spotify playlist for my favorite holiday tunes!

Gaming — Return to the Grind

Around this time last year, I stepped back into Palia because I needed something simple, cozy, and had that holiday flair. It served me well. According to my Steam Replay 2025 recap, I spent 52% of my gaming time in Palia this year. I recognize that it is a good amount, especially for a game that is still extremely underdeveloped, but there’s a lot of reasons why I kept going back to that one. I think it’s because the devs did a lot of work to make it feel very ”homey.” Plus, they’ve added a whole bunch of updates throughout 2025 that expanded the game considerably. You can also read a little more about Palia in this post that also appeared in my Ghost Archives.

The other games that I dabbled with this year have something in common with Palia: There’s a lot of grind. My current favorite game at the moment, Enshrouded, as well as Guild Wars 2, the MMO that I’ve decided to return to, all feature what gamers call a “grind.” They all include doing menial tasks as part of the built-in progression system. Mining, foraging, farming, ranching, crafting, etc., are all such tasks. Oftentimes, these games have daily or weekly quests that are very grindy, and once you do them, you earn rewards! If it sounds like work, that’s because sometimes it feels like it! But only in the most fun way possible.

I think it speaks to where I’m at in life right now, honestly. Having trouble finding meaningful employment throughout the last year has me so troubled that I’m looking for work in my entertainment, right? That’s one theory anyway. Sometimes I also just find it a little bit comforting or therapeutic to just sign on and go mindlessly till my garden, bust open some rocks, or can a bunch of pumpkin puree to go sell to the cartoon villagers, okay? Yes, I am an adult, stop judging me!

Palia also features a cat guy named Zeki. Could you blame me???

In any event, those are the three games I’ve been spending the majority of my time on, though I’m always open and willing to dabble in other types of games. If you’d like to come hang out with me sometime while I’m gaming, be sure to check out my livestreams on Twitch! I also try to post entertaining clips from those streams to TikTok and YouTube Shorts, so feel free to enjoy those also!

In Conclusion — Life is Lifin’

Not a lot changed for me overall in 2025. Even my coding and programming courses sorta did a reset. freeCodeCamp retired the Responsive Web Design certification that I earned at the beginning of the year, so I essentially started over with their full-stack course instead, only for them to break it up into modular pieces once more. Sigh. It’s fine… Running through all the HTML and CSS lessons has been a good review, and they’ve added quite a little more to their labs, workshops, and instructional pieces than they had before, so I’m still learning. I’m just very eager to start getting into courses for things that I don’t know anything about so far.

This year, I also started planning out my days. Which sounds weird, because it isn’t like I do a whole lot without a job or a big social life, but I try to stay busy most days. I did finally settle on Obsidian when it comes to a digital notebook, but I’m also keeping the old-school pen and paper agenda. I love when things are in the virtual space where I spend most of my time anyway, but there’s something about physically writing things down and taking notes that helps things stick to my brain a little bit better. I’m not too disciplined yet and sometimes have low-energy days where I do not manage to get everything accomplished that I set for myself, but I think the point is that I’m making an effort and trying every single day. Life is what you make it, you know?

Anyway, if you’ve read this far, I appreciate you big time and hope you have the loveliest of holiday seasons with a few of my recommendations found here. And I beg you to tell me: What were your favorites this year??
December 21, 2025
The Festive Film Feeling

We don’t normally get very “into” the winter holidays, but there are exactly two movies that I watch every year.

Before I share which movies they are, I want to make sure anyone reading understands that, while my family does celebrate and observe Christmas, we don’t typically make a point of making everything feel magically seasonal. I appreciate a modestly-sized tree, some twinkly lights, excellent food with the family—none of whom should have to work, preferably—on Christmas Day, and maybe a small gift or two. And quite frankly, even the gifts are optional most years. Because why does it always seem like everybody’s money situation gets complicated in December? What is that even about?

Also, when did the holidays start the day after Halloween? I’m not trying to yuck anyone’s yum here (because really, you do you, boo!), but we have never so much as hummed that Mariah Carey song until after Thanksgiving. We are a family of people who love to eat, so we need to give Thanksgiving its due first.

But November has come and gone, so it’s finally time for us to break out the holiday cheer with the rest of the class. Not only can you find that Mariah song on my brand-new Christmas Jams playlist, but I’m also going to fill you in on the only two films I feel the urge to watch every single holiday season. One is usually considered a very beloved holiday romcom, while the other is… Not. But I have my reasons, so stick with me.

The Family Stone

Okay, so this movie is very hated by critics, and to be fair, a good amount of the vitriol is justified. Specifically, the elements about Tyrone Giordano and Sarah Jessica Parker’s characters that are outlined in this review by Stereogum. However, there are a lot of good things and some emotional aspects of the movie that I think I mostly recognize from experience with my own quirky family. That alone helps it land on a soft, mushy part of my heart, but the fact that it has an all-star cast, many of whom I really like and who I think dialed in a decent performance, certainly helps matters.

For those who haven’t seen it, The Family Stone was released in 2005 and stars Diane Keaton, Craig T. Nelson, Dermot Mulroney, Luke Wilson, Claire Danes, Rachel McAdams, Elizabeth Reaser, and the previously mentioned Tyrone Giordano and Sarah Jessica Parker. The plot revolves around parents Sybil (Keaton) and Kelly (Nelson) and their five adult children, Everett (Mulroney), Ben (Wilson), Susannah (Reaser), Thad (Giordano), and Amy (McAdams), all of whom are gathering in their New England hometown to celebrate the Christmas holiday with each other. Everett, however, is bringing his uptight girlfriend Meredith (Parker) home for the first time, and things get heated when she fails to live up to the family’s expectations. Things get so intense, in fact, that she later calls her sister, Julie (Danes), to join the fray in a last-ditch effort to receive the support she isn’t getting from Everett.

Everett eventually finds himself falling in love with Julie, rather than Meredith, whom he had initially planned to propose to. Everything shakes out okay in the end, though, because his kooky brother Ben also has an unlikely attraction to Meredith. Everything culminates in a big slap fight showdown with Everett and Ben, and most of the ladies on the kitchen floor covered in Christmas morning breakfast strata (which sounds delish, by the way).

The big Stone family showdown in question.

It is basically the typical Christmas romcom you might expect to see on the Hallmark Channel, but instead, it had a theatrical release and starred actual A-list actors. And truth be told, I’m not at all the kind of person who enjoys Hallmark Christmas movies. Especially bad ones, which this movie would no doubt categorically qualify as, to most film reviewers. But there are a few reasons why I love it.

The family dynamic reminds me a lot of my own. My own siblings and I have a relationship not unlike the trio of Everett, Ben, and Amy, standing at the bottom of the stairs, smacking each other over the head for some reason or another. My mother was also the second-born of six siblings, most of whom had children, and many of those children have children now. For many, many years, we spent our holidays surrounded by aunts, uncles, and literally countless amounts of cousins. Which is fun until it isn’t. There was a lot of drama some years, some of which I would have traded for a slap fight instead. Truthfully, we probably did have a slap fight or two. But there are also core memories that I made with my family during these holidays. Memories that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Sybil’s untimely passing toward the end of the movie hits a little close to home, too. The breast cancer she once survived has returned, and there’s no treating it this time. Cancer has impacted my family more times than I like to try keeping track of, especially regarding my own Christmas-loving mother. But I’m a weird dude, and sometimes, consuming sad or painful things in pop culture makes me actually feel a little bit better. Like, somehow, if I look things directly in the eye, they don’t feel quite as threatening. It feels cathartic in a messed-up kinda way, I guess. It’ll feel doubly so this year after Diane Keaton’s own real-life passing.

The movie may be poorly written, but I love that it’s Christmas. I love that it’s family. And I love that I can see my own mother in it. I don’t really think you need much more.

Love Actually

Although this 2003 film is the better of the two, I feel like I won’t need to write nearly as much about it here, because it’s already one that is pretty well-regarded by critics. And this time, I can’t really argue with the critics. I find that it’s a very well-done British romcom set during the holiday season. I think that the film largely found success because it also features a large ensemble comprised of big names, but the connected story also shines by being simultaneously emotional and lighthearted.

Set in the United Kingdom, Love Actually begins with a narration by Hugh Grant’s character, explaining that whenever he gets stressed out or depressed by the crazy world we live in, he likes to think about the arrivals gate at the airport. There, one can typically find friends, families, significant others, etc., waiting to embrace their loved ones getting off a flight. The movie then begins by telling several different types of “love” stories.

In my opinion, the reason these separate but interconnected stories work so cohesively is because of their ability to display different definitions of the word love. For example, the love between two longtime friends is illustrated in the story between aging rockstar Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) and his manager Joe (Gregor Fisher). The feeling of unrequited love is showcased most effectively in the story involving Mark (Andrew Lincoln) and his feelings for Juliet (Keira Knightley), who has just married Mark’s best friend Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor). A childhood crush is played out between Sam (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and Joanna (Olivia Olson), while Sam’s step-dad, Daniel (Liam Neeson), is mourning the death of his wife. Grant’s character, David, is the new Prime Minister who develops feelings for a junior member of his staff, Natalie (Martine McCutcheon). Numerous other prominent stories emerge as the movie carries on during the Christmas season, with each linked in some way to the others.

In case you needed someone to literally draw you a picture to keep all of the movie’s storylines straight!

Except for the storyline involving Harry (Alan Rickman) and Karen (Emma Thompson), all of Love Actually‘s plot points wrap themselves up in a nice little bow by the end of the film. It’s something of a seasonal warm hug that I just like to take in before the holiday season is over. Kinda like how you gotta have that one peppermint mocha or cup of nog to really feel like it’s the season—it just doesn’t feel right without it. And I think the fact that Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Martine McCutcheon recently appeared in a Love Actually-themed commercial for the Google Pixel is evidence enough that it’s a widely shared sentiment!

It doesn’t matter how you love someone. It just matters that you do.

I mean, he’s kind of a stalker, but can we deny that Mark’s gesture was sorta romantic?

So there you have it… The two movies that I watch every holiday season. Mostly because I’m not into the “classics” the way that some folks are, and also because of all the reasons I stated above.

What holiday movies are on your must-watch list? Let me know, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll give it a view myself this year!

Happy Holidays! 🎄💖

December 9, 2025
The Funny Farm

I’m raising chickens now.

Okay, admittedly, they are virtual chickens within a video game called Palia, that my sister and I have grown very fond of over the past year or so. The chickens (referred to in the game’s world as “pekis”) were added to the game this week in an update that also includes an entire animal husbandry and ranching system, as well as modular player housing, and a variety of other fun additions that player’s have practically been begging for since the game’s debut. It all comes on the heels of the game’s Elderwood Expansion, which opened up an entire “adventure zone” and brought Palia, which was available to PC and Nintendo Switch players, to Xbox and PlayStation consoles also.

An adult and baby peki in Palia.

Launched in late 2023, Palia is essentially a fantasy adventure life simulator. Players dive into a realm as one of the first ancient humans to re-emerge in a high-fantasy world. They will build a home and relationships with the villagers, develop skills in a multitude of different crafts and disciplines, and explore and shape the world and story around them. The game is also an online multiplayer service, which means you’ll see other players running around inside of it, and can even team up with them to reap greater rewards. The game even encourages it, providing bonuses for players who tackle their to-do list together!

Did I mention that the game is completely free to download and play?

Video games without a price tag attached don’t usually attract much attention. They often contain microtransactions or a “premium store” designed to earn their revenue in ways that can sometimes be a little scummy. If you find yourself in a free game, you usually wind up needing additional lives, turns, perks, add-ons, and other items to keep playing, and those are going to cost you some of your hard-earned dollars, and thus get dubbed “pay-to-win” games in the sense that they aren’t truly a free experience across the board. That’s why many popular titles wind up charging upwards of $60-$90 to purchase the game upfront and/or require a recurring subscription to play. Some titles like Palia, however, have turned that sales model on its head.

Rather than charging for the game or exploiting pay-to-win mechanics, Palia has subscribed to what I like to refer to as the “Fortnite model.” Much like that massively popular battle royale game, Palia also has a premium store, but nearly everything in it is for cosmetic purposes only. You can buy a virtual peki to run alongside you in the game, a fancy outfit, or even an entire landscape on which to plant your own farm and cottage. But the big difference is that it has a negligible impact on actual gameplay. You don’t have to spend a single penny in Palia to have the same experience as the people who spend a fortune on it. The wealthier player has no gameplay advantage over the poorer of the two. In my opinion, that’s actually kinda beautiful and makes games like it far more accessible for the average gamer.

In my game, I’ve started the new ranching skill and adopted two pekis. Initially, I named the two “Tigger” and “Rufus” after my oldest two cats, but as I played further, it turns out that you need to breed the two together in order to birth baby pekis. Though the game is genderless in most circumstances, it still felt awkward for me to have two of my boys mate to create offspring. So once I devised a new naming convention and acquired a few “Rename Cookies” once I was able, I set out on figuring out some fun new names for my feathered friends. Now I have four pekis — the original two and two babies — named Chick Jagger, Henifer Aniston, Angelina Jopeep, and Loretta Hen. No, they’re not completely original, but I did find them clever enough after racking my brain forever and eventually consulting Google for assistance (this page in particular was very handy). Just wait until I get Feather Flocklear and Chick Norris!

Anyway, in case anyone has been wondering where I’ve been for the last several days, I’ve been letting myself get absorbed back into my weird and wonderful little world of Palia. It feels a lot better than doomscrolling and letting myself be completely consumed by the constant darkness in our real world right now. Feel free to stop by my Twitch channel sometime to hang out while we wander through the game together live, or you can even find some clips from those streams on TikTok and YouTube Shorts! One of my favorites especially is when the hot pot table blows my hair off!

September 13, 2025
You’ll Ask for Me

I’m trying to learn how to focus better, and I’m starting to scale down.

The past few weeks or so, I’ve been keeping myself busy ramping up production on my little home-based server. You might recall that I was doing something similar in the spring, only I was attempting to self-host everything on a paid VPS (virtual private server) and didn’t know much about any of it. I was learning things on the fly. I didn’t really have the funds to spend on web hosting as a hobby, and nobody was really interested or impressed in anything that I was trying to build, so I eventually shut it all down and fully moved just this website over to Ghost’s services proper. But I never really gave up the idea of building my own private “walled garden,” if you will, on the internet. The thought of a box physically set up here in my own home that’s harnessing and controlling my data instead of the corporate “broligarchy” dudes sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?

My nephew has also taken it upon himself, over the last few years, to slowly and painstakingly digitize our fairly massive film collection on DVD. Why? Because the DVD industry is rapidly dying due to the rise of streaming platforms and digital giants like Netflix and Disney+. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a Netflix subscriber since they were physically mailing me DVD rentals (did I just date myself??)… Nobody loves the ability to do things without leaving my home more than me. But these big digital corporations are also the first to tell us that we own nothing. Did you know that when you digitally purchase a movie, TV show, album, video game, etc., you are actually purchasing the license to use it recreationally? You do NOT own that piece of media, and the license can be revoked at any time. And the streamers? They’re sometimes just playing an eternal game of roulette with one another as to which copyrights they’re holding each month, which results in movies and shows being here one minute and then either on a different service or completely gone the next.

And what’s up with that, my dudes? I just wanna watch my little short-lived, sardonically creative and comical Wonderfalls in peace, but do you know where you can find it streaming? That’s right: NOWHERE!

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There’s also this point: Ever since this last presidential election, my father and I have been slowly turning into doomsday preppers. Which, admittedly, sounds bonkers. I also used to think people who spent a lot of time in their handmade bomb shelters were a little on edge, too, but the world has completely lost the plot. Can you blame me these days? Digitizing our collection so that the only requirement to enjoy them is electricity makes his portable hard drive worth its weight in gold during the apocalypse. It fits in nicely with our bug-out bags, solar panels, weather radios, and raised garden beds we’ve been making efforts to acquire.

With his growing collection in mind, I knew that there were a few pretty popular pieces of free and open-source self-hosted software on the internet, the most interesting of which was Jellyfin. After it’s installed on your system, you can effectively create your own streaming platform similar to Netflix, but you also pretty much have to supply your own media to load into it. Thankfully, we just so happened to have someone who did have that piece of the puzzle. But Jellyfin didn’t work out on my VPS because, well… It’s sorta difficult to plug a physical hard drive into a virtual machine, right? But when I started getting the idea to turn my old PC into a physical server here at home, that wouldn’t be a problem! So off to work I went on my new side project for my whole “famn damily.” And this time, I was more cautious and had a slightly better grasp on how things needed to function.

Now we’re getting to the techno mumbo-jumbo that I know many of you aren’t going to be super interested in. Feel free to skip ahead if you’d like. I’m not the boss of you!

No, Toad, wrong kind of techno!

I knew that I was going to need to wipe the entire hard drive of my old PC to get this project going. In fact, I was going to need a whole different operating system. We don’t want to mess with Windows. I knew that I wanted to use a containerized system, and since I was really only mildly familiar with Docker, that’s the one I decided to go with. Some cursory research indicated that there are two options for an OS that would execute Docker pretty easily: Proxmox or Ubuntu Server. Well, that “cursory research” wound up pretty much failing me, because neither of those operating systems wanted to boot on the old machine. In both cases, I flashed a USB stick with the image of the OS, managed to get GRUB to start booting, and then wound up on a completely black screen that did zilch. Nothing.

I was already pretty defeated, and I was only at the first step of this whole thing. I think the old PC just sat, set up on a desk, and wasn’t touched for weeks because I got so frustrated thinking that Rufus (the flashing software, not my cat!) was somehow flashing corrupted images onto the USB stick, or maybe I was doing something wrong. I was reading horror stories on Google and Reddit, and saw some users suggest that some USB ports are better than others, and maybe you need to change the BIOS settings on your machine to read what’s on the stick before it boots what’s already on your hard drive, and so on and so on. Eventually, I stumbled across some information that suggested that I instead install something even simpler: Debian. “That makes sense,” I realized, pretty much as I was flashing my USB stick with it. After all, Proxmox is based on Ubuntu, which in turn is based on Debian. When in doubt, go to the source, I guess, because BAM!!! Debian 13 installed with zero issues. I also managed to get Docker installed and got Cockpit, Portainer, and Nginx Proxy Manager up and running so I could control everything remotely from my main computer! I finally started to feel a little tingle of technological prowess and, hey… Maybe even usefulness!

I still wound up having to retool things a little bit, and eventually settled for using a little bit of a cheat code called YunoHost. Mostly because I kept getting frustrated at Docker, and I also quite simply felt challenged and maybe a little inspired by their name originating from the simple internet question of, “y u no host?” But everything started falling into place. I was going to build my family the best damn closed-circuit network they’d ever seen! It wasn’t just going to have an instance of Jellyfin! It’s going to have private communication apps, a wiki platform, collaboration and whiteboard solutions, and even a few games! Not to mention email at our own chosen domain! Have you ever known the thrill of having an email address that is just your name before the @ symbol?! Getting your own name in an email address carries the weight of being busy and important, okay? My family was going to be so glad they had someone as cool and smart as me in the gang! Simply just ignore the fact that I think I look a little like this meme to them:

Not gonna lie, I can kinda see it.

That was my thought process until I built it and gave them their credentials to access and log into it. A week later, and the server has seen exactly two of them log into it and then promptly forget about it. And though my dad and sister (who are incidentally also the only two family members that subscribe to this publication, hi dad and sisterface!) would maybe disagree to spare my feelings, none of them really care. And I’m making peace with the fact that that is okay.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s painful and frustrating to continually get these wild ideas to build spaces and communities, hoping that others will want to join in, only to be met with constant silence. I’ve been doing it for a long time. From my very first web pages all the way up to this website, along with my Twitch channel, content creation as a whole, social media, the AMA page on here, all of it… I’ve just been begging and hoping that maybe one day people will want to join me and think that all this “stuff” is as cool as I do. But I also need to understand that it isn’t personal.

Meredith gets it.

It honestly isn’t. To other people, all of this “stuff” is unnecessary. My 72-year-old father and my 33-year-old nephew alike don’t care about their super cool new email addresses. Neither one of them likely even cares about email overall. So the addresses that they’re already forced to use for everything else work just fine. My siblings are a-okay with relaying group communication through Discord, so why do they need yet another login to manage? It’s a little overkill for just the six of us. And that Jellyfin server? Eh, we’ll get that movie collection loaded into it some other day. These kinds of things, while cool to me to get to check out and get hands-on experience with, isn’t scratching the same kind of itch for them. And that’s fine. I should stop expecting it to. Even if it’s cool and technically better, people prefer to default to what’s familiar, what’s easier, and what they already know.

And listen, I love my family. I think I’ve established that fact in multiple other posts. But why fix what isn’t broken for them, ya know? And if something does break, or if I can somehow offer a solution one day? They’ll know where to find me. In the meantime, I don’t need to keep subjecting them to never-ending digital journeys or whatever.

So I’m scaling it back down a bit. I’m going to keep Jellyfin and the emails available, but the wiki, the message board, and the browser games are being jettisoned. They’re already stale and probably won’t be missed. I’m instead going to refocus the server space on things that are productive, fun, and convenient for me personally. Maybe build some projects of my own on it, who knows? And hey, sometimes things happen when you stop trying to force it. I want to believe that there are like-minded people out there who do care about what I’m building, what I’m streaming, what I’m making, and what my brain can accomplish.

Maybe they just haven’t found me yet?

August 30, 2025
Apple TV+ is a Hidden Sci-Fi Goldmine

I never thought I would be one to recommend anything from Apple, but here we are!

Despite my affinity for tech, I’ve never really been an Apple fanboy. I loved my old-school classic iPod back in the day with the satisfying clickwheel navigation, but for as much as the iPhone revolutionized basically carrying a whole ass NASA computer around in your pocket, I’ve never been on the iPhone bandwagon. I actually ventured into the world of smartphones with webOS and the Palm Prē, a largely defunct operating system and obsolete hardware manufactured by a company that no longer even exists (HP bought them out in 2010). It was a magnificent little device for its time, though, and eventually led to me joining the Android family of smartphones and tablets. I like Android’s openness to third-party developers as opposed to Apple’s so-called “walled garden,” and so I’ve never really even considered switching to an iPhone. And any time I’ve had to use a Mac for work or school in the past, I was thoroughly lost and confused, so swapping from a PC has never been an option either.

Apple TV+, the over-the-top streaming service that Apple launched back in 2019, eventually showed up on my radar within the last couple of years after I started seeing some articles and headlines about some of their marquee shows like Ted Lasso and The Morning Show, and as interesting and compelling as both of those shows look, they weren’t enough to convince me to subscribe. Then, early this year, I started seeing rumblings about a show called Severance on my social media feeds. I couldn’t recall having heard much about it, so I looked up the plot details and immediately wanted to check out the show. Thankfully, a member of the family is an iPhone user and already had a subscription to Apple TV+, and allowed me access. What I found upon logging in was unexpected…

Apple TV+ is hiding a goldmine of sci-fi television greatness.

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How this came to be the case is puzzling. Apple reportedly spends north of $20 billion to produce original content for the streaming service. Yes, that is $20 billion, with a ‘B.’ It attracts big-name stars like Jennifer Aniston, who was just announced to be headlining a second series for the service. And that money has earned them numerous Emmy Awards, including the 72 nominations they snagged just last year. So all of that begs the question: Why does Apple spend so little on marketing for the service or its popular shows? All kinds of arguments exist to explain: Apple is more focused on promoting its brand rather than its individual offerings, the billions spent on the content mean that the marketing budget is much smaller, or perhaps Apple is just more interested in curating quality content rather than acquiring a large quantity of it.

Whatever the case may actually be, Apple has managed to create something of a hidden treasure trove of shows, especially in the sci-fi genre, which we all know is where I tend to gravitate. This becomes obvious by the fact that it was Severance, and not Ted Lasso, that managed to draw me in.

Severance stars Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette, Britt Lower, and several others as employees of the strange and mysterious Lumon Industries. Many of these employees have willingly opted to undergo a neurological procedure where their personal life is “severed” from their work life. While outside of work, the employee does not know what goes on inside of Lumon, and while at work, the employee knows nothing about their personal life. While this might seem like an ideal situation for some, the show explores the morality and deeper meaning behind personal identity and the exploitation of it. This was the general premise that got me hooked, but it was the impressive storytelling that got me to stay. I don’t think I’ve found myself so attached to a series as early as the pilot episode since 2013’s similarly bonkers Orphan Black. And if you need a professional opinion to jump into one of Lumon’s cubicles, the Los Angeles Times calls it “an exquisite, masterful work of television.”

My reaction exactly, Tatiana.

Upon completing my binge of Severance, and during a discussion about how good the show was, my older brother recommended that I follow it up with the post-apocalyptic Silo, which is another sci-fi offering on Apple TV+. Taking the sci-fi a little further into what seems to be a ruined and toxic future Earth, Silo tells the story of a community of thousands of people who live in a giant underground silo. After the silo’s own sheriff breaks one of their most important rules and dies, this community, led by engineer Juliette (played by star Rebecca Ferguson), start to unravel the truth of their confinement, the world outside, and their restrictive laws that forbid learning more about the past or possessing historic “relics.” Tim Robbins, rapper Common, Rashida Jones, and Steve Zahn also appear at various points in the show’s run. While Severance at times seemed very well lit and almost squeaky clean, Silo makes up for it by being exceptionally dark and gritty since almost all scenes take place underground. The show is based on a series of stories collected in a 2011 book titled Wool by Hugh Howey, which I feel I’m going to have to eventually read to satiate my appetite for more until the show’s third season arrives.

Key art for Apple TV+ series Foundation.

The latest show that I managed to stumble into on Apple TV+ was the excellent Foundation, based on the stories of the same name by legendary science fiction author and biochemist Isaac Asimov. And whew, if you thought Severance or Silo sounded really out there, just wait until you step into the extremely far-flung future of this series! In said future, the galaxy is ruled by a Galactic Empire managed by its original Emperor Cleon’s trio of revolving clones: Brother Dawn (played by Cassian Bilton), the youngest Cleon of the three, who is training to one day take the reins; Brother Day (Lee Pace), the adult Cleon currently in command; and Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann), an aging Cleon who is preparing for retirement. This “genetic dynasty” is overseen by majordomo Lady Demerzel (Laura Birn), who also happens to be the last ageless robot to survive an event called the Robot Wars. The main story is put into place when the Cleons are threatened by a famed mathematician named Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) after he predicts the fall and ruin of their Empire with a method of science called “psychohistory.” Hari’s young and talented protégé, Gaal (Lou Llobell), is forced into the eye of the brewing storm when Hari calls on her to verify his findings and to help him set up a Foundation in order to try and soften the blow of the imminent disasters. With a story that spans centuries and galaxies, Foundation has been heralded as Apple TV+’s Game of Thrones, and critics are stating its upcoming third season is a “Masterpiece of Television.” If that doesn’t convince you to check it out, I don’t know what will.

And though I haven’t yet had the opportunity to view them, there’s plenty more science fiction where these came from. Apple’s original content on the service also includes alternate-history series For All Mankind, the alien thriller Invasion, reality-shifting drama Dark Matter, and robot comedy Murderbot. If the quality of these shows is as good as the aforementioned, then they will certainly be worth your time, too.

If you’re a sci-fi fan like me, the only piece of advice that I can impart to you now is that you don’t sleep on Apple TV+ and its incredible selection of stories. Don’t be turned off by what Apple might stand for with all its shiny iPhones and iPads, and instead, be comforted by the knowledge that I can almost guarantee you’ll find something to love here in Apple’s secret place. 🤫

July 3, 2025
The Big Buffy Reboot

If the apocalypse comes… uh, message me on Signal???

My time these days has mostly been engulfed with doing techie things with my computer and gaming, but did you know that I’m also something of a TV show connoisseur? I think I can pinpoint exactly why it is that I prefer television over film, and it all boils down to a conversation that I had with my sister recently. While working on a bit of writing herself, she had asked me if I ever get sad when a really good story ends. And I do! That’s why I love serialized storytelling like you see on TV—episode after episode usually expands upon the last. And don’t get me wrong: I also love and greatly appreciate standalone movies and stories in other media with firm beginnings, middles, and ends. But at the end of the day, isn’t it a little more exciting knowing that there’s more story yet to come?

There are plenty of shows that could probably make it into my personal Top 10 Favorite list, but I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer has had a pretty high-ranking position on that list for 20+ years now. People who have never watched the show often dismiss it as silly and frivolous based on the title alone, but honestly, the only thing you should judge the show on is its use of uh… Questionable special effects, especially in its early seasons. The show is built around the central character of Buffy Summers (played by the remarkably underrated Sarah Michelle Gellar), who is the latest young girl chosen by fate to fight against vampires, demons, and other nasty monsters that lurk in the darkness. Joining her in the show’s cast is her mentor, Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), and an evolving cast of friends, family, allies, and enemies alike, played by Alyson Hannigan, Nicholas Brendon, Charisma Carpenter, David Boreanaz, Seth Green, James Marsters, Eliza Dushku, Emma Caulfield, Marc Blucas, Michelle Trachtenberg, and Amber Benson.

The Buffy cast reunited for Entertainment Weekly in 2017. From left to right: Amber Benson, Alyson Hannigan, Nicholas Brendon, Emma Caulfield, Alexis Denisof, Charisma Carpenter, Seth Green, David Boreanaz, Sarah Michelle Gellar, James Marsters, Michelle Trachtenberg, and Kristine Sutherland. Below: Joss Whedon.

Pre-dating teen girl fantasy vampire dramas like Twilight and The Vampire Diaries, Buffy was ahead of its time and the curve. The show’s writers brilliantly used its supernatural theme as a metaphor for the horrors of high school and adult life in later seasons. For example, in a first-season episode, a fellow student of Buffy’s feels so ignored by her peers that she literally becomes invisible. After going off to college, Buffy’s first roommate is so annoying that she turns out to be—surprise!—a vile demon. The ultimate metaphor that the show employed throughout its seven seasons was a second-season arc in which Buffy’s ensouled vampire boyfriend loses that soul and reverts to his wholly evil and murderous persona after sleeping with Buffy for the first time. Raise your hand if you have ever had an ex turn into a massive jerk at perhaps your most vulnerable moment!

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The show fit into the supernatural and horror genre perfectly, but for these reasons, its storytelling was also surprisingly relatable and compelling, and perfectly encapsulates why it’s still relevant and beloved by its cult following to this day. It should come as no surprise, then, that series star Sarah Michelle Gellar is planning a return to the role in a series revival in development at Hulu. The new series is being spearheaded by Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao, Poker Face writers Nora and Lilla Zuckerman, and executive directors from the original Buffy include Gail Berman, Fran & Kaz Kuzui, and Dolly Parton—yes, that Dolly Parton!—with her company Sandollar. Thankfully, the show’s original creator, Joss Whedon, is not involved with the revival after facing a boatload of misconduct allegations in 2021 from numerous Buffy cast members and his own ex-wife.

The thought of the big Buffy reboot has me feeling two disparate emotions: over-the-top excited and grimly nervous.

Sarah Michelle Gellar talks about the Buffy reboot on Access Hollywood.

Excitement because… of course I want more of the Buffyverse! Is that even a question? The fictional world that was built in Buffy and its spinoff, Angel, honestly lends itself to infinite expansion. Even as early as 2003, when it was reported that Gellar was leaving the show after its seventh season and that the series was effectively ending, there were reports of additional spinoffs in development that could continue the story of a few other popular characters. Those spinoffs never happened. It is not even the first time a revival of the show has been planned. Back in 2018, before the allegations against him came out, it was reported that Whedon was moving forward on a reboot with TV writer Monica Owusu-Breen, who had worked with him on Marvel Television’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. series. That reboot never materialized either. But the hunger for more from this world is real, and the fact that it could happen very soon has me delighted.

There’s a great deal of trepidation on my part as well. It’s common knowledge now that Hollywood has produced a mixed bag of revivals, remakes, reboots, etc. Another one of my favorite series, Gilmore Girls, got a revival with a four-part miniseries on Netflix back in 2016, and feelings on it were middling at best. While it was lovely to step back into the show’s world again, the story left a lot of fans questioning why they bothered. If Buffy receives similar treatment, it would be enormously disappointing. I’m cautious, but optimistically so after Gellar’s recent remarks. Over the years, she has also been understandably wary about returning to the role of Buffy, but Zhao was the one who changed her mind.

“Every pitch I heard was just like, ‘Let’s just do Buffy again.’ Why?” Gellar said to Elite Daily last month. “But the passion that [Zhao] came to me with, what she wanted to do with the show and the character, and why Buffy is needed now — it was the first time where I thought, ‘OK, there’s a reason.’”

And frankly, in Sarah Michelle Gellar, I trust, so I think it’s time to put on our stylish but affordable boots and pick up those stakes again, friends.

May 13, 2025