This is so sweet 💕

Happy Birthday!
Sorry to hear about your birthday money, I hope you’ll still get to have nice day in spite of it!

What did this cat DO?!
Caught stealing a fish in Thailand (I‘m guessing), and then extradited to the US?
They must want him pretty bad.

“The planet Arrakis, known as Dune”

My very first experience with a sound card was watching the Dune 2 intro on my dad’s friend’s computer. I was so amazed, I just sat in awe as that intro movie played.
On the drive home I tried to remember if what I heard was real, and I just couldn’t imagine it. When I tried to recall what I saw and heard, I could only imagine hearing that tinny internal speaker making bleeps and bloops instead of the actual sounds. It just seemed so unreal at the time that I could not recall what I had heard only a few hours earlier :)

On a side note, I don’t think any studio in the nineties made as memorable tunes and sounds as Westwood did. There was always something enchanting about them. Dune 2, the Kyrandia games, they all had excellent music that really played into the strengths of what was available back then.
Of course I’m talking with pink tinted nostalgia goggles, but still… good memories :)

Yes, I remember these! Countdown And Tex Murphy: The Martian Memorandum come to mind. I remember being amazed at the sounds suddenly coming out of our internal computer speaker. It even had something close to speech!
The manual also came with some info on making the sound even better using some alligator clips, but that went waaaay over my little head at the time :)

When I was a kid our family went on vacation to the US. Everyone kept asking if I was Dutch, which I thought was German (Deutsch).
So I kept correcting them, saying I was Netherlandish :)

You might like Shadows of Doubt. It’s a procedural generated detective game where you have to solve murders. The entire city is generated, every npc has their own routine and you can pretty much go anywhere. There’s sneaking, hacking, talking, etc.

It’s still in early access, but it’s already a lot of fun.

Oh wow, that takes me back… This game actually got me into reading the book. I played so much of this when I was little, I loved the story and the characters.
When I saw the movie in the rental store I got really excited. I didn’t even know there was more to Dune than the game. I asked my parents if we could rent it but my dad told me (rather gruffly) to go and read the book instead.
I was so annoyed at the time, but looking back I have to admit he did the right thing :)

I often wake up around the same time. What helps for me is a big soft toy cat to cuddle with. The feeling of security of being able to wrap my arms around something tight is soothing and often helps me drift off to sleep again.
I don’t use it until I wake up though, until then it’s lying on the floor next to my bed. It could be that the change in sleeping posture is what helps?

Granted, this might be a bit too personal to be helpful. But maybe it will help for you as well? Alternatively you could try a big fluffy pillow if soft toys aren’t your thing :)

You can use the \blend command if you want to combine two images without any prompt.

https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/blend

God, I miss test listens. My favorite record store was very easy going in this, they’d happily let me stand there listening to most of the CD. The unspoken rule was that if you spend that much time listening, you’re going to buy it anyway.
One of the few shops where I always felt welcome.

I got into sci-fi because my dad had a giant shelf with nothing but pulp sci-fi books, mostly from the 60’s and 70’s. Most of them were not very hard sci-fi, but I loved reading through all of them as a little kid. They triggered my imagination, especially the ones that came with little maps in the back where I could follow the story’s progress. Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure was one of my very favorites, full of… well… adventure (it delivers exactly what it says :)
Most of them were already ridiculously dated, but it was the idea of traveling through space, exploring new places with strange and exciting cultures that made them so appealing to me.
I tried to find more books in the high-school library when I got older but was disappointed to find almost nothing outside of the traditional literature like H.G. Wells. It did motivate me to get into fantasy literature like Beowulf and LOTR to fill out my reading list for English class (English is not my native tongue), anything to get out of reading “proper” literature.

Anyway, if you want to recommend science fiction to young people, keep it simple and trigger the imagination. The hard stuff can come later.

*sniff* I always get emotional when people find their soulmate

Basically it’s what Aa! said, I just never knew the word for it.

I tie a knot, but it’s more like a shoelace and can be pulled open with a simple pull. Where does that put me?
I feel so lost and alone :(

So sweet! Looks exactly like my first cat…
Still miss him so much after all these years.

Ohhh… The Girl From Ipanema, Nat King Cole version.
Perfect for a warm summer night’s drive. Not sure about the other 27 minutes though.

More like a long but tormented life of barely subsisting on the smallest amounts of water possible.
Death is too sweet and quick for my houseplants :)

These are wonderful, you just got yourself another fan :)

I keep reading this as Criminally Sexy Pork.

Remember: even a moderately sexy pork chop is illegal to sell