all made up with nowhere to go

Not to complain about the weather again, but the top temp we hit last week was 31°C in town. That was around a week ago, and was the peak of it, but ughhhhhhh. I think prolonged heat is worse than a few days of abnormal heat. It's cooler now, and it did actually rain overnight last night (after two days of being promised rain and it not happening), so everything feels 900% better now.

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In other news:

# I wrote and posted the first art supply review for my ko-fi!

I'm planning on putting two of these up a month, since they're not very long*, and there's plenty of things (for now) that I can talk about.

I'm also going to put together some posts that anyone can access without having to pay for, because I thought the topic of at least one might be interesting, and also I know how irritating it is to click a link you want to read, only to discover it is paywalled.

And I did some more print tests yesterday, so a shop update will be coming soon! I am also going to update my redbubble store with some stuff as well, but I'll link to that when I've done it.

# I tried my Redbush tea and...I did not like it. It was certainly nicer than the Tetley one, but it tasted, looked, and smelt too much like black tea for my liking.

I also had some Blackcurrant and Blueberry tea, which was okay (miles better than the Redbush), but tasted too much of blackcurrant. Like, if I wanted hot blackcurrant, I'd drink Ribena. I am now onto Cherry and Cinnamon, which I've had before, and is lovely.

# Got a spoilery theory for Ni no Kuni, which I'm going to post now before it gets disproven!

( spoilers! )

Like I say, I don't know if any of this is right or not or if, as I often do, I am putting the clues together wrongly. Oh well, we'll see once I finish the game (if I do). Also if you have played it, or know the plot at all, DO NOT tell me if I'm right or not. I want to see this play out for myself, thank you very much.

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*They were originally intended to be audio posts, but I kept putting it off because I feel self-conscious about recording myself. So now they're just short text posts.

I don't think I mentioned it, but back when I was replaying FFXIII on the PS3, the fan kept switching itself on after about half an hour's gameplay and chugging really loudly. I thought this was weird, but figured maybe the PS3 was giving up the ghost (I got it second hand, and I don't know how much its previous owner used it). So I didn't ever play on it for very long, because I was worried about breaking it.

Around the same time, a friend of mine mentioned that she and her partner had recently cleaned the vents on their PS4 to get it working again. I filed this information away, but didn't do a lot with it until yesterday.

My PS3 is one of the slim consoles, so it's still fairly chonky, and the only visible vents are the ones at the back. OR SO I THOUGHT. When I was setting it up to play Ni no Kuni, I took a look over the whole thing, and saw down both sides there are also what appear to be smaller vents? And they were dusty a f. So I took a toothpick to them, and cleaned them out.

And then later on in the day, I played some more Ni no Kuni and I am pleased to report that, while I could hear the fan running, it no longer chugged like it was about to fall over! \o/ Which is good, because I don't remember it doing this until recently anyway - though I think the last game I played on it before FFXIII was Dark Souls II, which would have been nine months prior, so that's nine more months of dust, right there.

(Okay, apparently the PS3 has a self-cleaning function???? Need to bear this in mind for future reference! I didn't get the manual with this when I got it, so that explains why I don't know about it. Although it's possible the manual was as useful as the PS4 one, which is to say not at all).

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So yeah, now I've played a bit more Ni no Kuni:

Do you like puns? Then you will LOVE the English translation of this game, because not even two hours into the game, the puns are off the frikken charts.

Also there are cat people called Grimalkins and they are, of course, adorable (because they're cats).

The combat so far reminds me of Dragon Quest VIII (since that's the only one I've played), and the victory posing makes me think of The Last Remnant. I don't know why, it just does - although the enemy designs are on the cute side, which probably explains the DQ similarities? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There are no metal slimes, though, as far as I am aware!

I have already had to do a little bit of grinding, but it wasn't too painful? I haven't been actively avoiding enemies, but when I went into the Obligatory Sewer Level, I got pasted by the enemies there, so went and did a bit of grinding, and then things went a bit more smoothly.

I still have no real thoughts about it thus far, but I don't hate it? Which is good. One of the reasons I put off playing it for so long was that I thought I might. But I don't, so yay!