Quicksand and Treasures

The sun rises over the Belomisian forest, and I carefully store my archaeology tools back in their box. Waiting for the morning, unable to sleep, I was working on cleaning and authenticating an old vase, and I was delighted to uncover the incredible shine of the rarest omiscan treasures below the layer of dirt. I take this as a great omen of the day to go, and I have a spring in my step as I walk to the first Gate of the jungle.

The weather is still a little cold, but hacking at the lianas never fails to warm an archaeologist up. They fall apart fast, and I start my trek in the jungle.

And then I hear a scream. It’s a fellow explorer, one I’ve never seen in the forest before. She looks quite young, and distraught, at the bag that’s slowly sinking in the pit of quicksand at her feet. It could be worse, it could be her in there.

Hit by some inspiration, I produce a Guzmania Pollenis flower out of my own bag, slip it through the handle, and pull. The stalk holds and I salvage the bag — success! My fellow archaeologist pulls an ivory and emerald omiscan knife out of it and, thanking me profusely, sticks it in my hand. I give her advice about spotting quicksand and go on my way.

It seems I was right about the day being lucky! Before noon I find a chest and out of it, I dig some rare treasures of my own.

A wooden relic, and a Cetlcitli calendar plate. I secure both into my bag and keep going, straight to the temple, a smile on my face and every one of the worries that haunted me at home, entirely forgotten.

Treasures

Finally caught a fish I fell I can be proud of. 14.28 kilos of electric eel (is everything in this jungle electric?), so I decide to quit while I’m ahead.

It’s not like there isn’t much more to see in this area.

There’s treasures to find.

Treasures to dig up, as well.

Gems and fossils.

It had been a while since the last time I hammered at a rock, but the results are there. Rare fossils and fire opals.

Belomisian Wonders

This is what towers above this new spot I found, the complex city of temples and waterfalls and cascades that makes the bulk of the remnants of the omiscan civilization.

And on the other end, spilling into the river where I’m trying to fish, the royal baths, where I first swam with Mom what feels like forever ago.

I’m at a peaceful spot between those two marvels of architecture, with the sound of water flowing and the sound of the most exotic birds fighting for attention.

Yet when I fish, my thoughts invariably go to Dad. He’d be amazed, I think, at the improbable fish you can see swirling below the surface.

He’d probably be better at catching them than me, though, let’s be honest.

Gaslights and Electric Fireflies

I walked through the forest all day and walked into more than one odd situation. There was a family of sloths, who led me through an opening in the trees, to a cliff with an incredible view, a place I’d never been before.

There was also the pink egg I watched an adorable — albeit really weird — creature hatch out of. And then, of course, the electric fireflies attacked me. Thanks to tips I got at the market, I avoided them skillfully, if I do say so myself.

The night falling and the mosquitoes buzzing doesn’t stop me from working my way through the forest. I’m motivated, and I barely ever sleep.

If anything, this is my favorite time to go through the gates. The atmosphere, under the gas lights, is out of this world.

That being said, sometimes even I do need sleep.

Can never catch a break with those electric fireflies, can you? Ah well, witness my skill at dancing them away.

Quicksand and Treasures

The sun rises over the Belomisian forest, and I carefully store my archaeology tools back in their box. Waiting for the morning, unable to sleep, I was working on cleaning and authenticating an old vase, and I was delighted to uncover the incredible shine of the rarest omiscan treasures below the layer of dirt. I take this as a great omen of the day to go, and I have a spring in my step as I walk to the first Gate of the jungle.

The weather is still a little cold, but hacking at the lianas never fails to warm an archaeologist up. They fall apart fast, and I start my trek in the jungle.

And then I hear a scream. It’s a fellow explorer, one I’ve never seen in the forest before. She looks quite young, and distraught, at the bag that’s slowly sinking in the pit of quicksand at her feet. It could be worse, it could be her in there.

Hit by inspiration, I produce a Guzmania Pollenis flower out of my own bag, slip it through the handle, and pull. The stalk holds and I salvage the bag — success! My fellow archaeologist pulls an ivory and emerald omiscan knife out of it and, thanking me profusely, sticks it in my hand. I give her advice about spotting quicksand and go on my way.

It seems I was right about the day being lucky! Before noon I find a chest and out of it, I dig some rare treasures of my own.

A wooden relic, and a Cetlcitli calendar plate. I secure both into my bag and keep going, straight to the temple, a smile on my face and every one of the worries that haunted me at home, entirely forgotten.

Tumblr is getting a facelift

magnasimblr:

staff:

Some time ago we took a long, hard look at how we stacked up to the recommendations outlined in the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium. This is the initiative that sets standards for accessibility for people who may need assistance using the internet. It outlines steps to take and tools to use to create as seamless of an experience online as possible, whether you have auditory, visual, or neurological disabilities, are using a limited device, are on a slow connection with limited bandwidth, or…well, a whole bunch of other reasons.

The result of that long, hard look? Not great. We needed to make sure Tumblr was accessible to anyone who wants to use it.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been making changes to do just that. Our inaccessible menus are more accessible, we fixed our poorly described elements, and increased overall readability. You can read more about all that in our most recent @javascript post about the mobile web.

Part of making Tumblr more accessible involved upping the color contrast in our UI, most notably on the dashboard and everywhere else that familiar blue touches. The light grays and muted blues had a contrast ratio of 2.02:1. What does that mean? Bad. It was bad, and we needed to do better by people with visual impairments.

Enter your new dashboard:

image

It looks…cleaner, doesn’t it? Like someone dusted off the poorly accessible bits. The blue is darker, the grays are lighter, all the buttons and icons are brighter with our new brand colors, and it has a contrast ratio of 7.87:1 What does that mean? Good! Very good.

The switch to your brand new, higher contrast, less dusty dashboard has been slowly rolling out this week. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’ll get it sometime in the next few days.

A note: We know that this color change on the dashboard negatively impacts the beautiful bluespace art so many of you have created over the past few years. Seeing these older posts lose the utilization of the dashboard—something that made them so special and unique to just Tumblr—is certainly not a great feeling. There’s no way around that. We hope, however, that this change only means newer, more bluespace art will be created, and that this time around it will be easier for everyone to experience.

Goodbye, #36465D. You’ve treated many of us well, but #001935 will treat every single one of us even better.  

A retrospective into the future (don’t ask)

Didn’t post last weekend, did I?

I’ll try to post a little later today, but… I played some yesterday, and something got me very emotional, so I thought I’d share some screenshots from almost two decades in the future, along with older ones.

So this is a retrospective that includes stuff from the future? I guess?

My little Hannah grew up so much! And it felt so odd to go back and remember when this was Azalea’s story…

Horse Sketch Art CC for The Sims 4

krystalgamer1:

The original artwork depicted here was drawn by @legasimmer 

The CC is created by Krystal Gamer. 

Comes in 6 frame colors: Black, gray, white, dark brown, medium brown, light brown/tan.  

Sketches are in brown and grayscale.

Base game compatible.

DOWNLOAD from Sims File Share (SFS)

Follow me on Twitter @KrystalGamer1 or 

YouTube at www.youtube.com/c/krystalgamer

Such an awesome idea from krystalgamer! Thought I’d reblog because I’m really happy she found my horse study worthy good enough to make CC out of, and while I’m at it I can share the original 😉

So if you want a sketch of this horse right there in your house, you know where to go ^^