SunJeong Modding Mini Podcast #3

Main Topic: I lecture you on why you should sometimes take a break from the online world.

Sub-topics: Touching grass and how memes don't have to be dreams
                   Modding Updates
                   Small surprise at the end?
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Full transcript of podcast below:

Welcome to this week’s podcast! This is podcast #3 and my hope was to remain consistent with these releases but life got in the way so I’m sorry for the one week delay. I’ve been aiming for biweekly Saturdays, but today is going to be a Sunday post!

Last topic was very opinionated regarding the modding scene. For those that didn’t listen in, I talked about some of the positive aspects of modding like new innovations and some of the negative aspects of modding like money and the culture of modding as seen through the lens of Fallout 4. I also mentioned Starfield and my predictions based on the current sentiments.

Anyway, I wanted this week’s topic to be a little less dramatic and a bit more beneficial for others. I juggled back and forth about what I wanted to talk about until I noticed a common feeling many gamers had. Actually, there’s also a meme associated with it and that ladies and gentlemen is the topic of touching grass.

So what is touching grass? Touching grass seems to be a western meme that pokes fun at people that spend too much time indoors and need to “touch grass” or rather go outside more often. The way I see it, the term is sometimes used to poke light fun at others who are a bit too serious about their online presence and mannerisms. But I think the meme itself can be used as a positive light for the mental well-being of us gamers. Now, none of this is medical advice and I’m not any sort of psychiatrist expert or a therapist but I wanted to share my opinion on it and how it helps me often.

For people that explore creative freedoms online or use online to escape reality, touching grass can be the disruption you need to maintain a healthy balance of what you like doing. If you’re the type of user that likes to game for 12+ hours or likes to watch memes for several hours a day, you SHOULD be touching grass to disrupt what could be an unhealthy habit. Let me try to explain what I mean with another example. Let’s say you like eating Snickers candy. It’s your favorite American chocolate bar. Imagine that everyday you eat Snickers 5 times a day, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and 2 snacks in between. Slowly you’ll start getting sick of Snickers and eventually it can even be unhealthy with all the sugar it has. You need to disrupt your Snicker eating habits with something else, something healthier hopefully but at least something else. Maybe throw in a healthy oatmeal breakfast or maybe throw in a salad or something.

In this example, the Snickers represents your online habits and the different meal represents an offline activity you need to disrupt your habit. In my time on Discord and just learning other social accounts, I notice far too often that people seem to be in a spiral of mental exhaustion from spending too much time online. You might feel “trapped” and you might feel “obligated” to attend to these online habits. The idea is not limited to gaming but can also be some online social communities or even being a content creator. When you dedicate your time to just being online, you may begin to develop some sort of dependence on it since your brain becomes very accustomed to its comforts. So where does touching grass fit in? It’s very simple. Just go outside. For any length of time and for any sort of activity….as long as it’s safe and legal of course. Are any of you familiar with some of my Youtube shorts? I made several shorts where I’m just walking outside “touching grass” pretending I’m in Skyrim. These sort of disruptions of touching grass have helped me regain motivation for when I’m stumped in modding. Sometimes I’ll be in a situation where I accidentally overwrite my modding work and it’s hours of work wasted. I become angry and frustrated. In this situation, it’s best to take a break and go get some fresh air. If you choose to continue working after such frustration, you will feel less happy doing the work and start to become even more frustrated at smaller things. Doing something different like touching grass is like a soft reset for your brain. For some of your introverts out there this isn’t some sort of death sentence. You don’t have to interact anyone. Go outside in your back yard, just look at the sky or feel the sun (not me by the way). If you’re brave enough, just walk up and down your street once! This disruption is good for us and it’s never a bad thing to take a small break from anything no matter how good.

Now I’ll make one thing clear, I’m not saying spending your time online is bad. But too much of anything is bad for you. Even exercising! If you exercise all day everyday without doing anything else, your body is not getting the disruption it needs to recover. Moderation is the key. I feel that many people can benefit from just disrupting their habits a little bit. When you’re online and you feel a sense of being trapped then that’s the moment you should just step outside and refresh yourself. I’ve also heard some artists say that when they’re drawing, they’ll often take a break and come back to their art and notice many things that they can improve. Sometimes taking your eyes off one focus and coming back later brings an entirely new perspective.

Anyway that’s enough about that, I don’t want this to be misinterpreted as a therapy session. My personal touching grass moments are when I take boba milk breaks by going to the store to get some. Then coming back to drink and mod. It’s a win-win for me.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

On another topic, I will give my modding update!

A few days ago I released a Chinese themed mod called KunNew Cloth. It was a requested commission by someone named Victor (thank you by the way if you’re listening). When I looked into this mod from LE I noticed that there were numerous fragmented versions of it scattered. Bodyslide files were in one place, gold versions in another place, most of them were missing the proper hair texture and were using the wrong hair texture from a KSHairdos mod, etc. There were so many problems. What made this armor more interesting were how much SMP it needed. If I had done this armor a year ago, I would’ve really struggled. The good thing though is that I like to make existing processes efficient (it’s actually part of my real life job too). The challenge of making the SMP weights consistent was actually sort of fun. I always learn new things when it comes to challenges I haven’t seen before. For those that haven’t tried the mod, the item had several SMP items that I was able to consolidate:

1. The hair
2. The hair accessory
3. The tasset cloths
4. The dress of the cuirass

If had to provide a time estimate, adding SMP and refining all these parts took me about 2 hours including writing the XML.

The recolors of the armor were interesting. The commissioner asked me to include the gold version it came with but none of the versions I downloaded had any gold, only silver. Thankfully I made my own gold version. I also made a black and nature version as a surprise texture variation for the armor. Overall, these types of armors are a nice creative freedom.

For my next mod update, I converted another set of thigh high leather boots. This was a simple conversion with very minor improvements from the LE version. It is called the DF T33 Boots. If the name looks familiar it’s because I published something similar called the DF T19 Boots. Both are thigh high but the T33 version is a brown leather that’s actually kinda lore friendly to Skyrim while the T19 version were pure smooth black leather that’s more suited for the modern world. That was released Monday at 12:00 eastern USA time.

I am now back to my apartment to mod again and I am continuing the ninirim pack today. It’s actually going to almost be a year since I started the update. I really didn’t expect the workload for this mod pack to be this huge but I should have expected it. I’m hoping I can finish it on time for it to be a Christmas gift of some sort but I’m not making any promises yet.

For this podcast I’ll keep it shorter. I have been out of state and just came back home this weekend. The takeaway here is to supplement your online activities with something not online, preferably touching grass. Memes don’t have to be just memes; they can be your gateway to something greater!!

As always, thank you for your support! See you guys next time!Welcome to this week’s podcast! This is podcast #3 and my hope was to remain consistent with these releases but life got in the way so I’m sorry for the one week delay. I’ve been aiming for biweekly Saturdays, but today is going to be a Sunday post!

Last topic was very opinionated regarding the modding scene. For those that didn’t listen in, I talked about some of the positive aspects of modding like new innovations and some of the negative aspects of modding like money and the culture of modding as seen through the lens of Fallout 4. I also mentioned Starfield and my predictions based on the current sentiments.

Anyway, I wanted this week’s topic to be a little less dramatic and a bit more beneficial for others. I juggled back and forth about what I wanted to talk about until I noticed a common feeling many gamers had. Actually, there’s also a meme associated with it and that ladies and gentlemen is the topic of touching grass.

So what is touching grass? Touching grass seems to be a western meme that pokes fun at people that spend too much time indoors and need to “touch grass” or rather go outside more often. The way I see it, the term is sometimes used to poke light fun at others who are a bit too serious about their online presence and mannerisms. But I think the meme itself can be used as a positive light for the mental well-being of us gamers. Now, none of this is medical advice and I’m not any sort of psychiatrist expert or a therapist so I just wanted to put it out there as a disclaimer; I just wanted to share my opinion on it and how it helps me often.

So for people that explore creative freedoms online or use online to escape reality, touching grass can be the disruption you need to maintain a healthy balance of what you like doing. If you’re the type of user that likes to game for 12+ hours or likes to watch memes for several hours a day, you SHOULD be touching grass to disrupt what could be an unhealthy habit. Let me try to explain what I mean with another example. Let’s say you like eating Snickers candy. It’s your favorite American chocolate bar. Imagine that everyday you eat Snickers 5 times a day, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and 2 snacks in between. Slowly you’ll start getting sick of Snickers and eventually it can even be unhealthy with all the sugar it has. You need to disrupt your Snicker eating habits with something else, something healthier hopefully but at least something else. Maybe throw in a healthy oatmeal breakfast or maybe throw in a salad or something.

In this example, the Snickers represents your online habits and the different meal represents an offline activity you need to disrupt your habit. In my time on Discord and just learning other social accounts, I notice far too often that people seem to be in a spiral of mental exhaustion from spending too much time online. You might feel “trapped” and you might feel “obligated” to attend to these online habits. The idea is not limited to gaming but can also be some online social communities or even being a content creator. When you dedicate your time to just being online, you may begin to develop some sort of dependence on it since your brain becomes very accustomed to its comforts. So where does touching grass fit in? It’s very simple. Just go outside. For any length of time and for any sort of activity….as long as it’s safe and legal of course. Are any of you familiar with some of my Youtube shorts? I made several shorts where I’m just walking outside “touching grass” pretending I’m in Skyrim. These sort of disruptions of touching grass have helped me regain motivation for when I’m stumped in modding. Sometimes I’ll be in a situation where I accidentally overwrite my modding work and it’s hours of work wasted. I become angry and frustrated. In this situation, it’s best to take a break and go get some fresh air. If you choose to continue working after such frustration, you will feel less happy doing the work and start to become even more frustrated at smaller things. Doing something different like touching grass is like a soft reset for your brain. For some of your introverts out there this isn’t some sort of death sentence. You don’t have to interact anyone. Go outside in your back yard, just look at the sky or feel the sun (not me by the way). If you’re brave enough, just walk up and down your street once! This disruption is good for us and it’s never a bad thing to take a small break from anything no matter how good.

Now I’ll make one thing clear, I’m not saying spending your time online is bad. But too much of anything is bad for you. Even exercising! If you exercise all day everyday without doing anything else, your body is not getting the disruption it needs to recover. Moderation is the key. I feel that many people can benefit from just disrupting their habits a little bit. When you’re online and you feel a sense of being trapped then that’s the moment you should just step outside and refresh yourself. I’ve also heard some artists say that when they’re drawing, they’ll often take a break and come back to their art and notice many things that they can improve. Sometimes taking your eyes off one focus and coming back later brings an entirely new perspective.

Anyway that’s enough about that, I don’t want this to be misinterpreted as a therapy session. My personal touching grass moments are when I take boba milk breaks by going to the store to get some. Then coming back to drink and mod. It’s a win-win for me.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

On another topic, I will give my modding update!

A few days ago I released a Chinese themed mod called KunNew Cloth. It was a requested commission by someone named Victor (thank you by the way if you’re listening). When I looked into this mod from LE I noticed that there were numerous fragmented versions of it scattered. Bodyslide files were in one place, gold versions in another place, most of them were missing the proper hair texture and were using the wrong hair texture from a KSHairdos mod, etc. There were so many problems. What made this armor more interesting were how much SMP it needed. If I had done this armor a year ago, I would’ve really struggled. The good thing though is that I like to make existing processes efficient (it’s actually part of my real life job too). The challenge of making the SMP weights consistent was actually sort of fun. I always learn new things when it comes to challenges I haven’t seen before. For those that haven’t tried the mod, the item had several SMP items that I was able to consolidate:

1. The hair
2. The hair accessory
3. The tasset cloths
4. The dress of the cuirass

If had to provide a time estimate, adding SMP and refining all these parts took me about 2 hours including writing the XML.

The recolors of the armor were interesting. The commissioner asked me to include the gold version it came with but none of the versions I downloaded had any gold, only silver. Thankfully I made my own gold version. I also made a black and nature version as a surprise texture variation for the armor. Overall, these types of armors are a nice creative freedom.

For my next mod update, I converted another set of thigh high leather boots. This was a simple conversion with very minor improvements from the LE version. It is called the DF T33 Boots. If the name looks familiar it’s because I published something similar called the DF T19 Boots. Both are thigh high but the T33 version is a brown leather that’s actually kinda lore friendly to Skyrim while the T19 version were pure smooth black leather that’s more suited for the modern world. That was released Monday at 12:00 eastern USA time.

I am now back to my apartment to mod again and I am continuing the ninirim pack today. It’s actually going to almost be a year since I started the update. I really didn’t expect the workload for this mod pack to be this huge but I should have expected it. I’m hoping I can finish it on time for it to be a Christmas gift of some sort but I’m not making any promises yet.

For this podcast I’ll keep it shorter. I have been out of state and just came back home this weekend. The takeaway here is to supplement your online activities with something not online, preferably touching grass. Memes don’t have to be just memes; they can be your gateway to something greater!!

As always, thank you for your support! See you guys next time!