#WeeklyUpdate

1. life is slowly stabilizing and I got back to planning for the Summer Camp
2. the Summer Camp themes (change, refuge, belief, decay) fit very well the ancient times of Ædeos
3. I started a series called #DailyInspirations, aiming to inspire myself and everyone interested right before teh Summer Camp
4. I'm working on the Savenian conlang (finally!!!) >:)

Following Kummer Wolfe's example of making article copies of journal entries I've made one myself for the Inspirations category, both for Foraging Inspirations and Daily Inspirations. Generally if you're looking for inspiring articles from the World Anvil Community, Kummer Wolfe's list is a good place to start.

All themes have been released! The pledge and homework waits for an update for homeworks 2, 3 and 4. Real life is stabilizing, so hopefully I'll get it done before the Copper prompt release. I can safely say, however, that my choice of ancient times in Ædeos for this Summer Camp proves to be the good one. The themes are on my side at the moment. We'll see if the promprs are as well.

Last Tuesday I started a series called #DailyInspirations with the aim to kill time until Summer Camp and get at least a little daily bite of worldbuilding. There's a little bit of everything, but most of my inspirations come from my contacts (and sometimes too close enounters) with nature. It gave me a nice boost of confidence and a sense of being productive, so I'm happy.

Saving up energy for the Summer Camp.

I've started digging into the language roots of the Savenian language and the progress is satisfying. I'm not sure if this will be enough to make some stubs for the conlang but I'll definitely give it a try!

Mission accomplished! :)

1. I modified my world's CSS to take care of text justifying and paragraph indent.
2. Life has become crazier due to unforseen family stuff so with work to be done, worldbuilding is becoming... challenging (not the challenge I was expecting this summer; pun not intended)
3. I prepared the draft default content warning message boxes to be used in the Article Credit section: dedication, info, caution!, warning!!, danger!!!
4. I plan to post daily inspirations for the Summr Camp, related to stuff I come across

With little time I have right now, the pledge and homework was not updated. Currently released themes:

There's button mushrooms growing everywhere! XD Near the houses, right by the street, near the parks, near the metro station. A super fun source of inspiration! Something common and edible (at least the park ones would be safe to eat if the species is right) but regarded with caution because of the circumstances. People often perceive things wild and untamed as dangerous, even though this is just mostly an emotional block, not rational. The button mushroom is a great example of that. It's not that it is not safe by itself. By going to the market one can ease the fear of the unknown (is that REALLY edible) by trusting the seller. The seller is the authority on edibility in that particular situation. Another thing that transpires is that this means people don't trust themselves enough to take the risk.

There's a bit of everything to be used this Summer Camp:

Not yet, but I have the message boxes ready to be transfered to the Advanced variables. These include:

Thinking hard on the Summer Camp themes. No stubs have been harmed in the process.

I want to make a daily series of inspiration entries that will make use of the released themes. Not only #ForagingInspirations, but mostly stuff I come across. We'll see how it goes with the family stuff, though.

1. I submitted the Summer Camp 2024 pledge and finished week 1 homework
2. Played with Content Trees to show the tree-like structure of tags in my new system for Summer Camp 2024
3. June starts a bit tiring but we're not giving up! There's Summer Solstice, the beaufitul storms coming, vacation!!!
4. Preparations for Summer Camp continue
5. Found an interesting (and edible) mushroom!

The preparation for Summer Camp are going fast! With the week 1 homework and the pledge done I'm taking a small break due to some real-world stuff. In my spare time I'm thinking of how "Change" and "Refuge", week 1 and week 2 themese, respectively, are reflected in my world.

Finally!!! After a good deal of rain, the mushrooms have started to bloom and I managed to find the pheasant's back also known as the dryad's saddle. One of the tastier fungi that grow on wood and can get stupidly large (up to 1 meter in diameter?). Freshly picked smell fresh and very similar to green cucumbers. I'll nerd about them a bit more in the coming days with a focus on #ForagingInspirations.

Content Trees were my favourite this week, for their tree-like structure. I used them to prepare Tags for the SummerCamp and get a bit more organised on my Tag System (a follow-up on a story from a few months back :)). So, for example all articles written during this Summer Camp will get a tag events-challenges-summercamp-2024. Admittedly this will make the tags longer but I find comfort in how they are descriptive and self-explanatory.

I promised to show the examples of Type Advanced Variables as Content Warning Boxes but a lot happened (is happening) and I didn't get to finish them. :( However, since CSS is part of this week's Summer Camp Homework, I'll be taking my time to fiddle with it a bit more.

Gathering strengths for WorldEm... for Summer Camp.

The plan is to take care of myself, while tending to family stuff and balancing that with Summer Camp Prep.

The large portion of the experiments is now done and time for actual cooking and writing will start tomorrow. Looking forward to it, since I'll be making one of my favourite dishes, but with a medieval/ancient twist on it.

No good luc with the elderflower lemonade. The flowers withered super fast as I saved them for later (for the lack of time). Wood-growing mushrooms start to appear but there is yet too little rain for typically foraged species (Porcini, Chantarelle) to be found in my neighbourhood. There's news of Chicken of the Woods making its appearance around Poland, so maybe visiting a more remote deciduous wood is an idea.

When visiting my parents I collected grape leaves of 4 different varieties, having some bigger ones (more tanic and hard) and smaller (glistening, acidic and fragile). They are waiting in salted water untill I make a use of them, possibly for something similar to dolmas mentioned by ShadowPoenix. ;)

With Foraging inspirations. Mushrooms, pt. 1 -- the lookalikes I'm starting a series dedicated to #ForagingInspirations. Prepare for a fair dose of nerdy knowledge. Mushrooms are strange but also interestingly strange and can serve as a prop, right next to plants, animals and forces of nature. The article includes some real-life lookalikes, how they can be mistaken and whether the mistake will be deadly or not. I've included a short scene example at the end.

This is how the unrendered variables look like in the text (specifically in Euclid) by Angantyr

The above examples are "Type Simple", which means you get two fields: ey (which you see above) and Value (which appears as a tooltip). What gives even more flexibility is the "Type Rendered", which permits the use of BBcode, containers, etc. With containers it gets very powerful, since I basically get a segment, which can be CSS tailored in a thousand and one ways. But even with the ability to fit "aloud" boxes, tables and such, this gives quite an edge and enables one to have a big portion of information to be maintained in a single place. I have used these for content warning boxes. More on that in the next update.

More stubs and notes on which flavour pairings worked and which did not. Finally getting down to writing, after the foraging article is published. So now all hands on deck with the Food, Glorious FOOD! Unofficial Challenge.

I'm happy to announce, that this week was very productive! The kitchen has officially been reestablished as my laboratory to experiment with flavour, shapes and texture. I particularly loved the desserts and some of them will likely appear more often in real life. This challenge started off as an experiment to add some cooking traditions to Ædeos but inspired me to look more into "I wonder how this ingredient could be transformed into something new and interesting?" The battle continues and this week will mark some recipe wrap-up in the form of drafts of articles.

I made a first run of elderflower lemonade! The taste is almost there but needs some acidity to balance the swetness. The elderflowers are in full bloom, so this week will go under the flag of flavoured syrups. The robinia flowers were good in pancake dough, but not great. It's gave them a bit of that flowery fragrance but not enough to be truly memorable. Some other recipe called for a paste made of petals and sugar, so I may try that as well.

This week I'll be visiting my parents and the grape vines I planted a couple of years ago. Young leaves can be stored in salted water and used as a wrap for any type of filling (meat and or rice is the one I stumble upon mostly). Beech leaves are getting tough, but some still have some tartness to them, so I'll get a buch as well.

And last, but not least, my foraging-inspired article no.1 is aaaalmost finished. I will be focusing on wild mushrooms and their lookalikes, what makes them similar and different and how can you include them in a story. To get you started, here are some of the stars of the upcoming article. Can you recognize some edible mushrooms? How many are edible when raw? Which one is fermented and eaten?

Saved energy for this week. ;)

Stubs for the Food, Glorious FOOD! Unofficial Challenge have been prepared, as were th first runs of recipes!

I had a long week of pondering how to tackle Food, Glorious FOOD! Unofficial Challenge to expand my worldbuilding and came up with several ideas. It sprouted with both, something sweet, and savory. Some products had to be purchased (I don't have my own source of bacon nor honey), but thankfully, the some could be foraged in the nearby forest. First tests will start this week with articles being published some next week or so.

Hot and cold, hot and cold. With early spring came earlier summer and the elderflowers and robinias are already blooming. Time to prepare some wild lemonade and flowers in pancake dough. Bird eye cherry is almost done blooming and I may be late for foraging flowers for oxidation and almond-like flavoured tea. Pine cones are green and tender and soon will be ready to make a pine-cone syrup. Little to no mushrooms, though... Let it RAIN!!!

I made a good progress with the article about taking inspiration from mushrooms but it's getting too big, so... I'll have to think of ways to break it down into smaller, easily consumable portions.

Categories got some love and with that a new thing learned -- each category has a page of its own. They can be customized via a drag&drop design tab. The default is Table of contents | Articles (blocks) | Maps/Timelines but unneeded fields can be dropped altogether. There are 5 custom content fields + the usual ones:

Still playing with it to logically navigate the readers and make browsing through the world much easier. But since for that I'll need index Tags, the changes are not implemented yet, and probably won't until a week or two (I fear that even more, but we'll see how it plays out).

No progress in this field, though the preparations are set up and aligned with the Food, Glorious FOOD! Unofficial Challenge.