[text] @dr; OS v.3 [open]

[donttalktome]

Well, congratulations on managing to destroy the notion that I had seen all the idiocy this place had to offer.
Leave it to you all to find some way to sink to new lows. Literally.
I do hope you plan on not getting yourselves killed, because we may well have just lost our only way to add to the population.
Honestly, the whole thing makes me almost want to withdraw what I'm about to offer, but here I am anyway.
You can save your thanks for later.

A while ago, it came to my attention that not everyone here is used to dealing with a sunless environment.
In fact, it seems that a grand majority of you are terrestrial.
You don't know the protocols for a 24 hour cycle without daylight, and eventually that's going to have, let's say, a negative impact on your mental health.
Without your naturally-evolved signals for sleeping and waking, your circadian rhythm will become an absolute disaster.
Without UV light, your brain will not produce as much serotonin as it should.
You'll be exhausted, depressed, and withdrawn, and you'll start to suffer cognitive issues.
Memory loss, lack of coordination and concentration, etc.
In the worst of cases, you may suffer a psychotic break, which is something none of us, myself especially, want to deal with.

These are not mere hypotheticals.
Excusing what amounts to maybe a few months, I lived my entire life without a sun.
In that time I met a substantial amount of people who hadn't grown up that way, but for some reason or another chose to venture out into the void.
Many of them adapted, eventually.
The rest, to put it lightly, lost it.
Mostly that just entailed their being reduced to useless lumps, but sometimes things got a bit more exciting, and that's something I'd like to avoid.

Luckily for everyone, there's a fairly easy solution.
In addition to exercise and eating more fish and eggs, you need to regulate your sleep/wake cycle.
To assist in that, I have the gift of a simple application.
It operates as both an alarm and a stop watch.
Which may seem incredibly banal, but I assure you it'll come in handy.
Whatever makes the most sense for whatever species you are, make a schedule and keep to it.
That whole essay above wasn't just written to glorify a timer, it was written to tell you why you need one.

As an aside, this little update allows you to convert hand-written characters into text, and it also includes an application exclusively for multiple-image sharing.
The latter of which I'm sure you'll all decide is far more important, but don't forget to use the goddamn alarm.

[The aforementioned apps are attached to the post, though not separately; downloading one downloads them all. The first is, as described, a fairly simple alarm clock/timer/stop watch, and the second allows users to share multiple images at a time in a collection, like an album. The images can be captioned individually (or collectively) by the sender. And finally, the tablets now offer the option to write with your finger instead of tapping letters on a keyboard. The scribbles will be translated into text, so hopefully you have good handwriting!]

Oh, and the next person who tries to hack into my tablet is getting a very unfortunate name change on the network.

Comments

@freddie1967

[sauntered_downward]

💩

[donttalktome]

A very spot-on self description, thank you.

[sauntered_downward]

I'm so glad you agree that it describes yourself quite well.

@silent

[callada]

You work fast. Thanks again.

[donttalktome]

It's not like I've got a great deal of pressing issues to attend to.
But you're welcome just the same.
This will make both of our lives easier.

[private - look! he figured out how to do that!]

[callada]

Completely unrelated question, but while I'm thinking about it:

You've been through a reset or two before, right? What exactly does it entail?

Made this private since I know you've worried about people here going nuts and panicking before, and clearly we have a few among us who aren't really all there.

@riku; text

[equinoctials]

Thanks, doc.

[donttalktome]

And why do I get the impression that this was meant to be dripping with sarcasm?

[equinoctials]

[ Hey hey so about that lived experience being actively consumed by darkness? Might be contributing to the bitter tone. ]

Someone already beat you to this by a month or two.
But I guess you don't need to read the log books, since you know so much more than the rest of us.

@kingofwei

[pure_havoc]

What a remarkable device. This is much faster, thank you.

[donttalktome]

It took some tinkering to get it to recognize letters and characters properly, but all that language information was already in there.
They're nothing like what we had back home, but for things that came from a crude, post-apocalyptic wasteland, these things aren't half bad.

[pure_havoc]

It is quite magical from my perspective, so to speak. At the very least you worked hard for the benefit of those like me so you have my gratitude. If there comes anything I can do in turn, name it.

The warning is appreciated as well. That certainly does explain other previous populations going mad and turning on each other.

@scientia

[reigniter]

Thank you for the timer. It will be quite useful.

What is worrisome is that someone hacked into your device

[donttalktome]

Well, I'm not entirely surprised someone tried.
People of that sort see one another as a challenge.

[Does that include him? You bet it does.]

They didn't get much, from what I can tell.

@darkness

[evulsed]

You waited this long to tell them that? I'm starting to think you like to watch everyone suffer.

[donttalktome]

There are some of you I probably wouldn't mind watching suffer, but that's not my goal, no.
It simply didn't occur to me at the start.
As I explained, this sort of thing is normal to me.

@bacura

[mellowyellow]

[Each line is sent as a separate text. Because that's just the kind of terrible typer Masaomi is.]

Are you the guy who hands these out?

If you are, thanks for the death day gift.

And screw you for breaking into my room.

[donttalktome]

Well, no, actually.
To be frank, I have no idea who passes out the replacements.
If it were up to me, I'd stop giving them to people who can't be trusted to keep track of the things.

@daylit.

[sunborne]

So this type of thing never happened before? A month where no new folks are added to Beacon's population? Anything like that at all?

[ because, if that's the case, huh. that certainly gets daylight's attention. he's not sure why but it does. ] Do you have a theory of what will happen or it is just a case of wait and see now?

[donttalktome]

There were always at least a few.
Some months more than others, but never none.
I have several theories, but the most hopeful one is that whatever spawned the ferry in the first place simply spawns another.

[You probably don't want the other ones, Day.]

@jgordon

[saintjames]

Thanks. This is helpful.

You said terrestrial. Were you an astronaut?

[donttalktome]

If you want to get technical, though it's not a term we really use anymore.
I didn't live on a planet, and I've never been to Earth.
The very opposite of terrestrial.

@wayne

[pearlstrings]

I don't suppose you come bearing Vitamin D supplements as well?

After the ferry I'm afraid there are only so many tinned sardines to go around.

[donttalktome]

I'd say you ought to ask Rastus for them, but I'm not sure how he'll make his deliveries now.
Get what you can while you can, I suppose.
The sleep regulation is the most important part anyway.

@cuttingedge; text

[knifecollecting]

[Despite Will's attitude, Jo knows this will be helpful. She's already had trouble in this arena, and she knows she isn't at her best when she's so tired.]

Thank you.