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a few months ago now, i dipped my toes into a little game called warframe. my girlfriend loves it, and i decided i might as well give it a shot...

... did you know i hate FPS games? i don't like guns. historically i tend to get overwhelmed and the fact that i can't be an animal in most of them doesn't help. the only games that ive played that fall under a 'shooty game' (not necessarily first person) that i enjoyed were splatoon and super animal royale.

warframe is something different. i can't really explain it. the footage i saw, the streams i watched as my friends played... it felt impossibly fast-paced, like it would take all my energy to parse or play through. it looked really cool, granted, but i wasn't sure i had energy to invest in something that would be a challenge to decipher on the fly.

additionally, a thing i heard repeated a lot was that "the grind is the game". i don't like that idea, just abstractly. it doesn't sound conducive to fun in any capacity, and in fact, it sounds like a slog. why would you play a game just to grind?

what if i told you..... that the game feels so good to play that you don't feel any strain to grind?

i was quite shocked at how well i took to it. the controls feel great. the guns don't overwhelm me - i wonder if it's because they're somewhat abstracted, or because the game is not truly an FPS; it's more of an over-the-shoulder shooter. and you don't necessarily have to use the guns. there's melee, and like, the whole lore of the main character is having cool psionic powers to do things with.

it just feels so good to play. i was absorbed into it. i've been playing daily since i got into the game, aside from when i was in oregon and the computer i borrowed was too weak to play warframe. i love how everything flows. i like the gameplay modes. i like the lore, though it's a little more sparse in the first few mastery ranks. it really ramps up.

you'd think the 'i can't be an animal' aspect would put me off of it, but i feel like some part of me views the warframes themselves like animals. maybe alien, buglike animals, sure, but they're animals. something about them feels so nonhuman i couldn't help but enjoy them. they're just not very fluffy.

the scenery is really gorgeous. i stared at the earth scenery for a good long while and got really mad every time an enemy came to bother me. i was in awe at the attention to detail; the highland pines and conifers that dotted the landscape, the path of an ancient glacier etched into the valleyscape, the way the water flowed, the various little dips in the earth...

and that's after i got deeper into the game! even the beginning was really breathtaking. even during their little tutorial, i found myself stopping to take pictures or ogle at some detail in the trees.

it's all so consistently gorgeous. and i may prefer greener landscapes, but the urban interiors look really cool, too. some tilesets have a very 'art deco' vibe with its own sci-fi flavor that makes it unique.

another aspect i didn't expect was the ways players communicate with each other. though you can play the game solo, you're incentivized and rewarded for playing in groups with strangers. i was really nervous at first because of how new and "bad" i was at the controls. but it's not actually so bad, because they don't often talk to you. you're just vibing together, fighting the same enemies. i think the only real downside is when you get certain gamemode types where people will just race through the level as fast as possible, but i also find that those matches helped to give me a crash course on some of the common layout types and how to navigate them quickly.

and when i started learning how to trade items for the premium currency ("plat", short for platinum), i was really nervous. what if i messed up? how do people do this? but with my girlfriend watching over my shoulder, i figured out the layout of warframe.market and listed some things that rather quickly sold. thankfully i'm in a clan/guild so i have access to trading tools without needing to be invited. and every time i've had people be really kind and polite to me!

people were polite to me in non-trade contexts, too. my favorite squad sessions are when random people start talking in the chat about random stuff, mostly whatever they're trying to get out of the mission (loot, more star map completion, etc), or like, connecting by talking about how they got into the game. it's so refreshing to me how much comradery i've encountered.

overall, i think warframe is very much my pick for 2026's "least expected favorite game of the year".

foreward

did you know it's difficult to find a good guide to making your own linux mouse cursor? like, just one good one, i mean. i had to cross-reference many different threads and articles to make my newest one - and it was still pretty difficult to remember the steps LOL!

so i thought: why not write out my process somewhere people can reference it too? that way, i can link all my sources *and* do things in a straightforward manner! isn't that so niceys.

obviously YMMV. this guide is not made for windows or mac, and was tested solely on my linux mint 22.1 install. if something borks for you, i dunno how to fix it probably LOL. good luck my friend

the guide

step 1: make graphics

mouse cursors come in increments of 16, 32, or 48 pixels square. that means %n wide by %n tall. you can make them larger, certainly, but for most usecases you'll probably be using 32 or 48. (32 is the size on windows, generally.)

i used aseprite to create .png graphics for each state i anticipated myself needing/using regularly. don't feel like you have to do a "full set" unless you're doing this for the public; in any personal project, only go as far as you need to. overscoping brings pain.....

it is nigh impossible to find a real, comprehensive list of all the mouse states you can make. the ones i ended up using are:

all-scroll, cell, default, grab, grabbing, pointer (for hovering links mostly), ns/ew-resize, help, stop, text, wait, zoom in, and zoom out

this does not count the ones i aliased later, but don't worry about it yet.

i created all of my cursor files using aseprite. if you don't have that, you should try libresprite, which is an open-source fork of aseprite. otherwise, use whatever you use for pixel art normally.

step 2: setting up the folder

to create a system-wide cursor theme, you need to create a new folder in ~/usr/share/icons. i titled mine 'forestcursor' for this example.

inside this folder, you want to make a file called 'index.theme'. the inside of the text file should look like this:

[Icon Theme]
Name=forestcursor
Inherits=Breeze

note that the name needs to match the folder name, and 'inherits' is just what cursors it uses to fill in gaps in your customization, like a minecraft resource pack.

next, make a subfolder named 'cursors', navigate to it, and put all your graphics into it.

step 3: creating cursor files

now you need to create config files for each cursor. each should be titled .cursor and have the following input syntax:

size offsetx offsety filename.png

for example:

48 0 0 defaultmouse.png

you can also include animation frame data like so:

48 0 0 link1.png 500
48 0 0 link2.png 500

where '500' is '500ms', so each frame takes 500 milliseconds to display before moving to the next.

right click > open in terminal, so you're in the command prompt while in this folder. check to see if you have xcursorgen installed:

apt search xcursorgen

you should, in theory, because it's included in many distros by default (mine included), but it's good to make sure.

you will now type commands in this format:

xcursorgen cursorname.cursor cursorname

this creates a 'cursor' file named 'cursorname' based on your config file named 'cursorname.cursor'. for example, if i wanted to create one for my default cursor:

xcursorgen defaultcursor.cursor default

this creates a cursor file named 'default' using my defaultcursor config file.

you may find it easier to do this in a batch process rather than line by line. same goes for the next step in this process too. you'll want to generate each cursor like this.

step 4: symlinks

now, these filenames you gave are descriptive, but maybe not the ones the theme identifies as keywords for a cursor state. that's what symlinks are for!

this allows you to create an alias for a file. imagine it like a shortcut to the file. it takes less space than duplicating a file a billion times.

to create a symlink for your cursors, you'll do the following:

ln -s cursorname alias

for example:

ln -s default left_ptr

this takes my cursor file named 'default' and aliases it for 'left-ptr'.

there are a ton of cursor names to cover, and many of them are just ones that you'll want aliases for anyway.

a handy table of most* of the different values (taken from my folder directory of Bibata-Modern-Classic):

cursor namenotes aliasicon used for symlink drag-n-drop, i think (citation needed) all-scrolla two-axis cross-section with arrows on the ends arrow bd_double_arrow bottom_left_corner bottom_right_corner bottom_side bottom_tee cella crosshair center_ptr circle closedhanda closed hand. defaulttake a guess color-pickereyedropper tool col-resizea horizontal double-ended arrow (like < -- > ); make sure its offset (anchor) is set correctly in the .cursor file before generating context-menuusually has an 'i' for information next to a smaller cursor; used for context menus of course copyusually a hand or cursor with a plus sign or two page symbol next to it cross crossed_circle crosshairsee 'cell' cross_reverse defaultyour best friend diamond_cross dnd-askprompted when hovering over a field that asks for a drag-n-drop element dnd-link dnd-move dnd_no_drop dnd-none dotbox dot_box_mask double_arrow down-arrow draft draft_large draft_small draped_box e-resize ew-resizea horizontal double-ended arrow (like < -- > ); make sure its offset (anchor) is set correctly in the .cursor file before generating fd_double_arrow fleur forbidden grab grabbingsee 'closedhand' hand1see 'grab' hand2see 'grabbing' h_double_arrowsee 'ew-resize' help ibeam icon left-arrow left_ptri usually just dupe my default icon for this left_ptr_help left_ptr_watch left_side left_tee link ll_angle lr_angle move ne-resize nesw-resizedouble-ended-arrow-line angled from north east to south west (forward slash) no-drop not-allowed n-resize ns-resizevertical line with arrows on the ends, check offset in your cursor file nw-resize nwse-resizedouble-ended-arrow-line angled from north west to south east (back slash) openhandinverse of closedhand pencil pirateand why do we need a pirate cursor plus pointeri aliased my hyperlink hover icon for this one pointer-move pointing_hand progresssee 'wait' question_arrow right-arrow right_ptr right_side right_tee row-resizesee ns-resize sb_down_arrow sb_h_double_arrow sb_left_arrow sb_right_arrow sb_up_arrow sb_v_double_arrow se-resize size_all size_bdiagsee 'nwse-resize' size_fdiagsee 'nesw-resize' size-horsee 'ew-resize' size_horsee 'size-hor' size-versee 'ns-resize' size_versee 'size-ver' split_h split_v s-resize sw-resize target tcross texttextbox indicator top_left_arrow top_left_corner top_right_corner top_side top_tee ul_angle up-arrow ur_angle v_double_arrow vertical-text wait watch wayland-cursor whats_thisowo w-resize x-cursor X_cursorand why is the x capitalized here xtermvertical text indicator. you heard me. zoom-in zoom-out

please be sure to note differences between an underscore and a dash. they are wildly inconsistent, even in groups of the same variable (see: dnd).

* there are a portion of them that have some sort of hashcode name that i dont feel like figuring out or copying so do your own research if you know what they do and want them for some reason

step 4: profit

go to your system settings and open "themes". if it's not already, click 'advanced settings' to get to advanced view.

change 'mouse pointer' to your new cursor. if you don't see it, check to make sure that the name of the folder is the same as the name in index.theme.

and there ya go. now you have your own cursor. good job!!

sources

Xcursorgen - arch linux wiki

create your own mouse cursor - kde docs

xcursor theme tutorial - sole on github

there was another guide i used but i cannot find it for the life of me now, sorry!

i am so easily annoyed by things nowadays. never boiling mad or anything, but just enough to go, hey, what gives?

my latest annoyance is about phone cases. i recently obtained a samsung galaxy a17. this seems to be a more affordable line of phones compared to the S-series, at least given my understanding, and given how frequently i found myself struggling to find any good phone cases for the A17.

the nature of my annoyance this time... is the color green. in case you're viewing this from your rss feed and have forgotten how my page looks, or if you couldn't tell by looking, green is my favorite color. it's vibrant, it's warm, it's natural, it's full of life, and it has a very dynamic range. there are a lot of greens out there, including greens that could almost be yellow or blue or gray, but with just enough of a hint that you generally get the idea of 'green'.

however, scrolling through ebay listings for A17-compatible phone cases tagged as green.... i found myself wondering, you know, do people actually know what green ? more than that, actually. do they know that warm greens exist?

ideally, my favorite color of green looks like this, or perhaps like this. i like a warm yellow-green more than any other color in the world.

.... and here is an assortment of 35 different greens colorpicked generously from various listings on ebay for phone cases self-described as some flavor of green.

(this isn't screenreader friendly, sorry!)

of these colors, many were listed as 'army green', 'mint green', 'gunmetal green', or just... 'green'. the colors skew towards blue and gray in an overwhelming majority - even the ones that are 'warmer' are desaturated enough that they don't read as 'warm green' to me. i think a similar issue exists for yellows - i have not done proper research, but my own cursory search and feedback from my friend pebble tell me that yellow is also fairly sparse.

the primary phone case colors i found offered on general case listings are black, red, blue, purple, and occasionally white or gray. oftentimes they may have a "green" listed, but it's actually "blue".

i haven't really been able to come up with a satisfactory answer of why greens skew towards cooler tones in phone cases. my best guess is something with color psychology/theory, where yellow and green are bright, vivid, eye-catching, distracting, and possibly irritating. i imagine that scratches, smudges, dirt, and grime may show themselves more readily on a brighter case.

but why can't we just have a bit of fun anyway?

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