Work was surprisingly nice today. Everyone got free grande sized drinks from Starbucks (I had their new Praline Latte or whatever), work traffic wasn’t that bad AND we had full staffing for a change. Reminded me of the good times when there were more than just one or two of us at a time dealing with the masses. Now I’m loading up on Turkey before I enter my cocoon this early evening. I want to get a good night’s sleep, and I believe the Turkey will help with that, among other elements of relaxation.
The weather has been rather balmy these last few days, today and yesterday we got a well deserved amount of rain with the possibility of more to come. I might have to get under the covers and play a GPU demanding game just to get some heat into the room. 😛
I leave you with this disturbing video to commemorate the holiday:
Managed to upgrade my version of Windows 10 without anything hazardous taking place, though I did have to reinstall grub2 to get back into Mint. Leave it to Microsoft to snuff out any operating system that isn’t its own… It didn’t take too long, but between fixing the boot loader and taking care of other things around the homestead I didn’t have time to really do much else. I almost went back into Windows to play some Quantum Break, but ended up zoning out instead.
As expected work has been busier, so busy in fact that I had to wait in line to leave the damned building… I’m going to hate the next couple of days with a passion. I get the feeling I’ll need to load something violent and nonsensical onto my laptop to get through the day(s). It was mellow enough for me to chill in Sonic Mania for my lunch today. Amazing how well it runs, though for some reason on my Desktop the audio has been known to randomly distort itself upon launch.
I’ll have even less time tomorrow, but I’m not entirely too butthurt about it. I have to work on Black Friday at two in the morning, and while some may see that as horrific (which my face can look horrifying at 2am) I’m ok with getting away from there as soon as possible and return home to a sweet leaf.
We celebrated Thanksgiving a couple days early, since we’re all going to be working on both Thanksgiving and Black Friday… bleh. I came home from work today and was immediately greeted with the scent of a turkey rich holiday meal. I’ll sleep good tonight (even moreso than usual).
For the last couple of days I’ve been working on video footage. I sorted out all of the Quake Champions footage I’ve squirreled away, think I can get a couple good videos out of that. Now I’m working on our recent Serious Sam HD: Second Encounter romp recently. I’ve been working on a clip that’s almost two hours long, and I don’t even have a full minute of presentable footage yet. What little bit I’ve collected so far though has given me multiple braingasms that I’ll have to jot down on paper after I further refine my footage. After I finish editing this clip I’ll have another one to go through that’s about another hour long. Fortunately with good editing tools you don’t have to watch the entire video to get to where you want to be. :meeseeks: Then I’ll have Left 4 Dead footage to go through; Yutram and I played a custom campaign that truly lives up to its name. I know for certain with that adventure that we’ll have a good video on our hands.
I’m going to continue doing my new style of adding SFM footage (and other elements) into future gaming videos when applicable. It will take me longer to compile them, but I think the extra effort is worth it. There was something I enjoyed about Solid Snake magically growing a cigarette out of his mouth that I found enjoyable to animate in the derpiest style I could muster.
This may or may not be my final video for awhile. With Thanksgiving and Black Friday kicking off this week there’s a good chance that I’ll be extremely busy with work as well as other real life obligations. Though if I have enough time set aside I could start doing some Penguin themed videos if ya catch my drift…
Yes, this is real. On launch it will cost $99 and come with at least 30 games according to their Q&A. I seriously don’t know where to begin; to this day I still play games from the MSDOS era (Wolf3D being one of the more recent ones), and have even installed DOSBOX on my Amazon Fire for my own small amusement. Why would you spend almost $100 to get a tiny box that plays some of the oldest old school games that ever did old school, when you can do the same thing on hardware you already own? Including smartphones? If you do a search on ebay for a raspberry pi kit you’ll immediately see cheaper options for building your own.
You could also argue that people might want to buy these because they don’t have the time to build their own, or don’t have the knowledge of using a raspberry pi and installing operating systems and then configuring them to start/run accordingly. Normally I would agree, but most of the people that I knew growing up who liked to play MSDOS games were already people who tinkered with their PC’s, whereas with consoles you just plugged them in and inserted a cartridge/disc… done like dinner.
Can’t I just buy a Raspberry Pi, an enclosure, gamepad, keyboard, and mouse, 3D print a faceplate, install Armbian, buy 30+ games, build the source for ARM or install/configure in DOSBox for each and every game, create a menu system with game art, and tell everyone about it at parties?
No.
Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do! :zorak: I’ve actually been reading up more on Raspberry Pi’s and have contemplated getting some sort of kit… possibly of the portable variety. I’m just not sure what I would use it for. Perhaps make my own tablet if my Kindle catches fire?
President John Adams was always known for his epic swordsmanship.
Looking back on history can be more fun than people might realize. I was browsing my RSS feed during a break today and came across this article about American History as told during Japan’s Edo Period. It was quite a fascinating thing, looking through all of those pictures from a whole other era. This needs an anime or manga adaptation, make it happen and I’ll be on it like a bum on a bologna sandvich.
A thread of images from a Japanese illustrated history of America from 1861.
Here is George Washington (with bow and arrow) pictured alongside the Goddess of America. 1/ pic.twitter.com/LoF54y54bL
It’s funny to think that there was once a time when Japan wanted to remain closed off from the rest of the world, but at the same time they were fascinated enough to draw depictions of what they thought we were. The depictions of past presidents are astonishing… They had no idea about our culture, anything. There wasn’t much of a way for them to do so either given their strict rules about entering and leaving the country. As a result we have these artistic depictions of what life would be like in the US from the perspective of someone who has never set foot outside of their country or had any access to current events of the time.
This is both beautiful and terrifying to think about… considering I know people who feel that everyone should go back to their (dis)respected countries and stay there. Oddly enough that only seems to be reserved for folks that have skin tones of the spicy or chocolatey variety… I never see one white guy say to another to go back to Finland or England (though that would be amusing). I’m looking at these pictures, and thinking about quite a few of my co-workers or some of the neighbors that feel we can wear blinders to the rest of the world and be perfectly content with it. Hell, some of them don’t even understand why I even have international friends. I never thought that living in the 21st century, where anyone with even a cheap phone can talk to someone half way across the world, and even in this day and age we still have people that would be even the slightest bothered by the smallest speck of indifference.
Of course I would expect conflicts, especially from people that want to buy things from other countries because its cheaper… everyone seems to be all about their own home team until coins are involved.
I love being able to go into the dev console and head around making screenshots worthy of appearing on my desktop. I can’t remember the purpose, but my robot friend and I kicked a bunch of shiny metal ass. I was rewarded with much needed swag and further instructions. Perhaps I’ll adventure more tomorrow if I’m still feeling green under the gills.
Oh yeah, and Fallout 76 released… anyone check into it?
I can file Tomb Raider games under my list of games to play while not feeling entirely well or coherent. Over these last few days I’ve felt really ill. In one part due to the tree being removed from our house, all the sawdust and the rot from the center of the tree probably isn’t doing me any favors… My entire weekend was pretty much spent in bed. Today I’ve still been fighting with sinuses and other types of pain… Fortunately I’ve been keeping well medicated, but enough about my own problems… Back to things that distract me from physical agony.
I’ve been having a romp around Paititi for the last couple of days. Mainly searching for whatever isn’t nailed down, and discovering side quests and other stuff along my travels. Tonight I actually progressed further into Paititi, even managed to kill someone performing sacrificial rituals… the most unfabulous ritual of all… I’ve also been playing a bit with Photo Mode. It’s alright I guess. I do like taking scenic pictures as well as the occasional in game selfie in adventure games, so it all works out I guess. I’ve invested about 16 hours into this game so far, and now that I’ve thought about it this seems like quite a tradition I celebrate every year. Around this time I was having fun in Rise Of The Tomb Raider, and before that playing the first in this particular trilogy. While I still prefer the originals, there is definitely something that hooks into me and keeps pulling me back into this newer set.
Coincidentally they did release The Forge DLC today. I haven’t had a chance to visit it yet, nor have I ventured into coop. Perhaps when the planets align I’ll play with another human being.
