Month: September 2017

Adventure Seed: Sam’s Dojo.

Sam’s Dojo – Google Docs

Sam’s Dojo

 

Sam’s Dojo is located in a strip mall convenient to the campaign. It’s not much to look at, visually: the Dojo is essentially a big open space with a lot of mats on the floor, an office in one corner, and a bunch of karate equipment scattered about.  The place is clean and well run, and its owner Sam Cohen is a genuinely nice guy and good teacher of American Kenpo, but he’s also about as generic a karate instructor as you’re likely to ever see. You kind of have difficulty remembering what he looks like, once Sam’s out of your field of vision.

 

And he has almost no paper trail.  Neither does the dojo, come to that. And nobody can quite remember when Sam started teaching students.

Continue reading Adventure Seed: Sam’s Dojo.

Book of the Week: The Monuments Men.

Ended up never seeing the movie, but Robert Edsel’s The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History was a good read. And, to be fair: rescuing Europe’s stolen masterpieces was a genuine mitzvah. The Nazis would have destroyed all of them out of spite, and the Soviets would have just stolen them themselves. Such is the way of the barbarian.

And so, adieu to Lord of Janissaries.

 

Is Facebook really going to autorun videos with sound?

It’s not happening to me, yet. Or maybe it did happen to me, months ago — and then I screamed, button-mashed my way into settings, turned that feature off, then carefully suppressed my memories of the experience in order to keep the trauma from eating my soul.  It’s hard to tell; either way, I’d be still feeling this faint mix of nausea and horror. Auto-sound does not make it easier to enjoy video, Facebook. Quite the opposite, really.

I mean: really, Facebook?  REALLY? Who told you that this was a good idea?

Quote of the Day, I’m No Longer Impressed By Apple’s Battery Life, Either edition.

Ars Technica reviewed the 8 Series iPhones, and this sums up their reaction to the battery: “We tested the battery life in both the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus and were not encouraged by the results.” …I’ve been using a Samsung Galaxy J7 for the last week or so, having bought a sufficiently large microSD card to transfer all of my music over, and I have to say: I’m not surprised.  The extra battery life is remarkable.  Now, admittedly, I had old devices… but Glenn Reynolds has a point, here. It’s lovely that Apple products are so slim, but at this point it feels like they’re not so much ‘slim’ as they are ‘starving.’  I am holding up surprisingly well carrying around a phone that is somewhat larger than I’m used to, but able to do little things like hold a charge for more than 24 hours at a time.

Now if I can just find a reasonable alternative to the iPad…

Yeah, sorry, had a story get away from me.

By almost a thousand words, no less.  It took me a while to subdue it into submission.  And you know how it is, with stories; it you don’t get it all down while the creative juices are flowing, you’ll end up wishing that you had. I mean, just go ask Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Anyway, I think that I’m calling it a night tonight.  Seriously, all my creative juices are burnt out. I may just go to sleep.

Tokyo Lair finally coming in next @SecretWorldLgds update?

That’s what they’re claiming. Supposedly it’s all scheduled for October 11th: Orochi Tower, endgame, lair, wrist signets. Kaiden dungeons will not be showing up in Secret World Legends in the next update, or in fact this year. Still, a Lair in Tokyo is going to be the first no-fooling new content in this game that we’re going to see, so having that show up in two weeks will be pretty sweet. Continue reading Tokyo Lair finally coming in next @SecretWorldLgds update?

The latest Darkest Hour trailer.

Here is the thing: this is one of the best makeup jobs I have ever seen.

Seriously, look at these three Gary Oldman pictures.

I can believe that the guy in the middle is the same guy as the one on the right. But neither looks like the guy on the left.  At least, to me. As I said, this is a whizzo makeup job; because while Gary Oldman doesn’t look like he normally does neither does he look like he’s wearing prostheses, or whatever they did to give him jowls and a wider face generally.  It’s really very impressive, honestly.

Anyway, Darkest Hour is coming out during Thanksgiving, so I dunno when I’m going to see it.