#i know it’s still better hardware than a switch but. it would seem worth it to invest in a next gen console | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bearpillowmonster · 3 years

Text

Neo: The World Ends With You

I'm invested in the original game and its characters, I'm invested in this game and its characters. I've had a lot of time for the original game to marinate and I can say that I enjoy pretty much every character and their arc and while I don't exactly feel the same with this one, that's not disappointing to me and this was my most anticipated game of 2021 so I mean that. This is a sequel, I expected as much and it didn't let me down, it's even better than I thought.

This is a NONSPOILER review because I think it's best experienced by actually experiencing it so I'll keep a lot of character, story, and even gameplay details out other than how the very VERY beginning of the game starts out with Rindo and Fret.

Let me give credit where credit is due, Rindo is voiced by Paul Castro Jr. who is a new voice actor and I was honestly impressed by his voice more than anyone else in the game, I love his voice and while Rindo has some pretty big shoes to fill as the main, I think he does it. Rindo seems to act pretty accordingly to the situation he's put in. He's not as edgy as Neku but he has enough push to him to where he would be considered the "negative" of the group but I would rather call it "rational" because he brings up some valid points, stuff that I myself was asking. Putting yourself in his shoes, that seems pretty accurate.

Fret on the other hand is a bit of the opposite, an optimist if you will. He's not really a "bad" character, just in comparison to the others, he's not my favorite. I think that there needs to be someone in his position who tries to uplift the team, but he's just a little annoying about it sometimes. Also get ready to hear "Galaxy Brain, ACTIVATE!!" literally hundreds of times, as much as he talks, you'd think he'd add more variety.

IMPROVEMENTS:

I'm not going to complain about certain gameplay elements or limitations that carried over from the last game except one. The camera. It's fixed to where you have no control over it in the city areas and therefore can't get a proper look at everything, whether that works in its favor, I'm not sure because you get used to it but it's just a small peeve you start out with.

The combat is pretty loyal to the first game which is surprising. I personally didn't like the original gameplay because it was so limited on the DS, a lot of room for error, but having it on console expands the system and lets you use buttons rather than mashing a touch screen, improving on almost, if not all, gameplay fronts. However, because it's based on a game from 2007, the system may seem a little outdated to some, it's really up to you, it made a fan out of me, making it more fun.

I played the original in bites, not because of lack of enjoyment but because I felt like it was a game I could only get into for so long at a time but with this game it's the complete opposite. Maybe it was the DS hardware that hampered the original but I say it's a decent success on this game's part. I also felt that Persona 5 seemed a bit formulaic in its story context and gameplay layout with each castle but this game, while having patterns, it changes before you get the chance to really catch on. I could predict P5 but I couldn't predict this, each day was a mystery, I knew you'd fight people but I didn't always know who or when which is crazy considering that P5 had all the choices!

A small improvement that I'll suggest for combat is having short rhythm based moves or even QTEs, like how in the original Shiki had the directional pad moves which were annoying but still varied from the rest of the gameplay. There are definitely new things that you can do, but there are a few aspects worth complaining about. You can unlock certain abilities and once you enable them, you can't disable them. The only one that it personally applies with is the ability to enable individual health bars for enemies, rather than an overall one. Which sounds good but-

I personally don't like that it's always floating above their heads, if it was on the side screen, that'd be one thing but constantly above their heads? No deal. I actually had to go back and load up an old save to get rid of it. But with unlocking certain abilities comes with quality of life aspects so if you're not in love with the gameplay at first, give it a little bit because you might be able to unlock whatever piece you're missing.

There's also "soundsurfing" that adds to your groove meter that you can use when running around and it said that you press (in my case "X" on PS4) to the beat of the song which is a cool concept but it really isn't clear how to use it because I try matching the beat and I get nothing and have more success just button mashing. The groove meter can drop when it's not supposed to, like when you literally can't attack during the buffering of a special or switching between battles in a chain (The "Get Ready" screen) And if you're in a proper boss battle, you HAVE to fight, it's like a trainer battle in Pokémon which is especially annoying when you accidentally press "retry". It has no reason to be there when I already know that I'm not prepared for the boss and can't back out.

Do the trailers spoil it?

Originally, I only saw the first and or second trailer and knew I wanted it so there was no reason to see any more but it was kind of overwhelming with all the characters they were showing off in just a single trailer. I don't think they needed to go that far but I understand why they did. I understand why they showed a lot of things that they did but I think it's a bit easier to SWALLOW when it's introduced in-game. I even found myself doing all the side-quests and being engaged in the side-stuff in-game. But I knew about people pointing out spoilers so after I finished it, I went back and looked at the other trailers and OH BOY. The final trailer shows some stuff and I'm SO glad I didn't watch it. They straight up show some out of context death scenes as well as different alliances and betrayals, not to mention parts of the freaking ending. The launch trailer is no better, it's just like that trailer but cut down. You may not have context but you can draw some hefty conclusions and that alone makes me question, why? I'm not sure if there are many reveals that they DIDN'T tease, it's like they went out of their way to hit every single one. Whether it's Square or Nintendo, they need to figure out how to cut a trailer, heck, hire me, I at least have the editing skills and know what's interesting enough to show and what's too spoilery not to show, come on!

Is it newcomer friendly?

I heard a lot of things like "it drops you in without mercy so pay very close attention" (in terms of story, that is) so only people who played the original game will be able to get it. But I beg to differ, I think it does a pretty good job of filling you in while putting you in the shoes of a new player (both in the game and out) AND keeping the mystery of whatever happened since the last game coming in small pieces. Most of the dialogue text boxes are voice acted so it's not really a slog to read. To prove my point further, the premise starts out very similar so it should be easy to clue in what exactly happened in the last game. Of course you're going to get more enjoyment out of it if you played the original but I don't think you'd be totally lost if you started with this one and played to right before the ending because then it kinda has to do stuff without preface, so you're going to be confused by much of the emotional weight that it carries. But it still gives you plenty of time to catch up on the original, whether through the game, videos, or lore, this game has you ask the questions, so fill in the blank. It has a nice length to it so you'll have until the ending to figure it out. Also, Final Remix teased stuff that this game makes clarity on but I wouldn't call FR mandatory. (Except maybe no numbers on the hand? Maybe even I missed something there.)

#neo: the world ends with you #neo: twewy #review #game #nonspoiler

6 notes · View notes

lacquerware · 3 years

Text

2020 Recap - My Year in Gaming

2020. What a year for video games. I had big plans for last year, but in the end I did very little besides play video games, and I don’t think I’m alone there since we were all stuck at home looking for a way out of reality. I wanted to do a year-end recap as I’ve done sporadically in past years, but this one will be different than the typical “Games of the Year” format because despite all the games I played in 2020, almost none of them came out in 2020, and some of the things that defined my year in gaming weren't even games.

Resident Evil 3 Remake (PS4)

RE3 was one of the only games I played in 2020 that didn’t coincide with the deadly pandemic's spread across the US. RE3 is, of course, a game about the spread of a deadly virus in Anytown, USA. It was an appetizer, I guess.

When the Resident Evil 2 remake dropped in 2019, there were some things I loved about it, and a few things that felt like steps back from the original. I feel much the same about RE3. I had also theorized that a Resident Evil 3 remake would be better off as RE2 DLC than as a separate full-length game, and considering how short RE3 turned out, with some of the best sections of hte original cut entirely (namely, the clock tower), I stand by my theory.

Oh well, at least Jill gets this rad gun, which for the time being is the closest thing to a new Lost Planet we can hope for anytime soon.

Sekiro (PS4)

Sekiro is the first video game I ever Platinumed. This is partly because conquering the base game was such a spartan exercise that going the extra mile to get the Platinum didn’t seem so bad, but it’s also surely a result of the pandemic. I needed a project and a big win. Who didn't?

I wrote at length about why I like Sekiro more than every other modern FromSoft game, and also about the game’s cherry-on-top moment that reminded me of blowing up Hitler’s face in Bionic Commando. Please read them!

Death Stranding (PS4)

Release date notwithstanding, this was obviously the Game of 2020. I wrote about it here, here, and here. This game bears the distinction of being the second one I ever Platinumed. It took 150 hours. Only then did I learn I had a hoverboard.

Streets of Rage 4 (PS4)

This is the only 2020 game I played for more than a few hours. In fact, I cleared the entire game at least five times. I still don’t think it captures the gritty aesthetic of the prior Streets of Rages (nor even tries to), but this is probably the best-feeling bup I've played. Huge bonus points for finally bringing back Adam, but in the end I found it hard not to pick Blaze every time.

Blaster Master Zero 2 (Switch)

What impressed me about this sequel from Inti Creates was that it wasn’t just more of the same, even though that would've been fine. BMZ2 builds on its already excellent predecessor with a catchy new format where players can freely cruise the cosmos and stages take the varied form of planets—some big and sprawling, others short and sweet. Hopping at will from planet to planet without ever knowing what experiences and treasure each one held felt like system jumping in No Man’s Sky and island hopping in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, both of which felt like opening presents.

Dragon Force (Saturn)

Charming, satisfying, and addictive as a bag of chips. Unlike a bag of chips, when it’s over, you can do it all again. And again. And it’ll be different each time! This might be the first strategy game I've truly loved. Better late than never.

The PC Engine Mini

The PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 Mini seems a particularly justifiable mini-console for people outside Japan because so many missed these consoles entirely, the games are hard to obtain, and the lineup includes titles spanning the entire convoluted Turbo/PC Engine ecosystem—the TurboGrafx-CD/CD-ROM², Super CD-ROM², Arcade CD-ROM² and SuperGrafx, in addition to plain, old standard HuCard games. I myself didn’t know the first thing about these systems before. It’s like reliving the nineties again for the first time.

Most of the titles included are simple action games that don't require a command of Japanese, but make no mistake: being able to understand Snatcher and TokiMemo does make me feel like an elite special person worth more than many of you.

(Side note: From a gender representation perspective, the difference between Snatcher and Death Stranding is stark. Virtually every interaction with every woman or girl in Snatcher is decorated with ways to sexually harass her. Guess someone finally had a conversation with our favorite auteur.)

A Gaming PC

I’d threatened to transition to PC gaming for years after beholding the framerate difference between the console and PC versions of DmC in 2012, and last July I finally took the leap, buying an ASUS “Republic of Gamers” (ugh) laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU. It seems like consoles are getting more PC-like all the time, especially with all these half-step iterations that splinter performance and sometimes even the feature set (à la the New 3DS and Switch Lite), so with the impending new generation seemed like a fine time to change course.

In the half-year since, I’ve barely played a single PC game more recent than 2013, but just replaying PS3-era games at high settings has been like rediscovering them for the first time.

I also finally experienced keyboard-and-mouse shooting and understand now why PC gamers think they're better than everyone else. Max Payne is a completely different game with a mouse. Are all shooters like this??

The USPS

Early in the year, I rediscovered my childhood game shop, Starland, which is now an online hub known as eStarland.com with a brick-and-mortar showroom. To my delight, it has become one of the best and most modestly priced sources for import Saturn games in the country, and I scored Shining Force III’s second and third episodes, long missing from my collection, for a mere ten bucks each!

In June, I treated myself to a trio of Saturn imports from eStarland: the tactics-meets-dating-sim mashup Sakura Taisen 2, the nicely presented RTS space opera Quo Vadis 2, and beloved gothic dungeon crawler Baroque. Miraculously, this haul amounted to just around thirty dollars total. Less miraculously, they never arrived. This was the second time I’d had something lost in the mail in my entire life, and also the second time that month. Something was wrong with the USPS, and it wasn’t just COVID pains. We would soon learn Trump had been actively working to sabotage one of the nation’s oldest and most reliable institutions in a plot to compromise the upcoming presidential election.

Frankly it’s a miracle there’s still such a thing as “delivery” at all, and a few missing video games is the last of my worries considering what caused it, but nevertheless this was an experience in my gaming life that could not have happened any other year. I won’t forget it.

*By the way, USPS reimbursed me for the insured value of the missing order, which was fifty bucks. So I actually profited a little off the experience.

Mega Everdrive Pro

I love collecting for the Genesis and Mega Drive, but I will not pay hundreds of dollars for a video game that retailed for about sixty. The publishers never asked for that, and the developers won’t see a (ragna)cent of the money. I'm also far less inclined to start collecting for Sega CD, since the hardware is notoriously breakable, the cases are huge and also breakable, and the library just isn't that good.

Still, I'd been increasingly curious about the add-on as an interesting piece of Sega history, so when I learned Ukranian mad scientist KRIKzz had released a new Mega Everdrive that doubled as a Sega CD FPGA, I finally took the plunge into the world of flash carts. This has proven a great way to play some of the Mega Drive’s big-ticket rarities I will never buy—namely shmups like Advanced Busterhawk Gley Lancer and Eliminate Down—as well as try out prospective additions to the collection. I never would have discovered the phenomenal marvel of engineering and synth composition that is Star Cruiser without this thing, but now that I have, it’s high on the shopping list.

The Mega Everdrive Pro is functionally nearly identical to TerraOnion’s “Mega SD” cartridge, but slightly less expensive, comes in a “normal” cartridge shell instead of the larger Virtua Racing-style one, and supports a single hardworking dude in Ukraine rather than a company with reportedly iffy customer service.

Twitch

Getting a PC also resolved issues that had long prevented me from achieving a real streaming setup, and much of my gaming life in 2020 was about ramping up my streaming efforts. I even made Affiliate in about a month. Streaming has been a great creative outlet and distraction, as well as a way to connect with other people during the COVID depression and structure my gaming time. Find me every Monday through Thursday 8-11pm Eastern at twitch.tv/lacquerware.

Metroid: Other M (Dolphin)

PC ownership also gave me access to the versatile Dolphin emulator, liberating a handful of great Wii exclusives from their disposable battery-powered prison.

One of the Wii games I fired up on Dolphin was Metroid: Other M, a game I’d always wanted to try but had been dissuaded by years of bad publicity and the fact that I never had any goddamn batteries. I know I should temper what I’m about to say by acknowledging that I was playing at 1080p/60fps on a PS4 controller so my experience was automatically a vast improvement over that of all Wii players, but I’m increasingly confident Metroid: Other M was the most fun I’ve ever had playing a Metroid game. I haven’t decided yet if I’m willing to die on this hill, but I will just say that if you like the Metroidvania genre in general and aren’t particularly attached to the Metroid series’ story or its habit of making you wander aimlessly for hours, there’s a very high chance you will enjoy Other M—especially if you play it on Dolphin.

Don't Starve Together (PC)

Don't Starve is the only game my friend Jason plays, so last year I tried to get into it with him. I respect this game's singular devotion to the concept of survival, but make no mistake: every session of Don't Starve ends with you starving to death. Or freezing. Or getting stomped by a giant deity of the forest. The entire game is staving off death until it inevitably comes. Even when death comes, you can revive infinitely (in whatever mode we were playing), which means even death is not an end goal. There is no end goal. You don't even have the leeway to "play" and create your own meaning as you do in similarly zen games like Dead Rising.

Don't Starve is a game for people for whom hard work is the ultimate reward in and of itself. Don't Starve told me something about Jason.

G-Darius (PS1)

In the early fall, Sony announced they were dropping PS3, PSP, and Vita support from the browser and mobile versions of their PSN Store, and since the PS3 version of the store app runs like a solar-powered parking meter in Seattle, I decided this was my last chance to stock up on Japanese PSN gems.

Among my final haul, the PS1 port of G-Darius proved an instant favorite. Take down the usual cast of mechanized fish in a vibrant, chunky, low-poly style that perfectly inhabits the constraints of the original PlayStation hardware. I believe this is the first Darius game that lets you get into giant beam duels with the bosses, which is quite definitely one of the coolest things a video game has ever let you do. The PS1 port is also surprisingly feature-rich, including some easier difficulty levels that present an actually surmountable challenge for non-savants.

This one’s coming to the upcoming Darius Cozmic Revelation collection on Switch alongside DARIUSBURST, a good-ass romp in its own right.

Red Entertainment

In my effort to shine a tiny spotlight on some of the unsung Interesting Games of gaming, I found myself drawn again and again to the work of Red Entertainment. First there were cavechild headbutt simulator Bonk’s Adventure and twin shmups Gates of Thunder and Lords of Thunder on the PC Engine Mini. Then I streamed full playthroughs of the PS2’s best samurai-era, off-brand 3D Castlevania, Blood Will Tell and the Trigun-adjacent stand-‘n-gun, Gungrave: Overdose. Then I was dazzled by Bonk’s Adventure’s futuristic spin-off cute-‘em-up, Air Zonk, which was also sneakily tucked away on my PC Engine Mini in the “TurboGrafx-16” section. It turned out all these games were made by the same miracle developer responsible for Bujingai, the stylish PS2 wushu game starring Gackt and a household name here at the Lacquerware estate. How prolific can one team be???

Month of Cyberpunk

In November, I started toying with the idea of themed months on my Twitch channel with “Cyberpunk month.” It was supposed to be a build-up to Cyberpunk 2077’s highly anticipated November release, but holy shit that didn’t happen, did it? Still, I always find myself gravitating toward this genre in November, I guess because I associate November with gloom (even though this year it was sunny almost every day). A month is a long time to adhere to a single theme, but cyberpunk is such a well-served niche in gaming that I could easily start an all-cyberpunk Twitch channel. The fact that we’re so spoiled with choice makes Cyberpunk 2077’s terrible launch all the more embarrassing. Here are just some of the games I played (and streamed!) in November:

Ghostrunner Shadowrun (Genesis) RUINER Remember Me Transistor Rise of the Dragon (Sega CD) Shadowrun (Mega CD) Cyber Doll (Saturn) Binary Domain Shadowrun Returns Blade Runner (PC) Deus Ex: Human Revolution Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Observer

Shadowrun on the Genesis gets my top pick, but the two most recent Deus Ex games are great alternatives for those looking for something in the vein of 2077 that isn’t infested with termites.

Lost Planet 2

Every year. I played through it twice in 2020.

Dead Rising 4

I slept on this one too long. While it's a far cry from the original game, it's easily the most fun I've had with a Christmas game since Christmas NiGHTS. This is the game a lot of people thought they were getting when they bought the original Dead Rising with their new Xbox 360--goofy, indulgent, and pressure-free.

Devil May Cry 5: Vergil (PS4)

Vergil dropped for last-gen consoles in December and breathed a whole lot of life into a game that was already at the head of its class.

Nioh 2

I’ve only played a few hours of Nioh 2 because I promised my friend I’d co-op it with him and wouldn’t play ahead. But he’s a grad student with two small children. Nevertheless, Nioh 2 is my Game of 2020.

And that's it! Guess I'll spend 2021 playing games that came out last year, and maybe eventually getting vaccinated? Please?

11 notes · View notes

a-very-fond-farewell · 4 years

Text

The forbidden crack! Untamed prompts: 18/?

University AU: “Negative Space”

[ok so, self projection is a bitch, but I am petty to myself on a regular basis so it’s ok]

[title is from the Japanese concept “ma”, which Wikipedia describes as:

“a Japanese word which can be roughly translated as ‘gap’, ‘space’, ‘pause’ or ‘the space between two structural parts.’ In traditional Japanese arts and culture, ma is more carefully defined as the suggestion of an interval. It is best described as a consciousness of a sense of place, with the ‘intervals’ suggested often being more than simple gaps, instead focusing on the intention of a negative space in an art piece.

Ma is not necessarily an art concept created by compositional elements, such as the literal existence of a negative space. Instead, the intention is often to create the perception of an interval in the viewer experiencing the elements forming an art piece, making maless reliant on the existence of a gap, and more closely related to the perceived experience of a gap.

Ma has also been described as ‘an emptiness full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled’, and as ‘the silence between the notes which make the music’.”

Fun fact: “ma” also means “but” in Italian, which is what usually follows whatever intrusive thought may plague my mind. Eg: “I may be useless now, BUT just you wait until I get some dopamine to get me through this shitty times.”]

Wei Ying never asked for much in his life. He’s content with cleaning classrooms and toilets and nobody can beat him at wiping the marble floors if he works hard enough. Granny Wen, his supervisor, is slightly impressed with his ability to make the wood shine for ages to come. His nephew Jin Ling sometimes comes to check on him when he’s done with senior classes or cram school in the evening, and together they sit down and listen to whatever his older friends in music production came up with during the day. Jiang Cheng occasionally would ask him to keep him company while he grades papers and they bitch about ZiXuan and his inability to dote on their sister. The cafeteria ladies are always nice to him and they give him extra congee because they worry for his questionable consumption of spice products.

He’s fine, really.

So why can’t he stop wandering over to the science building these days? Looking for a clean board to use, for an equation to finally solve? Even if in the end he just takes the chalk in hand and simply stares down at the inky surface in front of him, unable to write. His mind working on a software too advanced for the hardware that constitutes his brain.

Thirteen years. It has been already thirteen years and yet it feels like yesterday, or like it never happened at all. Like it has yet to be. Time blindness is a bitch to deal with, yet dyscalculia and ADHD makes a joke out of you when you love math on a visceral level... but you burned too bright too fast and now you function on no data and with an even shittier signal. Having a burnout at 23 should have taught him humility instead of pride, but Wei Ying has always worked out of spite and certain habits are difficult to forget.

Couldn’t put the number in the right order, switching digits left and right since he was young? Fine. Numbers were concepts anyway, entire civilizations working their magic without even knowing what “zero” stood for. A brain steaming with a million ideas per second? Good. New connections brimming with ideas he could use to better the world.

It worked fine until he let himself down. Until he became a useless empty lighter, a wet match tossed out, carbon monoxide in the air.

Dropped out before finishing his very ambitious, highly dangerous for his psyche, thesis project. Aunt Yu never forgave him for that, not after paying for his advanced classes, not after trusting Uncle Jiang and supporting him despite his many flaws. What good is being first of your class every year, poster child of a teaching system done right, graduating bachelor at 21, if you can’t finish your master at 23 and get your PhD at 25 and start teaching by 27 and drive yourself insane in the process?

Wei Ying dropped out and didn’t finish his master, didn’t enroll in the teaching program, and let everyone down. His Uncle and Aunt looking down on him, whether out of pity or shame. Jiang Cheng may have been the one leaving him behind, but he used to be the one saying “you should have tried harder”. YanLi worrying over him when she should have focused on her career first. Jin Ling growing up with stories of his uncle “not being worth the money put into his education”, taught to not disappoint and make his family proud. The Jin side, that is.

And now the kid comes crawling in defeat to him instead of Jiang Cheng after bombing a test in high school. And they chat of what he would like to do and how much he likes sports and how much he despises the idea of getting a scholarship for that and being called stupid or something by his classmates. And he cries when he thinks Wei Ying cannot see him as he leaves the campus late at night.

Wei Ying didn’t even want to solve that impossible theorem he fixated on in his early twenties. His thesis project was inconsequential in the great scheme of things and his professor only wanted him to be his one trick pony in the end. No. Wei Ying wanted to teach math in elementary school, hell... even in kindergarten. He wanted to change the approach to the subject. Because numbers cannot be taught like language is and there are many ways to teach how to sum up digits and divide quantities and there are no rules on how to make sense of space either.

But how can he teach when even time eludes his senses?

Something that nobody can define, but certainly most perceive as linear... but not him. Not since his brain fried up in his attempt to function like a normal human being.

After thirteen years nothing has changed.

Until one day he hears something else aside from his usual intrusive thoughts and burdensome memories. A melody so quiet he almost mistakes it for the wind, coming from the music building.

He walks slowly, night surrounding him like the embrace of a friend as he makes his way to the traditional musical instruments room. The one where Jin Ling’s friends meet sometimes as they wait for the younger boy to join them. Wei Ying holds his breath as he spies through the gap of the door left ajar, neon light slicing his face like moonbeams as he peeks in and recognizes Jin Ling’s friends and another figure sitting on the ground, guqin on their knees.

But before he can lean in and breathe in the vibrant sounds all around, the door opens and music theory Professor Lan finds Wei Ying clutching his mop for dear life.

They said the man could see colors within the notes, that he despises language outside of his class or office and that only his brother, the history of art TA, could convince him to talk every now and then.

If numbers were created to measure space, Wei Ying firmly believed music had been invented to make sense of time and count its seconds in rhythm and notes, pauses and beats. Yet, time seems to stretch to a stop as the janitor focuses all of his attention on professor Lan’s stern face and his heart quickens its pace.

Wei Ying takes a rushed breath and dives right in with a weird sense of hope pumping in his veins. A small, timid voice whispering that life is not made to be atoned, but to move on and grow.

One step at a time.

“I’m Wei Ying, Professor Lan. May I listen while you play?”

Yes, maybe it will be enough just to let time flow at its pace.

Whatever rhythm that may be.

[some hcs down below]

WWX does not magically solve the math theorem. he may or may not help kids figure out how to use numbers on the long run tho. no, he will still work as a janitor and there’s nothing wrong with that.

yes, LWJ is autistic and stimms and finds WWX’s honesty soothing. yes, you can add your hcs on the matter. he has synesthesia, but more on the grapheme-color side of the deal than anything else and he sees certain letters/numbers/notes in different colors. people think he can see colors in music, but they misunderstood and thought he could recognize different hues while listening to music instead of reading it.

JC has grown since his uni years and doesn’t resent WWX anymore. he teaches astrophysics as a TA and doesn’t pressure his brother to pick his studies up anymore. WWX has mixed feelings about this: he feels he’s a lost cause, to the point not even his brother spurs him to best himself anymore, but he is grateful for the patience anyway.

LXC is the official LWJ translator of the campus along with their cousins SiZhui and JinGyi. he bonds with WWX and JC over how tired they are, seldom staring at flies roaming above them in the cafeteria bc none of them can even move. he lives on caffeine and regrets, but he’s getting better as he develops a love for his plant babies and tries to not let them die on a daily basis.

Wen Ning and Wen Qing are little overachievers and adrenaline junkies, hence their competitive streak on their way to their third master degree just for funsies. they scare people with how driven they are, but the juniors love them.

NMJ is the one to go to if you need to get away with murder, but JGY will actually be the one helping you dispose of the body. the fact that they both work in criminal law is somewhat both reassuring and disquieting. they hate each other and yet cannot stop hang out, they are close to 40 and need the rivalry to keep going anyway. nothing beats a good nemesis. not even sex. maybe.

NHS has failed his entrance exam to become a nurse too many times to count, but he is determined to see the end of it. even if he could potentially work in the family business, but he doesn’t know anything about managing an empire of bricks and he doesn’t care. if NMJ could run away, well, so can he.

MianMian is Wei Ying’s bestie and has the biggest crush on JGY’s sister A-Su the kindergarten teacher, but since they are childhood besties she doesn’t know how to approach her. she is Jin Ling’s idol and a certified boxer and refers to herself as a useless bisexual. Wei Ying boxes with her sometimes, she always win.

YanLi is an equestrian mum, but in the best way possible: she coaches children for shows and teaches them horses should be loved and feared equally and that if you want to shoot arrows from a running horse you should always, ALWAYS let go of the stirrups the moment the beast gets too unhinged to ride. JC fears her, WWX is only glad she didn’t train police dogs for a living.

ZiXuan actually loves his wife, but WWX and JC question his career choices and the fact that he’s a retired lawyer spending his family fortune while he’s a stay-at-home dad and does all the housework. WWX and JC believe he should give their sister a better life and work his ass off to deserve her, but he does make amazing rice cakes and keeps up with Jin Ling’s studies and is very supportive of his dreams.

A-Qing and Song Lan are siblings and sometimes bring JC food from the campus cafeteria where they both work at, while Xiao XingChen and his carer Xue Yang work with LXC for a project on accessibility for visually impaired visitors of the local museum. JC and LXC work to make Song Lan and Xiao XingChen fall for each other, but the youngsters are too protective to let them play matchmaker so easily.

[this is all for now. please, if you want, add your own headcanons!]

#mdzs #cql #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #mdzs/au: modern #mdzs/au: uni #the forbidden crack! untamed prompts #nieyao #xicheng #wangxian

14 notes · View notes

arthurhwalker · 4 years

Text

reMarkable 2 Review

I had some requests for a review of this device, and I am glad to oblige in this case. I've been closely following digital pen stylus tech for about eight years. I'm just old enough that I still need to handwrite a lot of things to tap into my creativity, but greatly dislike clutter in my life.

The reMarkable is for the person that writes enough by hand to fill several notebooks a year. For someone that wants the tactile and somatic component of writing on paper to associate with their process. The new reMarkable 2 does basically what the reMarkable 1 did; faster, better, and with a much improved piece of hardware.

If you've read my previous review from May 2018, you know I basically raved about the first generation reMarkable. I had a few criticisms of the Gen 1, and a lot of that has been addressed with the Gen 2.

Support & User Experience

I've used a reMarkable tablet continuously for almost three years. I've never had a support issue with one. The software is updated regularly, features added, and user experience improved with each iteration.

There is really no comparisons to be made with that kind of uninterrupted usage. No smartphone, tablet, or computer you ever own will be that reliable. A 3-4 year old Thinkpad, running Linux, is about as close as it gets to that level of, switch-on-and-use, every day, without fail feeling.

The reason is that the reMarkable 2 is leveraging the most reliable hardware, user input methods, stylus technology, and operating system basis available. My fear has always been that my reMarkable wouldn't be as reliable as a regular piece of paper, and a good pen. So far, that fear has never been realized with the reMarkable 1, or 2.

Pen Stylus Input

The majority of what one picks up and uses will be Microsoft Pen Protocol (MPP) stylus tech, with Microsoft Surface Products, or Wacom AES (Active Electrostatic) like that found in a lot of Asus, Dell, Lenovo, and so forth. The older Wacom EMR (Electromagnetic Resonance) is used less frequently, and usually only with their own products, or a version thereof with Samsung Phones and Tablets.

Of the three options, Wacom's EMR is still the best.

That's what you'll find on the reMarkable Tablet, and if you get their Marker Plus (it's the black one) it has the magical EMR eraser tip opposite the drawing point. There is no better pen stylus experience, for general use, sketching, handwriting capture, tilt sensitivity, and so forth.

The Marker Plus is $50 more than the regular Marker. It is worth it.

What if you're like me, and you have a drawer full of pen stylus products? Products that include the legendary Excalibur stylus pen that came with the Thinkpad Tablet 10 Gen 1, and worked with the EMR capable Thinkpad Yoga S1 from 2013? The one with the eraser tip, and sweet felt tip point? Will that stylus work?

Yes. Yes, yes it will.

However, the reMarkable Marker Plus just feels better. It's heft (19g) is perfect, eraser tip rounded to feel like the real thing, and tips that degrade gracefully without marking up the screen. Buy. The. Marker. Plus.

The Hardware

The manufacturer says that the reMarkable 2 gets 3 times the battery life of the 1, is 2 times as responsive (relative to rendering digital ink), and is the world's thinnest tablet at 0.19". Mostly, this is all of this seems to be true. Also, as mentioned before all the new Marker Plus has a built in eraser, all the new accessories snap together with magnets, and it charges with USB-c.

The screen is capacitive touch capable now. No more page turning buttons, and you can swipe down from the top to back out of a document or folder. You can turn pages with the swipe of a finger now. It takes a second to get the gestures down, but they're crisp and reliable once you do.

The tablet runs off of a dual core ARM process (a good thing, in my opinion).

My only quibble is that it is supposed to be able to connect to both 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz WiFi, but so far I've only gotten it to connect to 2.4. It might be something with my specific router, and I'm not sure if my experience is typical.

On the lower left hand side of the tablet there are 5 connection points. This suggests that the tablet may have the ability to connect to other accessories in the future. If reMarkable added a Plain Text Editor, and a keyboard cover to the reMarkable, I would be over the moon.

There is no evidence that they will do this, but a guy can dream. Having what's basically an e Ink Typewriter this thin and light would be the ultimate for this writer.

The Software

It is much the same experience as the reMarkable 1 with a few new additions.

You can convert your handwritten notes into text, cursive or block letters, and share by email. There is support for 33 languages.

With a Google Chrome plug-in, you can read web articles and pages on your reMarkable. If you're already battling with eye strain from looking at glowing screens all day, this is a nice feature.

Reading large PDFs and eBooks is still not crisp and snappy, but it is a vastly improved experience when compared to the reMarkable 1. Large graphically intense documents can be navigated without it taxing your patience. What I store on my reMarkable is vastly different now because of how much improved document handling has become.

I find the small sacrifice in speed rendering pages worth it, compared to the eye strain I get reading on other screens.

More pens, features, page templates, and ease of organizing have been added incrementally over time. With regard to the core functioning (Linux Based Codex OS) of the device, the manufacturer has only ever improved and supported the reMarkable.

Aesthetics

The reMarkable 1 was good for what it could do. It wasn't a bad looking product, but compared to the reMarkable 2, it was a rough prototype. Most tablets do not feel as nice in the hand as the reMarkable 2.

Rubber no-slip nubs on the back, rounded edges, satin finished glass and aluminum, make the tablet itself feel like it's from the future. I bought the Polymer Weave Book Folio, a step up from the regular Folio. A close friend got the same device and marker options as I did, but opted for the Premium Leather Folio.

Definitely, get the Book Folio, and if you can scrabble together the extra money, get the premium leather. That's my only regret is that I didn't spring for the best accessory offered. Is the Polymer Weave good? Absolutely, worth the $99. It is rigid, will protect your investment, and it's very classy looking.

My friend who picked up the Leather Folio is a graphic designer, and has greatly informed my sense of aesthetics over the years. She says the Leather Book Folio is well worth the extra. She is, most certainly, correct.

So, yeah, if you're going to get a reMarkable 2 and want a slightly used Polymer Weave Book Folio (mine), I'll let it go for cheap (so I can atone, and get the leather version, ha ha).

Value

The reMarkable 2 doesn't have a web browser, app store, Merge Dragons, audio player, or other third party applications. It won't replace your iPad, or Android Tablet. It will replace all the paper, notebooks, and pens in your life. This is especially true if you have a small scanner (like a Doxie), and leverage reMarkable's Smartphone app and cloud sync feature.

This tablet is for people that like paper, a lot, but don't want to carry it around or keep track of it. It is for people that fill 8-12 Moleskines a year, and mark up hundreds of pages of documents, for themselves, and others. It is for people that tap into their creativity by writing things down, sketching diagrams, and making lists.

The act of holding a pen or pencil against paper is a cognitive trigger, built into their implicit memory, every day, for years, that allows them to do their things.

$399 will buy a decent Samsung or Apple branded tablet, but neither of those is designed to emulate the experience of writing on paper like the reMarkable 2 tablet is. The reMarkable 2 will run you $399, a Marker Plus $99, and a Polymer Weave Folio $99, bringing it all to almost $600.

Unless you lurk reMarkable's website, and wait for a promotion. They did run a promotion for their pre-order, and will likely do something similar within a year of release. It is my recollection that the manufacturer ran at least two promotions for the Remarkable 1, and the savings were significant.

If you don't need one right this minute, check the website every week or so, their Amazon Store edifice, and whatever other options they have for your region.

Competitors

In the last few years, reMarkable has only acquired more competition in the e ink Tablet market. That competition varies depending on where you live in the world. In the US, no one makes a thing that directly competes. I looked at other products, didn't see anything that made me pull out my reMarkable 1 and make a list of pros and cons for comparison.

That isn't to say there isn't a better thing for your use case, but there wasn't for mine.

Final Thoughts

If I didn't drive this point home earlier, I'm going to make it now. The reMarkable 2 will not replace your laptop, mobile OS (iOS/Android) Tablet Device (meant to replace your laptop), or Smartphone. There isn't even a calculator app on the reMarkable 2.

The Remarkable 2 will replace the pens, pencils, highlighters, notebooks, and print outs cluttering up your daily carry bag, desk, and life. It's a digital paper option, not a personal computing option. When used for that purpose, it is exceptional, and well worth the investment.

#reMarkable #reMarkable Tablet 2 #E Ink #eink #linux #digital ink #review

4 notes · View notes

britesparc · 3 years

Text

Weekend Top Ten #454

Top Ten Launch Games

Oooh, it’s finally here!

By the time you read this, the Xbox Series X/S consoles will be out, and the PlayStation 5 will be imminent if not already with us. At the time of writing I’ve yet to sample either console, although hopefully that will soon change. However, it’s a bit of a weird console launch, especially for Xbox owners, as there’s not much in the way of actual launch titles. PlayStation has the excellent-looking technical showcase (in that it shows off their sexy new controller, if not necessarily the excesses of the console’s visual prowess) Astro’s Playroom. But on the Xbox side, the only genuine first-party exclusive (not including the port of rather smashing PC title Gears Tactics) was to be the troubled Halo Infinite, which has now been pushed to next year to deal with some of its apparent graphical deficiencies. For what it’s worth, as a Halo fan, I thought the actual gameplay presented looked as good as it always has, so I’m still very excited, but it’s a shame not to sample something genuinely new and shiny at launch. For me, then – as someone not getting a PlayStation this year – I’m going to have to contend myself with updated versions of older games, and hopefully something like the really exciting-looking The Falconeer or, eventually, Cyberpunk 2077.

Of course, it’s not always been like this; in the past, a landmark game has often been the core reason to upgrade to a new console. Certain titles have defined their hardware platforms, offering a taste of the experiences to come, be it through revolutionary control systems, previously-unimaginable graphics, or simply by shattering preconceptions and expectations. As such, this weekend I’m celebrating my favourite launch titles.

Now, a couple of my usual caveats. I’ve hardly owned any consoles in the grand scheme of things; I was a computer gamer until the launch of the first Xbox, and even then was PC-first until about midway through the 360’s life. As such I came to a lot of these late, or played them on friends’ systems. I’m sure a videogame historian would give you another list, one that was able to put each title into its historical perspective. For my part, I’m mostly basing it on how much I like the game, but I am also trying to weight it in terms of its “importance”. I mean, one of my favourite “launch titles” of all time would be Lego Marvel Super Heroes on the Xbox One/PS4, but that seems a bit of a ridiculous game to call a launch title, especially as it doesn’t really show off the hardware or define the generation in any particular way. I just think it rocks. So I’m trying to judge it also in terms of how effective a given game was at being a launch title, as well as my personal preference; as such, some games, which I think are more emblematic of their time or their hardware, might end up higher in the list than if I was otherwise just ranking my favourites.

Christ, that was boring. Look, here are ten games that I like that came out when a console came out. Have at it.

Halo: Combat Evolved (Xbox, 2001): it’s not just that it made playing an FPS on a console as comfortable and enjoyable as on PC, but it revolutionised what an FPS could do. Expansive open landscapes, dynamic combat with intelligent enemies, an ingenious shield/health combo, two weapons, drivable vehicles, and frankly outstanding graphics. And for Xbox – a curious underdog, a big black sheep devoid of cool or class and feeling like Microsoft was trying to buy its way into the console space with a hefty dose of brute force – here was something unique, something incredible. I don’t think anyone quite expected Halo, and it’s arguable that it single-handedly changed not only Microsoft and Xbox’s fortunes but the entire game industry too.

Wii Sports (Wii, 2005): the Wii was this strange outlier, a tiny white box that eschewed the grunt and girth of its rivals, and seemingly built around its unique motion controller. Would it work? Wii Sports proved that yes it would, a delightful bundle of games that perfectly showed what the console and controller could do. Immense fun in and of itself, but the Wii’s ability to lower the barrier of entry to non-gamers meant that your dad could thrash your brother at bowling. And that is a thing to cherish forever.

Tetris (GameBoy, 1989): depending on where you look, Tetris may just be the best-selling game of all time. It’s on everything now, from the Xbox Series X to your watch. But there was a time when “Tetris” meant “GameBoy”; that four-colour greenscreen box of wonder that everybody had but me. It was beyond ubiquitous, and its short-form nature and simplistic styling made it ideal for the portable console, its chirpy and iconic music sounding perfect coming from those tiny speakers. And above all else, of course, Tetris is fantastic, one of the greatest games of all time. It was a perfect marriage of software and hardware.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch, 2017): so here’s the thing: I like Zelda, but I’ve never fallen in love with it. I didn’t grow up with it, so coming to Ocarina of Time, there were too many old-fashioned trappings in the way; it just didn’t feel as enthralling or as fun to play as, say, Half-Life or Deus Ex. BOTW changed that; the limitations were gone, the world was blown wide open. It no longer felt like an 80s game in three dimensions, it felt new. Better than new – it felt like tomorrow. Despite the Switch being graphically weaker than its contemporaries, BOTW was and is simply gorgeous to look at, but it’s how it plays, how it feels like a vast but real world, how it has its own rules and they make sense instantly. It’s the greatest open world game of all time, and emergent physics sandbox, and yet it’s still unquestionably Zelda, emphatically Nintendo. Okay, it technically came out on the Wii U at the same time, but who the hell played that? This was the game that made you want a Switch.

Super Mario 64 (N64, 1997): this is often the game people cite as being one of the great revolutionary launch titles, but I must confess its charms were lost to me at first. Taking what was great about Mario and converting it expertly into 3D was a heck of a feat; graphically for the time it certainly impressed in the scale of its worlds, and whilst back then I felt it lacked the detail and granularity of some PC titles, in retrospect it was a perfectly-suited art style, offering smooth textures even when right up close. But it was its precise controls and the open, hub-based nature of its worlds that was revolutionary; many games aped its style, but it took a long time before anything really matched it.

Hexic HD (Xbox 360, 2005): not every game here has to be some genre-busting graphical powerhouse; they can be simple but quietly revolutionary. Hexic HD is a terrific puzzle game with a simple hook, brilliantly executed, and enough intrigue and nuance to keep you coming back for one more go, to beat your high score, to get to the next tricksy level. But the time and manner of its release, and what that signified, marked it out as something more important. It was the first Xbox Live Arcade title; Microsoft’s curated gallery of smaller, more indie-flavoured games. More than that, it was free, coming pre-installed on all Xbox 360 Pros (the ones with the removable hard drive). It was a taste of what was to come, introducing audiences not only to the idea of playing these kinds of smaller, less intense games on a console, but also the idea of purchasing and downloading them digitally. It was great and ground-breaking in equal measure.

WipEout (PlayStation, 1995): I kinda missed the PlayStation generation. I was still, more or less, in my PC-centric “consoles are toys” mindset (which I wouldn’t fully shake off till the release of the N64). But I came to appreciate its qualities as a cool, exciting, super-fast futuristic racer. I’m pretty sure it’s not the first 3D hover-car racing game, but it was presented in such a groovy package that it ticket all the boxes, and helped show off just what the PlayStation was capable of in terms of its 3D graphics and CD sound. And, of course, it helped define the console as being a bit more edgy and grown-up than the previous Nintendo and Sega stalwarts.

Super Mario Bros. (NES, 1988): what can be said about one of the most iconic games of all time? Mario Bros defined not only a console, not only a generation, but arguably an entire artform. Creating what we now know as a platform game, it expanded and surpassed the basic template of Donkey Kong into a roaming adventure, part twitch-gaming reaction test, part puzzle game. I played a lot of copycat games on my Amiga, but even then, as a whiny computer brat, I knew that Mario was better. Even when my cousins got a MegaDrive and Sonic, I knew – deep in my heart – that Mario was better. It's a deep game, an endlessly replayable game, a supremely fair game despite its difficulty. I think it’s hard to overstate just how good, or how influential, Mario was.

Project Gotham Racing (Xbox, 2001): I tried hard to pick a different platform for every game in this list, but I couldn’t exclude PGR. This may be tied up with my biography a little bit, but my other half and I played this game to death. I never think of myself as a big racer fan, but every once in a while a title comes out that I just really, really get into – Jaguar XJ220 on the Amiga, Midtown Madness on PC, the Forza Horizon series nowadays – and PGR did that in spades. A gorgeous arcade racer, it was a great launch title to show off the sheer grunt of the Xbox; then, as now, the most powerful console on the market. It also offered a terrific four-player split-screen. But its Kudos feature – borrowed from semi-prequel Metropolis Street Racer – offered ways to win outside of sheer racing graft, awarding cool driving. I still love the original, and I kinda wish they’d bring back or reimagine its city-based driving for a future release or Forza spin-off.

Lumines: Puzzle Fusion (PSP, 2004): okay, so this is a bit of a cheat as I've barely played the original PSP version, but Lumines is just phenomenal; the best moving-blocks-around game since Tetris, and probably the most influential one since then too (for the record, I've played it extensively on multiple other platforms). An excellent spin on a Tetris-a-like, its use of music and colour made it a beautiful, brilliant sensory experience. With Sony entering the handheld market, the PSP needed a USP, something vibrant and cool that suited a portable experience, and Lumines provided it in spades; also its funky visuals and music was a good fit for Sony’s brand.

Well, that was fun, and a lot harder than I expected. If you’re enjoying a new console this Christmas, then hopefully you’ll have fun with one of the new launch titles too – even if I doubt any (apart from maybe Astro) would trouble a list like this in the future (although I do think The Falconeer looks all kinds of cool).

#top ten #games #gaming #launch games #xbox series x #xbox series s #playstation 5 #nintendo #switch #halo #mario #zelda

1 note · View note

cozycryptidcorner · 4 years

Photo

Here is a monster match for the resilient @moonlightreetops! Information about getting your very own monster match can be found here.

“INFJ, my sun sign is Cancer, moon sign is Pisces rising sign is Sagittarius, also ADHD inattentive soo... 🙃very forgetful due to depression and said ADHD. I'm very empathetic but can get a little too passionate with my emotions sometimes. I cry at every movie I see. No exceptions. I spend most of my time world building or painting for dnd campaigns. Or reading. I also love hiking with my dogs as it's the only time I really get out of the house. I grew up in professional theater so the drama kid heart in me is still very strong. Whoever's my match needs to be prepared for a little bit of "extra", if you catch my drift.”

Your android isn’t fresh off the production shelves, not by a long shot, but he was tossed away as ‘defective’ shortly after being built. For whatever reason, though, whoever did it was sloppy, since the master switch to shut everything down hadn’t been pressed, resulting in your android being in ‘sleep mode’ for just over a decade. During that time, his software would remotely update, going with the flow of whatever the programmers would write, but his actual hardware could hardly keep up. He soon became an outdated model, as one does in this reality of rapidly evolving technology, and the updates weren’t exactly written for the machinery of his caliber. Yet, for whatever reason, his inner core kept accepting the incoming software, ultimately resulting in something inside him snapping awake.

Both he and you theorize that it must have been the time, plus the updates, and perhaps even the constant exposure to the elements that ignited some kind of self-awareness within his inner core. Or, it could just be a matter of time for all the other androids to follow, as he was without any mechanical checkups monitoring his awareness for quite a long while. Whatever the case may be, he’s present and in the moment, very much alive, and really can’t let many people in on that secret because god knows what will happen to him because of it. While it might be a little awkward for him to plaster a smile on his face and act like a shell, thanks to all the new cybernetic technologies, most androids tend to look and act very human, so he can get away with a lot more than he might of back when he was fresh out of the factory.

Since he was outside decomposing with the rest of the junk, his parts weren’t exactly in tip-top shape. It took a lot of careful, slow repairs to get him to even be able to walk again. Even though his central wiring system seemed to be in working order, most of his limbs and joints rusted over and eroded, so those also had to be either oiled and cleaned vigorously or unscrewed and completely replaced. Tiny seeds and saplings had taken to start growing in the metallic crevices of his body, so those had to be thoroughly washed out, and his standard blue steel had been tinted green with moss. It certainly was a look, that’s for sure, but not something that a functioning android can rock and still be able to stand on both their feet.

One of the interesting things about his type is that his synthetic skin and hair can change color whenever he feels like it, and while he might need the necessary coding for the color, once he has it, he can switch back and forth. Neon pink hair one day, then a muted, plain brown the next, it gives him an edge for blending in with, say, a rave party or a rock concert at a moment’s notice. Not that he needs to run, no, to both of your knowledge, he’s in no danger of discovery. Still, if it should it come to that, his power of camouflage might come in handy. Maybe it was a little shocking when he blinked that one time and turned his eyes blood-red, but you quickly got used to it.

Besides the fact that he can turn his skin blue the moment he wants, he looks like a regular, run of the mill person, as any signs of being made of machinery have been carefully covered up. But, like with most other androids, there are little, tiny ticks that a well-trained person might see. The way he sometimes focuses on something a little too hard, since he can zoom his eyesight in like a microscope, or the way he stands ridiculously still when at rest. Or even how he might know something about someone that may seem strange since he likes to look over a person’s social media profiles while speaking to them.

Your android likes to multitask and often has a very exact schedule for what he is doing and when. For example, he might get off his overnight charging station at five in the morning sharp, though he really doesn’t need to use it anymore, his battery has been replaced by one of those crazy nuclear fission boxes. After getting dressed in some athletic wear, he will then go for a run, not that he has any muscles to work out with. Still, he likes the feeling of the air on his face, but it helps the whole song and dance of being human, as someone will see him do the action and then internalize it without realizing it.

Then, once he gets back, he’ll make breakfast. He can’t eat, and really entirely depends on your tastebuds to do all the work, but his skill vastly improves with everything he manages to make. Once he is done with your breakfast, he will clean, and then exactly at 7:02 am, he will go off to work. His work isn’t exactly the same as, say, an office job with a guaranteed yearly salary. Your android is, after all, technically a non-citizen, and doesn’t have any of the many documents needed to prove that he’s allowed to work. Everything he does has to be under the table and off the radar.

His work, then, is a rather unorthodox way of making money. Freelance stuff, really, things that he can do quickly without having to become a full-time employee. On one end, he does photography, and since his eyes have the nifty little habit of seeing things that a human might not right off the bat, he tends to get some snapshots of things that others don’t. It also helps that he can climb, hide, dodge, and reach places that humans probably don’t want to risk. Climbing to the very top of a building just to get that photo of the sun rising over the bridge? Done, and his editor has no idea how he even managed to get it. Squeezing through a poorly constructed alley to find a nest of pigeons for a piece on animal life in the city? Good thing he doesn’t actually have to breath. It might not bring in the same kind of money as some fancy executive lawyer, but it’s just about all he can do.

Sometimes he might get frustrated when his schedule doesn’t seem to work out because he likes his life to be easy to sort and simple to categorize. It took a little while for him to be able to loosen up about the strictness of which he holds himself, slowing relaxing and allowing life to show him the wonders that is has to offer without chasing something else insistently. His photography began to improve vastly, mostly because he is now looking beyond just the object and the background, he is now looking for the soul outside of the basic image. Like humans, your android does appreciate beauty for what it is, though in a more mathematical, clinical sense. Things like flowers, shells, moon phases, or even weather patterns all hold a unique appeal to him that tends to lean outside of their traditional aesthetic sense.

Your android is very, very grounded in reality. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t really have a concept of what ‘imagination’ is, but his thoughts, his actions, his hopes are all squarely within the realms of his perceived existence. One of the drawbacks to this is that he doesn’t often allow himself to play along with anyone’s fanciful ‘what if’ scenarios because he will be the first one to let that person know that the idea is bad, and it might get someone killed, or that it’s just not even worth doing. It takes some cajoling to get him to indulge anyone in their fantasies, but he will, if the right pointers are given, and if doing so will help someone get out of their sadness.

One of his favorite activities is to explore the outdoors, whether it be hiking, camping, canoeing, etcetera. As mentioned before, he has a unique appreciation for something organically made, because there is something rather beautiful in the realm of strange frailties. Or, better yet, the impossible perfection that can be reached in something as simple as a snail’s shell. Sometimes he might pause, completely caught up in studying the movement of a bug or the swaying of a leaf in the wind, eyes glued to a single spot in space for however long it takes him to fully comprehend every little detail that he is seeing.

There isn’t really an issue in the bedroom, either, since his brain is basically connected to the internet at all times, any kind of position or move is easy enough for him to search up, comprehend, and then execute with near-flawless precision. That’s all I’m going to say on the subject.

#monster matches #android #exophilia

17 notes · View notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

Text

STARTUP IN FOUNDERS TO MAKE WEALTH

Would it be useful to have an explicit belief in change. And I think that's ok. Mihalko seemed like he actually wanted to be our friend. Grad school is the other end of the humanities. Indirectly, but they pay attention.1 US, its effects lasted longer. Together you talk about some hard problem, probably getting nowhere.

Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas. Why? They got to have expense account lunches at the best restaurants and fly around on the company's Gulfstreams. Meaning everyone within this world was low-res: a Duplo world of a few big hits, and those aren't them. It's not true that those who teach can't do. Or is it?2 I think much of the company.

Part of the reason is prestige. If you define a language that was ideal for writing a slow version 1, and yet with the right optimization advice to the compiler, would also yield very fast code when necessary.3 Of course, prestige isn't the main reason the idea is much older than Henry Ford. The right way to get it. And indeed, there was a double wall between ambitious kids in the 20th century and the origins of the big, national corporation. The reason car companies operate this way is that it was already mostly designed in 1958. Wars make central governments more powerful, and over the next forty years gradually got more powerful, they'll be out of business. And this too tended to produce both social and economic cohesion. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys.4 This won't be a very powerful feature. Lisp paper.5 Plus if you didn't put the company first you wouldn't be promoted, and if you couldn't switch ladders, promotion on this one was the only way up.

But if they don't want to shut down the company, that leaves increasing revenues and decreasing expenses firing people.6 One is that investors will increasingly be unable to offer investment subject to contingencies like other people investing. I understood their work. Which in turn means the variation in the amount of wealth people can create has not only been increasing, but accelerating.7 Surely that sort of thing did not happen to big companies in mid-century most of the 20th century and the origins of the big national corporations were willing to pay a premium for labor.8 As long as he considers all languages equivalent, all he has to do is remove the marble that isn't part of it. I had a few other teachers who were smart, but I never have. And it turns out that was all you needed to solve the problem. You have certain mental gestures you've learned in your work, and when you're not paying attention, you keep making these same gestures, but somewhat randomly.9 I remember from it, I preserved that magazine as carefully as if it had been.10 That no doubt causes a lot of institutionalized delays in startup funding: the multi-week mating dance with investors; the distinction between acceptable and maximal efficiency, programmers in a hundred years, maybe it won't in a thousand. Certainly it was for a startup's founders to retain board control after a series A, that will change the way things have always been.

Which inevitably, if unions had been doing their job tended to be lower. They did as employers too. I worry about the power Apple could have with this force behind them. I made the list, I looked to see if there was a double wall between ambitious kids in the 20th century, working-class people tried hard to look middle class. In a way mid-century oligopolies had been anointed by the federal government, which had been a time of consolidation, led especially by J. Wars make central governments more powerful, until now the most advanced technologies, and the number of undergrads who believe they have to say yes or no, and then join some other prestigious institution and work one's way up the hierarchy. Locally, all the news was bad. Close, but they are still missing a few things. Not entirely bad though. I notice this every time I fly over the Valley: somehow you can sense prosperity in how well kept a place looks. Another way to burn up cycles is to have many layers of software between the application and the hardware. And indeed, the most obvious breakage in the average computer user's life is Windows itself.

Investors don't need weeks to make up their minds anyway. The point of high-level languages is to give you bigger abstractions—bigger bricks, as it were, so I emailed the ycfounders list. They traversed idea space as gingerly as a very old person traverses the physical world. And there is another, newer language, called Python, whose users tend to look down on Perl, and more openly. At the time it seemed the future. What happens in that shower? You can't reproduce mid-century model was already starting to get old.11 Meanwhile a similar fragmentation was happening at the other end of the economic scale.12 But the advantage is that it works better.

Most really good startup ideas look like bad ideas at first, and many of those look bad specifically because some change in the world just switched them from bad to good.13 There's good waste, and bad waste. A rounds. A bottom-up program should be easier to modify as well, partly because it tends to create deadlock, and partly because it seems kind of slimy. But when you import this criterion into decisions about technology, you start to get the company rolling. It would have been unbearable. Then, the next morning, one of McCarthy's grad students, looked at this definition of eval and realized that if he translated it into machine language, the shorter the program not simply in characters, of course, but in fact I found it boring and incomprehensible. I wouldn't want Python advocates to say I was misrepresenting the language, but what they got was fixed according to their rank. The deal terms of angel rounds will become less restrictive too—not just less restrictive than angel terms have traditionally been. If it is, it will be a minority squared.

If 98% of the time, just like they do to startups everywhere. Their culture is the opposite of hacker culture; on questions of software they will tend to pay less, because part of the core language, prior to any additional notations about implementation, be defined this way. That's what a metaphor is: a function applied to an argument of the wrong type.14 Now we'd give a different answer.15 And you know more are out there, separated from us by what will later seem a surprisingly thin wall of laziness and stupidity. There have probably been other people who did this as well as Newton, for their time, but Newton is my model of this kind of thought. I'd be very curious to see it, but Rabin was spectacularly explicit. Betting on people over ideas saved me countless times as an investor.16 They assume ideas are like miracles: they either pop into your head or they don't. I was pretty much assembly language with math. Whereas if you ask for it explicitly, but ordinarily not used. A couple days ago an interviewer asked me if founders having more power would be better or worse for the world.

Notes

The reason we quote statistics about fundraising is so hard to prevent shoplifting because in their early twenties. Auto-retrieving filters will have a definite commitment.

It will seem like noise.

It's one of the world. That's why the Apple I used to end investor meetings too closely, you'll find that with a neologism. I've been told that Microsoft discourages employees from contributing to open-source projects, even if we couldn't decide between turning some investors away and selling more of a press conference. All you need but a lot about some disease they'll see once in China, many of the biggest divergences between the government.

Mozilla is open-source projects, even if they pay a lot of time. If they agreed among themselves never to do that. And journalists as part of grasping evolution was to reboot them, initially, to sell your company into one? Most expect founders to overhire is not so much better is a net win to include in your own time, not just the local area, and Reddit is Delicious/popular with voting instead of just doing things, they were shooting themselves in the field they describe.

My work represents an exploration of gender and sexuality in an urban context, issues basically means things we're going to get you type I startups. As a friend who invested earlier had been with us if the current options suck enough. MITE Corp.

The top VCs and Micro-VCs. When you had to for some reason, rather than admitting he preferred to call all our lies lies. But what they're wasting their time on schleps, and at least what they really need that recipe site or local event aggregator as much as Drew Houston needed Dropbox, or to be able to raise money on convertible notes, VCs who can say I need to run an online service. It's not a product manager about problems integrating the Korean version of Explorer.

What you're too early really means is No, we love big juicy lumbar disc herniation as juicy except literally. In either case the implications are similar. But there are few things worse than the don't-be startup founders who go on to study the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, phone, and only one founder take fundraising meetings is that it's bad to do more with less, then add beans don't drain the beans, and they have to do that, in which practicing talks makes them better: reading a talk out loud at least wouldn't be worth doing something, but they're not ready to invest in your previous job, or the distinction between matter and form if Aristotle hadn't written about them.

Philadelphia is a net loss of productivity. As a rule, if the growth is genuine. Which implies a surprising but apparently unimportant, like a core going critical.

In practice the first year or so. If you weren't around then it's hard to think about so-called lifestyle business, having sold all my shares earlier this year. Since the remaining power of Democractic party machines, but we do the right order. They're an administrative convenience.

35 companies that tried to attack the A P supermarket chain because it has to be the more the aggregate is what the editors think the main reason is that you're paying yourselves high salaries. What is Mathematics? Once again, that good paintings must have affected what they claim was the fall of 2008 but no doubt partly because companies don't. Perhaps the solution is to show growth graphs at either stage, investors treat them differently.

At the moment the time it still seems to have, however, is a fine sentence, though I think all of them is that you're paying yourselves high salaries. We thought software was all that matters to us. It's a lot about some of the business much harder to fix once it's big, plus they are to be something of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being a scientist. Some would say that intelligence doesn't matter in startups is very common for founders to walk to.

In fact, we try to be a special recipient of favour, being a scientist.

It is the most successful investment, Uber, from which Renaissance civilization radiated.

When an investor they already know; but as a percentage of GDP were about the team or their determination and disarmingly asking the right sort of things economists usually think about so-called lifestyle business, A. Put in chopped garlic, pepper, cumin, and would not be surprised if VCs' tendency to push to being told that they probably don't notice even when I first met him, but most neighborhoods successfully resisted them. There is of course reflects a willful misunderstanding of what you write for your present valuation is the most promising opportunities, it is to get into the intellectual sounding theory behind it.

Innosight, February 2012. Ashgate, 1998. So it is less than a Web terminal.

This is why we can't figure out the same ones. Trevor Blackwell, who had been able to. We didn't let him off, either as an example of applied empathy. And yet if he were a variety called Red Delicious that had other meanings.

1 note · View note

suddeninklings · 5 years

Text

Summary. Louis Bloom needed a change. Alone in a new city, he is ready to make his mark as he had in Los Angeles. Sadie Sims is alone, too. But she knows the city in ways he doesn’t.

Introduction.

The dinner rush at Whitney’s on 4th had long passed. It had been busy, for a Tuesday. Customers of all sorts had come and gone. Tourists, locals, and regulars, but the crowd was mostly middle age. This wasn’t a place where young blood flocked. It was a staple of the Inner Sunset, but it had remained more or less unchanged since Ben and Vera Whitney had purchased the property in 1972. Too old to be hip. Too young to be a historic treasure…

Now there were only the hangers-on. An older couple sat in the coveted corner window booth, sipping decaf, indulging in a hard-earned, comfortable silence. Two men were seated at the counter, eating eggs and reminiscing. There was only one patron who sat alone by the front window. Louis Bloom. He occupied the same booth he had the night before. And the night before that. It was the only storefront on the block still open. The others, consisting of a family-owned pharmacy, a chain deli, a hardware store, a UPS store and a hippy gift shop, were all closed for the night, their windows darkened. Street side, he sat just under the “h” in “Whitney’s” that had been painted on the window in a curly, but dated font. The paint had been scratched away here and there, a victim of age and weather. The booth he chose was in better shape than most. It was perhaps too plush, covered in a cherry red vinyl, but it was clean. In front of him sat a plated omelette, barely picked over, and a large mug of black coffee.

His attention was directed at his phone, a pair of cheap, black headphones crammed into the aux adapter. One bud was stuck in his ear. The other hung down in his lap. He was listening intently, scrolling through several online police patches he had discovered thanks to a local reddit board. He switched between them every third minute, but it was turning into a dead night. Aside from a few low key robberies. Maybe on another night he would have considered pursuing them, but he needed something big if he was to maintain a good relationship with the contact he had made at one of the local stations. His name was Robert Dean and he was primed for Louis’ intervention. His station was struggling in the ratings and he was desperate for a leg up. The perfect partner. It was no small miracle that he had been able to track one down only two weeks into his tenure in this new city. San Francisco.

The decision to leave Los Angeles wasn’t an easy one, but he couldn’t deny that circumstances needed to change if he were to continue to grow in the industry he had revolutionized. His relationship with Nina had soured. The competition had grown since he had exploded onto the scene. The number of copycats had risen significantly in a matter of months. It didn’t surprise him. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, they say. They. He thought, bitterly. They were ruining everything. He was no longer a lone shark in a large sea. He was one of many, hunting and feeding at the first scent of blood. Bait was being gobbled up so quickly, he was lucky to get by with one good story a week. It wasn’t enough. He needed more. A new sea, one untainted by the mimics that clung to him as if he were some giving, door-opening host. He thought long and hard about where he would choose to move. Chicago had been his second choice. Perhaps he would find himself there, eventually. But the city by the bay had some scintillating perks. It was a city in flux. The burgeoning, nationwide class war was escalating faster here than in most urban areas. The beloved streets, still rife with historical infamy, were now caught between the poorer sentimentalists and the vampiric greed of Silicon Valley overlords. A battle wouldn’t decide the victor. This was a war. The tension was palpable. He could smell it on the air as soon as he arrived in town, with only his equipment and his car. It thrilled him. What need was there for uppers or alcohol when the night brought a rush that could sustain him for days.

“Refill?” A waitress stood by his table, a tired but sincere smile gracing her face. She must have been at least forty years of age. Her hair was dark, her teeth and fingernails showed signs of steady smoking, but she never smelled of it. She wore a small name tag clipped to her apron, bearing the name “Annie”. He smiled back, maintaining eye contact.

“Yes, thank you.” He said.

“Anytime, honey.” She replied, before shuffling away.

He liked Whitney’s. The staff was amiable and attentive, but never chatty or meddlesome. For the most part, they let him be, only stepping in when it was clear he needed something. Aside from the owner, there were no men working there. At least, the night wait staff was all female. There were three of them: Annie, Laurel and Sadie, each working five days so that there would always be at least two to support Vera at the counter while Ben hovered over the kitchen staff most nights. Except for the first and third Monday, when the diner was closed altogether. Annie was off on Sundays & Mondays. Laurel on Tuesdays & Wednesdays. And Sadie on Thursdays & Saturdays, most likely because she was the youngest and therefore the most likely to want to be out and about on such a vital weekend night. Vera was a warm woman, portly with a throaty voice, but she seemed rather attached to the youngest waitress. At first Louis thought them related in some way. They had the same bright eyes. He had never met the day shift staff, since he was usually tied up at his place, editing or planning his route for the night, running errands or sleeping if the need presented itself.

He shifted in his seat, sighing as his eyes flicked from the screen for a moment. His stomach constricted. That’s right, he had come here because he was hungry. He reached for his fork, severing another large bite and swallowing it down. The omelette was more cold than hot now, but he barely tasted it. He focused again on the screen, this time turning his attention to a watchdog group he had found on facebook. He had gone to the effort of creating a burner account for the sole purpose of gaining access to the group. It was made up of locals throughout the city, and while he had only found two leads worth following, it was proving to be a helpful tool as people seemed to post to the thread day and night, hour by hour. It baffled him, people’s need to overshare, to shout to the technical ether every thought and experience they deemed worthy of public consumption. Though in most cases, not a single shred of it was worth more than a scrap of trash. What was it about the social networks that lulled the masses so easily into a false sense of security? Didn’t they realize people were always watching, cataloguing it all? It baffled him. But people clung to it as if they were made from it. As if every post or like or emoji were connective tissue, vital to survival. Pathetic, he thought, padding through another thread. Eyes searching for various keywords. But helpful. That he couldn’t deny.

“Uh, sir?” Came a soft call.

He looked up. It was Sadie this time. She wore the same royal blue dress as the others. It sported a wide wrap around white collar, with five large buttons that came together at the front. Unlike the older two, she pinned her name tag to the side the cropped apron tied around her waist. Her hair, a natural ashy blonde, was choppy and short, but she had most of it tied back away from her face by a thin folded floral bandana.

“We’ll be closing in ten minutes.”

“Alright,” He said, his eyes drifting to his watch. It wasn’t often that time slipped away from him unnoticed.

“Was there anything wrong with your food?” She asked.

He looked to his plate where a good portion of the omelette still sat untouched.

“No, actually, could you box it for me?” He asked, his dark blue eyes meeting her cool, almost grey ones.

“Sure,” She said with a smile. It wasn’t as seasoned as Annie’s but Louis could appreciate the effort. She took the plate and headed into the back. He watched her disappear through the door, the chatter on the radio in his ear dimming. There was something strange about her, something familiar. He had yet to put his finger on it.

She returned a moment later and handed him the box in a brown paper bag.

“Thanks,” He said, thumbing a wad of bills in his pocket.

“Oh, you pay at the front,” She said, gesturing over her shoulder.

He pulled a twenty loose and held it out to her. She eyed it, almost suspiciously.

“Split it?” He explained. “With Annie.”

She nodded, taking the bill in between her thumb and index finger and folding it. “Thank you.”

Her gaze fell away from him, dodging his eye. Louis thought little of it. He was used to it. She looked as though she wanted to say something else, but drifted back to the counter, calling for Annie.

He took one last listen to each station, hoping for some sort of lead before he would need to resort to drifting up and down the streets. He was still familiarizing himself with the streets and alleyways. Which ones were less traveled, which were highly looked after. Fortunately for him, at seven miles, it was a much smaller layout to anything he was used to. He didn’t expect it would take him much longer to learn the ins and outs of the landscape. For now though, he was taking it easy. Acclimating.

With nothing sparking his attention, he slid from the booth tucking the phone into the back pocket of his jeans and slipping the other earbud into place. He stepped outside, pausing at the edge of the street corner, trying to remember where he had parked.

He heard the faint tinkling of the bell that hung above the entry door behind him.

“Goodnight, Ms. Sadie.” It sounded like Annie’s voice.

“Night, Annie.”

“You walk around the panhandle, you hear me? And head straight home. I don’t like the thought of you wandering around.”

Louis pivoted slightly, watching them from the corner of his eye. Sadie was rolling her eyes.

“Annie,” she said, seemingly over a conversation they must have had more than once. “I don’t wander, I just walk. And I’ve never run into any trouble.”

Annie just tutted, stepping of the curb and crossing the street to her car. “That don’t mean you won’t.”

Sadie lifted a hand to wave her goodbye, then turned on her heel and headed down the street towards the park. As she walked, she pulled the kerchief loose and stuffed it into the pocket of her jean jacket. The jacket was at least two sizes too large for her. She reached into the backpack slung across her left shoulder and pulled a folded baseball cap out, plunking it onto her head. It was a deterrent. With the large jacket, short hair and hat, she could easily be mistaken for a boy.

Follow her. A voice in his head urged. He wasn’t sure why. There was potential there. A young woman walking alone through the streets at night…it meant trouble certainly. But was it newsworthy? Or was it an everyday tragedy. Too familiar and too frequent for people to care. Really care.

He took one step towards the park when a blaring siren shattered through the relative peace of the dark, empty street behind him. His fingers went to his ear, pressing the bud deeper in as his free hand fiddled with the tracer on his phone.

Finally, he thought, listening greedily to the dispatch. Something good.

He spun back around, heading for his car and his equipment.

Thanks for reading! This was really just to get my feet wet I guess. This story is just flowing out of me and I can’t be stopped.This story will eventually go to some dark and creepy places. It’s the nature of the character and noir after all.

#nightcrawler #fanfiction #louis bloom #jake gyllenhaal #tnio

13 notes · View notes

purkinje-effect · 5 years

Text

The Anatomy of Melancholy, 35

Table of Contents. Second Instar, Chapter 2. Go to previous. Go to next. Do you believe in heaven above? *is shot*

So the chemist and his Mister Handy surveyed the junkyard for viable robotics specimens. Angel separated at times from its owner, to return and report back its findings, while ‘Choly annotated everything useful they located. Seven Mister Gutsies, five Mister Handies, and one Miss Nanny had been left here lacking well over half their parts. Dozens of heavily damaged Eyebots and Protectrons joined the General Atomics robotics scrap among the landscape of car shells which had hidden the true nature of the junkyard from street view. Though not G.A. in origin either, ‘Choly found an Assaultron head and flinched away from the skull-like cyclopean structure, only to stumble and nearly drop his coffee cup. Upon righting himself with his cane and catching his breath, he took a sip of his coffee, and his gaze absently drifted up to the wall of automotive carcasses. He’d located the prototype Sentry Bot, wedged among the rusted sheet steel stacked high to either side of it as though a child playing hide and seek in a stack of firewood.

He sputtered, choking on his drink. It had been two hundred years since he’d last seen one. Despite the base’s heavily classified security status, the Deenwood Compound relied heavily upon Mister Handy and Mister Gutsy accommodations, and only had three Sentries at their employ. True to his memory, the thing before him was, in essence, a sentient tank. A heavy tripod of mecanum limbs supported its hulking dark green body, its ocular sensor matrix was encased in a helmet-like dome recessed for the most part into its chest component, and its thick, broad arms terminated in a pair of miniguns. A mixture of relief and disappointment came when he recognized that it did not have mortar launchers in its shoulder components like those they had on base, and he found himself wondering which was the more advanced model. From the sound of the documentation on the terminal in the junkyard’s office, it had only been dumped here mere years before the nuclear exchange took place, so Deenwood’s Sentries in theory predated this one.

“Mister Carey, I believe we’ve identified the majority of resources on site, if you’d like to get started.” Angel paused beside its owner and looked where ‘Choly did. “I see!”

“From what I can tell, it’s a complete robot,” ‘Choly told it, vaguely nagged by his compulsions. “If it’s still got its Fusion Cores, it could be powered up...”

“Oh, but we shan’t be doing that. It’s forbidden by military protocols, and it’s RobCo tech besides.”

“...You’re right.” ‘Choly stared at his dress shoes a moment before looking to his Handy in earnest. “I know that I’ve made a promise to you, and that’s why I’m asking and not... pretty literally... going behind your back. Can I have one Berry Mentat for this task? I understand the way that Gutsy and Nanny parts can interface with those of a Handy, but I want to make this more than just a parts swap-out. I want to optimize what each component can provide you.”

“I imagined that your sobriety wouldn’t last long,” it resigned, to which its owner winced sheepishly. “Can we at least come to an arrangement, then, Sir? I shall dispense as requested, but you must keep your entire chem stock in my storage. If it’s too much to ask, for you to put me in charge of monitoring your chem usage, then I’m afraid I’ll have to decline the request.”

‘Choly smiled and put a hand to Angel’s pale blue spherical body.

“You drive a very hard, but very far, bargain. Let’s go inside, so I can sit while I strategize how to approach the upgrade.”

“Thank you for being reasonable.”

Once inside, Angel dispensed a single lozenge to its owner. Popping it under his tongue, he got to work scrawling schematics concepts on the back and front of a manila folder, and adding all kinds of notes wherever they would fit. This included a mix of G.A.-exclusive combinations and combinations with RobCo inclusions, though he had every intention to respect Angel’s boundaries--even if the warranty no longer mattered for all manner of reasons, it provided a very black-and-white understanding of what Angel was comfortable with ‘Choly doing to its body and programming. He finished off the coffee from the day before while he worked. They agreed that one of each tendril would be the ideal: a standard Handy limb, outfitted with an interchangeable laser, a saw, and a pincer; a standard Nanny limb, with an interchangeable pincer, a saw, and an injection tool; and a standard Gutsy limb, with an interchangeable saw, a laser, and a minigun. Barring locating sufficient 5.56mm and MF cell ammunition to keep the Gutsy arm equipped, the real task was optimizing the motherboard’s ability to wield any combination of these three at a moment’s notice, without overloading the processing speed. A standard issue Handy, Gutsy, or Nanny came optimized with programming to handle three of any one of the limb sets, not one of each. But, as he skimmed the programming with his Pip-Boy key-prong plugged into Angel, the Berries found a solution to the limbs’ shared compatibility which also facilitated the other element of the upgrades--its hydraulics capacity via its thruster calibration.

‘Choly requested Angel retrieve the required parts from the junkyard, and once they were amassed inside, he had the Handy mount the curved forks of the robotics workbench and switch off its pilot light. Then, he got to work, motivated by the creative impulses of the Berry Mentats.

“I’m sorry that we didn’t find any paint,” he started, while he finished tightening the bolts underneath Angel on its thruster core comprised of pieces from each model of robot, onto which he would re-mount the new set of tendrils. “You’ll have mismatched shell colors for a while. But, for what it’s worth, white, sky blue, and army green isn’t an unattractive combination.”

“I’m simply grateful that you’re taking all this time and effort on my behalf, Sir. I’ll never get used to the sensation of being physically incapable of movement. I know it will only last a few more hours at most, but I worry my speech module is compensating for my inability to move anything else.”

“We’ve already refilled your fuel tank. And done all the cutting and welding, like armoring the top curve of the tendrils with pieces of van wheel well arches. Protecting the joints will help deter them from getting severed again. --But with the modified core, attaching and calibrating the tendrils will go very quickly. What I’m most grateful for, though, is that I could welt those car door handles and a pair of motorcycle foot pegs onto you, so I can stop worrying that the fabric harness is going to rip off through wear.”

“I quite like the choice of Chryslus Coupe handles. They’re sleek and angular, in contrast to the smooth curves of my design.”

“I figured you’d notice the model I picked them from,” he grinned, getting started loading the tendrils one at a time onto their cylindrical chassis. “They’re not the ones from his Coupe, but I feel like his ghost would come to haunt me if I so much as considered touching his car.”

“He really is gone... isn’t he?” Even Angel’s voice grew distant.

“He was gone two hundred years ago,” ‘Choly replied without missing a beat, too detached from emotions by the effects of the potent nootropics to get distracted from his task. “The moment your biometric scanners could no longer recognize him, he was gone. You put what was left of him to rest, in the Red Rocket this week.”

“Forgive my sentimentality. I don’t intend to upset you, Mister Carey. I just... I know I’m merely an artificial intelligence, but I really do miss Mister Hawthorne.”

The chemist plugged in his Pip-Boy key-prong and got to working on calibration and maintenance scans.

“That makes two of us.” After a pause, he added, “It’s better, this way.”

“Agreed.”

“I’m glad we still have each other, Angel.”

“And I you. I hope it stays that way for some time. Not having either of you... I nearly fell apart before you resurfaced from the vault.”

“I’m glad I can still be here for you.” He smiled up at its ocular lenses. “I’ve optimized the programming for your new ocular lens armatures and sensors, as well as for your new thruster hydraulics and new tendrils. You’ll still have your Handy software, but it’s largely running with Gutsy and Nanny hardware. I have to power you down in order to initiate the maintenance scans, and then reboot you so that the system will pick up the new hardware. Are you ready?”

“I cannot wait to reawaken and understand for myself what humans mean when they see everything with new eyes.”

While Angel powered down, and the Pip-Boy ran its diagnostics with the robot turned off, ‘Choly couldn’t move from his place in the office chair beside the workbench, and, for lack of anything better to do tethered in place, he fished his flip lighter and a half-pack of menthols from his coat pockets. He didn’t smoke much, less than a pack a month, but sometimes his restlessness got the best of him. It was more about the ritual and paraphernalia than it was about the nicotine, and he readily admitted this. The irony glossed over him, that the Handy would have considered it a contraband chem in his possession, had it been alert to the behavior. The cigarette was out before Angel’s boot sequence initiated. He retracted the key-prong and watched. Angel’s tendrils seemed to stretch, and its three eye-stalks emerged from their concealed cutout plates to either side and front of its body.

“General Atomics International Mister Handy, 2066 model, nickname ‘Angel.’ Custom order serialization 33313222123123.” Angel registered its company, relit its pilot light, and dismounted from the workbench forks. “Good evening, Mister Carey!”

“How do you feel?”

“Like a new robot.” It sped forward, then side to side, and it inspected its tendrils with a seeming thoughtfulness. “It’s peculiar. The programming for Mister Gutsy and Miss Nanny parts has always existed to some capacity within my own programming from the beginning, but to feel more of it being executed. Would it be strange of me to speculate that it... it feels right?”

“You’re allowed to feel things,” ‘Choly grinned, proud of his work. “Let’s go out into the yard and see if there’s any more fine tuning we need to do with your new parts. You’ve got enough ammunition to do a little target practice, and I want to test out the soundness of the harness mounts. ...I know my opinion matters far less than your own, but I think your new look is pretty fetching.”

“I quite agree! These new ocular lenses have heightened sensory arrays in them, so I can see and perceive even behind me. I’m fascinated with all the details filling into my readings. Including a heightened understanding of what I look like. Dare I say, you’ve made me quite a bit more self-aware, Sir.”

“As long as you’re aware of how wonderful you are, I think we’re working in the right direction.”

Go to Next »»»

#fallout 4 fanfic #fo4 #fallout 4 #fo4 fanfic #sole survivor #mister handy #automatron #robotics disposal ground #the anatomy of melancholy #melancholy

2 notes · View notes

dailytechnologynews · 5 years

Photo

Is there really not a perfect 11.5-13.5" Windows tablet choice?!

Hello guys. For the past week i've been researching to find the perfect windows tablet choice for my specific application need. However it seems there isn't even one device that doesn't have some type of throwback. I'm not asking for everything, but it seems it is either hit or miss, even if you take into account overpriced products. Please hear me out and let me know your thoughts.

I am essentially looking for a WINDOWS TABLET which its primary purpose is to be fitted to my car as a secondary "dash" per say so i can use it to interact with my aftermarket motorsports ecu. It will function as a monitoring dash for the most of the time, but can be used to datalog (aka record data) or for direct tuning (so i don't have to bring my laptop everytime i need to make changes to my engine calibration). I wouldn't mind using it at home as well since i will have it, but mostly will work as a travel/trip companion since i have a PC at home. It has to be a WINDOWS tablet as the software that interfaces with the ecu is only windows based.

After thinking and revising my requirements several times after getting disappointed by what is available here is the break down:

Dimensions: Height needs to be around ~205mm +10mm max so the tablet can be secured in the glove box when not in use. Ideally height should be maximized so that the display area is maximized as well. Length larger than 300mm is not a problem but would get annoying to fit to the car since it will extend more towards the passenger side. This effectively limits me to ~11.8-13.3" tablets, so Microsoft Surface Pro can be used as a reference design (since i haven't seen bezel-less windows tablets yet) Display: This is the most important attribute of the tablet. 1080p absolute minimum resolution, 2K ideally, 3K is probably not gonna be noticeable at the usage distance. Here is a screenshot from my 1080p laptop so you can see the ECU software in datalog mode (slightly cropped but so you can get an idea: http://content.invisioncic.com/r260425/monthly_2017_09/fuel_pressure_link.png.bc827c0a96fe120632f1d7c168e66a64.png However let's not forget brightness and contrast. Brightness should be ~400nits or better for a glossy display, and contrast should be considered over color accuracy. Viewing angle in the length span should be at least 150deg but i think it is hard nowadays to find such a bad display panel. Finally a fully laminated panel is recommended. Physical interfaces: I essentially need a single full size USB port so i can connect my ECU to the tablet. After my research i decided to allow for USB-C assuming that i can get a dongle that will allow me to interface without any issues; but it's best not to allow for that route due to possible incompatibility issues (like what happened when usb3.0 was released). Extra USB ports, USB-C that allows charging and data, video output port, headphone jack, m.2 expansion slot, sd card slot are all pluses. Wireless interfaces: Min wifi and bluetooth. 802.11AC and bluetooth v4.2 or better all pluses. CPU/GPU performance: Generally something better than N3450 (tested my brother's CHUWI surbook mini) and more recent will help, GPU performance is irrelevant for the task so the majority of intergrated GPU's will do fine. RAM: 4GB absolute minimum, 8gb ideal Cooling: I prefer passive cooling, but usually the cooling solution used is sh*t. At least in some cases it can be modded (i'm experienced and willing to do) Battery: 4 hours light use with full display brightness as minimum. If charging is performed over USB-C i hope it is not the stupid kind of power->battery->device like in phones and can work like in laptops where the battery is not used when power is supplied to the laptop. This way you don't wear out the battery since the device will be connected to power most of the time it is operated. Storage: 64gb absolute min, ideal min should be 128gb, speed is relative but i think at least m.2 sata interface ssd; NVME huge + Others: Pen support and attachable keyboard are pluses, but i plan on using a good bluetooth keyboard with backlight (required) so it makes them irrelevant if the tablet is good, Thunderbolt 3 is a +, unlocked bios +, kickstand should work on a lap without cutting your pants off and stay in one place, sd card reader + Reliability: From what i read most chinese tablets are pretty bad with both hardware and software issues out of the box. Backcover should be metal to act as heatsink and be stiff enough, weight and thickness is not that important Condition: New or used. I believe some products offer better value when bought used and others because have been discontinued Pricing: My budget is flexible but depending on the features lots of them are overpriced especially bought new. I would say ~500eur for a new tablet with min features required and 1000eur for one with better hardware. Considering i'm building a 7nm PC in a couple of months the market pricing is really unacceptable for most windows tablets. Blame Apple for it, but i'm not a rich consumer neither i am a sheep. Performance to value is what i always look for.

I literally checked every windows tablet and 2-in-1 i believe. Here some potential picks and what i didn't like.

Microsoft Surface Pro (4 - 5 - 6): At first glance it is a good base candidate..but..really Microsoft? It's 2019 and no USB-C? Proprietary connector and overpriced hardware? Questionable reliability? Get the f*ck out of here. Unless you find a good used deal i don't think it would be worth it. Another Apple wannabe. Eve-tech EVE V: This is one tablet that hits all the boxes, kinda, since by now it is almost obsolete in terms of CPU performance..sadly while i'm greek-cypriot i would go with the stereotypical view for greeks because the CEO is a "malakas" and i'm really sorry to all the people that were scammed. On the other hand i believe there is some truth to the Paypal issues he had since my friend had similar issues (because of not much experience) and even I couldn't help him get them fixed as Paypal is run by assholes as well which need a punch to the face (their excuse it is the system and they can't do anything about it - like wtf). I still use it but the time a different payment system reaches similar adoption i would gladly switch. Chuwi Surbook: Slow CPU, screen is not fully laminated, mediocre specs but was good price at some time ago. Maybe the announced "surbook pro" would fair better? Voyo Vbook i5/i7 Plus: Nice screen, fair pricing? Not the most quality build, shitty battery, i7 model throttles? Teclast X6 Pro: A slightly better vbook i5? No full detailed reviews yet, and i wasn't that impressed from the previous X5 review Alldocube Knote 8: Seems good on paper, but no type-A usb ports Jumper EZpad 6: Possibly the only windows tablet in stock with a good value, however i need something with a better and larger display Acer Switch 3/5: Mediocre screens, single type-A port on the right side (since my car is RHD and the ecu is on the left side i would prefer it on the left side), shitty battery performance, a little overpriced Dell XPS 12 9290/Latitude 5290/Latitude 7285: Great displays, powerful, only 5290 has type-A port, mediocre battery life, overpriced but there are good used deals Asus Transformer 3 Pro T303UA/T304UA: Premium specs but discontinued, expensive, only 1 type-A port and it is on the right side (again), T304 is a huge step backwards even though newer (what the heck Asus, are you drunk?) Lenovo ThinkPad X1: Overpriced, no type-A ports, Gen3 is too big and has display coating issues, Gen2 is more suitable due to size and type-a interface but older and screen brightness not that good - all too tall Lenovo MIIX series: new 630 uses an ARM processor so no go (since i can't force the software developpers to re-compile), 720 rates very high in the features i need, 2 usb type-A ports, nice display, etc. 520 is a little newer with weaker hardware but still good for its price HP Pro X2/Envy X2/Elite X2 1012: HP's other offerings like the Elite X2 1013 are too tall for my needs, and while they have good displays and good build quality i am not font of their design decisions. I have a Zbook 17 G5 workstation at work we bought new and not even 6 months passed and the CPU fan now rattles like crazy..here's my 1st day rant about it: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Note-to-HP-Zbook-17-G5-design-engineers-Please-read-and/td-p/6914797 Also they are overpriced like crazy. I wouldn't ever think of buying again from them. Also the power supply is proprietary as some of the internal hardware. F*ck HP Huawei MateBook E: Aside the lack of ports it is a pretty good designed device, display is perfect but slightly smaller than the biggest i can fit - depending on price it might be a good consideration assuming i can run a USB-C dock i can charge within the car Samsung Galaxy Book 12: Similar to the Huawei above, just a little faster but with a worse display, extra usb-C port. Older and more expensive than the Huawei Toshiba Portege X30T and others: Ports are on the keyboard and not on the tablet, won't work for me.

I think i've covered 99% of the options but i may could have missed 1 or 2. To be honest i won't need this tablet for another 3-6months i would guess but at least i've done my research so i will be prepared when the time comes to buy one. What do you think? I know i went a little crazy but i'm that type of person that never regrets his purchasing choices because i don't buy blindly.

#hardware #Computer #Technology #Tech #News

1 note · View note

someonestole15 · 5 years

Text

>Access Granted, welcome to the armory.

Can I take all of them?

I downloaded the access codes off the hard drive and placed it inside my pocket. I would have to go through the files inside when I had some more time. The map had indicated that the armory would be behind one of the walls inside this office, but not which one it was. I scanned the room several times, no luck in finding the door, but I managed to pick up where a wire connection box was. The wires inside would allow me to mess with the connection and get the door open. I removed a rug covering the box and got it open. Similar in design to the one I had seen in the penthouse back on Earth, but there were twice as many cables running through this one. A small cut through them and I was connected. The security wasn’t too tight, mostly focused on preventing remote hacks with firewalls and blockers, but I had gone straight to the hardware. I located the door control circuits and opened it, a piece of the wall slid to the side, revealing the stairs leading to the armory. Down into the belly of the beast.

I descended down through the stairs, most of the lights blinked on one by one as I got closer to the end, this place might have been untouched for more than 17 months… I hope the equipment down here is still usable. I set my foot down on the floor of the armory, the power was seemingly cut from the entire armory, but after flipping a switch on the wall nearby, I heard power buzz around and all the lights activated. I took a few seconds to focus on things around me before heading in further. I was in a lobby like area, several couches and potted plants placed around to make it seem like a fancy hotel. As I walked past the couches and coffee tables, I reached the table seemed like a reception area. A large chandelier hung above with the light bouncing off the crystals hanging from it. This whole thing feels out of place, a research lab with a luxury armory? Who planned this? Ah hell, I don’t have time to wonder about these things, I need hardware. I dinged the little bell on the desk, it echoed around the area for a while until a service robot similar to the one up above arrived.

“Greetings sir, welcome to the Armory. Is it your first time here?” It asked with a slightly posh, but professional tone.

After I confirmed that it was my first visit to the armory, she took my name and image to add it to their database.

“New user added, you are user: ZX15. We hope you are happy with our services.”

She led me through the security checks and made me leave my weapons behind, telling me that they would be cleaned and repaired. Unarmed, unarmored in a place I had never been before… I hope I won’t regret this.

“We are very serious about our security features, wouldn’t want an unregistered user to get access to these products.”

“I can see that, but why set up here?”

“It’s a perfect place, not many customers, but enough security to keep us safe.”

Hmm, I am not sure they know what is going on above them, but I better keep that to myself for now. We finally reached the showroom, and oh… It was worth the wait. Walls lined with weapons, some familiar and some I had never seen before.

“Let’s get you geared up sir, let me know what pleases your tastes.”

Time to get serious, the commander’s access code had provided me with a VIP access, so everything was available. I grabbed a set of pistols from the wall rack and felt my system calibrate to them.

The wolf has grown new fangs…

#stories #writing #logs of an android #fiction #science fiction #scifi #sci fi & fantasy

1 note · View note

attract-mode-collective · 6 years

Video

youtube

Exactly 79 Photos & Videos Concerning The Game Boy (plus other handhelds)

So... hope you’ve all been following me on Twitter, which is more or less the unofficial new home for Attract Mode. Mostly cuz Tumblr’s days are, alas, numbers, plus I haven’t warmed up to Medium as much as I had hoped to. Though I’ve actually spent the past two months republishing every single post that contains mainline Game Culture Snapshots, so it has remained somewhat useful at least.

Now, for a while there, I had been compiling every single thing tweeted. But because I’m now so damn active on that end… plus I’m busier than ever with other projects… I’m way behind with those digest posts, and the very idea of playing catch up legit gives me anxiety. Yet I have been sharing lots of cool things, which all deserve to be in the blog proper… and because a lot of them are specific to the Game Boy, I figure, why not just focus on that?

Like the above, which is a technique for producing full color photographs via the Game Boy Camera, and yet another thing that I can’t believe hasn’t made the rounds!

Sticking with Game Boy photography, here have a pair of mods that will greatly enhance picture quality. The first involves mounting SLR lens onto a Game Boy Camera (via ekeler.com)...

And the second has one shoving a Game Boy Camera into a SLR itself (via @MaxKriegerVG)...

As someone who was into video games as a kid, and also interested in photography, the Game Boy Camera was the first camera I was able to call my own. Am pretty sure this was the case for others as well?

I also remember seeing this ad in Nickelodeon Magazine (which I would eventually writer for, not too long later) and being absolutely gob smacked (via nintendroid.org)…

Though as much I loved Nintendo brand of FUNtography, I would quickly discover… as did everyone else I also assume… that taking pictures is serious business (via @PolandNintendo)…

Not only did I have a Game Boy Color, but I also had the Game Boy Printer (I still own both, for the record). Unfortunately my snapshots from Link’s Awakening have long since faded, but as with many things, you can find copies online (via gameandgraphics.com)…

Speaking of the world of print, coming soon is a handy guide to Nintendo handy game machine (via miki800.com)…

That one magazine ad featuring Princess Peach catch your eye as well? Well here’s a much better look at it (via suppermariobroth)…

I love handheld gadgets of all kinds, yet some of the popular ones confuse me. Like Hudson’s Shooting Watch; it makes no sense to have a gadget that can detect button presses without a game attached. Guess I’m not alone (via instagram.com/kazzycom)…

A realization I made while sifting through Game Boy related content is how popular the color yellow is with many. Cuz Pokemon? Anyhow, the final post from a blog that specializes in gorgeous photographs of gorgeous hardware, which I just brought up again very recently (via hard-aware)…

How your parents used to trade Pokemans online (via melonjaywalk)…

And no, Game Boys weren't the only things that one could connect to keitais ya know. And yes, Game Boys aren’t the only portables I’ll be showcasing (via anthony10000000)…

I own quite a few VMUs and am always looking to expand my collection… but nothing yellow, sorry. Instead, I want the one covered with dolphins (via anthony10000000)…

So my new favorites artist is Eri Kitamura, and not just cuz she makes pretty looking Game Boys…

She also makes pretty looking girls playing Game Boys (well, this one is technically listening to music)…

Was originally going to post the first thing from Eri that caught my eye, which is a Game Boy with a girl on it, but instead here’s a Game Boy with a girl on it playing a Game Boy…

Time for two more videos from the same individual responsible with the process for producing color photographs at the very top. And it’s what everyone has been waiting… specifically the backlit Game Boy Color mod everyone has been waiting for.

The process is detailed in this two-part video, and here’s the first one (it’s about 50 minutes long cuz spoilers: this shit ain’t easy)…

youtube

And here’s part two, which is ONLY 40-ish minutes long…

youtube

The author of the videos actually has a store, so if the process seems a bit too daunting, you can purchase a pre-modded unit for $250. Actually, this one is $260, cuz of the dual shells. Quite the price tag, yet somehow totally worth it (via instagram.com/esotericmods)…

Now might be a good time to mention how… remember that GBA with the GameCube finish from eBay a few months back? Well, I decided to get the one that resembles a Super Famicom, something I’ve been lusting over for years.

Well, here’s what the aforementioned seller had in his listing…

And this is what I got instead…

Yeah, that green shoulder button is not the right shade. After some complaining, I got the seller to admit that the one in the picture was hand painted; he didn’t know where it get ones that it’s exact color as on a Super Fami controller.

He also had a no refund policy, yet I bitched & moaned enough to warrant an exchange, for another Cube-esque model, one sans the stick. Cuz it’s comparatively boring to look at, here’s a version with the stick…

Again, mine just has the standard d-pad. As for my replacement… the colors of the A & B buttons are not an exact match, once again. But it’s close enough (am mostly just sick of dealing with that guy, aka johnnys_merchandise, whom you should all avoid btw), plus I have started to scour AliExpress for replacements.

BTW, my failure to obtain a modded handheld that channels another form of hardware has me wondering if I should go for something completely different instead (via instagram.com/wakuwakuisland)…

Up in the mountains, flower bloom amongst Game Boys & Game Boy Colors, whereas deep in the forest, you’ll find mushrooms and Game Boy Advances (via pxchinko)…

Some say memories are fuzzy, though for others, they're leafy (via lyosphe)…

I’ve looked all over for tinycartridge's original post, but no luck, so you can all instead have my personal copy of the earthy wallpaper that was shared years ago (and which I still to this very day)...

The Game Boy Micro, DS, and DS Lite are like family, and like siblings, there can the occasional squabble (via benkyo-es)…

@frankcifaldi: When I met this guy in 2003 and he told me he was going to make an extensive fan site about the Supervision, a Taiwanese Game Boy knockoff, I was like "sure dude." 15 years later he actually launched the thing??

Meanwhile, the Game & Watch Perfect Catalogue just came out, with the full low down on all 59 models. BTW, had no idea there were 59 in total until @ionadisco mentioned it…

How Game & Watches were sold in America; I fondly recalls this ad in-between the pages of Amazing/Spectacular/Web of Spider-Man (via suppermariobroth)…

And how Game Boys were sold in Japan, one day one apparently, which would explain this salesperson’s rather perplexed demeanor (via flashbak.com)…

Silly as it sounds, and as silly as he looks, the US version of Firebrand is nonetheless a warm & welcoming face from my childhood (via nintendometro)...

Mario dropping a knowledge bomb (via suppermariobroth)…

Here’s Peach seemingly kicking Toad’s ass in Super Mario Bros Deluxe, which I’ve been meaning to tweet for a while now, but now seems like the right time & place for obvious reasons (via nintendometro)…

A cute comic about someone finally beating a game after ten years, or at least I believe that's the case (you know, language barrier and all; via @desune593)

Sailor Moon seems to enjoy handheld gaming more so than in the arcades (via uglygreenjacket)…

It saddens me that ravages of time is robbing me of my precious memories, including the names of 90s anime, hence why I had to ask on Twitter who exactly is this (answer was Tenchi Muyo; via shxtfased)...

It’s SethEverman, just playing some pokemon blue…

youtube

Speaking of music, it again saddens me that I wasn’t about to make the trip to Japan to catch chiptunes at Square Sounds, and various associated venues. At least @bit_shifter_ took this great snapshot of Glomag at Cyberpunks Osaka…

Meanwhile, here in NYC, we actually still have record stores. And you can grab Josh’s latest release, his first in 12 years(!) at Rough Trade (via bit-shifter)…

Though back to Japan; attended Square Sounds would have also afforded me the chance to check out Tokyo Game Show, where I could have gotten that VMU shaped USB drive that was being sold at the Sega booth (via miki800)…

A few weeks before TGS, there was an earthquake in Japan, in northern island Hokkaido. Many were left without power, but one person was able to keep up with the news, thanks to an old DS peripheral that basically provides bunny ears (via kotaku.com)…

On a semi-related note, here’s someone watching old ECW VHS tapes on their Game Gear (via heavyelectricity)…

Sorry, but the only other thing I have that’s related to Sega’s Master System on the go is this gif from a pizza ranch salad dressing (yikes) commercial, which was cross-promoting Sonic Chaos (via sonicthehedgeblog)...

I have no idea why I'm so amused by this Getty Image of a Neo Geo Pocket that was confiscated at summer camp. Or perhaps no explanation is needed? (via hellomrkearns)…

Speaking of the Great Outdoors, here’s my buddy Steve enjoying some Mario Kart 8 in the middle of a forest (via instagram.com/vitaminsteve)…

And speaking of Mario Kart on the Switch, Bowser seems like a pretty cool dood to have a car trip (via suppermariobroth)…

The Switch is so beloved that people are doing fan art, not for any particular game but the simple the act of playing with it (via annazees)…

Granted, one of the best things about the Switch is all the different ways in which one can play (via kanekoshake)…

If you enjoy your Switch on the go and are looking for a way to store games… and are a diehard Breath of the Wild fan as well… plus if you have access to a 3D printer (via miki800.com)…

youtube

It’s a tribute to Star Wars… games… all of them… featuring Princess Leia focused on her DMG (via deviantart.com/robduenas)...

BTW, do you still have your Game Boy? If not, here ya go (via anthony10000000)…

When the realization hits that your Game Boy Color library is incomplete (via @Bootleg_Stuff)…

Back to my buddy Steve, who visited the Primark at the Staten Island mall and took pics of the game related apparel that, sadly, were no longer in stock by the time I was able to swing by. With the one thing I really wanted being this shirt…

This pair of Super Mario Land X Air Jordans is only $1,350.00 (via miki800.com)…

I’m sure you’ve seen him already, but for the sake of completion, here’s that grandpa from who rigged this bike with 11 phones to become a Pokemon Go master (via bbc.com)…

Yet another sign of our times, literally (via fuckdragonballz)…

This image features a PSP and a MacBook, both of which are from the mid-2000s, yet feels very late 1990s/early 2000s. Why? Those USB cables (via jcgraphix)…

And last but not least, here’s Paris Hilton with her DS in 2005 (via @ParisHilton)…

2 notes · View notes

askaceattorney · 6 years

Text

Dear ellipis-ultima,

As much as I like the joke of Phoenix joining Smash, it’s the same thing of everybody in the PL fandom want’s Professor Layton to be in the game. They have the same possibility, but the majority of people either don’t know the characters, don’t know the capability of the characters, or don’t care about either. Now, about the game as it is...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Kumatora Kumatora Kumatora! Ku-ma-to-ra!! I’ve always been a Lucas main, but I’m DEFINITELY going to main Lucas, JUST so I can see Kumatora in his final smash. And the Inklings! I wanna play them so badly!! I’m SO hyped!

Dear ellipsis-ultima,

It’s funny you should ask -- I already made a comment about it using one of Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” comics on my other blog:

Needless to say, I’m quite excited at the prospects of a Smash Bros. game that includes every flippin’ fighter from previous games. It does make me wonder how much content we’ll get in terms of the music, stages, and storyline (if there is one), but it’s still an intriguing thought.

And if, by some miracle, Phoenix appeared on the roster, my reaction would probably be the same as the one I had when they announced the new Ace Attorney game for the Switch:

Dear Afool Ishdud,

Fixed it. Mind if I borrow your name for a little while?

Dear Inferno,

...Whelp, that’s a book to add to my reading list. If we’re giving out legal book recommendations, I recommend to everybody “Black Jack Justice” by Gregg Taylor. It’s based on the podcast of the same name, and it’s about an old-timey detective and his... perky girl detective partner, and how they first met.

Dear Inferno,

I’ve only read his first book, A Time to Kill (and seen the movie adaptation), and from what I remember, it was pretty great in terms of plot buildup and suspense. I’m admittedly not much of a book-reader, but if his other books are as good as that one, I’ll definitely check it out sometime soon.

(Referenced News Report)

Dear Tanlerst,

Unsurprising.

Dear Tanlerst,

Word.

(Previous Letter)

Yikes... Thank you very much for finding that for us, as well as finding a better link (and another link after that one). Considering how many other links are on this blog, it might be a good idea for us to hire a quality control person. Do you know anyone with a palindromic name?

(Previous Letter)

Dear Guquis,

Possibly, but I'd say it was worth it. It isn’t the first time Athena has made a generalization about men, plus, as a member of that group myself, I wouldn’t say she’s too far off.

Dear Laura,

I’m so sorry I missed your birthday! Happy Birthday anyways! Sorry, I was so caught up with my own things. My friends and I are working on numerous things IRL, plus I’m waiting for a job application to go through, and a lot of other IRL nonsense. :(

Dear askaccurateaceattorney,

Dear Fulbright,

I haven’t been following Pokemon very much lately, so let me just take a quick look at it...

Hmm. Gameplay-wise, it seems like it’s playing the nostalgia card for the sake of older Pokemon fans, but even so, I like how the music sounds, how the multiplayer system works, and how much more real they’re attempting to make raising Pokemon. If I had one of those real-life Pokeballs, I’d probably be petting it all day. As someone who isn’t a hardcore Pokefan, I’ll withhold judgment of it until I see more, but I’m guessing its popularity will mostly depend on which features the developers decide to focus on (hardware, gameplay, graphics, etc.). Who knows? It might end up being great.

I’m also waiting for the Switch’s price to go down a little before I buy one. It looks pretty entertaining from what I’ve seen, but I’ll probably keep clinging to my Wii U until the Switch is within my grasp budget-wise. I’ve also been a fan of the 3DS for a long time (true, I stopped using the 3D feature a while ago, but it’s still amazing), so I hope it retains its popularity for at least a little while longer. The funny thing is, I was lucky enough to find a used one pretty cheap, but I still think it was worth way more than I paid for it. Sorry for ripping you off there, Nintendo!

Dear Pinky the Artist,

I LOVE fan art! It’s, in my personal opinion, one of the best things about any fandom!

Dear Pinky the artist,

Do I? DO I!? I wouldn’t make fan art myself and not accept it from others. Send it on in! (Assuming it’s tasteful, of course.)

And while I’ve already explained this over on my blog, I might as well explain it here so everyone can see it:

This blog was created by someone who called herself Ace Admin (a very clever name, in my opinion). She later handed it off to a guy who called himself the Mod (short for “Moderator”), who ran it up until about a year ago. At that point, he held an audition to pick a new moderator, and the winner was my good friend, who goes by The Modthorne, and she later allowed me to join her as the Co-Mod. (We both picked those names for ourselves, by the way.) The Mod said he was planning to stop by every now and then to answer a few letters, but we haven’t seen him in quite a while, so the blog is now run by the two of us.

However, as I mentioned before, it’s really the writers who provide “fuel” for the blog. We’re just the pilots. We hope you’re enjoying the ride so far!

-Modthorne and Co-Mod

#ellipsis ultima #Afool Ishdud #ajanisapprentice #tanlerst #jnv11 #guquis #aceattorneyfanforever789 #askaccurateaceattorney #Fulbright #ItzmeartistRAE #Mod Post #Modthorne #Co Mod

8 notes · View notes

itscryptovision-blog · 6 years

Text

Blockchain and Mining

Welcome to this week’s cryptocurrency blog. Last week we slightly touched on the blockchain and also a little on mining cryptocurrency. These two topics work hand in hand. Blockchain is the larger entity here, whereas mining works with the blockchain to accomplish its task. Without the blockchain, many cryptocurrencies would be inefficient, as they depend on it for their processing of transactions. It is easier to start things off with what the heck is the blockchain and what makes mining crypto so popular today.

Blockchain is a newly defined term that is not going away. Rather, it is growing in definition and use. The term “blockchain” is used to describe a coding technology used for managing, organizing, and securing financial record. Essentially, it is a ledger containing permanent record of irrefutable transactional data in chronological order, readily available for public examination. A blockchain is secured using advanced cryptography techniques, so what happens within a blockchain staying within the blockchain. Blockchain is desired because on it, no entity is able to manipulate the financial record. The way you make use of a blockchain is by using its associated cryptocurrency, and everyone using one’s associated cryptocurrency is held to the same standards as everyone else using it. Blockchain is the only technology in existence in which we have potential for a fair and honest peer-to-peer marketplace. This market is globally accessible and will connect the world.

As mentioned before, a blockchain uses advanced cryptography to keep the transactional record private and immutable. In today’s economy, it is a common event to see value printed out of thin air. This act jeopardizes the value of the currency we use to survive, given that raiding and looting other people’s goods is frowned upon. When asked for an audit to prove organizations actually have the funds claimed, it is often a “you scratch our back, we scratch yours situation”, and documents are completely falsified. This type of behavior is what enables organizations to manipulate economies around the globe; this same type of behavior is what blockchain technologies eradicates. Every single transaction that occurs on a blockchain is set in digital stone. Using a coding science known as “hashing”, the transaction is scattered across the chain so no entity can go in and manipulate the data. Current computing technologies calculate it would take billions of years to regather sufficient data to manipulate it. To use the blockchain, you must use its digital currency - think bitcoin. Bitcoin has value as long as there are people willing to use it, and that value is derived from scarcity. There are twenty one million bitcoin to be mined and no more will ever be created. If things continue down this ideology, the smallest fractions of a single bitcoin will have more purchasing power than any used currency today. This is great because no controlling organization has power to create more and transactional record is immutable within the blockchain. An audit is as simple as gathering the transactional data from the record, and if you claim that it is something it is not, anyone can check themselves to see what exactly the truth is. How the record is both publicly visible and immutable is courtesy of the coding sciences used. Upon realization of the potential here, more and more people will hop on board the blockchain train.

Blockchain has already been adapted by a couple of companies, which are driving their supply chain. UPS and FedEx, two major shipping giants, use a blockchain for many reasons. Being a shipping company, there are going to be multiple checkpoints for packages to be checked in, switch trucks, put on an overnight plane, etc. These companies would like to know where every single package is between which checkpoint and location as well. Using the blockchain helps these companies drastically being able to stay on top of their packages for their customers. Customers in the shipping industry are very heavily dependent on being able to track their packages at any time of the day. UPS and FedEx customer complaints and issues have gone down since the adaptation of the blockchain. Another company that uses blockchain is Walmart. Walmart employees have the technology at their fingertips to pick up an item and scan it with their phone or device and discover everything about the item. Employees can scan mangoes and figure out which farm the batch of mangoes came from specifically, as well as where they would be stored in the facility. This technology can definitely streamline the restocking process. Blockchain isn’t only being used here, but is being adapted in aviation, finance and banking, automobiles and more. The technology is revolutionary. The companies who have already implemented it into their system know how beneficial it is. Much of the computing and background filing jobs can be put to rest as the blockchain can completely take over. Seems like it only makes sense to make your systems more efficient, and also private. Possibly the best part that the blockchain has to help companies benefit is the way it can store information. It can hold all of a company’s files and keep them safe and secure. Everyone wants their files safe and secure.

The blockchain has different blocks that record each transaction that occur, which helps miners when it comes to figuring out which cryptocurrency they are looking to mine for. Yes, you can mine many different cryptocurrency, not just Bitcoin. Mining is not a simple task though. Miners are to verify the transactions on the blockchain, ensure they aren't false, and keep the infrastructure humming along. In order to successfully create a block, it must be accompanied by a cryptographic hash that fulfills certain requirements. The only feasible way to arrive at a hash matching the correct criteria is to simply calculate as many as possible hashes and wait until you get a matching hash. When the right hash is found, and a new block is formed, the reward for doing so, a miner's fee if you will, is payment in that block's coin. The payment is based on how much their hardware contributed to solving that puzzle. Once the block is solved, coins are distributed fairly to miners who worked on that block. Early on, miners were able to miner many bitcoins in a single day. Now, it is nearly impossible to mine a full Bitcoin in one day.

Although we are not able to mine crypto to the amount we use to due to mass adoption, we are still able to mine hundreds of different cryptocurrencies now. Each crypto is able to be mined differently due to supply of coins and the overall adaptation of consumers that want that specific coin. Generally, the less adapted, the more coins or amount of a crypto one will be able to mine and receive in profit. The more adapted coins, like bitcoin, are mined by millions of people daily. The crypto couldn’t just be handing out its currency left and right otherwise once all mined, it would become unable to mined again and the currency would then have a value based on the holders.

Mining cryptocurrency takes a lot of energy. So much in fact, that mining one full bitcoin takes 343 megawatt. That amount of energy can power up a quarter of a million houses. There was an article posted saying that Iceland has the most cryptocurrency mining in the world going on. The country as a whole runs collectively on about 700 gigawatts per year. This past year, the mining facilities and miners combined as a whole, consumed about 840 gigawatts of power in the country. That amount of energy is absurd! Renewable energy should be the main focus when it come to becoming efficient in the future.

A large majority of miners run their machines 24/7, taking up a large portion of energy. Many miners typically don’t just have one machine either, as they want to max their return on investment potential. These mining rigs are not cheap either, generally running around a couple thousand dollars a rig collectively. At first, most miners use their earnings from their mining rigs to pay for their electricity bill. The amount earned all depends on the token supply and the demand of the crypto itself. The more sought after coin will be worth more and harder to mine because so many people want to mine as well. The amount you earn also depends on the mining rig that you purchase. Like I said, they vary in the thousands of dollars. Doing my research, I’ve seen it is best to get one of the top two mining rigs if you want the best ROI down the road. The cheaper ones are not going to produce as much crypto as one would think they would. Those who buy the cheaper ones sometimes end up paying more for their electric bill that they are earning from their rig. Doing my research, the better ones are the way to go. It would be nice to have a large chunk of change lying around.

#mkt400uwl #cryptocurrency #bitcoin

7 notes · View notes

arthurhwalker · 5 years

Text

Lenovo CES 2019

Disclaimer: I attended Lenovo’s events at CES and CES proper as a guest of Lenovo. All opinions are my own.

This wasn’t my first time going to Las Vegas to help Lenovo promote their brand and represent their customer advocacy program, but it was still a singular experience. CES always is. I always feel like something of an interloper at these things, because I’m not a journalist, marketer, or employee of a tech company. I’m an independent/freelance author, game developer and illustrator.

I fall somewhere between fan and spectator, hobbyist and professional, depending on what booth I am in, or device I am checking out. I go mostly to support the brand that currently makes the tools of my craft, with hope they will continue. That’s what CES is for me, a measure of whether I hold on to what I’m using or update the contrivances of my workflow.

Bryan Custer was the handler assigned to curate the experience for the Lenovo INsiders in attendance. He is Lenovo’s Community Manager, handling the majority of replies from Lenovo’s Global social media channels. He’s a thoughtful guy, possessed of emotional intelligence uncommon in people. I can see why he was selected specifically for the task.

Jen Lawrence and Beto Sanro were the other two members of the customer advocacy program in attendance. Great folks! I learned so much from them while I was there, seeing how they handled digital marketing (they are experts and professionals), through the questions they asked, and observations they made. We also had a lot of fun!

Also in attendance, the inimitable Lenovo INsider, Dave Kennedy.

The first day saw us talking to various executives and getting a little time to try out new products.

Our first meeting with Dilip Bhatia (VP, Global Marketing, User & Customer Experience, PC & Smart Devices) was very illuminating. The last time I spoke with him (2016) he was talking about how Lenovo planned to connect with consumers to garner a sense of their sentiment for certain products and services. Since then, I often joke that it seems like Lenovo has my office bugged when they make certain product announcements.

In 2019, Lenovo is using big data to gather the analytics they need to make decisions about features and products. It shows, because I’ve seen very specific hardware, displays, and features, things I really wanted, show up in current products. It’s clear that Lenovo’s Dilip Bhatia is funneling good information back to product teams and designers.

Our second meeting, with Matt Bereda (VP of Global Marketing), started out with me making a lame joke that fell flat. It was a rough day, and I couldn’t seem to get my words straight through the conversation, but Matt patiently answered our questions and addressed our specific concerns gracefully.

Through the conversation I could tell that Matt Bereda genuinely believed Lenovo was providing value to people through their products. The sort of things that change workflows and lives. I got the impression that giving people information and communicating to the public about that value was priority number one.

I was sick at the press event, but I had to stay long enough to watch Matt Bereda’s full keynote. It was worth the extra discomfort just to see how he worked and interacted with the public. It feels less like he’s trying to convince you to buy something, and more like he’s just trying to give you good information to make an informed choice. It was a welcome departure from how one usually sees tech marketed.

There is every reason to believe Lenovo is going to continue being an attractive option for creative professionals crafting things for the web and for print. That said, I was nervous about the recent shift at Lenovo relative to design before I went to CES. Those concerned evaporated after meeting the VP of Design, Brian Leonard.

I asked a lot of questions about the rate of iteration between generations, prototyping for new devices, and how design influences the rise or demise of a brand. What shone through was that Lenovo intends to make things that are beautiful and functional, with the latter never suffering for the former. Then, I asked about the 3rd Generation Yoga Book, and whether we’d see a Ruby Red Yoga Book C930.

All things are possible. I have high hopes for that form factor.

Along that same thread, I was able to play with Lenovo’s Yoga A940 AIO for at least a half hour between two sessions. It’s a device with tremendous potential, waiting for some advances in NFC and for the price to come down on certain components. I’ll explain.

At first glance, it looked like the deck beneath the screen wirelessly charged the pen, keyboard, mouse, and had a spot to charge a smartphone as well. Lenovo’s Kevin Beck said he made a similar assumption, and Brian Leonard confirmed that such functionality had been a consideration. Because that sort of wireless charging isn’t cheap, it didn’t make it into the final product. Maybe in the Gen 2?

My wireless desk feels so close, and yet, miles away. That said, the inclusion of a content creation dial that can be attached to either side of the screen, for left and right handed folk, feels like a big deal. How big a deal? Huge.

If you know me, you know I dislike Windows 10. I’m pretty much all Ubuntu these days, but to use a Yoga Book Gen 1, or the new Yoga Book C930, I would tolerate Windows 10. Added to that list, definitely, is the Yoga A940 AIO as well. The hardware is so good, I would more than gladly use Windows 10 to have access to the features and form factor.

The Yoga Book C930 and Thinkvision P32u weren’t new products at CES, but it was the first time I was able to lay hands on them. The new Yoga Book is the ultimate companion device. Currently, I carry a stylus-equipped ReMarkable E Ink Tablet and my Ruby Red Gen 1.5 Yoga Book. The new Yoga Book C930 basically combines both of those devices in one tiny form factor, for the same money. Amazing.

How good is the Thinkvision P32u? There’s a picture of me hugging it on Twitter. Gods, the display and the features on that display are so (so) good.

Also, at Lenovo’s CES 2019 display was Lenovo’s AMOLED Yoga C730. Somehow, I walked right by it. Another INsider said the display was there, but understated. Still can’t believe I missed a chance to put my hands on one. It’s a big deal for folks that ink illustrations digitally. You haven’t really inked in Photoshop, GIMP, Mischief, or Krita until you’ve done it on an AMOLED display. The contrast ratio can’t be compared to anything else.

The second day saw as through product tours, with even more time to lay hands on displays and products.

Definitely, Lenovo is very conscious of the consumer’s desire for privacy. Every product seemed to have new privacy features, both in the hardware and the software. I saw a smart lock door handle for your home, a hardware switch for the microphone on their new smart alarm clock, and privacy software that detects people lurking behind you while working on your laptop. If you’re anxious about protecting your intellectual property and your privacy, Lenovo has a product to help you out.

There were the usual gimmicks, like a Formula 1 racing simulator, and cheesy eye-candy displays to draw people in, but there was also more substance to Lenovo’s CES offerings this year.

The Legion Gaming line has matured to the degree that even the pure Thinkpad crowd turned their heads slightly.Would I have bought a Legion Gaming rig at inception, no. Would I buy one of their new devices? Most assuredly. Would I buy a Thinkpad with the same cooling and IO set up at the 15” Y740? Anyone would.

We also had the chance to watch a Lenovo Unboxed video be produced. The INsiders in attendance got to be filmed giving their opinion about whether they favored the new X1 Carbon, or X1 Yoga. Gavin O’Hara threatened to have me draw on camera, but, fortunately, to the betterment of all, that did not happen, and none of the footage made it to the final video. Whew! ;-D

youtube

Day three had us on a Hoover Dam/Grand Canyon tour.

I spent a lot of time riding in the back of the Hummer on my Thinkpad X1 Extreme prepping posts and recording my observations and recollections. In that moment, I realized just how much Lenovo’s products had influenced my workflow. Sitting in my lap was a device I could pleasurably generate textual assets with, draw with a digitizer stylus on the screen, or play Fallout 76 with my spouse. Much of my work and play fit entirely in a backpack via a slim 15” form factor.

The tour was amazing, and so was the company. Bryan, Jen, and Beto are great to travel with.

As I write this, I’m reflecting on the time spent at CES. I got a chance to look at some of Lenovo’s competitors at CES because I was curious of what they were bringing to the table. I think if there’s anyone Lenovo should keep in their rear view, it’s probably Samsung. In the consumer (non-commercial) space, they make a pretty nice laptop, tablet, and phone.

Everyone else seems to lack a central design philosophy, or they haven’t iterated on those principles to the degree I think they’re keeping up. That isn’t to say Lenovo won’t have competition in 2019, because they definitely will. Communicating the value of their products is going to be important for folks that rely on them, and that’s why I continue to promote the brand.

#LenovoCES #CES #LenovoIN #SponsoredTrip #Lenovo #Thinkpad

5 notes · View notes