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*.BAK

AeroPress Flow Control Filter Cap

After the trip to Texas, where AeroPress proved very useful, I decided that I want to try using a metal filter instead of disposable paper filters, despite the fact that those were widely available. Metal filter works, but the coffee drips even worse than with the paper filters. So the next step was to replace the default filter cap with a pressurized one.
Coffee machines use pressurized baskets to mitigate effect from coffee that was ground long time ago. Here, the idea is that a rubber gasket in the centre prevents coffee from dripping, until you start pressing it.
I’m yet to see the promised crema even with freshly ground coffee, byt at least I don’t end up with hands soaked in hot coffee, which is still a good thing.

Categories
PC Gaming

Kingdom Come Deliverance

Someone really wanted an episode where you have to infiltrate a monastery, it seems. The problem is, this kills the pacing of the game. You just led an assault on Cuman camp and chased counterfeiters. Now you have to smuggle wine and wake up in time for morning prayer. Having godly lockpicking and speech skills by that point in the game definitely helps, though.

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One of the chores in the monastery is copying books, and it demonstrates well how monks were able to produce those stupid mistakes. Good luck doing better:

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Another extremely helpful skill in this game is the “Headcracker” perk. A change to one-hit-kill an opponent by simply aiming to the head is huge. Saved my life many times, for example, when the three bandings still turned up on me despite me spending a week in monastery doing those stupid quests.

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At this point you discover that when Sir Radzig called you “my boy”, he didn’t mean it figuratively… And all the royalty knew about it.

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After that point, some quests will auto-fail, but guess you can’t get the all 🤷‍♂️

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*.AVI

Penguin S01

I didn’t watch The Batman with Pattinson. Not a fan of DC or the Batman universe. But after The North Water, I decided to see Colin Farrell play another villain—and I’m glad I did.

 

The only connection to Batman is some names: Gotham, Arkham, Oswald Cobblepot. Batman himself is literally mentioned twice: at the very start of the first episode and at the very end of the last one. Everything else is a crime drama.

 

I almost want to say they pulled a bait-and-switch, like Mad Max: Fury Road, which wasn’t really about Mad Max but about Furiosa. But they didn’t. It’s just that Sofia Falcone is very fleshed out here. But so is Penguin. They toe a fine line, without making it a story about a “Girl-Boss” who was told all her life what to do, betrayed by those Evil White Men, and now she will crush them… No, it’s not that kind of story.

 

I also almost want to say they just repeated what Joker did—creating an ultra-realistic villain attached to his mother. But that’s incorrect too. Phoenix’s Joker wasn’t a villain at all; he was an anti-villain, in the way there are anti-heroes. While Farrell’s Penguin is a full-fledged villain.

The main theme for me in Penguin is the theme of lies. Cobblepot is an absolute liar, as demonstrated in the very first episode when he’s tortured by Sofia, and again in the very last, where she tortures him once more. He never tells the truth, never admits it—he always doubles down. There’s a lot of defiance of expectations throughout. And it’s not just Penguin; his mother plays into this as well. What actually convinced me to keep watching was Deirdre O’Connell in the first episode—that switch between a somewhat lost old woman with dementia and a vicious, megalomaniacal force.

And going back to lies—the biggest lie we tell ourselves is probably that what we do is to make our parents proud.

Visually, it’s so stunning I can hardly believe it’s a TV series. They did borrow a bit from Fallout, with ultraviolence set to jazz songs, but they have their own style too. Probably the scene that impressed me the most was the “vote of confidence” using cheap beer cans. But really, there was so much to unpack. Like the mundainess of Penguin’s violence.

All I can say is—my faith in TV series has returned. For now.

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Categories
PC Gaming

Far Cry 6

It feels like people understand less and less what made Far Cry tick. Far Cry 3 had immense sense of presence. How cutscenes worked from first-person, how characters followed you with their eyes. By Far Cry 6, it’s all gone. Now your missions are presented on this sterile backdrop.

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I haven’t played New Dawn much, I don’t like when I shoot someone in the head and they don’t die. But the makeshift weapon aesthetic is straight from there. Weapons are the only part Ubisoft still didn’t manage to ruin.

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What they got right is, for example, that you don’t put a scope on a LMG. But you can put a laser pointer. And that the weapons you get from caches are unique and useful. In really disappointed me in Far Cry 3, when you climb some lighthouse and find absolutely nothing of value.
You also have a pet crocodile now. It’s alright. Don’t remember if Far Cry 5 had pets, and don’t care much for them. Same goes for horses, which aren’t stopped by spinkes at checkpoints.
My trouble is, that the game becomes more and more Just Cause. Now you can climb everywhere with a grappling hook, fall from anywhere with a parachute, steal an ancient Soviet tank by yourself, firing and driving it at the same time.

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You pick a phone, and a car is delivered to you anywhere. Everything is so effortless, it’s not fun anymore.

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Categories
PS3 Sony

Virtua Fighter 2

As I wrote at least once already, Saturn version of Virtua Figher 2 was inferior to the arcade original. And that’s the version that was ported to PS2 as part of Sega Ages Collection series.

But from this video I discovered that PS3 and Xbox360 actually had a proper arcade version. I don’t own Xbox360 anymore, but still have PS3, so I gave it a try. And they aren’t wrong. It is indeed the arcade version, with bridges in Shun’s stage and all that.
Interestingly, PC version, which was the first I played, is a mix of the stages from the Saturn version and models from the arcade version. So I was right to remember that PC version somehow looked better.

The main benefit of that version is that there’s a movelist in the pause menu.

Categories
*.BAK

Schorschbrau Schorschbock beer

I never thought I’d write it about a German beer, but this is a mindblowing beer. It doesn’t look like a beer, and doesn’t taste like a beer, though. Completely opaque, like a coffee with a bit of milk in it, and with a heavy sediment. I rarely “taste” anything in beere, unless it’s something like a literal chocolate stout, but here, I can taste chocolate, coffee, and raisins. It’s closer to Madeira at that point than to a beer.
Also the bottle is something else, with the swing-top cap and wax. Theoretically, it could mean you could trink this beer in two seatings, and at 16% it even makes some sense.

Categories
*.BAK

Painting Skaven

I did buy Kolinsky Sable brush from Winsor & Newton, Series 7 size 000. It turned out to be a disappointment. No different from synthetic brushes, and it cost ten times more. Some say they have quality issues, others say there are counterfeits sold on Amazon:

Brand new Windsor & Newton series 7, anything to do to fix it?
byu/beardmire inminipainting


Then I got Raphael 8404 size 0. This is what I was promised from Kolinsky Sable brushes. It didn’t make me an amazing painter, but now I’m able to paint warts on my rats.
Seven rats done, 13 rats to go.

Categories
Emulation

Apple Pippin

Discovered this console existed thanks to eBay. Someone sells it for 600GBP

This is basically a PowerPC without HDD, but with a gamepad.

Categories
*.BAK

Tamdhu 18 Years Old

Final of the three Tamdhu tasters, and obviously most expensive, at 138GBP per bottle.
It’s very smooth, sweet, adds alot of numbness in the mouth, but no warmth in the throat. Warmth in the belly comes long after.
Is it worth extra 40GBP on top of Tamdhu 15? I’d say it depends. If you already have Tamdhu 15, probably not. But if it’s the only Tamdhu you plan to get for a while, then I’d say yes, although it is a stretch for sure.

Categories
PSX Sony

Persona 2 Eternal Punishment

Completed Persona 2 Eternal Punishment.

Of course there is another Xibalba golden temple, called here Torifune. I’m not sure if it’s more annoying than the one in Innocent Sin or slightly less. There are unavoidable traps, which I consider a bad design choice, but the dungeon is slightly shorter.

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The nice thing about Eternal Punishment is there are some unique abilities to the character-specific personas, with dedicated animations, that makes them feel special, and really burn through enemies.
There is a system of registering and duplicating spell cards in this game. In later games, this will be replaced with registering and resummoning personas.

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Despite beating the final boss on my second try, I still consider it quite ridiculous. I had to resurect characters 40 times, as he continuously smashes all characters for 3/4 of their life.
But hey, my characters were level 69-71, while a guide I read later suggest them to be 80-90 😆

Overall, I think it’s a shame they decided to split the game into two parts. Innocent Sin had a compeling story that ended with a cliffhanger, but the sequel is mostly the same ideas, with more dungeon grinding on top.

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*.BAK

Painting Skaven

I thought that what I’m missing is a better brush. Turns out, what I was missing is a better magnifying glass.
There are magnifying glasses for 10-15GBP, with names like NZQXJXZ. I went for a 30GBP magnifying glass instead. It worked, but I didn’t like the shadows.
Now I got myself a magnifying glass from Brightech. Twice as expensive, 70GBP, but what a difference it makes. There are no reflections, and no shadows whatsoever. I immediatelly noticed mistakes I made with the previous glass just a couple of days ago, and fixed them using exactly the same brushes.

Categories
*.BAK

Painting Skaven

Both the handbook and the official video paint Skaven half-assedly. I of course do no have the talent to paint them to the level of someone who did that for 10-20 years. But those are rats, rats should have pink tails, and both of the official guides don’t care to paint them any differently at all.
Stormcasts are pain to paint mainly because of their shields and pauldrons. Skaven require a lot of colors.
There’s metal.
There’s wood.
There’s leather.
There are their teeth and nails.
There’s the tail and tongue.
They also have two layers of fabric instead of just one.
And I also decided not to paint fur. In the official art, they are mostly fur-less, with exposed skin and just some patches of fur. But I wanted the pinkish tail to be the contrast, so my skaven have short white fur, I guess.

Categories
PSX Sony

Persona 2 Eternal Punishment

The game tries very hard to tie-in the first Persona, something Innocent Sin never attempted to do. I never played Persona 1, so all those Guido and The Boy With an Earing don’t mean anything to me.

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After the Underwater Temple, Ellen leaves the party (no big loss, although that could be said about most characters in this game), and Tatsuya joins. Now we have Katsuya and Tatsuya, great! Tatsuya explains that he’s the conciense of Tatsuya from The Other Side in a body of Tatsuya from This Side. Although technically This Side is the Other Side 😆
At least he arrives leveled enough, while all my other characters seem to be constantly underleveled, as no matter how much I grind, it still doesn’t seem to be enough.
Finally discovered what the different metals are for: summoning unique personas. And those are used automatically, when you reach around level 50.

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Categories
Mobile Gaming

Tacticus

Eldrion is indeed a game changer, literally. The damage out is now x2 if not x3

Eldar campaign seems to be much easier than others, that have steep difficulty spikes. And it also has much more lore embedded in it.

Unlocked Forgefiend through guaranteed requisition. As I mentioned multiple times, war machines are not very useful.

Then through another requisition unlocked both Abaddon and Anuphet. One one hand, this is incredible, as both are very expensive characters to unlock. And Anuphet is very useful, as there’s a Necron campaign that allows to farm Ultramarine characters. On the other hand Abaddon… Not so much.

From requisition milestone rewards got Wrask. Not very useful.

Unlocked Isaak during his release event. He isn’t that great, as you need other Genestealers and Genestealers in general aren’t worth getting. But I grab what I can.

Categories
*.BAK

Dragon’s Milk Tales of Gold

Now I’ve tried the Black, the Red and the Gold Dragon Milk beers. All three are fantastic. The only reason I wouldn’t buy the Golden Ale is there are plenty of belgian beers available at this level: Gulden Drak is what they were aiming for, I think.

Categories
PC Gaming

Kingdom Come Deliverance

The tournament quest has a surprising extension. The final contender in the tournament is a guy called Black Pete. After beating him, you meet a blacksmith in one of the villages that tells you his son once beat Black Pete too, but then succumbed to a strange illness. Time passes. Then Black Pete suddenly ambushes you, and he has a poisoned sword, one scratch and you are dead. Yeah, just like the blacksmith’s son.
Finally, I decided I had enough of sidequests, and it’s time to raid the cuman camp. It’s no slouch. There are a lot of cumans, and they see very well even in the dark and rain. I did manage to kill their captain, and burn some arrows. Not sure if you’re supposed to burn all of them or not. As I was escaping, fell in a ditch (it’s very hard to see in the dark), and a few bandits cornered me there. It didn’t end well for them, though. Not a blacksmith’s son anymore, I guess.
The siege of the bandit’s base is extremely impressive. There are arches shooting at you from the palisade (guess I had to burn both barrels of arrows, God knows how), there is a dozen of enemies and a dozen of your guys, all clashing together. There’s nothing quite like it.

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Categories
*.BAK

Tamdhu 15 Years Old

I already wrote about Tamdhu 12, as I got it from Advent Calendar last year, and I think it was great for its price. Now I got myself a taster of Tamdhu 12, 15 and 18. I still stand that Tamdhu 12 is great. But Tamdhu 15 is even better. Which is not always the case, mind you.
It is sweet, smooth, and leaves nice warmth not only in the throat, but also in the belly. With some liteheadiness on top.

Is it worth twice the price of Tamdhu 12? For the moment I think yes.

Categories
PSX Sony

Persona 2 Eternal Punishment

The Sea Cruiser and Underwater Temple sequence is… punishing. I’m glad Innocent Sin taught me to always stock on HP and MP items to the max. Still, the Underwater Temple is full of trapped floors that make you repeat the same sequence over and over again. And unlike trapped floors in Innocent Sin, those are only visible on the minimap.
During fight with Chizuru in the temple, I simply got lucky. Persona 2 loves the “shell game” mechanic. Boss summons 4 clones, then swaps places with one. Clones have some reflective properties, either a particular element or like in this case all of them. You need to guess which is the real one, and once you do, clones disappear, then the process repeats itself. Chizuru also casts Rage, which doubles the physical damage, but makes character attack at random. Which is usually deadly, as 4 out of 5 enemies would reflect the double damage right back. But this time, it simply worked in my favour, finishing the boss off.

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Categories
PC Gaming

Kingdom Come Deliverance

One design principle the game kind of breaks is putting very dangerous actions alongside very casual actions. “Trade” is “E”, while “Pickpocket” is “Long press E”. “Mount horse” is “X”, while “Sick your dog on a guard” is “Long press X”. You are one long press away from jail.
Dog also allows to break the game in interesting manners. One of the random encounters is a knight that offers to duel you for a wager. Those knights are tough and well armoured. But if you unleash the dog during the duel, it will distract the knight, allowing you to land a few free blows.
Finally managed to beat the tourney. It’s difficult, as you have to go through 6 bouts, and it takes 15 minutes of real time non-stop. But it’s easier once you understand it’s all about riposte. Do it enough times, and you’ll chip through opponent’s health without taking damage yourself.

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PC Gaming

Kingdom Come Deliverance

Got myself a dog. Dog is amazing, because it can fetch you rabbits you shot, that otherwise hard to find in the bushes, and it even can take down a boar.
At first I didn’t understand why meat you pick up from a deer or a boar appears as “stolen”. A funny bug? Then I understood that the game has concept of poaching.
One of the most important skills for a squire is… Lock picking. Everyone likes to store valuables in locked chests. And thief guild quests, sorry, millers quests, pay very well. Also, there’s a huge difference if you are fighting one enemy or two at the same time. And forget about fighting three. So if you manage to backstab one of them, you even your chances.
Game’s “perks” are more like “traits” in Fallout. Often they have not just positive, but also negative effects, like raising your strength, but lowering speech. Or they are mutually exclusive: you can’t get a stats bonus both in the wilderness and in vicinity of settlements. Given the fact that most bandits are in the wilderness, I picked the former. To be safe.
Some of the quests are timed, but it’s not clear that they are. The wounded in the Monastery die after a few days if not treated.

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