Usually I dislike lower ABV stouts, but I really enjoyed this one. The head is very tall, had to let it settle for a bit. The taste is smooth, sweet, definitely strong coconut influence.
I learned about the Savaki fighting game from “Great Sega Saturn 3D Fighter Extravaganza!, Retro Muel” , and of course with my love for Virtua Fighter 2 and Last Bronx (and hate for Fighting Vipers) I had to check it out.
It is a very grounded game, in more than one sense. There are seven fighers, each representing real style: karate, muay thai, taekwondo. They don’t have names, just the style they use. There are no astrojumps, and really almost no jumps at all, except a couple of special moves. The game uses five button setup, but what a setup: punch, kick, feint punch, feint kick, and namesake “savaki”, which is like a counter.
This is the first fighting game that has fall damage. Meaning you hit your opponent, he takes some damage, and if he falls, he takes more damage. Also, hit detection is surprisingly good: you can low kick your opponent as they fall for additional hit.
The game is also surprisingly easy. Considering I barely understand its mechanics, I managed to get to the final boss, who’s this huge freestyle luchador. He is though, though.
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Razer Pro Click V2 Vertical Edition
I know I said I’m done with Razer. I lied. Partially. I’m done with them for gaming, but I got this vertical mouse to try at work.
It’s such a weird mouse, because with it Razer does everything right, while it got everything wrong with its latest Deathadders and whatnot.
Integrated shell buttons. Magnetic dongle storage inside the mouse. Bluetooth. Grip texture instead stickers.
For the comfort: it’s like barefoot shoes. If your problem is in ankles, they help. If your problem is with tendons, they make things worse.
With this mouse, I feel that my tendons work less, but my elbow and even shoulder work more.
Completed Deathloop.
I thought that the sniper rifle shown on the promo art is not in the game. But you get it in a very Hitman 47-like twist, where Eternalists set a package for you, then snipers ambush you from all sides. By that point, though, I had a Metal Gear Solid-like stealth, that is infinite, as long as you don’t move, which is crazy.
So the main plot twist is that Julianna is not your disgrunted lover. She’s your daughter.
At first I was under the impression that I needed to figure out in which order to execute the Visionaries. But turns out there is just one order, and it’s all explained to you, no missing it
Overall, executing the plan is fun, with one exception. Maybe I spent too long, but most visionaries stopped dying from a single headshot. Power creep. So what was supposed to be an elegant kill turned out to be messing firefight.
I like how the game doesn’t force a stealthy approach on you, like Dishonored did. You get spotted, you often get a chance to fight out of it, without repercussions.
What I don’t like is that the game does make me feel a bit dump. The expectation that I would be able to create a time-bending plan to trap and kill all 8 of my Visionary “friends” in a single day is a bit too much.
Funny enough, Deathloop has same problem with its arsenal as Far Cry 6. Early on I got an elephant rifle from Julianna that fires explosive bullets. And honestly, you don’t need any other weapon in this game. It one-shots all enemies at such a distance they don’t even hear the shot. And it’s still efficient at close range.
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Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo
Finished listening to Six of Crows. My impression hasn’t changed much.
It is an internaining, but flawed book. It is never explained why Inej is such a great assassin if she was trained as a gypsy acrobat. Are all gypsy acrobats great assassins? As she’s seventeen, are do they become more or less deadly with age? Why there aren’t more acrobat gypsy assassins then? Same goes for Kaz: he’s supposed to be a cripple, but then he managed to beat opponents in hand-to-hand combat over and over again 🤷♂️
The whole buildup for Kaz’s childhood story turned out to be nothing. I expected that his brother was killed while assaulting the crooks that scammed farm money out of him, just stabbed or hit on the head. But no, he died from the plague. Now blaming scammers for this to the point that your entire life is a revenge… is a bit too much. Also, how convenient that the head scammer is also the head of the gang. I would have hired an actor instead, but who am I to judge?
For some reason, Leigh unable to hold suspension, at all. At one point she sets up a scene where Matthias traps Nina in a cell, and it’s almost convincing that he’s willing to trade her for his former position in “Inquisition”… but this resolves a couple of pages later. And this happens time and time again. I’m not a fan of cliffhangers, but it’s like Bardugo tried to avoid them proactively.
Also, isn’t it “neat” how the group of thieves is divided into 3 couples (one of them is gay-bi)? 🤡
The ending is fine, there are at least a couple of good plot twists, and it segways into the second book, which is both good and bad: I prefer complete stories, but I don’t suppose author could finish in on anything solid.
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Asus GL752VW
I decided to yield. After practicing in soldering, taking a long look at the burned motherboard to undrestand the connectors, half-disassembling the laptop, I decided it’s not worth trying to risk a working laptop just to try and solder back 15 pin DVD connector.
Well, I tried, and had some fun in the process. On to another project, I guess.
For the past year or so I was always using 3DS “Memory Management” to transfer files from and to the console. Not sure what changed, either my router or Windows 10, but I can’t make it work anymore. The console shows in “Network”, but despite turning legacy SMB, PC won’t connect to it.
Of course using SD card is always an option, but I don’t like to open my 3DS for that, even I have to do it only once every couple of months.
Then I understood that I’m just stupid. Jailbroken 3DS has an FTP app. End of story. Now I have Xbox, Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and 3DS all working through FTP.
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King and Conqueror
I had to see black Anglo Saxons for myself. Watched first 2 episodes, not sure if I’d watch more.
Edward is portrayed as not so much simpleminded, but more of a “not right in the head”, “speaking to God and hearing answers”, so to say.
Sweyn, Harold older brother, is an idiot that likes to deflower brides, and when provoked draws a sword at coronation.
The Game of Thrones level of Secret here is that King Henry of France ordered William of Normandy father assassinated.
Once Mathilda, William’s wife, discovers The Secret, Henry invades Normandy, and William escapes to Flanders, which are relatives of Mathilda.
Godwin of Wessex murdered Aethel, firstborn of Emma. So now Emma is bent on annexing Wessex.
She uses Mercia to stir chaos and build a pretext for that.
First, she exiles Godwin, and then sets early of Mercia on them as well. Ironically, Godwin decides to sail to Flanders as well.
And Godwin murdered Aethel because unlike Edward, he would never marry Godwin’s daughter.
So basically Godwin outplayed himself.
I never liked roguelikes, especially not roguelike FPSs, but then that’s because they didn’t have budget. Deathloop tries to pull what Hades did before: roguelike, but with a good story and art. This one has a 60’s aesthetics, which haven’t tired yet.
It’s a stealth shooter at its core. You mark your enemeies, they have alert meters, you’re given a silent nailgun early on, all that stuff. For some reason they decided to do away with bodies, maybe they didn’t want you to carry them around. But unlike stealth shooters, weapons have different quality levels.
As the name suggests, it’s a Groundhog day. Every day divided into 4 episodes, and then you wake up on a beach again. You play as Colt, amnesiac former head of security, who is now set to escape. In order to do so, he needs to eliminate all 8 of his former colleagues in a single day.
They really nailed the shooting mechanics. Weapons look unique enough, but also recognizable enough to understand their function, and they handle just right. There’s a jamming mechanic, which I don’t remember since Far Cry 2. Probably added so I wouldn’t be able to mow down dozens of enemies like I did in Far Cry 6.
This is such a weird game to make. It seems they took the engine of Assault Horizon, and the “story” of Ace Combat 2. The ironic part is, Ace Combat 2 didn’t have much story to begin with. Yeah, your first mission is to down some bombers. But almost every Ace Combat game starts with such a mission. Story in early Ace Combat 1 and 2 where, like in porn, just an excuse for some action.
With that said, it looks and plays amazingly. This is probably the most impressive game I’ve seen on 3DS. I’d even say that it looks better or at least on par with PS2 installments. And the first game that actually uses the second thumbstick of New 3DS, and the ZL/ZR buttons.
In terms of mechanics, this is more of Assault Horizon than Ace Combat 2, since you get to pick your load out. Moreover, something I haven’t seen in any other Ace Combat yet is ability to customize parts of your plane, in an RPG like fashion.
And there are also defensive and offensive maneuvers. Once a bar fills up, you can either magically place yourself behind enemy or magically evade the next missile. To counter that, missiles are harder to evade regularly.
Also, they added checkpoints, something I don’t remember in other Ace Combat games. But at least you don’t have to replay 10 minutes.
Categories
Miyabi Mizu
A quick rundown on Miyabi knives, main Shun competitors:
Black
– The most expensive
– MC66, 66 hardness
Birchwood / Artisan / Mizu
– SG2 steel, 63 hardness
– Birchwood: wooden handle
– Artisan: Big European handle
– Mizu: slim Japanese handle from Kaizen
Koh / Koya
– FC61 is like VG10, 61 hardness
Only difference is handle
Both with long bolster
Kaizen / Kaizen 2
– FC61 / VG10
Since I already own VG Max Shun Premier, I went for Mizu, and since I didn’t need two 8″ knives of the same shape, I picked 6″. Wish there was santoku available, but there wasn’t.
Now we just need to wait and see how sharp it will be in a month.
Completed Ace Combat 3.
This wasn’t easy, but not because the game is hard. To get the True Ending, you need to beat all 5 scenarios, and save them on the same memory card. I didn’t know that, so I used two memory cards, and had to repeat at least one scenario. I was also afraid that I was missing some missions, due to the way save states and memory cards work in RetroArch. But it worked out in the end.
I know I complained a lot about boss battles in this game. But “Ouroboros 1” scenario is probably the best boss battle in the entire series. First, Rena goes crazy, and you fight Night Raven. Then Keith comes to your rescue and sticks his plane in Rena’s (Night Raven is like a biplane from WW1).
In the Fi/Neucom ending, Dision mentions Yoko, but we have no idea who she is. Turns out, she was a scientist and Dision’s lover that performed Sublimation on him. It’s not a concience transfer, but a concience copy. So when General blew Dision and Yoko up, Dision-clone could watch how his original dies.
Keith/General ending is surreal, and I say it after the cyberspace battle from Dision’s ending. You fight Rena after failing to collapse geofront ceiling on her and Dision. Keith is shot down, but not before he shoots down Dision too. Then you need to fight 8 more Night Ravens! But once you beat the first, you somehow hack it, and then pilot it for the rest of the battle. No explanation is given, and the cockpit is shown to be empty.
In Dision/Uroboros ending, Dision mentions Simon, but it’s not clear why. In the True Ending, we get an explanation, and it’s a good one. Nemo is a computer program (that’s why Rena at the very beginning asks you why do you fly just like her), and the purpose of that program was to erase Dision from cyberspace. And alternative scenarios are alternative paths that the program takes to erase Dision. Talk about breaking the 4th wall.
Ace Combat 3 story is not just unparalleled for a flightsim. It is one of the best storylines in games. Dision plot made me think of Soma (which I hated) and Tides of Numenera (which I’m fond of), while multiple conflicting storylines reminded me of Zero Escape games, which, when I think of it, also dealt with conscience transfer.
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Trouble Sleep, Stigbergets Bryggeri
I don’t remember a barrel aged beer I didn’t like yet. This Swedish Imperial Stout is no exception. Very smooth and sweet, like a cold brew with maple. With surprisingly tall head, half glass of it. As with most barrel aged imperial stouts, feeling relaxed, but not heavy, despite 12.5 ABV.
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Anova Precision Cooker sous vide
I’ve been cooking my steaks sous vide in a slow cooker for a year or so. Finally, I decided to get a proper sous vide. After some research, I settled on Anova. Then I discovered that it is 50% cheaper in the US, so I decided to get one during my trip.
That was easy enough. But then “luckily” coming back to the UK I decided to check voltage before plugin it. And it’s 110V only. If I’d plugged it, it would have fried immediatelly. There’s such a thing as step down voltage transformers. But for 1000W, they cost as much as the cooker itself.
So I ended up buying another one in the UK. I went for a slightly older version than the one I brought from US, but looking at the specs, I’m not sure why I would pay 100GBP more in the UK for it. At first I thought that the sleeve wasn’t removable in the old version, but it is.
The first dish I cooked was scallops. They worked out perfectly. Then I tried poached eggs. I was very excited, as sous vide promised you could cook them in their shells. Two recipes suggested 75C for 12 minutes. It was a disaster. The shells wouldn’t separate, the whites too runny 🤷♂️
Next is cooking a steak, I guess.
Next I decided to go back and shoot down Fi and Clarkson, which took me to the UFEO scenario.
Park, the UFEO commander, is corrupt and working with Uoroboros to pit General and Neucom in order to eliminate both.
There’s an interesting twist in he mission where you need to bomb nanomachines: Rena’s plane gets infected, and you need to hit it with a freefalling bomb 😬
It’s explained that Dision onboarded Rena into an experimental program convincing her to install neurolink so she could pilot Night Raven. Then he was killed by General either because Neucom split or for another reason, but managed to preserve himself in Electrosphere.
He offers Night Raven to Rena, but she uses it to shoot the zeppelin out of the sky. She crashes, but survives to be picked up by Nemo (the protagonist) and Erich. The strange helicopter you blow in the English version turns out to be Park trying to flee.
This ending is much more positive, and also the entire scenario is easier: Su43 you get from UFEO is far better than the aircraft from Neucom, and there are no annoying boss battles or tunnel runs at all.
At the mission where you need to escort the UN diplomat, Fi is onboard with him when you’re ordered to shoot the aircraft, because Clarkson is about to defect to Neucom. Rena doesn’t care, but Erich objects. Another choice.
Joining Neucom we’re introduced to Cynthia, Fi’s edler sister. Turns out she is a Neucom ace, and obsessed with “Sublimation”, or in other words transcending into cyberspace.
Another choice, either follow her and join Ouroboros, or stay with Fi and Neucom. I didn’t save that broad just to let her go! So I stay with Fi.
In the underground, we fight Rena, then Dision. Now at least I understand who I fought in the English version. And that’s it, end of Neocom scenario. No delirious fight in Electrosphere. I thought that fighting Dision for a second time would be better. It wasn’t.
Rena receives a message from her sister telling her that she’s happy in cyberspace. The end.
I mentioned that Ace Combat 3 was the longest Ace Combat I played, and now I understand why. They mashed together missions from different scenarios. So I didn’t get to blow a train or to fight a virus or to free a path for a falling zeppelin. A single campaign in the Japanese version takes under an hour, pretty standard for Ace Combat games.
It’s time to compare the English disgrace with Japanese original. First, there are two fan translations: Project Nemo and LoadWordTeam
Second is considered superior.
The experience from the translated Japanese version couldn’t be more different from the English one. In English you are thrown into the fight with little to no exposition. In Japanese version, you sit for 5 minutes watching news reports (animation is by Production IG, Ghost in the Shell) and getting codec calls, as you are introduced to Rena, Erich (Erik?) and Fiona. Rena is Motoko Kusanagi of this universe, a pilot prodigy that is allergic to sunlight, so she muses why would she need human body at all. Erich and Fi are your peers at UPEO (which is like NATO), and Park is your superior.
In the English version, you almost always fought alone, and when you did have allies, they were anonymous. Here the aircrafts are clearly labeled.
There are more planes available, both initially and as you progress. The weirdest airplanes, like a Catamaran one, are not playable at all in the English version.
The first branching path is as soon as Mission 4. The way you chose between branches is which of the aircrafts you follow.
At first you fight with General against Neucom Neocon. Then you defend Neucom from General. Then Rena asks you to come with her to reclaim an aircraft she was testing as a child, Night Raven. Only with full version the mission names start to make some sense. “Paper Tiger” refers to the fact that everyone thinks NATO is a joke. And “No Clearance” is both a piloting term, and refers to the fact you are following Rena despite your orders.
I probably already mentioned that the original Xbox came with a meager 8GB HDD drive. I had 120GB SSD lying around, so I decided to upgrade it.
Needed IDE to SATA adapter, since all SSDs are SATA, and a 80 wires IDE cable, since SATA can’t work with the 40 wires one Xbox came with. But with enough patience, I got everything I needed.
Interesting that Xbox is a clamshell, that has very long screws that hold top and bottom parts together. Also, you need star screwdriver, not a cross one common to PCs. Luckily I had all the tools I needed.
Once you disassemble the console, you can see that similarly to Dreamcast, it’s basically a PC motherboard with an integrated nVidia graphics card.
The most common trick to upgrade the HDD is called a “hot swap”. There is a single cable that connects both CDROM and HDD to the motherboard. Xbox won’t boot without a CDROM. But if you let Xbox boot up, then disconnect CDROM and connect slave HDD instead, it will recognize the drive.
I didn’t want to perform that trick at first, so I tried to just connect original HDD to my PC, and copy C and E drives. But that didn’t work out, as the drive is locked, and you cannot unlock it with USB adapter, only when connected with IDE cable.
So I went back to the hotswap method. It went smoothly: you connect the drive, then use utility called Chimp that clones it to the slave, then just swap the two.
Now I have Xbox with space enough to store every game I’m interested in.
One simple truth every retrogamer learns is that no hardware is eternal. In case of my Dreamcast, the PSU started acting lately. At first I thought it’s the discs, as sometimes it wouldn’t boot at all, or take a long time to boot, or load a game then reboot after a few seconds.
Luckily, there are a couple of solutions nowadays. The most popular is DreamPSU, which replaces the proprietary plug and a massive board with a tiny board compatible with standard 12V adapters. Then there’s CleanPower, which allows it to use USB-C, but twice as expensive. I decided to start with DreamPSU.
And since I’m going to disassemble Dreamcast anyway, I decided that replacing my CDROM (sorry, GDROM) with an GDEMU that reads games from a SD card would be appropriate to. Great thing about both mods is that you don’t need to solder anything. Dreamcast had a PC-like architecture, so you can just unplug your CDROM and PSU. And to get to them, you just remove 4 regular screws.
Expected benefit: now there’s no need to swap discs, or burn them. Also, the games boot much faster since there’s no seek time.
Unexpected benefit: console is 460g lighter. CDROM is 310g, and PSU is another 150g (I thought it’d be even heavier).
