Note: This is NOT a sponsored post. I'm just a happy customer.

Background

When the G'AIM'E Kickstarter was announced, I got the itch to play light gun games again. I grew up playing Time Crisis on my PSX, stepping on a controller plugged into port 2 which acted as a makeshift pedal so I could mimic the arcade experience. A local pizza place near me had an Area 51 machine that I could play for a quarter, and over time I memorized the enemy layouts for that game so that I could play further and further on one coin.

There are a variety of modern light gun models available now, though all of them are at the hobbyist/tinkerer level. There isn't one that "just works" smoothly and easily.

The most well known is the Sinden, which achieves calibration on games by setting up a white border around the game on the screen. This allows the gun to establish its position within that border and "know" where it's shooting.

Unfortunately, when I looked into the Sinden, it seemed like reviews were very mixed, with many mentioning that the border can be kind of a mess to get working. Apparently it can require a lot of legwork and messing around with settings and external programs and whatnot.

After searching around for alternatives, I landed upon a different line of modern light gun and decided to, well, pull the trigger.

Gun4IR Intro

Gun4IR on its own isn't a standalone product so much as it is a framework for making a modern light gun. You can buy the individual components and put them all together in a gun casing, making a functional light gun of your choosing. For example, see the User Guide which goes into detail about which boards you'll need, pin guides, etc. People have made them in Nerf cases and 3D printed ones.

Now, if I'm going to ding the Sinden for requiring too much tinkering, surely soldering wires onto PCBs is a step in the wrong direction?

That's absolutely correct! The good news is that you can sidestep all of this. Gun4IR has some official pre-build sellers, meaning you can buy an already made gun -- no soldering needed! Their site sells builds for the UK, while, RPEG Electronics is their official pre-build seller for the US.

From RPEG, I picked up a pre-built Gun4IR setup in a Guncon 2 housing.

Gun4IR Basics

As is implied by the name, Gun4IR uses 4 different IR clusters for calibration. You can buy a pack of LED sensors that plug into the USB port of your TV. You stick these, facing out, to the midpoint of the top, bottom, left, and right of your TV. The LEDs are black and their light can't be seen with the naked eye but can with a camera (you can check to make sure they're working with your phone).

The gun comes with calibration software that gives you lines on your TV to show the mount points for the LEDs, check how the gun is seeing the sensors, line up shots, etc.

I'm happy to report that, once calibrated, my gun is VERY accurate. I was honestly expecting a bit of jank, but it's genuinely spot on. There's a small bit of jitter that's noticeable when you have a crosshair on (some of that also might be coming from my unstable hands), but when you're playing a game without a crosshair, it's not enough to make you miss shots. The shots I've missed have been because I'm, well, bad at videogames.

Games

Because I wasn't wanting to tinker, I found a big download pack that promised me a pre-configured set of ROMs and emulators that were turnkey and compatible with Gun4IR. I spent days downloading all the individual parts from one of those sketchy download sites, getting all the parts of a multi-part RAR file.

And when I started extracting it, wouldn't you know, it was INFESTED with viruses. I uploaded one of the .exes to VirusTotal and I've never seen so much red.

Shame on me, though. I'm not an internet newbie, and I should know better than to trust random executable files, especially on Windows.

So, I went seeking an alternate solution.

Batocera

Batocera is a Linux distribution focused on retro-gaming. You wouldn't use it as your daily driver, but you would use it if you want to just boot into something so you can play games. Additionally, Batocera has built-in light gun support! Perfect!

I did my usual "setup emulation" dance that I've done so many times before: looking up worthwhile games to play, locating ripping ROMs, getting the right extracting BIOSes, etc. I also bought an external hard drive and attached it to my Windows TVPC. I can now boot off the hard drive to go into Batocera directly (because I didn't want to try to figure out dual booting with Windows).

Batocera is like booting into an arcade cabinet, loading right into ES-DE. It doesn't really expose its file system to you by default, but it's got a killer feature that makes setup easy: Batocera automatically sets up a network share for you. This lets you access all of its folders from another device, meaning I could set everything up on my laptop and transfer it over easily to Batocera.

Furthermore, Batocera automatically knows when you've got a light gun attached and will show a gun icon on games that are compatible. In theory, I'm able to navigate the interface just using my light gun, but in practice I also paired a bluetooth controller. (See Caveats section below for more on this.)

You don't HAVE to use Batocera of course, but it ended up being so easy that it became my preferred setup.

Gaming

So, I got the gun calibrated, and I got my games set up in Batocera. It's time to shoot!

I'm happy to report that the gun works fantastically. Like, seriously good.

For most games and emulators, it "just works" which is exactly what I wanted. I tested out several different games on several different platforms, and it worked on stuff ranging from the Atari 2600 to Naomi arcade cabinets.

I played through the first 10 rounds of Duck Hunt on the NES without missing a shot before getting bored and moving to something else. Time Crisis on the PlayStation (my original light gun love) plays wonderfully.

I had a friend over this weekend who also loves light gun games and has nostalgia for TC (though his is for TC2 and TC3). We traded off rounds playing Time Crisis 2 (which ended up being a good way to do it, as I forgot how my arms and eyes need a rest after 15 minutes of light gun gaming). We beat the full campaign in 2 and almost beat 3.

I also tried the gun out in some Windows games off of Steam, just to make sure that my Batocera success wasn't a fluke. Sure enough, it worked just fine!

I now have an accurate, easy-to-use light gun setup that works on my large, modern LCD TV. I have hours of light gun gameplay ahead of me, and I'm thrilled.

Caveats

Wow, kfwyre, this sounds great! I can't wait to get one for myself!

Easy there, cowboy/cowgirl/cowthem! Let me surface some of the rough edges, lest you think that this is too good to be true.

Conclusion

I am quite fond of my Gun4IR so far. It works better than I hoped it would, and it's unlocked a type of gaming that I thought was extinct. (For some reason, light gun games have a different feel to me than VR shooting gallery games. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I like them a lot more?)

I would recommend it ONLY if you're someone who knows they're going to get their money's worth out of it and are also willing to put up with the mostly minimal tinkering required to get it working. I say mostly minimal because, no matter what gun you're using, you're still going to have to set up emulators and ROMs and whatnot. The configuration that is specific to Gun4IR is really just installing the sensors, using the calibration app, and making sure your gun isn't catching other LEDs.

Compared to the G'AIM'E (which is a bit of a fool's errand at this point because that one's still theoretical while this one's here to kiss you in real life), Gun4IR doesn't offer the "plug and play" promise, but it also is compatible with far more games. If you're in the market for the G'AIM'E, however, it's probably worth waiting out that release to see how it fares (and whether people can get it working with more games besides the included ones).

On the other hand, if you're like me and need some light gun fun NOW then I give the Gun4IR a pretty strong recommendation, with a secondary recommendation for Batocera. The two of them together are really great, and I'm delighted that I have hours upon hours of shooting games ahead of me.

If anyone has any additional questions or wants me to test specific games/systems, let me know. I'm happy to report back and help in whatever way I can.

Haven't seen anyone mention that project in a few years, but now I'm in the unique position to talk about it. I live somewhere where I can't get any proper internet service - mobile broadband is slow, DSL or fibre lines are not brought out to where I live, and the only other option is cable internet access, which I've 1. had bad experiences with in the past and 2. where I live is operated by a company with laughably bad reviews at exorbitant prices for what they offer. We are talking about 60 USD (eq) a month for 100 megabit service.

So I shopped around to see what other options there are, and Starlink made me an offer. Free equipment, which is usually 400 bucks, delivered to my house, and then an unlimited data plan at whatever speeds I can get where I live for 50 a month, with a one month free trial. I said yes, paid with Apple Pay (seriously, did not have to fill out a single form or sign anything) and the dish arrived the next day.

Now, I know, Starlink is run by Musk, who is somewhere around the top 10 of my nightmare blunt rotation and also pretty likely to be an actual neo-Nazi, but I say whatever. It's not like the alternatives are much better, and at least SpaceX has some actual value for humanity, if you ask me. I might put a "I bought this before Elon went crazy" on my router, though.

I got the dish delivered and set it up on my roof. The app - which is excellent - tells you to orient it north if you're on the northern hemisphere, and to roughly point it up. I built my own mounting solution - a wooden board with mounting holes that snaps in place on my roof - and set everything up, not expecting much.

I was absolutely blown away. The app, once more, is stellar and incredibly easy to use, and a joy to play around with. I got a satellite connection in minutes, and did a speed test. I got 200 down and 50 up in the Starlink app, but independent speed tests as well as my own experience routinely hit 400 down and around 80 up. Genuinely impressive. Ping around 30, by the way. Consistent as well.

The next few days were a similar experience, although I did notice a drop in speeds if there was heavy rain. The speeds dropped however to around 150 over 30, which is still more than usable, and latency was not impacted at all as far as I can tell.

Honestly, it's a super compelling package. Setup was so simple my grandma could have done it, the hardware is beautifully made and very robust, and the designers really did think of a lot here. The cables are just weatherproofed Ethernet and you can bring your own (although they don't recommend it), the router is Wifi 6 and looks damn snazzy, the dish can even heat itself up to melt snow in winter.

If you're looking for reliable internet service, I really can't recommend Starlink enough. If where you're planning on running it is within the service area and you're fine with the 50 dollar a month price point (no speed or data caps, by the way) I'd say go for it.

Now, there are people who will say that it's a good option for remote places, but not that great for densely populated areas in buildings that could get for example cable service, and you shouldn't rely on it. But, well, I haven't been completely honest here:

The real sting in the tale is that I live in one a large European city with plenty of access to other internet methods (just unlucky in terms of my specific building, which is getting fibre next year), and mounted the dish on top of my townhouse in one of the most dense districts in town. It works flawlessly, and it's been the fastest internet service I've ever had, period.

Course, it can't compete with a fibre line, sure, but many people don't have those - and then, service or hardware might still add large costs on top of that. And with Starlink, I can just take it with me whenever I move, and don't need to ever worry about ISPs again.

I don't have many sufficiently nerdy friends to talk about this with, so if you're curious or have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them. If you have Starlink too and feel like I missed something, feel free to contribute to the conversation.

So for the past several weeks, I have been running my phone almost exclusively in greyscale. This is a tactic that is normally recommended for reducing phone usage, and can be easily done in iOS and Android through accessibility settings. The primary argument is without the colours to grab your attention, the phone looks less enticing.

My experience has been mostly positive, with a few drawbacks. Overall, it has made me use my phone less, although it is not the only change I have done.

Benefits:

• I do find my phone less distracting. It is less appealing.
• Text based content still works great.
• Images are normally readable, although sometimes I miss subtlety in images.
• If needed I can toggle it off, but I rarely do so.

Drawbacks:

• It took me several days to adjust, and it was a hard adjustment period.
• Some apps use colour for organization. The biggest offender in my use case for this is Three Cheers for Tildes. Overall the app is great, but new comments being denoted by an orange line is not readable for me. However, this just at times leads me to wait until I am at a desktop to look at the thread. I do think both on website and in apps Tildes should look at putting new comments with a dotted line, to not rely only on colour for accessibility reasons.

Surprises:

• The biggest surprise for me is how unappealing my phone is in colour, since the use of colour everywhere is jarring. Most people do not realize how bright and colourful even phone menus are, until they run greyscale for an extended period of time. It has become more obvious to me how much app developers (and even OS developers) are using colour to grab our attention and suck us in.

Epigraph has been a joy, especially when you consider that it's only $3.

I love puzzle games like Portal, The Outer Wilds, Etc., but when I try to explore further in the genre, I often struggle to find many that provide a sufficient challenge.

I found that Epigraph, while short overall, provided a solid 4-6 hours of playtime.

The goal in the game is decipher a series of stones and tablets containing a totally unknown language.

The Zachtronics games are also phenomenal and probably even more difficult overall if you're like me and looking for a challenge.

Haven't seen a whole lot of discussion about this show on tildes. Not in weekly threads nor a main thread - so here is one!

It's a 9/10 for me.

I waited until all of season 2 was out before starting it. Realized I had forgotten almost everything since season 1 though, so rewatched that first. It turned into a binge of both seasons - I just could not stop! It has been probably 3 years since I was so glued to the screen and this engaged in a tv show (Euphoria season 1),

I will skip an analysis or further review but every character was good. Every actor delivered. Just great all around. Season 2 (9.5/10) even better than season 1 (8.5/10).

So anyways, discuss! More than happy to have my feelings about it validated lol, and also see other takes on it.

I wanted to share this, in case there are interested folks who haven't checked it out yet. This is me gushing about a thing I love and hoping other folks are listening because the story is so good.

Worlds Beyond Number is a podcast run and owned by Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aabria Iyengar, Erika Ishii, and Lou Wilson with the goal of being able to tell the stories they want without time/production pressures. Taylor Moore is the producer and composer.

What stories are they telling?
The first and largest story so far is The Wizard, The Witch and The Wild One, set in the world of Umora using D&D, that starts from Level 1 (with a children's level 0 adventure) with the intent of this being the first long term campaign. The characters are in a world that I'd describe as Ghibli inspired - which includes some of the lightest sweetest moments and some of the most devastating moments of war. There's a bit of a running joke about which character is getting a Kiki or Ponyo moment vs a Mononoke moment in an episode. The Witch is a custom class, the Wizard has a custom subclass, and the Wild One has a custom paladin subclass.

But they've also played a few side games, Erika ran a game of Roll for Shoes, a chaotic game featuring a gangster chicken, a goat that may or may not be the devil, and a retired race horse doing a heist of corn from the county fair. A space jam inspired Space Cram two shot Aabria ran using Tournament Arc and a few prequels set in different areas of the world of Umora.

Where can it be found?
Any podcatcher, with the talkback "Fireside Chats," Children's Adventure, and the side adventures behind a $5 a month Patreon. No other tiers, the goal is to just fund the podcast.

What makes it stand out from other shows

The level of sincerity, and the fact these are some of the absolute best storytellers in the field who consider this their favorite story. In most actual play the rails are firmly on (dimension 20 due to # of episodes) or the episodes are essentially unedited (Critical Role), but these characters have fully split the party multiple times, and have come into genuine conflict, so much so that listeners have, para socially, been upset with players on behalf of the other players for how the characters are acting.

The show is also edited so some rolls and table talk are cut from the finished episodes (the narrative play label), but never to a point where you can't track what's happening. And you still get to hear a delighted squeal, a stressed exhale or a "let's go!" at the table.

The aesthetics are also wonderful with music and sound effects, the characters and different factions have themes that will come back and blend into motifs.

What's coming up next
The fourth "chapter" and first "book" is wrapping up here soon with a bit over 50 episodes, characters around level 5, and major character arc conclusions and then the show is going to take a break from Umora to start another longer campaign run by Aabria, probably hopping back and forth in the future as the goal is not for Brennan to run for like 5 years straight.

Anyway I love these folks (in a non-boundary crossing way) and I love their stories and hope some of y'all are already watching or will check it out and want to talk about it too!

(Note idk where to put this, podcast isn't a group, I went with games.tabletop)

I was a fan of GameRevolution’s reviews for a long time. They always seemed to have a criteria to reviews that not only sold me on what to pursue, but what to truly avoid even if I loved the franchise. (MGS: Ground Zeros, I’m looking at you.) They have seemingly reduced to one reviewer…

I love the weekly Tildes thread of “what games are you playing” and it has truly opened my eyes to some games I would never have heard of, or even tried (Balatro).

Anywho the point of this is to ask where everyone else looks for reputable/intelligent reviews currently? I enjoy listening to Luke Stephens talk about the industry, but it’s not as concise as an A-F or star or 1-10 rating system. IGN doesn’t have my attention… I just don’t know where to turn, as there are so many options.

Have had a bicycle for most of my life and was a particularly avid biker as a teen - taking out my Sekine 10 speed and doing 40 miles just for the heck of it was a regular weekend ritual.

And then middle age and family intruded. Still had a bike but it got pretty dusty in the garage.

But last year I saw a classic recumbent in the local ads. I've tried a recumbent trike and absolutely loved it, but where I live, riding a trike with your head only a couple of feet above the road is a sure fire way to get run over by a lifted truck that didnt see you. So I bought the bike, a RANS Stratus XL for a mere $300. With an aluminum frame, its surprisingly light for a long bike.

The only real con is that this bike is a bit unstable at really slow speeds, but once you get rolling its very comfortable and stable. The frame absorbs some of the worst road bumps so its smooth and the long wheelbase is great for my tall frame, I can really stretch out.

But the best part is that Im laying back in a sweet lounge chair, as God intended, instead of bent forward with a kinked neck, sitting on a tiny seat that is certified torture device after an hour of riding.

Its still early in the year and Im still outta shape but riding a recumbent has brought back the joy of biking. And I havent even been run over once.

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD USE EXPANDABLE AND WELL LABELED SECTIONS WHEN REPLYING ABOUT ANYTHING THAT COULD BE CONSIDERED A SPOILER IN THIS TOPIC. IF NOT JUST FOR OTHERS READING IT THAN FOR MYSELF AS WELL

As tildes formatting help isn't stellar, here's how to do it from the docs:

<details>
<summary>Click to view the hidden text</summary>

Here's all the hidden text.

It can have **markdown** in it too.
</details>

Actual Content:
This game necessitates discussing in only the vaguest of terms. I cannot recommend it highly enough if you like puzzle games at all. To that point I'll keep the rest of this succinct:

I have gotten to Room 46 of Blue Prince. It is, by far, one of the best puzzle games I've ever played, maybe one of the best things I've experienced. I am in awe of just how much work this must have taken.

The vaaaast majority of the discourse i'm seeing (while avoiding the HELL out of spoilers) is about the RNG. Reviewer after reviewer focusing solely on the RNG.

Some small % of this is because yes, it's a very hard game to discuss, but the rest of it is literally because it seems that everyone hits a bad run or, what they feel is, a bad streak of luck and says "oh lol nice try, but i guess this game sucks".

The straw that broke the camel's back and prompted this brief writeup was a "minimal spoiler review" (i disagree, don't watch if you haven't been to room 46, don't even listen) from Tom Francis. Tom is probably most known for the "defenestration trilogy" of which most recently had Tactical Breach Wizards, a well liked game.

What blows my mind about this review is that at some point he says "I just feel like I wasted my time for those 25 hours", in relation to X not occurring which prevented him from doing Y.

I cannot IMAGINE playing this game, and somehow feeling like that was your only goal at that point. The laundry list of stuff I have had to investigate and try has been basically constant, and I am CERTAIN he did not exhaust all of that before X happened, no matter how late in the game it was. ESPECIALLY not in 25 hours (my room 46 time for reference was just shy of 20 hours).

If you're reading this, and you liked Myst, Riven, Tunic, Outer Wilds, Animal Well, La Mulana, Environmental Station Alpha, or any of the many other great puzzle games, you owe it to yourself to at the bare minimum wishlist this game and pick it up on sale. To me it's absolutely worth the $30.

Major Edit/Caveat:

I wanted to mention the one legit criticism of this game i've seen that's also not remotely spoilery. Once you start a run, your only option is to finish it. You cannot save and quit in the middle of a run. This is not the huge problem it might feel like it is, if for some reason you have to stop and turn off your computer rather than leave it running, but the fact people are just leaving their machines running to not lose a run shows how silly the limitation is.

As such it's worth noting that since runs can be nice and quick, or can sometimes take an hour +, you kinda have to block out your time in such a way that you commit to a longer run without knowing if it will be. I do hope they fix that, because obviously yes we all have real lives and this game really doesn't gain anything from this limitation.

They all released videos at almost the exact same time, so even though I don’t care, I was made to care. Therefore, I’m inflicting that same pain on you. You’re welcome.

Mrwhosetheboss made a good point saying that the target audience for this thing are rich people who want phones that look flashy and can pay for them, but don’t care that they have worse specs than the less flashy ones at a similar price.

MKBHD called it the “S25 Ultra Lite”, which I thought was funny. He also brought up the issue of cooling. He additionally said that no one is asking for thin phones, although it seems that Apple has also bought into the idea that people want this, since it’s rumored that they want to release a thin iPhone this year.

Dave2D said that he tested the heat dissipation capacity of the phone and that it can handle itself well. Apparently it still somehow has a vapor chamber inside of it, as well as a wireless charger. Apparently it also has the smallest battery in the lineup, even though it doesn’t have the silicon carbon tech that is all the rage now. He made a good point though, namely that this could just be Samsung starting the trend so that the technology matures in a few years’ time.

All three of them mentioned that everyone uses cases these days, which immediately kills the whole purpose of buying a thin phone and losing out on better specs.

If you somehow have not gotten enough of tech YouTubers acting confused over Samsung launching a product that no one asked for, there’s also Techaltar and Tech Spurt. I recommend the latter for dirty British humor.

I just got back from the 'Nintendo Switch 2 Experience', so I though I'd share my thoughts on the console for those who didn't/won't get a chance to check it out.

The Console Itself - 8/10

The S2 is a decent amount larger than the original, which really helps with the ergonomics. Pretty much all the controls are bigger, and the rounder shape might alleviate fatigue when holding it (I never got to hold it for long, the demos were mostly on TVs). I think it looks a lot worse than the original, but that's neither here nor there. The pro controller was a huge upgrade from the (already great) original, super comfortable materials and nice buttons. The screen is not OLED, which I think is ridiculous for the price tag. It theoretically has HDR, but I could not tell. Overall, it's bigger and better, but nothing super special.

Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour - 0/10

For the price of $10, Welcome Tour is a complete joke. There's absolutely nothing to say about it, it's basically an ad for hardware you'll already own. Should be free, don't buy it.

Donkey Kong Bananza - 5/10

This is the Mario Odyssey formula applied to Donkey Kong, you run around, collect bananas in some semi-open worlds. All the environments are destructible, which is super fun but adds one huge caveat: the game runs like shit. A nice 60fps when running around, but as soon as you try smashing stuff (the main gimmick of the game) the framerate jumps all over the place, and going to the world map tanks the fps to 20-30. I enjoyed surfing on chunks of the ground I pulled up, but I was constantly pulled out of the fun by performance hiccups. It looked about as good as Mario Odyssey (but at native 4k ~60pfs, of course).

Mario Kart World - 9/10

Okay, now I can start saying nice things! Mario Kart World is–as you might expect–awesome. It's a really fun twist on the formula that was perfected in 8 Deluxe. There's no more kart customisation, which I don't mind, but each kart looks really nice and detailed. I got a slight taste of free-roam mode before each knockout tour I played, and it was... fine? The open world looks great and plays well, but I'm curious to see how it's "gamified". The knockout tour was the main booth on the floor, with 24 people playing at once with the last placing racers getting eliminated at different checkpoints. It was chaos, but that classic Mario Kart chaos that works really well. I managed to come 2nd on my first race. It looks quite a lot better than 8 Deluxe, but that's mostly in the art style and animations.

Drag X Drive - 9/10

This is the gimmicky competitive game for this system (like Arms or Splatoon), showing off the mouse controls in the form of Wheelchair Basketball. I was super surprised by this game, the gimmick clicked with me instantly. I got dunked on like twice, but I also only had 5 minutes to prepare, so cut me some slack!

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond - 7/10

Again, the mouse controls work super well. It all felt pretty simple and intuitive, but that might be because I'm a PC player most of the time anyway. I don't know anything about the Metroid series, so I can't comment on the story or gameplay beyond that. It looked pretty good and ran at (I think) the full 120FPS the whole time.

Cyberpunk 2077 - 4/10

Cyberpunk was... rough. It had that classic "really really upscaled" look, and dipped down to 10fps a lot in combat. I tried both "performance" and "quality" mode, but both looked and played about the same (which might be a bug).

Breath of the Wild: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition - 2/10

I can't believe they're charging for this. It's literally just the original game running at 60fps with slightly better draw distances. You can get this look with CEMU. This is how I felt about all the "Nintendo Switch 2 Edition" games that I tried.

Conclusion

While the games were pretty good and the experience was nice, I don't think the console has justified itself costing as much as it does, and so I'm not going to buy it on launch. I'll probably pick it up used when there's a reliable jailbreak, but the preview event really dissolved any feelings of FOMO that I might have had about it, which I'm glad about because now I can save that $800! I hope there's still people playing Drag x Drive when I get to it in a few years.

Feel free to ask me any questions, and hopefully I can answer them.

After talking about it a few months ago my copy of the game finally arrived. @MimicSquid and I met up in San Francisco today and finally got to play Hide&Seek. It was a good time and it was neat to have a better sense of how the game plays instead of just watching it on Nebula. We're planning on playing again in the not too distant future, so if anyone would like to join in on the next one, please let one of us know (we both thought that it would play better with at least three players).

A month ago news about Dropout was shared here which is how I learned of the service. Having subscribed to it due to it, and since I liked it sufficiently in the three day trial, I'd like to share my thoughts on it.

Overall I mostly appreciate the content, especially due to the unique nature of it. The overall amount of diversity of various comedy formats and skill of the cast at improvisation(or at least the appearance of it) is pretty impressive.

Game changer is pretty amazing at how it manages to intelligently change the game presented (and sometimes format) nearly every episode. Play it by ear spinoff features an improvised musical with very good performances that are delight to watch. Dimension 20 is a tabletop gaming session show with good use of props and music and coherent and engaging storylines. These are mostly ones I watched for one but I'm sure I like some of the others it has to offer too.

But there are also some things that I consider at best suboptimal.

While not catastrophic in either intensity or frequency the crude ass/fart jokes are on average present almost every episode and definitely lower the overall quality in my opinion.

So far as I know specific to Dimension 20 is the woefully lacking content and trigger warnings descriptions. The seasons can vary massively in tone and the indication of it is basically zero until you actually watch it for a while. There are trigger warnings under episodes but only them. Using Burrow's end as example it starts as an intensive and dramatic in events but at the same time very cozy in the family interactions story, then devolves right in the next episode into intensely graphic(for the format) gratuitous gore and body horror with no sufficient indications of that in the first two hours plus long episode.

It mostly lacks the anti user features of modern streaming services but it would have been nice if they left them out entirely. Having to go outside of the site to get basic information on the content, bad series organization(overall seasons sometimes being listed in several different series, making the series tab a mess), unchangeable(as far as I know) play next video anti feature, multitude of trackers on site or the traditional inability to buffer too much of the stream in the browser.

Overall I mostly like it, I just wish they'd have made it possible to like it more.

wattpad.com is a popular website where mostly young people host their fiction so it get votes and visibility.

I was feeling lonely, and my usual online mates are not enthusiastic about reading my stuff, and I am always in search of feedback. So I got in touch with online groups for those who have an interest in writing. Mostly young people who, seemingly in their early 20s, give or take. Someone asked me if I was making something for the "Wattys", which I later learned is Wattpad's literary award. Another gave me a link to read his stuff on Wattpad. I had to make an account to read it on my phone. Annoying, but they kinda asked me nicely, so I installed it and created an account. Way too many hoops just to read some text, but okay! I started reading. There was an ad below, but that's okay. Suddenly, my phone was taken over by a full-screen ad. A full-screen ad. FOR TEXT. That was too much so I started looking for a way to read Wattpad outside of Wattpad. Maybe there is, but I paused my search to make this post.

Displaying text is a solved problem, and it has been for quite some time. It is so fucking trivial, I coud write a novel right here on this text box! I now hate Wattpad with such a passion, I don't think I'm reading that kid's story!

Wattpad feels like someone trying to fuck up reading.

On another note, I find it a little unsettling how these kids seem more concerned with their marketing than their writing. They have full press kits even before they learn the basics of writing proper sentences. There is also no love for short stories, they start writing novels as soon as they start writing. Everything is a novel with twenty chapters. I'm pretty sure Wattpad has a hand in that. But maybe that's just me being old, so feel free to disregard that.

I get the idea of a website that helps readers find authors, but in some sense at least, Wattpad feels like a water popsicle an I hate it.

I don't know how well known this show is. Maybe I'm saying something obvious, like "hey, have you all heard about The Wire?", but in most of my social group this completely slipped under the radar. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine I started following discussions about geopolitics and international conflicts on our local discussion board, and in there it's the opposite, apparently everyone knows it.

It's a show about deep undercover agents working for DGSE, the french equivalent of CIA.

It has two main layers. Firstly it's apparently quite accurate with regards to how real intelligence agencies work, plus it's obviously strongly inspired by real events. It mostly deals with ISIS, but also with Russia, relations between France and the US and other issues. This is very interesting on its own.

Secondly it's basically a psychological drama/thriller. The lives of undercover agents consist of constantly lying, constantly being on guard and never fully trusting anybody, and there cannot be a tangible division between their professional and their personal lives because they can never fully switch off. And human failures in their profession, whether small or large, cannot be fully avoided.

The premise of this whole show is exploring how those failures happen and what are their consequences. And those consequences are often terrible, so it's sometimes a heavy show to watch.

What I love about The Bureau is how it's all relatively civil, showing things without exaggeration, overly emotional music or other stylization. I want to say it's very un-american in this aspect, and on one hand mean that, I'm incredibly tired of film makers beating me over the head with horrible things like slow motion shots accompanied by emotionally simplistic music, as if I'm too stupid to understand what I'm supposed to feel simply from what's happening in the story.

But at the same time The Wire is also american and it's a good example of a show that does the exact opposite (and I love it for that). The Bureau does not go as far as The Wire, if only because human emotions are a much bigger focus of the show. However it is much closer in style and in quality to The Wire than to some imaginary "hollywood average". Overall it doesn't feel like it's playing tricks on you. People die and suffer horribly, and sometimes it is characters you love, but it doesn't feel like some cheap "ha! I got you, I bet you're devastated now!" and it doesn't happen often, for shock value (edit: actually suffering does happen all the time, but killing off characters does not).

In addition to the style feeling quite fresh in the context of mainstream cinematography, it's full of great and outside of France relatively unknown actors. They make it easy to fall in love with many of the characters. The characters have layers and development and nobody is black and white, it's a delight to watch them.

I'm putting it next to The Wire, Better Call Saul or Breaking Bad as a 10/10 show.

This post will talk about piracy. I won't provide any links or direct instructions. That said, if a mod or admin thinks there is something inappropriate about talking about that stuff, feel free to mention this in the comments and I will remove any inappropriate details as soon as I can.

Like many Latin Americans, I am a long-term pirate. I have pirated stuff with floppy disks, with CD-ROMs, through IRC, FTP, Kazaa, Napster, Soulseek, websites, and torrent. I have also purchased several illegal media from street vendors. The whole idea of traditional piracy is to get the files I want for me to own, which is why I made a Plex server for myself.

Stremio is a challenge to all of this. It is much easier to setup than Plex and basically requires no maintenance. It is a program that allows me to stream video content from a variety of sources, legal or illegal. It took less than 30 minutes to set it up on my computer, and I know that it exists for both of my TVs. I am using it with the Torrentio addon.

Stremio changed my viewing habits much in the same way paid streaming services did. I am more spontaneous in my choices. I have watched Doctor Who from 2005, ER, Tiny Toons Adventures, Animaniacs, The Twighlight Zone (original), The Magicians, Blackadder, and Falling Skies (alien TV show with Noah Wyle!). Playback sometimes takes a little while to start, but went it does it rarely stutters, even on old or less popular shows. A paid debrid service should improve on that. I am now considering removing most of our extremely expensive paid streaming services and replacing them with Stremio. Money is tight and, when added up, they make quite a dent on our budget!

One bad thing about Stremio is that it is basically a leech. It does not seed the torrents. I am considering getting Real Debrid as it seemingly reduces the strain on torrents via caching.

Right now, my only concern with changing everything to Stremio is that my wife will probably dislike choosing between multiple sources for an episode, and some episodes come with bad subtitles. That would require minimal effort to solve, but might still be too much for her.

Anyway, I am very impressed by Stremio. It is so good, in fact, that I am half-jokingly worried about the police knocking on my door.

Just kidding, that doesn't happen around here.

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT launches tomorrow (6th March) for a MRRP of:

• $600 USA before taxes
• £570 UK after taxes

Reviews:

• Have They Finally Done It? - Hardware Unboxed
• Review & Benchmarks vs. 5070 Ti, 5070, 7900 XT - Gamer Nexus
• Nvidia in Trouble? The RX 9070 XT has great potential - der8auer
• AMD Radeon RX 9070 / 9070 XT review: back to winning ways - Eurogamer
• AMD, I Could Kiss You - 9070 and 9070 XT Review - Linus Tech Tips
• AMD's Radeon RX 9070 XT is the most exciting GPU to launch in years - XDA Developers

Bonus:

• AMD FSR 4 Upscaling Tested vs DLSS 3/4 - A Big Leap Forward - RDNA 4 Delivers! - Digital Foundry

My thoughts on the show

An overarching theme of the show is that we aren’t very good at naming our emotions when we’re feeling them and that it’s important to learn the vocabulary for our emotions and call them by their right names.

Call stress stress, not overwhelm. (Are you “in the weeds” or “blown”?)

Call vulnerability vulnerability, not anxiety.

Call awe and wonder awe and wonder.

When we name what we’re feeling, we open up so much more agency and freedom to guide our lives in the direction we want them to go. Language is a portal.

I found this show moving and illuminating when I first watched it in 2022 and it was moving and illuminating all over again when I rewatched it over the past few days.

Awe and wonder are two of the emotions that stick out to me. These are not words I used regularly before watching the show. I use them now. I think I used to believe these emotions were nice to feel and a good part of life, but kind of like the icing on the cake. I have come to see them as necessary nutrients in the human emotional diet, more core and more central than I thought before.

Maybe we can’t feel awe and wonder very often, but maybe like the elephants who walk long distances to lick the salt off cave walls, it’s something we need in our diet and should go out of our way to feel.

I have a copy of Brené Brown’s book Atlas of the Heart, which the TV series is based on, and it mentioned that, among other things, experiences of awe and wonder make people more willing to cooperate with each other. Doesn’t that sound like something we need in this world?

Where to watch

Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart is streaming on HBO Max in the U.S. and parts of Europe and Latin America, on Crave in Canada, on Binge in Australia, and on Sky in New Zealand.

HBO Max: https://www.max.com/shows/brene-brown-atlas-of-the-heart/dfad262e-b764-4b92-ae63-72886f8a0d81

Crave: https://www.crave.ca/en/tv-shows/brene-brown-atlas-of-the-heart

List of countries and streaming services where the show is available: https://brenebrown.com/find-the-series-outside-of-the-us/

JustWatch, a generally useful tool for this sort of thing: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ajustwatch.com+Brené+Brown+Atlas+of+the+Heart

Or, let’s be honest, firstly as a novelty. I don't know anyone else personally who has bought, or would buy, a copy. I figured it would be interesting to see what it was like.

My wife and I stopped on Valentine’s day to buy a copy, and I think we were both surprised by the print. I knew Playboy magazines produced some notable interviews in the past, but a dozen important conversations over several decades isn’t exactly going to outweigh the sea of photographs they’re known for. The new edition was a surprising $20 in-person. It felt like a bit of a gamble, but I think it was worth it.

By the numbers, it’s ~125 pages long and features 3 pictorial photoshoots. Beyond a few pages of photos, the rest is basically all writing. There are a few ads, but nothing like the volume of ads in other magazines I’ve read recently. I figured the magazine would be full of risqué photos, but it’s more of a tasteful inclusion alongside other, more substantial discussion. It is essentially all writing, and it’s good writing.

From the outset, the Editor’s Letter (Mike Guy) sets the tone of the new printing:

Five years have passed since an issue of Playboy rolled off a printing press, and they have been strange years indeed. We’ve passed through the wreckage of a pandemic, sat on a violent political see-saw, and watched as discourse shrinks to tiny digital moments that explode into divisive range at precisely the time we need reason. Just as Playboy was frustrated with the conservative norms of the ‘50s, we want to challenge them now, too. This can mean just showing up, listening; it can mean choosing connecting and pleasure over sensation and isolation. It means rejecting poisonous, meme-driven narratives, as writer Magdalene Taylor urges in “The Rise of the Beta Male” …, her disturbing report from the front lines of our emerging dystopia about young men who have given up on sex. … The internet - OnlyFans, TikTok, and the rest - has stolen sexuality and fed it into the meat grinder of the attention economy. We’re doing our part to steal it back. As the poet Wallace Stevens wrote, “The greatest poverty is not to live in the physical world.”

I didn’t anticipate an article detailing a first-person investigation into the rise of anti-semitism, or an article about a far-out apocalyptic billionaire party, nor did I expect a humorous memoir about the rise of Nashville as the bachelorette party destination. But, these were funny, interesting pieces that spurred much discussion in my house. My wife and I have taken turns reading these long-form articles aloud each night. The article on an ultra-exclusive sex party in LA fell inline with the sort of topics I expected, but the writing and description of a beautiful spectacle made us pause and say, “that actually sounds like a fun time.”

It turns out you really can read Playboy for the articles, and more importantly resonate on the value of re-engaging human connection, disarming hate, building up our communities, and challenging our preconceived notions.

My partner and I have friends from China, and they pushed us to watch Ne Zha 2, the animated movie produced over there. It's pronounced "nuh zah" by the way. We had no idea what the fuss was about, and we were skeptical since it has literally no marketing in the US, and we hadn't seen the first movie either. All we heard is that it's insanely popular in China, and making records in the domestic box office there.

Now, I can say I was honestly blown away. It's like, ruined other animated movies for me, for a while. Again, I had no expectations going in, and the first ten minutes of the movie, I thought this was not the movie for me, it looked like a kids' movie, I was almost rolling my eyes in the beginning of the movie tbh.

We didn't look at any clips on the Internet beforehand, and I'm glad, because they would not do the movie justice!

What got me, I think it was the visuals, the nonstop action that looks like it was made with an insane budget, and animators working way beyond healthy hours to produce. Oh, and the sound production with the deep bass, so I could feel every impact, I have to thank the theater for that lol. I didn't even know it was an action movie, so it caught me off guard just how many scenes they crammed in there! Once it started, it really felt almost nonstop, no time to breathe like most movies would do

The story is actually good too, and there are definitely parts where people could cry

I'm also not used to seeing much of Chinese fantasy settings, so that part was entertaining for me. I don't know how much was out of the director's imagination, or coming from Chinese mythology, or Chinese video games, it all came together so well though

If you like action, and fantasy, and animation or video games, and are okay reading subtitles, please do yourself a favor, watch this one!

Disclaimer: I'm a US citizen, I'm not affiliated with Chinese media, I'm not a marketer, I really genuinely loved the movie