vili's recent activity

  1. Comment on Flight deal services? in ~tech

    vili
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    I subscribed to Scott's Cheap Flights back when they still offered the service outside of the US. And for the past half a year, I've been paying for Mighty Travels Premium. I feel both have been...

    I subscribed to Scott's Cheap Flights back when they still offered the service outside of the US. And for the past half a year, I've been paying for Mighty Travels Premium.

    I feel both have been well worth the price. You basically save the subscription price if you book just one trip a year through the deals. But for me, what's actually even more valuable is learning what destinations are available and repeatedly discounted, and what airlines I should keep an eye on. It's also nice to see those emails every day or two, read about the destinations and dream about going somewhere, even if I don't act on the offers.

    In terms of the UI, Scott's Cheap Flights was (at least back in 2019) quite simple and straightforward, while Mighty Travels (today) has more granular settings that you can use to tweak the alerts. Yet, the offers Scott's found felt a little more human, or something.

    Also, in the end, and for the airports that I'm close to, the discounts tend to be ok, rather than great. I remember seeing only one absolutely amazing deal, which was clearly a mispricing from the airline's part -- basically something like 150€ for a return flight from Europe to Shanghai. I was too slow to book it, as I was trying to get hold of my wife to ask when she'd be available to travel, and by the time I finally got to checkout and payment, the airline had realised their mistake.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on What’s good? in ~talk

    vili
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    I'm a bit afraid of Darktide, to be honest. I got quite hooked on Vermintide 2 during the spring 2020 lockdowns, spending waaaaay too much time with a game that, on paper, should not really...

    I'm a bit afraid of Darktide, to be honest. I got quite hooked on Vermintide 2 during the spring 2020 lockdowns, spending waaaaay too much time with a game that, on paper, should not really interest me at all.

    But the game loop is good, and I have great friends to play with.

    I joined the recent Darktide beta half hoping that the darker, more labyrinthine levels and the increased shooting gameplay would be too much for my motion sickness, which generally prevents me playing first person games.

    No such luck. It's still a great and very satisfying game experience.

    Quite looking forward to it!

    3 votes

  3. Comment on Whats one thing you are optimistic about? in ~talk

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    The winter feeders that my wife and I hung up last week will make local birds happy, and seeing birds in the garden will in turn make us happy. Positivity all around. Thank you for nudging us to...

    The winter feeders that my wife and I hung up last week will make local birds happy, and seeing birds in the garden will in turn make us happy. Positivity all around.

    Thank you for nudging us to think happy thoughts.

    5 votes

  4. Comment on How ‘Pig’ became Nicolas Cage’s cash cow. After making fifteen indies in the span of a few years, the storied action star has recaptured the studios’ attention — raising both his profile and his quote in ~movies

    vili
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    While I probably expected a little more from Pig after all the hype, I too thought it was a lovely film, and also quite an intelligent one. Among other things, it felt like an interesting...

    While I probably expected a little more from Pig after all the hype, I too thought it was a lovely film, and also quite an intelligent one. Among other things, it felt like an interesting reflection or commentary on contemporary films like John Wick.

    2 votes

  5. Comment on Inside Viktor Orbán’s response to the war in Ukraine in ~misc

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    For context: Although not directly vetoing any of the sanctions against Russia, Hungary has been their most vocal European critic and in many ways continues to blame the west for the war and the...

    For context: Although not directly vetoing any of the sanctions against Russia, Hungary has been their most vocal European critic and in many ways continues to blame the west for the war and the hardships that it has brought. This article sheds some light into what's been going on behind the scenes and why Hungary has taken the position that it has.

    While a democracy on paper, for the past decade Hungary has practically been a one-party state, partly due to the government fully controlling all major traditional media, and partly due to the opposition parties' inability to work together. During this time, the country has become increasingly hostile towards western liberal values, and moved closer to Russia (and China), to an extent that some question who is really running the show in Budapest. Elections earlier this year were seen by many as the final hope to change this, but with the war breaking out and the opposition failing to deliver, Viktor Orbán's governing party only increased their control.

    The article was published by Direkt36, a non-profit investigative journalism centre in Hungary. Although not a traditional news outlet, they are practically a voice for the online opposition media and very critical of the government, so read the article also with that in mind.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on Anyone know if there’s a way to just read text adventure games? in ~games

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    One option could be to find a walkthough for a game that interests you and follow it. You'd get through the story without trouble, but you'd also get to "play" it, and maybe after a game or two...

    One option could be to find a walkthough for a game that interests you and follow it. You'd get through the story without trouble, but you'd also get to "play" it, and maybe after a game or two these games wouldn't feel so brutal as you'd start to understand the logic of the genre.

    1 vote

  8. Comment on Let’s talk visual novels in ~games

    vili
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    This indeed looks pretty interesting! Thanks!

    OPUS: Echo of Starsong came out last year

    This indeed looks pretty interesting! Thanks!

    2 votes

  9. Comment on Let’s talk visual novels in ~games

    vili
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    Thank you so much for taking the time and the effort! I've added Eliza to my "buy next" list and look forward to checking it out.

    Thank you so much for taking the time and the effort! I've added Eliza to my "buy next" list and look forward to checking it out.

    2 votes

  10. Comment on Let’s talk visual novels in ~games

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    As someone who isn't quite able to understand or appreciate the appeal of most visual novels, I must say that Analogue: A Hate Story left an impression years ago. Compared to other works that I...

    As someone who isn't quite able to understand or appreciate the appeal of most visual novels, I must say that Analogue: A Hate Story left an impression years ago. Compared to other works that I have tried in the genre, it felt a little more innovative in its interactive mechanics, and a little more accomplished in its literary ambitions. It seemed to do a lot with relatively little, and did it quite elegantly.

    Neo Cab was also an interesting experience, although flawed in some aspects to the point where I didn't finish it. And while I suppose they aren't really visual novels, I would say that Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You and Her Story borrow mechanics from the genre, and I liked both a fair amount. The narrative model of Her Story is actually quite similar to Analogue: A Hate Story.

    A question for those who know more about visual novels: what works in the genre would you recommend for those of us who are interested in literary fiction (as opposed to genre fiction), not particularly interested in manga or anime, and who would like to experience meaningful or at least interesting game mechanics? Do such titles exist?

    4 votes

  11. Comment on I doodled my house in ~arts

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    There was also a short BBC news video about this a couple of weeks ago. It made my head spin!

    There was also a short BBC news video about this a couple of weeks ago. It made my head spin!

    3 votes

  12. Comment on What makes a good detective game? in ~games.game_design

    vili
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    I've often wondered if it would be possible to create a detective game where the player is not required to reach any specific, pre-determined "correct solution", but it would instead be enough if...

    I've often wondered if it would be possible to create a detective game where the player is not required to reach any specific, pre-determined "correct solution", but it would instead be enough if they were able to put together any solution that makes some sort of logical sense. In other words, as long as they could make a compelling case for some series of events that could explain the clues, the game would accept it as a solution and the story (if there is one) would move forward in some way. Criminals might not be punished, innocent people's lives might be ruined, but that is life.

    Papers Please sort of does something similar with its narrative, but not quite. And how exactly one would create a video game like the one I have in mind, I don't know. Perhaps the cases should or could be procedurally generated. But how to check for the logic of the solve, without it being very gamey in the ways that the video also discusses, I really have no idea.

    I've actually done something similar in a tabletop roleplaying setting. My players were trying to solve a mystery, but unbeknownst to them, as they debated amongst themselves about what had happened, they were more or less actively altering the past and the present to conform to their theories. In the end, they never quite realised that the solution was not something that they were supposed to discover, but rather needed to come up with. I tried it as an experiment in collaborative storytelling, and although a couple of players started to suspect that something unusual was happening on a meta-level, it never quite got to where I was hoping it to go, as my players kept on clinging onto the "realism" of the situation, even when everything, including the fourth wall, was crumbling down. It was an interesting, if flawed, experiment. And it was a lot of fun to run, even if it did require quite a lot of extra work and quick thinking, as I had to constantly rearrange things behind the scenes, so to speak.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Todd Rundgren: ‘It’s hard to find sincerely musical artists nowadays. The music is just mediocre’ in ~music

    vili
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    Currently, I'm doing both. For some websites, I use services like FetchRSS and Feed43 to convert web pages into RSS feeds. These are really good for pages that are updated once or twice a day,...

    I did some surface-level investigation into RSS feeds for sites that don't have native support and abandoned the idea. Did you use custom scripts or something pre-written?

    Currently, I'm doing both. For some websites, I use services like FetchRSS and Feed43 to convert web pages into RSS feeds. These are really good for pages that are updated once or twice a day, like for instance Bandcamp's always interesting album of the day. For some other websites, I've created custom scripts. It's handy to have more control for websites like Metacritic, if you want to filter out things below a certain score, for instance.

    That said, my current RSS reader of choice, FreshRSS, recently introduced HTML+XPath support for scraping any website. I've been thinking about converting to using that feature, but haven't made the jump yet as I'll first have to learn XPath syntax.

    Personally, I know whether I like a record by the 10th listen, and I'm sure that most other people would, too.

    I'm a little quicker (or hastier) to discard albums that don't catch my attention. But just like you, I tend to mark interesting albums for later. I work from home, so typically I go through a handful of albums every day with fairly passive listening, and save the ones that catch my interest for a later revisit, when I can concentrate better.

    Although right now, Todd's new album has pretty much taken over my player. I really, really like it. I know that if I continue playing it like I've been doing, I'm doing myself a disservice, as at some point it'll just be too much. But I just want to listen to it. I guess, with the world being what it is, one gravitates towards new things that are safe and familiar.

    3 votes

  14. Comment on Todd Rundgren: ‘It’s hard to find sincerely musical artists nowadays. The music is just mediocre’ in ~music

    vili
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    In case anyone is interested, I can report that Todd's new album is indeed very Todd-like. If you are new to his music, it's likely not going to blow your mind. You might even think of it as...

    In case anyone is interested, I can report that Todd's new album is indeed very Todd-like. If you are new to his music, it's likely not going to blow your mind. You might even think of it as mediocre. But if you love Todd, it will warm your heart and tickle your cerebral cortex. It's yet another great release.

    1 vote

  15. Comment on Todd Rundgren: ‘It’s hard to find sincerely musical artists nowadays. The music is just mediocre’ in ~music

    vili
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    That's a good point. And if one grew up with physical media, the listening experience was also different. Those stronger relationships with albums and artists probably came more naturally if you...

    I have heard chatter that part of the "intimate attachment" is likely due to listening music in our formative years (adolescence and teens).

    That's a good point. And if one grew up with physical media, the listening experience was also different. Those stronger relationships with albums and artists probably came more naturally if you spent good money on an album and it was the only collection of new music that you would hear that week.

    I will slightly contest the independence of radio DJs.

    You likely know more about this than I do, already because I know next to nothing about it, and I don't think I've actually listened to radio since something like the mid-90s. But somehow my understanding, which I suppose comes from reading music biographies, is that somewhere in the 80s and definitely in the 90s, the rules became much stricter for radio DJs, not only in terms of what they could play, but more importantly what they had to play.

    That is to say, while you definitely couldn't have Dewey Phillipses and Wolfman Jacks on every station, there at least used to be more freedom to influence what was played, and while smaller stations and off-peak-time programmes perhaps still continue to have a degree of freedom of choice, larger stations and primetime programming is now almost fully pre-programmed and the radio jockey is there pretty much just to press play. Does that sound like a fair assessment?

    I wish to add to the discourse on helping people find new music, so this is my strategy.

    Thank you for these pointers! While I check out music based on producers, engineers and sessions musicians, for some reason I had never really thought to follow record labels, other than with some world music labels. I'll definitely need to educate myself more about today's indie labels.

    I personally use Spotify a lot, but I don't use any of their discovery features since they just don't seem to be relevant to me. As I'm also almost exclusively an albums listener (which is one reason why I probably struggle with today's music), I primarily use Spotify to search for an album and then play it with repeat on. With artists new to me, I do also often check out the Spotify generated "This is..." playlist. It usually offers a nice general introduction, basically a long compilation album.

    To discover new releases, I have set up RSS feeds for a couple of dozen news sources, including some blogs and publications, as well as a couple of scripts that scrape recommendations from review aggregation places like Metacritic. It's not a perfect system, and it's been particularly challenging to find music from outside of the English speaking world. I listen to around a hundred new releases each month. Which maybe brings me back to the point I made at the beginning of this post -- perhaps one reason why I'm not creating those strong connections with new music is that I'm just not giving new music enough room to breathe. Possibly I'm just trying to listen to too much of it.

    A friend of mine actually made the conscious decision to cut down his listening, and started to keep a diary of sorts for all the music he listens. He says it has helped him to connect with music better. I'm not sure if it's a solution for me, as I've always enjoyed listening to a wide range of things, but perhaps it's something I should try.

    2 votes

  17. Comment on Todd Rundgren: ‘It’s hard to find sincerely musical artists nowadays. The music is just mediocre’ in ~music

    vili
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    I think you are absolutely correct, but I also feel like I agree with Todd. Perhaps the key here is this bit that you wrote (emphasis mine): I personally find it really difficult to discover great...

    I think you are absolutely correct, but I also feel like I agree with Todd. Perhaps the key here is this bit that you wrote (emphasis mine):

    The truth is that if he can't find talented musicians then he isn't looking hard enough

    I personally find it really difficult to discover great new music these days. Good new music is everywhere, and it's wonderful to have. But the kind of music that I would have an "intimate attachment to" that the interview mentions, the sort that changes me as a person? I don't really come across that very often these days. I think the two general points that @EgoEimi raised about contemporary music are important factors here.

    And while the top 40 has certainly never been the best source for music recommendations, I would argue that back in the 80s and 90s, and I'm sure even more so in the 70s that Todd is likely referring to, the top 40 was an artistically more interesting list, and as a result discovery in general was easier. Radio DJs and quality music magazines worked as fairly independent, third party curators that directly influenced sales and the top 40. This changed in the 80s and 90s, and today the top 40 and any visibility on streaming sites seems to be just the results of paid advertising that doesn't have to appeal to any independent quality controllers. This probably also means that music that has higher artistic merit, but still exists within the confines of the genres of "popular music", is finding it more difficult to be financially successful than before.

    But all that being said, I'm sure my difficulties in finding great new music is also a generational thing -- me growing older, having heard so much music that it's more difficult to surprise me any more, and at the same time me for whatever reason no longer being able to be in tune with the new directions that popular music is taking.

  18. Comment on Todd Rundgren: ‘It’s hard to find sincerely musical artists nowadays. The music is just mediocre’ in ~music

    vili
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    The clickbaity title aside (was debating whether to change it for the submission), it's a pretty nice interview with Todd who has a new album out on Friday. His 25th, or 42nd, or something,...

    The clickbaity title aside (was debating whether to change it for the submission), it's a pretty nice interview with Todd who has a new album out on Friday. His 25th, or 42nd, or something, depending on how you count.

    I'm quite excited. His albums are always exciting, and his previous couple of releases have also been excellent. While the last album was him sending unfinished demos to other artists for their input, this one appears to be the opposite: him gathering unfinished demos from other artists and finishing the songs.

    2 votes

  20. Comment on Fantastic false cognates - words that seem related, but aren’t in ~humanities

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    Another interesting etymological group is words like shirt and skirt, which are an etymological doublet. Shirt comes from the proto-Germanic (c. 2000 years ago) word *skurtijǭ, which meant some...

    Another interesting etymological group is words like shirt and skirt, which are an etymological doublet.

    Shirt comes from the proto-Germanic (c. 2000 years ago) word *skurtijǭ, which meant some sort of a short garment, possibly apron. When the Anglo-Saxons moved to the British isles (c. 5th century) they brought the word with them along with their version of the language. Over the centuries, the word changed to scyrte and shirte and finally to shirt, and it ended up referring to a short garment worn on your upper body.

    Skirt also comes from the same proto-Germanic word *skurtijǭ. But this time, it was the Norsemen who took the word to Scandinavia, along with their version of the language. In their use over the centuries, the word turned into skyrta and began to refer to a shirt or a kirtle. Later on, sometime in the 14th century, people of the British isles heard Norse traders use that word and decided that it was a word worth borrowing. They took it as something like skyrte, and eventually it turned into skirt: a short garment worn on your lower body.

    And thus the original short garment of *skurtijǭ ended up as two separate words in English.

    4 votes