tuckerm

tuckerm, 5 months ago

I loved all of the Sega-related Easter eggs in the Shenmue games, it made them the perfect sendoff for Sega's hardware.

tuckerm, 5 months ago

I never played the classic "Quest" games that Sierra made, but they published a bunch of really good ones from other developers, too.

I remember their logo coming up before each of the Half-Life, SWAT, Tribes, and F.E.A.R. games. I was always like, "dang, someone there knows how to pick 'em."

tuckerm, 5 months ago

The Ghost Recon theme has been stuck in my head off and on ever since it came out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwLIHqkqHcw

I didn't even play the game that much -- I think I beat it once, played the multiplayer a little, and moved on. But the music is catchy.

tuckerm, 5 months ago

I liked the music from Morrowind so much, I found the audio files in the game's install folder, burned them to a CD, and printed out my own cover art to make a soundtrack album. I was 11 years old; I probably still have it in a box somewhere, haha.

tuckerm, 5 months ago

Same, and that is still the way a d-pad should feel IMO.

tuckerm, 5 months ago

I always thought it would have been cool if Pokemon were only found in environments that were "realistic" to that type. Like, if you had to go to a river to find water Pokemon, or if Geodude was only in the mountains. Seems like they didn't do that, though.

tuckerm, 6 months ago

Yeah, I actually haven't seen the nag screen in a couple days, whereas I was seeing it often last week. Whatever updated circumvention uBlock has figured out, it's working just about perfectly.

tuckerm, 6 months ago

I've noticed that the nag screen never shows up in a private tab. In the last week I've gotten in the habit of right-clicking a video and choosing Open Link in New Private Window. It's not very convenient, but it has been working.

tuckerm, 6 months ago

I just checked and I do have uBO enabled for private windows, so I'm not sure why it isn't getting caught. I started doing it because I noticed that YouTube was giving one "free" view per day, and then your second view would get the nag screen. So I figured the private window might make you show up as a new person each time, so you always get the initial nag-free video.

But it seems like the nag screen shows up even on the first view now, so I'm not sure why this private tab trick is still working.

tuckerm, 6 months ago

Then I guess it's just down to cookies?

I assume so. But I don't see why they would need your main session's cookies to tell if you're using an ad blocker. I'm guessing this is still something left over from when they were giving you one nag-free video per day, so private tabs will probably see the nag screen too eventually.

tuckerm, 6 months ago

I think I'll still have to check out Bombrush Cyberfunk -- most other people seem to have liked it. And it's not like anything else is filling that niche right now.

Hadn't heard of Cyber Knights Flashpoint, that one looks fun.

tuckerm, 6 months ago

I've always thought that a lot of DLC and preorder bonuses are basically an admission that you won't enjoy all of the game, you'll just feel obligated to get through it. Like, if part of the game is earning coins, then that should be enjoyable, right? It's part of the game, and games should be fun, so you should want to do that. So the fact that they let you pay more money to skip that aspect of the game really shows that many game mechanics are just not enjoyable anymore. They aren't even meant to be enjoyable; it's more profitable to put un-fun game mechanics in.

Imagine if preordering Sonic the Hedgehog 2 allowed you to skip Emerald Hill Zone and Chemical Plant Zone. No one would do that -- that's the content you bought the game for! You wouldn't pay extra to skip it.

tuckerm, 6 months ago

I wasn't sure what kind of gameplay style they would give him, considering that he and Homelander are both going to be in the game, and both of them are basically "when you want to have a Superman in your story but definitely can't get permission."

Hopefully the dodge turns out to be significant when playing as him. It looks like a lot of guy-throwing-punches otherwise. :S

tuckerm, 7 months ago

The day dial is built into the watch movement, so replacing the movement will get you a new, working day dial. I'm not sure what model of watch you have, but there are replacement hands you can buy (for example, here: https://theyobokies.com/?mod=product&sec=item&task=list&cid=2) that might kind of match the original ones. If the seconds hand is still a little bent, you can try replacing that, too.

Putting the hands on the movement can be kind of difficult -- there's a tiny little hole in the inner part of the hand that fits onto a tiny pin in the middle of the dial. I'd recommend checking out some videos about it on YouTube before you try it. You'll want a loupe and some tweezers if you decide to do it. Replacing the movement does mean you'll need to remove the old hands and dial and then put them on the new movement.

tuckerm, 7 months ago

Great choices there! the Unreal Tournament and Morrowind soundtracks have been stuck in my head for a long time now. UT in particular -- I listen to the full album about once a week while I'm working.

I never played Deus Ex when it came out, so I don't have the nostalgic attachment for that one, but I just discovered this a few days ago: https://alexanderbrandon.bandcamp.com/album/conspiravision-deus-ex-remixed. I bought it and am giving it a full listen today. Highly recommended; probably that much better if you're a fan of the game.

tuckerm, 7 months ago

I don't want to jump to conclusions, but that does sound like a very possible explanation.

Poo. I was hoping DDG would keep LLM-generated summaries out of their UI.

tuckerm, 7 months ago

It showed me the same thing, but after searching again a few times I'm now seeing a summary of the articles on their homepages.

Side note: I've had a weird bug a few times with DDG lately, where it showed me results for current events that were completely unrelated to what I was looking for. I searched for something like "10 inch chef's knife" but the results were as though I had typed "US house of representatives speaker." This has happened maybe three or four times in the last two weeks.

tuckerm, 7 months ago

A go-to fall meal for me is something in the instant pot (or a regular pot, just takes longer) with:

• sweet potatoes
• lentils
• raisins
• onion
• garlic
• ginger
• curry spices + cinnamon

I found a recipe for that a while ago and absolutely loved it. I don't really go by a recipe anymore, but it's something like this: https://www.briana-thomas.com/sweet-potato-lentils/

tuckerm, 7 months ago

Obsidian is great; I was a happy user for a couple years. But I recently switched to Logseq and I think I'm already liking it more, and it's because of something Logseq doesn't do.

Obsidian lets you write a full markdown file, so step one is deciding how to write something down. Is it a nested list? Or a table? Or headings and subheadings with paragraphs?

In Logseq, everything is a nested list. This feels like a limitation, but I've been preferring it. The decision is made for you: you're going to jot this information down as a list. So then you just start writing it.

People often tout that Logseq is open source, and while that is great, IMO there is also a design consideration that makes it better. Pretty much any kind of information you want to write down can be represented as a nested list. Doing it that way keeps everything simple, consistent, and more searchable. (Logseq's built-in querying feature seems to be more powerful than Obsidian's Dataview plugin, although I can't say much about it since I haven't really played with it yet.)

Both Obsidian and Logseq save (kinda) standard markdown files, so if you spend a lot of time in a plain text editor, you can still use that. You don't lose anything by editing a file in a separate editor -- they will both parse and re-index the file next time you view it in the respective app.

tuckerm, 7 months ago

Obsidian is reaching market criticality so I’m expecting enshitification any time now.

You could be right, but I'm not 100% sure of that. From the article:

Keeping the team small and spurning outside investment is Obsidian’s way of avoiding incentives that might lead the company astray.

If they can stick to that, they can avoid going downhill. The main driver for enshittification is big shareholders that want the company to keep growing -- shareholders don't care about stable profitability, they need growth for their ownership stake to increase in value. If Obsidian is profitable now and they're fine with just keeping it that way, they can make it work.

tuckerm, 7 months ago

...I’m pretty sure every feature in obsidian can be done in emacs.

It definitely can. Unfortunately, I was the only emacs user on my team at work, so switching from org-mode to something that used plain markdown files was beneficial. There's a network effect here -- sharing notes is valuable.

Also, since Obsidian (and Logseq, which is what I use now) both use save plain markdown files, you can still edit your notes in emacs.

Honestly emacs is pretty decent for almost every text related task and many non text related tasks as well.

For sure, emacs is still my favorite operating system. :)

tuckerm, 7 months ago

I have not heard of cherrytree before, I'll check it out.

tuckerm, 7 months ago

Not sure what Half Life 2 is doing on there, pretty sure Valve is fully in control of that one on PC at least. Didn't EA publish the PS3 version of the Orange Box? I'm guessing that's for a console port.

Also, Biomutant? That only just came out like two years ago. Not sure what the online features are for that game though, I thought it was singleplayer.

This is all just another reason why I don't buy games where online multiplayer is the main selling point of the game. I might not even get around to playing it much before that feature is removed.

Old PC games with dedicated servers are still (and always will be) playable online, while games from a couple years ago have their centrally-managed servers taken offline. People are still playing Doom, Quake, and Unreal Tournament while games from this console generation are already unplayable.

tuckerm, 7 months ago

Portal (1 and 2) and The Talos Principle are the only puzzle games I've played that not only had a story, but also managed to make the puzzle gameplay actually make sense within the story. Like, there is an in-universe explanation for why you are solving puzzles. I'm sure there are other games that do it, but those are the only ones I've played and they were fantastic. That's a hard thing to pull off -- how do you make a compelling narrative, complete with characters, around "moving some boxes?"

Looking forward to playing the sequel. Also, the original is $3 on Steam right now!

tuckerm, 7 months ago

I have not -- I'll add it to my list!