T w e n t y S i d e d
I had a weird week. Even as I wrote this I heard a bang that sounded *exactly* like a box of chicken strips falling to the ground because an overactive cat knocked it over. All week has been like that. We don’t even have boxes of chicken strips in the house very often, and this one was especially-well-protected…but the cat just tried to pull the box of chicken strips out from under the bottles of cleaner weighing it down. I was, believe it or not, actually well myself this past week but ended up driving people to doctor appointments, or picking up meds, or driving people to other appointments, or installing someone’s multifunction printer that is used almost entirely for printing from an Apple iPad, and other things I’m probably not even remembering right now. Oh, and picking up a car from a mechanic and working on another one; neither of those was hard. I have been trying to stay out of my office when I don’t need to be in here, and while that’s helping a lot of things I’m not sure it’s been good for my productivity on computer-related issues. The jury is still out on that issue.
Infinity Nikki has been added to Steam as a “Coming Soon” title, however it is still listed as using kernel-level anticheat, ACE. Just adding a title to Steam doesn’t automatically overcome the issues kernel-level anticheat introduces for Linux users, but I noticed Steam Deck support is still listed as “unknown” so I’ve chosen to believe Valve is possibly going to introduce a work-around…and there is a decent chance this will eventually find its way to Linux.
I have been catching up on Foxmaster‘s “self-aware” Lara Croft, as I noticed he upgraded to the remastered editions (the “official” remasters) somewhere around Tomb Raider III. Foxmaster is almost done with III at this point, and I believe he has already posted some “shorts” footage from IV. I still recommend these videos, although Foxmaster did stop providing updates on the game-playing routine. The bloopers reel he does for every level still gives some insights into the iterative processes needed, but honestly getting Lara through any given level is as much a matter of luck as it is scripting polish. The Lara Croft “commentary” is still created the same way as initially outlined, with the updates I’ve already talked about to increase the speed of level generation. Again, the bloopers reels provide some insight into the various ways commentary can go on any given playthrough. Occasionally the output included in the bloopers is better than the produced video. Foxmaster usually points this out as regrettable. As far as I can tell he tries very hard to make the produced video be the product of a single actual playthrough to maintain consistency…and this means sometimes better results are left on the cutting-room floor, so to speak.
Incidentally, while I’ve been a big fan of Brother laser printers for personal use (multifunction or otherwise), I will point out that the process for getting a new one going is *not* currently as good as HP’s or Canon’s. IMO, of course; that is based on how my own mind works and others may interpret the instructions differently. It took a few tries to get started, but did work in the end. On an unrelated note, I will also need to setup a new iPad soon. This is purely because the old one is a 32GB model that needs its entire memory cleaned out in order to install the latest (as of a year ago, I’m guessing) update.
I’ll be adding another post tomorrow when I’ve had some time to sit and relax for a while. Sorry about the split post; hope everyone had a great weekend!
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The Thieves Guild quest in Skyrim is a vortex of disjointed plot-holes, contrivances, and nonsense.
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It's not a good movie, but it was made with good intentions and if you look closely you can find a few interesting ideas.
Project Button Masher
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Shouldn’t chicken strips be in the fridge or the freezer? Or is this like a box of takeout just temporarily protected from the cat?
That second one. It was a box from a chicken place because my spouse got hungry for chicken strips while doing homework and tests. They can only do it on weekends, so they sometimes have really full weekends with bad scheduling and they put off eating sometimes. The box had only been on the counter about 45 minutes, and was put in the fridge right after the cat attacked.
I like Epson printers myself, at least the inkjet kind. They have refillable internal reservoirs instead of replaceable ink cartridges, which means they can’t slather them in too much DRM. I will never buy an HP product again after they started their “instant ink” subscription thing which stops your printer from printing if you unsubscribe even if you have full cartridges (and don’t get me started on their print/scan combos that won’t scan if you don’t have ink).
Laser printers only really make sense to me for very large print jobs, and I print mostly character sheets and maps, monster art, and other stuff to put on my GM screen.
If you can afford one, laser printers are really good if your printing needs are intermittent. I ended up getting myself a laser printer because while at one point I could do intermittent printing at work over the past few years that ended up being more difficult, but all of my inkjet printers kept having their ink dry up. With a laser printer, that doesn’t happen, so even though the replacement cartridges themselves are more expensive if you print intermittently you might never actually run out of laser printer powder and have to change the cartridge. It’s been working well for me so far.
Yes, we’re on our second laser printer — got the first one in about 1995 I think, it died about 15 years ago and we replaced it with the current one. I think we’ve bought toner for it twice now. (It’s also a decent scanner and even sends faxes, although sadly they switched our home phone to VOIP and it can’t receive faxes on a separate line anymore.)
The intermittent printing is why I pushed for the laser. I was thinking of a cheap black toner, but the person buying believes they need color once a year or so. Much more expensive, but if they’re only using it a couple of times a year, the dust will get it before use does.
Yeah, that’s why I stopped recommending HP at all. I like Epson inkjets, but anyone who has intermittent needs I usually push toward a cheap Brother black-and-white laser.