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  • Best of 2020

    awkward cough Well, it’s been a year. I did somehow manage to enjoy various media things, which is fairly impressive with the small children at play. Here are my favorites.

    TV

    The Mandolorian. Wrapped up the first season at the start of the year, and watched season two mostly inline with its release. It’s fun, and miles better than Rise of Skywalker.

    Steven Universe Future. A small timeskip forwards, the final arc focuses mostly on Steven, and him actually taking care of himself for a change. They land the emotional impact well, and leave things open ended in a way that’s statisfying.

    Anime

    Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!. A fun and creative series. A group of girls get together (for various reasons) to make Anime. The show does a beautiful job of illustrating their ideas visually, with a mix of styles to showcase their imagination. I suppose this would probably classify as a “slice of life” series, but that entirely undersells the visual experience.

    Books

    The Aleph Extraction by Dan Moren. Continuing his Galatic Cold War series, this one is much more of a caper story than just a straight spy story. Very fun, left me wanting more. You should buy it so he can write more of them.

    A Memory Called Empire a very interesting science fiction novel. A bit of the classic “foreigner experiencing another culture” except in this case, both cultures are foreign to us. Additionally, the main character has to deal with knowing more than she can let on. It starts with court politics and quickly becomes a lot more.

    Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers. The third book in, well it’s a loose series, continues to explore the universe setup in A Long to a Small, Angry Planet. This explores the (formally) migrate ship bound human population through the eyes of a few characters.

    Games

    Hades. Game of the year. The gameplay is hard, but not too hard (and has a support mode if you need it). The story and characters are engaging, and give a great payoff for when you don’t make it all of the way out. Even after winning, there is more reason to play to continue to uncover the story, and additional gameplay.

    Destiny 2: Beyond Light. After spending over a year off, I decided to play the first mission of the new expansion. It was good, and I ended up buying in. There is still far too much to do for a casual player like myself, but it feels like there is more that I can accomplish than last year. I’m not entirely sure the season stucture works for me, but the content is good. The new super is fun. Bungie makes a good game, and it doesn’t feel like I’m missing as much as previously.

    Movies

    Not a lot of chance to actually watch full-length feature films, even at home. As I didn’t do a 2019, here’s my 2019 best movie:

    Knives Out. A great, great movie.

    What do I still want to watch? Weathering with You, which has been sitting in the Blu-ray pile for ages now.

    _spr_

    December 21, 2020
    Posts
    books, media, movies, tv, video-games
  • Destiny 2 and Casual Play

    For the past year and a half my primary game1 has been Destiny 2. However, as time has gone on, I’ve found it more difficult to feel like I’m making progress or accomplishing much in the game. At this point I’m probably going to shift my limited time2 to other games3. What’s wrong?

    Forsaken and Slower Progress

    Forsaken is great. Bungie did a great job. However, with it came the first hints of Destiny 2 shifting to the players able to dedicate much more time than me. The grind to 600 was punishing. The grind to 540 so I could comfortably6 play in the Dreaming City was frustrating.

    Once I hit 540, I got into a solid habit of starting every week of play by burning through the Dreaming City powerful reward activities. This was a lot of fun4, and since the drops were always a few levels above my currrent, it felt productive. I even managed to get a full set of armor with decent perks.

    When Black Armory dropped, I was just shy of 590. The content was set just too high for me to be successful. This was demotivating. At the end of the season I had just hit 640, and just barely unlocked the second forge.

    The current season is really dragging me down. I still haven’t unlocked the third forge. My clan is long gone from playing5. When I play, I often don’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything after a session.

    What Hurts

    Here’s what really has hurt:

    • Powerful Rewards not being equal. Just look at the chart. It makes sense, drive the players to the new content. However, it punishes players who really like the older content and particularly solo players who want to play what they like most.
    • It feels like I should be optimizing my play for power level increases. With the powerful drops that are tied to bounty completion it starts feeling like a spreadsheet is needed to optimize my play.
    • Armor type random rolls. Every bit of randomness increases the time that needs to be spent to get something worth using. Making the armor type random feels like an insult to the time I have. I didn’t need another variable.
    • The forge unlock grind. Look, the hardcore players and streamers complained. It is awful for someone like me. I’m terrified of getting to the strike step, no one I know is playing anymore5.
    • The low exotic drop rate. I spent months without receiving a single Forsaken exotic. The few exotics I got were repeats. This has gotten better recently, but Bungie overcorrected from Year 1.

    Two Things That Would Help

    1. I’d like to be able to sit down and play and know that the powerful rewards that drop during my session will really help me move along in the power level grind. Currently, with the minimal increase in power level for many activites, something dropping in a slot might end up doing nothing. This feels terrible, and then I end my play session feeling like I didn’t accomplish anything.
    2. There should be more currated rolls, and clear ways to get them to drop. I love the currated drops I’ve received. I think most weapons should have the option to drop currated, and that there should be a clear path to them. The rolls should be good, but not always amazing, so there is still reason to grind. In Year 1 it was great knowing that if I took the time to play strikes I could eventually get an Origin Story. Or the raid for Sins of the Past. Give me more clear targets like that, but without the craziness of the pinnacle weapons.

    The Future

    I’m curious what comes in Season of Opulence. Maybe the new activities will hit the mark for me. The catch up bounties added in the latest season are a great thing. More of that. I’m hopeful, but if there are big grinds to unlock new activities, I’m not sure I’ll bother at this point.

    1: Big AAA game really. I play a lot of Switch during my commute.
    2: Toddler + long commute. 2-6 hours a week after bedtime.
    3: Spider-Man on the PS4 looks like fun.
    4: Blind Well is great. A productive story mission is fun. And the Ascendant Challenges are very cool. Great job Bungie.
    5: Look, I know about LFG apps, etc. I have social anxiety7 so random groups are rough. Look, I wish I was neurotypical for this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    6: I’m probably just average for skill. That’s fine as long as I have fun. Just means I won’t be soloing the Shattered Throne anytime soon.
    7: And yes, I’m taking care of it. But it takes effort, which isn’t exactly top of mind when I want to play.

    _spr_

    May 8, 2019
    Posts
    Destiny 2, media, video-games
  • Best of 2018

    A list of my top media things from 2018, or at least things I enjoyed in 2018.

    Books

    Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. I read this late in the year, but easily the best story I read this year. The summary on the back doesn’t really do it justice. And the end is just 👌🏼.

    Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches by John Hodgman. A very funny memoir. Made for great bedtime reading.

    Provenance by Ann Leckie. Set in the same universe as her Ancillary trilogy, but relatively smaller in scope. I appreciate that she pulls off not just telling the same story.

    Music

    FooL on CooL generation by the pillows. Technically a soundtrack to the FLCL sequels, but functionally a “here’s some great music by the pillows from the last 18 years”. And actually available on US streaming services! The original FLCL soundtrack was my first import from Japan.

    I’ll Be Your Girl by The Decemberists. Still enjoying this album. Saw them live, and they still put on a great show.

    The Other Shore by Murder by Death. My first listen to the band. I’ve really enjoyed it.

    Movies

    Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I love comics. To paraphrase someone else, this is a comic book movie. Beautiful, fun, humorous. Watch it on the big screen if you can.

    Mary and the Witch’s Flower. Well done, beautiful and fantastic aesthetic. Not quite that Ghibli level of perfection, but very much that type of story.

    Thor: Ragnarok. Took me a while to see it, but wow. It’s far from perfect, but it is fun. The scenes are all visually stunning, the music perfectly paired, and just enjoyable throughout.

    TV

    Adventure Time finished this year. The last episode was great. A nice wrap up to a show that started out much simpler than it ended.

    Anime

    GAMERS! is a fun series that celebrates a love of video games. Read the Polygon review for a good summary.

    Games

    Celeste. I’m not a fan of the brutal platform genre that became big with Super Meat Boy, but Celeste does an excellent job of easing you into it, and you can complete the main story without dealing with anything too insane. The story is great. All the feels.

    Destiny 2 continues to occupy a lot of my time. The Forsaken expansion was very well done, and has kept me coming back.

    _spr_

    January 1, 2019
    Posts
    media, movies, music, tv, video-games
  • Media Diet, April 2018

    Books

    The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisim: finished the trilogy. What a great world, and the ending is just fantastic. A rare book written in the 2nd person.👌🏼

    Movies

    The Incredibles: rewatched recently. What a great film. Very excited for the sequel.

    Ella Enchanted: needed a light movie to end a day. This did that, but wow, it is of a time. A few good bits, but I swore it was a late 90s movie.

    Monsters vs. Aliens: silly, simple. I remembered it being better the first time. Didn’t hold up over time.

    TV

    Final Space: a space action-comedy. Starts light hearted, and develops a good story and world. Season 1 just finished.

    Video Games

    Adventure Pals: a fun platformer. Nothing deep, but a lot of fun.

    Upcoming

    Warmind, Destiny 2’s 2nd expansion in a week. Black Panther in a week at home, and probably Avengers: Infinity War in the theaters.

    _spr_

    May 1, 2018
    Posts
    books, media, movies, tv, video-games
  • Media Diet, February and March 2018

    Music

    I’ll Be Your Girl (iTunes): The Decemberists’ latest album is fantastic. They’ve clearly made a shift with their previous album, and this one continues that with a bit more synth. It’s been on heavy rotation since it came out two days ago.

    Video Games

    Horizon: Zero Dawn: a very interesting combination of gameplay. You are generally underpowered, making you think more, but it isn’t an extreme stealth game. Very enjoyable.

    Dandara (iOS): Metroidvania, clever mechanics, not too long. Perfect for my commutes. Engaging, and just hard enough.

    Movies

    Thor: Ragnorak: great visuals, best of the Thor films, and really funny.

    Coco: 😭😭😭. Wow, Pixar did an amazing job on this film.

    TV

    The Good Place, season 2: continues to be fun, and clever with their shift in formula.

    Books

    Serenity Rose: a reread of an old series I have on the shelf. A fun world, and good characters.

    The Secret History of Mac Gaming: I supported this on Unbound, and just received it. A wonderful trip down memory lane, with many details I had no idea about. Bolo forever!

    Upcoming

    I need to get back to my reading list (as always). Destiny 2’s next expansion will hit soon and I’ll likely shift back to that.

    _spr_

    March 19, 2018
    Posts
    books, media, movies, music, tv, video-games
  • Breastfeeding and Running for Office

    A campaign video for one of Wisconsin’s candidates for governor, with a cute baby who gets hungry. Mom (the candidate) continues the shoot while feeding the baby. Made me smile, as this really is life with a baby.

    _spr_

    March 10, 2018
    Posts
    babies, cute, moms, politics
  • Hidden Xcode Test Metrics

    Daniel Jalkut has a post on some of the currently hidden metrics you can track in Xcode’s built in performance testing. Very interesting stuff. I wonder why it hasn’t been exposed yet, as this method is a few years old now. Reliability issues? In any case, a fun thing to play with.

    (Via iOS Dev Weekly)

    _spr_

    March 3, 2018
    Posts
    ios-dev, tech, xcode
  • Solitaire Battleship

    A little web game that is solitaire battleship. Fun, just hard enough. Fills the little moments well.

    _spr_

    February 28, 2018
    Posts
    web-games
  • Japan’s Little Differences

    A lengthy twitter thread about various little differences and unique things about Japan. Mostly around transit, switches, and accessibility.

    We went to Japan this past fall and I noticed many of these details, but didn’t think to take pictures. It is a fun tour of many little things you run into.

    Also vending machines. So many vending machines.

    _spr_

    February 27, 2018
    Posts
    japan, twitter
  • Inside the Federal Bureau of Way Too Many Guns

    An older article from GQ I read a while back has come back up in social media today. Makes it pretty clear many crime TV shows don’t have much basis in reality. Fascinating read on how much they’re able to get done with paper and microfiche.

    Absolutely ridiculous that this isn’t computerized.

    _spr_

    February 25, 2018
    Posts
    politics, reality
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