greyduck.net

Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Category: Media

This is a container category for media reviews and related drivel.

  • We All Key Ya For Ikea

    We live in a proper house now, and with that change came some extra floor space for furniture. I decided last week that what my room needs is a “proper” display shelf. Cue some puttering around on Ikea’s website and a chunk of money gone from my bank account, and… well:

    Unexpected benefit of the design: It doesn’t block the switched power outlet so I can use the light switch by the door to turn on a lamp sitting atop the new cabinet. Sweet!

    As usual, Ikea does such a smart job providing visual instructions that even an easily confused duck like myself can follow along with relative ease. At one point I needed Vyx to help get the side glass panels into place (absolutely a two-person job, the instructions said so) but even that didn’t take very long. Mind you I also needed her to make sense of the instruction for getting the metal top piece into place. It’s a good thing she’s so smart or I’d still be at the build an hour or so later.

    I thought I was being clever by not hauling the entire shipping box up the stairs before starting the build, and it wasn’t actually a bad idea to take each piece up as needed… but I absolutely did not save myself the workload by piecing it out. I still had to shift almost exactly the same amount of mass (minus the cardboard, which weighs little) plus I had to climb and descend the stairs that many more times.

    In other words: Owie. My back hates me right now.

    Worth it, though?

    From top to bottom and left to right: Foam pickaxe reading “Remember Tunnel 17” from the Digger comic, Tolo brand rubber ducky, plush Teto from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, plush Kafka “Creation” (a cat-cake… thing) from Honkai Star Rail, Lizard Doggo from Satisfactory, Quaggan from Guild Wars 2, and Ryo-ohki from Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki.

    Yeah. I think so.

  • Satisfactory: 1.0

    It’s out. It’s finally out. Most of 4 years since I bought the game in its Early Access state, 1000+ hours of time spent in it during that time, and here I am starting a fresh new save.

    Not that there weren’t some hiccups at the start.

    (more…)

  • Gearing Up For The Stream

    When Coffee Stain Studios announced the release date for Satisfactory’s 1.0 version I immediately put in for the day off. (Also the day before, since taking just a random Tuesday seemed silly.) How, I wondered, would I properly celebrate? Given that I’ve very (very very) occasionally streamed the game on Twitch, I decided to go ahead and do that thing for as much of the release day as I can manage.

    Mind you, apparently Pacific time zone folks get the game at 8 o’clock in the morning. On the one hand this means I get to start playing as soon as I’ve had breakfast and such in the morning. On the other hand this means that I will want to start playing as soon as, etc, etc. Hmm. I’m sure it’ll be fine. I have to be up and medicated by that time anyway.

    Now, about that streaming idea.

    (more…)

  • Straight Into My Ears

    I have, one might say, a bit of a problem.

    Most of those are gaming headsets of one form or another, a couple are just-headphones, and a couple are designed primarily for videoconferencing use rather than for gaming. And then there’s the earbuds.

    “I can quit any time,” I say, as I ponder shopping online for yet another set of headphones. I (probably) won’t buy anything right now, though, because between the Poly-formerly-Plantronics work headset and my excellent Sony listening headphones, I’m set. For the moment.

    What brought on the urge to dig through the Box Of Discarded Headsets? Tuesday’s Satisfactory game stream project/idea/thing. The Poly headset is great but after a couple of hours my ears start to hurt. This isn’t a problem very often since usually I’m not in several-hours-long meetings… but the weekly game sessions with the kids can run to nearly three hours and by that point I’m definitely feeling some discomfort. Given that I’ll be streaming for more than three hours on Tuesday (if all goes well) I figured I should check my alternatives.

    My current plan? I’m going to stick the Blue Snowball on a boom arm to be my microphone and use the most comfortable just-headphones I have available… which probably means the wired earbuds. But we’ll see.

  • Satisfactory: Two Years of Co-Op

    We started this as a regular (mostly) Tuesday night gaming meetup in late 2022. Time flies when you’re having fun and tearing up the landscape and turning critter guts into shop tickets and building huge quantities of many things!

    Last Tuesday evening, the kids and I completed our Satisfactory (Early Access version) co-op save game session. We sent up the Phase 4 space elevator shipment, which was the final thing-to-do that the game has available. (Other than sinking items for tickets to buy geegaws in the shop, that is.)

    Spud had the idea of making a time-lapse sequence out of the end-of-day saves loaded into Satisfactory Calculator, so… I did that:

    And now for a real break from the game. 1.0 releases in early September and by then I’ll probably be refreshed and ready for it.

  • Ryoko, More Or Less

    I went through some of my storage bins Saturday afternoon as part of my ongoing effort to actually, you know, move in to this new house properly. Put stuff on shelves, put stuff in storage, live a bit less “in boxes.” That sort of thing.

    In the process I came across some of my old Tenchi Muyo merchandise purchases, such as some “super deformed” figurines and a 6 inch tall McFarlane Toys rendition of Ryoko (complete with small companion Ryo-ohki).

    On the back panel you could see the entire “Animation from Japan” line from this run of McFarlane Toys: Two characters from the movie AKIRA, Vash from the show TRIGUN, and Ryoko here. That’s it.

    Then I realized… I have shelf space now. And it’s not like I’m keeping this for resale value as a collector’s item. Why not just… get it out of that packaging after all these years? So I did:

    Poor Edelgard. First Holo the Wise Wolf, now Ryoko the Space Pirate. It’s getting crowded on that shelf.

    The quality’s actually fairly decent overall. The “flowing robe” is sort of a rubbery plastic and holds its shape pretty well. Getting the “beam saber” into her hand was tricky and I nearly broke the thing in the process. Having the entire figure kind of leaning forward in an action pose isn’t the worst choice they could have made. All things considered, though… something looks off about her. It’s like some other figurine is cosplaying as Ryoko, which is a weird-assed thought to have but that’s what I’ve got. My brain is the way it is.

    Anyway. Another fandom represented on the display shelves, this time one of the oldest of all my anime fandoms over the years.

    Oh, right, I also unboxed my Zentraedi Officer’s Pod. Did I forget to mention that?

    Alas, the regular Zentraedi Battlepod is in really bad shape and cannot stand on its own two legs. In the box it remains. By the way: Bonus points if you recognize the foam pickaxe…

    So that’s the absolute oldest anime fandom of my life (Robotech!) represented. I’m such a nerd.

Calendar

July 2026
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  

My Links