This is a container category for media reviews and related drivel.
Satisfactory 1.0 introduces an entire game mechanic that wasn’t in any of the Early Access versions. And I don’t mean the (erstwhile) storyline.
Meet the Dimensional Depot Uploader, which allows you to dump materials into a kind of Hammerspace. Neat, huh?
(more…)“101 Songs that Shaped American Music”
There’s an old line which goes something like, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” It’s hard, incredibly hard, to convey one’s thoughts and information about one medium in a whole other, wildly different medium. Just ask any of those YouTubers trying to get their takes about film and song across, I imagine they’d agree.
(more…)The release of 1.0 hit just a few weeks ago, and I’ve played… a lot. Not every day, though! In fact I took several days away from the game over the last week or so. Burnout is real and to be avoided.
With that said, I have finally hit my actual favorite part of the game:
Trains!
(more…)It’s phone refresh time for everyone on my Ting plan. Spud’s phone just up and bricked itself after several years of stalwart service, so I got his replacement sent out and that seems to have gone well. And then I started thinking, hmm, it has been a while since my Pixel 4a (5G) fell out of regular updates support. And Vyx’s phone has been giving her fits for a while.
So… new phones for everyone! She’s got a Pixel 8a due to arrive soon, and my Pixel 8 arrived today. I can’t really say if I like it better than the 4a (5G) or not yet, but the only annoying thing about it so far is that I can’t find a way to get rid of the “AI Wallpaper” app it comes with. Yuck. I got Signal, Duo, Discord, MediaMonkey, and Medisafe installed and settings/music/etc migrated with no particular difficulty, and my Jabra 65t earbuds are paired & tested.
In spite of my advancing age (and the decreasing visual acuity which comes with that) I’m happy that this is a slightly smaller phone. Fits in the pocket easier, doesn’t feel quite so bulky to grasp. And with the font sizing features I can make the phone more-or-less usable by my “old person eyes” even before I’ve got my readers on. Helpful, that.
All things being equal I’m going to miss the 4a, it was quite the workhorse, but eventually it will give up the ghost and now I’m freshened up for the future. Yay?
I planned to use this website to write more about Satisfactory. (Among other things.) What’s stopping me? All the free time I could be writing, I’m spending in the game. So, my love of the game gets in the way of my plans and principles yet again. Same as it ever was.
Anyway: At just about the 24 hours (in-game time) mark in the new save, I completed my Ironworks.
I’ve been referring to various purpose-built factory sites as [whatever]works since my very first play-through about four years ago. This one’s the best I’ve built yet. Which you’d expect given all the practice over the years, I suppose, but I really do feel good about this result. Let’s get into why.
(more…)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:
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?
Yeah. I think so.
