Drowning in too many things

Hmm, that's actually a good title for a de-cluttering type of post but it's actually just the continuation of my work overload. On the plus side, I've found a good set of youtube tracks to listen to that gets me in the working mood. AI generated cyberpunk synth music? It's pretty cool.

Here are a few of my regulars:
1999 - Drift into Memory 
2088 - Protocol: Airstrike
1999 - Momentum Over Fear 
1996 - Neural Link Broken
1989 - Walk Through Fire

The Friday night game sessions are currently Ready or Not, which is a FPS law enforcement game that reminds me a lot of SWAT3. DL has a video of one of our play throughs of that for those who prefer a more visual stimulus. :) 

The Slow Down in Posting

Hey all, it's that time of year again where work is busy and on top of that my "writing fuel" is being used in the preparing of the current campaign my party is playing through. I'm also behind on recaps of that, but for now I thought I'd just share some links that I liked which you might also enjoy. 

Starting off with some feats of engineering we have the process of "rescuing" a pretty big tree house, and China brings future tech closer by having robot fighting matches and first flying cars?! That's cool but surely going to cause air control some headaches. If you prefer your fighting to have a more human element you might enjoy these clips from FreeMMAGyms, and the archer Blumineck.

Music wise I've really been enjoying Mac Glocky's restyled songs, as well as Warframe's Lullaby of the Manifold and Yoko Kanno & the Seatbelts's recently extended version of TANK! Lastly if you want to both have a laugh and be impressed by yodeling, here's Chicken Attack, which I would never have encountered if not for Juris! Thanks dude!

Ukraine: Enemy in the Woods

This is a documentary about a small piece of the war filmed mainly from body cams - following a company of 99 Ukranian soldiers holding a railway forest against the Russian advance. It shows the daily lives of the troop: the down time, the scavenging, the danger, and yes - some of the fighting too. You will see a few dead people (most are blurred/censored/out of shot if too close) so that might be your time to "nope" out, but otherwise it is a sobering 1 hour flick that just makes me really glad I'm not there as I wouldn't last five minutes in those conditions - and that's without an opposing force! Definitely worth watching if you can find it and is possibly one of the best anti-war films around.

As of this post it is day 1585 of Russia's two day special operation.  The front seems to be a stalemate currently, but drone warfare has improved to the point where Ukraine is now hitting targets in Moscow.

Stranger Things experience at Luna Park

I was fortunate enough for my wife to take me to this live action experience in the Stranger Things world which is both hilarious and very well done, mainly involving us guests as people signing up for a "sleep study" at Hawkins Lab (where of course, things go wrong). 

Excellent live actors do the heavy lifting to get us into each scene and special effects and set crafting make for a fun experience throughout. Of course your mileage may vary on how much you like Stranger Things in general (yes the heroes of the show make appearances), and how into it you can get. Audience participation helps get other audience members into it! Definitely recommended. And the pizza (not free) we got at the end of it was pretty good too! :)

While this attraction is closing soon, it definitely encourages us to check out more of these sorts of things. I believe their next thing is Squid Game?

Stuff outside Tokyo

After leaving Tokyo... the Kyoto International Manga Museum is good for multi linguists but the section for English manga is small. Unless you are also getting your portraits drawn by the local artists (a cool service) it's not worth the entry fee.  

Onto Awaji Island - on the Western side is Hello Kitty Smile, a smallish building dedicated to Hello Kitty which we enjoyed much more than Sanrio Puroland. The smaller scale let them really decorate their rooms much better and somehow the gift shops are bigger!? The food here was also better in comparison. Nearby (in a car anyway) is the Hello Kitty Apple House whose main space is used for a stage show with dining. Live dancers and instrumentalists always are great, and getting the opportunity to "meet" Hello Kitty fulfilled one of my wife's life long dreams (as an aside, I'm officially taller than Hello Kitty lol). :D

The last theme park was my pick and still on Awaji: Nijigen no Mori. There's lots of attractions in this mountainous park including Naruto and Godzilla but the ones we did were Dragon Quest, Monster Hunter: The Field, and the Bleach: Night Walk, which is literally a mostly uphill walk through the forest lit by some cool lighting and screens playing scenes from a Bleach episode. It's a bit of a workout!

Dragon Quest was my favorite: a live action RPG where you help people in the town (by interacting with digital screens) to find stuff (physically in town, which includes opening chests and looking for secret doors) and fighting monsters which comes in 2 varieties: doing the correct pose to do more damage and furiously button mashing to beat bosses. It was super fun and has an ok story to boot! We even stopped by the Dragon Quest bar for a decent lunch (Awaji is known for onions, so expect that everywhere here).

Monster Hunter: The Field is more relaxed on the RPG side, letting you just wander the full grounds to find items / allies via digitally picking them up (you get a nice bracelet with a chip to interact with stuff in all the attractions I think) then returning to battle the creature you are hunting. The fight tech here is more involved as your team (of up to 3 only) gear up with a digitized gauntlet and belt and are set into a room with a 3x3 mat. Swing or shoot your weapon to do damage at the screen but also don't stand in the red (physically) and you'll actively have to duck and jump a few attacks to evade them. Pretty fun!

Definitely want to go back here, and back to the nearby glamping site of Grand Chariot which is spectacular in both accommodation and service, driving us up and down the mountain to the nearby Nijigen no Mori themepark and even providing a phone so to call for pickup. The heated floor yurt was amazing and so were the 7 course dinner and breakfast provided. Yes, it was really pricey but I'm willing to pay that again! If you need a cheaper alternative we also stayed at the Fairfield by Marriott Hyogo Awaji Higashiura which was pretty nice, but expect to walk around to find food. :)

Stuff in Tokyo

I covered off where we were in the last post, time for a bit more of what we did and since I already did a sweeping generalization of the temples and castles last post so what's left is... theme parks? Haha - something like that.

My wife is a big Hello Kitty fan so in Tokyo we visited Sanrio Puroland which looks great on the outside but is less impressive on the inside, simply having one big (but nicely decorated) main hall with little offshoots and a very small shop. The cafeteria gets crowded quick too, especially since the Japanese use the "if something is on the table it is reserved" methodology. As such I've seen people leave hand bags, phones, purses unattended which is very alien to my defensive "look out for thieves" brain.

The Sanrio character shaped foods are ok but nothing to write home about. You can get more desert type stuff of that at Sanrio Cafe Ikebukuro which is closer to Tokyo. Expect to wait in a long digital queue for a table there though. You know what else has long queues? Disneyland and Disneysea! Yes we went to both and while we didn't go for the rides, the old Disneyland just edges out Disneysea in terms of awesomeness. Both parks do sell large Mickey Macarons which were our favorite food item there. I think we ended up having five or six each!

The last in this set is Teamlabs Borderless. This digital art gallery is really cool and is staged in a labyrinthine set of rooms and corridors which encourages visitors to go exploring. There are many exceptional rooms here and its a good place to spend a few hours, but it definitely won't eat up your whole day (2 hours is plenty). Probably not recommended for people that get dizzy easily though as the displays on the walls are almost constantly moving.  

As an aside the food offered at the convenience stores like Lawson, 7 Eleven and Familymart are super affordable and pretty tasty (I miss Famichiki). We didn't worry about eating healthy there as we were racking up 20,000 steps a day!

So we went to Japan...

We were fortunate enough to visit Japan towards the end of last year which was amazing, so I figured I may as well do a few reviews of things we did while over there starting with the places we stayed:

Being the major international conduit, Tokyo is a busy but nice place to visit. Expensive shops and tiny streets with a spiderweb of train and subway services that make it easy to get lost around. Most importantly if you like Shiroi Koibito chocolates and are not headed to Hokkaido, the airport here is the only place to get them! Shinkansen bullet trains are an option to get you to another hub pretty quickly but again, not really something I'd do again because I enjoyed it - more just for utility. The Tokyo-banana snack boxes were nice though! Quick note on trains: we avoided the "sardine" crowd time by simply starting our days at around 4 - 4:30 AM (we didn't go there to sleep. Lol).

Kyoto has more traditional stuff and tight market lanes and hawkers. Our transport here is less trains, more cabs, and a lot of walking to get exactly where we needed to go. Might put a broad reaching categorization now: the old castles and temples (in all the cities) are ok and beautiful, but get underwhelming fast. As such I don't see a point in revisiting Kyoto. Funny that Starbucks is everywhere here, even beside ancient temples! Our favorite breakfast place quickly became the St. Marc Cafe chain which we visited many times, occasionally even for "2nd breakfast"! :P

Osaka is more modern with more upmarket shops and honestly, you might even forget you are in Japan here as it's just another crowded bustling metropolis, albeit with loads of maid cafes. Other than a day trip to Nara (to see the deer) and back by train, we just walked around a lot here in shopping malls. The Nara deer are cute but also stinky and a bit pushy when they see you have food. While I've no real desire to revisit said deer, there's another airport in Osaka which is useful for travel, even if you still end up flying to Tokyo first before heading elsewhere. Speaking of shops: Don Quixote (available in all the big cities) has a crazy amount of variety and its almost mandatory to visit at least one of them. I chuckled that their "toy" section covers everything from Pokemon and kid stuff right beside vibrators, fluffy pink handcuffs and kinky outfits.

Awajishima / Awaji Island holds my favorite spot of our trip. No trains go to this island and a cab would be too expensive so we took a bus and then pre-booked a rental car. People that know me know I hate driving but this island was freaking amazing. So few people and better yet, the winding mountain roads were almost all mine since I intentionally avoided the main highways that either follow the shore or cut right down the middle. This is the place we really want to come back to, as even when we walked around it was usually just us on the sidewalk - a huge difference from the other cities we spent time in.

House Wars V: The Flood

After so many years of everything going ok (well, other than a few trees growing from my rooftop gutter) this was a new one for me. My wife woke me up an hour or so after we went to bed because "it's flooding" and sure enough, a hose under one of the sinks had corroded to the point that (hot) water was gushing out and had reached at least half of our house, including some bits with carpet!

Had to turn off the water main to the house then spent that night mopping and toweling everything off, followed by spreading boxes and boxes of Bi-carb over the wet carpet, having fans going and putting dehumidifiers everywhere. It's all back to normal now and hopefully we caught that in time to prevent mold. Not sure how we'd be able to tell, (I'm guessing there'd be a mold smell?) but whatever.

However we've just undertaken a project that's revealed a second flood, not of water but of stuff that we've just accumulated over the years. Going through a major de-cluttering exercise now and I'm surprised at the amount of junk coming out that we can donate and/or throw. Apparently I am a hoarder of papers which is annoying because they are the least satisfying to clean out. On the positive side, I've been getting rid of clothes that are too big for me now because for a change I've lost weight (around 16 kg). Amazing what cutting down on carbs can do.

Busy September

Between working on "my own" TTRPG (in quotes because there's lots of external source inspiration) and actual work which is kicking my butt I've been a bit slack in posting. Hopefully that changes soon.

In the meantime you can try play around and make your own 6 second AI generated video for free! The site is Chinese but it can work with an English prompts. Tech advances are wild man. I'm also keen to see the remote machine guns Ukraine is developing (also, they've counter invaded Russia). Now gamers can really get into the fight? Curious to see if it will be stationary sentries or mobile with tracks or legs.

Then of course there's good old low tech sabotage and subterfuge, to do things like getting your enemies communication devices to just explode. That's pretty impressive too.

Scattershot

It's time for a random bits containing all the miscellaneous stuff I found just never got around to posting over the past few months!

Starting off with an unposted [Chess Campaign] post (remember those?) where I actually beat Stockfish 4 (as White) using a London vs its Pirc and got its queen early with a pawn push, then had two games against Rose, the first one I was White and sed a London but found myself constantly on the backfoot, staving off checkmates from Queen + Rook and Queen + Bishop but Queen + pawn finally got me and in the second game I played Black. Caro Kann won early pawns for me then we went into a LONG game where both sides were attacking and I lost pieces for her pawns. Eventually got a slayer queen to constantly check her king to clean the board and she resigned when it was just her king left against five of my pawns. I also discovered Josh's ELO is 1300, and then promptly stopped playing Chess entirely because I got sucked into Elden Ring (then forgot to go back).

I had also tried out a solo card based RPG called Deathship where you are a slave aboard an alien ship you must do your best to ... get a high score? What? Yep, your escape will only end in your death - but you might be able to make some friends and kill some guards on your way there. Not recommended. I can't even find the link to this anymore.

Speaking of RPGs, do you need to generate a city map really quickly? This free online Medieval Fantasy City Generator might be just what you need. Other things I found interesting was this method of watering plants using a fog condensation net, weapons testing against a Prince Rupert's drop glass and the Sphere Stadium in LA. That exterior just looks amazing and can be lit up to look like almost anything!

As I usually spruik a musician in these types of posts, for this one I'll highlight the young Aimee Carty who has some good composition and performance skills. Also if you just want some free music, check out NEFFEX. Props to Heartlessgamer for that bit of info! Switching into something funnier, here's an AI's attempt at close captioning the German National Anthem. Might as well follow that with more funnies from Yoleendadong, ISMO, and this old but amazing clip of how to win a cotton candy eating race while maintaining composure. :P

Ovation of the Seas

We were fortunate to go on a short eight day cruise last month on the Ovation of the Seas and it was quite the experience! Boarding was really fast as you deposit your heavier luggage early on which will just appear next to your cabin later, and the beds are cleverly tall enough to fit your luggage underneath so you don't have to squeeze around your bags - there's enough closet space so you don't live out of your bags all the time anyway.

There was no chance we'd be going hungry either with all the options on board but what we found was breakfast at the Solarium was the best, while lunch at Windjammer (provided you sit all the way past the food where it is quieter) offers more options, and the main dining for dinner is great. If you change those around it is less good in that Solarium dinner is repetitive, main dining breakfast is too little and Windjammer is very busy in general.

It's also interesting that the waiters (outside main dining) really get rotated around even from the pay-to-eat places (Chops Grille, yum) but there is alot of upselling especially when you first board and on shore days where they walk around to try get you to eat at wherever they are spruiking.

Of the snacks options, the Two70 cafe is a bit weak again in options (potato soup was good though), at the Doghouse hotdog thing you should just ask for two dogs per bun, and the Fish and Ships near the pool will require maybe three or four of their little servings to be satisfied. Sorrento's (nearly) infinite pizza is the highlight though. Just be aware that after the evening shows this place fills up really quickly!

There's always stuff happening for you to participate in too, and a handy schedule is available in the mandatory app as well as the daily ship news in your cabin TVs. Trivia, dance lessons (we danced on every dance floor we could find), competitions - and that's not even counting the sportsy / poolsy and gaming stuff near the top deck. I got my step count up (around 14-16K a day) doing the search for nations scavenger hunt where you collect signatures from staff from different countries, some of whom are really tough to find as the ship is massive.

While I only got third place I did feel that I got to see a LOT of the ship - including the beautiful gym, spacious spa, multi-roomed childcare, and pretty much every bar because bartenders are an excellent resource when finding people (apparently that's not just in the movies). Did spend a fair bit on shopping too though AND the casino - both of which are only open when the ship is out at sea. After attending an intro to gambling course (free ship activity) I finally tried my hand at a blackjack table. It went as well as you might expect (>_<), but by golly is it fun and super addictive!

For shore excursions (visiting ports) there was a bit of a line for both disembarking and re-embarking but neither took very long possibly because all the ones we visited we could walk off the ship / didn't have to be ferried off the ship. An interesting caveat here though, while you can buy food and bring it on board no food items are allowed to leave the ship! That nixed our idea of getting chocolate as a bday present for someone. We still bought and ate the chocolate though!

Disembarking was also pretty quick - we just chose to tag and leave our bags outside the cabin the night before, keeping basically just hand carry for whatever was left. There was no line for us and by the time we got back on solid ground our stuff was already there. All up a nice experience, with only one slightly rougher sea day where everyone was walking funny. That said as nice as being on that ship was, we were quite ready to get off it come disembarkation day.

Would I do it again? Maybe, but not anytime soon. It's also pretty expensive. :P

The Decluttering

While I am a scrooge, I don't classify myself as a hoarder of stuff but somehow things just keep piling up in my home. Inspired by other blogs that seem to just focus on decluttering which range from smashing an entire room per sitting to targeting a fixed number of random things based on the day of the month, I'm going to try the simplest one (in my head anyway) of getting rid of at least one thing a day - either throw out, recycle, donate - anything to get it out of the house.

And I'm going to post about it too so I can keep track for myself. Not sure if that will be a one liner to the end of my other blog posts or more if the item has an interesting story to go with it. Let's see how this goes, I haven't started and it already feels tough! :P

I think I'll start with easy stuff - today, its the box for a fan. You know how appliance instructions usually say "keep the box in case you need to return it"? Yeah, we keep the boxes, but maybe it's time not to. There are probably a few items like this that can be easy targets lying around!  

Declutter Day 1 - Fan box.

September 2021 Review: Death Count

Now Month 3 of Lockdown 2, this one just flew by for me. Busy with work and dealing with the death of my grandmother who now joins her husband. It's also highlighted how weak I've grown though, as I really struggled and needed help lifting my corner of her coffin.

For those wondering: no this was not a Covid related death, but the tally of "people we knew who died due to Covid" is now at five, three of whom passed this month, one being my brother in law. Of the five this includes one who simply had the misfortune of their ambulance not being able to find a hospital with a free bed in time and one who probably had a fatal reaction to their second vaccine dose. I'm currently only on my first one of that, with the second shot coming next month.

All this has made me break my usual rule of not buying games for myself, which you can be sure I'll be posting about in the future. For now stay safe and take care, don't let that reaper get you.

Most Viewed Posts in the last 30 days:

State of Decay 2: Team Humanity
August 2021 Review: Lockdown 2 Month 2
GTFO: R5A2 - Recollect (Overload)

Have You Ever... the Gaming Edition!

A continuation of sorts, this time with a gamer slant!

Have you ever rage quit a game?

Yes. Life is too short for annoying things. You'll do this more often as you get older.

Have you ever earned all achievements in a game?

Yes. To the Moon only has one achievement. Go get it (and cry)! :P

Have you ever pulled an all-nighter gaming?

Yes, once all the way to sunrise which was crazy. Now my group usually stops at around 2 or 2:30am.

Have you ever live-streamed your gaming?

No. Why worsen the performance of the game (and the player)?

Have you ever pre-ordered a game?

No. Only a fool invests in promises.

Have you ever bought a game and never played it?

Yes, when I buy things as gifts for others. I don't "buy" games for myself. I only get free ones.

Have you ever been jump-scared by a horror game?

Yes - this happens often. Doesn't even need to be a horror game, if something shows up unexpectedly that I need to react to. That almost describes all games right?

Have you ever had a set squad for a specific game?

Yes and no. On multiplayer games I usually run with my brothers. For single player games that use squads, I try use people from previous my stories.

Have you ever bought a game on multiple platforms?

No, that would be a waste. Even buying it the first time would be a waste, just get it for free (unless its for someone else).

Have you ever got a console for the games specifically?

No. If a game doesn't release on PC, then I never play it. It's that simple.

Have You Ever?

Long ago (or it will be long ago by the time I post this), there was this internet questionnaire floating around so I thought I'd answer it too! :P

Driven or been driven at 100 mph/160 kmh?

Nope. I dislike driving, so when I drive I try to be as careful as possible and drive as little as I can. That kinda goes for all vehicles actually. If I can walk, I'll walk.

Learned a possibly deadly skill?

Capoeira is possibly deadly, so yes... though it is unlikely deadly when I use it. I'm pretty good with guns though. :P

Ridden in a helicopter?

Nope! Never had a need to. This also falls into the "its a vehicle" thing for me.

Gone zip lining?

Nope. Seems unnecessarily risky. If someone managed to attach the other end of the line, I'll find the bridge to get there instead.

Been to an NFL game or Ice Hockey?

Nope, neither interest me.

Watched Dr Who?

While I might have seen bits of an episode or two, nope. Doesn't interest me.

Been to Canada?

Nope. I might do this one day.

Visited Disney?

Yes but I was so small I hardly remember it.

Visited an actual castle?

Nope. Someone really needs to build one of these nearer to me.

Visited Vegas?

Nope. Again I might do this one day, though Canada seems more likely.

Eaten alone at a restaurant?

Yep! I've got no problems doing that.

Played an instrument?

Yes, a few. I try to sing too.

Ridden a motorcycle?

Nope. This one is highly unlikely too being a vehicle and all.

Ridden a horse?

Yup! I rarely get to do this though, and I'm not very good at it.

Donated blood?

Nope. I need mine thanks.

Been skiing/snowboarding?

Nope. Never seen snow. I hear its cold.

Gone camping?

Nope. Never had a need to. Definitely not going to "for fun".  

Gone to a festival?

No. Oh, wait yes I have. Not really going out of my way to go to them though as there are people there. I try avoid people.

Driven a stick shift?

A manual car? Yes. Automatic is much simpler and less stressful.

Ridden in a police car?

Nope. Never needed to.

Driven a boat?

Nope. This combines a few things I dislike. "Driving" "vehicle" "water". None of those appeal to me.

Eaten Escargot?

WTF is Escargot? (Looks it up). Oh, so "have I ever eaten snails"? Blech. Hell no.

Been on a cruise?

Nope. At least I wouldn't have to drive it? LOL.

Been on TV?

I don't think so.

Been in a paper/book/magazine?

None of those... but a flyer yes. And the inside part of a music CD cover.

Eaten Sushi?

Yes. Not going to make that mistake again.

Seen a UFO?

Nope. I don't actively look for them though, and for me many aircraft/drones would be UFOs at night.

Been Bungie Jumping?

Nope. Seems like a really bad idea, so not going to do that.

Rescued an animal?

I walked a lost dog home once (good thing he had an address on his collar), but other than that nope.

Met someone rather famous?

A few - yeah, and that's not counting the ones that show up at conventions.

Worst Restaurant Experience

Blaugust centric post today: "Write that one post you wanted to write so often, but always postponed. Finally do it!" -Easha and Poppy

Sure! Here we go... We've probably all had one or more of these, but I thought I'd share my worst restaurant experience to date.

It was Father's Day I think, so the place was visibly busy but we were seated in a short amount of time. Then the waitress comes up to us and says that we can order drinks but not food yet because the kitchen is "too busy". Um. Really? That's not a good look for someone in the service industry.

Anyway, sure - we got some drinks and waited around until said drinks were finished, all the time more people were coming in and being told the same of not being able to order food. So at that point we paid for the drinks and left to eat at a establishment that actually values its customers. I mean, even fast food joints like McDonald's knows to take your order/money ASAP so I'm not sure what these people were thinking.

I grinned with malicious satisfaction when the place closed a few weeks later. It doesn't matter how good your food is if your service is worthless. Turn people away at the door if your kitchen is running that far behind schedule!

Thankfully that space has now been replaced by a restaurant whose service and food are fantastic, and one we regularly frequent.  Here's a good example of why it's always good to prune out the worthless shits to make room for better things so ALWAYS, ALWAYS leave scathing reviews to burn those businesses to the ground! HELL YEAH!

What you think that's too far? Like the time I got a bus driver fired for being too slow? Sorry (not sorry). Time is the most precious commodity, and I'm not going to waste mine on the incompetence of others.

Oh that felt good. Maybe I should put more rage induced posts up! Thanks Easha and Poppy for the suggestion! (Now you know why I postponed writing it!)

Tefal Cook 4 Me = Fire Hazzard

This nice device really helps in getting meals ready, automatic a bit of the cooking process for you. Unfortunately, it comes with a design flaw. Basically, this little pot is a type of pressure cooker and releasing the steam/pressure is one of those automated processes to help out the user.

It's actually really handy; when not starting fires...

It does this through a vent in the back... which happens to be almost above where the power cord plugs in. Not a problem if it was only steam coming out, but so does some liquid (we make a lot of soups/stews). Liquid that drips into said power cord which causes a short! Lucky our breakers are working.

Anyway, due to this I strongly recommend NOT BUYING this product and if you already have one be sure never leave it unattended. Kinda defeats the automation at that point doesn't it?

Technical Difficulties: the Burning Flood

Meanwhile in Australia... 

Plan = Not Drown?

Unfortunately neither of those are conducive to having a stable power supply so my regular posting might fluctuate for a bit. Just giving you a heads up!

Tesla Model 3

I managed to ride one of these quiet beauties recently and boy, does it scream "THIS IS THE FUTURE" for me. Gone are your standard car displays behind the wheel. This time you just have a laptop sized screen that shows all the information plus navigation, music, and anything else you want to set down to seat, wheel, and mirror adjustments based on the user. I also quite liked the 3D rendering display of the car's immediate surroundings thanks to all the cameras lining the vehicles exterior.

Not only can you set these to record and save to both an internal USB and to your remote server on "Sentry Mode" to look out for bad dudes, it also uses it to literally drive itself. You can let go of the wheel and the car will handle speeding up to the limit you set or slowing down if something is detected ahead. Just indicate to switch lane and it will do it for you, again using the detectors to determine a safe gap to do so.

Not as clunky looking as the earlier models.

Yes, by the same means it can also park itself and using a "summon car" app on your phone (which is one of your main IDs to access the vehicle) it can drive itself to you as long as you are in range. I assume that means "parking lot" size and not "home to airport" distance, though the latter would be funny especially if you put a dog in the driver seat and set the car to "dog mode" (keeps the car cool even if "off"). Imagine some cops trying to pull that over!

Not sure you'd actually want a dog in there though as the interior is really slick and comfy, and the glass roof really makes it spacious. It takes around a full evening to recharge the car back to full (as your battery is now your gas) or much faster if you use a super-recharge station which will do the same in a matter of minutes.

There are limits though: The self drive ability only works on roads with lines, so freeways and such are the best use of the feature. Off road or joining/leaving a freeway is best a manual task. Also the car can "panic" if it gets confused which will cause it to wail loudly while returning manual control so no snoozing for you drivers! Obviously any service must be conducted by a Tesla shop too as your local mechanics might scratch their head at what's under the hood.

Lastly, the thing is basically a 2 ton app now and apps can be hacked, tracked, and the like. I mean, it already intentionally tracks itself (again, anti-theft device linked to your phone) but it really looks to be the future of the automotive industry. A second intelligence that helps prevent accidents? Hell yes! Would I get one? Definitely! Why don't I? Because it's super expensive. :P

Blizzard: Tiananmen II

It's amazing how a few hollow words and the promise of entertainment can quell a crowd about to riot. It worked for the Romans, and it seems to be working for Blizzard too. For those not up to speed, here's a recap:

Blizzard is openly kowtowing to China. Business wise one assumes it would be big money for them at the cost of a little thing like morals and human rights, the same cost China is currently extracting from Hong Kong protestors - a few of whom Blizzard silenced. Game wise, things are being slowly changed for their market (which they deny). Less boobs and bones + more mobile games.

People got angry so Blizzard issued a statement of remorse (not an apology), and did not retract any of the offending actions. They then dazzled people with promises of cool games coming soon, which earned them redemption for some while their other supporters just have a general sense of apathy over the whole thing. It's an interesting disconnect.

I wonder, if an event like Tiananmen Square happens, will Blizzard supporters feel anything or will it just be "Blizzard just makes games man - they didn't pull the trigger", "It's not my fault they support China, I just like their games!" and "What they do with the money I give them is their business, not mine!"

While we ponder that, here's what's happening in Hong Kong now since it's not well covered by mainstream news:

Police are arresting students.

Allegedly raping females.

Making some "disappear".

Use of force has been escalating.

As of late, they're also openly shooting people too.

From point blank.

They were also trying to storm the universities.

Students barricaded defended said locations all night.

The general public is supporting them by delivering supplies.

(Perhaps not this dude in particular, he just looks cool getting his lunch!)

Now the students are gearing up with catapults and bows. 

Meanwhile the police are getting a special unit in to assist them.

Is it a massacre waiting to happen?

Do you even care?

If so, spread awareness of what's happening in Hong Kong and/or boycott what you can of China. Realistically Blizzard is low hanging fruit, but doing even a little is better than doing nothing. If you really can't let go of Blizzard, you might find some other way to help.

Remember: If you're not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.