Microblogging Journal 9/28/2023 through 10/16/2023

Dispatches from @ultrviolet@gts.endgameviable.com:

Thursday 09/28

08:03 # I’ve started alternating playing Baldur’s Gate 3 and Dragon Age Origins. They’re even more similar games than I realized. BG3 would have been a thousand times better if they’d adopted the third-person camera style of DAO. The combat in DAO stinks though. Very boring and skippable. And it’s always funny to play an old game where it’s super obvious that everyone except the principle characters is voiced by no more than one or two voice actors. #baldursgate3 #dragonageorigins

08:28 # Is it just me or does everybody else feel like 90% of what’s available to buy from Audible is now self-published and it’s very difficult to find something that might possibly be a quality piece of work vetted by people who know what they’re doing? There’s a point where I find myself thinking, “You know, some gatekeeping actually isn’t a terrible idea.” #audiobooks

08:37 # That controversial outburst was brought to you by me, who had to find some audiobooks to buy before my Audible credits ran out, and kept scrolling through tons of thumbnails and recognized almost none of the names presented. (Except one name I did recognize in the recommended list as awful self- published dreck I was previously suckered into buying.) I guess I’ll just make my own short list of authors and/or narrators I recognize and do my own gatekeeping. #audiobooks

Saturday 09/30

08:36 # It’s blog publishing day and I’m waking up with an unfinished post and the remnants of yesterday’s crushing headache and can’t really read a computer screen. So that’s cool. #blog

09:12 # I’m going to attempt to play Baldur’s Gate 3 today and maybe find some kind of direction to go in the sprawlingly directionless Act 3. I increasingly wish the game had ended at the end of Act 2. #baldursgate3

Sunday 10/01

10:18 # The sun is solidly out for the first time since the tropical storm went through last Saturday. It’s so frickin bright I had to pull the curtains closed. #weather

Monday 10/02

19:50 # A good use for AI text to speech would be something that reads subtitles out loud while you’re watching a foreign movie, so you don’t have to actually watch the movie, and can just listen to it while waiting for something interesting to happen, because most movies, foreign or domestic, are roughly 75% waiting around for something interesting to happen.

Wednesday 10/04

09:04 # Emoji movie reviews: Black Sunday (1960, English, Amazon Prime) 🧛‍♀️🏰⚰️🥱 #movies

11:49 # Emoji movie reviews: Haunt (2019, Amazon Prime). 🎃✋🔪😐 #movies

11:50 # Emoji movie reviews: The Wailing (2016, Korean, Amazon Prime). 👮‍♂️👻😢😀👍

11:52 # Emoji movie reviews: Devil (2010, Amazon Prime). 🏢🪞😈😐 #movies

11:54 # Emoji movie reviews: A Bay of Blood (1971, English, Amazon Prime). 🌊🦑🔪🥱 #movies

19:31 # Emoji movie reviews: The Keep (1983, PlutoTV) 🪖🏰💨👹🍊🤨🤔

22:44 # Emoji movie reviews: Train to Busan (2016, Amazon Prime). 👨‍👧🚆🧟‍♀️🏃🎵🙂 #movies

Thursday 10/05

14:29 # Heat pump maintenance folks were just here. I didn’t do anything but sit around inside waiting while strangers poked around at equipment outside. Yet somehow I’m completely exhausted now. #homeowner

21:17 # Emoji movie reviews: The Exorcist (1973, Max). 🐪🎬👩‍👧🤒🩺😈✝️🛌🧐

21:19 # Emoji movie reviews: Jigoku (1960, Japanese, Criterion Channel). 😈🚗💃💋🚂🪦🥱🔥👫🤔🤷

Friday 10/06

10:50 # Good finale of season 2 of Wheel of Time. It was basically a complete rewrite of the book, but they still somehow got the “epic high fantasy” tone right. Imo, from here, they should just condense the entire rest of the book series into a third and final season and call it a day. You just know Amazon’s going to pull the plug on it anyway. #wheeloftime

12:40 # Emoji movie reviews: The Sentinel (1977, Netflix). 👩🏠🐤🐱🍷🥳👻🔪✝️😐

21:44 # Emoji movie reviews: Nope (2022, Amazon Prime). 🐴🛩️👽🌥️🎈😳🤩😍👏

21:48 # Emoji movie reviews: The Caller (1987, Tubi). 👧🏠🌲👀👨‍🦳📞⛈️🗣️🏎️🏃‍♀️🙂

Tuesday 10/10

08:58 # I need to write an application to keep track of movies I’ve seen in the same way I wrote an application to keep track of books I’ve read. It’s too much work to manually create lists. #development