2025

3 March, 2025. 992 words.

Dispatches from @ultrviolet@gts.endgameviable.com:

Monday 01/27

19:02 # Started watching American Primeval on Netflix. I love a good grimdark western but man this is the grimdarkiest grimdark one I’ve seen in a while. The west was apparently indistinguishable from Monty Python’s Holy Grail-style rainy, muddy medieval Europe, except there’s no jokes.
- 08:33 # Despite being only 6 episodes, somewhere around episodes 4-5 it started to feel padded and too long. It split into an A story and a B story and the B story felt kind of unnecessary and distracting. Still, I enjoyed it despite the flaws. But I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a high tolerance for senseless brutality.

21:59 # How do I find the like, I don’t know, serious books on Audible now? Browsing the front pages for a new book, especially in the sff category, is so depressing.
- 22:04 # The genre fiction world has fallen a long, long way when I have to start looking to Brandon Sanderson as the bar for quality.

14:29 # I started an audiobook of Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold. Not really into this audiobook so far. I really liked the First Law series, but I read those. I remember almost nothing of the story, but I remember it mainly for having good, interesting characters. Not seeing that in Best Served Cold so far.
15:37 # Somehow I managed to drive to the store, buy stuff, and walk back out to the car with my belt unbuckled.

15:39 # I’m just now catching up on the Severance phenomenon. The first season was amazing. Looking at the episodes in the second season, I’m predicting it right now: It will end up being thought of in the same way as Lost.

17:41 # The grocery store this morning was way more crowded than I expected, because of, I assume, superbowl preparations. There were people expressing their support for both the Birds and the Chiefs in the form of shirts and actual chants. I found it charming. I myself don’t want either team to win, which is unfortunately not one of the possible outcomes.

12:55 # People are losing their minds over Severance S2E4… I need to rewatch it because I was mostly like “wtf this is cool I guess but can we get back to the actual show please”

15:58 # I keep forgetting to write stuff here. Yesterday it snowed all day. Maybe 3 or 4 inches. No big deal, today it’s already melted off all road surfaces.
16:06 # I tried out the new game Avowed last night, by the same people who did Pillars of Eternity. It’s basically Pillars of Eternity except in a 3D action RPG form instead of 2D. It has a bit of a janky AA kind of feel to it, but I like it. Looks nice, deep lore, interesting RPG systems, decent dialog trees, and combat is frickin’ hard on hard difficulty. Sort of Oblivion-esque but you can also do a third person camera. Not bad so far.

22:23 # I was tinkering with OBS video encoding settings today. OBS changes them randomly from time to time. First I noticed the NVENC H.264 encoder I was using had been deprecated, so I switched to the new one. Then I tried the NVENC HEVC encoder, which seems to work fine. I also tried the AV1 encoders but my recording PC is way too slow to handle those.

16:36 # Yeesh I had a number of subscriptions going that I had completely forgotten about, including a FFXIV sub.
19:13 # Hey I finished the story in Dragon’s Dogma 2 tonight. None of it made any sense from beginning to end, so it was consistent throughout.

19:25 # Confession: I’ve never noticed any ray-tracing effect in a video game ever. Never once seen any video game NPCs juggling mirrored balls surrounded by checkboard textures.

08:55 # Good news, everyone! I found eggs at the store yesterday.
12:41 # I logged in FFXIV for the first time since… I dunno, 2021? 2022? Well, not really. I just got to the title screen and list of characters then quit. I wish there was a way to see which FC I’m in (if any) before I actually log in with a character. The last thing I ever want to do with a video game is give anyone a chance to notice I’m online playing. Haven’t wanted to do that since the late 90s. It’s basically the same as walking into a crowded room. Gross. Icky.
- 12:46 # In addition to seeing which FC I’m in, I’d also want to be able to join or leave FCs before logging in. I dunno. I guess my personality doesn’t align well with MMORPGs anymore heh.

10:42 # Is anyone else getting tired of every male video game voice actor’s breathy exhale at the end of every phrase?
- 12:04 # That explosive rant was brought to you by playing a bit of Monster Hunter Wilds today. I think it’s an anime voice actor thing but it seems like every video game voice actor does it now like every video game producer expects it as the standard or something, even though no human being ever talks like that unless there’s a microphone in front of them.
12:24 # I fell into a rabbit hole watching Smosh reads reddit post videos. I’ve blocked this sort of content before (“my super original content is just reading other people’s content woo”) but it’s better than usual and hilarious and horrifying how many horrible people are out there in the world. I don’t have a high opinion of humanity to start with but sheesh it’s a frickin’ miracle there isn’t a new serial killer arrested every single day.