The Recluse Report - December 2024 Part 1

15 December, 2024. 3,086 words.

From deep in the winter doldrums, it’s another hodge-podge of miscellany nobody asked for.

Gaming

Path of Exile 2

Path of Exile 2 is getting a lot of buzz among the ARPG crowd. I used to play Path of Exile now and then whenever I felt the need to remind myself why I can’t play ARPGs for more than a couple of days without getting bored. This new one looks like it’s meant only for existing fans, because to me, it looks identical to the first one.

The Game Awards

The Game Awards happened and a bunch of games I never heard of won awards and stuff. Astro Bot won game of the year. The Witcher 4 was announced sans Geralt. Can’t see anything else of note to report about it.

I wanted to get excited about the Witcher IV trailer but it felt like samey factory-produced video game trailer material to me. Oh no, doing the right thing has unintended terrible side effects! It’s still shocking and innovative twenty years after everybody first saw this concept, right?! I dunno, I just can’t pretend to be hyped about these kind of reveals, especially when we have no idea what the gameplay is going to look like. (Hint: It’ll be the same as every other game we’ve played.)

Also, I can’t believe anybody actually thought there might be a Half-Life 3 announcement at The Game Awards. Talk about your franchises that nobody cares about anymore. The percentage of current gamers who actually played Half-Life 1 or 2 at the time when they were relevant is probably, like, what… 5%? Maybe 10%? The world really needs to get over the idea that Gen-X males in IT still represent the target gamer demographic. So who is a Half-Life 3 for at this point? It’s not going to be the evolutionary leap forward in gaming that 1 or 2 was, it’s either going to be “yet another unremarkable live service shooter with microtransactions” or it’s going to be “yet another forgettable shooter,” either of which would undoubtedly be made in the extremely dated Source 2 engine. Why risk the backlash against the brand? It’s not like Valve is hurting for money. They should make a Netflix show or comic book or something if they really, really want to continue Gordon’s story.

Media Production

AI-Generated Descriptions

Inspired by a Blaugust 2024 alumni post from Hey Dingus, I started tinkering with the OpenAI API and hacked together a script that will automatically write descriptions for my videos. This is the holy grail for me.

I hate writing video descriptions. It’s so time-consuming, and I find it soul-crushingly dull and uninspiring, particularly for games that I’m not in love with, which is, let’s be honest, most of them. The vast majority of the time, I just don’t write descriptions and my video uploads are just a title and nothing else.

Not anymore. First I use ffmpeg to generate a low-bitrate mp3 file from my OBS commentary track. Then I call the API to transcribe the audio into text. Then I call the API again to summarize the transcript into a one-paragraph video description. With some creative prompt engineering, it comes out as a first person narrative that’s not half bad.

I can write a variation of this script to automatically transcribe vlog videos I record occasionally, which is something I’ve always wanted to have. (I can also have OBS generate transcripts of my game commentary live at recording time, and cut out the need to have OpenAI transcribe the sound.)

The down side is that it costs money to use the OpenAI API. But so far it’s just a few dollars.

Anyway, it’s another nifty addition to my video post-processing scripts, and another reason to embrace our AI overlords instead of fighting the inevitable.

Media Consumption

Regulars

It’s A Thing podcast (on YouTube).
Glass Cannon Podcast Campaign 2 (on YouTube).
Critical Role Campaign 3 (on YouTube).
Night Court re-watch (on Prime).
Various politics podcasts (on YouTube).
Other stuff I’ve forgotten to write down.

Sporadic

Various NADDPOD podcast episodes.
Churchill at War (on Netflix). Another Brian Grazer/Ron Howard documentary, which, if you were just listening to it, you might mistake for a summer blockbuster with all the drama and sound effects and stirring bombastic music behind everything. Surreal to see George Bush interviewed as an expert on world history.
The Madness (on Netflix). Netflix really wanted me to watch this new show, so I did. I have this ongoing theory that television writers are getting all their ideas now from Twitter memes, and this one is riddled with them. I kept thinking, “Okay that line of dialog was definitely a direct copy of some rando’s tweet.” And, “This is what someone thinks the world is like after only reading Twitter for ten years.” I expected to find the showrunner and writers were all Gen-Z but the main dude is my age. Weird. Anyway it was mediocre.
I got stuck in a rabbit hole watching FailArmy videos for days. When you’re deep in that winter despair of never seeing the sun or warmth ever again, it’s comforting to see other people’s lives are way worse than yours. At least I’ve never drilled a hole into a water pipe behind a wall.

Movie Week

I had a week off from work so I resolved to catch up on some relatively recent non-franchise movies.

Babylon on Prime. At first I had no idea what I was watching, but it grew on me and I really liked it by the end. As a hobbyist audio engineer, I especially loved the scene when they were filming with sound for the first time. (Though I question the historical accuracy of a 1930s microphone picking up the squeaking of a pin in somebody’s ankle… but then they weren’t exactly going for historicity.)
Poor Things on Prime rental. Quirky is an understatement. Not really sure what to say about it. I liked it, but I lost interest here and there. Visually stunning though. Incredibly unique and fantastic performances.
Longlegs on Prime rental. This was the only movie on a “best horror movies of 2024” list that looked interesting. It’s well-reviewed, but it didn’t click with me that much. You can tell the director kept telling the actors, “Okay but do it again in an expressionless monotone like you’re dead inside.” Except Nick Cage of course. Had a bit of a Stanley Kubrick vibe to it. I dunno. It was okay, just didn’t resonate much with me and I guessed most of the surprises well ahead of time.
Abigail on Prime. Also on that “best horror movies of 2024” list, but this is more of the campy fun (i.e. not scary) kind of horror. Felt like a late 80s or 90s movie to me. Sort of that over-the-top sweaty ensemble vibe like Predator. I saw some reviewers praising the performance of the kid but I kept thinking “yeah this is good for kid acting but it’s still kid acting and it’s pretty obvious they’re doing a lot of editing around her.” Lost interest a number of times, didn’t make much sense in-world or out-of-world, but it was kind of funny now and then.
Salem’s Lot (2024) on Max. Among the works of Stephen King, I find Salem’s Lot one of his weaker efforts, so I wasn’t expecting much. The story was pretty faithful to my memory of the book (if rushed), but I found it a fairly flat retelling and I lost interest and wandered away from the screen in the second half. King’s writing is a lot more suspenseful and engrossing than this movie was. Kind of funny that they made it a 70s period piece.
The Command aka. Kurst on Prime. Pretty good flick, I thought, though critics don’t seem to agree. I vaguely remembered the incident so I kind of knew how it would turn out. A major First World Internet Age problem with these movies based on real life incidents is that it’s hard to stop oneself from just looking up the Wikipedia article at the beginning of the movie to see exactly what happens.
Midway on Netflix. Adequate but not especially memorable war movie. It’s no Saving Private Ryan, that’s for sure. Pretty good air combat scenes though.
Alien: Romulus on Prime rental. Not part of my week of movies, but I’ve been waiting a while to see this one. I actually sat down in front of an actual television and watched it in 4K with no distractions, the first time I’ve done that in quite a while. It’s no Alien. Or Aliens. Or even Alien 3, to be honest. But for some reason it was received well. I guess because it was bland and predictable? Who knows. I didn’t find it the slightest bit scary or innovative. Unmemorable characters, laughable plot points, mostly just copying-and-pasting the tropes of previous movies. Neat-looking space scenes though.

Day Job

Not even sure what to say about it. The team’s chief architect has left and things feel very disorganized and chaotic while big, vaguely-defined deliverables loom in the very near future. Meanwhile I’m struggling to determine how much I want to personally invest in trying to solve organizational problems. I’ve been through this multiple times before and I find it very tiresome and unrewarding.

Health and Wellness

Fall of Casseroles

Previously I mentioned that fall would be the Fall of Casseroles for me. I’m pretty happy that I did manage to make a bunch of them. (It’s still technically fall, but it’s cold enough now to feel like winter.) I say “a bunch,” but I gravitated toward making variations of the same one over and over again, which was a chicken and rice casserole, which was based on an AI-generated recipe.

Boneless skinless chicken breast, cooked and cut up
Frozen mixed vegetables
A can of chicken broth (lower sodium if available)
A can of cream of chicken soup (the low salt one)
White rice (I could never get brown rice to work)

So am I brimming with energy every day now because of better-than-average nutritional rigor? Well, no. I’m starting to wonder if I have a latent Lyme disease or gall bladder problem or something like that. It’s hard to judge during winter time, though, when I’m generally hibernating until spring anyway.

And I wasn’t exactly abstaining from excess snacks, either. I have a very bad habit of boredom eating, particularly when I’m watching a show. I need to find something else to do with my hands in those situations. In olden times, that would have been gaming, but I don’t play grindy games anymore.

Homeownership

I’m lucky enough to be from apparently the last generation that can afford to buy houses, and I have one. When I bought my current house in 2016 (an 1800 square foot single family dwelling on a one acre), it was the most expensive house I’ve ever bought (the third I’ve bought in my life). It was extremely easy to buy. I didn’t have to put any money down for the loan, and the interest rate was pretty low (it went even lower pre-pandemic, but sadly I didn’t think to refinance).

By today’s standards, it was extremely cheap. Even by 2016 standards it was relatively cheap. I paid $200k for it, when most of the trendy location houses were closer to $300k. (According to ChatGPT Search, the median price of homes in my county in 2016 was $250k.) I was worried I was paying too much for an old house from the 1950s, but I really liked the privacy of the area. I’m a recluse, after all. I’m surrounded by woods on three sides. Behind me, there is a huge forest lot of some 90 acres.

Fast forward to today.

Surprise Subdivision

As a recluse, I never open my mail. It goes from the mailbox to a pile on the passenger car seat or a pile in the kitchen, waiting for a day like yesterday when I psych myself up to go through the pile which is 99% junk. (This was part of my recent decluttering efforts.)

I found a letter from an unknown source and opened it. What was inside shocked me to my core. Cue commercial break.

It was a letter from June from a legal firm to “adjacent neighbors.” It turns out, a developer wants to turn the 90 acres of woods behind my house into a “residential development with public water and sewer.” (I don’t have public water or sewer.) No further details were provided, except a link to a web site which also didn’t provide many details.

Much Googling and ChatGPT Searching later, I still couldn’t find much information about it, but I found one article on a paywalled business site with an image of the proposed subdivision layout that I was able to capture without having to pay.

All of which led me to the stark realization that local information isn’t on the Internet. There’s no social media I can follow or RSS feed I can watch to learn more about this upcoming development a stone’s throw from my back porch. The only thing I can think to do is frickin’ call the developer’s office and ask what’s up. Feels pretty antiquated.

I was somewhat comforted to learn that the land directly adjacent to my property is zoned as “conservation land,” and the subdivision layout doesn’t have new houses butting right up against my property.

Still, I thought about making plans to move in a year or two. A subdivision full of screaming kids right behind my house is somewhat antithetical to the reclusive lifestyle.

I’m quite lucky to live in an area of my county that has been growing. I’m regularly bombarded with offers from computerized land barons crawling America’s property listings for land to buy, especially on the two empty lots surrounding me. (I technically own three one-acre lots, only one of which has a house on it. The other two acres are just trees.)

This is an area that’s “in-demand.” There’s an airport nearby, there’s a Facebook data center very close to my house, and I keep hearing about new plans for “technology centers” on this side of the county. Virginia has been going pretty hard into the data center biz, which, as everything does these days, has caused some controversy. A new high school was built nearby a few years ago, and a new county police station is under construction as we speak (they just recently activated the digital sign out front that exclaims pithy aphorisms at motorists driving by).

So I knew the value of my house has been rising. My tax assessment has been steadily growing year after year. But I didn’t realize just how much, until I started wondering if I needed to move soon, and starting doing some searches.

According to Zillow, the value of my house has almost doubled since 2016. ChatGPT Search tells me the median price of houses in my county is now $395k.

Yikes. No wonder the younger folks can’t afford houses. And this is in a low cost-of-living part of the state. Up in northern Virginia, the population center of the state where all the really juicy jobs are, the median home price is about $750k.

Sooooo. That’s interesting information to have. At first glance it sounds like I’d be making a tidy profit from selling, except I’d probably have to buy a house that costs $400k. It’s a lot to think about, and I hate thinking about money, unfortunately. Maybe AI will soon open up a financial advice branch soon for those of us who don’t want to talk to people.

The good news is that if I were to move, I’d want to move into a smaller house (it’s hard to maintain a house and property this big by yourself, and I’m regularly failing at it). So I’d imagine a smaller house would be cheaper than average, depending on location. I might have to think about looking for property in even more rural areas of Virginia. Which kind of stinks because I like the area I’m in right now.

Heat Pump Repairs Again

Also, unrelated to any of that, I had to have yet another fix to my heat pump for the heating season. It wasn’t heating at all, but now it’s working. Kind of. My heat pump isn’t nearly as efficient as I think it should be, and I’m starting to suspect something is wrong with the ductwork up in the attic of the house. Leaks or poor insulation, perhaps.

There’s a big list of minor and possibly major repairs and renovation work I’d like to have done to the house, if I can ever summon up the nerve to call complete strangers in to crawl around my house banging on things. It’s difficult to imagine anything more invasive and unsettling to my routine.

World Context

A busy month for crazy so far.

Fighting heated up again in Syria. In fact, it heated up so fast that Damascus was taken by rebels and Assad fled the country in a matter of days. A rare story this year where the brutal dictator is deposed, rather than getting voted in democratically.
Joe Biden pardoned Hunter Biden. This was considered controversial, one of the biggest understatements in American history.
A House report on COVID-19 was released, concluding the origin of the virus is unknown, but “likely” originated from a Wuhan lab. Otherwise it’s a laundry list of Republican grievances about the pandemic, which I imagine most people will read through partisan filters, if they read it at all. It’s gotten exactly zero news coverage.
In “wtf is that about” news, the South Korean president tried and failed to declare martial law.
United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was (allegedly) assassinated by the most popular murderer since Jesse James.
The French government collapsed. Luckily it was in the normal democratic way, not the guns and explosions way.
Mysterious unexplained night drones have been spotted in the skies over … wait for it … New Jersey. Luckily we live in a world where anyone can grab a microphone and posit explanations, providing us with endless entertainment for what is undoubtedly just some college kid pranks and mass hysteria. #RememberTheClowns
Ongoing Trainwrecks of the Year: War between Israel and Hamas (since 10/2023), War between Israel and Hezbollah (since 9/2024), Sudanese Civil War (since 4/2023), War in Ukraine (since 2/2022).

Bye!