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[DeVaultSetter]

Just a small nondescript urn with a couple of small holes in it. Really have to upgrade, this caught the eye:

Yes it is, wasn’t aware Tolkein provided his own illustrations, aspects of which are recognizable in the movies.
In the local cafe, there was a copy of Nature, May 2024. Lots of detail in the research, commensurate with Scientific American in quality. Do you read all the articles?

[Spastic Hamburger]

That is nice!

My dad uses colorful, spotted toadstools for his incense. He usually picks them up at the art festivals so I may try looking there when we get one 🙂

Yeah, it’s really quite cool to see things as he intended them to look. I do remember that some of the descriptions were kind of vague. 🙂 I wonder if there are illustrations of Mordor in there? Always had an issue visualizing that locale in particular!

I try to! Lately, though, I’ve been having to focus on the studies that are of particular interest since it takes me so long to read an entire issue and I’m already months behind 😛

[Spastic Hamburger]

https://www.entertainmentearth.com/product/garfield-11-scale-gigantic-figure/bfgf0001

That would require a lot of lasagna to maintain 😛

[DeVaultSetter]

20 inches, and half expecting it to be 20 feet, thus lasagna for an entire army!
Quite a few mods for Doom 2 at Nexus, earliest 2015, quite a few from this year interestingly.

[Spastic Hamburger]

If it was twenty-feet, it’d be a moon-ful of lasagna! 😀

The ad does read as though they may be having issues getting the licensing agreement worked out, which is interesting. They don’t usually advertise products like that unless they know the paperwork is all figured out.

Cool! Never played Doom myself. Though, I did used to play a lot of Quake and Unreal Tournament at LAN parties. That was a lot of fun. Really miss yelling across the room at the guy when I got shot. 😛 See what we lose by going remote only!

Been reading John Scalzi’s books and they’re a lot of fun. Essentially, they’re science fiction with a humorous twist and a lot of pop culture references. The Collapsing Empire, for instance, had a starship that was named “Our Princess is in another Castle” for example. He also has a book that satirizes the redshirts from Star Trek. Got that one on the waiting list!

[DeVaultSetter]

There was an incredible hype and promotional activity at the time of the original Star Wars film release. This brought the movie into the “crowd pleaser” category, so fun for everyone really, however the urge to personally explore it further never did come to fruition. The vollies from some critics rang clear and loud:

Star Wars is a junkyard of cinematic gimcracks not unlike the Jawas’ heap of purloined, discarded, barely functioning droids

Scalzi doesn’t hold back much either:

Star Wars is not entertainment. Star Wars is George Lucas masturbating to a picture of Joseph Campbell and conning billions of people into watching the money shot.

Now with AI, deep fake, and Whatever, it’s possible to illustrate the vision of Scalzi in such a way that Star Wars becomes entertainment for an even wider demographic. 😛
Fabled Lands is now a game, very nice writing over at the Blog. Just noticed still logged into Blogger with the Google account after years, forgot that logging out of Blogger also logs out of Google.
The state experienced a windstorm a couple of nights back, so busy clearing up the branches. A couple of less healthy trees lost their crowns. 🙁

• This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by DeVaultSetter.

[Spastic Hamburger]

Yep, Scalzi does use some colorful language. Part of what gives his books their charm! 😀

Yeah, Star Wars reviews are all over the map. That’s not even taking into account the changes made with each subsequent release. Han shot first!

Then there’s the debate whether or not Star Wars is science fiction or space opera. Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction so it’s actually both. One could argue that it’s more of a fantasy film, though, as it takes place in an area where Earth doesn’t exist.

Ooh, the art style reminds me of Battle for Wesnoth. Really wish I could get a good tabletop RPG group going. Each time I try, the other folks just stop showing up after a session or two without explanation. /shrug

Always sad to see a tree get hit hard. 🙁

Been getting a ton of storms over here. With the heat, though, the water has been evaporating faster than it can fill up the reservoirs so the water level isn’t too high.

Also just noticed the other day that NMS quotes John Scalzi when you die. Never noticed before!

[Spastic Hamburger]

Trying to decide on a new electric razor is a bit of a pain. My old one from Philips broke after less than a year due to a lot of plastic in the construction (the foil got stuck in an angled position so was no longer safe). Too many options with too many price points. Looked online at reviews and the reviews lean towards the pricier models. 🙁

[Spastic Hamburger]

Just finished reading Redshirts and it’s a brilliant piece of meta-fiction. Highly recommended if you enjoy riffing on writing flaws (I do enjoy bad movies, after all). 🙂

[Spastic Hamburger]

Here’s an interesting idea for an experiment:

Plug a generative AI extension into a blog and set it to output articles based on random input (source yet to be thought of) and set it to run periodically, mimicking an actual writer. The idea would be to see how weird things get over time. 😛

• This reply was modified 1 month ago by Spastic Hamburger.

[DeVaultSetter]

Up here have an old Philips HQ6415, downstairs an HQ6946 which has an online registration posted somewhere.
Did get replacement blades three or four years ago for both, worn out again unfortunately. The big problem with these is the socket connector is too loose, so cord tends to fall out while in use. Might not be an issue with the pricier models, not entirely sure though.
Scalzi punches through with writing flaws? There would be me floored with a heavily punched chalk line all around! 😛
AI is taking over at such a pace that anything we can imagine it to be adorned with is already old hat! AI driven ASCII art might still have some surprises though. 😛
Got another pair of emails and a text message about a money request from someone on Paypal, can be a bit scary how they just allow all this stuff to get through to credulous clients. 😛

[Spastic Hamburger]

How do they handle the upper lip? They’re not too large, are they? My only experience is with foil razors 🙂

Looks like most electric razors these days are cordless. Not too worried about battery capacity as they’ll only be used for a brief time daily so it’ll be a long time before the batteries are no longer able to hold a charge. Sadly, it does mean more e-waste 🙁

Scalzi’s books are great! Have a few more available from the library here but they don’t have many. He’s written quite a few more than we have at our local library. Maybe the bookstores will have some!

Haven’t played with it yet but Microsoft recently introduced generative AI into Paint. Could be fun. Then one can input the result into an ASCII generator, like GIMP’s conversion feature, and have at it! Just checked and it looks like it’s currently invite only so it’ll be a bit.

Yuck!

[DeVaultSetter]

No problem with the actual shaving moves, even with the blades blunt as they are. The ultimate wish is for a blunt blade flash alert, requiring a snazzy kind of shaver with such self-check features. 🙂
Better performance in Freecell today.

Wonder why MS can’t provide direct urls for those results, other than more paying customers that is. 😛
Some years back, one of our local radio announcers has taken upon the task of creating short and ear-catching audio reviews of movies. Here he covers Alien: Romulus, and, true to form, does it rather well. As to the movie itself, sounds good, despite the fact the outcome of most in that franchise to date is rather depressing. 😛
Looking for a worm farm like this, will require the dimensions as it has to fit inside a metal box used as protection from mice.

[Spastic Hamburger]

Thanks! Taking a look at them now, this one looks like a good middle of the road option?

Great!

I really miss games hosting the leaderboards on an easily accessible site. 🙁 Granted, that hasn’t been much of a thing in a long time but I still miss it! It was fun to check in and see how you were doing compared to everyone else throughout the day. 😛

Have never seen the Alien films but they are on the list. Figure I need to watch them at least once. The Predator crossovers? I can probably skip those. 😛

Yep, that looks like a good design. Over here, we usually make our own. Not sure of the details, though, since that knowledge hasn’t been passed down to me. Will need to change that!

[DeVaultSetter]

Looks very nice. Never had any luck over here with e-shavers and batteries, mainly because everything then was Ni-Cad. Which explains the preference for power straight from the sockets – (and hence the rickety connections 😛 ). So good idea to check on the efficacy and user experience of any battery powered units.
We’re in for some dry and warmer days now, so on the watch for fires. Not so many hazard reduction burns either this season.
Oh, and we forgot to say good-bye to Gundam. 🙁

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 3 days ago by DeVaultSetter.

[Spastic Hamburger]

Thanks. Took a closer look at the reviews and they’re pretty consistent with regards to the upper lip area. Sounds like the spacing of the rotaries is too much to properly cover the area. Back to the drawing board!

Yeah, I’ve always had battery anxiety. Really wish we’d go back to batteries that were easily replaceable by the consumer. 🙁

Ugh. Hope all goes well!

Yeah, we’ll miss Gundam. 🙁 In other news, Japan has started using giant robots to repair utility lines!

[Spastic Hamburger]

My base in NMS is coming along rather nicely. Got a roamer bay assembled so that will help with exploring the planet I’m on and I may toss a few more bases on it later. Not sure as it’s nothing special, just the first base the game had me make to get used to base building. 🙂

Still want to build a base on that desert planet but I’ll get there! I should probably start naming the bases something witty but I’m terrible at coming up with names. 😛

Eventually, I’ll need to go to the Anomaly to unlock more base parts but I’m still working on the initial unlocks. The game is about to have me unlock a freighter, which will be nice

Haven’t yet figured out the purpose of the terminals other than for roleplaying so I may need to look them up. Will get there

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 2 days ago by Spastic Hamburger.

[Spastic Hamburger]

https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/23/bofh_2024_episode_16/

*looks at timestamp*

Yay! New story! Always did love the series! 😀 Been reading it for twenty years 😛

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 1 day ago by Spastic Hamburger.

[Spastic Hamburger]

Here’s an interesting blurb on wormholes: https://futurism.com/the-byte/small-wormholes-fabric-space-time

Got more articles buried in my list somewhere. Wormhole research has really been getting popular over the last several months!

[DeVaultSetter]

Giant robots fighting fires even? First thing that comes up is the Dragon Firefighter which has seen some improvements:

Simon is funny, wonderful if he could pop up in a feed – never checked out theRegister before, cool stuff, doesn’t look as if they have a newsletter at this time.
A feeble attempt in worming out a new angle:

Dark Matter May Be a Deformed BLACK Mirror Universe, Scientists Say

Speaking of games, on the top of the bucket list is Disco Elysium, and yay, a few mods to explore. 🙂

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