Month: December 2017

Feh

I tried playing a little Fire Emblem Heroes (FEH!) since AC:PC makes me happy, and I played the first DS Fire Emblem game long ago. Nope.

Pro: Tactical combat is passable; small maps with slow movement, but has some challenge. Character art & voice acting is kinda sexy. Con: The "story" is incoherent nonsense, told thru very slow dialog boxes, and never allows you to make choices or kill enemies. Requires grinding fights over and over. Parties are limited to 4 chars, so by the time you have a tank, cavalry, archer, and magic, you have no flexibility to put in an optional char for levelling or a quest. Very few skill choices, no equipment or crafting. ★★☆☆☆ only because I like tac combat.

Compared to Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, which I played for a year: Pro: Main story was OK, had a few path options. Tons of new areas to fight thru (3-5 stages of 3 random fights) and then open up exploration: traditional FF dungeons & cities with secret areas. Characters are great, all the classic FF chars from 1-13, plus new chars. 5-char party plus an ally, plus summons. Tons of equipment & spell crafting choices, and easy to swap out for a specific fight. Con: Slightly aggressive IAP push, but it's playable without. ★★★★☆ I only quit because after maybe 100-200 hours I had done all the things.

FEH isn't significantly easier/more casual-friendly than FFBE, and it offers nothing much to a hardcore gamer.

Status: Boy, that Billie Holiday can sing.

So AIM is shutting down on Dec 15: And read that FAQ. "Why?" "We know there are loyal fans". That's not an answer, AOL/Oath!

But fine. I have iMessage and a .Mac @mac.com address, right? I'm a blue bubble, I'm somebody.

Huh. Well, I can send and receive messages, but can't set my status anymore. No IM, no status. My very specific but subtle mood messaging is gone! Why isn't this in iMessage?

IM status

  • Boy, that Billie Holiday can sing.: From WHY I HATE SATURN, by Kyle Baker, which expresses like 75% of my moods.
  • Fuck Xcode: I'm working in Xcode.
  • GL_ANGER_MANAGEMENT: Look, I made a triangle appear! No, wait, it's the wrong side of the triangle and now everything is broken and the GPU is on fire.
  • Hates the Cloud: Networks are shit, databases are shit, so let's put our databases on the network!
  • is a Pepper: Last and only time I joined a movement.
  • Jon Postel Has a Posse: Postel's Law and Andre the Giant Has a Posse, but also in the sense that I am a semi-qualified angry mob who will string you up for breaking the Internet.
  • Pretentious Mac Bastard: Been called this so many time by jealous Windorks I ain't even mad.
  • [REDACTED]: I could tell you about [REDACTED], but then Apple would kill you.
  • Turns coffee into code: Working
  • Will Xcode for food: Wants to work
  • Wielder of the black sword: And even more so the books. If you know what happened at Quarzhasaat, that's what I mean by this.
  • Where are my pants?: I just got up. Don't look at me.
  • Bananaphone5: This I don't recall. Was there a song from the '60s about a bananaphone?

Anyway, my point is someone at Apple needs to add statuses to iMessage.

Cat Person

"Cat Person" is Mary Sue insertion fanfic about the origin of Logan's Run: Gross, hairy, flabby old people over 30 years should be executed/"renewed" at Carousel, so only pretty young people with hairless, plastic surgery-improved bodies get to have sex.

iMac Pro first review

Very nice! For all that I'm not the biggest fan of Apple's software choices these days, Mac continues to be the only UNIX® workstation worth buying.

The specs on this are actually top of the line, it has sufficient max RAM (128GB!), the AMD Vega card is a great choice. We'd have to wait to see benchmarks between the 10-core, 14-core, and 18-core models for ideal multi-core vs single-core performance.

That said, this isn't the machine I want. Non-expandability is a massive problem for these machines. Wrapping a high-end CPU inside a tight thermal enclosure like the iMac is not great, no matter how much ventilation you put out back; and fans running right behind your screen and speakers is awful, it needs to be on the floor or far end of a desk. When I'm doing anything with audio, I have to use the headphones not just because they're better than speakers, but to isolate the fans.

So I'm still waiting for the Mac Pro next year, and will limp along in my old iMac 5K Amateur, with its ridiculous "little" 3TB fusion drive I can't easily replace, 16GB RAM (which is replaceable, but it hasn't been a priority this year).

The Twelve South HiRise Pro is amusing/insane, it's $150 for a different paint job and reversible door from the $80 HiRise, of which there are plenty of $30 equivalents, and spray paint costs $1. That's, like, half a RAM doubling for an aluminum box. #ZerothWorldProblems.