Author: mdhughes

Animal Crossing Direct 2021

I haven't been playing as much, typically I'll get in on Fri-Sun if there's an event, or check for birthdays. I've had to time-travel cheat a couple times now, just a few days off, to catch something, and I hate doing it, but it's better than waiting a year? There's just nothing new each day to bring me in. I am trying to stockpile candy for Halloween, but I can get enough candy on the day to not need to do this, it's just easier.

But now there's reasons to come back more often! As of Nov 5:

  • Brewster's café in the museum looks charming, and I have a few Amiibo cards which can be used there. They didn't say if KK Slider would move his shows there? In Wild World (which I mainly played) you had to know KK was playing there to find him; the courtyard is a much more obvious place, but not as comfy.
  • Kapp'n! Boat tours to really non-standard islands. I rarely bother with the Nook Miles islands because I have everything I need at home.
  • Aerobics is back from GameCube. Not at an impossibly early scheduled time now, but just whenever you want?
  • A bunch of Town Hall stuff. And you can expand your storage more! I'm constantly fighting my storage, and have an assistant/mule character who just holds extra junk.
  • Gyroids will grow in the ground again! Fun fact, they're actually ancient Japanese funerary statues Haniwa.
  • More construction content with Harv, who I find creepy but the scene studio's amusing.
  • But also Lottie, who I hate, largely because the Pocket Camp furnishing minigame was absolutely terrible, with no choices or creativity, just a prompt to pay real money for gacha. Maybe it won't be as bad in New Horizons. Maybe. But I want all the construction tools for my own home, not another "Happy Home Designer" minigame. Apparently this is only available if you pay for Online Plus?

Also announced is the Online Plus subscription, mo' money, for Lottie's thing, and:

  • N64 & SEGA Genesis emulators. This is like Coke+ giving you Pepsi as well. That there's a Nintendo-branded Genesis controller is so weird and cursed I don't even know. I think the controller won't work on my Switch Lite, so I'm not too tempted.

Fuck Firefox

I'd been using Firefox as my media browser; I can't reasonably set Safari to show on all desktops, or risk it crashing from stupid movies & music, so I need a secondary browser.

Mozilla's constant disruptive updates are annoying, but they just added a new "trick" to Firefox:

Yes, they've added ads & spyware, and enabled it by default. If they're willing to do this kind of shit, the next one won't have a checkbox, it'll just secretly sell everything you do to ad companies.

So fuck this, Mozilla is dead to me. The one thing I ask first and most importantly from any app or service is DO NOT SPY ON ME.

I've uninstalled Firefox, gone to Chromium for now, we'll see if there's a better option later.

Nostalgia Sunday Music

Look, I remember getting No More Tears when it was new and I was in college, and, uh, 30 years that doesn't make any sense. Because that'd make me not young, but The Old, and I'm clearly not The Old.

What I'm Reading: Shadow Captain, Bone Silence by Alastair Reynolds

Shadow Captain follows the other, less crazy sister, as she tries to revenge herself on pirate Bosa Sennen, then keep their ship supplied, and gain clues about what Bosa was up to. Very much middle-of-trilogy syndrome, nothing happens that's necessary to the overall plot, but it's adequately more of the first volume. We find out a new behavior of the Quoins. ★★★★☆

Bone Silence is split between the sisters POV, and wanders between some excellent lightsail ship combat, a bit of urban treachery, and then pursuit by the… not Navy, but thugs employed by the bankers, so essentially the East India Company, and like the pride of the English, they're honorless scum. All to the good, except midway thru they split the party, one ship goes to town and the other stays to fight the thugs. The author fails to remember the many Chekov's Guns hanging on their fireplaces, and so this is much more of a struggle than it ought to be.

And here the plot turns into a summary, dozens of characters are introduced who have no further purpose or interest, an insurrection takes place in the sewers of an O'Neill colony, and impossible machinery is turned on. An alien explains more about the Quoins, except this is couched in superstitious nonsense for the monkeys and I don't know I believe any of it except the behavior we see. This part's absolutely disposable, but clearly Reynolds was tired of the setting and couldn't wait to get to the last bit. Where a giant precursor starship is approached… the Baubles use stasis fields, but the ship doesn't, even tho it absolutely needs it. The nature of the emergency is made clear but not why they're in that emergency. Rather preachy finale, bad guy is sent off to… smash into the habitat windows? He should be spaced, to make the punishment work, but he's not.
★★★☆☆ at first, then ★★☆☆☆ by end

Possibly better to make up your own 3rd volume than read Bone Silence. I'd still dearly love an RPG sourcebook (preferably for Traveller/Cepheus Engine) covering the mechanics of ships and Baubles.

The Death of iTunes

So, I was listening to my last playlist, and realized I don't own one of the albums, so I figure I'll grab it off iTunes…

No iTunes app. No "show in iTune Store" action on the album page (Share has since shown back up, because Apple Music is non-deterministic). There's an iTunes Store on my phone, but I want to download it here on my desktop. Fine, where's the store page. It's… missing. After some duck searches, turns out you have to open Apple Music Preferences, check "iTunes Store" in a little grid. I didn't deselect this, it came deselected, meaning NOBODY is going to see it.

Once that's done, Store is back in the sidebar, and clicking it shows the good old storefront, account links, etc. But how do you search? Search box just shows Apple Music (streaming). WAAAAAY up in the top-right corner is a selector for Songs or Store. Now I'm on the album. And it's $8.99. Yeah, there's no DRM, but you know, I can get this elsewhere.

So I went over to 'zon and bought a used CD (a little cheaper), because I can rip that lossless. At least they want my money.

And like that, with no announcement, Apple killed their store.

Machines That Don't Work Thursday Music

We had some good machines
But they don't work no more
I loved you once
Don't love you anymore
—Shriekback, Faded Flowers