Author: mdhughes

Windows Schadenfreude

After my recent woes with iOS updates (and a completely trivial Mojave update), but always saved by backups (I eventually found my iTunes backup password in my old journal, and put it in 1Password), I sympathize, but also laugh in their direction:

NEVER let a system auto-update. ALWAYS have backups.

Anyone who lets their OS or software update without backing up first, is asking to have their files deleted. Anyone who doesn't maintain a couple backups, with at least one offsite, is asking to have their files deleted. I often say people don't learn about backups until after their first catastrophic data loss, and sometimes not then, but you can beat the curve and learn first.

I use a daily cloud backup, and a weekly to monthly full-disk backup with SuperDuper!. Many people like Time Machine, it doesn't fit my workflow well, but it's a good tool for non-technical users.

You may be thinking, "I don't use a Mac!", but the advice is the same for other (lesser) computers, and you need it more. Only the specific apps for backup will differ. I'm looking for recommendations.

Omens of Some Kind

In today's "waiting for the end times" news, the Good Omens miniseries trailer has dropped like… well, a thing that drops.

Adaptation looks very CW-ish, like that dreadful The Magicians show.

I don't mind Tennant as Crowley, I've dislike all the NuWho shows except Eccleston's series, but Tennant was fine in Broadchurch and Alias (er, "Jessica Jones"). The guy they've got for Az is the comically bad villain from Underworld, and a ton of garbage since, I have little hope for him doing more than hitting marks and repeating lines; it's hard to tell from a chopped-up trailer.

The book was good fun, maybe I should just reread it. I'm a Fifth Horseman fan, myself.

Text Filter

  1. I need a utility to filter some text, like awk but more modern regexp.
  2. Start writing utility.
  3. Discover I wrote this exact utility in 2006, and forgot about it. Apparently I did something with it in 2009. I may have blogged about it on my old site, too lazy to go searching.
  4. Clean it up for Python 3.7 and release.

Utility/Filter 1.1 can be downloaded, put it in your ~/bin or /usr/local/bin folder and call it with Filter.py -h.

BSD license, so do what thou wilt with it, but don't be a dick (uploading my stuff to github as if it's yours is dickish), OK?

Dragalia Lost Tuesday Music

  • DAOKO: Performer of the music in Dragalia Lost.
  • Geazs fanart of Brunhilda/Mym

  • First-week revenue >$3M: Not great compared to established properties, but surprisingly good for an unknown title with little PR in NA. The epithet "Lost" is unfortunate, I don't know why Nintendo is so incapable of getting English-speakers to review their names before release.

  • Reddit thread on raid event: But still hasn't started yet, so you have a little time to level up; you'll want a water-elemental adventurer and dragon.

    Dragalia-raid-2018-10-02

  • The castle building minigame isn't a full city sim, but it lets you have some creativity. And unlike many, your production & bonuses aren't disabled while it's upgrading, you just can't collect coins until it's done.

    Dragalia-castle-2018-10-02

What I'm Watching: The Endless

The premise for this does not prepare you at all for what is to come, but perhaps the initial quote by H.P.Lovecraft will. On the surface, it's two escaped survivors of a Heaven's Gate-like cult, getting a videotape message and going back to the commune and finding old friends.

Then they see things in the sky and the water, and beyond the totem poles. Then they receive more messages. Then the truth of everything is revealed.

This is maybe the best strange tale I've ever seen as a movie.

The older brother's acting is wooden and fixed in a permanent blank stare and smirk, the younger one's a little better, the other characters are either stoic or insane, or underacting or overacting, but it's the story that drives this.

I don't like the final scene, there's too much closure and that's not what this story's about.

But you must absolutely watch this.

★★★★★

Dragalia Lost

A new gachapon game published by Nintendo.

Super, overly cutesy, somewhat like Legend of Zelda (original) with 3D models in a top-down, flat world and dungeons.

You explore dungeons and fight mobs by tapping, combat's fast and very casual. You can bond with dragons you've summoned and shapeshift into them; basically the adventurer/assistant model used in DanMachi.

There's a little comic book story, haven't had time to read it yet. The music is perky and varied, though it's a bit loud until you can get to the main menu and options about 10 minutes into the tutorial.

Cute enough to play a while; I'm still pining for TES:Blades. There's not any obvious equivalent to DanMachi's "Syr's Lunchbox", a cheap monthly subscription of goodies and currency, which I prefer to buying IAP currency directly.

Downloading a bit at a time is annoying. In More, Options, System, there's a Batch Download button at the bottom, to load everything.

Setting a "Helper" (the character you contribute to other players) is under Friends, Helper. Obscure UI. But you get 300 "Wyrmite" (the free gem currency) for doing it!

My player ID as Kamimark is 9320 9801 641, friend me.