The Last American President

Trump showed up today. Biden’s pre-recorded announcement could not be reached for comment.

No iBrator for you!

(classical reference)

Apple warns that iPhones should not be attached to motorcycles, because the vibration will damage the camera’s image-stabilization and autofocus. Well, that rules out my idea of having Thanko and Tenga collaborate on a new USB-powered phone accessory.

(Jahy-sama is unrelated, unless she’s managed to make enough money to afford some toys; no idea, I never made it through the second episode, even after three tries)

No Blackfriday after Friday!

I’ve switched the Hugo config that generates this site to use the new Goldmark Markdown processor, with its comically-bad “typographer” extension disabled. It took a while to diff 4,000+ blog entries after running my script to hardcode the smart quotes in the source files (source control is your only friend), and while I think I managed to catch all the small breakages it introduced, I wouldn’t be surprised to find some from the MovableType days that look a little funny and need cleanup.

I will not be offended if someone says, “hey, this old page looks like crap now”. I did a lot of hand-formatting workarounds in the old days. 😁

Neighborhood Noise Pollution

The summer continues to be cool and damp, and there aren’t any fires near me, so I’d love to have all the windows open. Except that every afternoon, someone at a nearby house is running a continuous mix of loud music, old enough for me to know the songs, and just loud enough that I can recognize them by the distorted reflections off of every house in between.

During my last meeting of the day Friday, it was what sounded like an extended remix of Rapper’s Delight. Either that, or they just put it on repeat.

…and then came The Eye of the Tiger, so muffled and distorted it took a full minute to recognize…

The Neverending Tutorial

The Switch version of Immortals Fenyx Rising is 60% off for a few days, so I picked it up. It eventually becomes a more-or-less open-world adventure, with terrible voice acting and a mandatory online account so they can push microtransactions. Mostly cosmetic stuff, it looks like, but still a bit intrusive.

There’s a free demo, which is basically a side quest where you get to play with all the powers you’ll eventually unlock. The tutorial in the full game, though, lasts several hours, leaving you wondering just when they’re going to let you off the rails. Even when they do, you often get ambushed by cutscenes to remind you which rail you should be on.

Gameplay is fine, although the controls are awkward and oddly mapped. My least-favorite is the way double-jumping tends to turn into a triple jump, which will send you into the pits of Tartarus (literally; Hell is a platformer). It feels very much like a surface-level clone of the Breath of the Wild gameplay, with bad voice acting, single-solution do-it-again-stupid puzzles, and arcade action replacing depth, immersion, versatility, and replayability.

For instance, I’m currently picking off monsters from extreme distance with arrows that can be steered around corners and obstacles, with the only range limits being my character’s stamina and the game’s draw distance. I haven’t tried shooting myself in the back of the head yet, but I’m pretty sure I could:

🎶 🎶 🎶
Watch out here comes my arrow,
it flies superfast,
and kills everyone.
Watch out here comes my arrow,
Legolas sucks,
and Yondu is the one.
🎶 🎶 🎶

(hey, she’s got an arrow, that’s related!)

File under baffling the fact that they automatically populate your world map with other people’s screenshots, complete with a like button. I’d be a lot happier if they’d made the map more useful as a map; quest navigation is cluttered and confusing. And had a button to say “always play this single-player game offline, dammit”.

Also, in an inverse of the usual console-to-PC porting fail, the menus are navigated with a cursor that does not snap to the buttons, which is incredibly clumsy on a console controller. And while sometimes you need to just press on a menu option, other times you need to press and hooooooold.

I would have been unhappy if I’d paid anything close to full price for it.

(Genshin Impact’s Ganyu is unrelated, and cuter than Fenyx)

A Slime Among The Demon Lords, #2.10

In an effort to drag out the fight against Clayman so that it doesn’t look completely effortless, big thick expositions are vigorously thrust into tight spaces, which is less exciting than it sounds. Hope you kept notes on everything that was going on outside of the big party, because you’ll need to wait at least another week before they get back onscreen.

Send more black ships…

Japan has extended the current state of emergency another two weeks to flatten the curve, except for two prefectures that have been upgraded to a quasi SoE. Chance of letting tourists back in this year? Pretty. Damn. Low.

We have not yet bitten the bullet and started rescheduling for a spring trip, but we should probably get started soon.

I Gave Up Trying To Save The World And Got A Girlfriend Instead

It turns out that the “banished from the hero’s party…” series that’s coming out in October isn’t a harem comedy. The trailer works to suggest it, because that sells, but reading up a bit, there’s no real competition for his affection. Our Hero and First Girl To Move In have a history together that their new relaxed setting allows to flourish. They’re a couple of awkward virgins, but they’re definitely a couple.

Emotionless Little Sister Who Can Kill Dragons With Her Bare Hands does have a serious bro-con, but is not necessarily thirsty for his dick. It’s just that being The Chosen One really fucks you over.

Amusingly, the genki love interest is voiced by the actress perhaps best known for the calm maid-tank Noelle in Genshin Impact, while the emotionless sister-hero’s voice will be delivered by the over-the-top Jahy-sama.

Like a certain immortal witch, Our Hero’s new slow life is aided by the fact that pretty much nobody out in the boonies could fight him anyway. He was literally born at level 31, and spent all his points on useful skills to support his sister.

(there is no (recognizable) fan-art for this series yet, so here’s a pair of cute teenage* witches)

Remember the Perl 7 announcement?

Wonder why you haven’t heard anything since? Toxic CoC Syndrome. In fairness, it does sound like there was at least one giant asshole who should have been kicked out a long time ago, but the long-running Perl 6 fiasco really destroyed whatever community and leadership Perl might have once had.

(hole in the wall is possibly related)

500 years ago, on the planet Zeiss…

I have no idea who the $6,000 Zeiss ZX1 digicam is for. 37-megapixel full-frame sensor, 35mm f/2 fixed lens, 512 GB internal storage only (data can only be transferred via USB-C, Wifi, or Bluetooth), and built-in Adobe Lightroom CC software using the 4-inch touchscreen. Full support for sharing via Adobe’s cloud… if you pay for a monthly subscription. Max ISO 51,200, no image stabilization, reviews on B&H say the UI is terrible, Lightroom drains your battery, and the battery gets very hot very quickly. Also, despite the Zeiss name, everything is made in China, and it doesn’t seem like they even licensed the technology of their usual partner Sony.

For $500 less, you can impress your friends with the well-regarded Leica Q2. If you’re more interested in taking decent pictures than in impressing your friends, you probably don’t want to buy that one either, though.

Side note

Every single digital camera I’ve ever owned still works perfectly, they just became obsolete as sensors and processor speeds improved. My mid-Eighties Minolta lenses, though, are still pulling their weight; they won’t autofocus as quickly as the latest glass, especially with a mount adapter, and they don’t have internal image stabilization, but they still deliver excellent image quality.

(schoolgirl waitresses from another world are unrelated, but photogenic)

But what about digitizing film?

The best-regarded flatbed scanner for film up to 8x10 inches is the Epson Perfection V850 Pro, released in 2014. It even ships with an expired license for the SilverFast software, but the drivers have been updated for the latest 64-bit Windows/Mac releases. There’s just no market for quality scanners any more.

I may buy one to get better scans of my great uncle’s medium-format negatives than my other obsolete scanners can deliver. I doubt I’ll ever need the wet-scanning adapter to pull maximum quality out of MF/LF negatives, but I might buy it while it’s still available, just in case.

(catgirl/schoolgirl in underrim glasses is unrelated, but always acceptable on this site)

Ooh, nice one!

Someone went to the trouble of sending me a scam email pretending to be Amazon Japan, announcing that someone had logged into my account and used my credit card to place an order. They definitely copied a legit Amazon email, sent it to someone who only orders occasionally and might not notice a “real fraud” right away, and... sent it to my cpan.org email address. Also, they used boilerplate intended for Prime customers, and I don’t have Prime in Japan. So close.

Looks like they laundered it through pobox, with the original sender in China. The address mismatch was enough to flag it as spam, but it tripped a number of other flags in my filters as well, so there was never a chance I’d be fooled.

(Kentucky Fried Noelle is only related to the first item)

And another!

The following day’s attempt used Yodobashi Camera’s templates to tell me I needed to update my credit card information. Also to my cpan.org email address. That one seems to get hit with scams a lot, despite its obvious low value.

(Kentucky Fried Noelle again; honestly, I’m not even sure why that’s a meme...)

Smartdown

As mentioned earlier, I’m finally spending some time converting the raw Markdown source for my blog to hardcode the smart-quotes rather than have the conversion done badly by Hugo’s new formatting library. I’m starting with the most recent entries and working my way back 100 at a time, diffing them against the checked-in versions as I go. This has led to a number of improvements in the script.

How a Realist Animation Team Fit Three Half-finished Battles Into One Episode’s Budget

Speed lines, panned stills, and speed lines over panned stills. Also lots of long-winded stalling, but that’s actually part of the plot this time.

(there is effectively zero fan-art for this show, despite the eye-candy, so candy girl is unrelated)

Two cours?

Jahy-sama, which I never made it through the second episode of, is headed straight into its second cour. Great for the fan-art, not so much for having something interesting to watch.

At least it’s not a giant spider…

Roland Emmerich’s upcoming disaster of a movie answers the question nobody asked, “what happens when the moon crashes into the Earth?”.

Famed physicist Ming The Merciless already ran this experiment, so there’s no need for independent replication:

“After the lockdowns earthquakes and mask mandates tidal waves, they won’t be quite the human beings you remember. They’ll be more… tractable. Easier for you to rule, in the name of Ming.”

Dear Apple,

Don’t ask me to trust you when you store data on my laptop that I’m not allowed to read (or back up!), even as root.

Are you a better artist than a 5-year-old?

The trendy jackochallenge tag on Pixiv illustrates that the people least qualified to draw human anatomy are the most likely to try.

(Hikari refuses to try to get into that sort of position)

Ye canna change the laws ’o physics!

Samsung has announced a 200 megapixel smartphone camera sensor. If you know what the word “diffraction” means, you know that this provides maybe 6-8 resolved megapixels, with software helpfully creating the additional data they’re promising.

The camera body I’m most likely to buy when I have a reason to (and it’s back in stock...) is the Sony A7S III, which offers “only” 12 megapixels, but they are really, really good ones, large enough to offer good performance at ISO 409,600 with 15 stops of dynamic range.

Small high-resolution sensors are just recording the limitations of your optics. Large high-resolution sensors are precisely recording the noise in the shadows. Large, “low-resolution” sensors make every pixel actually count for something.

…which makes me sad that they’re still not making full-frame medium-format sensors, much less large-format. Someone is selling a full-frame 4x5-inch B&W back, but it’s only 6 (very large) megapixels, and it costs $26,000. They also briefly made a 9x11 12-megapixel B&W camera body for ~$100,000, and claim to be working on a new 26-megapixel model that mounts as a back on 11x14 view cameras for only ~$85,000.

Slime Priestess #2.9

Shuna did indeed effortlessly kick ass. Also, more new characters were added to the sprawling cast, ending with a premonition of the next round of effortless ass-kicking.

New toy!

You know you’re a grown-up when you tear open the box as soon as you get it home, assemble the contents, and then… vacuum the house.

I’ve considered and rejected a number of more toylike toys, due to the lingering effects of Corona-chan on supply chains and travel. Even if many things weren’t overpriced and out of stock, I don’t need a new car When I’m Not Going Anywhere, I don’t need new camera gear WINGA, I don’t need a new laptop WINGA, etc, etc.

Rotten to the (iCloud) core

Did Apple lock my account again today? Yes, yes, they did. Did they provide any explanation or warning of unusual activity? No, no, they did not.

Losing the faith…

(with small apologies to Billy Joel)

🎶 🎶 🎶
I told you my reasons for the whole debacle.
Now I’m going outside to have an ice cream cone in the shade.
Oh, I’m gonna memorize the latest lies,
’bout the allies that we left behind,
then stare off into spaaaaaaace, yeah.
’Cause my memories faaaaaaade, yeah.
I’m losin’ my plaaaaaaace.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
eatin’ the paste.
🎶 🎶 🎶

Banished from the Hero’s Party, I became Bounty, the Quicker Picker-Upper

At least, that’s what I get from the trailer for this upcoming anime series. Out of 93 seconds of video, I think 90 were focused on stacked haremettes. The other 3 featured a loli…

(Jahy-sama is unrelated)

Amherst College and the Madness of Clowns

Students must:

• be vaccinated
• wear two masks indoors
• no social gatherings
• eat in their dorm rooms
• shelter in place

Note that there’s no cafeteria service, restaurants/bars are completely off limits, and their rooms are the only place they’re permitted to unmask indoors.

In other news, Amherst College has canceled all STEM programs, because no one working there is capable of “following the science”.

(sad Lefiya is sad, unrelated)

Dear Amazon,

On Prime Video, I, Robot is filed under “Black voices”, and The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is filed under “Black cinema”. Your racism is not adorable.

(Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle is also filed under “Black cinema”, which you might be able to weakly justify based on Dwayne Johnson’s ancestry, except he doesn’t (ever) play the “black” character, and the movie has absolutely nothing to do with anyone’s racial characteristics)

(Jahy-sama counts as a black voice under these rules, right?)

If this goes on…

…not even the photocopiers will admit they voted for Biden.

Qwality Ass-surance

Apple locked my iCloud account again with no explanation, requiring me to enter the answers to my security questions and then type my password eleven times. Number of times Apple has notified me of any unusual activity that would justify locking my account remains zero. (I was actually astonished to discover that I havehad some data stored in iCloud, back from when I was using Yojimbo; good thing it was all encrypted!)

(emoji keyboard is unrelated, because Apple could never QA it)

Not related,

…but just as annoying, Trello is completely reorganizing their service tiers, wording it in a way that doesn’t tell me if I’ll now get my existing functionality at the free tier, or if I’ll need to pay $10/month for the calendar and map addons.

That is, the free tier now includes “unlimited addons”, and I’ve been using Calendar and Map (and Planyway). But the $10/month tier is the only one that includes “Calendar and Map views”, so are they changing the status of the existing addons to force an upgrade, or adding new premium functionality? Reply hazy, try again later.

(cat/food is unrelated)

Everybody Wants To Slime The World #2.8

Somebody effortlessly kicks ass, somebody else effortlessly kicks ass, somebody else effortlessly kicks ass, then somebody else effortlessly kicks ass. In between, there was some effortless ass-kicking.

At no point are any good guys in danger of being killed, even when they’re the ones getting their asses effortlessly kicked.

Next episode: Shuna kicks ass. Effortlessly.

How A Realist Princess Shows Her Determination #9

In which lines are drawn, then talked about. A lot. If they don’t have a signed deal for a second cour, this is going to get wrapped up quite abruptly.

(Chupacabra’s most loyal retainer is related; she voices Juna in this show)

Harrying the lead…

This headline carefully amplifies negative claims about Larry Elder that were made by an angry ex specifically to keep him from becoming governor. The actual story is that prosecutors can’t just charge him with misdemeanors when someone makes unsupported allegations five years after the statute of limitations ran out.

“Wrong End In Focus”

I’m always annoyed when I see a glamour photographer fail to get the eyes in clear focus, but worse is when the entire head is an afterthought, either cut off between the chin and forehead, or, worst of all, completely out of focus. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the sight of female body parts, it’s that there’s nothing unique there; I’m not shopping for components to build my own, I want them fully assembled.

Kana Momonogi has a sleek collection of first-rate goodies, but what makes them stand out is the girl they’re part of. Which this photographer (NSFW! Javascript off!) did not get.

NSFW

And, yes, this is one of the worst positions to put a Japanese woman into for an ass-shot, so he’s not even showing the parts off well.

How A Realistic Isekai Story Would Play Out

“Reborn in a fantasy world, I barely scraped out a living as a peasant farmer, lost my wife in childbirth, sold my daughter to a brothel to pay crippling taxes, watched my one surviving son get conscripted and used as cannon fodder, and then died of pneumonia at the age of thirty-seven.”

Faster, please

Restaurant To Another World 2 trailer. And if they need another waitress, hire Jahy-sama away from her show; the ambient magic should be enough to keep her in adult form.

Nothing to see here…

Hundreds of CA recall ballots found in car with armed, drugged-out felon. Also thousands of other pieces of mail, drivers licenses and credit cards in multiple names, etc.

Key quote: “This is an isolated incident.”

…because we really, really don’t want to look for more.

I plan to vote in person again (which requires that I turn in the entire packet that was mailed to me, including the outer envelope), just to make sure that someone hasn’t already cast a vote in my name…

I hate it when I’m right

For many years, I’ve said that I only vote for Republicans because Democrats destroy the country faster. The Bidenhandler regime has provided more evidence for this than I ever imagined possible, and “I don’t think he’s gonna stop.” (classical reference)

91% false-positive rate

No, not Covid tests (they won’t admit to real numbers on that one), Chicago ShotSpotter alerts. Not only are they wasting police resources, they’re priming street cops to treat suspects (even) more harshly, and providing a way to alter evidence to fit the narrative.

(Officer Friendly is unrelated)

Ah, the good old days…

Pizzeria struggling to recover says, “we will hire literally anyone”. A long, long time ago, when Bush senior was in the White House, I stopped off at a Shell station for gas, and saw a hand-lettered sign in the window:

“Help Wanted, must be able to read and count.”

The future’s looking bright… if you run on batteries.