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@Darkpriest and all other, worried about EU situation in winter. I offer you a "little" counter to the ZeroHedge arguments, about how bad the winter will be. The hard data suggests, that the winter gas issue for the EU was already solved on August 31. And even in the case, that EU will not try to save the gas usage at all and Russia will completely stop all gas exports to EU It will cost a lot, but the funny interesting thing, that I did not knew is, that current gas price in EU is only 40% higher than in September 2021, and that we are 20% lower today from the maximum price in mid-August https://www.facebook.com/databezpatosu The google translate: "HORROR, SCARY, DISASTER, PANIC, ANXIETY, CRISIS (written by Ivan Bošňák) ️We had it here for the last 2 years and it was called a pandemic. Absolutely negative connotations everywhere (except Sweden). Politicians took the helm and "saved" us. ️ Then came the economic crisis, predictions of the unemployed, declines, recessions and bankruptcies everywhere. Politicians printed incredible amounts of money on the machines at the ECB and were very surprised when inflation soared in a way that only their parents can remember. ️Now we have Russia's aggression in Ukraine and the lack of energy and the madness continues, while few see the solutions and almost no one reads the data. We will try to bring some peace into your homes. We offer 2 links to read excellent analytical articles and charts: https://www.icis.com/explore/ and https://www.bruegel.org/ No, the war in Ukraine is not to blame for high energy prices. Russia has been playing with the price of gas for 3 years, if not 12, and thus a year ago the price of gas was only 40% lower. And it wasn't a war. The fluctuating gas supplies from Russia and its unreliability have mainly been dealt with by the EU over the past 12 months: 1) From dominance of 35%, Russia got to 10% share of gas imports to the EU 2) In Germany, the Gazprom reservoir with a capacity of 8 billion m3 was nationalized, and instead of being "empty" last winter, there are now 5 billion m3 and in the near future it will be full to 8 billion m3 3) There are already almost 90 billion m3 in reservoirs in the EU (and we have been hearing this for 6 months about continuous problems with gas from Russia). Very likely, thanks to the warm weather, the EU will reach close to 100 billion m3 within 4-5 weeks, and maybe even fill up to a maximum of 106 billion m3 in October. The EU has set a goal of filling the reservoirs to 80% by November 1. Without fanfare, this goal was met on August 31. Germany later set a 95% target for November 1st and that would push all of Europe to 84% by November 1st. We will be there this weekend and not on November 1st. It is a super success despite the lousy Russian gas supplies. You can find detailed data on the current situation of storage capacity on our website: https://databezpatosu.sk/category/zemny-plyn/ Today, Slovakia is 80% full and we are the leader in Europe, we have high stocks (status), but relatively low supplies (inflow). WHY IS NOBODY REPORTING SUCCESS? Politicians love when they can save people and spend their money on it in good faith and regulate everything possible that they would not be allowed to do in normal stable times. Just look at the nonsense about the nationalization of SE in our country. They don't understand data, they don't understand trends, but they embark on adventures that inevitably end badly. WHERE IS THE PRICE OF GAS TODAY Of course, the price of gas is crazy. These are spot prices, but also future deliveries in the short future. We are 40% higher than last September, and in mid-August this year we were 11-15 times higher than before Covid. But NO ONE told us and you that we are 20% lower TODAY from the maximum price in mid-August and the price is literally flying down, also due to the falling price of oil. Today Brent was at USD 78, which is a decrease of 35% compared to the maximum in June at USD 120. Let's keep our fingers crossed. WINTER FORECAST Large analytical houses can predict, based on averages from previous years, what awaits us from October to April: - in 2 quarters we will need 300 billion m3 of gas if we do not save. The savings targets in the EU are 10% to 15%. - the EU can produce or deliver a total of 1 billion m3 of gas from Norway and Algeria per day via LNG. That is 180-200 billion in 2 quarters. - If we add 100 billion in reservoirs to the supply of 200 billion, we get exactly 300 billion in consumption. Yes: with no savings, no increase in deliveries, zero deliveries from Russia and an average winter, it still comes out to ZERO - ZERO. On April 1, we will have approximately 1 billion deliveries per day, but if it's cold, then a little more demand, but if it's already warm, then a little less consumption. And that's assuming: - nothing is saved - nothing will flow from Russia from today - nothing will be increased in deliveries compared to contracts - the winter will be quite decently cold Every single day, already in "warm" September, we "cut" a meter of the winter period (maximum 8 months: September-April). And as you can see, we still have a joker in the EU and it's warm, and Black Peter is owned by Russia and Putin. It is also true that Russia supplies to the EU via Turkstream and Transgas, and it certainly won't shut down at least Hungary, about 60-80 million. m3 per day. That is 1 billion m3 per month and 10 billion by the end of May 2023, which the above calculations did not include. CONCLUSION: It would be useful to track the weekly data: - filling reservoirs to the 106 billion maximum - balance: supplies - consumption in Europe, where there is now a surplus of about 2-3 billion per week and it's storage tanks - when the weather will turn and we will start cleaning the surplus of 2-3 billion per week in households and in institutions - the price of gas, which can follow oil "DOWN". A drop in price together with a decrease in the volume of deliveries from Russia would help the EU to finance consumption with lower finances and would also significantly reduce Russia's income from gas exports to Europe. With high gas supplies last year and this year and with a high price, Russia's maximum earnings were at the level of 5 billion per week just from gas to the EU. Today, with deliveries reduced to 1/4 and at a price 25% lower, the amount is 1 billion per week. It already hurts, because it was 4 billion Euros more. But that was the maximum. Anyway, we wrote down about 7 good news and 1 big risk: hard, cold, early and long winter. Today we know that it will not start in the next 14 days. And that's good news, friends. If you want and know how to support the work on our reports, you can do so at: https://www.patreon.com/databezpatosu Source for chart and data: https://gas.kyos.com/gas/ Our overview of the state of reservoirs in Europe and Slovakia: https://databezpatosu.sk/2022/08/29/plyn-aktualne-statistiky-k-zasobe-kapacite-zasobnikov-a-rocnej-spotrebe/ Gas prices on world exchanges: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/natural-gas"

I try to get my kids to play that game in real life. It is stuck on the hardest difficulty.

My wife's super pro-Russian uncle made me laugh this morning "Germany let us hold their balls for cheap gas, so now we squeeze!"

A brief summary of what I was talking about few post above on what happened during the last day and half in Kharkiv region… Ukraine took more area in a single day, than Russia since the fall of Lysychansk…

and so it begins: https://www.thedailybeast.com/st-petersburg-officials-demand-vladimir-putin-be-tried-for-treason-in-letter

we don't like throwing judges under the bus unless is particular egregious. have been trying to give the judge in the mar-a-lago search the benefit o' the doubt. unfortunate, the recent judge cannon bit is one o' those, you don't need to be a lawyer to spot stoopid issues. *shrug* the documents marked top secret, secret and classified seized as part o' the mar-a-lago search, a search the judge cannon believes were legit btw, through some inexplicable alchemy of the presidential records act and public opinion o' all things, may have become privileged and could possible need be returned to trump. ... ignoring the fact the reputational harms the judge identified is o' the kind and nature suffered by any potential target o' a criminal investigation, so nothing unique whatsoever 'bout trump's situation, the notion that GOVERNMENT documents not belonging to trump could be somehow be beyond the reach o' doj and the national archives because o' the Presidential records act, which were written specific to guarantee ex-Presidents would not retain the work product o' their office OR because trump's private lawyers viewed or commented on those documents is so utter insane we have difficulty mustering the will to even form a worthy response... sans an unintelligible string o' expletives punctuated by a liz lemon eye-roll. literal every defendant accused o' stealing documents from a former employer will be overjoyed to hear they may need only have an attorney peruse the alleged ill-gotten gains to trigger a special master requirement... 'cause o' public distrust in the fbi or something? we will note judge cannon did kinda throw herself under the bus (via a footnote? serious?) by observing how any Presidential records case should necessarily have the dc court as the proper jurisdiction, effective suggesting she were an improper magistrate for the review o' the question she were current addressing. *le sigh* based on her comments from the transcript, we thought it were likely judge cannon would grant a special master, but her legal reasoning for doing so is just so utter devoid o' legal support we were genuine nonplussed. wtf HA! Good Fun!

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises of the conflict was the use of AGM-88 HARMs by Ukrainian MiG-29s, more specifically was how those MiG-29s were re-engineered so quickly to be able to "talk" to the missile and employ them, something that stumped a great many serious defence watchers. This video provides perhaps the most plausible explanation of how this was done:

Im about 15 hours in BG2 EE and its going really well, firstly I have forgotten much of the main narrative which is important. I do remember Irenicus is linked to the Elven Queen and he was cast out or something similar but most of it I have forgotten I must say he really is a diabolical and deeply dysfunctional person, when I encountered those creatures trapped in those tubes and completely insane his dark nature really became clear. Viconia has just joined my party and so has Hexxat who had a very interesting quest for her to join me, I never thought I would allow a Vampire to join my righteous quest but she is a worthy combat addition so I will see how it goes Im now in the city and trying to raise money to free Imoen and I want to get my magic license I also loaded the Skie Silvershield mod and I intend to save her from the Soultaker dagger, exciting times

Need to get the Belt DLC.

Would be really nice if this were over in November, though.

Making games these days as a small and non-established dev looks brutal. I was just looking through the "interactive fiction" tag in the Steam Store to see if anything halfway interesting caught my eye, and the number of games released within the past few months in that category alone that have between 0 and 10 reviews is like...well, it's certainly doesn't make me want to become a game developer in a highly saturated market, that's for sure. I don't know why I wishlisted this game when it came out a year ago, but I tried a game called Unpacking on Steam. Here's a screenshot from the Steam Store: It's supposed to be a "relaxing" game about unpacking boxes and organizing whatever their contents are into the space that you're given...but I'm like the exact opposite type of person that this game is made for: finding where things permanently belong probably rises pretty close to the level of clinical OCD for me, and that was pretty well reflected here in how distressed the first level made me feel. Anyways, I finally tried it and have now uninstalled it, and at least the last part felt pretty good, . Don't know what I was thinking in trying a game like this.

Can you tell him to shut up in the game?

Wesley Crusher is the mirror universe Terran Emperor in Star Trek Online. End of message

if you're just casting, as an end game weapon you could use weyc's wand. when you empower an ability you get +3 PL for 20 seconds (intellect would help boost it), which can make your casting phase go pretty well. In fact, this might be a good synergy for any caster paired with a darcozzi for any hard fights. With Least Unstable Coil, you could empower the Darcozzi's Lay on Hands on your self. Every time you get hit and trigger you minor flame aura damage, you'd trigger another tier 3 inspiration. Eventually you'd get Brilliant. (I think you can also keep this effect going by re-using Lay on Hands on yourself. The game "remembers" that the original use was empowered, and just refreshes the duration. Though the flame aura should last plenty long by itself). You'd basically be able to cast druid spells in perpetuity, with a +3 PL for much of it. or you could just keep shifting into forms (though brilliant won't restore spiritshift) and spam flames of devotion over and over and over and over again.

Jack Del Rio got a raw deal there for sure. I hope he is a bit vindicated by the way Gruden was shown the door.

You could also invest an ability point for a third weapon slot, and use the staff for initial casting, and then have the shields in the other two slots.

You can always use a dagger + modal to increase your deflection against melee attackers (doesn't stack with active deflection buffs though), Griffin's Blade can give a little bit of a damage bonus to offensive spells, Magran's Favor and Sun and Moon can give you power levels for fire spells (or freeze in case of Sun & Moon), Kapana Taga or Squid's Grasp can make you immune to flanking (Rapier + Buckler is a nice combo for a Darcozzi anyway)... there are some more weapons which can make sense to just hold in your main hand while casting.

I see a big difference between situation in Yugoslavia and Ukraine. Russia has been most of the time killing civilians in a cities with dominant Russian population, which was not the case for Serbia. Mariupol and Kharkiv being a prime examples of that. Then you have all of the reports, how Russians and especially Wagnerites recruited in Russian prisons are behaving towards civilians in occupied cities. A lot of ethnic Russians are because of that hating on Putin’sRussia, and are fighting on the side of Ukraine against Russia, or are just rooting for Ukraine to win. All of that just because they have experienced the “Russian World” firsthand. The Ukrainian boy, which we have “addopted” with my wife is from this cathegory, he was Russian speaking boy, from Russian speaking family from Kiyv. After he spent with his family a week in underground shelter and emigrated with his mother (which is already back in Kiyv), he does not want to have anything with Russia anymore. The most interesting thing is, that same is happening in Kazakhstan. Most of the Russian speaking Kazakhs have started to learn Kazakh language en masse after February 24th, so they can distance from Putin’s Russia as far as possible, and hope that this will help them to not end up “liberated” in the future.

Chilloutman already linked the article, which I found few minutes ago. There is still chance, although miniscule, that the Ukraine would not need to push them out at all. We’ll probably see very soon, if this gains any traction, or there will be a big tea party in St. Petersburg…

I met with the three councils and the advisors. It looked like I spent hours talking with them, but maybe it was just me tired late at night. I don't even remember what I wanted to do back on Drezen. Anyway, I chose to invite a priest instead of having a parade for the Queen, which made the Kitsune call the meeting tense. Not sure what she was talking about. Daeran was the funniest, he wanted to solve everything with bribes. Me: “Daeran, what are you doing on this council?” Daeran: “Mostly, I’m just waiting for it to end.” “Why bother solving problems yourself when you can push them off on someone you pay?”

In that scenario I think they will become a NATO country (not even part of the EU) and will get a few NATO bases on the east front. Oh I 100% agree that will happen, I even said as much. I just do not know of how much help that will be for them. In the practical sense I don't think so, they will just exchange the boot for a leash. I mean yeah, the doors of capitalism and democracy will be opened to them, but I very much doubt that their corruption and mentality is going to change. (See Bulgaria and Croatia) One big question in case of an Ukrainian victory is what is going to happen to the Russian populace. I image it's going to be another ethnic cleansing like it happened in Croatia with the Serbian population, only that it will spill over to the surrounding states. Also what would happen to Kaliningrad. When it starts affecting their everyday lives, they will not care about political parties, only about the solution. People in the west are too used to comfort. @Elerond https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-08/most-accurate-us-artillery-shell-is-quietly-added-to-ukraine-aid To your point regarding only sending old weapons.

It's not really meant to. See below. No offense taken. Also basing this somewhat on experience with Iraq and Afghanistan where we threw so much money at lucrative contracts that made a lot of people a lot of money but didn't amount to much in the end. I also think the fact that Ukraine is white and Christian and a democracy will help them more than it did those other countries. I can't speak to Kosovo so I'll defer to you there. Of course, I'm super pessimistic about all this stuff but I do think Ukraine will be better off if they "win" but I don't know what a Ukrainian victory would look like or if it's even possible. I think it's unlikely they push Russia out of Ukraine entirely and even if they get close to completely turning the tide then I'm afraid of what Russia would do to prevent such a humiliating defeat.

It depends mostly how they feel about governing party. If they support opposition parties they will see anything that government does as bad and if their party comes in power same thing will be good. Same goes to people who support governing party/ies. Most of the people don't really have time to understand budget so their feeling come mostly from politicians and political commentators that support their party.

My robot waifu: The queen and her servant sending me on a mission to let the people of Paris eat cake: These vestals serve as the game's bonfires: Side note: On xXxBOxXx this game has 3 graphics quality settings: Favor framerate, favor graphics, and favor resolution. I am, of course, playing on the favor framerate setting. There is some texture pop-in, but other than that it looks decent enough so far.

I'm inclined to agree with Malc. I don't think it's optimistic though but rather a pretty easy way to launder money and make them a vassal state.

Surprised she didn't say he was the leader of Iran.

Boat Arc 2.0 here we come.

I'm mostly curious on how it ends

And here is the video of former DNR commander Girkin, where he states, that Russia already lost the war: Maybe @bugarup can do some translations for you, if he has spare time (if I understood it correctly, that you are fluent in Russian language)

Ukraine's military command isn't that optimist they estimated that war will continue at least to 2024 in current course

All the time? Really? Ok, point me to three (3) Western companies whose PR departments have taken the trouble to make a sort-of promotional video whose sole purpose is to mock the (supposed / possible) plight of its former customers. I'd love to see the videos, too. The US instructing its chip makers not to sell is not what I was talking about, nor was harsh words around a negotiation table. There's nothing unusual about that, I agree.

hey, don't blame Gromnir. greataxe options ain't noteworthy better than greatswords, but the grave singer crit range boost is a big deal for a trickster character, so is a good option and acquiring is not dependent on doing a quest correct to get. don't let the +2 scare you away, 'cause with greater magic weapon applied, you are always gonna be wielding an effective +5 weapon. am not convinced exotic is an efficient use o' feats, but there is a background which provides scythe proficiency and there is multiple excellent scythes in wotr. is not a bad choice even if the crit threat range is not ideal. ordinarily, we go falchion for 2h weapons, and bardiche if we want a reach weapon, but is a couple fantastic fauchards and they is available in act iii and act v respective, so along with finnean, you always got an excellent fauchard... if you believe the feat cost is economic. am having no idea what gear is available in the new dlc. if good stuff is available in the act iii accessible portions o' the dlc, our advice could change. in any event, finnean will always be useful and will be your go-to weapon for a few foes. if you want greataxes, make certain you acquire grave singer. you should already possess the unholy symbol o' rovagug-- is a reward for a crusade battle in act ii. when the crusade decree becomes available, be sure to upgrade it appropriate. HA! Good Fun!

Following advice, I changed to using greataxes for now. I can always (hopefully) switch back to greatsword later. Sadly my avatar no longer matches the portrait picture. I wonder if there is a way to use some of all those IWD1+2 portrait pictures (absolutely loved those). I'll have a to check what's required. I'm sure I saw a Portrait folder somewhere in the installation directory. Gave Finnean to Sosiel for now, as it was definitely an upgrade to his old, non enchanted glaive. Edit: It looks like most of my bonus damage was coming from sneak attacks anyway, rather than crits. I may have a word with Destna and Calistria, to see if either of them offers a better deal on RNG outcomes Edit2: I'm tempted to create a "branch" save, just to try out how my barbarian looks with that scythe I've been hanging on to for a long time. Probably either very comical or very cool. Maybe both. Probably something I'll keep in mind for a subsequent run (looking at the Lich path)

Unpacking is probably a game I'd play a couple levels of, at most, were I to play it alone. And even then it's only because the game is on Game Pass. But I played it over the holidays collaboratively with my sister (the game has no co-op functionality at all, mind you, we were just handing off the controller between rooms) and it was oddly compelling to play it that way, talking about where things should go and how it relates to the silent player character. Ended up finishing it, I probably made a post about it from around the start of the year.

Ginja addicted friends came over on like Saturday or something but I couldn't find ginja so I got some Austrian cherry liqueur instead. They didn't touch it so now I'm having a little with coke. Sure, it's like 50 bucks for a bottle but I've mixed 100 dollar Scotch with coke so you know I'm a man of little class and middling sophistication.

the axe we mentioned earlier in this thread, but we identified it 'cause @Gorthwere considering a switch to great axe. grave singer, with the 18-20 crit range, comes in three flavours: hand axe (small,) battle axe (medium,) and great axe (large.) there is a small annoyance factor related to the other benefit o' grave singer. once per encounter, grave singer will automatically free the wielder from movement impairing effects, including (but not limited to) such stuff as paralysis, petrification and stun. the cost for such freedom is the weapon wielder takes gave singer's damage, but not with all kinda enhancements. am not 100% certain what were the calculation, but our dual wielding aeon using the hand axe would ordinarily get hit for +40 damage. the thing is, even if you are immune or inoculated as it were to whatever is the movement impairing effect targeting grave singer's wielder, you nevertheless take the weapon damage hit. but yeah, the 18-20 crit range is a massive benefit and is why so many munchkin dual wielders is choosing kukris or scimitars as their weapons o' choice. is two hand axes in the game which provide 18-20, although one is available only very late in the game. we thought it would be fun to do not kukri. also, is a novel series from the 80s called the pelbar cycle, which nobody has ever hear o' but we enjoyed much. have frequent played a shumai axeman character in crpgs and 'course absolute nobody knows what am referencing. amusing, greybor's hand axe, crushing cold, were a nice option for much o' the game, but we had to be concerned with friendly fire. am not certain if has been fixed, but the cone o' cold effect o' the hand axe were not as per an 11th level wizard as described, but rather based on the wielder's level, so we got up to the full 15d6 benefits/pain when triggered. HA! Good Fun!

Minor tip, because it is not that intuitive either: Don't dismiss weapons with good secondary effects just because they have a low enhancement bonus. There's a dagger +2 that gives two extra attacks on a full round attack, there's a +2 club that prevents you from becoming flat footed, and a +2 battle axe with a crit range of 18-20. You can buff the enhancement bonus of weapons, and bypassing DR isn't an issue beyond the very early game either, but you cannot teach a generic +5 weapon any new tricks. A dagger with an additional attack is quite painful when playing a character having Sneak Attacks and/or Elemental Barrage, and that axe? That axe removes the requirement to take Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Fauchards if the primary thing you're going for is their increase crit range. Which it usually is. Plus it comes much earlier than the go-to Fauchard, which is available in Act IV, and has a higher critical hit multiplier.

This does remind me a lot of how I find some degree of Conservatives (although can come from anywhere) that will point to China as being the problem for things like climate change, human rights abuses, taking jobs etc... but that the interdependence was non-trivially impacted by a lot of American companies recognizing an opportunity to save on assorted manufacturing costs (and the labour costs associated with that) by moving stuff off shore. A British friend of mine got upset at some of his friends commenting about how China is so bad for emissions while UK is so much better, because you can't really be proud of that was a big reason why your emissions improved was that you relocated a lot of your emission production to places like China via multinational corporations. I'm actually not fundamentally against globalization (IMO there's a bit of an idealized world where we functionally have no borders because we're all on some level politically equal, with sufficient mobility that opportunities are not gated by "you're lucky enough to be a citizen born in X") sowing some seeds for stuff like this to happen because, unfortunately, we're not functionally borderless with political equality. I think it's very complicated as there is probably some value in providing that type of employment and whatnot in local regions, although our world is pretty interconnected now and it will have some knock on effects that are not always easy to truly anticipate. It is unusual to see some degree of protectionism coming from the US. Even Trump had some despite being ostensibly free market supporting Republican, with his China trade war stuff... which I feel ran afoul with a lot of the business/rich demographic that often did business with China, but is actually particularly resonant with poorer demographics that saw jobs disappear overseas (often couched in varying degrees of xenophobia that can get fostered by some drum beaters).

You write this as if this was the wrong way to do it.

Because if you say stop motion animation recreations of iconic romance films with preserved amphibians people tend to look at you weird.

During this push deep into Kharkiv Oblast, UA army captured Lieutenant Colonel of Russian army

In the meanwhile, while Russia sent their best Spetznas and VDV to western Kherson Oblast, UA army started another offensive in Kharkhiv Oblast and in little bit more than 24 hours, they moved more than 20km deep into Russian occupied territories and removed Russian soldiers with heavy losses from 7 settlements between Balaklia and Shevchenkove, probably trying to completely cut-off Izyum from all Russian GLOCs… The push still continues, with first reports, that they moved 5 kms further to the northwest, and are approx. 10kms away from Shevchenkove. EDIT: more liberated towns in Northern Kherson Oblast officially reported today as well.

Mortal Shell. It is an indie Souls-like. After Nioh, it feels incredibly slow and repetitive - there are very few types of enemies with extremely high density of them. Considering that there is not much customisation for the "shells" (playable characters), mowing through them seems pointless. The 3 bosses I've defeated (two of them were mini-bosses, one protecting a shell, another a weapon) were rather straight-forward - find one punishable attack and exploit it. The Hardening system (the MC turns to stone and becomes immune to damage) is an interesting and unique feature, though takes time to get used to. The locations seem to change after the corresponding boss has been defeated, granted I was just running through the one without much exploration, but I think the mobs were different on the way to the boss. I still have a very vague idea about the story, but a not-Firekeeper allows to level up and a giant chained bird-man asked to bring him glands. The MC is a spirit who is able to possess corpses, the titular shells. They have set HP and stamina, but the abilities are unique for each shell and require unlocking them. Also been playing Paradise Killer. It is a first-person adventure game with very few puzzles and a lot of dialogues. The story follows a detective who has been returned from her exile to investigate a mass murder. So far so good. Some mechanics are not obvious, but the game is delightful.

In the year 2022, proletarians living in the South have more common sense than Joe Yankee living in the northeast or West Coast.

To be fair to the Battle of Winterfell, it wasn't even the most stupid 'battle' in GoT*, amazingly. That honour goes to Euron Greyjoy 360 noscoping a dragon from a moving, pitching ship, with a ballista, from a distance of hundreds? thousands? of meters, because the dragons had gone blind, and Danaerys had developed a very specific form of early onset dementia which makes her forget about fleets. At least a few things in tBoW worked (well, kind of), that had no redeeming features whatsoever. *and would probably have been better received if everyone had the same a/v equipment as the producers had so could actually see what was going on. Oh god yes. They got a lot of criticism for how they handled Whispering Wood (? when Jaime got captured) and it being offscreen but the Battle of Blackwater was, in retrospect, an utter disaster for GoT longer term. Or at least their need to constantly one up the last battle in spectacle (but little else) was.

So I bought a Super Slim PS3 a while ago just to have a spare one since I loved the console so much and it was indeed one of my favorite consoles of all time next to the SNES and the N64. I started transferring all of my old data from the Slim 160 GB to the Super Slim 500 GB and now I have room for a crapton of digital games that I purchased back in the days. Played a little bit of Dragon's Lair. Damn...it's not even a game, who plays stuff like this! Now I do aim to switch back to the old Slim PS3 at some point since the disc drive in the Super Slim is so badly designed, but I need to upgrade the older PS3 with a 1TB SSD first.

I did 5 different batches. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot, and the beer was surprisingly better than what you typically find in stores. But it was also an expensive hobby and pretty time intensive. When I moved, my brewing buddy got all of the equipment we bought and he put it in storage, and so we haven't brewed in a few years. Top-notch ingredients seems to be the real key. Avoid the cheap ingredient kits. Fresh grains, fresh hops, and good yeast make a difference. We made 2 IPA's with Citra hops (one had been fermented with orange rinds), a Centennial and Chinook Pale Ale, a dark Weissenbock, and an amazing Vanilla Oatmeal Stout. The vanilla came from vanilla beans soaked in scotch, and it was by far my favorite beer we brewed.

Game time is extremely relative thing. I routinely clock three digits of hours in RPGs and there's one in four even and it almost always is like "Why is it four in the morning when I just sat down with it a minute ago?!" versus, say, FEAR which dragged for me like forever and a year when I actually finished it in less than 10 hours.

Holidays means family gaming time as I go back to my parents' house for a couple of weeks. During that that I played Unpacking with my sister, taking turns to unpack each room. It's a decent enough game, cute but perhaps not as zen as others may see it. However it has way too many books. That's not a joke complaint. A lot of the game is just robotically unpacking books out of boxes and putting them on a shelf. Makes it feel like filler, especially as the low-res pixel art means most of the books are nameless, title-less and look completely generic instead of telling a story about the protagonist which you'd think the intent would be. You might say that this kind of thing is the point of the game, but differences can be subtle: organising a bunch of colourful panties into an aesthetically pleasing grid arrangement in a drawer is far more engaging than placing nameless books in arbitrary order on a shelf. Other than that I've played a random grab bag of things on the Xbox Sex. A little bit of Sherlock Holmes Crime and Punishment, co-operatively. A little Overcooked in 3-player mode (which is unbalanced in some levels that have a 50:50 geometry split). A little FIFA with the 10 hour trial thing that comes with EA on Game Pass. And sampled a couple other Game Pass titles: a little of The Pedestrian, which isn't a terrible puzzler but has an irritating interface. And Rain on Your Parade, which was just boring. Katamari Damacy Reroll which might have potential but is kinda obnoxiously loud (both in a literal and figurative sense). Oh, and Moonglow Bay, which crashed shortly after the tutorial ended and didn't autosave, and which apparently does not allow you to skip the tutorial. Ugh. Anyway, back home now for the past week but haven't really been bothered to play anything but a couple of quick AoE2 games. I half feel like doing some trucking, but a recent patch kinda broke the default force feedback settings and I can't be bothered dialling it in manually.