LadyCrimson

I've started to buy nuts for the backyard squirrels again. Because apparently watching them from a distance is more entertaining than TV/gaming at the moment. Put out a plate and use binoculars/camera to watch them. It's been years since I made friends with a bunch of them (to get close/feed by hand), so I'd have to start all over again with the current crop. Not sure I'll go that far - I'm happy enough just watching. Also, apparently the large, weathered avocado seeds (from the neighbor's tree) confuse them and they'll pick them up (sometimes the same one repeatedly over days) and sit on the fence trying to crack them open for a few minutes before realizing it's not really a ... nut. It's hilarious.

So I was buying some (shelled) walnuts for the squirrels and realized that in all my life, in the common stores around where I live, I have never seen bags of "salted" walnuts. They are always raw or still in the shell. Not including candied/baked in goods versions, I mean. Peanuts, almonds, cashews, pistachios, seeds, others - all have many roasted and salted (and flavored) types in cans and bags as well as raw. But not walnuts. I mean, I've never looked very hard for such, mind, but offhand never see them sitting next to all the other wal/nuts in stores. I looked online and apparently there are "roasted and lightly salted" walnuts ... now I must order some to find out what they taste like.

There should be "Star Trek Verse" and "Star Wars Verse" threads. I haven't watched anything Trek related in a long while, but I still have those OS and TNG Nitpickers guides in the bathroom and flip through those while doing my business. They were really the first series I spent so much time "studying", knowing names, history, and wanting to know all the ins and outs of the fake-tech and behind the scenes as well. I still have official "blueprints" of the ship somewhere. Have never gone to that extent with any other series, ever. Supernatural almost went there but was never quite realized.

Outside of the console performance stuff, all the commentary re: cut content and "expectations" and "not like the trailers from 3 years ago" reminds me a lot of the years-in-development FF-XV hoopla. Many of the same complaints, really. Edit: except XV *is* a lot worse in story cohesion etc, heh.

A lot of them are save games or Reshade modifications, as well. I usually only care about money, sometimes materials, no-damage (infinite health or regen type stuff I can use to just explore/combat w/out thought), any QoL mods (UI, speed, other). So something like WeMod just to save changes into a new savefile (then turning off WeMod) is good enough. Or CheatEngine tables. In Borderlands gun editors were really fun to make silly weapons with, but don't really care about that here. Just need health and a big bat. I think the main complaint (from such complainers) is that they'd rather have had a few dozen more long, well written, choice-matters/multiple result type of side quests than seemingly endless "kill gangsters for 5 minutes and loot their stuff" mini-quests every 100 feet. Which I can sort of relate to. But that's not exclusive to Cyberpunk - many open worlds have this problem. The constant phone call trigger method just reminds you of it rather intrusively vs. a static NPC with a ? over their head that you can simply run past and ignore (or maybe never discover in the first place). Of course, if there were less short filler quests and filler loot everywhere, then you'd have people complaining the world was too "empty" with no reward for exploration, or something. Edit: actually, now that I think of it, the phone calls do make me feel like there's less sense of "surprise discovery" in the game. I prefer walking into some house and suddenly encountering a situation and dialog/npc's needing help, and having to make a decision then, for example, vs. being told there's something to do over the phone because I'm standing in a certain alleyway.

I've had enough of thinking about collecting money vs. crafting materials or whatever. So izza cheatz. Think this is enough? ...I can make V walk/run faster, too. Just a .5 speed increase and V's Speedy Gonzales on speed. It's not a flying cheat but it'll do. Haven't tried max speed yet - I wonder if it would make the game crash. ...yes, that's right, I've lost interest in playing totally legit, already. I'll probably never finish the plot anyway (just not interested....) so why not just goof off. ...did you know you can open your save.dat file in notepad? Not that it's much use but it was interesting to scan for the occasional readable bits, for several minutes. *LC's brain, again*

I spent the first half wondering if book one would ever get interesting/less dry - it did "get pretty good" eventually but then I had to wait for a sequel. So I was going to wait until they were all out before reading ... bought the second book 3 years later, put it on the shelf and kept waiting. At this point, I no longer care/can't be bothered. I keep waiting for the announcement he's died before finishing and someone else will finish it.

^ That's why I like electric ovens (gas ranges are fine). Broiling a steak a few inches away from the heat element coil makes a tasty steak in no time (flip it over once or twice). ...but maybe some gas ovens have this kind of capability these days, I have no idea. Although I think I'd still prefer the way the coil caramelizes fat/meat vs. gas oven flame, if gas BBQ's are any indication (there's this gas flavor...). I'd like a gas-range/electric oven combo some day - but they're pretty expensive, whether in a "single unit" or installed separately, and it's not a priority. ...never liked pan-fried steak. Except maybe when camping and it's over a fire in a cast iron pan, and because everything is better when you're utterly starving camping.

Ghost of War, Netflix, film. Hmm...went in expecting WW2 haunted house horror film. Which it was, for most of the movie. I'm not sure what i thought of it. Overall it's ok, I didn't FFWD anyway - altho if you're used to a few jump scares, not scary at all, more of a psychological thriller perhaps - but there's a strong performance by Kyle Gainer as the sniper. Brenton Thwates (who was pretty good in Signal) didn't have much to do. When the twist started it wasn't unpredictable but my interest perked up quite a bit for reasons, and then ... one of those few cases where even as a B movie it might've been better served with maybe 10-15 more minutes with a bit more expansion on certain things. So one of those "could've been pretty good" things. But at the risk of a conceptual spoiler, if you hate type of endings, you won't like this movie. For such people, there, I saved you some time.

^ I watched the first season of GoT, because I read the first book, and enjoyed it enough in that regard. Watched one or two episodes of the 2nd season, rapidly lost interest and am unlikely to ever watch the rest at this point. Which is pretty much what happened with the books as well. I think hubby watched two seasons. :)

Note to self: Don't go to a theater with majestic. Probably like most people, I only remember the catch phrases/memes, because they're short and have placed emphasis. Or the only reason I might remember names is because someone is always shouting them in the movies. Sarah! Where is Sarah? I have to see Sarah Connor! Sarah! John! Where is John? John! Call John.

Oh I'll remember game stuff - but that's in the vein of (me) repeating something 100x. When one spends 300, 500, 1000, 3000 hours playing a game, you're going to remember things. But if I was watching a game trailer or game review that spoiled something, I wouldn't remember it at all. Edit: and I generally don't watch a movie more than a few times, these days often not even twice. Back when, there were some early utter favorite films I rewatched up to 6 of 10 times on VHS (ah, VHS), but that's now extremely rare even if I liked something a lot.

I have the most iron-clad spoiler-protection ever available - poor memory retention/recall for anything that isn't repeated (by ME) 100x in a short period of time. Used to know this guy who, months after seeing a movie, could stand in our living room and still quote entire scenes between characters nearly word for word. This was before the internet, mind you. Most of the time, months later I couldn't even tell you what most of the characters names are, let alone much of anything outside of main plot points.

Binge watched (well, mostly) (Netflix) Bridgerton 8 episode series. It's basically an alternative (eg, inclusive) period romance-drama. Not typically my thing, tbh, but was curious about it. The first half was pretty great - classy, visually sumptuous, often low-key absurdly amusing - y'know, more that drier type of drama style, not the US rom-com sort. But then the latter half started to feel more modern soap-opera, with lots of boring and overlong bed scenes and side plots that for me were not very interesting or amusing. I started FFWDing here and there. Still, worth it, for the first half. Also, admittedly, Regé-Jean Page was very easy on the eyes.

After learning how to switch audio languages for Cyberpunk thru Steam settings, I thought it might work for Death Stranding too. But then I discovered that DS seems to now include many more languages in the in-game menu to begin with. When did that happen, one of the patches I presume - most definitely couldn't do that before, it was the first thing I checked when I bought it on PC (couldn't change it on console originally either). But whatever...it means that finally I can play Death Stranding with Kenjiro Tsuda's voice instead of Norman Reedus' voice! Now I have a new motivation/reason to actually play again and finish the game on PC. ::happydance::

I discovered how to change the audio language away from English. Sadly it doesn't seem you can have a list of all language options at once, in-game. Have to change actual game language properties by r-clicking on game in Steam menu. Then that means initially the entire menu text interface is in the chosen language - so I had to use Google Translate to find out what Japanese lettering = "English" to make interface/subtitles readable for me. :P But now I can make a male V play thru and have Japanese audio. Can still switch to English for my female V saves (just not any other language w/out doing whole thing over again). Only issue is every time you restart, the interface/menu reverts back to non-English. You can either remember which "position" the language selector should be in (2nd from left for English for me) and change it back each time, or start game as Admin. from the actual game folder .exe file vs. Steam's menu. Although the latter might disable achievements, I hear.

I definitely find her VA one of the better aspects of the game, character wise. Every time I watch videos or streams with the male V, I just can't take that VA's interpretation. He's not horrible, but it's so ... dull.

I woke up very early this morning, got up, shuffled around the house, said "it's cold," shuffled back to bed, and went back to sleep. I woke up early this afternoon ...

Healthy New Year everyone.

If I still had access to SyFy, I would watch this for Alan Tudyk alone. Although I'm sure SyFy will cancel it after one season.

Well, I'm not a parent, but I suppose one could look at it as an opportunity for discussion, like teaching/preparing re: death and terrible circumstances. That film is depressing, sad/traumatic, etc. but it's not a rah-rah violence as entertainment, at least. Or something. As to animation in general - hey, it's a "cartoon," must be ok for kids, right? I saw some of the weirdest animation stuff on PBS as a kid, with my parents watching. Books can be similar. My mother loved that I loved to read, that she hardly paid attention to *what* I was reading. So here you are, 8-9 years old, reading every horror/fantasy/samurai action anthology and novel, full of sex, descriptive violence, vengeance - my mom never looked at/checked my books - but I could only watch Little House on the Prairie and Popeye was "bad" for the casual violence.

The game is like a "very old person driver" meme simulator, so I won't miss those turns. Brake, accelerate, brake, herky jerk, 20mph everywhere, baby!

The main reason I prefer being on foot in most open-world (at least for a 1st run) is because I can't stand getting in/out, on/off, whatever riding option there is, 5000000000 times every time I want to look at/pick something up. Because I must find/pick up EVERYTHING. Ooo, shiny! The motorcycle is ok tho - at least it doesn't control like a tank in a grease-pit. I'll have to try the flying bike fun. Will photomode still work during?

But that's where DLSS starts to look ... especially blurry, for lack of a better word ... to the point it doesn't meet my personal "graphics clarity" meter. Quality or even Balanced mode (as far as I'm willing to go) isn't enough to get Cyberpunk to be 4k/60fps even with dropping some things down to Medium. And yes I mean with RT off. Too much DLSS affects screenshots as well - that petroleum jelly lens look. Ick. Not that I mind too much not having a constant 60fps - altho that really depends on the game. Some games "feel" fine at stable 30-45 far as I'm concerned, while others do not.