Gorth

I think there are two religious holidays in Australia, Christmas and Easter. Then there is the secular stuff like the Melbourne Cup Horse racing (Victoria only), The Kings Birthday (this one was funny last year, because of the timing of her passing away), Labour Day for us hardworking blue collar developers and Anzac day where people get up at 5am and eat cookies. Oh and here in Brisbane we have The Ekka (an annual agricultural show day, not a statewide holiday, just a public holiday for people living in the greater Brisbane are). Australia day where we celebrate seizing the land from the Aborigines and try to kill them off. There are a bit mixed feelings about the latter holiday, so it might change in the future to become a more inclusive day on another date, suitable for all Australians, both old and new. South Australia has an Adelaide Cup day (similar to Victorias Melbourne Cup), Tasmania has a holiday called "Eight Hour Day" (no, I have no clue), Western Australia has nothing interesting and no idea about the territories (NT and ACT).

No, I haven't forgotten JoJo 😝

After a bit of a break, I found a new series to watch. It's not completed yet, so just like Mieruko-chan it may come back and bit me when I wait for more episodes 😖 Anyway, a series called Jigokuraku ("Hells Paradise"). Only seen first two episodes. Lots of gore and chopping of heads. Set in a pseudo feudal Japan, ruled by a Shogun and people lose their heads faster than Russians fall out of windows. The protagonist was raised a someones pet killer-for-hire, working for the local towns leader. Getting married to a woman he doesn't realize he loves, he ends up getting ostracized and sentenced to death. Dying is a bit tricky for him, because he realizes a few seconds before finally dying, that he still has something live for. An emissary from the Shogun is searching around for people sentenced to death, who will undertake a risky mission for him to a newly discovered land, rumoured to be in possession of an elixir of immortality, something the Shogun would like to get his hand on. A few dozen convicts are assembled in the Shoguns courtyard and he tells the gathered convicts, that they are too many (and for his own amusement, arranges an impromptu "battle royale", leaving 10 survivors, who will travel by boat to the island. 10 armed "executioners" accompanies them, to make sure they don't get funny ideas. Episode 2 ends with the protagonist having flashbacks to his wife and what in retrospect was something good in his life, that he didn't appreciate when they still were together.

The F16 were good planes (I'm old enough to remember a lot of controversy around their acquisition). No noticeable accidents and they've seen a bit of actions too, participating in Ex-Yugoslavia, Libya and Iraq (sitting it out in Afghanistan iirc, that mostly infantry and AFV combat) The Danish government also decided to send 100 slightly older Leopard 1 (probably still a lot better than the Russian Sardine Cans) as well as a handful Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. Denmark is known for it's effective recycling policies. Suddenly raising the retirement age for military hardware 😛 Edit: Luckily the Nordic countries have decided on a "unified command" when it comes to their airforces (not at least because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine), so the Swedish airforce can cover Danish airspace because the Danish airforce always seems to be eager to fight everywhere else but in the Danish airspace... https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2023/03/24/nordic-countries-move-toward-linking-their-air-forces-250-planes/

Never say never...

I know Denmark has/had a number of F16 jets that were due to be scrapped and /or replaced by F35's starting in 2024... looks like some of them might find a new home. Maybe it's related? https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/denmark-open-delivering-f-16-fighter-jets-ukraine-minister-2023-02-24/

That's a long distance away to smash it with a wrench!

Ooh... Kraken Black Rum... any Kraken Black Rum

I currently have a bottle of Absolute Vodka in the cupboard. I'm not a big vodka drinker, but it's Ok for mixing with orange juice or whatever. Ironically, there is one vodka I really do like (just like Roku Gin is the one gin I really like as is) and that is a domestic product made in South Australia (St. Agnes Silver). Sadly it's impossible to get outside South Australia unless you order it online and have it shipped to you. The St. Agnes distillery also makes a Brandy that is as good as any good Cognac. Same deal though, you have to pay for shipping to get it . Not so much an issue for the Brandy, when you pay close to $1000 AUD for a 40y old Brandy, the shipping is trivial

My favourite Faeroese songbird strikes again ☺️ I haven't seen the movie, but what an interesting soundtrack. Sounds like an extended version of another of her songs 'Trollabundin' or the latter sounds like a condensed version of the soundtrack

Sometimes Games Workshop release "freebies" on Youtube to advertise their subscription channel. No, not going to subscribe, but some of them are pretty good quality (considering many of those started as fan made projects that either got cease and desists or got bought outright from their creators)

The worst is Wikipedia... the number of open tabs just keep exploding. Every time you try to close a tab, you've open 2-3 new ones with new subjects to read 😠

RTS games suck... all of them. Even Dawn of War games despite being set in the 40k setting. I make a bi-annual exception for Age of Empires 2, because it's so slow it might as well have been turn based, so the RTS aspect is less noticeable.

The only thing that really, really bothered me when I upgraded my Windows 10 to Windows 11 (to shut up the constant nag screen) was that my Kaspersky Internet Security (KIS) (yeah, I know, Putin knows what is my PC now, right? Probably no worse than the CIA or Xi snooping on my criticism) suddenly started blocking everything. The weather gadget, Steam updates, EA App, in game store in Guild Wars 2... long list of things that made me turn it off every time I needed to do something. Lots of googling eventually led me to a page on their support forums where a 12 month long back and forth had been going on regarding a similar issue. Turned out the fix was to disable KIS's "Self Defense" mode, stop KIS, delete all contents of the Report folder in the programdata folder, start KIS, enable Self Defense mode again and everything was back to working perfectly fine 😖 Talk about obscure causes and effects...

Wouldn't it be a weird world if Moscow ended up with German peacekeeper forces patrolling the streets in a collapsed Russian Federation?

For added excitement, why doesn't Nato offer Taiwan membership of the club? 😁 I know it's slightly tangential, but one of the Youtube channels I watch regularly (they usually did history/historic battles like War of the Roses, WWI, The Punic Wars etc.) has been making a series of videos where the Ukraine war gets covered in the same style as the historical documentaries. If curious, check out Kings and Generals on Youtube.

That sounds like a bad case of polonium poisoning... time to stay away from windows (and upper floors in general)? Last step before Belarus "comes home"?

That's what you get when you fight on the side of The Confederates?

I completely forgot the legendary editions now have built in "photo mode" features. Just a test pic, I obviously need to manually use the hide ui key before hitting the the take a picture buttom. Very classy Miranda, following me into the boys room (I hope those Turian guys aren't shy)... 😝

That has to be a +3 mace!

Yeah, "copycat killers" probably have an entire library section of their own. An old and well documented phenomena unfortunately, once somebody else gets fame and/or media exposure, they lose their inhibitions and decide they can do it too... (it's like some barrier of entry suddenly gets lowered significantly)

Completed Mass Effect 1 (legendary edition)... just some thoughts rather than a coherent recap: World building felt great The story felt... meh. Not what sold me on the game. Combat is for me still the best in any of the 3 games for one reason alone, it feels like you have 3 dimensions. I learnt one lesson, if I ever play it again, I need to remap the 'g' key for grenades, because I was always out of grenades from accidentally hitting 'g' when i wanted to holster weapons ('h' key) 😖 Companions were... ok? Alenko grated way less on my nerves this time around than he did when I played it originally. Didn't bother with any of the "romances". None of the npc's gave me any warm and fuzzy feelings. Mostly brought Garrus/Wrex for combat efficiency and Tali for her electronics/decryption skills (so I could loot crates). Took great pleasure in taking down the secondary villains in the game, which were mostly corporations with too little government oversight (ExoGeni, Binary Helix, Cerberus etc.) Loved the ominous feel that Sovereign exuded. It felt like a really enigmatic opponent. The only thing I hated more than the decryption minigame was the mako driving. it felt like what it is... a frustrating time sink (as did the mini games, but at least you could spend a bit of omni-gel to cut corners there) edit: Just started on ME2... did the intro comic rather than importing the save, as I wanted to play this game with Udina as the council lead and Ashley as the survivor on Ilos...

15 minutes of legalese, Greek tragedy, humour,licensing, distribution rights, history, movie related, tv series related, video game related... you name it. Couldn't find a home for it, so in weird and interesting it goes

I wonder if that's available in Australia... 🤔