Notices by adiwan (adiwan), page 31

adiwan

I just ordered a pack of blank ID cards. i want to use them as mini dry erase whiteboards for notes inspired by https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5772876 However I want to put magnets on the back so I can place and reorganize these notes on my whiteboard. I could write directly on the whiteboard but I'm quickly annoyed on how any bigger change needs to redrawn and thus rarely used. This is an effort to get more organized.

adiwan

The neon-colored spirograph end credits were visually appealing.

adiwan

I'm "watching" Morbius on the side as it is released on Netflix... Oh boy... I'm not giving it a lot of attention and the little attention it got was too much. It's dull and terrible.

adiwan

Finally watched the Scott Pilgrim animated series on Netflix... It's totally different than expected. While I like the message the show has it's told in a way only a hyperactive deranged nuthead can. The original comic and the film are straight-forward in comparison. Bryan Lee O'Malley is not the strongest writer I think. I read his comic "Snotgirl" and it was difficult to follow and empathize with the characters.
Do I like the show? Sorta in parts. It fixed some characters along the way. I'm not a fan of how it's told. Maybe 18-year old me would be thrilled by all of that but I think I grew way past it.

adiwan

<Insert yearly post on how annoying fireworks is>

adiwan

Glass fiber internet! It's a mild shock to handle the glass fiber cable and a CAT7 cable at the same time. In the one hand is a long thing with the consistency of a noodle and in the other hand something thick and hard. Definitely not gay.

adiwan

This track from Judgment just slaps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqcDtgqosiY

adiwan

AI image generation is dangerously addicting. It's like a loot box where one hope to get a good image or the perfect image. I've spent too much time yesterday generating portrait images for preparing to my D&D adventure. Also Bing's Dall-E has a content filter that makes it a little bit more tricky to make grotesque images. For example I wanted to create a fleshy and bloody amalgam of unicorn body parts that assemble into one giant and colossal unicorn. The background is that the heroes have defeated the wizard that used unicorns and their blood to fuse animals together. However the remnants of that magic and unicorn blood and the disposed bodies were tossed into the sewers and spread through the rivers. Now they have to "clean up" the whole mess and be some kind of Ghostbusters but with bloody unicorn blobs with veiny tendrils instead of ghosts.

adiwan

Finding good images of Giff is practically impossible.

adiwan

I'm not a big fan of AI-generated images but it is real handy when it comes to digital virtual tabletop as it enables me to create character portraits of characters that I imagine. Before I had to "hunt" for images that resemble my idea. Or the workflow was just that I had to develop a character from an image I found. Both valid. The next D&D adventure I plan has a ton of Giff. Giff are practically anthropomorphic hippos with a colonial British attitude, as they like to conquer and hunt. I want them to invade the unicorn world I used last time.

adiwan

Changed my avatar because I got bored with Komi, from the manga "Komi Can't Communicate". I AI-generated a cartoony image of a character from my last one-shot D&D adventure. https://i.imgur.com/v5QhrYZ.jpg

adiwan

In that case buying boardgames for half or third the price is a no-brainer.

adiwan

Also I have bought so many boardgames that I have gifts for the next year.

adiwan

It's easy to have boardgame loving relatives, even easier when most of the games were bought for dirt cheap on sale for 15€ a piece and have a decent rating.

adiwan

I listened to Iji Sakura from LAD Ishin way too often https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ESM0ckHSBY I like how it gets more intense with each repeat.

adiwan

Almost forgot that the newest Marvel's What If season started. It was a cool cyberpunk-ish, noire detective story with Nebula. For 25 minutes it was good enough to be fun.

adiwan

The composer John Powell never disappoints.

adiwan

Finished LAD Ishin! in 48 hours with 95% of all side stories finished. The last few ones were basically friendship missions. Also the battle dungeon stuff I ignored mostly. It is a pure grind for crafting materials in the most boring hallways imaginable. I would say that it's the barest of the bare minimum of level design. It's not even randomly generated but looks like it as I recognize the same handful of repeated hall segments and junctions. Also the troop card mechanic is asinine. The plan is that one can assemble special modifiers and attacks to augment the combat but it ended up for me as a big dud. Getting those cards is random and the actual abilities are either broken or the minor ones recharge too slowly. I used a slow health regeneration ability and an "unblockable" spin attack (bosses somehow were able to block...).

adiwan

Also Unreal Engine 4 irks me a lot, especially loading scenes. There is so much texture loading delay that I'm not used to with the Dragon Engine. Also animations on load behave weirdly: A sitting person stands for a frame and snaps into a sitting position with physics-driven secondary animation wiggling wildly. In rarer occasions distant scenery also flash white.

adiwan

Like a Dragon Ishin starts to feel good to play after 5 chapters, similar to Yakuza 3. Once enough skills are unlocked combat the combat is suddenly fluid and doesn't feel like brakes are applied all the time. The only things I don't really appreciate is that there are soooo many money sinks everywhere. I get it that they don't want to make the player accumulate too much money like in the other games. Fine... But progression is also somewhat tied to money like the crafting and enhancing of weapons. I'm constantly low on money. Also seeing familiar faces with different names is discomforting, like Majima being called Ogita and Kiryu called Ryoma/Saito. It just f-up what I've learned in 9 games. It gets better with time in that regard.

adiwan

In a weird way I feel sorry for all the future anthropologists, historians, and archeologists (also students) for what is happening culturally now and the last two decades. It's like culture worth of 1000 years happened in that time.

adiwan

Two of my friends finally got Covid. One who is always very, very careful, and one who is working as a teacher and got it after a day visiting university to attend a doctor thesis presentation. 3 out of 7 had it.

adiwan

Hot baths (above body temperature) feel good when sitting inside the bathtub but feel awful when getting out of the tub. My whole circulation system of my body is then out of whack and I feel sickly numb and real sweaty. I get it that it's a very fever-like reaction but damn it is not on my mind when sitting relaxed in the tub.