Tuesday December 20, 2022
I originally started playing Minecraft back when it was in beta. I bought it.
It was released 7 months later. I gave a couple of years of my free time to it before
moving on to other things.
Notch sold Mojang in 2014 to Microsoft. I continued to play it for a while after that.
I don’t remember when I got tired of it.
I’m taking some vacation time from work around xmas and new year day.
While watching some videos I came across one of my favorite reviews of Minecraft
I thought “why not re-install Minecraft and give it a few hours for nostalgia”.
That’s why.
Sunday September 11, 2022
Bored.
Thursday May 12, 2022
I saw this on a car driving around. I found it at MerchBar,
but it’s out of stock.
Friday April 1, 2022
I’m married now.
Sunday March 20, 2022
We switched to daylight savings time last weekend. I get screwed up by the change
for two or three weeks.
I don’t know when to make dinner now. Two weeks ago, I did it when it started to get
dark. Now, it is 7:30 and still light out, and I should have started dinner an hour
ago. Eating too late disrupts sleep.
Yes, as spring progresses into summer it’ll get dark later and later, but a gradual
change is easier to make.
It was better when DST changed later in the year, the last weekend of April. By
then dinner time is far enough after sunset that switching to DST didn’t
screw me up.
I think daylight saving time need to be stopped. But I think it needs to stay
non-daylight saving time, so that mornings get light when people are waking up,
not some time after they get to work.
Saturday March 19, 2022
While going over the site I’m re-reading things I wrote long ago.
This one caught my eye.
One of the things I said:
well… What can I say. Dubya is a dickhead, but we
gave him the power with our fucked-up electoral process. He can use
that power for good or evil as he sees fit, though it is obvious that
he isn’t fit to wield that power. That power is his to use until we
remove him.
I mellowed on Dubya after I wrote this. Yes, I was angry about his
shortcomings. I still am to some extent. But as the books came out
after he and his administration left office, I found some measure of
respect for him. That was during the Obama administration.
Now that we’ve had a traitor in word and deed
in the oval office, well, Dubya doesn’t stack up so bad. My view of
Dubya these days is he was a conservative guy, surrounded by even more
conservative elements with agendas.
There still no way I’d vote for him. But I’d shake his hand if I
met him.
Tuesday February 22, 2022
I’ve posted before about being all in on Cloudflare.
Today I “cut over” to Cloudflare Pages, getting off
of Github Pages. There’s nothing wrong
with Github Pages, I just wanted to try this new thing. I’m still building it with
Jekyll. But now I have to configure Ruby
gems as part of the site.
The old site used a slightly modified version of Jekyll’s default
Minima theme. New site uses a hacked-up
version of the Lanyon theme.
Dark themes have become a thing because screens are getting
so bright that a big, pure-white, web page is eye-searing.
The old site was a “light” theme. The new site uses dark version of the
Solarized theme. This theme may
have more color science behind it than any other. I agree it is… green.
I’ve gone with a dark version
of the theme, with the sliding menu using the complimentary light version.
I may switch the whole site to the lighter version, or figure out how
to allow users to choose. Still haven’t decided the final state of this.
Switched to using system fonts. This was fascinating to me. There is a fairly
serious amount of typographic work that goes into making operating systems
look good in a brand-forward way. Using the results of that work is not a
bad plan. This site will look a little different on different browsers,
because there’s no way
on macOS to directly use Apple’s new system font “San Fransisco”.
There is a new-ish standard for a way to access system fonts in browsers, but
support is still being worked out.
The site has commenting now. The Movable Type and WordPress versions used to
allow commenting, and there it was used. So I’ve got it again. Sadly, nobody
knows this site exists any more. Probably won’t be a hugely used feature.
Commenting requires a login on Github to enable. Those rare people that do
find this site might find this to be another hurdle commenting. But past
versions of the site did have comments, and it was good.
I’ve collected some things that were on previous versions
of the site, but haven’t been recently, and will restore them.
Humor archives and some stuff I find entertaining.
There are, as well as I can recall, 5 previous versions of munged.org:
-
Site coded by hand, and then Dreamweaver. Served by a shared hosting system
2001 - 2002: These pages still exist, and I keep them around as a curiosity. They
come from my days at RiverSoft, when I travelled for a living and
sometimes committed information technology work.
-
Movable Type, served by that same shared hosting system
2003 - 2009: Also still mostly exist, and forms most of the content on this site.
Did a lot of blogging during this time. Experienced a lot and wrote
about much of it.
-
Written in WordPress, served by that same shared hosting system
2009 - 2014: Lost. Nothing wrong with WordPress, per se, but the site
was hacked to serve porn pretty frequently, and I didn’t want to deal with
keeping up with it.
-
Migrated to SquareSpace
2014 - 2015: SquareSpace is a fantastic site
if you’re trying to sell something. Complete shit for a non-photographic
blog like this one.
-
Migrated to Github Pages
2015 - yesterday: This was easy, and I was getting into git and Github.
This seemed like a way to learn both by way of Jekyll and static site
generation.
-
Now, migrated to Cloudflare Pages.
We shall see how this works out. Coding the site has been fun, and that work
continues as I enhance it and import the old content. I’ve written
some things recently. Might do more.
Saturday February 19, 2022
I’m sure there are going be some fan-boi apologists out there that will say
“but Apple doesn’t put these in themselves.” I say: Apple either
cares or it doesn’t and it doesn’t look like they do.
What Am I Talking About? Two things: series, and sorting.
The Apple Book Store groups books by series they are in, which is very cool. When set
up correctly, it looks like this:
I use this to see what the next book in a series is when I want to buy it, and then
to read it.
But take a step back, and the Zelazny section looks like this:
In my mind, the stories of Merlin of Amber are part of the Chronicles: books 6 thru 10. Even if you don’t agree with that, they are definately a series and should be in a “Merlin of Amber” series under Zelazny. Not listed separately like that.
And then there’s sorting parameters. Are we using last names of authors? Are we using first names of authors? Who the hell knows. One of my favorite sorting fuckups:
This list is sorted as:
- Vernor
- Vincent
- Vinge
Come on! Standards, people!
I long ago gave up by sorting on artist last names in music. Is Alice Cooper an artist or a band? But I still think of authors as having
last names, and that we should sort on them. Charles Stross is called “Charles” or “Charlie”, but I categorize him and discuss him as an author as “Stross”. Last names are often more unique than given names, at least in the Western world.
Yes, there’s a lot of books in the book store, but computers should be helping these publishers do this correctly. Not standing by the side, or actively hindering them, as the case may be. Making it easier for me to tell what books are in a series cause me to buy more of them. If I can’t tell what books I own by an author I tend to be
conservative and not buy any.
Apple needs to give a shit.
Tuesday January 25, 2022
I enjoyed it immensely.
I really liked the ornithopters. I really liked Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho. I really liked the production design. I really liked the sound design.
I’ve been an Oscar Isaac fan ever since I saw him in Sucker Punch. I thought his beard in this role looked really fake.
Rebecca Ferguson has an austere beauty that worked well for her role, and she’s certainly capable. But there were a couple of times where I thought she was more Paul’s sister than mother.
Finally, I liked how faithful to the book they were in translating it to the screen and the way they were faithful. The things they decided to bring across from the book to the screen were “minimum viable movie”.
Saturday January 22, 2022
It sucks. Avoid it at all cost.
Wednesday January 5, 2022
“Joe’s Bar and Grill. If you’re his wife he ain’t here.”
“Hi! I need tables for 6, at about 9 tonight for dinner and drinks.”
“Tables. Are the people in your party friends? Should the tables be close together or is there a minimum separation distance you need?”
“We’ll be packing, but we’re all terrible shots. Keep them together.”
“How many people per table?”
“We’ll need 6 tables, one per person, but each person will bring a hostage with them to use as a shield.”
“Do you mind a room in the back to keep the collateral damage to a minimum? Or are you sending a message?”
“A room in the back is fine, thanks.”
“Will there be one check, or multiple checks?”
“Multiple checks. We will cover all checks of anyone that is too dead to pay their bill at the end of the evening.”
“That is appreciated, sir. Okay, I have a private room with 6 2-toppers for 9pm tonight. There will be a 18% gratuity added since technically this is a party of more than 8 people. We’ll probably put you in the “OG” room.”
“Perfect! Thank you, see you tonight.”
“Have a pleasant day sir.”
Tuesday January 4, 2022
Liked it, but didn’t love it. I found it to be okay.
I can see where people might dislike or even hate it. It’s a weird picture like that, I think. I found I had the patience for it, but not everyone will.
I don’t know of any open questions that needed to be answered after the original “The Matrix” trilogy. This movie doesn’t try to answer any, which is a plus in its favor. I think this got made because Lana Wachowski came up with it all and felt it needed to be made. I can see that, and agree. Once this idea was a script, that script needed to be made. I’m glad it was made.
The Matrix trilogy suffers from being deeply philosophical. The first movie asked so many questions, we had an immense amount of fun working out answers for them. Do a search for the “philosophy of the matrix”, and you’ll find tons of stuff. There are college classes and all sorts of things. It starts out as an enormous cloud of possibility. As the sequels start collapsing the possibilities into a single quantum state, it was never going to be as good as it could have been, no matter where it ended up. This was a series of movies that just can’t win after the first one was made.
It started really slow. I spent the first 20 minutes or so reminding myself that I wanted to see this movie. Once they were done setting the scene and establishing everyone’s motives, it was okay. It would have been better if they’d managed to make me give a shit about any of the characters during that time. But once it got moving it was interesting enough that I forgot I didn’t give a shit about any of those characters.
Neil Patrick Harris was incredible. He radiated pure menace. Stole every scene he was in. I hope it’s possible for him to get some supporting role nominations for his work here. But he’s the only nomination-worthy thing in this picture, so probably won’t happen.
The idea that Neo and Trinity could power a whole matrix by themselves doesn’t jibe for me. I don’t understand how removing Neo and Trinity from the matrix jeopardizes Io, which seems have nothing to do with it.
Getting in and out of the matrix was a whole thing, every time, in the original trilogy. It wasn’t a trivial thing, requiring being at “broadcast depth”, and a “hard line”. Every time. I liked that this used mirrors to get in and out, but didn’t like that they played fast and loose with that. They have to find a mirror on the train to get out of the matrix one time, but the next they’re in a bombed out structure in the matrix fighting, then they’re back on the ship again. I found myself out of the story wondering where the intact mirror was in that bombed out building.
I really liked Jonathan Groff as a new Smith, tho I kept trying to figure out why the machines hadn’t purged Smith outright after he was defeated.
I am okay with where it ended. I didn’t like it got there. I spent the whole time waiting for an arc where Neo relearns/regains his powers. I guess there was one, of sorts, but I really didn’t buy it. Trinity couldn’t fly in the original trilogy, why can she now? Yes, she was supposedly part of the original anomaly. But that’s a really clumsy retcon.
The Matrix Resurrections is a good movie, and was well made. Its only real crime was that it could have been better.