I got a Steam Link recently.  This hardware device streams a computer monitor screen to your television, allowing you to play PC games remotely.  It's made by Valve and named for Steam, but actually does stream anything on that monitor, not only Steam, so you can use it for non-Steam Big Picture Mode stuff if you attach a mouse and keyboard to the thing.  It's a pretty good idea, if lag doesn't break it, and I've been interested in the concept but only for the right price.  Well, this offer was for $1, plus about $8 shipping, but there was a catch -- it was a bundle with a game, ICEY, which cost $7.69 itself; that is an okay price for that game, but not as low as it's been.  ICEY looks decent (it's a sidescrolling action/platformer) so I decided to keep it anyway, though, so I have that too now.  The total bundle was a bit over $15, which is quite reasonable.  Now you can get the Steam Link alone on sale for $15 on Amazon, so Valve seems to want to clear their warehouses of these for some reason... moving over to more built-in apps (TVs with the capability included out of the box and such), instead of an external device, probably is what I've seen for a good guess for why?

Anyway though I tried the thing out today and it works pretty well, most of the time anyway; it does vary from game to game.  I have it connected by wired internet to my router, which connects to the PC via another wire.  I only have one ethernet cable long enough to reach from the router to the TV, so my 360 now doesn't have wired internet.  Ah well... either I'll have to see how well the 360 handles wireless, or get another long ethernet cord.  I'll probably get a cord eventually, wired really is better... though my other devices (PS3, Wii U, 3DS, tablet) use wireless and do decently with it, wired is faster and more reliable.  It's apparently especially important to sue the Steam Link with wired internet, though, for lag reasons, so I will do so.  But as for the Steam Link, as I said it seems to run fairly well.  Games definitely don't run as smoothly as they do just on the computer, surely in part because of having to duplicate the monitor image (maybe I should try 720p streaming instead of 1080...), but it works and controls are responsive.  Between the distance and extra rendering there is more lag playing games on the TV than there would be on the computer, and faster-paced and higher-end 3d titles do seem to run worse, but even those games are playable so long as they work on a gamepad, I think... though people will vary on this depending on their tolerance and system power, for sure.  In some games I didn't notice much of a difference between PC and Steam Link though, so it works great if your system can handle it.  Being able to play computer games on my television, while the computer is still in another room, is great and I think I'll use this thing a good amount; it's kind of like having a new console, only it's my computer!  Sure, there is more lag and slowdown in games, and worse image quality too (because while my TV is HD and largeish, it's pretty old), but still it's pretty great.

So I have this now, and I've been using it with my Hori EX2 Turbo pad, my favorite xinput gamepad.  It works great with that in games, but for things like text input it's miserably bad, and it cannot act like a mouse.  So, I need a mouse and keyboard solution for the TV.  I generally prefer wired things of course, but I'd need what, a long USB cable, and maybe a hub too?  Mouse and keyboard cords are not long after all, and the Steam Link is over 10 feet from the chairs.  And that would mean even more wires going across the room, too... I could do that and might eventually, but as much as I dislike them maybe a wireless thing is a better answer.  I don't own any wireless mice or keyboards though, so I'm not sure what to get... hmm.  Do I just get some portable thing with a keyboard and trackpad for starters?

(One option is to get the Steam Controller, and if it goes on sale I am somewhat interested, but I'm not interested enough to pay full price for that thing.)

So yeah, overall the Steam Link is pretty cool.  Beyond the above section on lag and slowdown it has some other limitations too, though.  First, there is no power button on the thing so you need a compatible controller to do that with.  It seems most reliable with a Steam Controller; with the 360 pad it can work, but also can have issues.  That's annoying.  Worse, though, even if I had a mouse and keyboard for the living room they wouldn't be nearly as convenient to use as ones at the computer are the Steam Link really is only good for games that can entirely be played on a gamepad, most obviously.  Additionally, there is going to be lag because of the distance between your computer and TV.  In some cases this lag can be crippling, though thankfully it isn't for me.  Additionally, I also have worse image quality on the TV than you'd get on a computer monitor, and sitting a lot farther from the screen makes small text unreadable in cases because PC games assume you will be close to the screen.  For games where none of those things are an issue however the Steam Link is a good idea executed fairly well, and I at least have a lot of PC games that would be awesome to play on my TV too.  Well, now I can, and the thing that allows it is (or has been) available for pretty cheap.  Cool stuff.

... Is, for me at least, kind of the understatement of the year. So, early last Monday morning there was a strong wind and rain storm here in Maine, and between the up-to-70mph winds and its unusual wind direction (coming from the south, not the north) it knocked out power to almost half of electricity customers in the state -- 480,000 customers lost power. I'm not sure if the national news noticed, but it was a pretty big deal. Where I live now usually has quite reliable power, but sadly a huge tree branch took out the line going from the pole to the house, so we lost power as well. The huge branch and downed line were cleaned up by later Monday, but that's where it stopped for quite some time.

Now, the local power company, CMP, prioritized things by focusing first on line outages that would get a lot of customers their power back, then slowly working their way down from that. So, we were pretty low priority, so I didn't get power back all the way until this morning. They said they were trying to get everyone back up by Saturday night, but missed that goal. I just got power back this morning, and it sounds like a lot of other people only got it back today as well. This is a huge relief, because this has been a pretty awful week due to not having power. Some of that of course is because most of what I like doing (except from reading books) requires power, but also my hot water and stove are electric so they didn't work, and the furnace needs electricity to turn on so it didn't work either. I do have some gas heaters in some areas (and electric, not that they're useful here), and since those have pilots they worked thankfully, but the furnace is essential.

Now, Maine had one previous storm like this, the great Ice Storm of '98. That storm in January 1998 knocked out power to a lot of people, including us. We lost power for longer then; it was at least a week and a half, where I lived then. Conditions in general were a lot worse because of ice and temperatures, though; this time few people were forced out of their houses because of cold, 6-plus days in moderate above-freezing temperatures is not enough to do that. That's a huge thing, because in '98, while we were able to stay in our house because the house had a woodstove as well as the (not-operational-without-power) furnace, a lot of neighbors had to move out if their only heating system was a furnace. I remember it being kind of boring, with no power or school (since the schools were shelters for people who had to leave their homes) for several weeks, but no similar power-outage event had happened again here, until now.

This outage was similar in many ways to the one from '98, but different of course -- there were more outages (in my hometown for instance, the downtown and mall areas never lost power in the '98 storm, but this time lost power for days...), warmer temperatures, a faster recovery, and such. So really this wasn't as bad as '98, despite more people losing power -- CMP does seem to have learned from the previous storm. Still though, I really disliked this experience (and worried a lot, of course, since that's what I do). Sure, I love reading and did a good amount of that and still could use handhelds (if you find a way to charge them for newer ones that don't just use batteries), but electricity, the internet, and modern life are so closely entwined that it is jarring to suddenly be without those things.

So yeah, while we had it really bad here this last week, thanks to lots of work from line crews from all over the Northeast and Atlantic Canada, power is back on in most places at last. I feel for all those people in Puerto Rico who have been without power for over a month now! Sure, they don't need to worry about literally being frozen out of their homes given the climate there, but otherwise it's an incredibly unacceptable thing to allow a part of America to have no power for that long. The place needs a massive response that our racist president obviously has no interest in giving. Sad stuff... but anyway yes, I'm back!

http://themillions.com/2012/02/the-arcad...games.html

Behold, Martin Amis' take on 80's era arcade game strategy guides. A sample about Space Invaders itself:

Quote:The phalanx of enemy invaders moves laterally across a grid not much wider than itself. When it reaches the edge of the grid, the whole army lowers a notch. Rule one: narrow that phalanx. Before you do anything else, take out at least three enemy columns either on the left-hand side or the right (for Waves 1 and 2, the left is recommended). Thereafter the aliens will take much longer to cross their grid and slip down another rung. Keep on working from the sides: you’ll find that the invaders take forever to trudge and shuffle back and forth, and you can pick them off in your own sweet time.

Quote:Those cute little PacMen with their special nicknames, that dinky signature tune, the dot-munching Lemon that goes whackawhackawhackawhacka: the machine has an air of childish whimsicality. ... Do I take risks in order to gobble up the fruit symbol in the middle of the screen? I do not, and neither should you. Like the fat and harmless saucer in Missile Command (q.v.), the fruit symbol is there simply to tempt you into hubristic sorties. Bag it. ... PacMan player, be not proud, nor too macho, and you will prosper on the dotted screen.

(Note: I saw the original Blade Runner once, probably nearly 20 years ago, and haven't watched it again. I remember very little about it, but we went to this new sequel anyway because it sounded interesting. And it is.)

Is mostly a good movie, particularly for its presentation. The visuals are fantastic, you can really see the $150 million budget. And that soundtrack is amazing! It's an atmospheric techno soundtrack, kind of like the original Blade Runner, but with even more loud, ominous tones that play while a cityscape scene slowly passes by. I really like this kind of music so I thought it's great. The frequency of scenes like that makes this movie overlong and very slow, and those are faults, but I liked the visuals and music, and scene-setting those things combine to form, enough to not mind this too much. I will say though, see this in a theater if you can! Unless you've got a great home cinema setup it'd look and sound far worse at home, and that is a big part of the movie.

As for the plot, however, that's where Blade Runner 2049 has more problems. I won't spoil it, but the plot is a little too predictable most of the time, probably. There is one major twist late in the film, and it's pretty good and I didn't see it coming, though, so there is that. On the other hand though I don't like the somewhat open ending, it feels like a sequel hook that may or may not ever be followed up on. And other than that one twist the story could have been better. Maybe the movie could have used a bit more plot (and backstory), and a few less of those long scenes where nothing is happening except a background and an audio tone... ah well. Because of all the story issues I didn't love this movie and definitely have criticisms there, but it was good enough to see at least, particularly in the theater.

This is my star track.

By all accounts, where Yooka Laylee was a decent game that got too much flak for being what it is, A Hat In Time is the one that shines like the sun's sun.

Never Stop Sneaking

... Pretty much. Specifically, you will be able to add money into the Wii store until March of next year, but you will have until January 2019 to spend that money. There is also no guarantee that you will be able to re-download any games you've previously purchased after Jan. 2019.

So what do I think of this? Well, it was going to happen someday. Nintendo has never been one to leave online services on after the system they are on isn't selling anymore, as you see with, well, every previous online network they have ever done, up to Miiverse, which shuts down in about a month. I presume that WiiWare/WiiVC was making money for a decent while, since it is a cash shop, but it must not be anymore, obviously. So down it goes. For many platforms (though not the Wii) this would be terrible for game preservation, and this is yet another very bad sign for the future of digital games.

There are two sides to this. One the one hand, this is another reminder that digital storefronts can and will be shut down, and your purchases will eventually not be re-downloadable. However, you can lose physical games as well, and in some cases people have had all their games lost, destroyed, or what have you. You can lose your games either way. However, this way EVERYONE loses everything and no one is able to buy any of the hundreds of download-exclusive Wii games again after this, so of course physical is far better for lastability, as has always been said.

However, in this case, things aren't as bad as they could be -- because the Wii has been completely hacked open, if you just install custom software into your Wii, including the Homebrew Channel, etc., anyone will be able to play any of the Wii's downloadable games without too much trouble. For as long as you can still actually buy the games I won't be doing that as it's not right, and I think I'll buy a bunch of WiiWare stuff at some point before the shutdown, but once Nintendo makes it impossible to buy downloadable Wii games again? Yeah, that'll be the time to mod my Wii. There is no reason not to once Nintendo has said "we don't want your money anymore or care about game preservation", as they have once again done here.


I wonder, when do MS and Sony follow suit and take down the PS3 and X360 online systems, including online stores and multiplayer... it'll probably be long after Nintendo, since MS particularly had so much more success at getting people online than Nintendo ever did (for good reason), but it probably will happen eventually. That X360 dashboard sure looks empty without all the online stuff on it though, and I still use my 360 online regularly, something I have never done with the Wii, so yeah, I hope MS keeps their 360 servers running indefinitely.

On that note, I wonder, will you still be able to use Wii applications like Netflix and such after this shutdown? Like, 'you can use it if you have it but can't re-download it anymore' or something? Heh...

But anyway, overall this is disappointing but was going to happen. I'm just glad that hackers have backed up everything in this store, or else this would be much, MUCH worse. But before this shutdown happens, I'll have to think about how much to spend on WiiWare games...

As one final thought though, the biggest mistake Nintendo made with WiiWare is that sales are not allowed. Sales are a great way to increase sales and revenues, and I like buying games that are on sale. I have a few dozen WiiWare games (and a couple of Wii VC games), but I've bought a lot fewer games for WiiWare than I would have had games gone on sale like they do on literally every other online storefront! I know Nintendo likes to not reduce the price of their games, but not allowing anyone else to ever put games on sale was a huge mistake. And if I remember right didn't Nintendo set prices for all games too, not the developers? WiiWare had issues... but despite that it has a pretty good library of games and it should be remembered for that.

So, Nintendo just released Metroid: Samus Returns for the 3DS. I don't have it, yet at least, but it looks really good, with great graphics, art design, and music, level designs which expand on the Game Boy original they are based on, and what sounds like pretty good gameplay and controls... and a lot of people are complaining. I hope that the game sells well and the complainers prove to be a minority, if if this game doesn't sell as well as it sounds like it should have maybe Nintendo should just give up on Metroid, these fans are impossible to please it seems...

(insert thing person saying this doesn't like here)?" -- As in, 'this thing still happens, really?'

Seriously, this is kind of a dumb meme. Donald Trump is President, and you're claiming that somehow the world is beyond whatever it is you think we should be past? Really? I'm not so sure about that to say the least...