Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 15

Logbook, December 2-8, 2019

the-memedaddy

My Stuff

Game Finishing Season: Untitled Goose Game

Articles

Sam Rockwell Is … Totally Kind of Hot?.
Halted & Caught Fire.

Podcasts

The watch, Plus: an unspecified amount of time at the farm with Mando and Baby Yoda in last week’s ‘The Mandalorian’ (37:57).

Movies

Satan Met a Lady, 1936 - ★½.

I hate that this movie basically proves that we should remake stuff whenever we feel like.

TV Shows

Letterkenny S5, Watchmen S1, My Hero Academia S2

Video Games

So I bought the Sega Genesis collection on sale this week, which included a nutso amount of games:

Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
Columns III: Revenge of Columns
Light Crusader
Streets of Rage 2
Sonic the Hedgehog
Kid Chameleon
Shining Force
Vectorman
Shining Force II
Gain Ground
ToeJam & Earl
The Revenge of Shinobi
Streets of Rage
Super Thunder Blade
Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom
Virtua Fighter 2
ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron
Golden Axe
Sword of Vermilion
Decap Attack
Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master
Fatal Labyrinth
Space Harrier II
Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millenium
Phantasy Star II
Golden Axe II
Comix Zone
Streets of Rage 3
Flicky
Alien Soldier
Shining in the Darkness
Columns
ESWAT: City Under Siege
Golden Axe III
Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
VectorMan 2
Altered Beast
Beyond Oasis
Galaxy Force II
Alien Storm
Sonic Spinball
Landstalker
Sonic 3D Blast
Gunstar Heroes
Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi
Dynamite Headdy
Ristar
Crack Down
Bonanza Bros.
Bio-Hazard Battle

And then Nintendo decided to update the SNES and NES collections:

Star Fox 2
Kirby Super Star
Crystalis
Breath of Fire II
JOURNEY TO SILIUS
Super Punch-Out!!

Youtube

Lessons Animation Taught Us || The Secret of NIMH.
Journaling vs Bullet Journaling.

Good Tweets

Okay I got all three Affinity apps. Now I just need to unlock the dark world to get the rest of the dungeons.
Getting from my apartment to work today https://t.co/aRJkmvsphR
Baby Yoda being so cute is blinding us to the fact that The Mandalorian has a Xena vibe. That’s not a bad thing, but it really feels like a 90s fantasy serial.
Mario: jumps, delight. Zelda: puzzles and swords, epic. Fire Emblem: item management, horny.
I hope whoever built the Spotify end-of-year story gets a raise. That was a flex.
On the other hand, listens to Discover Weekly, oh, hey, this sounds like Wilco, oh hey, this is Wilco, oh, hey, there was a new Wilco album this year? Huh.
Gettin all my scared spouses peloton’s.
I pay for the Peloton workout app thing. I don’t have the bike or the treadmill or the stocks in the public square. It’s expensive for a home workout app but it’s way better at not being boring. Every other workout app is a quiet room with a lonely man or a JPEG of a sit-up
At least the grift of peloton is front-facing. They want lots of money. Giving them the money and your heart rate and they’ll maybe choose your name mid-ride. The cult part isn’t subtext. It’s right there the first time you even try it.
We constantly joke about the other people in the filmed workout room. How’d they get there? Are they employees? Interns? The chosen? My guess is it’s a reward for 5000 workouts. Twenty minutes in the chamber.
I just want my iPhone XR to last as long as some people’s iPhone 6’s. Five years is a noble life for a secret tiny hand computer.

Game Finishing Season: Untitled Goose Game

Untitled Goose Game is a good date. Buy it for less than $30 and spend four hours with your significant other being very happy and causing nice mischief with the goose. It is a game you pick up once and probably never again. I would very much like video games to be more like this and less like that they generally are. Why spend 80 hours doing something when four will do? That’s fucking delightful.

I’m tempted to say that Untitled Goose Game is the game of the year, not because it does video game better than anything else, but because it respects the player’s time. No other game does!

Here are several very smart and funny things about Untitled Goose Game:

Untitled Goose Game: Is it Good to be Bad? - A video by Grace Lee that’s beautiful and deep and and funny. I am creatively jealous at Grace’s video essay quality, and I don’t even make them.


The Top Tweets hashtag search for this game. So many gifts.


I Am The Horrible Goose That Lives In The Town - the best fanfic I have ever read.

There. A short list of nice things. This game has taught me.

November 2019 in photos

Logbook, November 24-Dec 1, 2019

Mulder it’s Me By Grace Taylor

My Stuff

November 2019 in photos

Articles

The Unspoken Complexity of “Self-Care”.
5 Rules to make Norwegian Friends.
100 Ways White People Can Make Life Less Frustrating For People of Color.

Podcasts

Breaking Down ‘Watchmen’ Episode 6, ‘The Mandalorian’ Episode 3, and the Rest of ‘The Crown’ Season 3 | The Watch

Movies

Midnight Cowboy, 1969 - ★★★½. You guys are pretty bad at everything huh.

TV Shows

Watchmen, Would I Lie To You S10, Letterkenny S5, The Mandalorian, Mr Robot, Bob’s Burgers S10

Video Games

I’m playing Fire Emblem: Three Heroes. But I took advantage of an eShop sale and picked up Ape Out, the Sega Genesis collection, and Transistor.

Youtube


Good Tweets

Sometimes I just want my doc to prescribe two levels of Monument Valley and three chapters of Vanity Fair.
A twoonie to the person who can take their iPhone out of a case without accidentally taking a screenshot.
iPhone 11 silicone case review: it fits my XR fine. It’s smaller and lighter than my moment case. The white looks good and will look good forever. I really worry about the naked bottom lip.
Of course guys love this movie. It has the word “actually” in the title. https://t.co/2aZeVgQD72
That’s the Nintendo I know and love. #blackfriday #dealsdealsdeals https://t.co/fCqQgyTYtq
Apple TV says I can watch Season 4 of the Good Place since I have Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime says I need to subscribe to Stack. So I can watch The Good Place on Apple TV through Amazon through Stack TV. Except it’s also not allowed. This is the Bad Place. https://t.co/k0EhEGyEIW
#CAVALCADEOFLIGHTS #panorama #toronto #ghosts #skating https://t.co/qNqDQ3KvuU https://t.co/QKRBe7M2pb

Logbook, November 18-24, 2019

Articles:

Why we are all losing sleep.
TV Is Dead. Long Live TV.

Podcasts:

Radiolab: Breaking News. “Today, two new technological tricks that together could invade our most deeply held beliefs and rewrite the rules of credibility. Also, we release something terrible into the world.”

My stuff:

Game finishing season: Super Smash Bros Ultimate
Nintendo Switch Pro Controller Macro Photos

Good Tweets

Toronto Skyline, November 18, 2019 #nofilter #toronto #skyline #pink https://t.co/Cjf3OYRKqb https://t.co/lV2wOEe3ec
Has anyone ever spec’d out a computer, added it to a cart to check the tax/shipping, and then left it there for weeks, only to accidentally buy it when you pick up a case?
This good internet https://t.co/E6HSgbCazQ
It’s really my thirteenth anniversary on this hell site but sure. One year since I came back for the jokes. #MyTwitterAnniversary https://t.co/K5PfXVbMzk
I feel attacked from many vectors. https://t.co/TRoiBXk1ao
That’s such a petty reason to not make millions of dollars and I love it. https://t.co/DXYLM41bsE
My Surface Pro should loop through these on startup like the Mandalorian intro bumper. https://t.co/mf0ZarAp1t
So just everyone grew up with a piano except me huh https://t.co/UrEDy1etRQ
the end of the decade is folding in on itself and in a month we’ll find ourselves right back at 2000. https://t.co/SBJ8dpQA1q
I know everyone’s moved on, but I finally picked up Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Quickest of takes: the teaching parts are stressful because they on purpose give you no real time or resources to help these kids. That’s accurate!
There’s no way this works out well for me. https://t.co/Bz3sd28HAr
Why you gotta hit this podcasting cyclist so hard [image error]

Game Finishing Season: Super Smash Bros Ultimate

Spirits

I know, I know. You can’t, like, finish a fighting game. Fighting games are like disciplines and some people go their whole life mastering a single character. It’s insane. I have no idea how anyone has that kind of focus.

What you can do, theoretically, is finish the single-player content in a fighting game. Usually that’s a tournament or a tower where you beat all the characters vaguely related to your own, and then you beat the boss that may or may not be a playable character. In Smash, that big bad was a hand, which stands in for you, the player, or God, or the player in reboot. It’s murky, Smash.

In Smash Ultimate, the single-player mode is a gauntlet of hundreds of specialty matches called Spirits. Each match turns up or down dials in the same. Some matches are faster, slower, harder, easier, windier, on fire, upside down, etc. It’s the classic Nintendo approach: take one simple concept and then mutate it over and over until you’ve wrung the whole thing dry. This takes a long time.

I imagine most people do not finish Spirits.

Using other characters

You begin Spirits with just Kirby, because he’s the best. Over time, you unlock everyone, and as soon as you unlock them you can play them. There’s nearly 100 unlockable characters but you’ll likely only use a few. Some matches require a stronger or faster character, and I ended up using a mixture of Toon Link, Richter Belmont, and Kirby as needed.

Endless Mode

It took me thirty hours to finish Spirits. There are apparently 936 matches in this mode. God, that’s a lot. Probably too much. I remember very few of them individually. They really blend together. I liked that I collected the spirit after each battle, and they have their own strengths that help in subsequent battles. Near the end, I felt invincible. But I can’t say it wasn’t a slog at times.

The Story

There’s a light god and a dark god. I figured the whole thing was just about the light god, and figured after 13 hours or so I was done. And then I wasn’t, and that was annoying! It’s ostensibly about balance in the universe, but I kinda didn’t get it? The ending was an emotional let down. Maybe I don’t understand the lore here enough.

The last level, however, was great. Difficult, fun platforms and timed spots that I wish they’d done way more of.

Built for 5 minute sessions

I do not have the discipline to be a Smash player beyond casual parties. I’m ok at it at best, but the buffet of Nintendo and video game nostalgia is really what I’m here for. Smash is silly, but also amazing at times. It’s maybe impenetrable, like the story in Spirits. Don’t come here.

Game finishing season: Super Smash Bros Ultimate

Spirits

I know, I know. You can’t, like, finish a fighting game. Fighting games are like disciplines and some people go their whole life mastering a single character. It’s insane. I have no idea how anyone has that kind of focus.

What you can do, theoretically, is finish the single-player content in a fighting game. Usually that’s a tournament or a tower where you beat all the characters vaguely related to your own, and then you beat the boss that may or may not be a playable character. In Smash, that big bad was a hand, which stands in for you, the player, or God, or the player in reboot. It’s murky, Smash.

In Smash Ultimate, the single-player mode is a gauntlet of hundreds of specialty matches called Spirits. Each match turns up or down dials in the same. Some matches are faster, slower, harder, easier, windier, on fire, upside down, etc. It’s the classic Nintendo approach: take one simple concept and then mutate it over and over until you’ve wrung the whole thing dry. This takes a long time.

I imagine most people do not finish Spirits.

Using other characters

You begin Spirits with just Kirby, because he’s the best. Over time, you unlock everyone, and as soon as you unlock them you can play them. There’s nearly 100 unlockable characters but you’ll likely only use a few. Some matches require a stronger or faster character, and I ended up using a mixture of Toon Link, Richter Belmont, and Kirby as needed.

Endless Mode

It took me thirty hours to finish Spirits. There are apparently 936 matches in this mode. God, that’s a lot. Probably too much. I remember very few of them individually. They really blend together. I liked that I collected the spirit after each battle, and they have their own strengths that help in subsequent battles. Near the end, I felt invincible. But I can’t say it wasn’t a slog at times.

The Story

There’s a light god and a dark god. I figured the whole thing was just about the light god, and figured after 13 hours or so I was done. And then I wasn’t, and that was annoying! It’s ostensibly about balance in the universe, but I kinda didn’t get it? The ending was an emotional let down. Maybe I don’t understand the lore here enough.

The last level, however, was great. Difficult, fun platforms and timed spots that I wish they’d done way more of.

Built for 5 minute sessions

I do not have the discipline to be a Smash player beyond casual parties. I’m ok at it at best, but the buffet of Nintendo and video game nostalgia is really what I’m here for. Smash is silly, but also amazing at times. It’s maybe impenetrable, like the story in Spirits. Don’t come here.

Nintendo Switch Pro Controller Macro Photos

I’ve been playing around with this trick I learned. If you take off the lens of a DSLR and flip it around (and hold it properly), you can get some pretty cool macro shots. Here’s some practice shots using a Switch Pro Controller as the subject.

Logbook, November 11-17, 2019

The Society Dude

Articles:

5-Hour Workdays? 4-Day Workweeks? Yes, Please

Podcasts:

Why Everybody Needs Therapy, Licensed therapist John Kim (aka The Angry Therapist, author of I Used to Be a Miserable F*ck) discusses the stigma stopping many PoC to join therapy, the challenges of being vulnerable as a therapist, and how long it takes to get over a breakup.

Games:

NABOKI is a fun fidget cube of a puzzle game. https://t.co/dCFM1k1FIz

My Stuff:

Fran’s Not Here 44 - Party Hard https://t.co/4fm26YQWS6

Fran’s Not Here 44 - Party Hard

Listen to or download episode 44

Recorded live at the Free Times Cafe on November, 2019.

The French probably have the best porn or whatever.

Fran’s Not Here is a show about Toronto, co-hosted by Sawyer Paul and Robert Pilgrim. Read blog posts about each episode. Subscribe via

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