Giles N

Are you having a good Summer ?

Been some good and warm Summer-weeks during June, some intersped sunny days during July - now its mostly rain and chilly, and probably will for next week. Arrggghh… where is my indian summer-stuff…?

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Except that, I cannot complain… too much… because I must, just must complain… about the wheather… it shalt not go uncomplain’d as long as there still lives a remainder of common norwegianess inside me… every drop counts… every rain-drop in the summer-month is eihher one too much (why do I live here? Shit - do I have to go SpaceX-travellin’ to Mars with Musk, just to bbq a piece of pork?) Or.. one drop to little… too dry! I cannot BBQ!! The final drop!  
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Well, - so besides that^ - cannot really complain.

Got some IOS-pixel-painter tools,

Cheap.

Ads all over the place.

Almost killed my drive to draw akward 8-bit graphics for no-particular project… 

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How are you?

Cat believes in climate change. Cat has panicked. Cat has encountered raindrops… after a dry period. Cat thought it was safe now. Cat wants owner to change The Climate. Cat is angry at owner for not changing the climate.   Cat wants no more rain …Owner sorta agrees… ‘yup, Cat is right, no-can-do ‘bout it, furball’

Mario Kart - New courses - what do I think? A course-track with a bathtub… down in the bottom of the pipe of the bathtub… there’s is brown, grimy layer which is the mud-track you drive… Yeah, I knew they were pretty crazy at the Nintendo-office… but this is… what…?

Seriously the track-designs themselves were fairly stinky… boring and predictable…

Happy Tuesday everyone!!

Will try to get good at Crystal Quest. Gave it serious go last night. Its too good to not get good at, and I kinda suck right now … at least I still have quality gaming ahead og me…

Yesterday night I gave it go to really win Scrapyard Dogs (no unlimited lives), and I still can’t do the final puzzle in time - even though I’m kinda Scrap-fan… hrrmff

Stuff I got for summer-holidays: Arcade-Archives on Switch: Pac-Land, DragonBuster, New Zealand Story, Double Dragon, Ninja Gaiden… And they were: YEAH!! perhaps … in an age of save-states, I can finally get through or really far into the games 

Yesterday I bought Atari Flashbacks Classics for Switch. I wanted to get Red Baron specifically. And compare with 50th Anniversary. 50th Anniversary is overall better, but couidn’t miss out on Red Baron. Don’t know if its much more to it than what you get during 5 minutes of play - but that was really cool stuff.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Saw it today.

My expectations were set for the mediocre-type.

Without going into stuff that would make for spoilers, I feel it had an awesome intro (first 20-30 minutes), then succumbed to generic swashbuckling-type action.

Action lacked true tension and feeling of danger.

The mysterious parts switched from lacking a audio-visual presentation that made it feel mysterious - immerse the viewer in atmosphere of mystery -, to coming off as so fantastical as to be more Marvel/Matrix etc, as to breaking with the Indiana Jones franchise whose legacy stems from the excitement of dangers of old-fashioned/Victorian - to - early 20th century exploration and discovery with the underlying wonder: is it truth to ancient reports, powers beyond modernistic reductionism?

It feels like either too generic, lacking suspense and mystery, to being just too fantastical for me.

At least I was satisfied with (most of) the emotional parts regarding the conclusions to Indy’s relationships with other characters.

As to show-downs and epic shocks, it was sorely lacking, even though the main bad-guy was well-acted.

Had they worked more on getting not only the photography and costumes etc, being Spielberg-like, but actually worked on creating true tension, feeling of danger, epic questions, not spared the audience for classic Indy-shocks, and had more witty, edgy humour in the action, - which is, if the entire movie, of just the last 30 minutes had been as well-made as the first, this could have a massive, epic finale.

As it is now, for me, some touching moments, lots of good photography and backdrops, a fair amount of potential, some cool action, but it does not make it to be the epic closing that Raiders, Temple and Last Crusade deserves.

7/10

Have you been debating Atari today?

Merry, merry  Christmas  Holidays

and a  truly Happy  New  Year

Double cheers - to all of you here! 

All have we good days or bad ways,

our up n’ downs, hopes and fears,

Friends, don’t drown in tears …

nor in too much cherry,but be wary,

so as we gaze upon our next phase,

we can - despite a bit of game-craze -

make it through the existential life-Maze

having learnt much or little, one is clear

to make it dear to try to care in the upcoming year…

Is there a social-media metacritic aggregator…?

The Rings of Power & The Third Age:  read - check

Akallabēth: read, check

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That didn’t take long…

Spoilers only for the palantirless 

And now, its red, salty meat, cheese, fresh bread and mead..!!

An Evercade VS is on my way as a birthday-present…

… from   someone… 

19th Sept is/was my birthday…

very nice day…!

Excellent steak for dinner!

Good time with family.

 
Saw last episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi…

Usually, I have little hope for spin-offs…, but Star Wars Obi-Wan Kenobi 1-6 really did it for me: for a thing put in the middle where ‘everyone’ knows whats happened, everyone knows how it’ll end, this one got real suspense, caught me not ‘meta-thinking’… only in for the action of the moment, got me into really feeling what little Leia and worn ol’ Ben had to go through… and having a finale that - at least for this guy - really did it for me…

Cannot hope for a better output of an in-between series of an epic franchise…

Oh yeah…

Rings of Power - Ep.1: 4/5 Epic start, epic (re)introduction of familiar places seen LOTR. But the fill-ins are a bit mixed-bag or sub-par… 

RoP -Ep.2: 3/5  The introduction of the tense nature between the Elves and the Dwarves are wonderfully close to Tolkien spirit. Galadriel drifting on the sea, with wooden acting and emotional allusions to imagery from LOTR when done by complete strangers, just feels flat…I was left being more curious what the full Wyrm looked, rather caring for the rafters who drowned.

The small peoples - (the hobbit-like creatures) where mostly done right, but ok doesn’t mean ‘perfect’.

Mithrandil… is that you… there appearing like a tramp on mushrooms…?  And such brutal

landing…? The Valars couid throw on some flesh ‘round their spirit-being like we use clothes…

We’ll see, we’ll see…

Hope it pics up on epic & using as much Tolkien-materiel as possible, and hope they avoid drowning it in endless fill-in episodes where nothing-important or meaningful happens, and thus turning an Epos into common cheap, hollywood-fiction, keeping the spectacle, drain it of meaning, subtleness, art and depth…

We all know its not a good sign when things feel like too little butter being scraped to cover a too large loaf of bread…

Finally found a combination of Amp + Pedal settings that I feel is well-suited to most sounds I want to go with…

So, last evening I tried to get my Retro-gaming corner a bit less of a mess. Man, its beginning to get a bit crowded there, with items and cables having two 7800s (european and american), one 5200, one PAL NES, one japanese NES(famicom), and multi-region Megadrive with Sega32X and a Sega Master having to share connections with 3 CRT TVs … well, then its gotta get crowded… Pretty? Oh-well… At least its working…

Supper: experimenting with marinating and roasting chicken with wok-vegetables and spicy fresh mushrooms and cherry-tomatoes. Methinks expectations of the forth-coming Tolkien-series - Rings of Power - brought forth my hidden inner Hobbit… 

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BTW: Anyone planning to follow Rings of Power? Anyone who have opinions about first-impressions…?

Anyone here into ‘classical’/famous movie-scores?

I find it so frustrating that certain very good, well-composed and highly emotional compositions, seems hard-to-obtain,  or not available at all at Apple-music - even using iTunes-store:

… some examples:

Soundtracks: 

• Basil Poledouris - Conan The Barbarisn - ‘Death of Rexor’
• B.Poledouris - Starship Troopers - Klendathu Drop/Main Theme
• Hans Zimmer - Crimson Tide - Main Theme Song

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Why does professional music-providers hate to sell good music…?

***frustrated***

We’ve passed the 5 million mark!

The ‘someone making the 5M-mark,  should have gotten a… 

   a) free AA game

   b) 5$ disscount

   c) a notice that he/she posts just way too much here…
??

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But is the above stuff only my opinion…?

Or is it rather that I’m alone in having this view…?

Or could it be that its merely that no-one else among the 7+ biliion people in world have this view about possibilites of how AA couid reward over-posting (and possibly over-zealous atari-everything-involvement…)???
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Endless possibilites… (but some may not even have bothered to notice posts have gone beyond 5 million not seeing any meaning in that contra 4 999 987 posts or 54 posts…)

I’ve found out I struggle with whats called c-ptsd. Therapy have been slowed by the Covid-situation. I may have posted some strange stuff lately. It’s due to my conditions, and my attempts to cope with a difficult life in relation to a difficult world. I hope this can clear up anything, if anyone wondered. The best to all of you here. Life is a process. There are times for relaxation and enjoyment, and times when one just need to open that awful infected wound and get it properly cleaned out… and thats pretty painful sometimes.

Just wanted to clear up stuff.

So to those of you whom it may concern - yes, all 0.5 of you: I’ve uploaded my latest STRUCKD level from iphone: 

So, now before winter is over: here is Zombies N Skeletons - Level 4 Dead Frozen Wastes 

http://d2wik449sxgttb.cloudfront.net/games/zombies-n-skeletons-level-4-dead-frozen-wastes