Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Netflix and .... hunting the aliens

Gosh, XCom 2 was addictive before .... and they've expanded it making it even more addictive.
Quite.

One of the rather daft novelty features of the expansion is that they've added in a photobooth feature. Soldier gets promoted ? Snap. Finish a mission ? Snap. In this case, it was the team hunting down one of the alien boss creatures in its lair.

I've been enjoying being back in the game. I haven't been rushing it but this play through has already been almost the same length as my last two non-expanded playthroughs already. Enjoying it enough to not bother going into the other games in the queue - Elite, Deus Ex Mankind Divided and Mass Effect Andromeda. Oh and it's also kept me away from the Stellaris playthrough I was doing (although I think that one's off anyway due to the robot races needing a patch apparently)

It also kinda fits the playthrough style, with it being point, click, tell soldiers what to shoot at. And I'm good with that.

I'm off work at the moment, using up some of my annual leave to get a break before the Xmas mayhem properly kicks off. It was a good time too as a little bit of manic rushing around cleared off most of the urgent outstanding stuff. Just in time for the next batch of urgent outstanding stuff to pile up this week.

I'm hoping to avoid being a house hostage this time around. One reason for sticking around the house is for my tortured outsides to get a chance to heal up. I think they just need better protection and then they'll have a chance to heal up on their own. There is good signs of healing ... my ankles are back to the proper colour again (instead of being reddened and wounded). The usual trouble is though that if I attempt to clean it up at all, the removal of the bad bits is too much for the rest of the good bits.

There I go again with the mucky details that people would rather not know about.

I went to see the new Bladerunner movie on Friday ! I was underwhelmed. I sense this might have been mostly due to me being at about the end of my energy and otherwise in the depressive turn of my own personal cycle. A very well made film again, fantastic visuals, great characters, oppressive music and a story that kept you well guessing. My mirror tendency may have fired though and reflected the lack of emotion on the main character, which led to me coming out with a bit of a Meh feeling.

Good film though.

And I've seen a couple of poor ones since !

If I'm watching science fiction, the science has to be decent. Just passable will do if the story is good enough. One thing I'm looking for from Netflix is the chance to watch those films I am curious about but don't want to pay any money for. (The sub doesn't count because I'm paying that for things like Star Trek Discovery and The Expanse anyway). Tonight's was Mechanic Resurrection - don't watch it. It's a routine action movie with nothing really special about it. Your time would be better spent doing something like .... watching cricket as a non cricket fan.

Cricket's worth it - honest.

The other one was a TV movie about the first man to be going to Mars (fictional). This had so much wrong with it .... I wouldn't really know where to start or end. Let's just say that if there were two people on a space station (the only two) as depressed as those two were, there would be an emergency rescue trip before they blew each other out of the airlocks. And you don't simply turn around in space and come back, with our technology level you're going where you're going no matter what. We don't have the fuel to spare to stop and return like they were suggesting. We do the stop and return at the destination by using the gravity of the planet or moon we're going to in order to get what is called a Free Return Trajectory.

There's some complicated/not complicated mechanics around that which I may talk about if I start doing videos again with Kerbal Space Program ! I don't have a legitimate key to a video editing program now though (my trial has expired), so no new videos until I pay someone money.

The Expanse is well worth watching though. It has some magic science in terms of the propulsion that makes it possible but even that is limited to sensible levels. As in, accelerate the human body too much and it'll crush all the blood vessels in our brains .... which doesn't tend to end well. I may have to watch this series again soon.

But before then .... I want to read the books. I need to get reading again actually, it'll give me more ideas to add to those from the outside world for the book or two that are in my head wanting to get out.

And that may well be tomorrow's plan .... if I'm feeling up to it, then it'll be a run to the Book Barn, maybe Forbidden Planet too.

Mind you, last thought for today - there is that growing conflict between the amount of Stuff I have and the space I have to put the Stuff in. Digital is looking better in that way, as it shrinks the space that Stuff needs down to very manageable levels.

And that means more room for more Stuff !

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