It Can be Nice to be Busy

It's true that it can be nice to be busy, and that is what I have been in recent weeks. I went from one review to another to another, then finishing off a set of recordings, to then working on another two projects. I know it can seem weird to some, but truly, having things to do is nice. I just wish I were getting paid for it, but event still, I enjoy it. I'm doing something, and maybe somewhere out there will care.
I just hope I can find time for some of the things I have been putting off doing for more immediate projects.

It's not always Better Late than Never

The old saying 'Better late than never' really is not always true and I got an example this past week. Back in September I made a purchase from Newegg, and as it turns out at that time Newegg had been successfully attacked so my payment information was almost certainly compromised. I learned about this by seeing a news piece on it, and then wrote my own covering it. What I did not get though was any notification from Newegg. In fact, the only notification I had ever seen was a post on Twitter by Newegg, because I looked for it.
After I replaced the likely-compromised credit card, I actually contacted Newegg, because I was rather unhappy about the situation. The response I got was that all those who might have been affected "would have received an email from [Newegg] explaining what happened." Well, this past week I got a letter, as in physical mail, from Newegg informing me of the attack Newegg discovered two months prior and one month after an investigation by Newegg into what was likely compromised. Literally months later Newegg finally informed me, which makes you wonder what might have happened if I had not learned of the attack on my own and acted on my own?
As it was, I was less interested in shopping at Newegg, but now that I get this, potentially well later than it would have been most useful. My displeasure with Newegg is even greater now.

Back to Work, Sort of

After finishing some heavily-focused work a few weeks ago, I was able to take a nice break, doing work with less focus, but that's over now. I'm back to work on recordings, am nearly done with a sizeable article, and have a review to work on too. And all of this is work I enjoy doing. It is actually kind of funny to think about this when I'm applying for jobs, that in my chronic unemployment I am probably doing as much as some people in their careers, and perhaps more than some others too, but despite that, I'm unemployed. It's weird (and sad/frustrating/disappointing) how the world can work like that, but then it hardly matters. As weird as the world can be, what matters is what we do in it.

A Bit of Truth

Wow, I did not realize I was missing almost an entire month! I am back though, and hopefully will be better at remembering. I have just been so busy with reviews and capturing the playthroughs to share. The most recent was Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, which I definitely enjoyed, but still took me over one hundred hours to complete. I was focusing so much on that, it escaped me to come and put anything here.
I have not looked at them recently, but it appears my YouTube statistics are falling back to nothing again. This is actually somewhat relaxing though. Success of any kind is so alien to me, it is stressful and a kind of scary when it happens, so a return to failure has a kind of comfort to it. That is probably not the kind of thing most people want to read, but then I do not write these to lie to people. I write them because they are, at the time, what I feel is true.

Completely Unexpected

Over the years I have had a number of ideas I thought were good enough to do. Some of these have been story ideas, some project ideas, and of course my Body on Games idea. One of the more recent ideas I had, which actually came out of The Body on Games, was to start capturing my review playthroughs when I can. Thus far I have done with for Agony (on the TBOG YouTube channel), F1 2018, Star Control: Origins, and am working on Assassin's Creed Origins. (Yeah, AC Origins launched a year ago so I don't mind sharing I'm working on a review for it.) Well today I saw there was a comment for the last part of the Star Control: Origins playthrough, and the person said they not only did watch them all, but will also be picking up the game.
I was definitely surprised that someone watched the playthrough, but then I looked to the channel's stats and was shocked. It looks like this is all owed to Star Control: Origins, but the views for the past four weeks are is at 2514 with 58,751 minutes of watch time... The videos only went public on September 20 though, so that is from just 10 days...
How?! How has this happened? Yes, I'm questioning how I have achieved this measure of success because, very seriously, I have not had such success for years. The closest would have been about six years ago when my book, Sci-FU, reached #1 in Technothrillers on Amazon over just five days. It was free for those five days though, so like this, I am not going to monetarily benefit from it. (None of my YouTube channels qualify for monetization, and even if this one, GuestJimOCC, were to now, I don't think I will hit the button on it. Maybe I would set up something else, but I don't want to put ads on these videos.)
On the bright side, this does appear to be validation for my idea of capturing and sharing my review playthroughs. Hopefully it will happen again, but I will likely not be surprised if it does not. Like I said, success and I tend not to meet, so this being a one-time fluke would fit with how the world treats me. If it is not a fluke though, then hopefully I can continue producing this content, but we'll see. I do have other projects and responsibilities.

Work and a Random Idea

Just when you think you may be able to have a break to get other work down, some more arrives.
Anyway, had an idea for a movie and I wish there were some way to suggest it and maybe see it happen. The idea is something like a remake of Silent Movie, but instead of the goal being to make a silent movie, instead it is to make a movie with all of the old actors and actresses so many people think are dead. The best way to do it though would be to have Mel Brooks involved, as Silent Movie is one of his, and you have also have some fun with the title too: Mel Brooks Presents He's Still Alive.

It's Good to Be Busy

So I went from having things to do and the time to do them to having More things to do and less time to do them. Hence why I failed to post something last week, and I even had an idea of something to share! Still remember it too, but I want to cover a couple other things too.
Okay, so that first idea was to call out the stupidity of the FCKDRM.com stunt by GOG. It's not only stupid, it's juvenile and ignorant. There is a very one-sided view of DRM, and by 'very one-sided' I mean extreme-level bias that exclusively equates DRM with evil and greed. This ignores the fact that DRM is used by many, including GOG, to protect your digital rights. A password-protected account is, guess what, an example of DRM. What does this give you at GOG? The ability to store information to make purchases, the ability to claim your purchases after the fact without needing the original email associated with a purchase, and likely more. Two-factor authentication, that's DRM protecting your rights, and is even encouraged if you have a GOG account (which is DRM). Look, here's the truth the anti-DRM zealots want you to forget; DRM is not about protecting someone's ability to squeeze money out of you and remove your access to products. It is about protecting someone's rights, both creators and consumers. It protects a creator's rights to receive compensation for their work and it protects the consumers' rights to claim that work after compensating the creator. Without DRM, creators might not be paid because someone else could claim to be the creator and take the money. No DRM, no way to prevent someone else from claiming any digital products or services someone produces. Without DRM, a consumer making a purchase might be able to make it with the payment credentials of a different consumer, because those digital rights are not protected. Also, without DRM (and even with) it is possible for a consumer to defraud a creator by requesting a refund on a digital product they have made a copy of, that cannot be identified or removed. DRM does not assume people are dishonest or that they will commit a dishonest act, but it does protect others from bad-faith actors. They are like rules or laws; most people will never break them, or at least not severely, and keeping the rules and laws likely will not degrade their lives either. But, when someone does break those rules or laws, harming another, we are grateful for them and those who execute them.
Okay, the other two points are both more political than the above, and concern the rather stupid comments of Senator Cory Booker. I decided to turn on the committee hearings for a bit and caught some of his opening statement and, well, I don't think he knows what a resume is. He was equating not receiving tens of thousands of documents (compared to hundreds of thousands that have been made available, as I understand) and approving Judge Kavanaugh to only reading 10% of a resume before hiring someone... Uh, a resume should be about two pages, sometimes three, so not even thousands of words, let alone pages. A resume is also like a hit-list, so not even a summary of your relevant work experience, while possessing all of those documents would equate to having a super-biography, as they would include details no one cares about and are likely unimportant to most anything. Finally, while you might not hire someone when only reading 10% of a resume, I have been rejected based on less than that. Guess what, decisions are made on less than what is 'fair.'
Finally, 'I am Spartacus' is not about breaking the rules. It is about claiming responsibility for something you are not responsible for, to obscure the one actually responsible and/or to accept the punishment; a sign of solidarity. If you're going to use a reference, at least be accurate and appropriate with its use.

Question Concerning Reviews

While it is true I do not think anyone actually reads this, I still feel like putting a question out there. Is there any interest in a game reviewer sharing the complete review playthrough? For a different reason than just doing it, I have done this before, and I honestly like the idea of doing it more. I mean, even if no one watches it, does it not demonstrate an interest in transparency? If it is watched then it can demonstrate the reviewer's opinion, and perhaps more importantly, how the opinion may change over time. Sometimes your view and opinion of a game can change as you play, and this would capture it. Additionally, there are sometimes things that are forgotten by the reviewer that this can capture. Personally, if I forget something when writing a review, I just chalk it up to not being that important (at least to me) and do not worry about it.
Anyway, if nothing else, consider the question privately about if the reviewer sharing the experience is actually desirable, if only so a public record exists.

Lesson on Division

I'm actually trying to be early this week!
Anyway, a thought occurred to me that I feel like sharing, even if this will not be read by anyone. (Maybe I'll be able to stick in a story too, so it can be not-read there also.) The thought was just remembering how division works in mathematics and that it, like the other operations, requires two components; the numerator and the denominator.
I think the reason I remembered this basic math lesson is because of how much talk there has been about people becoming more divided, and invariably whenever this is discussed, a cause for the division is also identified. That cause is like the denominator, the component that divides the other. What is forgotten though is the numerator, the part that is divided.
Now, people are not numbers, which I feel is important to remember because as persons we can decide if we are divided or not. Whatever someone says or does, it was, is, and will be our choice to walk away from others, figuratively or literally. The trick is that walking away from the denominator is still walking away, and so doing that is itself division. We do not need to agree or condone, but we can stand where we are and find ways to be closer to others.
We, ourselves are individuals. As persons we cannot be taken a part with one set of thoughts over there and our principals over there. To do so would be dangerous and destructive. Be careful to not let that happen, for to compromise our own individuality, as some do desire, is to fall to division.

A Waste of Time?

How often do you wonder why you do certain things? I recently finished going through and making revisions and even adding an entire section to a document that I am aware might never be used again. I know there is an amount of self-satisfaction to this, as I am improving something I created over a year ago, but that satisfaction is the only benefit that might be had. That is kind of sad, but I suspect this is something many if not everyone who reads this might be able to give their own example of.
Actually, as I stop and think about the different things I do, a lot of them are just for my own satisfaction, because I have the curiously bad luck of being interested in doing things other people do not care about, or at least those who might see the results of my efforts. What might be the saddest part about this is I'm used to it.

Back to the Norm

This past week was my last working this Summer, or at least the last scheduled. With luck I will have more work in the near future, but that is not exactly how things have been for years, so I can hardly expect them to change. At least I have a number of projects in mind of different kinds and purposes, so I'll be keeping busy, whether I get paid for any of my time or not.
Oh, but possibly the best part is I won't need to get up so early.

Not Enough Luck

I really have gotten bad at remembering to post things here. Unfortunately I do not have any especially good news to share, but also nothing bad. If I were luckier than I am (though I do not know how much luckier I needed to be) I might have been able to say I finally had a job! I made it to the final round of interviews for a job at AMD, but the decision was to hire someone else. That's how it goes and I wish the new hire, and the team, the best of luck with all sincerity. (I've went from chronically unemployed for six years to underemployed last year with a seasonal position, so still kind of unemployed. I mention this to confirm my sincerity here because I am well past hard feelings for not being hired somewhere.)
As it happens though, there is another, similar job recently posted by AMD, so I'll be applying for that shortly and maybe I'll have better luck there.
Other than that, I have been having some interesting hardware failures of late. My CPU cooler failed a bit ago, which I think I mentioned, so I am running an older cooler I still had. The fans are dying and I'm still trying to get them replaced, but it is functional. (It is making me think about going to a custom water setup, but maybe not now as my current situation is not ideal for it.) Part of my speaker amplifier failed to, so I no longer have a headphone jack on it. Now for recordings, streams, and any other time I want to use headphones I need to use the audio interface, which works, but is less convenient. Perhaps the most unexpected of the recent failures though was my router. What is so unusual about it is the physical power button failed. The electronics and everything are fine, it just could not keep the button in the On position. Imagine the button on a retractable pen, as it is a similar concept. The mechanical portion of it that holds the button down so the tip is out failed, so the spring kept pushing it out, to Off. Remove the spring (and extend the button to make it easier to turn off) and it's fixed.
Something else I've done recently that I can mention is changing how I make the different R scripts I do for processing performance and heart rate data. Pulled in some Python to do string replacement, so the source R scripts are easier to edit, and put them up on GitHub for others to see. I doubt anyone will look at them, but I like the idea of sharing them for the curious.

Another Good Week Off

This has been another good week off for me, as I spent it doing a number of things I needed and wanted to do. Not necessarily as much as I would have liked, but I got a good amount done. I completed another set of Body on Games recordings (Metro Last Light Redux), finished playing another game I have been trying to play for months (it is not always easy to take the time to play a game you want to play just to enjoy), and I re-did how I make some scripts for processing data. Had to teach myself a little Python for that last item, but the result makes the effort worth it, as it makes it much easier to make changes to the scripts that are generated. Before I had a Batch script set to write out every line, but now I have Python making a copy of a source file and change certain strings in it to the appropriate file references. Much cleaner, especially as editing the source file does not require contending with Batch's quirks.
Anyway, I need to be up early tomorrow, so I'm off to bed.

Productive Week Off

I was not scheduled to work this past week, which is fine because it gave me time to work on various things, including one I am still finishing up now. (It's a guide covering some LaTeX usage stuff, but I tend to be more verbose with this kind of stuff than I likely need to be. But hey, you cannot say it does not tell you a lot!) Unfortunately what I cannot say is that I got much work done on any of the stories that have been bouncing around the inside of my head for a while. I'm making notes when I think of something for them, but that is very different from actually sitting down and telling the story.
Actually, having this week off was very convenient for me, because of something else it let me do without any scheduling issues. I don't want to say what it is yet, to not jinx it, but if it goes as well as I can only hope, then there will be some very good news in the future.
I hope everyone out there has a great week!

This has been an interesting past two weeks for me. I went from being busy, going from one project to another, to finally finishing them and then moving on to actual work. In a way the transition was like a vacation, though with the complication of actually being more work (especially with Computex and E3 to cover). Still, it has been a good and interesting two weeks, and now I have a week off (wasn't scheduled for this one) to actually relax... Okay, I'll probably work on some other projects, but at least they should be a bit less time-constrained.
And it's Father's Day! I am sure there are many out there enjoying the day. My father probably enjoyed it, but also spent some of it trying to find the gift my mom got for him. She forgot where she hid it.

From Project to Project to Work

Actually there should be about five Project's in the title, because for a number of weeks now I have had to do at least five projects, and finally I have them done. Just in time too because tomorrow I start work, meaning something I will actually get paid for! The funny thing is, this work will be like a vacation, because unlike those projects, this work I clock into and out of, so it has a beginning and end each day. Those projects of mine have no start or end in a day, and also do give me weekends off. Of course, I am the one that decides to do these projects, and am also the one that can result in them being more involved than necessary, but it is still a lot to get done.
Now the relaxation can begin... and I can think about what projects I will be doing next.

Such a Busy Month

It has been and is going to continue to be such a busy month for me. I just have a number of projects I need to get done before the end of it, because I will have much less time to do them once June starts. I'll get them all done though! Really it is just one project that is going to eat up a lot of time because of the repetition involved, but I think the results will be interesting and ultimately worth my time, if only for satisfying my own curiosity. Also have a few one-day things, and ,hopefully, another large project, but it should not be so bad. Well, it should not be as hard to do, but the experience itself might be unpleasant. It's a little complicated but should be more than worth it in the end.
I suppose it would be a good idea to mention it is Mother's Day! One thing pretty cool about this particular Mother's Day is it is the first a friend of mine gets to celebrate. I am sure it was a very happy day for her and her family, as it should be.

Avengers: Infinity War

Went to see Avengers: Infinity War earlier today, and have to say I was quite impressed. I am hardly an expert, though I do tend to critique stories in movies and other media, but I could not find any fault in the story or execution. The team behind it did that superb a job. (Well, okay, Thanos' logic for his actions is flawed, but he is very sincere about it and I doubt most people would find the flaw, so I'm okay with letting that slide. So often such dogmatic people do not see similar flaws in their reasoning, so really, it is not an issue.)
I do not want to spoil anything, but I will say there were a number of good moments, from the interactions between the different characters and some of the twists presented. Definitely the guardian/keeper of the Soul Stone was a great twist I hope will be taken advantage of in the future.
I doubt I will get a chance to see it again in a theater, but I feel like this might be a movie for me to watch more times before I can get everything out of it. There is much there and I am looking forward to seeing what comes next.

You know what, there is something I can criticize, and that is the graphics. Seriously, there is at least one point that it just looks bad. hopefully it will be fixed for the disc release, because I know I would be deeply unhappy if I were directly involved with that portion of the project.
And on a related note, my suspicion for Agents of Shield is that there will not be any real crossing between the show and the movie. Why? Because I don't think they will want to spend the money on the graphics necessary for the tie in. The graphics on the show are also quite lacking.
Come on Marvel, at this point do you not have enough money to award hefty contracts to the graphics teams you use? Give them the time to get the jobs done well too, if you can, and a lot of people will be much happier.

R is Such a Fun Letter

I might identify it as a letter, but I am actually referring to the R statistics environment, something I taught myself to use a bit more than a year ago, and continue to put find new ways to use it and learn more.
This past week I did a number of things with it, including putting together some complex graphs. Had to fight with it to get what I wanted, but once I had the results, and threw in some more data, I think I see a pattern that is intriguing, at least to me. Still have a lot more data to collect, but what I have at least serves to develop the scripts I will use.
Something else I figured out how to do just today makes one step of processing the heart-rate data I collect easier. For the Body on Games videos, I keep the recorded data and upload the CSVs for people to view, if they are interested. To help look at the data, I make a column that shows the time in the video the specific measurement is for (helps the measurements are made every second). Have I have been doing this involves loading up Excel, typing in a couple entries, and dragging the pattern down. I figured there had to be a way to do it in R, which I already use to generate a graph and histogram data, and again I had to fight some, but ultimately ended up with a script to do the job for me. It is just so much more convenient this way. The reason I had to fight with R is because of the, to me, convoluted way it handles time, always requiring a data. All I wanted was a hh:mm:ss sequence starting from zero and counting up by one second, but that is not something it wants to do. I figured it out though and am glad I did if only because I enjoy finding ways to move away from Office and Office-like software to more powerful, if more complicated/hard to use, FOSS solutions.

Definitely Dropping the Ball

I wish i knew why I keep forgetting to post here, because I do want to put something up each week, but sometimes it slips my mind as I am busy with so many other things. On the bright side, I have had time to think of something to write about (and actually remember it!).
This is actually something that entered my mind a week or two ago, and I cannot help but still have it there. From the beginning, I have been watching Marvel Agents of Shield, and while I can put up with a lot of the less-than-good aspects of it, especially in the more recent seasons, some of the more recent episodes are really annoying me. One example would be in an episode that has a ship floating in the air, and there being a concern about visually finding it. Apparently not only was RADAR not a thought (within the show or the writers' room) but as it was stated to have been there for years, the concept must not exist either. Some episodes later we also learn that Hydra, the secretive global-domination minded organization is really evil Hogwarts without magic, but still uniforms including crests stitched on. No one is supposed to know this group still exists, but they have a school and school uniforms. Really makes it hard to believe Hydra went unnoticed for decades.
It feels like a lack of respect for the previous content for the show, the viewers, and a desire to always outdo the previous climax are hurting it. The stakes can increase without making the danger greater, but by making them more personal, and leaving the stakes the same is viable too. Seriously, we don't need an escalation in threat every season because it can always just be a threat to a newly found/exposed weakness. It is possible and I wish this would happen, to give us all something better. (Also, it would be nice if it could be unified with the movies as well. There are still plenty of stories that can be told while acknowledging and connecting to the movies, without compromising the show's integrity as a separate entity.)

To Stream or Record

I do not know why, but for quite some time I have been suffering connection problems when streaming. I do not know why this is, but everything tells me it is external to my system and house, putting it outside of my control. This forces a question, which is if actually trying to live stream, as I try to do every Saturday, is worth it or if I should instead just record and post a video every week. It certainly is more stable, as then I do not need to worry about the connection to the ingest servers dropping out, but if it is a weekly stream, does it not seem fair that it is actually streamed? I don't know, but I do need to think about it some, if only to remove another source of frustration from my life.

Focus Forward

There are these abstract, amorphous things called 'life lessons' people are supposed to learn. I am not sure how many of us do, but undoubtedly we learn them in different ways. One of them I have been learning for far longer than I wish is to focus forward. Do not let setbacks actually set you back but find a way to keep moving forward. Sometimes that means changing directions and sometimes that means going ahead regardless. It can be hard to know which it is you should do, but it is very much worth figuring out. Personally, I think the path I am on is the path I am going to stay on if only because there is no other path I can see. Options would be nice, but when you can find a measure of satisfaction and happiness with what you are doing, why abandon it?

Black Panther and Kingdom Come: Deliverance

So I've been busy for a bit more than a week now as I have been working on a review for Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a game that can take over 100 hours to complete, and because of how I play/enjoy games, I may approach that before writing the review. Good news is, I am enjoying it and having fun. Do have some criticisms, but most are not too major. (Personally I do not have an issue with the save system, unless the game crashes, then I am peeved.)
What I think I can more freely talk about is Black Panther, which I saw just earlier today. I do think it is a good movie, but it too has some weaknesses. Some aspects of the story are cliche, but I'll be fair and say being an origin story can almost require cliches (plus, cliches work, but one should still be cautious). There were some plot holes at the end, like resolving why M'Baku came and what his new status is, so I am hoping there will be deleted scenes explaining this, as even a couple lines like, 'It is time we came down from the mountain,' with a positive and affirmative response would do the job. The main criticism I have is a certain weakness to the beginning as I felt the Wakandan tribes were not well introduced. The movie provides very little information about them or their roles, so the conflicts between them and their members felt more hollow than I wish they were. Still an enjoyable movie though and I am looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Congrats Philly!

Wow! That was an amazing game to watch, even if it did not have my Packers in it, and I am very happy I stayed up and tuned in. I doubt this Super Bowl went anything like what most people were expecting, but that is part of the fun of any game. Good job, Eagles, but next year, it's going to be healthy Aaron Rodgers leading the Packers to victory in LIII.

Wow, I have been forgetful

I truly have not realized how much time has passed since I last posted here. This blog has just been slipping my mind as I have been focusing on other things, of which there have been several. I had TBOG recordings to make, a book to finish and publish, and some other odds and ends.
Now, what can I share... Actually nothing good is coming to mind. Everything I am thinking of is too far off or not something I want to share yet... I really can be a boring person at times, even when there is stuff some might find interesting. Hopefully that will change by next week. (And I remember to post something next week.)