The MMO I play these days, Final Fantasy XIV, is having a Real Escape this summer, one of which will be in San Francisco. Can I talk anybody into coming along?

I went on a walk today, along with what I was told was 30,000 other people, from San Jose City Hall to the Cesar Chavez Plaza. It wasn't a very quick walk, to be honest, and I don't know if the organizers expected quite as many people as 3.0x10E4. I did see some clever posters, including a number of variations of the image of Carrie Fisher with a ( Read more... )

Passengers is just about the most generic romantic Hollywood movie that it is possible to make. It includes Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, and ignoring Physics whenever it serves the plot. It's not a terrible movie, I didn't want my money back, and Michael Sheen was quite entertaining, but it wasn't Moon, either. If you want a story about being ( Read more... )

There is a book, by L.E. Modesitt, named Gravity Dreams, that I have read, I think, ten times this year. Yeah, I know. The thing is, I don't know that I can say it's really that good. Certainly, the writing is clumsy, particularly when it comes to interpersonal relationships. And it's vintage Modesitt: young, fairly clueless, man comes into his ( Read more... )

I forgot to mention another book I finished recently: Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds. I'd picked it up hoping to find an author with the scope and intricacy of Ian M. Banks. Overall, he certainly builds a detailed, well-considered world, but, not quite the scope of imagination of Banks. I didn't find the central mystery too compelling, ( Read more... )

It seems like everyone is fleeing FB and putting up update posts, so I'll jump in ( Read more... )

It turns out that Windows 10 doesn't come with the ability to play DVDs, which, as a person with a spotty internet connection, isn't really that helpful. I asked around and was recommended the VLC media player, which I have found to be quite excellent, apart from a rather utilitarian user interface. However, even as a replacement for the player ( Read more... )

Ok, it's as done as it's going to get. The internet connection problems, unfortunately, were never in the box, so I'm going to continue making friends with the tech support guy at the ISP. It does, however, fit reasonably well in the spot where the old one was and the Violet Crumble was pretty tasty.

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Well, it's pretty much done, apart from downloading some things like virus definitions and Lord of the Rings Online needing to install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, even though 4.5 comes with the Windows distro disk. Time for Violet Crumble as soon as I can log into either LotRO or FFXIV and crank the settings all the way up. I'll post a pic of the ( Read more... )

Well, the box runs, but getting it to recognize the internet is being somewhat of a challenge. I'm downloading drivers on the old box right now. Also, if you want to take files from an old Win 10 computer, you cannot take out the old hard drive and mount it in the new. I ended up making a run to Fry's for an external drive to copy files and drop ( Read more... )