I swear “quietly” is the new “slams”.

My five-year-old daughter just climbed over me, stopped to stare at this pic, and said (in a goofy voice) “Wuut da heeeyyck?”

I briefly had an S22 Ultra because there were Pixel shortages at the time, and I hated that piece of shit. Not only was it way too large, extremely heavy, and loaded to the gills with far more unremovable bloatware than the common Google variety, but the camera for which it was touted for being “the best on the market” was absolute dogshit. The white balance was awful, and the shutter speed was slower than a hot turd sliding down the onramp. I returned it after only a week and settled for a budget 4A that actually captured clear photos of my daughter in motion.

No problem. I don’t know what it is about 6am bathroom time that makes me write novels.

It functions well enough that I haven’t noticed anything off, save for maybe two occasions in 40+ hours where I was unlucky enough to have bandits spawn in near me. Once out in the woods, and one time they literally appeared sitting in chairs in the room I had just passed through, then attacked on my way back through it. You can’t help but laugh when it happens, but it’s nowhere near like it was on release.

I know that several of the squads I encounter in the wild have been artificially spawned in just outside of my exclusion radius, but they move organically enough that I’ve never had my immersion broken with the impression that these aren’t just stalkers on their own mission. Sure, if I reload a ways back and travel the same route, it may well be a different assortment of them, no one at all, or maybe bandits or mutants the next time, but rather than feeling tacky it keeps the Zone feeling unpredictable. Retracing my steps after reloading often results in a wildly different experience from Point A to Point B, so I can’t cheese my way through much of anything.

I’ve also encountered large, roaming packs of mutants who, when avoided, travel well outside of my exclusion radius and continue to be heard far off in the distance (Flesh are a good example) even though they’re no longer rendered on my screen. I’ve traveled in that direction a short time later just to run into the same pack having changed direction, so there definitely are some persistent A-Life doing their thing out there. It’s just sprinkled with some chance encounters.

All in all, the A-Life isn’t exactly where they/we want it to be, but they’ve taken enough corrective steps that I find it very enjoyable, and I say that as a long-term fan of the originals, as well as hardcore versions like Anomaly. Honestly, the only thing I truly dislike about STALKER 2 is the number of bloodsuckers. They’ve become a lot easier to dispatch with my better gear, but if I’m ever going to run into three bloodsuckers in the wild, it should be like one time. But there are times where I encounter packs of them several times per day, and on Veteran difficulty that is absolute bullshit.

STALKER 2, and I haven’t felt this frightened to climb down into the basement of a decrepit waste processing station since the original trilogy. So in short, it hits just right.

I actually stood in my kitchen last night eating some yogurt and two Lucky Charms cereal bars just to procrastinate what I knew I had to do.

Anyone have an issue with the shadows/night rendering very strangely in The Sims 3? My wife has been playing it on Windows 10 lately, and while her UI and well-lit sims or objects are all completely normal, anything in the shadows (especially the grass outside at night) looks like her GPU is fucking up. It’s a mix of purple with grainy red and green textures throughout. Almost like her shadows are only rendering in a 64 bit colour palette.

They all have cousins, so…

That’s unusual. Yeah, I had only played on mobile. Couldn’t tell you whether or not it contained spyware, but the game itself is fantastic and the only paid content (additional classes/decks) are well worth it.

Night of the Full Moon is excellent.

That’s fantastic if it’s true. It was my favorite film growing up and the reason my family got a few pugs in the late-90s/early-00s (Holy shit, did the poor things have problems). But I’ve read time and time again that animals were hurled off cliffs, had their feet broken to force limping, etc. I never stopped loving the film itself, but it certainly cast a very dark shadow over the entire production.

Edit: Marked unproven (the animal abuse) on Snopes and basically appears to be a giant “who knows?” at this point, given the evident suffering seen in some of the shots (cat howling in pain with a crayfish hanging from its lip, being thrown from a sea cliff into the ocean, etc.), but despite tons of articles about it during the '90s, too much time has passed to really paint a clear picture anymore.

Solid movie. Just… fucked up that they made it.

Being an entomologist would be sweet as hell. You walk into the lab on a Tuesday morning and Jerry, a gray-bearded researcher with spectacles and a friendly demeanor is like, “Hey, come over here, Kevin. Come look at this bug.”, and you go over there and see the coolest fucking bug.

Thanks for the heads up. I don’t really have a vendetta against Microsoft, I just hear a lot of moaning over how bad 11 is and have been hesitant to upgrade thus far. Even if it isn’t great, I managed to strip 10 down in a way that it closely resembles 7, so I’m sure I can do something similar.

I’m on Windows 10 currently, so not quite two versions behind, but I held onto XP and 7 for ages.

I have always liked Windows, but I’m always two versions behind and have never actually experienced any other OS. I’m open to Linux, but it also scares the shit out of me because I’ll essentially go back to knowing fuck all about the OS on my PC.

And I’ve also heard gaming can be complicated on Linux, whether or not that’s true.

The entire app is a slow and clunky mess on our Roku TV. I’ve never seen a more poorly optimized and irritating service. Every time we’re subjected to it I’m dumbfounded that Disney would even greenlight such a thing.

Shaggy has some densely elongated schlang.

Finally another game the Elder Scrolls Online community can enjoy.