My kid is the only one in the cul-de-sac with Minecraft. We have quite the popular couch this month.

Didn’t even know this album existed. Will have to check it out.

I was at the Calgary Zoo last week and I watched a blonde bear being hunted relentlessly by two darker bears. The consensus was that they were playing and everyone was having a good laugh, but the longer it went on, the less the blonde bear appeared to be having fun. But the darker bears just kept going. I couldn’t help but wonder, what if the blonde bear was going to be eaten by the other bears, and he’s just trapped in this exhibit, doomed to run perpetual circles until he finally collapses and gets ripped apart by the others?

I don’t know where the fuck I was going with this one. I just wanted to rescue that blonde bear from his cruel friends. Maybe he’d make a good candidate for a housebear. I didn’t get a photo of him, but I did manage to snap this awkward pic of a meerkat.

I tried Terraria a few times and I just can’t connect with it.

Oh, no kidding? I either missed that or have forgotten entirely. It’s been a few years now.

I’ve always thought it interesting how Portrait Leah vs Sprite Leah are entirely different people. Sprite Leah is a chill, lanky Gravity Falls type chick who probably crushes beers beneath the bridge, while Portrait Leah is like a lovely Dutch barmaid who probably collects nesting dolls. I dig both, though. Can’t go wrong with Leah, boys.

It sucks to hear the reality of working within the industry. I grew up on Morrowind with (wholly unpursued) dreams of working for Bethesda. I couldn’t think of anything more incredible than to be a part of that, building and cluttering those environments, and possibly even writing the lore for The Elder Scrolls. I was so involved in those games. I knew how to use the Construction Kit, and contributed here and there to the modding community. I never took any actions to set me on that career path, but that was my childhood dream.

I’d still jump at the chance to do it now, but I know it wouldn’t be the experience I imagined it to be.

Elliot always left a gross taste in my mouth. I thought it was because I have a thing for Leah and the two of them are close, but in retrospect, it was probably from his penis.

Looks like Carpet Beetle larvae. Used to find them in my old house some mornings. They come out at night to eat crumbs and shit.

I always screenshot a million things on my phone and then purge them all at once one day without even looking.

I swear “quietly” is the new “slams”.

I really enjoyed my Shepard and Liara romance during the Mass Effect trilogy, but I don’t think it’s particularly well executed in most other games.

That’s one unusual looking fellow. Perhaps he could find a new job as a mad scientist of sorts?

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…

I’ve always had a fondness for the original Call of Duty single-player campaign. I don’t even care for that series, but the original had a phenomenal campaign.

I sit with one foot on the floor and the other foot (leg bent out to the side) beneath my opposing knee. I think this may have contributed largely to the miniscal tear I had to get surgery on two years back.