Cordeos

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Posts posted by Cordeos

  2. Posted

    I remember it suffering pretty badly from the same narrative issue GTAIV did. Namely, the main character is strung along by very bad dudes for ages and tricked or manipulated into doing things for them over and over and over. At some point it started to get a bit tedious. The game nailed everything else though (and had a great ending), so I was able to get past it. Looking forward to a sequel.

    R* games are full of stupid protagonists going along with bad ideas formulated by people who spout annoying philosophy on unskippable traversals to missions. I despise their writing style to the point that its the biggest reason I didn't buy GTA 5. 

    I distinctly remember characters in RDR complaining about how lawless things are, but how they resent the loss of freedom the federal government brings.

  5. Posted

    Lucky's tale? I saw the trailer for that and it just looked like any other non-VR 3d platformer. Maybe there's something good in there, but they certainly don't show it off in the trailer.

     

    I mean it doesnt seem to take advantage of VR very well, but it seems like a fine game

  8. Posted

    Yikes. As a Philadelphian, the tear Bill Clinton went on that disparaged BLM protestors got me pretty upset. I really think Hillary needs to either keep him in line or just stop letting him be a surrogate for her.

    I think this piece by Jamelle Bouie in Slate is a thoughtful reflection on Bill Clinton's tirade, and what it says about his complicated legacy.

    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/04/the_politics_of_bill_clinton_s_crime_bill_were_messier_than_they_seem.html

    Slightly unrelated: I really want campaigns to stop letting Celebrities be surrogates, they seem to be best at putting their feet in the mouths. 

  9. Posted

    As someone who doesn't buy expensive phones, are iPhones still more expensive than comparably powerful models? I presume there's some amount of apple premium in the cost but I've never looked into what the gap is really like.

    Base models are around the same price, but Apple still charges ~$100 for each internal memory upgrade

  10. Posted

    At this point I've lost all friends from earlier than college. I figure it's only a matter of time before those undergrad friends start fading away.

    I feel like some of that is because people you grew up near/went to pre-college with weren't entirely friends you picked. They were the best of limited options. I assume this stays true if you went to a small college as well.

    There are only 6 people that I still keep in touch with from before college. The rest of my friends I met through clubs etc in college or are friends of friends. When I was teaching in Korea and hanging out with the other Americans there I realized just how nice it is to have friends you have things in common with, I ended up not really getting along with most of the teachers because I didn't like them as people.

  11. Posted

    Slightly tangential to the topic, but I always find that a potentially good metric for judging someone's character is how they talk about their exes.  If every single ex is the worst person ever, and they mostly shit on them, then that tells me a lot more about that person than it does their exes.  If they have a wide range of opinions about their various exes, some fondness, some distaste, again, I've learned more about them than I have the people they once dated. 

     

    I'm very leery of people who speak of all their exes universally negatively. 

    Yeah, either they are really spiteful or a horrible picker. It also speaks to an ability to forgive and move on. Unless that ex does something legitimately horrible, then you can hate them forever.

  12. Posted

    I'm on Verizon.

    Is there a common understanding of when to stop updating your phone's os? I feel like my problems with my phone started immediately after installing the first update that happened after my contract was up. It seemed to make performance worse. Maybe it was just a coincidence.

    I am a bit nervous about Android. I understand how a Windows PC lets me play tons of hobbyist games and that's why I have no interest in the walled-garden of Mac. But when it comes to phones I hear people talking about bloatware and force-closing apps and some of the stuff my wife downloads on her phone asks for all sorts of permissions. I'm not sure if the openess of Android would be of any benefit to me, but that may be because I'm so inexperienced with it. Is Android buggy and susceptible to malware?

    Also, are there any types of apps that you use regularly that I wouldn't know about because I've been on iphones.

    Also, what would make the S7 a better Android phone than another. Speed? Durability?

    The biggest advantage to my mind for android is the customizability.

    I use a custom launcher that lets me modify my home screens to a large degree, I turned off app icon text and have 5 widgets on my first home screen. I can check my calendar, do media control on podcasts and audiobooks check the weather and search. Nova Launcher also lets me resize my app grid and widgets as i please.

    Android also has a lot of cool features, not sure which Iphone doesn't have until Apple pretends they invented them a few years later.

    From what I understand the S7 has a camera on par with if not better than the Iphone, its well built and has a responsive OS. 

    I wouldn't worry about malware, as long as you dont download shady apps, especially from outside the play store its fine. If you are worried Lookout is a free anti-malware app that seems good?

    BCdIyRA.jpg

  13. Posted

    If you care about expandable storage and removable batteries the LG G4 and soon to be released LG G5 are your only options. They are good flagship phones. I have the G4 Camera is good, performance is good, the only app that crashes regularly is tinder.

    If you want something cheaper I have heard a lot of good things about the Nexus line of phone. The have stock android and get upgrades before any other phones including security upgrades.

    The Samsung S7 is probably the best android phone on the market but there are some issues with manufacturer and carrier bloatware. I have these issues a little on the G4 but I remember my S4 having it worse. Which carrier do you use? Verizon seems to be the worst for this, I think T-Mobile isn't so bad.

    All most all of this bloatware can be disabled or ignored and the reskins can be fixed by apps like Nova Launcher.

  16. Posted

    Earlier already when some info was leaked that this movie will feature some sort of black armored Stormtroopers that I think pop up briefly in that trailer as well, I immediately thought they are taking the Imperial Dark Trooper idea from the Dark Forces games.

     

    I like that, but damn they really need to have Kyle Katarn in this one way or the other. To hell with the Disney plans that all Expanded Universe is just "legends of the past". 

     

    Also that whitesuited Grand Admiral, I can't be the only one that wishes that guy had blue skin, right?

    If they were going to put Thrawn in a film I would drop all of my objections about new star wars. I also had originally hoped that Rogue One meant it was going to be a movie about Rogue squadron. Ah well.

  17. Posted

    I finally finished the first season of The Expanse like everyone else in the world did six months ago. I'm mixed: on the one hand, it's nice to see a well-realized sci-fi world presented with a decent budget and an eye towards consistent aesthetics. I'm looking to another season of it very much. On the other hand...

     

    I was deeply disappointed by the introduction of a black-and-white villain in the form of Mao's company and the protomolecule research team. For the first two thirds of the season, The Expanse established a regular pattern of introducing threats and then complicating why they're threatening: the OPA is a bunch of terrorists but their grievances are legitimate, the Martian Navy is belligerent but eminently pragmatic, Fred Johnson is a war criminal but very ethical about his extremism, etc. When we get the inkling that Mao's performing ridiculously evil experiments, I was ready to have it subverted in some way, to continue the themes of the universe being a complex place and people having their reasons for almost anything... but no, it's all just profit and blind fetishism of scientific progress. Sure, that's worth the mass murdering of thousands of people and turning an interplanetary cold war hot! It's not that everything's shades of gray, it's that all these shades of gray are ignoring the one truly black thing out there. I don't find that particularly interesting.

     

    Also, all the viewpoint characters annoyed me at various times, but I was sincerely surprised that UN Diplomat Lady ended up having the most satisfactory arc for me: she was pompous, high-handed, and cynical, but her growth was believable and satisfying. Compared to Holden, who is willing to risk the lives of his team repeatedly and, in the finale, to hang out with a sketchy cop who murders dozens of unsuspecting mercs just because but who threatens to shoot a crewmate and friend in the back for defending them from hostile soldiers, and Thomas Jane, who is a misanthropic jerk willing to murder dozens of unsuspecting mercs just because he's in love with a dead woman he's never met, she is a sterling example of good character writing. Maybe if the writers had done a better job of contrasting Jared Harris' love of Julie Mao, which is all about him, with Thomas Jane's love of her, which is all about her... but they didn't. I'm just supposed to believe that a hardened cop who's inured to his status as a traitor to his people and who insults his partner for believing that a prostitute loves him is head over heels for some teenage debutante. If all your central characters are irredeemable idiots, hypocrites, and monsters, why am I watching your show? Why is it not about Fred Johnson, an interesting personality with an interesting past and an interesting future? Why are we following around Goody Two-Shoes, Lord of Good Intentions and Unintended Consequences, and his counterpart Dirty Cop the Dirtiest Cop? I don't know.

     

    Also, the writing for episodes five, six, and most of seven was inexplicably bad on the level of dialogue, with every other line coming out of characters' mouths being a platitude or a cliche. I know that the mid-season doldrums are time to give the less experienced writers in your stable a chance, but keep some oversight on them so we don't have to hear two women debate the meaning of motherhood with empty hyperbole.

    After book 2 the villains get more, complex. Not sure how long it will take the show to get there. I Think the books keep getting better, so IMO stick with it. I don't want to spoil anything, but there is a lot of character growth for pretty much everyone.

  19. Posted

    I hope that Serial continues being about untangling big complicated systems. It did that pretty well in both series. I think the disappointment was that the human individual story was a lot more compelling in S1 than S2, and I gather that was the more important part for a lot of people.

    I think of Serial as essentially a season on one episode of This American Life. Some TAL episodes are not great, so for Serial it will be a whole season you might not care about.

    I actually stoped listening to TAL a while back because I have started losing interest in anecdotes.

  24. Posted

    I finally got a chance to make ramen from scratch this weekend.  I used the process I linked earlier from Serious Eats

    http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/02/how-to-make-tonkotsu-ramen-broth-at-home-recipe.html

     

    along with their recipe for marinated soft boiled eggs

    http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/03/the-food-lab-tonkotsu-ramen-part-how-to-make-ajitsuke-tamago-marinated-soft-boiled-eggs.html

     

    and, instead of Chashu pork belly, I went with Sous Vide porchetta

    http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/12/the-food-lab-deep-fried-sous-vide-36-hour-all-belly-porchetta.html

     

     

    I took a bunch of pictures and was going to post them up here, all proud of my two day ordeal, but the broth didn't turn out great. The thing that seems to happen to all my complicated dishes happened to this one, it just didn't have any flavor. It was like eating ramen sitting in dirty tap water. If it had just tasted bad, that would be one thing, but no flavor at all is the most disappointing thing ever, especially when I had to get up at 6am to start cooking for a 6pm dinner. A little bit of my soul was crushed. I ended up boiling the bones on full tilt for another 3 hours, then reducing it down till I was afraid it was going to scorch, and it turned into a passable pork gravy at least, but definitely not ramen-like.

     

    Also, I tried a lot of temperature settings and times for Sous Vide soft boiled eggs, but could never get it right. The yolk actually seemed to solidify faster than the whites, leaving a hard ball in the middle of a puddle of mucus. After going through almost a dozen eggs, I finally dumped the Sous Vide machine and just boiled the eggs for 6 minutes exactly, then chilled and peeled (which was it's own ordeal.) The marinade actually turned out really well though, and my wife loved them.

     

    If there was a sunny spot in this whole thing, it's that the pork came out absolutely excellent. I would definitely use that recipe again. Frying the outside of the roll to give the rind a nice crispness was great.  

    I found my broth disappointing as well. I ended up adding hoisin sauce to my broth to give it some flavor. I think I will just use Miso paste next time. A lot easier, and way tastier!