Nappi

One of my favorite electric musicians, Nicolas Jaar, made an alternative soundtrack to The Color of Pomegranates. At least on first listen and by itself, the album is not one of my favorites among his projects. Nevertheless, I would be interested to hear how well people think it fits the film, and how it changes it. I'm also looking forward to watching the film at some point in the future

One More Time with Feeling was a tough, beautiful cinema experience. Background: Nick Cave's 15 year old son fell of a cliff and died last year. Instead of discussing it at length with media, he collaborated with Andrew Dominik and made a documentary about the grief and the process of recording the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album Skeleton Tree. The film was shown in theaters one night only on 8th September. The documentary does not touch on the accident itself or the conditions surrounding it at all. It does not show Nick Cave or his wife, Susie Bick, getting over or erasing the sadness and the grief and the anger. Instead, it shows them trying to cope, or more precisely, live with these feelings. Nick Cave put it beautifully by describing the accident (although, he actually feels that, in some sense, there are no accidents) as this fenced off disaster area inside of which nothing makes sense and everything is chaos, and they are attached to the fence by a rubber band, so that the can walk away and carry on with their lives, but at any moment they might be blunged back to the chaos by the elastic band. This is clearly visible in the film, as well. One moment Nick Cave might be having a friendly chat - even laughing and joking - then after a while he is distant and forgetful and sad. In addition to not claiming to have any instructions for dealing with a grief of this scale, what I liked most about the documentary was watching the dynamic between Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. I suspect that Warren Ellis already played a major role in the overall sound of the previous albums, but here he is pictured as basically keeping the ship afloat, dealing with the other musicians and supporting Nick Cave in the best possible way. Watching them work together highlights how well they fit together, and helps explain how they can make such beautiful things as soundtrack. Despite the subject matter, the documentary is not a tear-jerker and does not feel exploitative in any way. There were several genuine laugh out loud moments, and not all of the documentary was about the grief. For example, there were several fascinating glimpses into the album recording process. About the cinema experience: Although, it is a shame that not all people that are interested in this documentary are able to see it in theaters, there was something really arresting about the ephemeral quality of the experience. It was interesting to see what kind of audience this film attracts (turns out, all kinds of people, from children to pensioners). When most people had settled in, the lights went out and the documentary just started; no commercials, no trailer, nothing. I had no idea what to expect, since I hadn't come across any reviews, comments, or opinion pieces (A rare delight. Even if I try to avoid them with regular movies, I often stumble across "the consensus" on the movie before I am able to see it). The film is shot in 3D and is mostly black-and-white, but the cinema I saw it in only played the 2D version. Apparently, 3D was used to increase the sense precence, and I can see how it could have that effect in this film. Hopefully they will release a 3D version on blu-ray.

I did not expect PS4 Pro to not support 4k Blu-ray, mainly because I have traditionally considered (perhaps erroneusly) Playstation as the main platform for Sony to showcase the awesomeness of Blu-Ray. Anyway, I don't currently have a 4k TV so whatever, who cares...

I have been intrigued by Netrunner for a while. I played Magic: The Gathering as a kid, and this seems like a version of it that only wants a portion of all your money. However, head-to-head card gaming is not very convenient for me, since I usually meet the friends that are interested in card and board gaming in larger groups where it makes more sense to play 4+ player games. I did not even consider the online option before. What is the etiquette here? Is there a way to pay for the "digital versions" or do I just buy the physical game in order to feel less dirty? I don't have time to start learning the game right now, but I will definitely consider this at some later stage. Hopefully someone here is willing to spar with a noob then.

Turns out it was GPU and not the motherboard. Two capacitors had simply evaporated. I bought GTX 1070, and a new modular PSU just in case. Some observations: (1) PCs gather a lot of dust in 5 years. (2) Modular PSUs are awesome. (3) Cabling still sucks, though. (4) Holy shit, this graphics card is a beast.

My PC exploded while I was playing Mankind Divided. I think the motherboard got fried, but I don't trust the power supply either, so I think I will need to buy new PSU, motherboard, CPU (because of different LGA socket), and RAM (because of DDR4). At least my current CPU fan seems to be compatible with the new chipsets. I'm not particularly looking forward to finding out exactly which components I should buy and where. Or the pricetag. Or trying to figure out what is the deal with my Windows 10 licence once the motherboard gets replaced. Oh well, at least my computer will be significantly faster.. oh wait.. no it won't because I'm not changing my GPU or SSD.

Steam has a Paradox sale this weekend, and I was thinking about buying some Crusader Kings II DLC for when I'm ready to play the game again. Man, this sounds messy. Looking at the more expensive ones, I'm missing Charlemagne (which I think I will buy), Conclave (which sounds pretty bad), Horse Lords (which I like the name of, but don't know if I will find it useful), and The Reaper's Due (which is expensive, and I think I will have hard enough time without having to deal with the black death as well). Gormongous, is the children not getting education traits if Conclave is not activated an actual bug acknowledged by the developer or an annoying feature? I.e. is it likely to get fixed within a couple of months, or should I buy Conclave just in case? The actual content of that DLC sounds very uuggh to me. Also, thank you so much for the settings and expansion recommendations! I really liked this game when I first played it, and the idea of a ton of additional systems affecting the gameplay is intriguing, but I also don't want to suddenly get wrecked by a major invasion event (or whatever) introduced by an unbalanced piece of DLC. Edit: Checked the latest hotfix patch notes: I assume that the hotfix gets applied even I don't have The Reaper's Due? Sorry for these dumb questions, but the content model of this game makes my head hurt.

Oh, good clarification! Also, if I understood it correctly, the beta access for "early November" is only available if you purchase the Thrillseeker Edition. The actual release is November 17. Can't wait to play this game!

If you want to see it in action, you might start with the Idle Thumbs stream: https://www.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/v/85154654 No idea about more detailed info.

Thank you so much for streaming Planet Coaster! Excellent stream, excellent ride, excellent game!

Kerbal Space Program: Any layered drink.

Regarding that the last bit in the tutorial mission

I haven't followed the development, so I'm not entirely sure what the game is going to be like, but would Overland fit the bill? It should be out this year, maybe?

Yup, I have 100 hours on record, and I started skipping some side quests towards the end and haven't played the expansions at all yet.

Not necessarily post-vanilla but definitely late game. The recommended level for the first one is something like 30, I think, s you have ways to go. I don't think they add anything to the game that you can experience yet.

Ok, thanks! I don't want to spent any more time in the menus than I already do, so I might install that mod as well.

Cool stuff! Umm.. how do you hide the HUD?

Love the new Stream Room! Good work!

I am now able to listen to My Brother, My Brother, and Me, Adventure Zone, and Cool Games Inc. while having a walk without looking like a grinning idiot most of the time. Not so with My Dad Wrote a Porno! I recommend giving it a try if you are interested in three friends reading and commenting on a very graphic (and bad) piece of erotica written by the father of one of them, but perhaps not while walking downtown...

Pie's a cake, right?

Baboo's Gate.

Yes yes yes, to Sean DM'd D&D!

That really sucks. Shame to see the trend of shipping broken ass games continue. The game runs quite well for me now, and I didn't have particularly high expections of the gameplay itself, so I'm okay with exploring the empty yet paradoxically overcrowded universe at a leisurely pace. The UI is amazingly unfriendly, though. Please give me auto-stack option. Please let me stack trinkets. Please let me view multitool upgrade options even though all my upgrade slots are currently full. Please, for the love of god, give me a direct option to craft and use a bypass key instead of forcing me to go to the inventory, reorganize it to fit the item that stays there for all of 5 seconds, craft the item, exit the inventory, and interact with the object again. I managed to buy a new ship with more inventory slots yesterday. The ship was fitted with quite many upgrades though, and I am now seriously considering whether I should remove those upgrades to make more room for the fucking Atlas stones that I apparently have to carry thoughout the rest of the game. I spent most of my money on that ship so now I will have to do some serious inventory optimization in order to haul enough money for the next ship purchase (which will probably be closer to 2 million credits because my current ship was around 800 000 credits). I'm not particularly looking forward to that. I jokingly said that the reason the developers were so upset about the pre day-one patch streams, was that they show for the first time that you actually spend half of your time in the inventory. That was obviously not the reason they were upset, but I really do feel that the inventory shuffling is such a major part of each of my play sessions, that it seriously detracts from the sense of exploration. A couple of days ago I actually decided not to launch the game after work, because I remembered that I was on a cool planet that I wanted to explore further, but I would have had to do some serious inventory management before I could go on. That really sucks.

Murdoc, does restart help? The first time I played the game, the FPS suddenly sank to about 10 and stayed there. When I restarted the game, the FPS was back to normal.