Trying out Cities: Skylines

by   •   General
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I thought simulation games, like Sim City, were easy.

My experience today with Cities: Skylines made sure it was absolutely clear that they are not at all easy – at least not for beginners who have no idea what they’re doing.

I decided to try out Cities: Skylines because I’ve literally never played any simulation games before, and I wanted to try it out. I expected my experience to be very relaxed and easy – just build some roads, con­struct some buildings, and watch my city grow.

…

I had to completely destroy and restart my city three times before finally managing to figure out how not to immediately go bankrupt.

Cities: Skylines really puts your city management skills to the test. It starts you off easy, only having you manage a few utilities, but as your city grows, you need to keep track of everything that you would need to survive in real life.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stream my first experience with Cities: Skylines because my streaming software appeared to have some conflicts capturing the game. (When I did a window capture instead, I lagged so much that I think I had about 6 FPS. I already have pretty low FPS when playing Cities: Skylines without streaming, on minimum graphics settings.)

Steam says I have about four hours of game time on Cities: Skylines so far, and in those four hours, I built five cities (three of which no longer exist due to bankruptcy).

The first city I built that managed to stay alive reached almost 2.5k population.

The second city I built was with the infinite money mod, and served the purpose of easing my curiosity as to what the mid-game was.

I stopped playing when I realized I was getting overwhelmed and needed to take a break.

I feel like Cities: Skylines is a much more stimulating game than I originally thought it was, but I think I need to read up on it and do a lot of research on the intricate workings of the city before being able to fully enjoy the entire simulation experience.

This game received quite a bit of hype when it first came out because a lot of people said it was the better version of Sim City that everyone wanted.

I haven’t been completely captivated by the game yet, but I do feel like my first experience with it was positive, and I did have some fun. Although it won’t be a game that I will play on a regular basis, it’s definitely something I’ll boot up once in a while when I have some spare time.

 

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Hard boiled eggs do, in fact, explode in the microwave

by   •   General, Highlights
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I spent the day at home today.

Before my mom left this morning to tend to the family business, she left some food for me in the re­frig­er­a­tor. It was tteokbokki, which is Korean-style rice cake with seasoning.

A lot of different stuff can be added in with the seasoning; my mom decided to put in some garlic, other boiled vegetables, and hard-boiled eggs.

I decided to eat this tteokbokki for lunch.

I mindlessly removed it from the refrigerator and put it in the microwave for two minutes.

A minute and a half later, I hear an explosion.

I realize that a hard-boiled egg had blown up.

Remembering too late that hard-boiled eggs explode in the microwave, I grudgingly get some paper towels and wipe down the inside of the microwave, dabbing at the remains of the splattered egg yolk. I yank out the rotating tray and wipe it down with a wet rag. After a handful of minutes, everything is cleaned up and ready to be used to continue heating my food.

But I’m not as retarded as you might think. I carefully inspect the food and find another hard-boiled egg. I furiously hack at it with my chopsticks until it’s in 12 different pieces. If there’s no albumen encasing the yolk, there obviously is nothing there to hold in the pressure and explode.

I put everything back in the microwave and set it for another two minutes.

A minute later the hacked up eGG EXPLODES ANYWAY HOW IS THAT EVEN PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE

I spend another five minutes re-cleaning the inside of the microwave.

Before putting the food back in the microwave for a third time, I just completely remove all the egg from the bowl and furiously let it fall in the trash.

…

There was a third egg hiding under the tteok.

I cleaned my microwave

three times

today.

 

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Yesterday, I vomited for the first time in four years

by   •   General
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

In case you’ve been wondering why I’ve been out of action for a little bit, it’s because I’ve been sick since yesterday.

Apparently, something I ate on Wednesday night wasn’t safe – possibly some reheated pasta or some old bacon – and it upset my stomach. Enough that I randomly woke up in the middle of the night and vomited for the first time in literally about four years.

It appears like I got a stomach virus that is preventing me from digesting food, because, ever since I ate this morning, I’ve felt full all day, and the liquids I’ve been drinking seem to be sitting inside of me and sloshing around whenever I move.

So, I’ve been laying at home since yesterday, busily being sick. I start feeling a bit better when I go outside and get some fresh air, but then I rapidly become dizzy again and return to my bed.

I’ve been spending most of my time on my phone, browsing through Twitter, Instagram, reddit, and other sources of interesting content. I’ll probably be spending most of the weekend watching the North American League Championship Series (assuming I’ll be un-dizzy enough by that point to be able to look at my laptop screen for extended periods of time).

I’m hoping I’ll be better enough by at least Monday so I can start posting some more content and get back to my regular daily routine, but that’s not really a guarantee, so expect me to be missing for a little while longer while I recover.

 

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What I think of the “MagicAmy is two different people” controversy

by   •   Hearthstone
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

In the past few days, there has been a lot of controversy about the true identity of MagicAmy, the com­pet­i­tive Hearthstone player.

People have stepped forward claiming that Amy is a Korean girl as a front, but a Canadian man in the background actually playing the game. They also have been revealing anecdotes about how Amy has cheated and manipulated them out of money.

If you don’t know the further details about the controversy, and are actually interested, you will probably want to go to the Hearthstone subreddit to learn about all the elements of this situation, as my post is directed at the people who already know what’s going on.

I strongly believe that the claims of manipulation should not have been released to the public, and it is mostly irrelevant to the problem of her real identity. From my perspective, a bunch of guys who fell in love with Amy over the Internet are now regretting giving her money because she is no longer giving them the attention that she used to. In retaliation, they are opportunizing on this drama to “get back” at Amy.

As for her true identity, I have a feeling that she actually is who she claims she is, and all this evidence just happens to be the unfortunate coincidence of account sharing*. However, because it’s logically pos­si­ble for all this controversial stuff to be true, people are more likely to believe the story that leads to the more interesting outcome.

According to the Tempo/Storm announcement, MagicAmy was released from the team because she chose to leave.

To me, this looks more like a case of reddit scaring Amy away from the Hearthstone scene through ha­rass­ment and abuse, rather than her leaving because she was “found out.” Because of what reddit’s Hearth­stone subreddit did to her, Amy most likely no longer sees Hearth­stone as a safe community in which she can exist.

Of course, I don’t know Amy personally, and even if I did, I wouldn’t really have much of an interest to pry into her past personal history. So, I most likely won’t ever know 100% what the real story is. However, I trust Reynad and Frodan (the administration of Tempo/Storm) enough that, after their investigation found nothing suspicious, this whole controversy was just some coincidencial occurrences blown irrationally out of proportion.

*Edit: When I say account sharing, I am referring to her other accounts, such as email and Skype, and not her Hearthstone account. A lot of the evidence is on the basis that she shares usernames with this Ca­na­dian man.

 

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Shattered ice

by   •   General
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Shattered ice

(Click to enlarge)

Just a random photo of shattered ice that I thought looked pretty interesting.

 

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The playlists on my home page are now more obviously playlists

by   •   Site News
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Ever since I created a new splash landing page for my website, I’ve had some videos embedded in it.

Over time, I realized that a lot of people thought that the videos were just that – videos. Most people weren’t alert enough to realize that I had actually embedded entire playlists, and once the video was over, another one from the same playlist would automatically play.

In order to make it more obvious, I did a bit of coding today, with the help of jakiestfu.

Now, there is absolutely no question that you are able to watch multiple videos per video player on my home page, as there is a very noticeable list of videos to the right of the actual video.

A passive plus side to implementing this new embedded playlist is that the height of the whole thing is shorter, so I was able to get room to embed even more playlists.

 

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