The other night, I decided to start watching Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-. It’s a isekai series that’s been filled under my watch later list for some years now. The series, and more than one of its characters, made my worth remembering list.

Re:zero takes a very different perspective than most series involving another world, of which there are loads. Instead it’s much more story and character focused, than conceptualized for entertainment.

Subaru’s return by death trick leads him to an interesting directive: just because people can’t remember what happened before a reset, does not mean they are any less important. Which is also leveraged in multiple directions, such as the discovery of who murders him during the second arc.

In the first arc, we’re pretty much given a straight forward scenario of Subaru trying to save the kind hearted Emilia, known to him under the alias Satella. I kind of like that over the course of the story, while Emilia largely remains true to that awesome-kindness in the beginning, the point is made that she isn’t the ideal in Subaru’s head–real people aren’t ideal.

By the time that is resolved, and things head into the mansion my interest was kind of permanently priqued. It’s moved from an almost CYOA scenario into something more mysterious and with room for the characters. Oh, and the way Ram and Rem carry on….especially together. It’s like someone tried to push all my right buttons, lol.

For the most part the series is pretty grisly, and definitely not for the squeamish. Subaru’s resolve is tested far more often than the utility of his death resetting time. Often with the other characters paying the price. But it’s also an incredibly good story. The gore is more of a consequence, as the series focuses much more on the emotion that comes with Subaru’s battle, to not give up.

Oddly, by the great conversation between Subaru and Rem on the roof, I’ve come to see a lot of my own nature in that supporting character. Morbidly, she is also one of the most frequently killed characters given her closeness to Subaru.

I do kind of have to wonder though, what the state of the novels might be. Seems like there are a lot of those. Where as the anime, is only about 26 episodes or so.

Well, aiming for a larger breakfast, and skipping lunch might not have been a great plan, but on the upside, I’ve gotten most of my planned chores done. I’ve also gotten to spend time catching up on my anime backlog, hehe.

While I find dealing with the house work tends to be an intersection of time, and gumption, it definitely helps to keep a running list of sorts. Less so because of directed acyclic graphs, and having to deal with floors drying or surfaces you’d have to reclean. More so because it allows compressing them into an effective block, and being able to decide, “Yes, if I just spend fifteen minutes or an hour on this stuff, I’ll be nearly done”.

‘Cuz often the time required is shorter than people think. What makes it such a messy business is falling dreadfully behind, or trying to tackle very large areas. My approach to household chores is probably lax, since I don’t actually like to clean in my rest-periods, but I tend to make it focused time. That is to say, not clean the place top to bottomus but rather snipe specific areas and carpet bomb regions, where a little focus leads to a lot of done. Versus the frakk that’s gonna take all weekend, problem.

Plus it’s kind of a given fact, that I am both lazy and nerdy.

A subject that I find intriguing. Especially when I live in a world, where friends kids usually have computers in school: and I find it amazing that schools are able to offer that.

The way that my family got our first computer, basically owes to one of my mother’s friends, and how much her son had improved at school, and that she should get my older brother a computer. I have no freaking idea how our mother could afford such a machine.

In practice though, my brother didn’t really care that much for computers until well into the Pentium era, and ma didn’t really care much for computers herself until the late ‘90s. Thus, I had the advantage of a computer and little competition for its use.

As a child, typically the computer to me was a place to play games. I couldn’t read yet, and no one really understood computers very well, so it was hard to get a lot out of MS-DOS 3. But it was easy enough for us to learn the procedure for using floppies, and most of our diskettes had the associated command written on the label.

A few of these games, were purely entertainment. Like a Japanese based thing that could shift between robot / jet / car, or whatever; and Jeopardy. Most games however were more educational: math problems like making change, and dividing ingredients, and stuff like that. I probably moved a frog through a maze or painted interstellar space with wormholes a ridiculous amount of times, but most of the games were school related.

In fact: until compatible software started to become difficult to find in the mid~late ‘90s, most of our diskettes came from school supply stores with a software section.

As it turned out, I would basically be using computers since before kindergarten. Eventually though, Internet access via Web TV, and the usefulness of general purpose Pentium machines with modems, is where I really started to care about computers.

For some reason, I am reminded of the era I was born into, before people even started talking.

Also pretty neat, both comments about the technology covered, and comments about what the future might hold. Like micros reaching the stage where you’ll be able to lose them like your keys because they will have become so small.

Myst is a classic game that I missed. Also one that I should probably dig up someday and play.

The technical challenges faced aside, I kind of wonder how many computer users had CD-ROM drives by then. Another wonder of an era that I missed, since my family’s computer was still a single 5 1/4” diskette machine at that time. Actually discounting the CD-ROM, it was kind of amazing when we finally got a hard drive equipped Pentium computer in the very late ‘90s, and it wasn’t good enough for playing games much more complex than Battle Zone and Asteroids, because Windows 98 took up most of the drive, lol.

This just in: Baby shark swallows AirPods charging case

It’s kind of hard to see myself owning wireless earbuds until the prices come way down, but I have to admit : I’d so buy a cute charging case like this, lol.

If you’re going to do a thing, be awesome. If you can’t be awesome, well at least try and be cute. If you can be both awesome and cute, all the better 😄

The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

Apple is a lot of things, some good, some bad; consistent is not one of those things.

I actually used to have a fairly high opinion of Apple’s design skill, until the first time I tried to help an iPhone user. That was somewhere around the 3GS or iPhone 4. At which point I wondered how the fuck anyone could use the things.

Over in the land of PCs and Macs, I kind of recognize that many oddities exist. A great many are also artifacts leftover from a time where Apple or Microsoft did a thing, and were probably the first to really do it, rather than following on the trail of standards and successful giants. But that feeling never has repaired my opinion of the fruit company’s software. Today is also a much more connected world than the ‘90s and ‘80s were.

Apple actually does make some great stuff, and folks that helped create those products and experiences should be proud of their work. But like anything else with ten trillion moving parts, consistency kind of goes out the window quite rapidly.

I will admit though:

How would anyone ever figure out how to split-screen multitask on the iPad if they didn’t already know how to do it?

Is the kind of thing, that lead me to start making jokes about having to swipe friend in Elvish.

The iPad has developed a pretty nice on boarding experience, give or take four hundred privacy notices, and the user guide in the Safari default bookmarks is well worth giving anyone that has never used an iPad before. But there is definitely IMHO, a trend towards learning to swipe and gesture in elvish.

Those times when you need a nap, and everyone is comfortable. And then you start debating whether the risk of inciting a riot outweighs having to visit the bathroom.

Passing thought: there are days I wish I could just crash next to the heating vent for a nap.

Sadly, it’s hard to hang yourself from the ceiling in a way that’s comfortable for napping, lol

Watching Terminator: Dark Fate, I found it a rather nice retake on Terminator.

While Gensys was pretty entertaining, and the alternate version of Sarah and “Pops” was pretty damned fun for me: Dark Fate is a little more terminator, less popcorn. The beginning is a tad rough, but quickly leads to what we’d expect.

It’s hard to decide what I like best about Carl’s reintroduction though. That he ends up a drapery expert, or the Texas comment about his armory. The bit between Sarah and Carl, is really a positive aside to the whole cyborg / guardian battle. It’s far more a win than a distraction.

Legion’s future also seems more plausible to me, with the more stab happy Rev-7s, and the Rev-9 being far more plausible than the T-1000. And that it probably wasn’t SkyNet that created it, lol.

One of the problems I’ve long found with the SkyNet timeline, is the lack of sense it’s usually made. If we presume that SkyNet was so screwed by the time the T-800/Model 101 and T-1000 were sent back, it becomes even more plausible that SkyNet would play the most obvious card: once you’ve invented time displacement, go back and provide yourself with the necessary files to not be so screwed, develop a head start, and send back oodles of terminators. Because if we accept the linear influences, that becomes the logical course of action: not just sending two minions back in time and hoping at least one would be successful.

Actually, that let’s send back oodles of terminators is one of the things I like about The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Because why send one, when you have time on your side? Likewise, I think Legion makes a better follow up than Rise of the Machines and Gensys did, in the sense that if you buy into their model of time travel, and that Judgement Day would be inevitable despite taking out Cyberdyne, why would it always have to take the same form of SkyNet? Same shit, different timeline.