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Next U.S. Navy aircraft carrier to be named after African American Pearl Harbor hero
https://flip.it/6Dlhwg

That is pretty damn cool. Didn’t think we would see a carrier not named after a president, shy of experiencing another conflict on the scale of the war in the Pacific.

Thoughts on Xbox Game Pass and SteamLink

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One of the perks of Steam, is the ease of continuing from anywhere.

Most games on Steam with more than ten cents worth of effort, support cloud saves. Most that don’t tend to be very old, or games that shouldn’t. Which makes it pretty easy to continue from another machine, or even the same machine from some future reinstall of the game. Many games on Xbox also support cloud saves, and it’s usually less famous titles that lack them, like indie titles.

At least when you’ve got a solid graphics card, and aren’t struggling to run the game to begin with, Steam’s in home streaming actually works great. So transitioning from /dev/desk to /dev/couch is more to do with input devices.

Microsoft’s Game Pass is pretty sweet, and ultimate makes sense if you were already paying for Live. But the trade off I think is the portability.

When I play a game on Steam: principally, I give little mind to whether I’m playing from my couch or in front of my computer. The decision is typically driven by how much precision mouse/keyboard work is required. The only game that’s been otherwise is Final Fantasy 15, as my CPU struggles to run it locally, unlike 99% of my other Steam games.

When I play a game on Game Pass, principally my thought is “Do I want to play at my xbox?”.

As much as I applaud Microsoft’s record and stream tech, I really love that they made it available, the truth is that I find the stream quality from my Xbox to my desktop to be inferior to my 780 GTX to my SteamLink over the same network and locations. There’s more visual glitches and even set for quality, the encoder can’t best the encoder on my nVidia card.

What would really make the PC side of that coin mean something, is if it were possible to share the same saves between my desktop and my Xbox. I.e. the decision would be like open Outer Worlds on my desktop, and continue from the same save I made on my Xbox. I’d call that a win.

By contrast the decision works out that I started playing on my Xbox, and need to stream to my PC if I want to play at my desk. Which means a loss of image quality, and the occasional wtf/freeze/lag; on the flipside Outer Worlds seems to do that less often than Halo 5 when I stream.

Likewise, I don’t think Microsoft offers the inverse. I.e. that I could stream my desktop to my Xbox, if I had started with the PC, I’d not be able to stream to my Xbox. Although it might be possible to horse wrangle something with my SteamLink. By contrast, Steam’s streamy goodness is basically from anything to anything, especially when you account for needing a Direct3D PC for most games anyhow.

Thus, I am finding that Game Pass is very worth it for the Xbox side of the catalog. On PC, it’s more like a “Meh”, because the only benefit I’m really seeing there is good odds of playing on desktop with a mouse, a game I wouldn’t want to play on console with a controller. To be fair though, my decision was based on the cost comparison of Game Pass + Live versus Game Pass Ultimate; that is to say on the dollars required.

Beyond the lack of PC <-> Xbox crossover, I’m finding Game Pass to be very worth it. For a while, I’ve actually considered dropping my Live subscription because Games with Gold doesn’t bring that many games of interest down the pike, versus how little multiplayer I tend to do on Xbox. Where as Game Pass delivers the content, and probably curtails much of the need to buy games outright.

I’m also pretty sure that if Valve offered something like Game Pass on Steam, I’d probably hand Gabe Newell my checkbook and be done with it, lol.

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You know, if I was really smart: I’d be at least half as comfy as these three goonie birds with fur.

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Upsides of Friday: being able to have a cup of coffee at 2000, and not feel guilty.
Downsides of Friday: being ready to snore loudly by 2200, despite coffee.

On a mostly positive side, having had pretty daily visits to the vet thanks to blistering, Misty’s next appointment is Monday. For what will probably be a very trying day for all of us. But for her, I expect it’s been least fun.

Also on the positive side, the side with the blisters, aside, she’s been doing pretty well from her dental surgery.

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So far I’ve been using an ESR for iPad Pro 11 Case with a surprising level of success. When I ordered it back in October, I found several similar ones, which likely means same thing from the same place with the branding of whoever is paying for the batch, lol.

Generally, I’ve tended to keep my devices naked. Tablets are already too damned hefty for my tastes, and most generic cases add considerable weight. First party ones tend to be ridiculously expensive, and likely due to litigation happy Apple, somewhat hamstrung into sucking.

Pretty much I wanted to solve two problems:

  1. Better protection at work, and some screen protection while its in my work bag.
  2. Be nice for writing position on my desk.
Most of the generic cases I’ve had for my Android tablets, failed because they’re too heavy once you make the generic adaptive frame and affix the cover. Most first party cases, traded cost for weight by using lighter plastics but suffered the same problem. It’s just the first party result was more like sewing pads together than a one piece plastic mold.
As someone who takes care of their overpriced electronics, my interested in cases tend to be less about drop protection and more about utility. If you’re going to toss a tablet out the back of a truck, or have risk of it being pierced by something dropped on the screen, by all means: get a highly protective case. I’d even recommend Otterbox for that.
But for me the protection factor is more like having my laptop and tablet in the same section of my bag, or my tablet laying on a work bench where things may get shuffled around a bit: but even a scratch or crack is like more a worse case scenario. I’ve only managed one damaged screen despite having used tablets since Honeycomb.
The trick that’s made this case sick are really down to the design. It’s magnetic connection allows it to be a very thin, lightweight case rather than one that tries to prevent catastrophe. Plus or makes our very easy to remove without scuffing or stressing the device, so when I want to use my iPad without the case: that’s so easy, I don’t worry.
Throw in how useful it is to have a kick stands like function along with the basic screen protection, and I’ve ended up sticking with it. By contrast, I don’t think I’ve ever managed to get more than a few weeks before discarding other cases I’ve had for past tablets.
The catch, I think has less to do with the cost of integrating sufficient magnets: and more to do with Apple’s inclination to sue the pants off other tablet vendors if they made the same style of folio case. Or least that’s been my feeling since Samsung almost nailed this problem with the Tab S2, but fell shy due to weight and using metal “Snaps” instead of magnets for attaching the case to the tablet. But that’s probably cheaper than dealing with their legal department, never mind actual circle jerking over the idea.
A notable side effect is for generic cheap ass cases like this, for most tablets you’re stuck adapting some kind of plastic frame or similar system. In the case of modern iPads, the magnet thing seems suitably generic amongst iPads at this point.
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Since my mother learned the recipe in high school, my family has enjoyed the potato chip based tuna casserole. Left to my own devices, I sill make it pretty often.

Coincidentally, Willow really likes fish. Not so much that humans get dibs on the people food.

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Things I can blame on ninja: finally seeing what graphviz / dot files look like, in their textual form. Which is really neat! If you wanna generate a graph from a program, definitely look at graphviz and its various tools like dot.

Things I can blame on programmers: when “ninja -t graph | dot -Tpng -ograph.png” gives me a 50meg file that is over 18,000 x 32,000 pixels. Which is due to the size and complexity of the code base.

On a positive side, my part of the job was mainly getting it to build in a non broken way. Not writing software several times the size of Jurassic Park.

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Me: “Can I tickle you?”
Tickles Willow’s sides.Willow: “No you may not!”

I’m not sure this says more about how often the dogs get tricked, out how often I usually reserve the option instead of phrasing it that way. Lolololol!

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On one hand: I try to respect how much care seems to have gone into Steam’s controller. Whether it was an internal Valve team or an external, some real TLC was put into its design.

On the other hand: trying to use it makes me feel like I’ve had a frontal lobotomy, and don’t really feel like my brain cells can ever adjust to it versus a normal controller. Where normal is probably anything in the vein of a PlayStation or Xbox (modern) or Super Nintendo or Genesis (classic) controller.

Yeah, I think it’s going to end up in /dev/closet. Unless someday they’re worth something on eBay.