About a year and a half ago, I posted some suggestions for people trying to learn Japanese who wanted to keep their costs down... and everything there still seems to hold up. However, there's a new tool just on the market, from the makers of Human Japanese, that might provide some extra help with learning kanji in particular, called Satori Reader.
The basic description I would give is that it's a website where you can read a variety of articles on various topics in Japanese, but it's really more than that. Much like the Human Japanese series, it includes full spoken audio for each article. Past that, it's use of Kanji in articles is very customizable... you can tell the site what your level of knowledge is (be that by how commonly each kanji is used, by grade level, or from a custom list), and the site tailors the display of words based on your preferences (for example, hiragana if you don't know any of the kanji, kanji if you know all the kanji involved, and kanji with furigana if you know some of the kanji involved). You can also pick out words and phrases for review, which the site offers to you in a flash-card-style format at intervals, in both English to Japanese and Japanese to English formats, based on how you tell it you did the last time you saw that card. You can even export those words and phrases into external programs, but, as that's a feature I haven't tried, I can't speak to how useful it will be for you.
All that said, it's a pricier proposition than anything I've recommended to date. While it does have a free trial option, they expect to charge $12/month, or $99/year, for everyone who signs up for it after mid-January. Until then, they offer $7/month and $70/year options for "Founder Pricing", which is a little more bearable. Personally, I expect I'm going to go with the $70/year option after the first of the year, which is at least reasonably close to the streaming anime subscription I use that started me on this path to begin with. For the rest of you, hey, free trial, can only hurt so much to give it a look.
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Sunday, December 4, 2016
Now the ball's in Sony's court
It's been over 6 years since Sony decided to screw with their customers by removing Linux functionality from their PS3 line of devices without compensation. I was none too pleased by that turn of events (as posted here), and decided that I was done with buying anything from Sony... and, barring the odd movie that might have come out where Sony's involvement wasn't readily visible up-front, I've been quite good at sticking with that decision. It's with some mixed feelings then that I went ahead and submitted a claim, just now, for "class A" compensation under their lawsuit settlement process (which, on the very off chance somebody from the verification crew is wanting to make sure the post I submitted is really from a blog I control, my Claimant Number is F0CEDC52DF).
So, first off, any of you with the necessaries that somehow haven't heard, be sure to head to www.otherossettlement.com to make your claim before the December 7th deadline.
That said... if Sony makes good and pays out in full on my claim, they'll be the first company taken off my no-buy list that I can recall. Honestly though, I'm expecting they'll kick me down to a "class B" claim, since the only proof I have that I actually used the PS3 Linux capability is a brief whine about repartitioning going poorly afterwards, because I never thought to post about playing NetHack on PS3 after having mentioned doing so on PS2's Linux kit prior. Not that I'm going to rush out and buy a PS4 if they do pay up (6+ years of grudge doesn't slough off that easily), but at least it won't be a reflexive "hell no" if a Sony option does enter the mix.
So, first off, any of you with the necessaries that somehow haven't heard, be sure to head to www.otherossettlement.com to make your claim before the December 7th deadline.
That said... if Sony makes good and pays out in full on my claim, they'll be the first company taken off my no-buy list that I can recall. Honestly though, I'm expecting they'll kick me down to a "class B" claim, since the only proof I have that I actually used the PS3 Linux capability is a brief whine about repartitioning going poorly afterwards, because I never thought to post about playing NetHack on PS3 after having mentioned doing so on PS2's Linux kit prior. Not that I'm going to rush out and buy a PS4 if they do pay up (6+ years of grudge doesn't slough off that easily), but at least it won't be a reflexive "hell no" if a Sony option does enter the mix.
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
No Man's Sky 1.1 - one way *not* to update
I considered not posting anything about this, but, hey, it's been a couple of months, ought to put something up, yeah?
Over the past weekend, the folks at Hello Games finally released what they're calling their Foundation Update (as in the foundation on which all their future fun updates will build), also known as version 1.1. Finally got some play time in on it last night... the changes were a bit disorienting, but not bad per se. However, it left me with the feeling that, whatever their prior plans and intents might have been, this game is now effectively an unannounced "early access" title.
I don't say that sort of thing lightly. My last save pre-update was on an extreme radiation planet, but they re-generated the galaxy in the meantime, so I was punted back to the space station. I went back to the same planet, and it's now an extreme cold planet (fun side story, I originally named that planet after my brother's ex-wife, then named it again for my brother post-update... both tags appear to refer to the same planet now, so, in some way, they're sort of "together" again). While exploring that planet, I came across some Titanium, and was shocked to discover that I couldn't mine it now, not until I get an "advanced" mining laser. That prompted me to take a closer look at my craftables and refueling options... most of the crafting seems to have similar requirements (usually adding a minor component where the original recipe only called for one material), but life support looks to charge off of Thamium alone now (as opposed to any isotope including Carbon, which at least made some sort of sense), and the pulse drive now runs on... Iron. Simply put, an "update" to a game shouldn't alter the base mechanics of the game that radically, if it's a polished end-product.
It's not that the changes are bad or anything... I adapted pretty quickly to needing to gather more Iron for in-system travel, found and claimed a little base on a temperate little planet, landed on a freighter and quickly decided that it's out of my league, price-wise, for the foreseeable future, used my system scanner to get a preview as to what sort of minerals I would find on the various worlds in a system (which is very handy)... but the scope of changes in this first update tells me that I shouldn't invest too much time in this game at this stage of completeness, because things are still in flux as to what it's doing and where it's going, and there's other games I can play while this one works things out.
So, for me at least, I'm going to attempt what I can in the way of a "speed run" for the center of the galaxy now (already got my Atlas Stones), and, once that's done, set it aside until it's a little more fully baked.
Over the past weekend, the folks at Hello Games finally released what they're calling their Foundation Update (as in the foundation on which all their future fun updates will build), also known as version 1.1. Finally got some play time in on it last night... the changes were a bit disorienting, but not bad per se. However, it left me with the feeling that, whatever their prior plans and intents might have been, this game is now effectively an unannounced "early access" title.
I don't say that sort of thing lightly. My last save pre-update was on an extreme radiation planet, but they re-generated the galaxy in the meantime, so I was punted back to the space station. I went back to the same planet, and it's now an extreme cold planet (fun side story, I originally named that planet after my brother's ex-wife, then named it again for my brother post-update... both tags appear to refer to the same planet now, so, in some way, they're sort of "together" again). While exploring that planet, I came across some Titanium, and was shocked to discover that I couldn't mine it now, not until I get an "advanced" mining laser. That prompted me to take a closer look at my craftables and refueling options... most of the crafting seems to have similar requirements (usually adding a minor component where the original recipe only called for one material), but life support looks to charge off of Thamium alone now (as opposed to any isotope including Carbon, which at least made some sort of sense), and the pulse drive now runs on... Iron. Simply put, an "update" to a game shouldn't alter the base mechanics of the game that radically, if it's a polished end-product.
It's not that the changes are bad or anything... I adapted pretty quickly to needing to gather more Iron for in-system travel, found and claimed a little base on a temperate little planet, landed on a freighter and quickly decided that it's out of my league, price-wise, for the foreseeable future, used my system scanner to get a preview as to what sort of minerals I would find on the various worlds in a system (which is very handy)... but the scope of changes in this first update tells me that I shouldn't invest too much time in this game at this stage of completeness, because things are still in flux as to what it's doing and where it's going, and there's other games I can play while this one works things out.
So, for me at least, I'm going to attempt what I can in the way of a "speed run" for the center of the galaxy now (already got my Atlas Stones), and, once that's done, set it aside until it's a little more fully baked.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Another no-buy: HP
I've been around for a while, so I remember when Hewlett-Packard (as it was then known) was a good company, producing quality products. I got a LaserJet III used, abused it for a number of years, then passed it on as newer printers with better performance got ever-cheaper. To my mind, that really stopped about the time HP merged with Compaq, and, given superior options pretty much everywhere, I haven't bought any of their gear in quite some time... but the possibility was still there, should things turn around, or a rare outlier on the quality curve happened to cross my rader.
Now, not so much. HP Inc., as they are now known, first went and slipped a firmware update for their inkjet servers into the wild, which made them stop accepting refilled and third-party ink cartridges after a certain date... then, when they were called on it, they decided the "right" fix was to prepare an "optional" firmware update for people who know/care to fix what they broke. At the same time, apparently, they're reserving the right to similarly break their printers in the future.
I'm with the EFF in thinking this is basically a bait-and-switch on their customers... and I won't, personally or professionally, support any company that stoops to that level.
Now, not so much. HP Inc., as they are now known, first went and slipped a firmware update for their inkjet servers into the wild, which made them stop accepting refilled and third-party ink cartridges after a certain date... then, when they were called on it, they decided the "right" fix was to prepare an "optional" firmware update for people who know/care to fix what they broke. At the same time, apparently, they're reserving the right to similarly break their printers in the future.
I'm with the EFF in thinking this is basically a bait-and-switch on their customers... and I won't, personally or professionally, support any company that stoops to that level.
Sunday, September 18, 2016
Time for a little peevish whining
I'm comfortably middle-aged at this point, and I know one trap that's easy to fall into as you get older is to let life's little annoyances become your "small-talk filler" in lieu of anything interesting you're no longer doing. Wouldn't want that... luckily, I have this mostly-barren blog to dump that sort of thing into!
First off, of greatest interest to any potential readers out there... apple pears. Yes, this is a single fruit, a cross-breeding of two similar kinds of fruit. I picked up a five-pack at Costco, just to give them a go. My verdict: don't bother. They combine the worst aspects of their respective parents, giving you an oddly-colored fruit with a thick, not-quite-furry skin over a crisp-yet-almost-flavorless flesh. I didn't even half-finish the one I bit into, and I tossed the whole batch. You've been warned.
Then, after a long hiatus of pretty much just doing what I expect without issue, Comcast, specifically their Internet pricing. I've been a constant customer of theirs for a great many years, since they first brought high-speed internet to my neighborhood, so I'm more-or-less "grandfathered in" on a 15Mbps downstream connection, where their closest "regular" speeds on their billing schedule are 10Mbps and 25Mbps. As a bachelor living alone, 15 meg is plenty for me (since if there's any streaming going on, I'm the one doing it), so I'm in no rush to switch up. Standard pricing for my area is $49.95 for 10 meg, and $59.95 for 25 meg, and my connection has been $52.95 for quite some time... setting aside any issues of pricing-structure validity in general, that price fell at a reasonable mid-point between the two values, based on what I'm getting. For some reason, last month, that went up to $56.95, without any sort of notice... in fact, I missed it until I was balancing my credit card statement, even though I check their online billing system every month, so I've even got a little bit of nagging doubt that their system showed the increased price at the time of increase. In the grand scheme of things, no, I'm hardly going to miss the extra $4 a month... but a price increase for no better apparent reason than "because we can", and with zero notice beforehand, when literally every other entity I pay a monthly bill to goes out of their way to notify their customers up-front that an increase is coming (yes, I actually went through my bills to determine that), well, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Well, enough whining for the time being... things to do, people to see and all that.
First off, of greatest interest to any potential readers out there... apple pears. Yes, this is a single fruit, a cross-breeding of two similar kinds of fruit. I picked up a five-pack at Costco, just to give them a go. My verdict: don't bother. They combine the worst aspects of their respective parents, giving you an oddly-colored fruit with a thick, not-quite-furry skin over a crisp-yet-almost-flavorless flesh. I didn't even half-finish the one I bit into, and I tossed the whole batch. You've been warned.
Then, after a long hiatus of pretty much just doing what I expect without issue, Comcast, specifically their Internet pricing. I've been a constant customer of theirs for a great many years, since they first brought high-speed internet to my neighborhood, so I'm more-or-less "grandfathered in" on a 15Mbps downstream connection, where their closest "regular" speeds on their billing schedule are 10Mbps and 25Mbps. As a bachelor living alone, 15 meg is plenty for me (since if there's any streaming going on, I'm the one doing it), so I'm in no rush to switch up. Standard pricing for my area is $49.95 for 10 meg, and $59.95 for 25 meg, and my connection has been $52.95 for quite some time... setting aside any issues of pricing-structure validity in general, that price fell at a reasonable mid-point between the two values, based on what I'm getting. For some reason, last month, that went up to $56.95, without any sort of notice... in fact, I missed it until I was balancing my credit card statement, even though I check their online billing system every month, so I've even got a little bit of nagging doubt that their system showed the increased price at the time of increase. In the grand scheme of things, no, I'm hardly going to miss the extra $4 a month... but a price increase for no better apparent reason than "because we can", and with zero notice beforehand, when literally every other entity I pay a monthly bill to goes out of their way to notify their customers up-front that an increase is coming (yes, I actually went through my bills to determine that), well, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Well, enough whining for the time being... things to do, people to see and all that.
Friday, August 19, 2016
No Man's Sky
This is a bit of a tricky one... let me start by saying, after playing over 20 hours of No Man's Sky, I honestly like the game, and I think some of you might as well. I'll get into the pluses and minuses as I see them in a bit, but first, a list of what this post isn't about:
Of course, many gamers these days weren't even born back when that game came out, so they tend to judge it on their own terms. As in, the ground combat isn't as smooth as Call of Duty, so it's obviously trash... or, the dogfighting action in space isn't as gripping as [insert combat flight simulator of choice here], so it's obviously trash... or, the storyline isn't as well-planned as Mass effect, so... you see where I'm going with this? Here's the thing: all those games, you're supposed to be a highly-trained soldier/pilot/whatever, and/or The Hero, savior of humanity and all that. This game, you're just a guy, who wakes up on a planet next to a broken starship, and has to work out what to do from there. I started out thinking this might be like a "Space Frontiersman" type of game, but there's a fair population of at-least-as-advanced aliens everywhere you go... so maybe it's more "Space Hobo" than that... but it's got a definite whiff of "get bored doing what you're doing where you're doing it? Go do something else somewhere else!" to it.
That all said, it's not a perfect game, not by a long shot. The very "procedural generation" that gives it variety also limits the scope of that variety. Land form tends to be hilly, with possibly some caverns and/or water-like surfaces to deal with - but I've yet to see anything I'd call plains, swamps, or a mountain as such. Plant variability is also pretty limited - and in some cases nonexistent to my eye (I'm looking at you, interaction-produces-resource plants). Animals have the best variability, but not a lot of behavior variability to work with, so if you've seen one scuttling attack mantis-crab, you've kind of seen them all. I'm pretty sure that procedural generation is also what makes the game put such a load on my machine... I'm thinking the people saying it needs to be "better optimized" don't know how much optimization in a regular game comes down to limiting visible play area and controlling polygon counts on the various pieces in play. I'll be happy to be proven wrong there, though... the game's quite playable on my PC, but I'd really prefer to stream it to my living room via the Steam Link, and that's proven to be a bridge too far to date.
Oh, and then there's tweaks that could be made to current systems, never mind features to be added down the road... simply put, as-is, there isn't much that's actually a threat to you in the world, that I've seen so far. Pirates can bombard you into oblivion from afar, if they pop in a good distance from you, but everything else I've had to deal with, whether sentinels or hostile animals, just don't pack much of a punch. Past that, some of the alien interaction seems imbalanced as well... the "right" choice costing you tens, maybe hundreds of credits, when earning thousands of credits is a simple as scanning a few plants and animals, or mining and selling a few minerals. It's not exactly a fair comparison, but, difficulty-wise, it's almost like the match-3 or Farmville of space-exploration games as stands now... not zero-difficulty, but certainly not "hardcore" by any means.
At the end of the day, though, all you want to know is whether this game is for you, right? I'll just say this... all the words that I've written up there, they won't really give you a good feel for the game. I suggest you do what I did... watch some gameplay on YouTube, and decide for yourself. I'll guarantee you this, though... if you do pick it up, it will be like nothing else you've played to now, and you may never see its like again.
- This isn't about the game being not what was advertised over the years, or any promises made or perceived to be made by the developers or anybody else associated with the game. I saw the first video that was put out, thought the game might be worth checking out once it was released, and ignored it after that. Once it came out on PS4, I watched some other people play the game on YouTube, and decided what I saw there was worth ponying up $60 to play on my PC. It's a shame if you imagined it to be more than it became, and are disappointed thereby... if you pre-ordered, however, I have no sympathy for you, since that's been a proven path to disappointment for years now.
- This isn't about major technical issues with running the game. I know there are some people out there who can't even get the game to run... luckily, I haven't had any major issues. Well, I did crash to desktop on one warp between systems, but I didn't lose anything in the process, so it was just a nuisance.
Of course, many gamers these days weren't even born back when that game came out, so they tend to judge it on their own terms. As in, the ground combat isn't as smooth as Call of Duty, so it's obviously trash... or, the dogfighting action in space isn't as gripping as [insert combat flight simulator of choice here], so it's obviously trash... or, the storyline isn't as well-planned as Mass effect, so... you see where I'm going with this? Here's the thing: all those games, you're supposed to be a highly-trained soldier/pilot/whatever, and/or The Hero, savior of humanity and all that. This game, you're just a guy, who wakes up on a planet next to a broken starship, and has to work out what to do from there. I started out thinking this might be like a "Space Frontiersman" type of game, but there's a fair population of at-least-as-advanced aliens everywhere you go... so maybe it's more "Space Hobo" than that... but it's got a definite whiff of "get bored doing what you're doing where you're doing it? Go do something else somewhere else!" to it.
That all said, it's not a perfect game, not by a long shot. The very "procedural generation" that gives it variety also limits the scope of that variety. Land form tends to be hilly, with possibly some caverns and/or water-like surfaces to deal with - but I've yet to see anything I'd call plains, swamps, or a mountain as such. Plant variability is also pretty limited - and in some cases nonexistent to my eye (I'm looking at you, interaction-produces-resource plants). Animals have the best variability, but not a lot of behavior variability to work with, so if you've seen one scuttling attack mantis-crab, you've kind of seen them all. I'm pretty sure that procedural generation is also what makes the game put such a load on my machine... I'm thinking the people saying it needs to be "better optimized" don't know how much optimization in a regular game comes down to limiting visible play area and controlling polygon counts on the various pieces in play. I'll be happy to be proven wrong there, though... the game's quite playable on my PC, but I'd really prefer to stream it to my living room via the Steam Link, and that's proven to be a bridge too far to date.
Oh, and then there's tweaks that could be made to current systems, never mind features to be added down the road... simply put, as-is, there isn't much that's actually a threat to you in the world, that I've seen so far. Pirates can bombard you into oblivion from afar, if they pop in a good distance from you, but everything else I've had to deal with, whether sentinels or hostile animals, just don't pack much of a punch. Past that, some of the alien interaction seems imbalanced as well... the "right" choice costing you tens, maybe hundreds of credits, when earning thousands of credits is a simple as scanning a few plants and animals, or mining and selling a few minerals. It's not exactly a fair comparison, but, difficulty-wise, it's almost like the match-3 or Farmville of space-exploration games as stands now... not zero-difficulty, but certainly not "hardcore" by any means.
At the end of the day, though, all you want to know is whether this game is for you, right? I'll just say this... all the words that I've written up there, they won't really give you a good feel for the game. I suggest you do what I did... watch some gameplay on YouTube, and decide for yourself. I'll guarantee you this, though... if you do pick it up, it will be like nothing else you've played to now, and you may never see its like again.
Monday, August 8, 2016
Remember when businesses didn't screw (with) their customers?
It's been a couple of months since my last rant, and No Man's Sky hasn't come out yet... how about we examine a couple of nuisances I came across on my last trip to Seattle?
Between one thing and another, it had been about 2 years since I last got "out of town" (note to self, that's way too long for your continued mental equilibrium). Things tend to change over that span of time, and, when it comes to paying for goods and services, those changes are usually either good (for the customer), or at least ignorable (anybody out there use a cell-phone based "wallet" yet?). Catching two such changes that were neither put a bit of a damper on my trip.
First, a friend and I went to check out an event near the Mariners' stadium. Naturally, for all we were there many hours before the day's game started, event pricing was in play for all the parking lots nearby... but, for whatever other nuisances might be in play, event pricing does mean a fixed price for the day's parking, normally. We find a little lot with a sign saying $25 event parking (robbery, basically, but marginally tolerable), and it's even got an electronic pay station (convenience to the consumer, that's probably a good thing). Choose the event payment and... up comes an extra $5 plus in taxes, which may or may not be legit, but would normally be included in the event price. As far as we were concerned, that's pretty well a bait and switch, so we moved on (and, luckily, found free street parking within a few blocks).
Next day, it was time to head home, and I decided to fill up the car before I hit the road. The place I used last time was boarded up, but there was a nice new Shell station nearby, so I gave it a try. New pumps with large, easy-to-read color displays on them, what could be wrong with that? Well, no sooner do I put in my card info and choose what I want, I'm surprised to have a commercial start up on the screen, with audio... and there's no pressure on the line. Best case, this smart new pump was too stupid to display that it was out of the gas I wanted... worst case, they expected you to sit through who knows how many commercials before the would deign to give you the gas you wanted to pay them for. I verified the same behavior on another pump at the station, just to make sure it wasn't a glitch with the one pump, then got the hell out of there and gassed up elsewhere... and I don't see myself willingly going back to a Shell station any time in the near future.
So, remember, all you synergizers and revenue enhancers out there in corporation land... you start playing games with us consumers before you've got the money in hand, we can still walk. Sometimes, if you're bad enough, even if you have some of our money, we'll walk and never come back.
Between one thing and another, it had been about 2 years since I last got "out of town" (note to self, that's way too long for your continued mental equilibrium). Things tend to change over that span of time, and, when it comes to paying for goods and services, those changes are usually either good (for the customer), or at least ignorable (anybody out there use a cell-phone based "wallet" yet?). Catching two such changes that were neither put a bit of a damper on my trip.
First, a friend and I went to check out an event near the Mariners' stadium. Naturally, for all we were there many hours before the day's game started, event pricing was in play for all the parking lots nearby... but, for whatever other nuisances might be in play, event pricing does mean a fixed price for the day's parking, normally. We find a little lot with a sign saying $25 event parking (robbery, basically, but marginally tolerable), and it's even got an electronic pay station (convenience to the consumer, that's probably a good thing). Choose the event payment and... up comes an extra $5 plus in taxes, which may or may not be legit, but would normally be included in the event price. As far as we were concerned, that's pretty well a bait and switch, so we moved on (and, luckily, found free street parking within a few blocks).
Next day, it was time to head home, and I decided to fill up the car before I hit the road. The place I used last time was boarded up, but there was a nice new Shell station nearby, so I gave it a try. New pumps with large, easy-to-read color displays on them, what could be wrong with that? Well, no sooner do I put in my card info and choose what I want, I'm surprised to have a commercial start up on the screen, with audio... and there's no pressure on the line. Best case, this smart new pump was too stupid to display that it was out of the gas I wanted... worst case, they expected you to sit through who knows how many commercials before the would deign to give you the gas you wanted to pay them for. I verified the same behavior on another pump at the station, just to make sure it wasn't a glitch with the one pump, then got the hell out of there and gassed up elsewhere... and I don't see myself willingly going back to a Shell station any time in the near future.
So, remember, all you synergizers and revenue enhancers out there in corporation land... you start playing games with us consumers before you've got the money in hand, we can still walk. Sometimes, if you're bad enough, even if you have some of our money, we'll walk and never come back.
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
How about a little love for OTA DVR gear?
I cut cable TV long ago, and the vast majority of my TV time is fed by streaming services at this point (primarily, in no particular order, Netflix, HBO Now, CrunchyRoll, and Funimation). However, there's still the odd something I like to grab from over-the-air broadcasts... problem being, watching broadcast TV requires watching on a schedule, and who does that these days? If only somebody made a cheap-but-solid DVR, that would be the way to go.
Of course, nothing's ever that simple... most DVRs I've run across either don't support over-the-air broadcasts at all, or are saddled with obscene subscription fees. Some years back, I thought I had found an answer with the first round of Simple.TV hardware, but not so much (here's their story, frankly I'm surprised they're still around in any way, shape, or form). Then, the folks at Microsoft released an over-the-air tuner for their XBox One, with a promise of DVR functionality "coming soon"... I bought a tuner on release day, and have been patiently waiting, keeping track of what little news I could find. Heck, as recently as March, I had news that the feature was in testing, stoking my hopes that it would finally come soon.
Yeah, you'd think I would have learned by now, but a promise by a corporation isn't worth the paper it's not written on. I don't know if it's because of some major bugaboo that cropped up in testing, or maybe some back-room deal with... who? At any rate, development is officially "on hold" now, while the resources on that project are redistributed to other XBox and Windows 10 projects... and if you think that "on hold" means anything other than the project is dead for this generation of hardware, I wish I had a bridge to sell you.
Of course, nothing's ever that simple... most DVRs I've run across either don't support over-the-air broadcasts at all, or are saddled with obscene subscription fees. Some years back, I thought I had found an answer with the first round of Simple.TV hardware, but not so much (here's their story, frankly I'm surprised they're still around in any way, shape, or form). Then, the folks at Microsoft released an over-the-air tuner for their XBox One, with a promise of DVR functionality "coming soon"... I bought a tuner on release day, and have been patiently waiting, keeping track of what little news I could find. Heck, as recently as March, I had news that the feature was in testing, stoking my hopes that it would finally come soon.
Yeah, you'd think I would have learned by now, but a promise by a corporation isn't worth the paper it's not written on. I don't know if it's because of some major bugaboo that cropped up in testing, or maybe some back-room deal with... who? At any rate, development is officially "on hold" now, while the resources on that project are redistributed to other XBox and Windows 10 projects... and if you think that "on hold" means anything other than the project is dead for this generation of hardware, I wish I had a bridge to sell you.
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Goodbye CenturyLink, Virgin Mobile, hello Project Fi
If I haven't made it clear elsewhere in this blog, I'm a bit of a cheap bastard. That said, one place I've spent needless amounts of cash is my phone services... which is to say, I kept a land line for far too many years. Mind you, I did get some entertainment value out of it, giving it out as my phone number (technically true) to a great many businesses and getting to listen to it ring, and there is some security benefit to a hard line, but, even stripped down as far as I could get it, that land line still cost me about $33 per month. Combine that with about $39/month for cell service through Virgin Mobile, and that's much too much, especially for phones, which I don't much care for to begin with.
Enter Google's latest tentacly arm of world domination, Project Fi, a cell service that piggybacks on Sprint, T-Mobile, and Wi-Fi. Only downside is you have to use a Google Nexus phone, but, as part of their open-to-the-public deal, I could get that for $150 cheaper than usual... and get a fully up-to-date phone that actually gets security patches and the like in the process. Oh, and, in my case, service comes in at no more than about $35/month, thanks to my limited mobile data usage... but, whatever you pay for data, any unused data, they give you credit for. Not, mind you, "rollover" data or anything like that, but actual money credit against your next bill. If it sounds at all interesting, you should check the link above, I'm sure Google will do a much better job of selling you than I can.
Of course, getting new phone service isn't a hard thing to do, but, in this age of "customer retention specialists", getting rid of your old service can be a pain. Of the two, I expected CenturyLink to be the harder to get away from, so, for that and other reasons, I decided to try for the fait accompli, get that number transferred over to Project Fi, and follow up to handle any remaining issues thereafter. For anybody that wants to try that themselves, it was fairly straightforward... just use the account number listed on your statement, without any spaces or dashes, and your PIN should default to the last 4 of your SSN. In my case (once I got the account number right), it took 2 business days to transfer the phone number, and they automatically scheduled the disconnect for 2 days after that. I don't expect any further issues with CenturyLink at this point, but I'll be sure to update this post if I do. Likewise, I don't expect any major issues with canceling my Virgin Mobile service when I'm ready to do so (it's prepaid, after all), but I'll post again if that turns into anything messy too.
Update: Three weeks on, and it's so far, so good... CenturyLink disconnected as expected, my final bill was a negative balance, and I received a check for that amount recently, so I think that's pretty well wrapped up. Virgin Mobile is still a bit in the air at the moment... their website and automated phone support don't have an option to outright cancel, so I used their "contact us" tool to let them know I intended to cancel on April 18th, and got an email reply from someone who, well, English wasn't their first language, saying they'd have a specialist contact me. Got a callback on the 20th, from somebody who got bad info as to what they were calling for... once we got that straightened out, they told me that, since my credit card was no longer on the account, it would just expire after 60 days... so, we'll see what the story is once a payment doesn't hit their service.
Enter Google's latest tentacly arm of world domination, Project Fi, a cell service that piggybacks on Sprint, T-Mobile, and Wi-Fi. Only downside is you have to use a Google Nexus phone, but, as part of their open-to-the-public deal, I could get that for $150 cheaper than usual... and get a fully up-to-date phone that actually gets security patches and the like in the process. Oh, and, in my case, service comes in at no more than about $35/month, thanks to my limited mobile data usage... but, whatever you pay for data, any unused data, they give you credit for. Not, mind you, "rollover" data or anything like that, but actual money credit against your next bill. If it sounds at all interesting, you should check the link above, I'm sure Google will do a much better job of selling you than I can.
Of course, getting new phone service isn't a hard thing to do, but, in this age of "customer retention specialists", getting rid of your old service can be a pain. Of the two, I expected CenturyLink to be the harder to get away from, so, for that and other reasons, I decided to try for the fait accompli, get that number transferred over to Project Fi, and follow up to handle any remaining issues thereafter. For anybody that wants to try that themselves, it was fairly straightforward... just use the account number listed on your statement, without any spaces or dashes, and your PIN should default to the last 4 of your SSN. In my case (once I got the account number right), it took 2 business days to transfer the phone number, and they automatically scheduled the disconnect for 2 days after that. I don't expect any further issues with CenturyLink at this point, but I'll be sure to update this post if I do. Likewise, I don't expect any major issues with canceling my Virgin Mobile service when I'm ready to do so (it's prepaid, after all), but I'll post again if that turns into anything messy too.
Update: Three weeks on, and it's so far, so good... CenturyLink disconnected as expected, my final bill was a negative balance, and I received a check for that amount recently, so I think that's pretty well wrapped up. Virgin Mobile is still a bit in the air at the moment... their website and automated phone support don't have an option to outright cancel, so I used their "contact us" tool to let them know I intended to cancel on April 18th, and got an email reply from someone who, well, English wasn't their first language, saying they'd have a specialist contact me. Got a callback on the 20th, from somebody who got bad info as to what they were calling for... once we got that straightened out, they told me that, since my credit card was no longer on the account, it would just expire after 60 days... so, we'll see what the story is once a payment doesn't hit their service.
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Disgaea PC, Rocket League, and related things
So, over 3 months since my last post? Best get back into it by writing about what I know - games!
First, the catch-up bits... I know I mentioned Rocket League in passing, as part of my Steam Link and Steam Controller write-up, but that's hardly sufficient at this point. First off, the Steam Link has improved with the addition of hardware video encoding support for all the major graphics manufacturers, all but eliminating the lag I reported on earlier. Past that, though, Rocket League is so much fun that, having gotten it for free as part of my Steam Link purchase, I ponied up the cash for it when it launched on the XBox One, for the better-for-the-task controller and my social circle there. If you don't know anything about it, think "spastic monkey rocket jump car soccer", and you'll be pretty close. It's not a deep game, but it is a load of fun, and I heartily recommend it.
On the other hand, there's Disgaea PC, a port of a port of an old PlayStation 2 game. I'm a fan of the series, and would desperately like all of them brought to PC. When I saw the news that the first one was slated to come out, I was thrilled... but then, I saw the push for pre-orders, and got that sinking feeling. Launch day came yesterday, and, as I feared, the reports started pouring in of weird performance issues from all corners... but, initial reports seemed to indicate that it was mostly people with nVidia graphics cards seeing the worst problems (I have an AMD card), and the producers were quick to accept that there were issues they missed in testing and promising to get things fixed. So, I paid my dues, took my spin of the wheel, and... well, as-is, it seems to be playable, so long as I turn off anything "improved" from the original version, and for my definition of playable (it's slower than it should be, but not intolerably slow). I wish I could tell everyone to go and get it right now... but, I just can't. Hopefully, the developers work out the kinks, and this is just a momentary stumble on the road to getting good, working copies of all the games on PC.
Update: Wow, the Disgaea folks (Nippon Ichi Software America, or NISA) are taking care of business like no other company that I can think of in recent history. Two patches later in the course of a week or so, and the game's gone from "barely playable" to "working mostly as intended, with a glitch or two". Hopefully, NISA has learned the value of a beta or early access stage to their PC releases from this little debacle, but it looks like they're well on their way to cleaning up this mess, at least. As for the game itself, I'd say it's worth buying at this point... my main issues with it at this point are design choices that later games in the series improved on, but it's still a nice little game itself.
First, the catch-up bits... I know I mentioned Rocket League in passing, as part of my Steam Link and Steam Controller write-up, but that's hardly sufficient at this point. First off, the Steam Link has improved with the addition of hardware video encoding support for all the major graphics manufacturers, all but eliminating the lag I reported on earlier. Past that, though, Rocket League is so much fun that, having gotten it for free as part of my Steam Link purchase, I ponied up the cash for it when it launched on the XBox One, for the better-for-the-task controller and my social circle there. If you don't know anything about it, think "spastic monkey rocket jump car soccer", and you'll be pretty close. It's not a deep game, but it is a load of fun, and I heartily recommend it.
On the other hand, there's Disgaea PC, a port of a port of an old PlayStation 2 game. I'm a fan of the series, and would desperately like all of them brought to PC. When I saw the news that the first one was slated to come out, I was thrilled... but then, I saw the push for pre-orders, and got that sinking feeling. Launch day came yesterday, and, as I feared, the reports started pouring in of weird performance issues from all corners... but, initial reports seemed to indicate that it was mostly people with nVidia graphics cards seeing the worst problems (I have an AMD card), and the producers were quick to accept that there were issues they missed in testing and promising to get things fixed. So, I paid my dues, took my spin of the wheel, and... well, as-is, it seems to be playable, so long as I turn off anything "improved" from the original version, and for my definition of playable (it's slower than it should be, but not intolerably slow). I wish I could tell everyone to go and get it right now... but, I just can't. Hopefully, the developers work out the kinks, and this is just a momentary stumble on the road to getting good, working copies of all the games on PC.
Update: Wow, the Disgaea folks (Nippon Ichi Software America, or NISA) are taking care of business like no other company that I can think of in recent history. Two patches later in the course of a week or so, and the game's gone from "barely playable" to "working mostly as intended, with a glitch or two". Hopefully, NISA has learned the value of a beta or early access stage to their PC releases from this little debacle, but it looks like they're well on their way to cleaning up this mess, at least. As for the game itself, I'd say it's worth buying at this point... my main issues with it at this point are design choices that later games in the series improved on, but it's still a nice little game itself.
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