Day 3 of a 4 day weekend.
I started the weekend with a sore throat, but it seems to have retreated. I spent this morning making two trips to Bunnings. Nothing of note can be achieved in one trip, it always takes two.
I’ve been playing a some Starcraft II on my PC connected to my TV. Other games I can play with a controller on the couch, but this really needs a keyboard and mouse. I had been playing with them on the coffee table, but this makes it a lot more comfortable to sit on the couch and use the computer.
Photography
Last weekend I put up a new blog post with a lot of photos from a national park just outside Helsinki. I enjoyed that day trip a lot, and it was good to go back through the photos.
This weekend I’ve been going through my photos from Oulu in Finland, not ones from the two nights chasing the aurora, but ones from around the town. I hope to have those ones up this week.
What have I been watching?
Star Trek Discovery wrapped up the second season this week. The two-part finale was fantastic. I kind of wish I had more faith in it at the start of the season where there were what I felt were a couple of missteps.
After last week’s episode I did some Google and managed to find the 4 mini-episodes CBS produced between season 1 and season 2.
In Netflix go to ‘Trailers and More’ for Discovery, and there are four 10-15 minute shorts.
They added a lot to the story, and cleared some things up. It is (now) clear the writers and showrunner had a clear goal at the start of the season, and they nailed it. I am just happy to have a Star Trek that does the ‘golden age of television’ thing and have a single story arc for a season, and Orville to give me new and original Star Trek-esk content.
Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse
I never got around to seeing this in theaters. There isn’t a lot to say, other than it is amazing, and totally justified the Oscar win. The animation is incredible, the story is great. It is easily Nicholas Cage’s greatest comic book movie, ever, though that was a low bar to get over. Spider Ham, Spider-Man Noir, Gwen, the whole thing was brilliant. Strongly recommend everyone see this movie.
Slowly meandering dead zombies…
The Walking Dead wrapped up in the last couple of weeks. It ended on an non-cliffhanger cliffhanger. I still care a tiny bit about the core characters, but it is getting harder and harder to justify. I didn’t hate the final episode. It was even pretty good in places, but the whole thing has gotten a bit meh.
One of the main characters, Maggie, disappeared early in the season, and simply hasn’t turned up again. I wondered if the actress had quit, and if they were working on anything else. Turns out they are, Whiskey Cavalier.
Episodic Mission Impossible, with just enough of a sense of humour to make it watchable. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, but then at the end of the second episode they did one smart thing. I’ll just say never bring a knife to a gunfight.
Next week is the release of Avengers: Endgame. I watched Avengers: Infinity War in preparation this week. I enjoyed Infinity War, mainly for the amazing dialogue between all the characters that meet for the first time. The action is good, but Thor on the Guardian’s ship is amazing.
There is also the look on Thano’s face when he is fighting Captain America and he thinks, gees, this guy is a lot stronger than he looks.
What have I been listening to?
For reasons I can’t explain, well it was mentioned on Chat 10 Looks 3, I listened to Play by Moby. I also listened to a couple of records
Over the weekend I listened to a couple of records on my record player, like a good hipster. Puce by I am Duckeye, and Darker Days by Peter Bjorn and John.
What have I been playing?
A few weeks ago I accidently watched a few Starcraft II games on Twitch. I do enjoy watching the games. The professional gamers play very differently to me. They have these insane ‘actions per minute’ stats, where they micromanage their units in battle.
I take my time, build solid defense, and only attack when I am confident I can take them. This means I suck at multiplayer, but I do enjoy the single player campaigns. I’ve sunk a quite a few hours into the campaigns over the last couple of weeks.
I like games with single player campaigns.