Aye, I kind of have things to ramble about this week.
Gaming
I started on UFO Robot Grendizer: The Feast of the Wolves. Its been on my list for a while. Its, kind of super awesome. Big chonkey robot combat, super cheezy old school anime plot and moments. I feel like the controls are maybe a little overly complex, but I can get used to it. Its also interesting how there are so many modes of gameplay depending on what is going on. Grendizer is a giant robot, but there is also a flying Space mode for when Grendizer combines with the space ship thing. Plus occasionally some on food running around as a human with an overhead view modes. Then an entirely different ship mode that’s basically a top down shooter.
Its kind of wild.
I have been working a bit on filling the mobile gap from Beatstar ending. Mostly just with Pokemon Go, which … it is what it is? I have never been one to care about “meta min max” in games. Like, my only real goal in PoGo is completing Pokedexes. I don’t PVP at all if I can help it. I do pretty good when I do with my Obstagon and Girafarig and a few others. I do raids and max battles, but I don’t generally go out doing dozens of them to try for max IVs and tons of candy. I just catch Pokemon and feed the extras to the candy grinder when my boxes get full.
Lately I’ve also been filling that hold with this Cat themed Nonograms game called Meow Tower. I like Nonograms, but also this one feels a little cheezy because it tells you of you screw up, and there doesn’t seem to be any penalty for screwing up, so its a little too easy. I try to not cheeze the “screw up on purpose” method of playing, but its easy to do it by accident.
Toys
I have been hearing about Blockees Transformers for a while, and since Walmart has some of the kits on $5 Black Friday mark down, I picked up Movie Megatron. I really enjoyed putting it together. These are literally model kits that become poseable figures. Similar to a lot of Japanese kits (mostly Bandai). I kind of want more, but also I am not real keen on a lot of the designs. The Blockees website lists Movie Prime with the Jetfire backpack and a G1 Shockwave that are nice looking, I may keep an eye out for those, even if they are not $5. The regular price is like, $15-$20.
Speaking of cheap Walmart stuff, there is a line of “Sega Classic” figures that is commonly there. I have not had much interest in it but came across a couple neat ones. This goofy Boxing Kangaroo, and this pretty near Weredragon. The line is surprisingly cheap as well, so I randomly picked up both. There was also a Werewolf, but he seemed a little too small to be useful.
On the subject of monster humanoids, I also snagged the No Way Home Lizard figure for cheap. He was on a markdown, and I had Amazon Credit, so he ended up being like $5. My No Way Home villains line up is basically complete now, though the Sandman I have isn’t quite right, he is close enough.
I also had a pre order come in about a month early. I ordered the Green Bay Packers NFL Transformer. I had the Steelers on order too because I liked the colors, but they are identical so I really don’t need it. The whole package is neater than expected. Basically just, all around a Deluxe Transformer at a Deluxe price that turns into a football helmet.
Music
I have been going hard on fixing ID3 tags still. I moved from doing it in VLC to a dedicated program called MP3Tag, I think. I have figured out most of its more useful automation features so I am moving right along. If you wonder why its taking so long, I have a LOT of music. Like, 20-30k tracks, easily. The bulk are correct, but maybe, 20% so far are not. For some reason my CD rips I made would sometimes tag all the FLACs, but not the MP3s. Even though I have ABCDE configured to rip both at once.
The process is basically, load an entire folder up, then skim the list for errors. This is a bit tedious, especially in things like, my Soundtracks folders. Its not always as obvious as a blank space, which means its easily lost in the visual clutter. For example, the soundtracks often list the “TITLE” tag as “Artist / Song” and the “ARTIST” as “Various” or “Movie/Game title”.
Thankfully, I found the automated way to tell it to split these tags apart using REGEX style syntax in MP3Tag.
TV
We randomly started a couple of new shows recently.
The first is FBI. Its way more my wife’s sort of show. Maybe it sill get better, but I am not super into it. The characters are not compelling like, at all. The lead chick is ok, the lead dude is actually interesting. I kind of actively dislike almost everyone else. The character details we get are very sparse and very very slowly dripped out. The show pretty much just focuses on whatever crime plot is going on. Also, watching this, really feels like its where a lot of people get their weird fetishism fears of cities and various world groups.
The second is one called High Potential. Also a cop show, but more like say, Castle. The basic plot is pretty much Good Will Hunting, if Matt Daemon was a “hot mom cleaning lady” instead of a dude from Brooklyn janitor. Also, Cop stuff instead of math.
The lead chick is a cleaning lady at the police station and sort of accidentally solves a crime overnight because she is a sort of idiot savant OCD type who remembers everything. Its fun, and unlike FBI, all of the characters are fun and interesting. I do feel like it leans a bit too much into the cop characters basically, constantly missing obvious clues, but also a lot of what she comes up with is very not that obvious.
