Peter Drake, he/him, LFHCfS 🔥 @peterdrake@social.cleverlibre.org

Tried out AER Memories of Old. The tutorial is very gentle right up until the first time you jump off a cliff and turn into a bird. It tells you to use space to flap, but as hard as I flapped I always nosedived.

Eventually I turned to the web and found out the reason: the aerial controls are completely different from the land controls. I assumed that, as on land, W would move you forward and space would move you up. This also seemed reasonable given past games from Joust through Flappy Bird. It turns out that, in the air, W and S point your nose down and up, while flapping propels you forward.

With this understanding, the game is not too stressful (so far). The low-poly graphics are appealing, including various birds you encounter on the floating islands.

My next question was whether there was some kind of quest journal. The answer from the Steam forum:

"It's a walking simulator. Walk / fly around and explore the world. You'll see, what you have to do. Otherwise in your hometown (-island) are some people. Talk to them, maybe they know, what to do."

Open world sandboxes aren't really my jam, but I'll give it a few more sessions to see if it grabs me.

#gaming #AER

Final G tally:

Go Nuts for Donuts! (x4)
+Go Nuts for Donuts! (x2)
Gravwell
*Go (x14)
Guildhall
Gaïa (x2)
Ghost Stories

https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/308826/2023-alphabet-board-game-challenge?itemid=9512214#item9512214

#BoardGamesAToZ #BoardGames

We were going to try Great Western Trail over boardgamearena today, but after reading the rules and/or watching videos, none of us had the appetite for such a huge bowl of victory point salad.

Instead we tried Gaïa, a tight little game with some clever mechanisms.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/163920/gaia

As usual, we concluded with Go Nuts for Donuts!.

#BoardGames #BoardGamesAToZ

Wrapping up G fortnight, I (black, even game) won a thrilling game by resignation. ai-sensei.com says it went back and forth a lot, but white never recovered from the mistake in the second image.

#go #igo #baduk #weiqi #BoardGames #BoardGamesAToZ

@nlowell I guess I've been spoiled by things like the old O'Reilly/ACM deal or music streaming services, which gave you the entire catalog.

I'm usually looking for specific books, not just something to read. I was also hoping this would be useful for students buying textbooks.

I recognize the economics at play, but it gave me flashbacks to Microsoft's Xbox Live, USAir's voucher to make up for an overbooked flight, and Amazon Prime Video, where "unlimited" inevitably meant "but not that one".

Ah -- I might have found the catch with that Kobo Plus deal. It doesn't give you access to their entire catalog, just some titles:

"Not every eBook or audiobook from Kobo is available to read with a subscription. There are over 1.3 million eBooks and over 100,000 audiobooks currently available through Kobo Plus, with more being added all the time.

Any time you see an eBook or audiobook with the option Read with Kobo Plus, it's available to read with your subscription."

A quick browse suggests that most books in their catalog aren't covered by this program.

#kobo #books #reading

I squeaked one out by 2.5 points. (I'm white, 3 stone handicap.)

#go #igo #baduk #weiqi #BoardGames #BoardGamesAToZ

Based on two data points, in a 7-season horror comedy TV show involving a perky blonde heroine, a dark-haired brooding good vampire (whom the heroine dates and who temporarily turns evil at one point), and a blonde bad-boy vampire (whom the heroine eventually also dates), if a new character named Ben is introduced in a later season, Ben is the same person as the season's villain.

#Buffy #TrueBlood

Am I the only one who saw this photo and thought someone was being murdered and/or romanced by a trilobite?

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/taubman-colleges-groundbreaking-project-brings-3d-concrete-printing-forefront

#3DPrinting #concrete #materials #construction

I'm not sure what happened here, but somebody fully committed to the bit. #BoardGames #bananagrams

"No! It's a ... blast, what the devil do children draw? It's a pheasant!" -Stewie

#MastoArt #drawing #birds #FamilyGuy

This Kobo Plus deal looks tempting. Does anyone have a sense of whether they treat their authors well?

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/plus

#writing #author #kobo #reading #books