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The Irishman is a magnificent achievement on so many levels. A truly compelling three and a half hours from beginning to end. Very glad I got to see this in the big screen. I only wish the chances of being able to own it someday were not so slim.

Well I was gonna finish Luigis Mansion tonight but.....

What, what, what.... WHAT? 🤯

I really dug the hell out of “Doctor Sleep”. It might be one of my favorite films this year, in fact. It’s a wonderfully respectful sequel to a film that I didn’t think ever needed one. It’s such a significantly different movie with its own tone and pace with plenty of callbacks and sprinkles to the original Kubrick film. My fear going in was that this would end up going deep on the nostalgia play and zoom right past homage right into Kubrick copycat territory (given I have little knowledge of the book) but Mike Flanagan does an amazing job of setting is own course here. Despite there being plenty of homage to chew on. By the time we end up in the finale and the much stronger ties to the first movie become evident, it feels earned and well executed. The cast is just brilliant, really. Carl Lumbly and Alex Essoe who play Dick Halloran and Wendy Torrance respectively impressed the hell out of me. Both capture the essence of what Scatman Crothers and Shelly Duvall brought to the roles without feeling like imitations/distractions and with very, very limited screen time. Essoe in particular sounds uncannily like Duvall. Rebecca Ferguson is dynamite and downright screen stealing as Rose. It helps that’s she’s a damned knock-out but the range she shows here after some of the her most recent action outings left a mark. Curran as Abra is also fantastic and a standout. Both have great screen chemistry with Ewan as Danny who’s fantastic in his own right with a difficult role. I could go on but seriously, it’s a top notch horror thriller of a film from start to finish. I can’t recommend it enough.

My seat for tonight’s festivities!

A friend was complaining that his hdr feed was too dark as well, I didn't ask him id he had that issue with any other source material. I was only watching the regular feed and all the issues i think i had can be blamed on my horrible tv. Really enjoyed the episode. If the rest of the season matches the quality of this episode I'll be pretty happy. I have spoken.

Sonic Redesigned Character design is much better, good on them for changing the look.

Some video we took of the brawl at the end. Love Jericho taking down the camera guy 😆

I think they are much better than the ones Sony came out with a few months ago. I’ve been really pleased at how well they did blocking out busy airport and airplane sounds.

I played through the first two hours. It’s absolutely stunning visually. The art direction, presentation and music are just *chef’s kiss*. The HDR implementation is also very strong. I made sure to calibrate using the PS4’s new HDR calibration tool and enabled the HGIG setting on the C9 and it does bring out some additional detail from the standard HDR game mode. Mechanically it’s an interesting game to say the least. There are systems to control balance, organize encumberance as well as your typical health and stamina meters. Holding both shoulder buttons will force Sam to hold on to the belts for his cargo which helps to balance him out when he’s carrying a heavy load but doing this will slow you down. It will also slow down the rate of stamina burn while in water for example. Don’t hold them and you’ll need to press either shoulder button if Sam loses his balance but otherwise, he moves faster. If you don’t pay attention then Sam will fall damaging the load thus affecting your rating upon delivery. Alternately, you can hold precious cargo in either hand as well....and I do mean hold. You pick up cargo by pressing and holding either shoulder button which represents your hands. Let go and the cargo drops. Press triangle and you move it to your back. Holding cargo in your hand protects it from damage. Even from a fall so there’s some strategy there. Rain or timefall as it’s called in the game is corrosive and basically ages most anything it touches. So if you’re in the rain long, your cargo will get damaged. Rain also brings about the BT’s which are the ghostly other world beings in the trailers. It appears there was some kind of explosion that caused the world if the living and the dead to collide and that’s the core of the world building and narrative early on. Its an interesting if super weird game but I’ve liked what I have played so far. I was surprised by how quickly the game launches you into its gameplay. There are cutscenes interspersed but it didn’t feel Metal Gear Solid 4 tedious. Obviousky early, early days here but I’m intrigued by the setup of the story and the visuals are just slack jaw gorgeous. I’m traveling next week so I won’t be able to dive in but completing Luigi’s Mansion 3 needs to come first anyways. I’ll post more thoughts when I do more of a deep dive in the coming weeks.

This seems completely unnecessary, and yet kind of brilliant... 😆

This looks beautiful:

I legit laughed my ass off at this. If you’ve never watched the videogamedunkey, you’re in for a treat.

So the recommendations are for NordVPN or ExpressVPN as they cover IP, DNS and hostname. VPN’s that only mask IP appear to be blocked by default (like Netflix). The only real issue is billing if you don’t have a US payment method. I have a US iTunes account and I can pay Disney+ through that so no problem there but, you’ll need a payment method once you get past the IP/DNS/Host check. I’m not sure about accessing from the Netherlands with the US account to see if the different library‘s are available but I’ll check that once I get a chance. Article on using a VPN for access: https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/entertainment/watch-disney-plus-uk-3777628/

Looked fine to me

I would really love to know the backstory on that joke. It has to be the name of Seth Macfarlane's x-wife's boyfriend or something. At least, I hope so.

Mandalorian just started for me. Oh and.... Carlos.

Lol Keith! "You win this time Ralphie, but we'll be back" Black Bart - Christmas Story

Still playing. Still enjoying it. Been spending a lot of time building up the road system. VASTLY improves hauling cargo. Surprised that with all the attention to detail, that there isn’t a day/night cycle. Seems like it would be quite a bit more tense hunting BT’s, at night.

Love black cauldron. I saw it in radio city the weekend it came out

Finished this as well, and was a lot of fun. Other then the interface needing a few improvements, I did run into a few things towards the end that were glitches or bugs.

Today’s comfortable victory over City, corroborates that Liverpool are the strongest team in Europe and the ones to beat in the UCL. I think that Klopp’s high pressure/high work rate game has evolved as the perfect counter to the high possession idea of the perfect game that Barcelona and Pep showcase. The high pressure is revolutionizing the game; you see it now everywhere including La Liga teams that in prior years never gave Barcelona any trouble. Fuck, it is the most common strategy in FIFA among anybody with a clue, and as sick as I am of it, I can’t deny how effective it is. I would love to see a match between 2009’s Barcelona and the Liverpool team of the last 12 months, the ultimate test for such contradicting ideologies in the sport. Nevertheless, it’s a great time to be watching football.

I was just at Universal a couple of days ago for the Ignite attendee party, and finally got a chance to try a couple of the rides for the first time: -Kong is OK. Screens, but at least they're really big and convincing? Big animatronic at the end was neat. -Hagrid is really good. They're pretty crazy with the restraints though, and I almost couldn't get it tight enough for them to be satisfied on the bike. Longest line of the evening though. Most others were walk on to 10 mins, and this was 90 mins. They didn't seem to have the whole preshow running though-just fang wandering around that 3d screen. Besides those, managed to get on Forbidden Journey, Spider-man, and Gringott's before they shut down for the night. Not bad for 3 hours or so.

Death Honking

The new IPad is very nice, as is the keyboard case. The screen is not that much bigger then my original air, but it’s still a nice improvement. Glad I was waiting for BF so I saved myself $160 bucks which will now go towards something else that needs upgrading.

Retrobit finally released the 2.4ghz wireless controllers for the Saturn and mine arrived today. The packaging, build quality and feel are just glorious. For $35, this is well worth it.

This made me laugh a moment ago:

Not a fan of that myself. I couldn't give less of a shit about watching Agents of Shield for instance and if I needed to know anything going on there to get into the movies, I'll read a summary. It's not going to drive me to go watch their content. I mean, I plan to give those shows a chance but there's a METRIC TON of good TV content out there and if the shows are middling at best, I don't plan to waste my time with them long term just to make the movies worthwhile. I want the latest Jim Sterling rant on there now being movie release DLC, apparently.:)

Likely both. I know the new Airpods have Active Noice Cancellation, which sounds like reversing the outside noise to cancel out.

So I forgot my Airpods Pro in my other jacket this morning. Had to use the old Airpods instead. Have to say that I really miss the Pros! The difference is just night and day in sound quality.

I've got it pre-loaded, so ready to go. Not sure when I will get a chance to put some real time into the over the next few days.

I've been pretty happy with it too:

Haven’t tried the VRR support as of yet. It’s next on the list (primarily because I have to hook the X up to the set direct since the receiver won’t pass it). On the subject of uniformity/banding - I’m not one to hook up a slide and look for stuff but I loaded up Pan’s Labyrinth on Blu (Criterion) and loaded up a few sections of the Blair Witch game, Both of which present some challenging near black/low black level scenes where DSE and banding would readily appear and I’m happy to say that this new panel is even better than my 55in B6 which I thought was pretty great (after I had the panel replaced due to banding issues). I picked up the LG UBK90 today on sale for $229. Time to dump the Sony X800 which I’m about sick of seeing freeze up on every damned movie I throw at it. Good riddance. Dolby Vision here I come.

Amazing what can be done with the Animation features in the upcoming Procreate 5 update:

Looks like Freddy Krueger has a new strategy to scare teens.

AirPods Pro’s noise canceling is great on a 737. I sit in the exit row above the wings and they were fantastic.

Theming coming along nicely at Universal Japan’s Nintendo Land:

The Symfonisk surrounds came in and I’ve got the whole 5.0 setup working now. The Beam was really easy to setup but these were a little finicky to get working. After the software update on the speakers, they were quick and easy to add so not too bad overall. Design-wise I love them: they look great IMO, are really unobtrusive (don’t take up much room at all) and blend in with my room nicely I think. I have them on my end tables currently vertically but they have a great wall mount available so I may go that route later and put them up vertically or horizontally. The sound quality out of them is very good too. I expected them to be good but, to lack some depth however, they are surprisingly “big” on sound for small speakers. I don’t think they sound as impressive as the One’s I’ve heard in a similar setup but, as surrounds for home theater they sound amazing. They are currently set to ambient for playing music and this adds a nice balance to the music focused from the Beam. For TV or a movie - they are full surrounds and work beautifully with the Beam at the front with really good, clear directional surround sound. Very impressed for reasonably priced wireless speakers (with Airplay 2). The whole thing together as a 5.0 system works incredibly well - even better than I’d hoped. Versus the discreet speakers + sub and receiver I was using before I think the Sonos sound better with deeper, more pronounced bass (despite not having the sub), clearer and more precise sound and better directional audio. Really impressed

It really illustrates why Nintendo’s focus has been in merging the home/portable markets for their console releases since the Wii U. Their portable devices have been their bread and butter for a long time. The Switch is the natural evolution that captures both markets in one device. It also helps illustrate why the Switch Lite is a thing even if it’s not for me. I’m curious to see if we do get a proper Switch “Pro” hardware reset in the near future. Come 2021, we’ll be in the full swing of the next generation of consoles and it’s going to be harder to get some of those miraculous third party parts we’re seeing today. By then the Switch will still only be about 3 and a half years old. I don’t see a need for them to do a whole new platform, really. A Switch Pro with improved hardware specs, an even better screen with higher resolution support and cartridges with more storage in the $299-$350 range would be welcome and I’d certainly pick one up.