Yup. I learned cursive in the 2nd or 3rd grade. Probably the last time I used it as well. If I needed to write something in cursive, I would be pretty screwed. I remember some of the easier stuff, like the vowels. But if I needed to write a “q” or “k” I don’t think I could remember it.

With that said, learning how to read an analog clock is way easier. It’s a formula/method, and the numbers are right there. It’s not memorization. This should be something easy to teach.

The problem is that analog clocks are not in the curriculum for middle school and high school. It’s hard to find time to teach middle schoolers how to read clocks when you are struggling through “To Kill a Mockingbird” with a bunch of students on a 4th grade reading level.

Teenagers in inner city schools not knowing how to read analog clocks is a much more complicated issue than it seems on the surface. The solution is not “well they should have just had the childhood that I had and it wouldn’t be a problem”

I don’t normally do the whole trolling thing, but I gotta say I was tempted to write “Windows” with no explanation just to see how poorly it would go.

Is anybody else seeing Christopher Walken’s face in the top left of this picture when you look at the bottom right of it? I think I need a nap.

Round up the billionaires and put them in camps? Don’t threaten me with a good time.

This was the type of information I was looking for, no need to apologize for being rambly. I’m going to look into these games and use them to weight my decision. Of course this all kind of hinges on the price of the frame. If the price point is right, it might be the platform that finally gets me to buy into VR, but I’m still very skeptical.

Honestly, one of main motivators is throwing money at things that use Arm arch for gaming. It’s clearly the future and Apple silicon has forced the hand of a lot of developers to make business apps for Arm. But the steam frame feels like the first thing to make gaming on Arm mainstream. Baby steps, right? If the frame drums up enough development for games running natively on Arm, then maybe the next steam deck will be arm, and it will be super fucking awesome. Valve has spoken about not wanting to make a Steamdeck 2 until there is a “generational” leap. Arm arch would do that. It just needs people to develop for it (without using amd64 emulation)

I was in a ring pop commercial for about half a second, and it was just my silhouette.

I also started a Smash Brothers tournament for Smash 4 that ended up in the national rankings at one point. I think our largest tournament had 80 people. We had some high ranking players like Jtails come, and even guest commentators like Max Ketchum. I was actually college room mates with one of PC Chris’ close friends, and I had the pleasure of getting absolutely destroyed by Chris in Melee a few times in some basement hangouts. My college room mate actually made a brief appearance in the Smash Brothers documentary in the chapter about PC Chris.

Yeah but what are some good VR games? This is the part I am having a hard time justifying. I never hear about good VR games. Beatsaber? Super Hot? Like… I love the Steamdeck because there is a plethora of 10/10 indie games that run awesome on it. It feels to me like the VR game library is very lacking in that sense. Like are there “Must play - 10/10” games that are VR only? What is the “Hollow Knight” of VR?

I’ve never had a VR headset, and this is the first one I am considering as it feels like we are finally out of “First Gen” VR and we have moved into the product space of VR that is not clunky and burdonsome.

With that said - convince me to get one.

I have a killer PC for playing at my desk, and a Steamdeck for playing on my couch. What will I actually gain? I don’t really have the space in my apartment for things that require moving around, and I don’t really care for VRchat type social experiences. Is there anything about the platform that I will actually use, or will it become an expensive dust collector hanging on the side of my desk? I have a hard time coming up with something that will actually add value. The only thing I really want to play is Half Life Alyx because I love the series and it’s the only thing I haven’t played.

Pre-game or post-game baseballs?

First rat off the ship

I was in the Supermarket a few weeks ago and “All for Love” by Bryan Adams came on and I was like “Is this the fucking song from The Three Musketeers movie that came out in the 90s?”.

Indeed it was. Not sure who is making the Shop rite playlist, but rock on dude or dudette.

Like the age old advice for getting better at Smash Brothers - Don’t get hit.

I just tried this on my Pixel 10 Pro and it opened the AI assistant and now I’m angry.

Here’s my Christmas eve Wellington from this year. It’s only a 4 year old tradition at this point, but I’m getting pretty damn good at it. I sous vide the beef so it’s always perfectly cooked and tender. Getting the puff pastry to cook without over cooking the beef is the hard part. It takes several steps of refrigeration while doing the layers/wraps.

https://imgur.com/a/4O2ATMo

https://imgur.com/a/vE2Vdiu

Hah thanks. I had no idea about the reference and I was like “That’s a pretty weird animal to use in this context”

A giant sea bird?

Yeah that crossed my mind, but if I’m not mistaken Pokemon was developed by Game Freak, only licensed by Nintendo.

I mean, that’s capitalism, right? The manufacturers see that their product is still selling at a 300% markup, why would they bring the price back down when they can just make more profit if/when costs for them come back down? Sure they might drop it a little to make it “look” like a good deal. Just like GPUs. They went from being $600 for high end, to being $2000. Then when they announced that the next Gen was “only” going to be $1200 everybody was like “Wow! What a great deal!”

I hate this timeline. They just keep figuring out new ways to squeeze money out of me and ruining my hobbies.

As much (well deserved) hate that Nintendo gets, they are fantastic at this. They seem to be able to make games look good on low powered systems with stylistic decisions and smart optimization/coding. They learned some pretty important things in the NES/SNES era about using tricks to squeeze performance out of the few KB/MB they had to work with.

So does my ex