Been taking lots of shots of the kids, but one finally came out nice!

(edit: Ah, I figured it out, I can’t let the blog create resized versions of my giant files. To get the original size file (for printing) click here! It will look horrible in your web browser)

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (11 hours):

https://youtu.be/zRYruIvgd5w?list=PLEJrELYLxNgVMLzx98YPIGhKdSDiGFjaU

There are many times that The Giant Bombcast or other video game podcasts have led me to discover games I wouldn’t have otherwise considered: Peggle, Saint’s Row the Third, Assassin’s Creed, and The Witcher. But there was one time they did me wrong: XCOM: Enemy Unknown. They made it sound like it was just an exercise in frustration in which you died at every turn and it since it was made by Firaxis, I thought it was just going to look like Civ. Nothing wrong with that, but I already had Civ. But Dan got an extra copy at some point and gifted me this one. It’s been a blast and I’ve loved playing it even as it has started to kick my butt as the difficulty ramps up. If I had more time, I’d be playing this game A LOT.

Although, if you aren’t judgemental, I guess it’s a good thing it exists. I know some women (not Danielle, we both rarely drink alcohol) who had miserable pregnancies because they couldn’t drink. So at least this way if they want to drink now that the baby’s out, they can make sure the milk is alcohol-free.

Finally got the change to post some shots from Dina’s wedding. I didn’t take too many photos since I was shooting the official video. Enjoy:

And a couple videos of the kids dancing with Fran:

Mom got me a new LED ring flash for my birthday. I’ve wanted one for a while, but they were always too expensive for a niche subject (they’re mostly only useful for macro shots). But with an LED ring flash, the flash can be cheap because it doesn’t need to be TTL or E-TTL. It is always on so the camera just uses that light as the ambient light calculation. Again, it works best when you’re doing a macro shot. As a test, here’s my mom’s eye:

These guys show up during rush hour every Friday. I don’t care if you agree or disagree with their views, but it’s so annoying that it backs up traffic as people try and read the signs.

18 GB RAM on Bowser

Thanks to mom, now I have 18 GB of triple RAM on Bowser. Incidentally, it’s the first time I’ve used the Task Manager in Window 10 and it’s really slick! I like it - it matches the look/feel/usability of the similar utilities in KDE’s Plasma 5.

I created my first GPG key 10 years ago when I didn’t really know anything about encryption. So I have created a new key and signed it with my old one. You can find it here: My New GPG Key

I’ve also uploaded it to the servers supported by KGPG.

It went a little something like this.

Scarlett: “Will the leaves be back in the Spring?”

Eric: “Yes, they’ve fallen now, but they’ll be back in the Spring.”

Scarlett: “It’s like MAGIC!”

So much in there - learning things for the first time, the wonder of childhood, the reason it took humans to long to understand science vice magic.