My shelf is full of Ubisoft games. I’m playing one right now in fact, Farcry 2.

Thing is, I’ve bought a lot of them based of my love of the series, and the truth is, all the recent one’s have sucked. Farcry 2,3,5, primal, AC black flag, rocksmith 2014, anything splinter cell, ghost recon wildlands, all amazing games.

Farcry 6, AC anything after black flag, breakpoint, the new rocksmith, I hated them all. Not because I want to see a company fail, but because the games just don’t have the mechanics I enjoy.

I’ve spent a lot of money in good faith because ubisoft made some of my favorite titles, but I’m done. The only games I might buy at this point on faith are GTA6, Kingdom come Deliverance 2, and Subnautica 2.

I won’t buy anything ubisoft again until I’ve seen multiple reviews telling me exactly why I’m going to love this one.

No, I work in corporate AV, so I’m buying higher end digital signage for most applications at work.

NEC and Philip’s I’ve been using lately, but they are just the cost effective ones now. LG, Samsung, Sony, all make good displays.

Digital sign usually dont have any smart apps, and if they do you can fully disable them.

They also have all the advanced features you could want. Serial and TCP api, multiple ports of various formats, auto on with sync detect, etc.

For personal use, my last three have been Visio from Costco, and while it has the apps, I just never connect to the internet.

I have seen guides online to open up a display and disable the smart elements, but that seems overkill to me.

One thing to watch for, I’ve heard but haven’t witnessed that many displays are getting way more aggressive about auto connecting to wifi for sharing data and updates. If someone has unsecured wifi near by etc.

Yes and no. This is for parents, so ease of use is a huge factor.

The processors in smart TVs are often crap, plus who know what updates and monitoring they are pushing on you.

With a dedicated media device you only have one company to deal with. Personally, I use my playstation for everything, but for my mom a Sony bluray with the apps works fine.

At the end of the day, they’ll want netflix, amazon, youtube, hbo max, etc, and you get a way better experience with a media player vs smart tv. Sony is a known evil as it were, their hardware is good, and they generally don’t fuck up firmware updates.

If you want a true dumb TV, buy a commercial grade display made for digital signage. Bit more expensive, but designed for 24/7 operation and has none of the smart tv fat.

My advice is never use a smart tv of any kind.

Use a third party device like an apple tv or roku, hell even a bluray player with apps on it.

Then get what ever TV you like and never let it see the internet.

I personally like Visio, but any mid grade display is fine.

Well, it’s not like RDR2 had a short story, so I’m ok with that.

I suspect they want enough of a solo game to not piss off us old guys, then will quickly pivot to GTA6 online for the cash cow.

If the world and AI are good, I’ll have endless hours causing chaos and jumping motorcycles.

The pace of change is about every five years, and some elements are always in transition.

All in one turn key solutions are always one to two cycles behind, so may work great with the stuff I’m already replacing.

I think these are honest attempts to simplify, but by the time they have it sorted its obsolete. If I have to build modules anyway to work with new equipemnt, might as well just write all the code in my native language.

These also tend to be attempts at all in one devices, requiring you to use devices only compatible with those subsystems. I want to be able to use best tech from what ever manufacturer. New and fancy almost always means a command line interface, which again means coding.

20 years ago at a trade show, a new module based visual coding tool was introduced in my field which claimed “You’ll never need another programmer”.

Oddly enough, I still have a job.

The tools have gotten better, but I still write code every day because procedural programming is still the best way to do things.

It is just now reaching the point that we can do some small to medium scale projects with plug and play systems, but only with very specific equipment and configurations.

This is my solution. I’ve said it before, but think it should be repeated. The global population was half of today’s when I was born. 4 billion instead of the current 8+ billion.

That means if half the population disappeared today, we’d just be back where we were in 1975.

Not having kids is the best thing I can do for both the environment, and myself.

Has the added benifit of leaving me as a passive observer who doesn’t have a biological need to care about the future.

I went into one of the larger local shops to buy some risers or something to try and adjust my old setup. Older sales guy about my age took one look at my gear and said “Your knees must hurt like hell”.

I had the money, so I just went full in on new gear, and came away with something I would never have picked for myself.

Not only did he size everything proper for me, he made sure all the pieces were right together. For the first time in my life toe and heel line up exactly with the edge, and where they belong on the pressure points. I’d always riden too small a board and had far too wide a stance to make up for it.

I was still skeptical, but he told me if I didn’t love it he’d do a full price exchange.

Even though it’s about the longest board I’ve ever had, the banana camber makes it feel half the size. Took about three runs to actually trust the board, and I was completely sold, you couldn’t pay me to ride the old gear again.

I can’t see going to a theater for a movie ever again.

Live performance, sure, but I’ll watch movies at home.

True, but at least where I ride they have 100% snow making covered. Solution to man made warning is man made snow.

Joking aside, the season in the midwest sure has shrunk since I was a kid.

It’s like going from moms station wagon to a high end sports car. Do I need the performance sports car? Usually no, but those few times you push it, it’s ready for all that and more.

Thermal form boots are a must, though I guess that tech is more than 15 years old in ski boots at least. I no longer cringe and grunt when I put on my boots, they are as comfortable as any footwear I’ve owned.

The flexibility in modern plastics means the straps and bindings themselves are stiffer where they need to be, and have give where they don’t. Combined with the boots there are no more pinch points at all, and all the force you put into riding goes where you want it.

I ride almost exclusively in the midwest US, so hard, rough, icy conditions that most people wouldn’t consider snowboarding in are the every day. A board with reverse camber, often called banana, and magna tractions, serrated edges for holding grip on ice, are a must.

“Turns ice into powder”, well I dont know if I’d go that far. I can lay into turns in the worst conditions and completely trust the edge to hold. When you get that horrible downhill edge that wants to catch and slam you into the ground, the newer complex curves in the camber means more often than not you will pivot out instead of hanging up. I can’t count the number of times I’ve felt that edge wanting to catch and end my day, only to slip around switch and get away with it.

I’m sure there are more now, but a product called 3DO gel was the first I saw. Flexible and soft normally, it turns ridged under force. I have pads of that stuff basically all over my body, knee and elbow pads, but also tail bone, forearms, and in the liner of the helmet. Saw a demo where they were hitting a guy with a shovel and instantly thought “That’s for me”.

If I had to pick one, a board with C2 or C3 gen camber from lib tech, or its equivalent makes the biggest difference. The over all package of a new setup bought and sized together for my cough, um, “modern” weight requirements, took riding from a painful and nervous experience, and made it relaxed and enjoyable again. Due to many old injuries, I used to ride an hour, maybe two, and had to quit. Now I can ride a full evening, and feel good about doing a few hours the next day as well.

The advances in material science and manufacturing in sports equipment in the past 15 years has been amazing.

That means boots, bindings, and a snowboard that would have seemed like alien technology to me when I started riding. Same goes for all the saftey gear, knee pads, helmets, integrated wrist guards in gloves.

The performance, comfort, and saftey offered by modern equipement means I can still enjoy my favorite sports at 50. The thought of getting on a hill with gear I had just 15 years ago makes me shudder.

My earliest gaming memory is my dad taking me to a local hotel bar to play Pac-Man when it came out, which suggests spring of 1980.

I know I played pong, river raid, and pitfall on home consoles as well, not sure which was first.

One xmass we got an Atari, but when my dad realized it came with a poker game he returned it a few days later.

First system I had actual private access to was a TRS-80.

No, I don’t think that would work for me.

TIL that both Voyager craft are still operating, simply amazing.

I’ve skated and hung out with a lot of pro skaters over the years at various demos, but the one who is probably most universally recognized is Bam Margera.

It’s either him or Ben Bernanke, the ex federal reserve chair.

Somehow I had missed that Bannerlord has come to consoles, been waiting for this one a long time.

Sequels often disappoint, but so far this one strikes a great balance between keeping what made the original fun, incorporating new ideas, and adding a ton of quality of life features that fix what made the original a bit frustrating.

Obviously porting this kind of game to a controller is a huge task, and over all they did a good job. Some of the map and menu navigation is a bit clunky, but in almost every way it’s better than warband.

Looking forward to never being able to finish this one either.

My cat was 16 or so years old and in good health, though pretty under weight, when we brought in a 6 week old kitten.

Having been a loner all her life, she wasn’t so happy to have the kitten around, but left her be. My only concern was the kitten was so small she might kill her.

By 18 months, the kitten was larger than my senior cat, but had been put in her place so many times they mostly left each other alone.

Occasionally they’d scrap a bit, but that was just the kitten wanting to play and the old one hissing and swatting her away. Honestly, I think it gave her some needed excercise to be chased around a bit and stalked.

I made sure they each had their own food, water, and litter box, and there never was any real issue.

They both had their spots, the kitten up top of the cat tree, and the old lady in her bed. I think so long as they have enough room to get away from each other it will be fine. They never became friends, but they learned to live and let live well enough. It even reached the point they could both sit with me on the couch and not fight.

Had to put the older cat down a few weeks ago, and as sad as that was, it was very nice to have the kitten at home so the house didn’t feel so empty.