Roy Tang

March has begun. Did it ever really end?

The world:

• Vaccination finally starts in the country, with initial donated batches of Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccine arriving in the country. Just in time for the one year anniversary of the world’s longest lockdown. SinoVac isn’t the best choice, but many of my doctor friends say they’ll settle for it if that’s what’s available for them. I think QC is planning to use AstraZeneca for their citizens, but worrying is that AZ’s efficacy has been shown to be not so good against certain variants such as the South African one, which has already been detected in the country. Cases have been on the rise in the past couple of weeks as well, possibly due to the variants. We may very well be in a race against time now (maybe we always have been). The next month may be the most crucial phase of the pandemic for us, as vaccination drives hopefully kick into gear to try to overcome the accelerating spread.

Links of interest:

• OhHelloAna.blog shared a whole bunch of bookmarks. Quite a few look interesting. Looking forward to going through this list.
• Great article about cutting loading times in GTA went around last week. A case study in the problems with blindly relying on dependencies perhaps, and the complexities of C code performance, and even software performance in general.
• Rachel True had problems with iCloud after accidentally inputting her last name in lowercase. Feels like the sort of thing that can be maybe part of standard QA test suites? Hope she gets it resolved soon!
• I enjoyed this fan video: What if Wes Anderson directed X-Men?
• I also enjoyed this thread on classical music in classic cartoons. I’m no musical expert by any means, so it was even educational for me!

My stuff:

• Still sketching. I’ve switched back to doing digital sketches via Procreate, with kind of a different style this time? I kind of like it, more or less.
• Today I was mentioned via the u/hungryroy syntax on reddit for the first time. Not a big deal, I was just surprised lol.
• Generally the pandemic and the quarantine hasn’t hit me as bad as other folks. My day to day routine hasn’t actually changed that much, since I didn’t really go out too often even pre-pandemic. That being said, I do miss being able to go out to places just to wander around, take my daily walk in a public place like the QC circle or the university campus, or even just loitering at the mall. It’s not that I miss being able to hang out with other people (although I do to some degree as well). More like I miss the ability to be outside, alone, in public, just sitting quietly and letting the universe wash over me.
• Watching:
  • WandaVision is done! Here’s a spoiler-free review, something I used to do more regularly. I have more spoiler-related thoughts, but they may be too much for this space.
  • I’m almost done with season 2 of Star Trek: Enterprise, which means I’m about halfway through the series overall.
  • The Flash started its new season last week, but it feels like their episodes are like 90% nonsense now. (Used to be closer to 60% nonsense.). Second ep of Superman and Lois was okay, although we are definitely getting more moody teenager problems.
• Gaming:
  • Second Fire Emblem Three Houses run: still WIP. Moving forward slowly, ever so slowly.
  • I got last month’s Humble Choice, and decided to go ahead and install and try out some of the games in the bundle.
    • I started by playing Iris and the Giant. It’s a nice little tactical battle indie game with CCG mechanics – think Slay the Spire, but with turn-based tactical RPG battles that can also feel very puzzle-like. I’ve been enjoying well-designed indie games recently, and this one seems to fall into that bucket. It has a unique, minimalist aesthetic and the story is about a young girl’s mental health? Maybe? I’ll know more if I actually managed to finish a run.
    • I also tried to play a game of Endless Space 2. I’m not unfamiliar with 4X games of course, but this one was a bit confusing for me. In the one game where I managed to get anywhere, it felt like I was always behind in tech, and there’s so many indicators and UI elements on the different views that I don’t really understand. I can see there’s going to be a learning curve for this one, so it may take a few games for me to get the hang of it.
  • Speaking of Humble choice, the next one has Control as a showcase game, but I already got that off PS+, so I think I’m pausing on this one.
  • Saturday regular gaming group decided to play Blood Rage again yesterday, and we found out there was new DLC so we all decided to buy that and try it out. Might do a review for this game this week!
  • Also did quite a few Starcraft 2 1v1s with friends this past week. I don’t consider myself very proficient with SC2, mostly because I’m very micro-averse, but I still enjoy playing it. Maybe not ladder though. We recorded some of our games, the first one is up on the Team Camote youtube channel, if you’d like to watch me be terrible.
  • Because of reasons, I browsed some Ludum Dare games the other day. My favorite is this short and simple one: A Monster Hunter Story. Check it out!
• Books: Still very slowly reading cyberpunk classic Neurmancer by William Gibson. I’m about halfway through, but I’m not sure I understand everything that’s going on. Might need to look for a recap later on. Still, I soldier on!

This coming week:

Huh, nothing. I guess it’s going to be one of those weeks.