Roy Tang::

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 15:08:32 +0000

“Not sure you brought enough guys.” #sketchdaily 225/365

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Weeknotes 2021-08-15

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 08:39:06 +0000

A quote:

“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” - Eckhart Tolle

The world:

We are one week into the current NCR ECQ lockdown. Covid19 and the Delta variant continue to rampage through the country; the DOH reported 14k+ new cases today, the 2nd highest daily rate since the pandemic started, the positive testing rate staying above 20% for more than a week (signaling not enough testing - WHO recommended rate is 5%). The hospitals are starting to fill up again. Rumors are already circulating that the lockdown might be extended; businesses have pre-emptively said no, but what are we going to do if the cases just keep going up?
The US is completing their withdrawal from Afghanistan this month, and the Taliban has rapidly made advances, capturing and now they are poised to take Kabul. Yet another failed American war?

Links of interest:

Divergent association task. I did relatively well I guess. One of my friends suggested we take all the words we chose and put them in a Codenames pool.
Nestflix is a website that presents a faux Netflix-like service except it lists out fictional movies and TV shows that were featured in actual movies and TV shows
The case for optimism. It’s been difficult to stay optimistic with everything happening in the world, but we need to remind ourselves to still remain optimistic to help us find a way forward. Somewhat related: here’s a twitter thread about climate despair.

Visit the Links page for more links of interest.

From the archives, this week in history:

My stuff:

I celebrated my forty-third last week! “Celebrated” might be a bit of a stretch, since we are still in a pandemic, and the day was largely uneventful.
Early this week, the Metro Manila mayors decided to ban outdoor exercise during the ECQ lockdown. So I haven’t been able to do my usual outdoors walking. It’s actually not likely that anyone accosts me for outdoors exercise as long as its within the confines of my subdivision, but I like to pretend that I’m following the law, even if the law is ridiculous.
Still sketching; I am once again behind on the weekends, as it happens. Here’s a sketch of Gandalf. It’s not particularly good, but it turned out looking a lot more than Ian McKellen than I thought it would:

Watching:
- Movies: This week’s movies: Skyfall, Jumanji and Police Story
- TV: Parks and Recreation rewatch is up to season 6. I found the first episode of What If to be a bit underwhelming. Final season of Brooklyn Nine Nine has started, and I know they had to address all the policing issues of the past couple of years, but the first two episodes felt a bit heavy handed.
Gaming:
- No Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4) this week, instead I played through four cases of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. I’m enjoying the game, and I am getting a lot of screenshots for the eventual review.
- Daily fighting games ongoing on weeknights: both Guilty Gear Strive and Street Fighter V. I’ve already earned enough fight money in SFV to unlock Akira (the only season 5 DLC character I want to get) when she releases later this week.
- Magic Arena: I was looking forward to the release of Jumpstart Historic Horizons this week, but that has been delayed most likely for software development reasons (which I of course understand completely!). They’re giving us some free drafts as compensation, so that’s something. I also tried playing Standard for a while, but Winota mirrors are so boring, so I decided to explore the Standard 2022 queue. Still not doing well, but at least it’s more varied. I like the idea of Standard 2022, it’s kind of like Block Constructed, which deserved better.
- Regular Saturday group played some Root and Blood Rage again, as usual. I think I won’t be logging this moving forward until we pick up new games.
Reading: Still comics again this week. Comics are books, but I should also start looking up for new traditional books to read.
No quiz night this past week, just the usual NY Times crosswords and spelling bee with the trivia team. I also started doing the Newsday crossword online, which are the same ones I’ve been doing in the daily newspaper, having them online is more convenient.

This coming week:

Aug 16 Akira releases on SFV! Oro releases too, I guess.
Aug 18 Free demo of Tales of Arise is coming out!

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sat, 14 Aug 2021 17:18:15 +0000

Divergent association task thingy: https://www.datcreativity.com/task

PHOTOS PLACEHOLDER

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sat, 14 Aug 2021 13:03:23 +0000

I just solved @AmuseLabs’s crossword in 26 minutes, 9 seconds. Can you beat my time? https://www.newsday.com/?id=Creators_WEB_20210814&set=creatorsweb&puzzleType=crossword

Reviews: Skyfall, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Police Story

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 15:26:51 +0000

Skyfall (2012)

Bond film no. 23, Daniel Craig’s third. I watched this in the theaters back in 2012, so this is the last rewatch of my James Bond run. Back then my main complaint was that Bond’s plan in the last thirty minutes of the movie was terrible. The same complaint stands even now, especially given the eventual outcome of that plan. Make no mistake: the entire defending the house sequence is one of the best things about the movie from an action standpoint, but tactically it was terrible.

The whole film is basically a swan song for Judi Dench’s M, exploring the extremes of her relationship with Bond and how fond they are of each other in spite of everything. Ben Whishaw appears as the new Q, who starts his run appropriately, by letting MI6 get hacked. The film still calls out the old Bond film tropes, with Q telling Bond they’re not really into exploding pens anymore. Bardem gives a good performance as the villain Silva, but the character felt a bit underdeveloped as we didn’t get his background until an info drop around two-thirds through.

The theme song here by Adele won the Oscar for best song; it’s not my cup of tea, but I can see how it could win.

This film also brings cyberterrorism into the modern Bond era, and the usefulness of MI6’s focus on human intelligence during the modern era is called into question. It will be interesting to see how technology further changes the Bond films moving forward.

The film ends with basically the Connery status quo - Bond answering to a male M, flirting with his assistant Moneypenny, and assisted by Q. It’s something I wouldn’t have appreciated back when I first saw the film in 2012, given that this was only the 4th Bond film I’ve seen at that point, and none of them had that Connery setup.

Next up is Spectre, which I haven’t seen before and is the last one of the run before No Time To Die comes out in September!

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

I watched this even if I hadn’t seen the old first movie. I didn’t have a high opinion of The Rock, er… Dwayne Johnson’s acting skills, because I’ve previously seen him only in silly sports films like The Game Plan or The Tooth Fairy, but he does a good enough job here, portraying a nerdy high schooler trapped in a buff, macho, adventurer hero type. Same goes for Jack Black portraying a teenage girl in… well, Jack Black’s body. I like how the Jumanji game evolved from a board game to a video game for more modern times. The movie overall is a pretty good popcorn movie and has a few funny bits.

Police Story (1985)

This one was just something that I saw was on Netflix and was like “Why not?” Had to watch with Cantonese voice and English subs, the only alternative was Japanese voice. Pretty good, for its time. As you’d expect from Jacky Chan, all the action/fight sequences are great; I especially like the bus chase sequence and the ending fights in the mall were great. Apparently that sliding down the pole stunt is considered one of the best action film stunts of all time. The film glorifies police excesses though.

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 15:23:26 +0000

Brewmaster #sketchdaily 224/365

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Welcome to Nestflix

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 08:49:53 +0000

Shared via pocket: Welcome to Nestflix

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 04:21:23 +0000

I don’t pay a lot of attention to fonts, so I might not have noticed the Twitter font change if so many people weren’t talking about it

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Wed, 11 Aug 2021 18:00:29 +0000

Soldier fly #sketchdaily 223/365

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New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 12:26:34 +0000

Old school gaming #sketchdaily 222/365

PHOTOS PLACEHOLDER

Reply to monday_demos's tweet at https://twitter.com/monday_demos/status/1424626927936053253/:

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 10:01:46 +0000

Reply to monday_demos's tweet at https://twitter.com/monday_demos/status/1424626927936053253/:

@monday_demos @rowheyourboat thanks pala for the responses

Repost from JessicaTheLaw https://twitter.com/JessicaTheLaw/status/1424680519829180425/:

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 08:01:53 +0000

Repost from JessicaTheLaw https://twitter.com/JessicaTheLaw/status/1424680519829180425/:

And even if it does all end, even if civilisation crumbles, even if we are the last ever generation of humans to walk this earth, let’s not waste our precious last few decades on doom and defeatism. Let’s hold onto out hope, our humanity and our very real power to make change.

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 12:34:46 +0000

Civil War #sketchdaily 221/365

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New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 12:09:44 +0000

Old man #sketchdaily 220/365

PHOTOS PLACEHOLDER

Forty Three

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 06:29:45 +0000

Had some trouble thinking about what I wanted to write for this year’s birthday post. And while I was thinking about it I accidentally published an empty draft of this post earlier today. Sounds about right.

I like to consider myself an optimist, but it’s been a challenging 365 days. We are still very much in the throes of a pandemic, threatening to overrun our vaccine defense with mutated variants. The entire twelve months since the last birthday have been spent in quarantine. The world is burning, experiencing record levels of heat. The internet is dominated by big silos that incentivize spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories. Democracy, freedom of speech, and human rights are being threatened by ever-encroaching authoritarianism. Tensions are rising between two of the world’s biggest economies. The world doesn’t feel like it’s in a good place.

It is very difficult to remain an optimist in these trying times. But birthdays are a good time to look back and reflect and consider what the future holds, and perhaps to unapologetically turn back to hope and optimism. I want to believe.

As for me personally, I am in a good place. I am privileged enough that the pandemic doesn’t deprive me of my daily needs or to still take part in many of the things I enjoy (though I wouldn’t mind being able to go see a movie in theaters again). Still able to enjoy the love and company of family and friends, albeit online only. Work is light to nonexistent, by choice. I have been exploring and trying out some new things, trying to see if I can find a new path for me moving forward, as every time I think about going back to full-time employment that seems like a terrible idea. Nothing solid yet, but that’s alright, there’s nothing wrong with just being a wanderer, if that’s how the world decides to turn.

Hopefully the coming year will be better, both for the world, and for me personally, and that I have better things to write for the future post titled “Forty Four”.

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 05:17:50 +0000

I thought I was done with #mtgafr, limited but in the wee hours of the morning earlier I threw some gems away on the draft challenge. RW pile went 0-2 (boo!), UR went 4-2 (better, but still not happy with it). I should stop letting the format keep drawing me back in lol

PHOTOS PLACEHOLDER

Reply to rowheyourboat's tweet at https://twitter.com/rowheyourboat/status/1424339108902498313/:

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 04:47:45 +0000

Reply to rowheyourboat's tweet at https://twitter.com/rowheyourboat/status/1424339108902498313/:

@rowheyourboat Hi. I’m a tall and heavy person. Will a folding bike work for me?

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 16:51:09 +0000

Bespin Cloud City #sketchdaily 219/365

PHOTOS PLACEHOLDER

💡 Kevin Kelly: The Case for Optimism

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 07:07:03 +0000

Shared via pocket: 💡 Kevin Kelly: The Case for Optimism

Eternal Change for No Energy: A Time Crystal Finally Made Real

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 06:45:05 +0000

Shared via pocket: Eternal Change for No Energy: A Time Crystal Finally Made Real

In praise of PostgreSQL

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 06:37:24 +0000

Shared via pocket: In praise of PostgreSQL

Why medieval city-builder video games are historically inaccurate

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 06:33:26 +0000

Shared via pocket: Why medieval city-builder video games are historically inaccurate

Scammers sell griefers

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 06:29:41 +0000

Shared via web: Scammers sell griefers

Foundations

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 06:07:12 +0000

Shared via pocket: Foundations

Weeknotes 2021-08-08

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 05:09:43 +0000

A quote:

“Ask yourself: Why am I seeing and feeling this? How am I growing? What am I learning? Remember: Every coincidence is potentially meaningful. How high your awareness level is determines how much meaning you get from your world.” – Ansel Adams

via Nitch via Swiss-Miss

The world:

Metro Manila is back under Enhanced Community Quarantine, this is season 3. The delta variant continues to spread, and the case counts over the past couple of days have reached peaks not seen since April. And the response from congress is to… investigate an independent research group that provides covid data analysis?
Meanwhile, on the eve of the ECQ, unknowing citizens flooded vaccination centers thinking that they won’t be allowed outside if they’re not vaccinated. Where did they get that idea?
The Olympics are over, and the country not only got our first ever gold medal, but we also registered our best performance ever, with a gold, two silvers, and a bronze. Still a long way to go, but a pretty good outcome nonetheless!

Links of interest:

The most unbelievable things about life before smartphones
Paint Everything Everywhere: a nice and short puzzle game. It’s even mobile-friendly, I played through all 20 levels while lying down in bed.
Jeremy Keith talks about why browsers should avoid breaking changes
Cory Doctorow talks about the social media silos’ complicated banning/reinstatement processes, and the scammers taking advantage of them. As is typical with this author, some great detail in the links.
Why medieval city builder games are historically inaccurate
Drew DeVault writes in praise of PostgreSQL. I honed my database chops on Oracle for 10+ years, but this blog currently runs on Postgres, and frankly it’s pretty good for a free, open-source alternative.
SCIENCE! Eternal Change for No Energy: A Time Crystal Finally Made Real. This is my first time hearing of these time crystals as well. Haven’t delved too deep into the science, but it seems like exciting stuff.

Visit the Links page for more links of interest.

From the archives, this week in history:

2010: Google killed Google Wave
1991: The first ever website is published

My stuff:

Still sketching; My favorite sketch this week was this update + redraw of a pencil sketch from 2016:

Watching:
- Movies:
  - James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad was fairly good. Spoiler-free review. Full review.
  - James Bond run continued this week with Quantum of Solace.
- TV: No new series watched this week, but I have started a new Parks and Recreation rewatch as my background noise. Series is still great.
Gaming:
- I think I’m close to completing all the Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4) Frozen Wilds quests. I only have 1 sidequest left, plus finishing the hunting grounds (1 out of 3 done so far). Might have less PS4 during the ECQ though.
- Still managing to play a bit of Guilty Gear Strive on weeknights. I also tried playing some Street Fighter V again after the announcements this week, with the view of earning a bit more money so I can just unlock new DLC fighter Akira for free when she drops on the 16th. Coming back to SFV is weird after playing GGS for a couple of months; I lost my first match back because my instincts were all wrong, but I kind of got back into the groove by the second and third matches. I’ll try to do both GGS and SFV on my nightly runs.
- Magic Arena: Streamed the final episode for my Adventures in the Forgotten Realms drafting on Magic Arena, you can follow via the MTGAFR tag. The last stream lasted more than 3 hours! You can view the whole Youtube playlist here.
- Regular Saturday group played some Root and Blood Rage again, as usual. I won this week’s Blood Rage!
Reading: Mostly just comics again this week. When I say I’ve been reading “comics”, I mostly mean I’ve been trying to make my way through a stack of printed comic strip collections that someone had given to me earlier this year. I’ll make a blog post about them presumably when I’m done.
No quiz night this past week, just the usual NY Times crosswords and spelling bee with the trivia team.

This coming week:

August continues to be stacked! This coming week we have:
- Marvel’s What If on Disney+ (Aug 11)
- Jumpstart Historic Horizons dropping on Magic Arena (Aug 12)
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s final season starts (Aug 12)

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sat, 07 Aug 2021 08:59:48 +0000

Paint Everything Everywhere: https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6a412035f6f1999cc773ddcb071de6e6

A nice short puzzle game

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sat, 07 Aug 2021 00:32:39 +0000

Nanaue #sketchdaily 218/365 #TheSuicideSquad

PHOTOS PLACEHOLDER

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 23:59:57 +0000

After last night’s terrible W/L record in the final #mtgafr draft stream, I decided to do an off-stream quick draft just so I hit platinum by Aug 10. Naturally this was the one where I managed to get 7 wins lol

PHOTOS PLACEHOLDER

The Suicide Squad

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 14:25:12 +0000

First, the spoiler-free review:

On 6 Aug 2021 10:27am I wrote:

THE SUICIDE SQUAD spoiler-free review:

great, fun, violent, hilarious, possibly best of DCEU so far

trailers have spoiled waaaay too much of this movie

first act was ok, second act felt a bit meh, third act was great

hard to comment on actor performances without spoiling things, but Daniela Melchior was great and Idris Elba took the role seriously

there is a post-credits scene

Full review on the blog later

Second: I have to say, titling it “The Suicide Squad” is super annoying especially for anyone who does data processing/indexing, since “The” is what differentiates it from the 2016 word, and that’s usually ignored in stuff like search engines and such. Oh well.

Anyway, it turns out I don’t actually have very spoiler-y stuff to say though; the film is pretty straightforward. I guess I’ll try. It’s a marked improvement over the 2016 film in all aspects. It’s also visually a feast; James Gunn obviously had way too much fun with many of the shots. I am less a fan of the music/soundtrack choices here than in Guardians of the Galaxy though.

Some of the DC characters here are very strange choices, but most of them are used well. At least, the ones that survived most of the movie are pretty good. The rest were mostly cannon fodder who got killed off in like the first 5 minutes. King Shark was hilarious; Bloodshot and Peacemaker’s “rivalry” was great; you find yourself strangely rooting for Polka Dot Man; and Ratcatcher 2 was indeed the heart of this film, as promised. Also, I like how they straight-up just played Starro true to his comic book roots, and he’s just a giant kaiju starfish. He even walks around like Patrick Starr lol.

I am disappointed at how much the trailers have spoiled though. Specifically thinking of that scene where they’re about to go rescue Harley but she just shows up outside and are all “What are you guys doing?”, that would have been a great gag on first watch. Also I would’ve led with that scene first before cutting to “X minutes earlier” and THEN show Harley tearing her way through the building to escape. I actually didn’t like the “Harley getting captured” subplot too much though, as it felt like unnecessary filler that was added just because they needed to give one of the big stars more to do.

Still overall pretty good, and a welcome entry to the DCEU.

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 10:36:37 +0000

Drafting Adventures in the Forgotten Realms! final (?) episode https://www.twitch.tv/twitchyroy #mtgafr #magicarena #twitch

[22:42] Tonight’s extra long final AFR stream featured FOUR DRAFTS. Look at these piles and try to guess whether I made it out of Gold rank?

YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B7kTTuQGgM

PHOTOS PLACEHOLDER

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 10:27:59 +0000

THE SUICIDE SQUAD spoiler-free review:

great, fun, violent, hilarious, possibly best of DCEU so far
trailers have spoiled waaaay too much of this movie
first act was ok, second act felt a bit meh, third act was great

hard to comment on actor performances without spoiling things, but Daniela Melchior was great and Idris Elba took the role seriously
there is a post-credits scene

Full review on the blog later

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 13:24:24 +0000

Beach volleyball #sketchdaily 217/365

PHOTOS PLACEHOLDER

Previously

The most unbelievable things about life before smartphones

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 07:22:37 +0000

Shared via pocket: The most unbelievable things about life before smartphones

"Async read access to your brain"

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 05:36:44 +0000

I read this quote from Twitter recently that I really liked:

Blogging is creating async read access to your brain. Highly recommend. – @brian_lovin

I feel like this is very true for me because a lot of the time, I write posts in an unfiltered, stream-of-consciousness manner, so in many ways it is in fact a direct look at how I think (barring the limitations of language of course). Basically a documentation of thought processes. More often than not the beneficiary of that documentation is myself, or at least, a future version of me; but having a blog also gives other people insight to what and how I think.

Somewhat related: I read this post from Jamie Rubin about unposted writings:

Before a post goes into the world, there is really only one person who can judge whether it is good enough to be posted and that is me. This blog is a one-man operation. I play the role of writer, editor, and marketing department all by myself. And sometimes I write something and think, nope, that just isn’t very good. It used to be that I’d post the bad stuff anyway, but over time I realized that I wanted to show the very best of what I write. So I’ve gotten better at weeding out the bad stuff.

This time I found it interesting because it’s the opposite of how I approach things. Generally if some thread of thought surfaces in my brain that I feel is good enough to at least start writing a post about, I’m going to write it out and probably publish it, even if the end result is not super coherent. It’s part of my blogging process being mostly unfiltered - you kind of get the bad with the good here. It’s part of an evolving thought process: if ever I decide to revisit the topic in the future, I have this reference for my thoughts on it at the time and see how my views and opinions may have changed or become clearer or whatever.

How you blog is of course a mostly personal affair. What topics you discuss, what quality of writing you expect from yourself, these are all personal decisions, and what works for some people may not work for others. I don’t expect other people to blog the same way I do; it’s not like I’m a wildly successful blogger worth emulating, but I think my methods generally work for me.

I do find that recently my standard for “what deserves a blog post” has gotten a bit too high though, as I am blogging less and mostly reliant on the weeknotes to document my thoughts, and I may be leaving too much on the table, leaving quick thoughts mostly to social media or the notes folder. I’m kind of tempted a bit to lean in towards blogging more like I did in the early days before social media, with shorter, more frequent posts. We’ll see how it goes.

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 15:25:57 +0000

Red panda #sketchdaily 216/365

PHOTOS PLACEHOLDER

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 08:22:29 +0000

This aged kinda well. Still waiting on the holiday.

Quoted roytang's tweet:

Siguro pag may nanalo ng gold medal na Pilipino, magkakaron tayo ng holiday, sangkaterbang parada, at bagong national hero

Quantum of Solace

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 16:00:13 +0000

Bond film no. 22, Daniel Craig’s second outing. I actually watched this back in 2008, but apparently I wasn’t super impressed (and I wish I wrote more back then lol). I suspect I didn’t really like it because this movie is actually a direct sequel to Casino Royale which I hadn’t seen until this year. It picks up on several hanging plot threads, and some of the characters appear again, and Bond in this film is primarily motivated by anger over the events of the previous film. Not to mention I had only seen two Brosnan movies prior to watching Quantum of Solace at that time, so I really didn’t have either the franchise foundation or the context from Casino Royale to appreciate this film.

This film sets up more of the gritty tone for modern Bond. Unlike the black and white factions of the cold war, the geopolitical setup here is more complicated, with even Bond’s traditional allies the CIA mostly turning against him. The villain’s plot and motivations seem kind of thin and the plot itself is a bit forgettable; while I recall many of the scenes from my previous watching, I didn’t remember what the overall plot was until it just happened.

Olga Kurylenko gave a great performance here. The film also has some great action sequences, and even hits the trifecta of land, sea, and air chases/vehicle fights. The theme song here is “Another Way to Die” by Alicia Keys and Jack White (of the White Stripes), which was ok but I didn’t particularly enjoy. Stana Katic makes a bit appearance here towards the end, before her run on Castle. Also I just chuckle to myself whenever Bond tries to use a 2008-era dumbphone like it was a modern smartphone, such as taking pictures good enough for facial recognition from like a hundred feet away.

Still, the movie is a decent watch. Overall I’m enjoying modern Bond, but I have to admit I kind of miss the campy tropes of classic Bond, but I can understand why they’d have no place in a modern action franchise. I mean, Craig still hasn’t even got a Q or any fancy devices! (Yes, I know he gets a new Q eventually). Anyway, next is Skyfall!

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 15:49:17 +0000

Rebel flight suit #sketchdaily 215/365

PHOTOS PLACEHOLDER

Performative Politics

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 08:38:14 +0000

I read this article about how a US Democratic representative says his Republican colleagues are like WWE wrestlers (excuse me, they’re called “Superstars”) who behave differently in private versus in public. Basically their politics are performative, they act a certain way in public to appeal to their bases, but in private they don’t actually really believe in many of the things they say in public. It speaks to a certain lack of integrity and deceptiveness. It’s the kind of laying and salesmanship that I really dislike.

Reading this article reminded me of supporters praising Duterte back during the 2016 campaign (or even until now) because he is a totoong tao (i.e. an authentic person). I guess it’s kind of appealing to people who are sick and tired of two-faced performative politics, such that they applaud his “authenticity” even when he says terrible things in public. It’s the same thing for people who support Trump because he “tells it like it is”, I guess?

It’s a weird kind of “authenticity” because Duterte is actually two-faced in public as well. There’s his formal “good Duterte” version where he pays lip service to human rights and being a decent human being, then there’s his ranting extemporaneous vindictive mode where he’s cussing everybody, making misogynistic jokes, threatening and/or admitting murder or other crimes, etc. I agree that this is probably “authentic” to who he is in real life, as in, he is probably two-faced in real life as well, saying what he thinks his current audience wants to hear. I assume Trump is the same way.

I think their supporters think their being two-faced in public is “authentic” because they assume people/politicians are naturally like this and people like Duterte are just showing their true selves in public. At the same time other politicians who always present in public as “decent” (a term that one would assume to be universally accepted as positive, but has been degraded by negative propaganda) are rejected as “plastic” because people assume they just behave just as badly as Duterte in person/private? It’s like they don’t believe good people can exist. This is my same reaction whenever someone is criticized for “virtue signaling”, it’s kind of a similar thing.

I look at politicians like the Vice-President Leni Robredo, whose public image is generally both decent and competent and may or may not run for President next year, with cautious optimism. We can’t really know what public personalities are like in person since we aren’t in their inner circles, but I think in generally, we should at least prefer politicians with good public images, instead of praising someone who behaves badly in public as “authentic”. After all, no matter how they behave in private, it’s their public actions and statements that are more likely to affect society.

(Obviously, I don’t approve of presenting as good/decent to hide bad/illegal activities, but absent such problems, I think it’s fine to be cautiously optimistic about people’s good nature.)

This felt a bit ranty. Kind of like Duterte. I’m like this in person too, if you’re curious.

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 14:27:40 +0000

Caricature practice #sketchdaily 214/365

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New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 13:56:36 +0000

Castle town #sketchdaily 213/365

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New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 10:59:24 +0000

Drafting Adventures in the Forgotten Realms! ep 7 - Quick Drafts! https://www.twitch.tv/twitchyroy #mtgafr #magicarena #twitch

[21:15] Did two quick drafts today, both BR, but neither one went the distance. Maybe try some other archetypes next time?

YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dctRWIvwJE

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Duterte restores Philippines as ‘sick man of Asia’

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 08:22:48 +0000

Shared via pocket: Duterte restores Philippines as ‘sick man of Asia’

What is a diamond dependency conflict?

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 07:04:45 +0000

Shared via pocket: What is a diamond dependency conflict?

700,000 lines of code, 20 years, and one developer: How Dwarf Fortress is built

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 07:03:57 +0000

Shared via pocket: 700,000 lines of code, 20 years, and one developer: How Dwarf Fortress is built

Weeknotes 2021-08-01

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 06:04:54 +0000

It’s August!

A quote:

“Here’s the thing: there is no real life. There is no full, meaningful, “best life.” There are, at best, more and less meaningful pursuits, from your perspective, based on your upbringing, imprinting, and your own specific cocktail of longings. It is natural for us to feel anxiety about how we spend our limited time. No matter how happy you convince yourself to be, you will sometimes feel the vague ache of other possible lives.” – SandwichBear via Amy Hoy

The world:

Some good news for the country last Monday, and it wasn’t the old man’s last SONA (where I heard he spent more time talking up China than discussing the pandemic response). The good news was actually that the country finally got an Olympic gold via champion weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz, after we some commentators described our country during the opening ceremony as having the dubious distinction of having won the most Olympic medals without a gold. Additionally, a couple of our boxers are still in the running for another gold, currently guaranteed a silver and a bronze each. Go sports!
Now that the delta variant is here, on Thursday the IATF announced that NCR would be on “GCQ with heightened restrictions” up to Aug 15, despite calls for a “circuit breaker” lockdown to face the delta threat. Not 24 hours later, they changed their mind and said the NCR will undergo the stricter ECQ lockdown starting Aug 06. I suppose we should be happy they flip-flopped reasonably quickly? As is typical for the pandemic response so far, we still don’t have a clear idea what specifically this new season of ECQ will entail and whether or not there will be ayuda for the poor.

Links of interest:

Katie Baker reminisces about The Day The Good Internet Died
Ed Zitron over at the Atlantic talks about Why Managers Fear A Remote Work Future
Ryan Donovan over at the StackOverflow blog interviews Tarn Adams, solo developer of the almost 20-year Dwarf Fortress game.
Some dev stuff: What is a diamond dependency conflict?
A twitter thread that reminds us that we are allowed to leave uncomfortable situations.
Youtube: Ghostbusters Afterlife trailer
Youtube: Trailer for Brooklyn Nine Nine final season

Visit the Links page for more links of interest.

From the archives, this week in history:

2016: Our trivia team won the inaugural Pop Quiz!
2008: I bought a cellphone with my own money for the first time. It was a Nokia 5800

My stuff:

Still sketching; My favorite sketch this week was this Roy Mustang one I did early in the week:

Roy Mustang #sketchdaily 205/365 I enjoyed this one and liked how it turned out, but it took me over an hour because I was playing with various #Procreate tools and brushes. Here’s a timelapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOYUkG1ac38 (Click to view full-size)

Watching:
- Movies:
  - Casino Royale (2006), Gunpowder Milkshake (2021), Batman the Long Halloween (2021)
  - During this week’s Saturday gaming session we did a rewatch of Mortal Kombat (1995), a fitting followup to our rewatch of Street Fighter a couple of weeks ago.
- TV: Here’s the review for Masters of the Universe: Revelation (season 1 part 1). I also watched the new season of The Movies That Made Us on Netflix; not much commentary needed here, but I really enjoy learning about the ins and outs of movie production and how movies can sometimes take years to get off the ground, even before filming.
Gaming:
- I think I’m close to completing all the Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4) Frozen Wilds quests.
- Finding matches on Guilty Gear Strive has gotten a bit more difficult lately. I think it’s mostly because I got promoted to a higher floor? A new DLC fighter came out last week though, so hopefully that means a resurgence of players?
- Went ahead and bought The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles on Steam! I did a Let’s Play + commentary with some friends for the first hour or so of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-jAUOpQUO4
- Magic Arena: Still drafting the latest MTG set Adventures in the Forgotten Realms on Magic Arena, you can follow via the MTGAFR tag. I managed a couple of quick drafts this week, one of them a 7-winner! I may end up wrapping up the AFR run this coming week because on the 12th we’re getting Jumpstart Historic Horizons which was just unveiled last week, and I’ll probably want to focus on collecting that. There’s also a Standard Open going on this weekend, and I somehow managed to qualify for Day 2.
- I managed to hit both Mythic on Arena and Masters on Eternal this past month, a feat I haven’t managed to do in a while!
- Regular Saturday group played some Root and Blood Rage again, as usual. I just keep copying this sentence over from previous weeks lol.
- A friend has been trying to convince me to get the just-released Orcs Must Die 3 on Steam, but I complained that we haven’t even finished our long-running coop run of Orcs Must Die 2 yet, so we did just that this weekend.
Reading: Mostly just comics again this week.
No quiz night this past week, just the usual NY Times crosswords and spelling bee with the trivia team.

This coming week:

August is fairly stacked, and that kicks off this week with James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, which should be out by Friday. Despite being an MCU fanboy, this is the superhero movie I’ve most been looking forward to this year!
There’s also some Street Fighter V reveals/updates slated for Aug 3. I’m not playing the game regularly anymore, but I am willing to be sucked back in, especially since the upcoming DLC character Akira is a favorite of mine from Rival Schools.

New note

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 04:46:03 +0000

Managed to clear the #mtgarena Standard Open in just under an hour using @urlichmtg ’s Monowhite Book list. Wasted a bunch of gems though, since I had a first run that was plagued by network issues on my end. Still, looking forward to day 2!

PHOTOS PLACEHOLDER

[2021-08-02 02:06] Unfortunately, day 2 didn’t go quite as well. Finished day 2 at 5-2, just short of cash prizes! Such is life. Deck was a great choice though! BO3 decklist attached for reference.

PHOTOS PLACEHOLDER

New photos

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Sat, 31 Jul 2021 13:44:39 +0000

Old Man McDonald #sketchdaily 212/365

New photos

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 17:20:47 +0000

Couldn’t sleep, decided to grind some @EternalCardGame instead, finally hit Master rank after a long drought, just before the end of the month too. I think it’s been an even longer time since I’ve had both Master in Eternal and Mythic in Arena!

New photos

hello@roytang.net (Roy Tang) — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 14:57:20 +0000

Look to the sky #sketchdaily 211/365