Now that I’ve decided to reactivate my blog, I might as well start sharing inconsequential life updates on it. I recently started collecting typewriters - I didn’t really mean to, it just kind of happened, and now I own, like, eight. I don’t care a lot about mint condition or anything like that, I want to actually experience what it was like to use them, and my favourite piece is also among the more scratched-up ones. ...
You might notice that this website looks a bit different now. There’s a reason for that: Thanks to the current ongoing drama around Wordpress.com, Automattic, and its competitors, I no longer felt confident in having my website hosted there, and frankly, I didn’t feel confident using a self-hosted Wordpress instance either. This post will give you a quick rundown of the changes, and then a somewhat longer ramble about the new tech stack, and my experience upgrading. ...
Boso View Express, or BVE for short, is one of those train simulators that have been around for a very long time but never quite managed to establish themselves at the top of the food chain, at least not here in the west. But if you want to simulate Japanese railways, BVE is essentially the holy grail. You can find a huge variety of routes and vehicles, all of them with appropriate train protection and signalling systems courtesy of a highly-flexible plugin interface, for absolutely no money at all, but there is a downside: Basically the entire community is based in Japan, communicates in Japanese, and works on Japanese computers - which makes it difficult to get into the sim, or even to get it working, if you are not able to read and understand at least a bit of Japanese. (Google Translate, while definitely useful, often chokes on technical jargon.) This guide aims to help you install the sim and addons, understand principles of how Japanese railways generally are operated and how they differ from what we Westerners would expect, and also point you to some up-to-date, high-quality add-ons.
Just giving a quick shout-out to this Tumblr, which combines a thing I like with a thing I like. [embed]http://trainsingames.tumblr.com/post/152307726330/photoset_iframe/trainsingames/tumblr_ofmfgsedB41tw7x7i/0/false[/embed] Source: Trains In Games
It’s cold as shit, so I figured I might as well sight, edit and upload my vacation photos from Venice, several months ago. There’s far too much to reshare here, but you can see them on my Flickr. Highlights include: Animals! Shipping! A Weird Funicular! A Tramway But Done Wrong! ...
With only 5 hours to go, it’s my last chance to tell y’all which games of 2016 I liked best, which is apparently a thing many people do. So, let’s go. They’re not ranked, I like all games on this list equally. Overwatch Not including Blizzard’s newest franchise on a GotY list is apparently a game crime, so let’s get it out of the way first. It’s good. The characters are diverse, colorful and likeable (except for Reaper, who’s kind of a dipshit). Gameplay is extremely well-paced, fast-flowing and deep yet intuitive. But you probably knew that already. ...
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(I messed up the Flickr share because I blogged this from my smartphone. Click here for the Flickr page and full-sized image.) By the way, the building this tag is on is the same one you can see in the background of this older pic:
Hooray, Dragons of Tarkir is almost there! And because I chose Kolaghanbased on rushing the opponents with Dash, my sleeves were oddly fitting. Screamreach Brawler and Reckless Imp really pulled their weight, while Scion of Ugin didn’t do player damage even once. Grumble. Dragons are overrated.
Recently, I did a couple of trips to Zürich for a job application (it didn’t work out). This also meant I had a couple of hours for some photographing each time. Yay! The first thing of note is the Sihltal-Zürich-Uetlibergbahn (SZU). They operate two lines, the Sihltalbahn (with 15 kV 16.7 Hz AC) and the Uetlibergbahn (with 1250 V DC). Funnily enough, both lines share the tracks on the last kilometer or so before reaching the central station, so somehow they need two separate power lines on those tracks. How did they do that? Easy! ...