I Now Live In A Smart Home

After buying an Alexa earlier in the year I became intrigued with the idea of the smart home.  However, while cool in theory, I struggled a bit to justify spending the time and money to do something that was already as simple as flipping a switch.  Someone pointed out to me that hooking a Christmas tree up to a smart system was helpful so I decided to try it out myself.  I bought a smart plug and was easily able to set up the tree lights on a complex timing system to turn the tree off and on automatically. Pretty useful and much easier than climbing to the back of the tree to reach a plug.  Secondly, after a bit of finagling with the sketchy Alexa app, I was able to install the skill for the smart plug on my Alexa device.  Now I can turn the tree off or on using just my voice and Alexa. It's really pretty amazing. I feel like I'm living in the future.  We have some under the cabinet lights that currently we are turning off and on every night. I might extend this smart home functionality there if I can get the smart plugs on sale.

Red Dead Is Here!

Finally, Red Dead is here! I plan to spend a lot of time in this world, after the 105 gb install, that is.  I'll see you in the spring.

Playmates Are Back

Nudity was removed from playmate photos in 2016.  This made some news at the time.  I had no horse in the race and didn't care much.  However, they also removed the playmate photos from the website which I didn't understand then and I don't understand that decision now.  I was a bit irritated by this decision.   Fast forward to spring of 2017 and they brought nudity back to the playmate photos.  However, they continued to omit them from the website.  I'm obviously not involved in the decision-making process and don't know the internal politics that are involved, but it seems like an odd decision.  Life went on. Now fast forward to the current day, nearly three years after they removed the photos from the site, and they are now back on the site! Seemingly out of nowhere, as if they never left - sort of.  They seem to be releasing them one week at a time instead of a single large batch release, but at this point I'm just glad that they're back.

Speedruns + Why The SNES Is Awesome

When I first heard of the concept of speed-running games I thought it was stupid.  What's the point of running through a game as fast as possible? I like to slow down and enjoy the game.  After I saw a few videos, however, I adopted the concept.  This became especially true after reading the article regarding Mario world 4-2 and its importance in the speed running community.  

A few months ago, prior to getting my 3DS and being in my "lull in-between games" I randomly had the desire to play Super Mario World from the Super NES system.  I can remember playing the game once in its entirety, and I've played the first couple of stages on numerous occasions.  After getting the 3DS I had access to the game again easily and began playing it a few weeks ago. It's a fantastic game that is both challenging (thank goodness for restore points) and fun.  I'm glad I've been able to play through the game again.

This game brings up two points that I'd like to make.  The lesser point is that games like Super Mario World really make me appreciate speed runs.  This game is full of challenges involving timed jumps, so much so that on numerous stages I've almost ran out of time waiting for the best moment to advance.  I've died numerous times (again, thanks for restore points) mis-timing my jumps.  There have been a few instances where I wasn't sure how to advance, so I pulled up some videos on YouTube to watch.  A lot of the videos available are from speed runners, and they are amazing to watch.  After struggling through a stage, watching these players effortlessly time their jumps to advance is amazing.  Their speeds require so much skill, the disparity between them and me is mind blowing.  

The second and larger point is that in retrospect, I think the SNES was under appreciated. I know I under appreciated the console at the time.  Despite 30 years of time passing, games like Super Mario World, A Link To The Past, and numerous others play shockingly well in modern time.  The NES was a bit too early - graphics not quite advanced enough, sounds a bit too cheesy, and controls lacking.  Games in the Playstation/N64 era are plagued with early-on 3D graphics and awkward camera angles. Games from the PS2 era and beyond mostly fit into the modern era of games.  The SNES, however, seems to have this perfect niche of being noticeably better than games from the 80s and not suffering from the setbacks of games from the late 90s.  Some modern games even seem to model after SNES-era graphics (such as Stardew Valley).

At the time I had both an SNES and a Genesis.  I remember playing a few games on the SNES and thinking they were alright.  When I was younger I always thought the Genesis was better - It had better versions of Madden and NHL, along with many other great games.  It seemed like games that came out on both systems were frequently a bit better on the Genesis.  But in hindsight, the SNES seems to be the system that continues to play well.  

Oracle of Seasons - Thank Goodness for Restore Points

Oracle of Seasons has many great attributes common to Zelda games, including being fantastically odd at times.  For a hand-held game that is nearly 20 years old, the gameplay holds up quite well.  I never owned a Game Boy Color so with my recent 3DS purchase this is the first time I've had access to the game and as a long time fan of Zelda games I was excited about the opportunity to play the game. 

I no longer review games on the site and so I'll stop discussing the game at this point.  It was well received by critics and fans and I'm sure at this point those who are interested have already played.  I wanted to take a brief moment to discuss Nintendo's Virtual Console and how fantastic it is.  Specifically, I wanted to discuss restore points.  Oracle of Seasons has many great attributes, but two negative attributes are that the game can be tedious at times and they are stingy with hearts, making dying easy.  I blame Capcom.  The restore points allow you to save the game at any point, so that if you mess up or die, you are able to start the game from the previous restore point.  This save feature is awesome and I think all games should have this feature.  In fact, this game is so tedious at times I probably wouldn't have finished the game without restore points.

With that being said, I technically haven't finished the game yet.  I'm on part 2 of the final boss and I keep dying.  After dying I am able to restart the game where  I started, as if going back into time before dying.  It takes the sting out of the tedious nature of the game. 

I've died several times so I decided to place finishing this boss off on the back burner and start Super Mario World.  I've been wanting to play through this game again for quite some time but didn't have a convenient way to do so - another example of the fabulousness of the virtual console.  It's loaded with both games I want to play again and games I've never played before.  I'll get around to finishing Oracle at some point.  For now, I'm off to Yoshi land!

Nintendo Direct

It wasn't too long ago when I was complaining that I didn't have any good games to play.  That changed quickly.  Last week Nintendo Direct announced several games for the Switch that are being released in the near future that I'm interested in.  I've commented on the Switch in the past, and to summarize, I like the system a lot.  My biggest complaint with the system is that the game choices are quite odd, and while critics seem to like the games, I'm not overly interested in most of them.  That's about to change.

There's a couple of new Mario games about to be released. The one I'm most interested in is the New Super Mario U, a 2-D platforming game.  Obviously most Mario games are quite good and I'm sure this one will be no exception.

I'm also interested in Animal Crossing.  Obviously this is a hugely popular gaming series and the Nintendo community seems quite excited that the game is coming to the Switch.  I've never played any Animal Crossing games but now that I have access to the series via the 3DS and Switch I'm interested in seeing what the fuss is about.

The game I was most surprised to see and maybe the most interested in is Cities Skylines.  I've always been a fan of the city building sims and have been playing 2004's Sim City 4 for over a decade.  However, as previously discussed Aspyr doesn't seem to support the game anymore on the Mac and OS updates have made the app unplayable.  This is quite disappointing.  I've played Skylines once on Steam but unfortunately my computer doesn't have the horse power to run the game well.  I've always been skeptical of playing these types of games on a console but the PS4 version of the game got good ratings for controls and from what little I've seen on the Switch the controls look smooth.  Ideally I'd play the game on the computer but I honestly don't know when I'm going to upgrade my computer - it could be years.  So I'm likely to take the plunge on this one.  Some people said the game lags when your cities get large but I've also heard people say this happens on PC as well so I'm just going to find out for myself.

And by the way, while this has nothing to do with Nintendo, there's also this little game coming out soon called Red Dead Redemption 2.  What a time!

Smart Commute

Earlier this year my office moved 60 blocks south.  This is problematic for my commute.  Previously, I was able to avoid the highway and take side streets to my office.  This is no longer a practical option.  My office is now far enough away that there is really no way to avoid the highway.

There's a stretch of road on my way to work that due to the nature of how it is designed gets backed up daily.  This is usually a minor inconvenience as the delay is small and expected.  However, if there is even a minor fender-bender or if a cop has someone pulled over or if it is raining/snowing, etc., my commute time can double.  This obviously isn't acceptable.  The trouble is, I already give myself about 40 minutes to get to work.  If the commute goes smoothly it typically takes 30-35 minutes.  Since the major slowdowns are infrequent (a few times per month) I don't think it is worth the effort to give myself more time on a daily basis.  This is where the "smart" part of the smart commute comes into play.

When I can remember, I've started using Alexa/Google Maps/Waze. If any of those services show significant delays, I could bypass the common area where delays occur and get on the highway at a more distant point.  The problem is you need to know of the delay ahead of time in order to take a different route.  I've only done this a few times but thus far I haven't found it to be overly accurate. At least once both Google Maps and Waze said traffic was light on my commute and I got stuck in a jam.  I'm not going to give up on the idea yet because I am hoping they can save me significant time and frustration on my commute.