It's May

It's May.

April was one helluva month, for sure. Many things were moving, fast, and the weather was downright atrocious, leading to many a time where I was just left physically out of it.

And this month, May, is likely to be just as hectic, if not more so.

(sigh)

Damn I'm tired.

I did manage to finish up my LEGO Bugatti Chiron build, which was exciting. The detailing part of the build (second booklet) was just a smidgen more interesting than the base frame build (differential gearing, simulated gear box, and simulated W16 engine). I would take pictures, but just not today---am just tired.

After nearly four whole months, The Great Negotiator finally arrived. It's the BAHCO 87, a rather large adjustable wrench, 30 in long, and coming in at a mass of 5.7 kg.

``MT, why the hell do you need a large wrench like that?''

Well... it's ludicrous. It's the embodiment of ``speak softly but carry a big stick'', but put into a slightly more plausible context of being a Crazy Old Man Engineer. No one expects the satisfying ``thunk'' of a 5.7 kg single-piece high performance alloyed steel on a table over a rather mundane discussion; hence the epithet of The Great Negotiator. It is also a rather visceral demonstration of an engineer, and is thus why I got it, despite it costing quite a fair bit of money, and taking so long to make its way over.

I will attest to the quality of the build though---the tolerances are pretty tight for the size, with a full clamp of 0.0 mm on the span-scale having no room to slip a thin sheet of 80 gsm paper through.

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My reading has taken me back to the era of the old WOWIO---an online storefront for digital graphic novels/comics, just at about the time the first Amazon Kindle was released. They released lots of free digital graphic novels/comics then, and it was only up till now that I have a chance to really read them. Many of the graphic novels stopped at issue #1, with their stories never completed, their artists being lost in the mist of time. But there were still some gems among them that I wished could have continued, like the Lullaby series.

Unfortunately, to get them working on Eirian-V required me using Ghostscript to remove the ``sponsored by'' pages---they were full page sized URLs that made turning pages on Eirian-V impossible due to Eirian-V relying completely on touch screen for all interactions as opposed to the external buttons from all the other Eirians before.

Ah well.

I'm abandoning Elden Ring even though I didn't complete the game---I think I've derived all the fun that I want out of it. That's probably the first and last Fromsoft game that I'll play this lifetime, mostly because I'm really getting to the point in life where I can't just sit there for hours on end just to ``git gud'' on a game.

I watched Kronii's playthrough of Blasphemous, and got interested in the game. It's yet another metroidvania, but it did not appear as punishing as [say] Hollow Knight nor as clunky as Feudal Alloy. I think it scratches that metroidvania itch adequately.

And then there's The Talos Principle II that I uh... need to complete. It's a puzzle solving game, so I think I was just puzzled out for a bit. I'll get back to it.

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I think that's all I care to talk about for now. Till the next update, I suppose.